Yes because it makes perfect sense that one would deploy an expensive tactical vehicle into a battle with no way to fight back against the enemy.

If the enemy took back all the null cannons and you still lost because of MCC damage, you were getting your asses kicked well enough before for them to deserve the win anyways.

I REALLY miss the June/July build in which the game was progressive, with the MCC not moving at all until the original two objectives were destroyed and then it escalated to having to assault a complex. That map was brilliant in terms of what Planetary Conquest should be as I think it's a little crazy that all matches should be "fair".

Why should the defender be on equal footing with the attacker if they own the planet?

I agree but for all the wrong reasons, they hurt my dropships.

Totally agree with you there. The only Skirmish made more sense. Now if they changed it to where defenders had objectives already captured and needed to defend and hold those objectives against attackers...it would make the current system more viable.

And yes the turrets limit the duration of the match significantly. It's my understanding that when an objective is contested, the Null Cannon doesn't keep shooting, so for highly contested fights the battle could drag out a REALLY long time. Now while some people would love this, the turrets allow CCP to create an adjustable hard limit to battle duration. Now if they increase or decrease that limitation that is their choice.

The reason this is important mostly comes down to ISK rewards, if battle dragged too long, people are spending a lot of ISK in most cases, meaning ISK rewards would be higher. This could prove to be problematic if people adopt a playstyle which tries to farm ISK from the battle with minimal loss. If someone is disinterested in playing to win, and makes no attempt to fight and possibly die, they're still making a large ISK reward with minimal loss. Whill positive ISK production is wanted, too much of it causes problems in the market, namely with inflation. Because of this, ISK produced from NPCs much be tightly regulated because too much will crash the market. Which this is not important right now, once the player market opens up and equipment prices are set by players, inflation can become a bit problem.

By keeping the battles short, it helps to keep the cost and ISK production from each battle to a minimum. And although people can theoretically do the same thing by playing multiple battles in a row, it prevents farming of random battles. Two organized corps could queue sync together, and purposefully AFK in the MCC, or endlessly contest objectives back and forth to make the battle literally endless, rack up an infinite amount of ISK, and inflate the market.

I'd like to point out that when MCCs become Player-Owned, they are very expensive (120 mill last noted) targets. Forgive me, but if my corporation is going to sink that much funds into any piece of equipment, it better be able to shoot back at whatever is shooting it.

To be fair, this includes aircraft, ground targets, the base, etc. etc.

On a side note, I believe that if you're the defender, you should:

A) Start without an MCC... why would you need it when you'd have a base of operations in the area.

B) Control all objectives. You own the planet, the defences there are likely yours. You should control them.

And on the side of the Attacker:

A) Have to disable Null Cannons, not 'take control' of them. (Similar to Skirmish 1.0)

B) Have to progressively destroy control 'shields' to hack Null Cannons. These shields can be hacked, or blown up by weapons, to allow you to access the Null Cannon Controls (which should be housed inside a building, and not in the open).

This should have to be repeated for every Null Cannon Facility, as without an MCC, they become the sole way for the defender to destroy the hostile MCC. (Unless you make heavy weapons capable of damaging the MCC, which I sincerely do hope happens, so you can, in planetary conquest' strike at the attackers, rather than waiting for them to come within range of your Null Cannons.

you only get hurt if you manage to fly into their flight path, in which case you deserve the damage, though i wonder if anyone has ever been killed by it, and whether the MCC pops up on the kill feed.

yes yes and lol.

MCC turrets kill 3 people a month. They were involved in a kill stat discussion in IRC.

Sometimes they hit my merc directly because I am sniping from on top of the MCC.

Can't we just wait until after May 6? Who knows what changes there will be anyways to the system. This debate is pointless until then.

+1

I'm pretty sure 12 days isn't going to break anyone

Cheers,
Cross