~ 2h 30m to clear
4 guys in poi ships, or infantry
1 guy in CV dedicated to pvp/defense/manufacturing/repair, clearing drone tower, clearing defense HQ
Major notes:
Overview
it was a slog. it was not fun even with the resources we had to throw at it (unlimited SV’s, ammo, logistical support) The only reason we finished it was grim determination.
the heavy use of player turrets made it worse. the entrances were so restricted that it appeared to be intended for players to do it by hand. after that was clearly not an option, I created a “credit card” poi ship. which merely brought the sphere down to grueling instead of impossible.
intended to do the mission without SV’s, but the machine gun bullets only do ~ 5hp damage and the turrets rnage in HP from 10000-15000, which is… asinine. I’m guessing that this is because it was last changed before the turret changes.
countless shotgun zirax 1 shot killed us. shotgun and missile zirax make for poor gameplay. spamming them make for punishing pointless gameplay and we cheesed as hard as we could by the time we got there.
Reward:
rewards were poor for the difficulty.
The gold payout from the one time pda in the end was equivalent to 3.5 man minutes of GG mining. While that’s extremely paltry to ACP, it’s probably pretty paltry for others too.
I would suggest at least doubling the final rep rewards after removing all player BA turrets
Wow, you did the Sphere even it was designed with the old Config and some glitch exploits still around!?
I’m impressed and you get a special gift from me
Yes… I know… sorry that the time was missing for some important adjustments. I will update the Sphere with your feedback to a more appropriate version again.
Alfonz and I ran it before the turret changes and mission changes and it was a lot of fun for the two of us. and that’s what got me to drag the ACP guys out there.
If you intend the sphere to be a maximum difficulty level POI, there are ways to make it hard but still fun. In its current state, the combination of super strong turrets and super strong shotgun/rocket Zirax make it more frustrating and painful than fun.
A few major points that I think need addressing:
The turrets inside the sphere have far too much health, and fighting against turrets while using hand weapons is not fun.
Base Turrets belong on the outside of POIs, where they can be shot at with SV / HV / CV. If they are going to be inside at the current amounts, their health, damage, or damage resistance needs to be substantially lower.
Fighting turrets with 10,000-15,000 health using hand weapons is not fun. 90% of our time was spent trying to line-of-sight the base turrets to fire off a 3-rocket hand rocket volley; 18 second reload, volley, reload, get 1-shot, respawn, volley, reload, get 1-shot. respawn, etc. Or time was spent cheesing with gatling guns.
If turrets are going to be inside a POI, there should be one or two guarding a hallway or large room, similar to what drone bases have (or had? haven’t done drone base recently)
To me, POIs are the only place in the game where ground combat is relevant
In this POI, ground combat was painful and slow. We used SVs that were 2 blocks wide to fit through the slots. SVs were equipped with gatling guns and were used to painstakingly fire for ~3-5 minutes straight at a base turret to take it out.
Finally, we reached the inner box of the sphere. We (4 players) blew down a door and immediately got murdered by several shotgun and rocket Zirax. Not fun or challenging - only frustrating as we were back to cheesing with gatling guns to take them out. It is impossible to take out several shotun and rocket Zirax by using hand weapons.
- The inner box area should be better utilized for ground combat
Remove the combinations of shotgun and rocket Zirax. Adjust it so only one of these types is present at a time in the pile of enemies. Even then, shotgun and rocket Zirax are ridiculous and I would rather the rocket Zirax not be in the game at all.
The shotgunner damage and bullet spread(?) was recently adjusted, we were all using heavy armor with 1 to 2 armor boosters - still got murdered instantly. The AOE from rocket Zirax is completely broken given their aim-bot reaction time and accuracy.
I think the inner box should be expanded on. Make the box much larger with more hallways, rooms, and floors. Make us get lost in the box. Add secret passage ways similar to Haunted Mines.
With a larger inner box, add break-away trapped floors. Add hidden monster spawners, add sentry turrets hidden behind trapdoors triggered by sensors. I really think the haunted mine is well done in terms of hallways, secret passage ways, traps, hidden spawners.
Greatly increase the amount of Nightmares, Alien Assassin, Alien Vampire, Scorpions, Golems, etc (more melee enemies) and use the Zirax and robots as a reinforcement. The Haunted mine is a great example of long hallways with Melee enemies chasing you, as it really created a sense of urgency and fear to run for your life.
Rewards felt sub-par for the time spent
One of each enhanced weapon is cool and all, but even with the 250 gold crafting change, enhanced weapons are still relatively easy to obtain loot as already crafted (making the 250 gold irrelevant). In the current state, they aren’t very valuable as a reward. Enhanced weapons need to be more rare as a finished product, and the kits should actually crafted into weapons.
7 stacks of gold ore didn’t feel like enough. That can be mined faster than it took to clear the POI.
RP reward felt weak. In the end I walked away with 2 POI Cargo Reputation boxes (We split the 4 lawless and 4 freelancer boxes between 2 lawless and 2 freelancer players, one player opted out of taking a box, and we have 4 extra alliance box).
Maybe adjust the PDA mission to reward a flat out RP amount? And then have players flip a switch that blows up 2 out of 3 cargo boxes with different combinations of POI RP cargo boxes inside? Allow players to choose the combination of POI RP boxes that fits their group faction combination?
In the end, the POI was definitely top tier in terms of time consumption and rage inducing. I think the inner box should be expanded, and the fight to gain access to the inner box reduced.
More time should be spent traversing through rooms and hallways, fighting enemies, figuring out puzzles, and less time spent trying to cheese turrets and crowds of one-shot enemies.
If you want no SVs inside, then make the entrance slots one square, and then add a window block to make it 0.8 square so that nothing but a player (or one SV block) can fit. Or just add indestructible doors with a switch located on the alien satellite or something.
Meat_Bag nails all the big points quite well. it was quite rage inducing to be killed over and over by base turrets while trying to get into the sphere.
Personally. I’d like to see all the base turrets moved to the outside and the entire inside filled with at-least a dozen decks with everything from crew quarters to armories and defense checkpoints. it would also be a good idea to have some white space between the outer sphere and the interior decks to keep people from cheesing through the walls with ships.
the last thing is the loot. just one of us could have mined the 35 stacks of gold ore that the 5 of us got combined in less than an hour. to really get down to it, just one of us in the 2 and a half hour span could have mined enough gold ore to pay for all the loot. that all said. i wouldn’t suggest the loot be increased by 4-5 times if the poi is to be redone. possibly five stacks of ingots per person if it takes an hour or so to run.
