Im assuming you’re asking us to stop zerging? Im not sure though, as the numbers have been pretty even. Maybe to both teams? One only has to look at the videos Posted by rebels to get an idea of numbers on both sides. And how on earth are you wanting to regulate this? Making max number of people per faction? The rebels are already using multiple factions. 10 last count.
Smaller battles wouldnt change the fact that HV’s should have the same rocket damage as an SV.
Nope. I won’t ask you to stop zerging. It is within the rules, so you go right ahead and do it. Hopefully it will show RexXxuS the performance issued with it and he will find a way to prevent it in future seasons.
The numbers are currently even. If you’d read what I posted, you’d see that I said “at the time we don’t want to contribute to the problem”, but we have since been forced to recruit a fair amount ourselves to compete. This was out of necessity, not desire.
10 rebel factions? We are talking about HWS right? There are TPP/Op4/GRG mainly. Sometimes PKA, but they don’t play much. Also there is PoR, but that’s just Ucka and he doesn’t wanna join a large one. If you wanna stretch it you could say 5, but 10 is a MASSIVE exaggeration.
To answer your question, yes. I think factions should be limited either in the amount of people they can recruit, or in the amount of people they can field on a playfield in order to regulate lag by reducing the scale of engagements. 10 bases per faction, 10 players online per faction (mostly in tank)… you count the turrets firing simultaneously. I ran out of fingers. Reduce the obvious sources of lag and vehicle balancing generally will be much easier.
I think the problem is not so much the size of a faction but rather the large amount of bases that can be fielded that causes the most lag. More bases and turrets means more things to load.
Large factions should rely on the amount of members they have logged on and not on the amount of bases they can spam and lag the play-field and cause disconnections and massive amount of loading problems and lag all over the planet.
I truly don’t understand why Rexx increased the number of bases from 3 to 10. That makes no sense. We already had problems with three bases per factions why increase it to 10 and size class 7 i do not understand.
LOL ahhh Supreme.
Of course, because PRI, DAR, PKA, POR, TPP, OP4, GRG, DIE, IMF is nine just off the top of my head. But ten is a MASSIVE exxageration. 
Change the word “faction” to "alliance and you would have a point. As it is right now you can field 90 bases and 90 tanks JUST from the factions i mentioned above.
When he changed it to no OLP, it went from 2 bases to ten, not 3. And that was a large jump up i agree.
HV is good when there is a lot of lag and you don’t need to worry about manually aiming.
HV generally can put out more overall DPS against an SV assuming it still has it’s Arty cannon.
HV is good for random stuff like instantly killing players on foot (RP!) and player drones to prevent repairs & rebuilding.
HV can shoot out dirt in AG zones.
HV is good for an ad-hoc defensive sentry when you want some protection while setting up a base in the battlefield.
All HVs can mine resources.
HV is bad for lumber jacking towers and AI turret targeting can get easily confused by dummy sentries/generators underground.
HV is harder to maneuver than SV.
SV is good for manual targeting and lumber jacking towers when there’s less lag.
SV is better for scouting the map than HV.
SV can always choose when to initiate and run from HV whenever it wants to.
SV can leave planets, do stuff in space, and has some limited warp capability.
SV is better at underground combat.
SV targeting is a royal pain when there’s a lot of lag or rubber banding.
SV requires a bit more ammo and upkeep cost.
Personally I like SV for its better maneuverability and higher skill ceiling, but HV is good fun when I want to just drive around and let my turrets whack things. Launch ramping a Mjolnir into the air and surprising SVs is always a good laugh.
I dunno who PRI are. DAR I forgot about, fair enough. IMF merged with Op4 (c’mon, you knew that). DIE is just Blue Avenger, and he’s a part-timer, so sure, count him too I guess… since you’re trying so hard to get to 10. =P
Those factions can only field 5 bases unless they have more than 5 active members as I understand it, so you can’t simply multiply everything by 10 either. Aside from that, it is obvious that we are not trying to maximize our bases, since factions have been merging (aside from IMF, JL is now in TPP for example) and even the now larger factions aren’t anywhere near their max. We don’t wanna live in lag. Ick.
I’m glad we’re at least agreeing somewhat though. You said “Change the word ‘faction’ to ‘alliance’ and you would have a point”. In a way, I did address that in my post that I linked. I suggested both a limit on players in a faction and the amount of allies they could have, which would essentially mean an alliance cap on players.
I don’t want you to think I’m saying this because it is some anti-TAW mechanic. I simply want a solution to reduce the lag and make fighting fun again. Yesterday on GG I took one of our new players down to GG to show him around, let him mine behind some towers, and fight the zerg when they showed up. He never got to fight because I wasn’t able to spawn in any tanks. I spent half the fight on a loading screen while our bases were sniped and we tried to counter snipe with no tanks available. SVs never flew because aiming would have been impossible. Eventually we said “this is stupid” and left.
Couple the ground being dug (I hate this, terrible for playfield lag) with the 4 bases, 2 SVs and tank we had there and 4 enemy tanks plus attack bases, things got choppy real fast. You practically need a supercomputer to participate in the big fights. Players saying that they use tanks during big fights because aiming with an SV is impossible sums it all up perfectly. The Devs aren’t going to fix this. PvE crap is what interests them, so instead of waiting for the next awesome tree texture, let’s all find a workaround that Rex can apply to the server that all of us can work with and enjoy some 10+ FPS combat again like back in v6.0.
To get back on topic (recalling the topic of this thread is “Base Sniping Distance”), why not either make it so that bases cannot damage other bases or drastically reduce the damage dealt from base to base? Also, we have an intruder notification mechanism incorporated with the server. It can detect distances. Rex mentioned that “Anti Grief Zone of 300 meter is technically the max.! We can’t increase it.”… so why not use the detection system we already have to give a player 3 warnings when a base is spawned within gun range of an enemy base before it is deleted? Seems a simple enough fix. @RexXxuS
hands Chaz more popcorn
much lower rates of fire with much higher damage is the only possible fix imho
Ok, I read everything, much of it seemed like bickering between those who like SVs and those who like HVs but some productive things did seem to come out of the discussion. At the risk of repeating what is already known I’m going to list a few things I gathered:
All this being said I think there’s a fairly obvious solution, but am not sure how much the HWS team can actually manipulate in the game’s code. I remember when I played previously HVs had longer range than BAs with their Artillery turrets, I think this should come back but with a caveat:
If ReXXuS and team can manipulate the code to prevent manual fire of Artillery turrets only then these four steps restore order to the battlefield, IMO.
HVs once again become the longest range unit on the field, but only with their Artillery which can no longer be manual fired to avoid easy base cutting.
HVs can take out a base from a distance if no one comes out to fight
SVs can easily outmaneuver and outrange HVs once the fighting starts but if they get in close enough HV turrets can rip them apart fairly quickly
BAs maintain the 2nd longest range and heavy firepower to deal with attacking SVs and non-arty HVs
Please @ReXXuS let me know if this is something that’s doable and @everyone else please feel free to critique this if it’s possible and you see any issues that I might be overlooking.
There’s only one thing I didn’t consider, been awhile since I played, Artillery can also attack air in Empyrion, correct? The slow reload could make this a non-issue, but another thing might need to be done, once again if possible, preventing artillery from being able to attack/target non-ground units. I would say that with a slow reload it should be fine, but only testing would provide answers to this.
Bases just need a bigger anti grief zone >300 and would solve sniping in general. But lets just wait until 8.0 and see what the devs can play around with to improve the server overall.
Have to check if this is possible but even if
What stop players from spawning HVs instead of BAses then to do the dirty work? Turrets are shooting even if the player is offline.
So you kind of forward the problem then from BA vs BA against HV vs BA.
!?
The problem with sniping is the ability to cut the towers allowing structural integrity to take out turrets and such. With HVs only having 1 turret [type] with enough range and that turret not being able to be manually fired it will target turrets and other “pririty” targets instead of cutting the base in half to wipe out several turrets at once.
That’s why the turret has to be restricted from manual firing. If a player can enter then they can control where the turret is hitting.
Yes people can still destroy bases while others are offline, but the defenders can also plant HVs(left running) on the perimeter of their base to “try” and prevent the offline tactic.
Thanks for the reply!
Hm, I see… let me do some tests.
So it is actually possible with the Config to prevent access to HV Artilleries completely. Making them full auto mode. (preventing also Tank Rush events btw. need to revise that anyways)
But I’m not sure if this is really not just a problem shifting.
If we look back at the bad HWS 6 season, with CSW + no Offline Protection and HVs taking out Offline Bases we had no fun in PvP at all.
Yes, this would sooner or later remove the BA vs BA meta but it is actually something what needs to be done actively from both parties.
Letting HV artilleries taking out BAses without counter-attack will kill ALL offline bases.
Causing massive bad feedback about this combination + no offline protection.
This is basically mirror of the thinking “let offline bases protect themself”. You see, they are stupid and any active player will take any offline BA or offline HV out without trouble.
So I fear this is no solution for now.
I’m not even sure I should activate Offline Protection at all for the 16th march full wipe.
So without more Anti Grief Zone meters and my initial response Base sniping distance - #2 by RexXxuS
I don’t see a good solution for that situation. (sniping)
I can see your point but still feel that more could be done to combat this rather than reducing the usefulness of HVs in a long range role. The game can obviously already detect when an owning faction is offline.
Maybe rather than bringing back OP bubbles it can be modified to add some form of damage reduction to BAs from HV Artillery while all faction players are offline…but then this could be exploited as well by having allies defend your base for you giving you bonus defense. I’ll have to think on this some more but I hope something else can be done.
I feel that having a really slow reload will discourage most from using strictly the offline HV snipe method, as it will take quite some time to kill a base this way, but there’s always those groups that strive to exploit whatever advantage they can so I can’t rule those people out. Limits on max HVs in any given zones will help with this as well to prevent 20+ arty tanks from making short work of a base, those limits already exist it seems.
To be honest with you Alandauron i’m not even sure what your talking about. To me the solution has already been found by Ryan. So simple. Here it is below and on the original post by the way.
What is wrong with base sniping? All you need to do is build a base that makes it extremely difficult for an opponent to set up a base to snipe. Then if they do start sniping you rush them and destroy their base.
Or if you want to counter base sniping entirely just setup the config files so people can’t enter plasma/rocket/flak turrets (lame IMO, because base sniping has a huge amount of risk and can be countered easily by an active defense)
I have read a bunch of the comments and it seems to me that here are some of the issues now:
Solution: Up the damage rate on all HV weapons, make those suckers hurt. This way SVs have to actually think before they attack an HV. It also provides HVs the ability to take out bases, by having a high DPS it provides them the ability to take out bases - but at the risk of being destroyed by bases.
Not much can be done here, it’s an alpha game we gotta deal with that.
Summary
Base sniping is a valid tactic, it takes time to do correctly, and has high risk/resource consumption. Active defenders can easily repel the tactic, and if there are no active defenders… well that’s the risk of HWS PvP at this time.
HVs need to do more damage and be a threat to SVs.
Bases need to do more damage so SVs can’t tank so easily.
Or, we put block limits on class sizes so people can’t build 6k+ Class 1 SV/HV and now have real danger of being wiped out by a base when they zerg/snipe/tank etc…
Agree with the “setup the config files so people can’t enter plasma/rocket/flak turrets”, should work fine as well. Another thing about placing an attack base right outside 1m of the anti grief protection, prevents the defending base from repairing/building in their own area to an extent. Due to the fact enemy anti grief zone overlaps existing zone belonging to the other base.
Anti-Grief
We should do away with anti-grief entirely, or make it only extend 50m outside of a core. Why? Because it forces people to spend hours digging up cores.
Also, it makes it so enemies can just plant random cores into the ground to prevent them from being able to mine in certain spots - lame.
The Real Issue
Spawning a HUGE base in front of someone else’s base and having the bases ‘duke it out’ - that can be solved by disabling spawning base blueprints on ‘hot PvP zones’
Does anyone disagree with that?