Base sniping distance

HWS General Discussion
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I completely agree with @Ranzeth on reducing the size of Anti-Grief zones, though I didn’t even know that it prevents non-faction members from mining. Ranzeth’s reason aside I think increasing the Anti-Grief zones would cause a bigger problem than BA Sniping, though some may not view it as a problem. The Anti-Grief zones prevent other poeple/factions from building a BA within [Anti-Grief distance] meters. Considering the amount of BAs allowed per faction combined with resource deposits and leftover BAs left from previous attacks(leaving the cores, which I hear is a strategy used by defenders) it can be really hard for an attacking force to be able to establish a beachhead at all in order to retreat to, resupply from, and mine from. Increasing the Anti-Grief size would make this even more of an issue, especially if the suggestion is to increase that to above the range of the longest range BA turret.

No matter what the decided “fix” is the(aside from increased AG distance) BA sniping strat is still a valid one, even with my suggestion it would still be possible to use the BA sniping strat, though it’s less of an issue since there is an alternative. Essentially there’s no way to protect bases that are offline from attackers wanting to exploit that, but I feel there should be more options. Even if the “greater range” for an HV Arty is merely 10-20m I feel it would be a valid change to make for the sake of battlezone diversity.

Is there a different topic specifically for PvP balance suggestions? I love what has been discussed here and kinda want to discuss it in further detail without taking away from the BA Sniping discussion altogether.

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People can mine deposits just fine with enemy cores nearby. If you don’t know how, you’ve been slacking. With that said, what’s wrong with having an enemy core there? If the base is rendered inert, the only thing it does is reduce the amount of bases the enemy can spawn (as per global/playfield BA limits). If you don’t like digging up the cores, then simply dont.

Disallowing blueprints (while I’m not opposed to this) will not fix base sniping whatsoever. You can grab 50 blocks, BA starter, gen, fuel tank, ammo box and sniping turrets and get a base set up for sniping with the connect-to-base option in 2 minutes no problem. How in the world would disallowing base spawning fix the base sniping problem?

Or do you not think it is a problem? You said above “What is wrong with base sniping?”. It should be obvious that base sniping is anti-PvP. You’ve been around a while, Ranzeth, you know full well what the problem with base sniping is. That’s like saying offline raiding is a valid tactic… or reversing during CV battles so the pursuer is the only one taking damage. Sure, it works and all and is within the rules, but obviously discourages fun PvP and replaces it with things some dumb 90’s game could offer. If it weren’t broken we wouldn’t have 60+ replies to this thread right now with actually constructive ideas on how to fix it.

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Increasing the Anti-Griefing range would be a good option and it wouldn’t prevent an enemy from creating a beachhead especially with the increase in playfield size with the upcoming 8.0 patch.

I think it’s 4x the playfield size. 32x16 playfields is plenty of space =)

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Digging for cores in the ground isn’t a problem, because we all know all parties shoot through the terrain to core such bases. Which has led me to make nasty base designs where random components surrounded by blocks are scattered in the ground. Even then its suspicious the attacking side cored 7 of my large decoy bases.

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Right…Hold on folks, time to bring a Logic Bomb to this discussion!

Ok, let’s start with the perceived ‘issues’ (i sayit like this as on EU we’re all pretty good right now, we’re just looking forward to base-spawning being disabled). But for NA let’s begin (with the disclaimer that i Rarely play on NA):

So the two problems you guys seem to be having are:

  1. Base 'Sniping.
    AND
  2. AG distance.

1 (Base Sniping ) Ok let’s start with base-sniping, this is an issue on EU also but less pronounced, the biggest issue is the ability to spawn an attack base instantly within firing range of a previously established base, it then becomes a matter of priority to disable the attack base before it strips the established base of turrets.

1.0 Why is this a problem you say? Well it’s a problem because it creates a rather horrible lag-infested meta which has basically become nothing more than a glorified tower defence mini-game. And this leads me to a sub-point…somebody on here complained about structural integrity being active…WTF?! Structural integrity is fantastic as it encourages smart fire-control and co-ordination AS WELL as smart BUILDING techniques! Nobody is forcing you to build thin sleek towers, maybe you guys who are coming up with issues should build something other than a frikkin’ tower!

1.5 So how can base-sniping best be solved? ‘Increase AG/Decrease AG’ I hear you say…UH-UH, wrong! The simplest and most beautiful solution is to simply disable blueprint spawning of bases on the busiest PVP playfields, as this will force them to manually build their bases, and any prepared PVP faction on semi-permanent standby will make it their SOUL mission to destroy that base before it gets off the ground. This is where i disagree VERY strongly against @Supreme_Admiral’s point about this not solving the problem, it will certainly reduce the problem as the enemy will be focused on building the base instead of attacking alongside a pre-built base, whereas for the initial stage the defenders have an advantage in killing the person building it. I think that us simply all being patient and waiting for that ‘feature’ will be the first step to a better playfield. Goodluck getting an attack base up in 2 minutes against an established SV defence!

2.0 Ok next point…I am TOTALLY against messing with anti-grief right now. I am against messing with it because right now (on EU at least) IT WORKS! It stops the whole digging meta of old whilst not allowing bases too close to one-another without hindering a faction’s ability to repair their vessels/modify their base. Increasing AG simply means every base becomes isolated and therefore easy pickings yet again, or worse it encourages more factions to permanently station themselves there massively increasing the burnout of players. Our GMC faction was on GG for two weeks with two base set ups and after every night of constant fighting we finally pulled out due to burnout, this was PART OF a base complex, it would go back to the ole’ days of bases being easily wiped if you increase AG. Finally to-this point SVs and HVS still take too long to kill IMO therefore having multiple bases in a small space increases the DPM against SVs/HVS therefore making the fight more intense (if not necessarily more fluid).

3.0 Onto another point about limiting players/alliances/factions…i’ve seen this all before and I said it then and i’ll say it now…this is not the way to go. By creating arbitary limits all you’re doing is giving in to the games limitations, giving the deves even less of an inclination to ‘fix’ or improve performance. Let’s not bottleneck the playercount but instead help the devs find the bottleneck through proper fights. Reducing the number of active pvpers in one playfield is not the way to go.

4.0 Ok now onto the least logical idea of the evening; the one about HVS out-ranging bases. Uhm, have you seen the size of a HV arty gun compared to a BA arty, and you want it to OUTRANGE BA arty? Well i’ll ignore size and just go straight for the logic…

By having HVs outrange base guns all that’ll happen is you’ll revert to the base-sniping meta of old. Someone drives the hv in, fires the arty, drives out. It can be done as it has been done before, and in exchange you want to remove the perfectly organic feature of having someone man the arty gun. What’s wrong with two-man hovers? To me this sounds like the gross kind of over-simplification that is seen in mainstream games these days, keep this feature as it requires teamwork, and yes good co-ordination can sometimes feel ‘over-powered’, but then i suggest if it is too much for some folks then they should find a faction to co-ordinate with.

EDIT: Furthermore decreasing the reload speed adds nothing to the game in the name of ‘balance’ or supposed balance, let’s just remember the fantastic HV event we had the other night, I loved being on one of the arty turrets manually selecting targets and not being a victim to lag and faulty tracking!

Ok that’s me for now I think, but please remember, lots of these problems you guys are experiencing are NA only, hence why i felt it important to post here to remind you guys of that as people are placing suggestions irrespective of server region. Whereas EU we just had a fantastic battle tonight against the Russian factions that involved offline protection; attack bases, svs, hvs, cvs, it was fantastic fun, and there was little-to-no salt to be had. I don’t want the kind of salt i’ve seen on NA to translate to harmful changes to EU, if this means there needs to be a permanent divergence of the config to reflect this imbalance in playstyles then so-be-it.

One reason you guys are having issues is because everyone has 10 bases each fac instead of 2 due to previous drama, that’s probably a cause of some major issues. As 10 modern PVP bases on the current config are pretty powerful beasts…

Best regards and I hope this isn’t too aggressive, if it is I apologise, i’m just in a state of shock after reading some NA-based threads/forums on here and the salt over on general-discussions, it just all seems a lil’ bit much for a videogame.

Best regards to my NA brothers from across the pond!
Wise.

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I’m gonna start by saying that you are very one-sided in your opinions, literally every single one of your suggestions work to benefit defenders over attackers, every single one.

  1. Remove base spawning - makes it harder to attack
  2. Remove base isolation to prevent war/defense fatigue - makes it harder to attack
  3. Remove limits on max players - allows more defensive structures/vehicles harder to attack because lag
  4. Don’t let HV outrange BA - makes it harder to attack

You literally want it to be easy to defend, what if you’re not the one holding, don’t you want a chance to be able to take over? A couple of points I want to address in more detail though:

2.0 - I feel that on these planets you’re not supposed to hold it for the entirety of the season, it is supposed to change control multiple times over the course of a season, and if you manage to hold it the entire season it’s because of an extreme commitment from your faction/alliance:

  1. allowing other factions to benefit from the perks of holding the high-value targets
  2. causing the faction(s) that were pushed out to reorganize and try to retake

3.0 - Limits are needed because of the fact that we have found issues with lag thanks to previously [and currently] having some pretty severe lag issues.

4.0 - You would obviously hate this idea because it takes away from you being able to sit back and do nothing in order to defend your position, which is the impression I get from all your suggestions. If you’re the attacker, however, you’d want to be able to have some sort of poke that forces the enemy to come out to you rather than having to be the only one concerned with offensive strategy. You can still use HVs with Arty to defend as well, but what makes you think that BAs should be all but impenetrable?

Furthermore, decreasing the reload speed is a method to allow time for defenders to rally and actually defend, not allowing anyone to manually control the Arty Turret accomplishes the same thing by preventing the cutting of BAs to use Structural Integrity against the BA. It’s actually really logical if you’re considering things from a neutral position rather than offensive or defensive.

In regards to your “salt” comment, I haven’t seen much of that myself, most people on here seem to discuss things fairly well, some obvious preferences become clear, like your desire to have BAs for defense be all-powerful, but it’s fairly easy to cut through that. I could say that I see an equal amount of “salt” on your 4.0 because you are clearly squarely opposed to any concept that forces an active defense rather than passive.

All in all I think the issue comes down to a simple desire from defenders to always have control over a given planet(or part of a planet) without having to be there to fight for it. Nothing is stopping them from coming down when online and fighting while they mine, in fact I would find that more interesting, having to actually fight for what you get, rather than being able to lag defend the playfield. Maybe BAs on GG and Homeworld should be severely limited in size to make these more “active” PvP zones.

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Well didnt take them long to use a base to attack my derp one lol. @HPG

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Let’s begin…

Firstly if i seem to be erring on the side of the defenders that’s for two reasons:

On EU (unlike NA) the defender is limited to two bases, so right now we have 1/5th of your capacity to project firepower in a defensive manner in exchange for the realtive midnight safety of offline protection. (A price worth paying in my mind)

  1. Not sure what you mean on this point, could you clarify? And yes the only way we in GMC held onto our base for two weeks was due to a permanent state of readiness in an alliance of about 30-40 players. (about 10 players in each). This is what base defence SHOULD be, i’m not for empowering bases, we on EU did fine enough with two per faction.

Secondly it’s because only a co-ordinated, assertive and (most importantly) sustained attack should be able to take down a base. Even on EU a single SV can take out multiple arty turrets before going down to multiple bases.

  1. So yes I want the attacker to work hard (not necessarily harder) for their meal so-to-speak. You also somewhat ignore my mention of maintaining structural integrity to punish bad base-builders. Moreover let me clear up that i am AGAINST REMOVING ANY limits on GG and other pvp playfields. The base/hv/sv limits should remain, i’m simply AGAINST limiting the number of players in factions/alliances. I am 100% FOR playfield limits on structures. I think that was a genuine misunderstanding on both our parts so an apology from me for not making that more explicity clear.

  2. Hvs outranging BAs is a terrible idea as it allows a HV to carefully work its way through a bases defences, the HV being limited only by the amount of time they have to slowly do it. This happened on 5.0 and it was awful, base-defence was non-existent, we have finally got to a stage where actually a dedicated defence can manage a base on a PVP playfield My recommendations on here aren’t me empowering bases, its me stopping the empowerment of a single hover vehicle over an entire base system.

And as a veteran PVP EU play i can safely say that if you attack my base in a hover you WON’T find me sitting back, if you do or do not outrange me. The whole problem with making HVS outrange bases is that it will make the bad old days of HV base-sniping a thing, i can imagine it now, the Russian factions with about 6 hovers in a nice little firing line slowly whittleing down a base without the base being able to fire back. If you want to attack a base you should have to risk your assets, not like the old days where svs/hvs could swoop within base-range, fire, and swoop back-out before being shot at.

And on your point about reload speed defenders shouldn’t need time to ‘rally’. They should be on-the-ball for the get-go and co-ordinating and targeting high-priority targets such as enemy base arties or enemy hover arties, the whole idea of structural inteigry is fantastic, and those who build stupid bases deserve to be punished. Keep the manual targeting, punish those who build terribly so they can learn to build a proper pvp base.

EDIT: On your point of lag i would simply revert the change to GG and return the NA playfield to a limit of two bases per faction…with or without OP, if they can’t play nicely with the toy then we keep it removed in my mind. But it should be discussed in detail.

Oh and for the record, if anyone thinks i’m saying this because i have a nice pvp base somewhere then they’re wrong, i don’t have any PVP base right now, instead my faction has spent this last half season exclusively attacking on GG and HW, and I love the challenge of taking down an enemy base complex! It should be a costly but ultimately rewarding affair!

Finally attacking a base should be a serious committment that places great and mortal risk to the attacking force, and instead of people patiently waiting for base-spawns to be disabled they’re posting some rather haphazard and ill-thought-out solutions to problems that are exclusively those of NA.
.

And there you have it; my main issue, NA solutions to non-existent EU problems. Hence i’m posting on here in an attempt to prevent any terrible ideas translating onto EU.
Best regards
Wise.

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TL:DR I’m for the status quo, in fact i’m for reducing the base limit on NA gg from 10 back to 2 with or without OP. That’s the best way of keeping attacking credible, not by buffing hvs but by nerfing the base-limit back to its original number and by keeping structural integrity relevant.

I also wouldn’t reduce AG as it right now a smart attacker can still single out bases from certain angles, if you reduce AG to 50 odd then you end up with this crazy close-base complex that becomes near impossible to pick-and-destroy.

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  1. Sorry if this wasn’t clear, was basing it off what you mentioned about BAs being isolated, you are on a different server with different BA limitations so it makes a bit more sense now. I knew you were on a different server, wasn’t sure about BA limitations there. I would fully support some middle ground between 2 and 10, maybe 4-ish, and then having stronger BAs makes much more sense than with the current 10 on NA.

  2. Agreed, an attacker should have to work for it, but the differences between EU and NA server limits will give a different perspective on what it is to “work hard” on the offensive. Agreed on all other points, no limits to number of members in a faction/alliance, playfield limits maintained and possibly tweaked.

  3. I don’t really see the problem here, if a faction is offline the attackers are going to find their way in no matter what, if a faction is online then you can counter with Arty HVs or SVs(depending largely on amount of lag) and the distance difference doesn’t need to be severe. 10-20m over the BA defenses would still put them close enough to either build to them or engage them fairly quickly. Rate-of-fire plays a huge role in this though, being able to send in up to 10 tanks armed with Artys could be devastating quickly unless limited in some way. Still I feel that this doesn’t give the attackers an advantage, especially if they can’t spawn in a BP and have to build. You can easily roll out and remove them before they can get established.

I apologize for my part in the misunderstanding, I was thinking in terms of NA gameplay as it currently is, I am fairly new to HWS but played a large amount of Empyrion some time ago. If the discussion were involving 2 BAs only then my suggestions would be much different, though I don’t feel that my stance on HVs would change at all. HVs I feel need to have a long range poke that allows them to lure out defenders, SVs are your versatile vessels but unreliable once lag kicks in, BAs are your all-rounders that have great defensive capabilities but need some sort of vulnerability.

For the record I want to see more 2 man tanks, but in the form of close range combat rather than long range. My reason for removing the ability to enter the gunner seat on HV Artys isn’t to benefit the attacker but rather to prevent that extra range from being effective at cutting BAs. Would bring in the strat of 5 Arty tanks + 5 CR tanks, drop the arty tanks at safe range and defend with CR tanks. Coordinated SVs could easily take out the Arty threat before much damage is done, but not without taking some damage. Defensive HVs with low mobility could be used to counter the offensive Arty threat as well.

I try to consider counters to my suggestions when I make any suggestion. If I can’t think of a counter then it’s not a good idea.

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I have been playing on HWS since Empyrion Version 4 and before that other servers in Version 3. I have seen many changes and have the perspective of long Empyrion gameplay.

HVs with artillery turrets that have a longer range than any base gun was found to be a bad idea in version 5. In the real world a base would have stronger and longer range weaponry than any mobile gun platform. In this case I think we should follow real world logistics.

Keeping with the real world analogy, defenders do have the advantage. Attackers have to be much more creative in their thinking in order to defeat a good defense. Why skew the advantage to the attacker when it is plainly not a logical position to be in.

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This is factually not true, ships and cruisers have longer range weapons that can fire as far or farther than most base defenses.

There are mobile guns that are used from military bases to fire artillery, they fire as far or farther than gun emplacements. They can’t be fire while mobile though so maybe that’s something to consider(maybe something to suggest to Eleon) turrets that need to be steadied in order to fire.

Also, this is a game not RL and sometimes game tactics need to be absent of RL in order to allow fun gameplay. In RL there are hundreds or thousands of combatants, we can’t handle that on a playfield in Empyrion so the different tactics and strategies that are available because of the larger number of forces are out the window as well.

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No problem dude on the above! And hey never be afraid to post suggestions, wanna say a massive welcome to HWS and it’s good to have another dude welcome on the forum especially! Nice to have more than just myself to float ideas about with! :slight_smile:

Yeah with the whole hover thing its a tough one, no doubt that they have lost their edge when it comes to base attacks, though personally i would say increase their rocket-fire-per-minute to make them more worthy against both svs and bases, and maybe make plasmas do yet more damage. Biggest issue with hovers is that it relies on that dodgy tracking whilst moving, meaning so many shots miss. The biggest issue is that i imagine many NA factions use HVs due to the lag of extra bases with the current base limit, if they reverted it to 2 or 4 then the lag would be (slightly) less bad resulting in SVs being favoured more (which makes sense as they have much higher DPM).

For me I love the whole idea of teamwork in a hover, and that really is the most effective way of doing things, pre 6.0 that’s how GMC (back then PKA) used to take on bases :slight_smile: One man driving, one man firing! Was great fun! With the new config and the increase in arty turret number and HP HV arty has become almost entirely irrelevant, the one thing i’d finally suggest hv-buffwise is a MASSIVE Buff to HV arty damage or a large nerf to base arty HP but maybe remove the guidance system on all artilleries; base, hovers or otherwise, (maybe keep it on cvs) and see if this balances things out

Best regards and i’m curious as to what you think! :slightly_smiling_face:
Wise!

I know we at GMC favour SVs over hovers any day for an attack, simply due to DPM reasons, yes SVs go down faster than hovers but we find it’s worth it simply for the extra DPM.

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I’v read what Wiseman had to say. And i agree with just about everything.

Sense for the next season we won’t be able to instantly spawn anything on Golden Globe and will have to build from the ground up i think we should wait and see. Also i agree with Wiseman that it should only be two bases max on Golden Globe.

Thanks for sharing with us your experience and thoughts on the issues Wiseman i found it enlightening.

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The inverse of my suggestion is of course a good idea as well, though would not make things better for those offline people, they’d likely hate it.

  1. Make HV and BA Arty same range
  2. Make Arty longest range item
  3. Remove auto-fire from Arty
  4. Allow manual-fire only

This would of course mean Arty would be the new BA/HV sniper and people could use either in sniping tactics. This would make it easier to cut BAs. Defenders would have to respond promptly or their BA would be destroyed so this would likely encourage offline attacks more than discourage them. I mean I personally don’t see an issue with offline attacks, at least on the “heavy PvP” playfields, will discourage people from setting up permanent shop if they don’t feel they have a group that can defend around the clock and will allow more fluidity in control over the PvP playfields. I can, however, see where people would dislike this, I myself am a part-timer now, I used to play Empyrion a ton, but RL has more demands of me recently.

I much prefer SVs over HVs and will continue to despite lag and implementation of my suggestion, I do want to see HVs addressed in some way and not just, “Make them super hard to kill” cause honestly aircraft have always been superior to ground vehicles and should remain so. But tanks are supposed to be beneficial against other ground-type opponents. Just want to see them fit into a role besides the “anti-lag” role lol.

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Np Israel! No problem! I just felt that I had to stand up and say something or i feared that we’d be heading in the wrong direction in terms of server-side improvements, to be fair i wouldn’t have an issue with any of these things if they were NA implementation only as i’m basically 99% EU. But I was worried that they were being suggested for both regions which is when I started panicking! :slight_smile:

@Alandauron The issue I have with 1. is by making them the same range the hv can still back in and out with impunity, effectively acting as-if it is still effectively outside of the bases range. Similar to the whole idea with longer-arty reload previously; it doesn’t solve any problem, it mitigates or in fact reverses it.

With 2. I like that idea. Arty should return to universally (BA’s HVs and CVs) being the longest range item, and i’m not sure why/how this changed.

  1. Auto-fire i don’t mind from Arty as otherwise bases would be super-dead, as Arty is the only thing that can really dent hovers/svs. I’m more interested in removing the ‘guided’ shells right now, which follow targets, make arty auto-fire still so it can punish the numpties who are stationairy, but don’t make it so their shells follow svs and hvs.

  2. Same issue as 3 ^^ I like to think of manual-fire as an optional extra adding layer to the game instead of it being mandatory for artillery to function.

For me i’d just like to see a big buff to HV Arty damage (2-3k+ or some sort of config bonus damage to enemy turrets of like +300% damage to enemy turrets) to have some sort of disabling effect on an enemy base, that enough would be worth the damage inflicted upon a hover for entering into a bases sphere of fire.

And yes i agree that i wouldn’t want to see any kind of armour buff for hovers or a zerg of attackers could just negate the turrets for soooo long with about four hovers. I remember A.F.T doing a video (the config guy) about how it still took like 5 minutes for a single tower to take down his hv and he still managed to half-cut it solo. Obvs thats one example but that’s the same config we’re playing in now i believe for the most part.

So yeah my TL:DR is buff HV arty damage, take out the guidance feature of arty shells where it ‘follows’ svs and hvs, and see how that runs.

With the config i like to recommend one change at a time to see how it pays off, if we change too many things at once then suddenly it is hard to see what effect each individual change is having. So i’d start with this and see where we go from there, but TBH i’m also more than willing to wait for 8.0 and give that a try without the base-spawning, without the ability to quickly spawn attack bases/respawn defence bases/towers/outposts it will change the whole idea of attacking defending for the better in my opinion :slight_smile:

Sorry! This was way longer than intended!
Best regards
Wise.

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Here’s a vid of some of our attacking exploits (BE WARNED LOUD MUSIC, VEEEEERY LOUD MUSIC! ) You’ll see at about 6:30 how we’re making it difficult for the defending bases to target us thanks to the placement of a hover between our svs :slight_smile:

I must say 99% of the time both sides play by the rules and we have fun all around on EU which is fantastic! In this case everyone was playing by the rules on the opposite side and we all had a blast!This attack of ours was of course retaliated against us by the Russians the next evening! We still need to upload that vid as it was an EPIC attack on their part, and it taught us a lot of lessons on base defence!

We won the defence but it did cost us! And we decided a couple of days later to pack up as we couldn’t sustain the players required to hold gg day and night :slight_smile:

Best regards
Wise!

ps you can see me get wasted at the 11:45 mark :slight_smile:

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lol, if this were true base sniping would not be a thing

Totally agree

exact opposite, defenders need full bases, snipe bases are 5 blocks only

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When people play by the rules and don’t purposely push the boundaries it is much more fun. If not for the people that want to use every exploit possible Empyrion would be a blast.

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Agreed! If you get sick of some of the drama then do try EU, it’s not drama-free by any-stretch but it is at least more chilled in general than what i can tell from the NA conflict at least.

We have our share of exploiters/hackers/ragers on EU but there seems to less of them here, maybe as less of EU as a % are pvping, but those who are have been in the business for a long while and it’s great fun! :slight_smile:
Best regards
Wise! :slight_smile: