| Author |
Locking planets, building issues, beakons, my 2 cents. |
Okkam
Marshal
Joined: February 06, 2008
Posts: 157
From: Dorset
|  Posted: 2009-11-07 09:14
Hey all,
I haven't played DS in a year, it normally works out this way. I stop playing for a while when somthing annoys me or I don't like the current patch and then come back later to see whats new.
Once I come back I normally start playing again, get a feel for the area and how the current patches and servers are working, then find out the flaws and problems and address them. Normally addressing flaws and problems that have already been addressed lol.
The first problem I would like to mension is the locking of planets. Now while I can see the benefit of locking planets there is also a massive downside. There are a few planets in the sagittarius server (MV) that are locked for UGTO, the one off the top of my head is No Water.
Currently at this point in time the MV has been overrun by luthies (more on that later) to the point where I believe ugto has 1 SY planet left. If No water was not locked it could easily be turned into a SY planet, not only that but if you were to look at No water you would realise that it was a botched build job aswell. 110 power left, 1 worker left and 100 max pop with 90 food, dabbling into level 1 defences to stop bombing. If No Water was not locked we could make a new SY planet or just tweek the planet so that it didn't have any errors, remake it so it is better used or defended. All that power isn't needed if it already has 32 buildings, 90 pop, 90 research and 11 defence. It doesn't need 110 power, so if you were to take away 1 power generator and 1 dome then *gasps* thats right you got 2 more building places which can be used to somthing small that requires little worker amount but can help out, for example a depo.
That leads onto building issues. Now previously when I was last here they changed bombing to be insanely hard, and I mean insane. Heavy infantry would actually heal faster than a luthie bombing cruiser could hurt them and you needed a rather large fleet or someone who was extremely good at bombing to do anything. This meant that with a lack of bombing there wasn't anything to build on, the occational planet was more or less flattened and it was a mass rush to conquer it then build on it. The issue with the current MV sagg server is that with the amount of planets crossed with the difficulty to damage a planet enough to cripple it so it can be taken there isnt anything to build on. Put that with the locking of planets and suddenly engineers are useless. You can't get engineer pres, building pres because there is nothing to build on. Leaving someone with the only options of combat and bombing, with bombing still being rather hard but possible.
This leads me onto the combat of the current MV sagittarius server. The only issue I can actually see is beakons. Kluth mandibles just sit there cloaked next to a planet and ninja ganking someone then getting away more or less unharmed. They will stalk smaller ships, uncloak and instagib them, then recloak and move off silently. Beakons apparently, or so I saw, only slow down this process of cloaking instead of stopping it for a period of time altogether. With beakons the way they are this means that 2-3 kluth dreadnaughts are more or less unstoppable.
Imagine this. You finally get to a planet that can be built on or you are in a cruiser orbiting a nicely defended planet. Suddenly 2 mandibles uncloak and kill you instantly before you can set destination and jump and if there was any defending fleet whatsoever all they can do is occationally 'ping' and fire at where they think the ship is. Now while its easier to hit a dread while cloaked because of the size it doesn't solve the issue that as soon as they cloak they are more or less invulnerable to focused fire. IF I were to get a anti sensor frigate and sit it with the fleet, then beakon a kluth that uncloaked and keep doing it, eventually he will manage to cloak up anyway. Back in the day it used to be that a beakon would prevent a luthie being cloaked for around a minute. The idea behind this was that the beakon would send off a extremely large and powerful signal so that it can be seen. This meant, annoying as it was at the time to be kluth, that if a beakon ship turned up it was practically game over, but without this beakons are pointless and luth are free to conquer.
Now add the following issues together and you get this:
You can't build or edit a planet because there are none to build and you cannot unlock a planet so you get a bombing ship. You attempt to bomb a planet only to find a kluth or two uncloak and mess you up. So you get a combat ship and try again looking for kluth this time only to get messed around and messed up yet again. So finally you decide to get someone to come along in a anti sensor frigate to beakon the kluthies so that you can actually do somthing and the corvette/frigate either dies to a luth attack in one volley because its small and small things die in one volley to luthies (at close range) or the beakon only slows down one target from cloaking. All the others, 2-3 or so, are free to cloak up, move around and then uncloak volley cloak over and over. Now put a mandible or two in that situation and its completely pointless in doing anything.
You can't actually play. Which is the current situation on the UGTO side in the Sagittarius server (MV). I need 200 pres til VA and i'm struggling to find a way to do it. Yes I can get a supp ship but that will be targeted first by the solo player Mandible that is orbiting our ship yard planet, our only shipyard planet because we cannot take more or refit No Water, taking out anything small in one volley then cloaking and waiting. I can go bugg the ICC some to try and get the pres but again it comes down to combat and eventually the luthies find out that ugto and icc are ignoring them and come after the icc and ugto in a different system while in combat. I recon it takes 7 minutes on average for a luth fleet to interrupt a icc vs ugto fight.
On bombing, quickly just mension this. Michelle planet in sagittarius server is small enough that you can litter it with small point defence batteries. Now while those PD batteries cannot hurt ships easily they still make bombing amazingly hard. Now while bombing shouldn't be a cake walk, we had as ugto 8 ships, 2 bomber cruisers and a station soaking fire, attempting to bomb or land infantry on that planet for over a hour and do you know what we managed to do? Lose half the fleet to a single mandible and destroy 1 power generator and we only managed to destroy that power generator because I rammed the sodding planet with my cruiser so that they PD couldnt hit the bombs. That far outweighs ANY pres I get from bombing to then lose a cruiser so that the bombs will even do ANYTHING.
We even put the station literally point blank, so much that if it moved forward it might hit the planet and the point defences still shot down the infantry before they hit the planet. Just food for thought.
Solutions:
Beakons
- Making beakons have a lower rate or fire and low ammunition amount. (e.g 3-4 beakons per ship) To prevent spamming maybe 1-2 beakons.
- Make beakons keep luthies or anything else visable for 1 minute (give or take, if you feel its unfair make it 30 seconds or 45 seconds. 2 minutes is too long and 4 seconds isnt good enough.)
- Give fleets, such as the ICC and UGTO, the ability to put 1 beakon on their larger ships or design a current shiptype larger than a sodding corvette to hold a beakon.
Building:
- Scrap building is more or less cheating when it comes to pres but atleast its minimal amount of pres with the deduction after scrapping. If not a server change a player change, when you are finished building a planet, unless it is 100% fully finished and completed without the need to change it EVER don't bother locking it. No Water is locked by a FA so no one who is currently on the server on UGTO side (during this post) can do anything to it, should we really have to wait for someone with higher rank to come onto the MV just to unlock the planet so we can build on it?
- Building and bombing go hand in hand, unfortunately with the current bombing such as it is building will be hard anyway. Bombing shouldnt be easy but atm there is no need for engineers. I'm not sure what can if anything should be done for it but think about it. There is 2-3 engineer capable units in each race and 2 of those are dedicated engineers which are rendered mostly useless at most times of the day.
Thanks for reading, now go take a break lol
Silent
[If you say anything along the lines of 'OMG WALLOFTXT' or 'rant' or even 'learn to space' then you should be shot, castrated and then hung before being shot AGAIN for saying such a thing on a READING FORUM. I say this because there is always ONE moron who doesn't like reading but goes into a forum]
_________________
When the universe collapses and dies there will be 3 survivors; Tyr Anasazi, the cockroaches and Dylan Hunt trying to save the cockroaches...
|
The Fridge
Chief Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: December 13, 2008
Posts: 559
From: In Your Fridge, Eating your Foods.
| Posted: 2009-11-07 10:47
Quote:
|
On 2009-11-07 09:14, SilentHunter13 wrote:
[If you say anything along the lines of 'OMG WALLOFTXT' or 'rant' or even 'learn to space' then you should be shot, castrated and then hung before being shot AGAIN for saying such a thing on a READING FORUM. I say this because there is always ONE moron who doesn't like reading but goes into a forum]
|
|
You know it's Beacon right?
_________________
|
AmbasadorThron (Bringer of Hope)
Vice Admiral
Joined: March 17, 2009
Posts: 6
| Posted: 2009-11-07 12:11
locking planets is nessesary for a few reasons but players with the much higher ranks should either unlock before they log or when they finish whatever they are doing with the said planets.
i have seen planets get bombed then the bombed planet is left with missing structures and because its locked with to high of a rank it is impossible to fix.
you can always ask players in you faction if they are of the required rank to unlock the planet for you but if there is nobody else arround you really cant do anything.
the best reason for locking planets is to help prevent unsklilled builders to alter planets in a distastefull way.
second best reason is to prevent sabotage ... since older more experienced and higher ranked players know that its against to rules of conduct we dont worry about them but the new lower ranked players may not be aware of all the RoC.
if a planet like no water is locked you will have to ask other players if they are able to unlock the planet ... ususally the planet has a SY and barely enough population to sustain it.
however after its captured by an enemy fleet the recaptured by UGTO you will find that if you dont lock it at all and there are structures missing the Ai engineer will build rediculous structures on it.
usually someone involved in the capture of a planet will be the one locking it.
best advice is just to ask someone to unlock it 
good luck
_________________
|
The Fridge
Chief Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: December 13, 2008
Posts: 559
From: In Your Fridge, Eating your Foods.
| Posted: 2009-11-07 12:53
Your saying it's always a player induced problem of them being ignorant, basically.
Well theirs a well known Bug that locks all the planets to the highest ranked player on the team.
[ This Message was edited by: The Fridge on 2009-11-07 13:21 ]
_________________
|
MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2009-11-07 15:54
There should be a message saying who locked a planet, like we get when someone scraps or pauses a building. And when that person logs off, the planet should unlock automatically.
That allows people to still lock planets, but prevents situations like this where nobody is high enough to fix one because it's locked too high. It also prevents disputes over who's locking planets, which is more a scenario problem than MV (and I love scenario, it's where I usually am).
As for beacons, NO to giving them to larger ships. Scouts have a purpose now, and people should start getting used to flying what's needed.
And I don't think the older type beacons would be a good thing. They were changed for a reason.
_________________
|
Sops
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 07, 2004
Posts: 490
| Posted: 2009-11-07 16:54
People just need to be able to select lower levels to lock the planets. If your a CM you either never lock a planet or you deny access to just about everyone else in the game. You should be able to pick the governor rank.
_________________
|
ADmiraLMaXimus (Bringer of Doom)
Chief Marshal
Praetorian Wolves
Joined: March 09, 2002
Posts: 363
From: Earth
| Posted: 2009-11-07 19:35
thats a great idea...
make it so players can lock planets at any rank lower than theirs as well as thier own if nessesary....
and some kind of notification that shows who locked it woul dbe good as well
i likey 
_________________
Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold..... It Is Very Cold.... In Space.....
|
destroyer_x27
2nd Rear Admiral
Joined: April 26, 2008
Posts: 5
| Posted: 2009-11-07 20:37
ok here is my 2 cents on locking planets..... they are locked so nubs(excuse my french) cannot mess them up .......BUT
if for example a FA locked planets and goes away .. wat happen to ppl like 1ra 2ra and so on ...
??
here is my proposed solution to devs and admins....
- players should be able to vote to unlock planets
so for example a planet locked by FA could take 2 admirals to unlock it and so on..... i beleve this would be a real improvement to the game and probably allow people to gain more preessssssss
_________________
Signature file size too large, please resize (500x200x50kb)
|
flyerken
Commander
Joined: November 01, 2009
Posts: 3
| Posted: 2009-11-08 15:03
I'm also a player who leaves darkspace because I get frustrated about some game features and returns later to check it out again. Last time I was so frustrated that I killed my account so I would be sure that I would not come back. (my accountname was Flyer). And yet here I am again because darkspace has something special.
And again I get frustrated. This time the cloacking is the big cause.
I know a lot of kluth players will say that it is balanced and that they have a another playing style that requires them to chose the time of attack and do hit and run attacks in order to be able to fight and make a decent chance, and the cloack is the tool that allows them to do this.
Problem with having the choice over when to fight and when not that an experianced player will never fight when he thinks he will lose. ICC and UGTO do not have that option. Therefore ICC and UGTO players will lose more ships then equally experianced kluth players.
It is wrong to give a side the complete discretion over when they can attack and when then can leave (with or without delay). Either give ICC and UGTO the same option (maybe by removing the kluth interdictor from the game) or give them a tool to keep the kluth from escaping.
_________________
|
Flyer
Admiral
Joined: December 07, 2001
Posts: 143
From: Belgium
| Posted: 2009-11-08 15:32
Well my old account still excisted, thx for the moderators to unlock it.
_________________
|
Jar Jar Binks
Grand Admiral
Joined: December 25, 2001
Posts: 556
| Posted: 2009-11-13 11:56
Quote:
|
On 2009-11-07 15:54, MrSparkle wrote:
As for beacons, NO to giving them to larger ships. Scouts have a purpose now,
|
|
yes to die really really fast without actually gaining anything from it...
needed or not, scouts arent played for a reason...
_________________
|
Sops
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 07, 2004
Posts: 490
| Posted: 2009-11-13 18:53
Quote:
|
needed or not, scouts arent played for a reason...
|
|
Could be fixed by giving people more pres for using beacons.
_________________
|
Hellza - Dark Master
Fleet Admiral
Praetorian Wolves
Joined: June 06, 2004
Posts: 498
| Posted: 2009-11-14 02:51
Quote:
|
On 2009-11-13 11:56, Jar Jar Binks wrote:
Quote:
|
On 2009-11-07 15:54, MrSparkle wrote:
As for beacons, NO to giving them to larger ships. Scouts have a purpose now,
|
|
yes to die really really fast without actually gaining anything from it...
needed or not, scouts arent played for a reason...
|
|
I dont have a problem flying a scout...
_________________
I am watching you in the dark shadows
|
English
Deutsch
Nederlands
)
