Let's talk about (HWS) PvP

[RexXxuS]

Hi HWS Community,

once again we are at the end of the season and that means feedback, frustration, suggestions, etc. are coming to the light. This topic however should only cover our PvP players.

So I would like to discuss some ideas, suggestions and upcoming changes.

1. Anti Grief Zone (AG) / Land Claim Zone (LCZ)

• It’s good
• It should be only at the actual structure, not 50-350m around
• It’s bad

Over the time Anti Grief (AG) or actually Land Claim (LC) got greatly enhanced. Hence some don’t even know what Land Claim or Land Claim Device really mean.

Recap:
As a Server Owner you have the option to set a playfield:

1. No Land Claim Zone at all
2. Land Claim Zone only if you have a Land Claim Device on your structure AND it’s above the surface
3. Default Land Claim Zone active. No matter what, every base has always a LC Zone around.

The range is taken by a global “gameoptions.yaml”. Currently HWS has set it to 350 meter.

The term “Land Claim” is causing confusion. It is not a real gameplay element like in a “Risk” game. Let’s just say “Anti Grief” got renamed to “Land Claim” (for now).

However it is one of the biggest feature that affects PvP in Empyrion.
For example it defines if you can drill within that 350m radius or not. If you can place a core on your crashed ship to get out again or not. If you can spawn a Base out of your pocket or not.

Leave a comment: What is your opinion about all of that?

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2. Offline Protection (OP)

• It’s good
• Change the times (suggestion as comment)
• It’s bad

Another big PvP feature. It “let’s you sleep in peace” some say.
Recap:

1. If you have an OP Device placed on your Structure, it will make your base invincible and turrets fire with infinite ammo against approaching enemies
   1.1 the blue shield is activated only if you and all of your alliances are offline and 30 minutes have passed
   1.2 The blue shield stays for 1 day
2. As a Server Owner you can only define the values globally. Not per playfield unfortunately.

Leave a comment: What is your opinion about all of that?

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3. Blueprint Spawning / Elite Builder League (EBL)

• It’s good
• Only on some PvP playfields
• It’s bad

In Vanilla you can spawn a Class 7+ structure out of your pocket all the time.
With recent patches we can limit that to a certain degree.

Recap:
As a Server Owner you have the option to set a playfield:

1. to restrict certain blueprints to be spawned
   
   1.1 That means EBL => everyone have to build their base by hand - block by block
2. Globally you can also define if ships should be spawned on a platform or not.

Combined with the First Topic about AG / LCZ it’s a very deep influence of many PvP elements.

Leave a comment: What is your opinion about all of that?

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4. Terrain Deformation

• It’s good
• More Indestructible Terrain for performance boost
• It’s bad

Eleon and HWS made couple of benchmarks the last 3 years and the result was always the same: Terrain deformation is the most “costly” thing for the Unity Engine + Server Playfield / Hardware + Player clients.

Recap:

1. Any deformation on terrain combined with the fact that Empyrion is a Voxel game means that more and more triangles are added to the environment the server and client has to calculate
2. As a Server Owner you can set playfields to Indestructible Terrain or together with our tool, only at given times.
3. Indestructible terrain means you can’t drill / change the terrain in any way - deposits included.
4. A core / a blueprint can only be put 75% into the ground (with page down button), making it always reachable / destroyable
5. A Server Owner can set in the EAH Tool to wipe the surface the hard or soft way:
   5.1. Soft means the terrain except near bases and deposits will be reset. So your underground base will stay that way.
   5.2. Hard means the terrain will be reset everywhere, also by deposits and bases. You have to drill your underground base again. General Disadvantage: deposit HUD labels are gone or say 0% but are in reality 100% refreshed.

Leave a comment: What is your opinion about all of that?

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5. Playfield Restrictions

• It’s good
• Change (suggestion as comment)
• It’s bad

Similar fact from above: if you have no limits for structure size and quantity in Empyrion you suffer major performance issues.

Recap:

1. We have Class 1 limits on many “hot” PvP spots like Golden Globe and Black Hole
2. We have Block limits of ex. 100 for CVs, 3000 for SVs & 5000 Blocks HVs on many “hot” spots
3. We have global structure limits to limit the quantity
4. We have local structure limits to not allow private HVs on Golden Globe for example.
5. We have Alliance structure limits to reduce mass fights with too many Alliances
6. A Server Owner can set a playfield to allow certain structures
   

Leave a comment: What is your opinion about all of that?

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Let’s focus on these 5 big topics for now but keep in mind that PvP has way more parameters and decisions we could go about. A random list:

• Gravity
• HWS Config
• Resource destribution
• Terrain resource crust
• Planet Size
• Rules
• POI gameplay (capture a POI / territory game)

I really want to get every PvP enthusiast into the boat and have a constructive discussion about the “best” PvP setup for HWS. Sure we have 3 year experience as a partial PvP server but the game is non-stop changing, so I want to get always the best out of the game for you.

I appreciate your comments and as always: any finger pointing, drama, stir up history or whatever toxicity will just be removed and excludes you and your opinion!

Your HWS Team

[MonsterIce]

I personally would like to be able to have at least 3 private ships in a play field. as example, one garage mining SV, 1 garage fighter/ class 1 SV for GG, and one hand built SV of class 2 or so for other playfields. helps not having to switch ships from faction to private, back and forth, and makes faction bases more usable.

[Zackey_TNT]

The way I see it there’s been four main reasons for this season’s reduced PvP enjoyment on NA

1. Unbalanced Bases.

Whenever bases have been involved in PvP, it’s invariably led to a slugging match between alliances, and whoever controls the bases, wins almost 100% of the time

The only way I have seen bases hard-countered so far is by digging under them. But this is a very cheesy mechanic not really suited for mainstream gameplay. It creates lag and is extremely unfun for the defenders.

In my opinion, bases need to have their DPS reduced, their durability also reduced, and in future, balance should take into account how many there are (3 on GG, unlimited on titan, for example). We (the community at large) have long pushed for more durable bases, but we’ve now past a point where bases are ironically too durable. Their blocks take 10 or more shots to destroy and during lag it’s almost impossible to strip turrets properly due to them popping back into existence (which is caused by the large HP pool, confusing the game during lag)

The final change for bases that I personally suggest is making it illegal/impossible to place the core under the terrain. I understand this might not be mechanically possible at this time, but it should be something we push towards. Bases with cores under them and land claim blocks are basically impossible to take, since even plasma can’t dig the bases out.

2. Garage ship Balance

Everyone’s guilty of this, go to ECC, buy a 20 laser (or thereabouts) garage ship, up armor it, and instantly be better then 5 or more enemy standard fighters. Garage ships should be stripped of all their bonus laser weapons and only be able to use xeno steel/more maneuverability to win fights. Laser weapons are the single most important weapon, and having 20 of them is insanely overpowered for anyone who welds it.

I have seen garage ships go up against 6 or more players and kill every single one of them in under 10 minutes. It’s ridiculously overpowered and needs to be put to rest. Newer PvP players can’t counter it with more garage ships because of the insane cost and the only other effective way to counter it is simply leave the fight.

3. Toxicity

NA seems particularly bad for it, battles are fought daily and the aftermath in the chat is often much worse then the actual outcome of the battle. Win or lose, you’re going to get absolutely smacked in chat for it, and empyrion’s mute function is not a solution for lack of moderation. Even if every single apposing player muted the other side, the entire server is exposed to it and I have often seen completely new random players jump in to start bashing the side who’s getting stomped even more. This means less recruits, less motivation, and a general sense that the entire server is kicking you while you’re down.

4. Limitation abuse

We’ve all done it at some stage, I’m sure, take down a class 7 ship into GG and ignore the timer. Switch your ship to faction or private multiple times to reset the timer, and absolutely sealclub all the fighters below you. You won’t get banned for it, because it’s impossible to moderate, and the timer is completely confused by it, so you’re at no risk of your own ship. Even if HWS takes it, people often just go back to their home planet with it and replace it later/core it.

Sometimes players even take in class 1.70 fighters with the intention of having the advantage in the short term and taking enough damage to come back down to class 1.49.
I’m afraid the only solution to this is a reduction in the timer itself, and preventing it from resetting when you set it to a different faction/playfield.

General Balance Suggestions:

Class 1 CVs are having issues with lagshots/fueltanking due to their restrictive size. I suggest upping the class size to 2, to make fights last a little bit longer and reduce the “one-hit-wonder” most class 1 CVs suffer from.

HVs seem to lack firepower compared to bases and SVs, this should be addressed by slightly increasing the turret count of rockets and plasma (not arty!) since the most common problem seems to be that HVs get stripped to easily.

SVs are still getting lag-shotted a bunch due to laser’s increased damaged this season, despite “whitespace” and “anti-penetration” armor. Aside from the general game mechanic of “penetration” basically being an excuse for the bug “hitscan” and being totally unpredictable, the general experience I’ve had with it is that most ships die due to cockpitting, and not actually being a result of continued battle.

It’s a huge skill-gap in the community still and the number 1 cause for newer players getting killed in pvp unfairly. Even the veterans agree that it’s not a very good game mechanic.

The solution? Reduce laser damage by half. This will immediately stop most, if not all, hit-scan related deaths in SV vs SV combat.

Commodity trader planets need to have SV only limits (meaning no bases, no HVs), as HVs/BAs are simply used to rather annoyingly camp the traders with turrets. This results in one group being the soul owner of a trader, despite putting zero effort into it. With SV-only limitations in place, walla and cebo can become PvP hotspots where players must respond to beacon alerts or lose their stronghold over the trader.

Those have been my thoughts, I doubt very much it’ll be uncontroversial simply due to the fact that any side willing to abuse these balance issues is the side that will mostly dominate the server.

Regardless, thank you rex for making a dedicated post just to PvP, really makes that community feel welcomed!

[Vengeance]

2. Garage ship Balance

Everyone’s guilty of this, go to ECC, buy a 20 laser (or thereabouts) garage ship, up armor it, and instantly be better then 5 or more enemy standard fighters. Garage ships should be stripped of all their bonus laser weapons and only be able to use xeno steel/more maneuverability to win fights. Laser weapons are the single most important weapon, and having 20 of them is insanely overpowered for anyone who welds it.

I have seen garage ships go up against 6 or more players and kill every single one of them in under 10 minutes. It’s ridiculously overpowered and needs to be put to rest. Newer PvP players can’t counter it with more garage ships because of the insane cost and the only other effective way to counter it is simply leave the fight.

I’m not really a PvP player, yet, but I can completely agree with you on #2. Garage ships with weapons over the default limit is way too OP. And your right about newer PvP players against them - not a chance!! Sure, let garage ships intermingle all the HV, SV, CV, & BA components they want, even 20 mining drills and/or multi-turrets; but never let them go above the default limitation count for each weapon type.

Of course, that then leaves you with the issue of figuring out HV, SV, CV, & BA weapon limitations per garage vehicle. Maybe based on the final category of the ship, you can only have 1 or 2 of the other vehicle type weapons. E.g., Garage SV can have all the SV weapon types plus 1 (or 2) HV, 1 (or 2) CV, and 1 (or 2) BA weapon types as well?

Anyways, garage ships with 20+ lasers, etc, just destroy PvP for the entire server and it makes it nearly impossible for any new player to even attempt PvP.

For the Offline Protection question, I don’t mind it. Problem is your structure is already being protected by it, WHY would the OP player get free UNLIMITED shots at people passing by? When the shield activates, weapon systems should deactivate. When the shield ends, weapon systems should come back online.

For Terrain Deformation, can the indestructible “core” be dynamically adjusted based on planetary location? E.g., your core depth (before you hit it) would be around 10m (30 feet) for all the flat “plains” areas. I think you could build a decent “basement” for your structure down to the bedrock (core) with this depth. The core depth would adjust to this level around the planet with 2 notable exceptions. 1) it would dynamically adjust to always be 10m lower than the “bottom” of any body of water - so you can still have deep bodies of water. 2) It would NOT dynamically adjust upwards for mountain terrain. That will give areas for people to build their larger underground bunkers.

I was drilling down hundreds of meters (200+) on a PvP moon (to get away from ABN) and I never did hit bedrock (the core). It seems if the amount of overall voxel area can be reduced, but still be available, may help with performance. Raising the indestructible core level should help.

Just my 2 cents…and probably all it’s really worth…

[Lokiet]

Class 1 CVs are having issues with lagshots/fueltanking due to their restrictive size. I suggest upping the class size to 2, to make fights last a little bit longer and reduce the “one-hit-wonder” most class 1 CVs suffer from.

Is it possible to limit front mounted weapons by class?
Class 1 CV = 2 pulse, and 2 rocket. (X scaling of mounted turrets)
Class 2 CV = 4 pulse and 2 rocket. (X scaling of mounted turrets)
Class 3 CV = 6 pulse and 4 rocket. (X scaling of mounted turrets)
Class 4 CV = 6 pulse and 6 rocket. (X scaling of mounted turrets)
Class 5 CV = 8 pulse and 8 rocket. (X scaling of mounted turrets)
Class 6 CV = 10 pulse and 8 rocket. (X scaling of mounted turrets)
Class 7 CV = everything the server allows. (X scaling of mounted turrets)

This would better differentiate ship classes, rendering a CV 1 a patrol ship, while a CV 2 a destroyer, CV 3 a frigate, CV 4 a light cruiser, CV 5 a heavy cruiser, CV 6 a battle ship and CV 7 a Dread?

[Zackey_TNT]

It is not currently possible to scale by class, to my understanding.

[olurz]

Please make a normal range of guns for Small Vessels. 200 meters is very small, 350-400 looks much more interesting.
When approaching the enemy, at a distance of approximately from 50 to 100 meters, there is a small lag in the game. The game loads something inside the enemy ship, something that does not load at a longer distance. This does not add to the convenience of fighting.

[_Furious_Hellfire]

3. Toxicity

NA seems particularly bad for it, battles are fought daily and the aftermath in the chat is often much worse then the actual outcome of the battle. Win or lose, you’re going to get absolutely smacked in chat for it, and empyrion’s mute function is not a solution for lack of moderation. Even if every single apposing player muted the other side, the entire server is exposed to it and I have often seen completely new random players jump in to start bashing the side who’s getting stomped even more. This means less recruits, less motivation, and a general sense that the entire server is kicking you while you’re down.

Toxicity is my single biggest concern about PvP at HWS.

It mostly starts with sarcasm which is a disease that seemingly afflicts 9 out of 10 americans unfortunately.
Probably as many russians.

I really want to see thor put his hammer down on this matter.

We need a zero tolerance approach, it can be done to, and you wont lose your population.

I have moderated a racing sim with up to 110 active simultaneous players across 3 servers linked via in game chat.
The sim was called Live For Speed and our servers were called Live To Cruise, at the time I was playing, we like HWS had the most popular server in the entire game.

We had several admins who assisted with upholding and maintaining a verbal and behaviour stature/covenant that we put together in our forums.
Players had to be banned every day, but usually they would be new players who join server crash everyone and start with the nazi stuff.
Our regular players always adhered to our rules strictly, regarding general attitude, swearing, flaming.

We also learned that its not just the players attitude that has to adjust, but admins attitude, teaching admins to remain neutral in all matters of rule upholding.
Not taking sides with a player but rather the taking sides with the servers covenant.
And always the ban would be the last course of action, we gave a 3 strike system, but for certain things you could be instantly removed because it is just not acceptable in a gaming environment filled with both adults and children.

The toxic chats I see in this server make me sick, I ask myself, who lets this shit continue really? its a joke.
This actually gives me a little anxiety in game to see this babble going on, it makes me feel like HWS is not for me, too many trolls are freely allowed to dominate chat and ruin the mood for everyone whenever they feel like it.
Also randomly picking on a pve player in chat when he is talking pve stuff to other pve players ? This is beyond wrong and needs dealing with.
And because there are no real rules in place about it, I can do nothing but tell these people to grow up stop being a kid etc etc.
It makes me want to confront these people but I have no power to do so, instead I have to just counter troll them with witty inoffensive banter.
But eventually because there are no powers that be, I will one day eventually get mad and either rip the server chat apart until i get banned myself, or send a nice big personal message to rexxxus stating how I feel about the lack of rules against toxicity.

I was happy to see @RexXxuS recent comment in PvP chat stating he will be policing toxicity more !

And if he needs help he need only say the word and I will write up a covenant for HWS players based on my experience from other games and also offer to help uphold it as a moderator for next season.

[Insap]

Dass einzige was total nervig ist bei der begrenzung der schiffe ist ,
Wenn man ein 3000 Block SV mit Größen klasse 1,49 oder 1,5 hat und man Kämpft auf GG und man verliert durch den kampf blöcke steigt die größen Klasse sehr schnell auf 2 oder Höher.
Dann bekommt man ständig warnungen und dass is was dann nervt.
Man hätte dass Problem nicht wenn man in SV oder HV RCS 2 verwenden kann denn dann würde die größen klasse nicht so hoch gehen.

Und was die Kaufschiffe an gehen…
Generell habe ich nichts gegen Kaufschiffe besitze selbst ein Raider x2 aber die Kampf SV sind einfach OP.
Mir würde es gefallen wenn es vllt eine beschränkung geben würde wo es nur erlaubt ist Pro Fraktion 1 Kampf SV Pro Playfield wie z.b. GG
Oder es wird einiges an der einstellung geändert das die nicht mehr so OP sind.
Sonst hat man gegen die SV einfach keine chance.

[RedRina]

The server is one of the best at the moment, but the anti-grief and OP solutions are illogical in the pvp situation, only the defenses should be available (turrets, hoover, small ship, players).
The “pvp” players make kings, but hide in pve zone or under anti-grief and OP protections …
assume your choices, you are flagged pvp, no protection possible, neither in zone pvp, nor in zone pve …

[Slainalot]

Ok, I may get myself into a little trouble here but …

Why do we keep changing PVP settings when we really haven’t tested the current settings to the maximum? Having been a part of almost every major engagement on NA this season, my opinion is that there really hasn’t been enough fighting to test half of these settings yet.

Earlier this season Rex tried something different to eliminate one of the worst aspects of pvp space, that being no danger in being there. After much whining, we are now essentially back to a system with the gates/warp that we knew didn’t work and everyone that actually fights in space was tired of. That was changed back when almost no one had even tested the new system and most were relying on horrible mis-information about it. As a result there has been so little CV combat there is really no good metric for how the new settings should be tweaked.

Now we’re talking about adjusting everything from base toughness to terrain deformation?? And after the giant siege war on Titan? That feels like far to much of a coincidence to me. Other then that one conflict has either of those factors been even a thought to anyone on the server?

Garage ships over powered? That was the intention from the start. Buy one. Everyone can. Yes its not fair for new people just starting with no cash … but everyone has to start somewhere. In truth the “new players” that can’t afford garage ships yet aren’t likely trying to get into a massive dogfights in deep pvp space. I don’t even understand where this thought is coming from other than people are scared of the Mordrid, Xamut and Slazer, and they should be.

Limitation abuse … not going to go into a ton here. Everyone has the same limitations, bringing over classed equipment in has been an issue since day 1 and likely always will be … Also, everyone appears to be guilty of doing it to some extent. This one may not be solvable, but moving the goal posts around just to force everyone to rebuild equipment doesn’t feel like a solution to me, it just feels like a waste of time when so many other things are changing in the game alpha state. Pick some limits, lock them in and let them be unless there is a clear and distinct issue that can be put forward and debated.

Lag shots … ah lag shots. They are going to happen no matter what with this game engine in its current state. They are 20000% better than in the past with Rex’s new config but they are still going to happen no matter what. Again I am going back to what are we trying to accomplish here? Gatlings were the single worst offender back before the config but nerfing lasers too? Why don’t we just eliminate all of the hit scan weapons … oh wait turrets can still lag shot you too … so lets get rid of those … now let’s fight with dumb fire ammunition or sticks.

About the only true data we’ve managed to pull together, feedback and just about agreed on was that weapon ranges were a little to short. That was changed a little and it feels much better. Constructive changes like that are what we should be focusing on.

Toxicity can maybe get dealt with … somehow … but let’s put Trolling on that list of things to watch yourself on. Half of the toxicity I see is basic crap talking, but the other half is brought on by some serious trolling. There is going to be some smack talk though, it’s a competitive game where we’re killing one another. Having played lots of other pvp games I can honestly say that the toxicity here is fairly minimal over all but I do understand it offends some people. Try playing some Rust as a comparison.

One last thing for now since this is turning into a wall of text. I do not understand where this idea that everything should be fair and accessible to everyone from noob to vet comes from. This is not how anything works, anywhere. Experience is going to beat even the best designs 95% of the time and there is no way to just hand out experience to a new player to bring them up to the same kind of levels as someone who has playing here for multiple seasons, it’s impossible.

You want the noobs to have an easier experience, help them. As much as I disagree with Pjams he is one of the very very few people I see in channels actively putting in some time and helping new players along. Lots of people offer advice and help in chat, but mostly new players are left to fend for themselves, and this game + HWS features has a huge learning curve.

[WreckinCrew]

With regard to the weapon config, the end of last season, the weapons did damage to a ship to the point it was somewhat scary to engage. However, players complained about lag shots. Perhaps there were few who exploited it to their advantage, however, in my opinion, it was the best weapon config. I feel it’s been nerfed to death.
Bring it back. Adjust the ranges if you wish, but it was very effective. With that in mind, larger ships may be used such as Class 2 max size, including Blackhole and GG.
I’m totally against a larger class size being able to enter the atmosphere where the limit is Class 1 like this season. Warnings just allow an invitation to exploit the limit. An immediate bounce out would be the solution, but I believe the game engine won’t allow for it.

I agree with Slainalot in that when changes are made in the game regarding rules and configs or settings, it’s based on whining because someone found it to be inconvenient or a challenge and misinformation was given to RexXxus. With the amount of people this season who actually dealt with it is less than the majority population. So my question is, what was the criteria of changes based on? Whining is most definitely not the answer.
And, changes that drastic during the season is most inconvenient. That is how you lose your player’s interest in playing the game. Make a choice and stick with it good or bad.
Much testing and feedback was giving regarding the config, yet, when the season started, it was changed.
The game was built for PVE. No argument there. But, RexXxus developed a PVP style and incorporated into the game. Please allow actual PVP players give you feedback and adjust with a poll that will have an actual voted platform.
I’ve been involved with polls, voting and posts and it always reverts back to a whiner’s claim about how difficult it is to move about the galaxy.
Regardless if the game was/is for PVE and has some PVP quality to it, remember, the game is a survival game. Not just human battles AI.
Adjust your gameplay and lets all have fun.

[Lokiet]

The problem with Garage Ships are that they become the sole realm of those who control GG or are masters of the markets. The former group think nothing of replacing a 10 million gold ships, and the latter do not use such ships other than for mining. This leaves the average player who doesn’t spend 300 hours playing a season without the Garage ship or the capacity to obtain enough of them (around 10) to engage in battle and replace their losses.

They were a cool idea, but largely I think they have outlived their usefulness as a commodity and now are horded by the super wealthy as a “I win” or tool of abuse levied against moderate players. Personally, in my tier one or class one fighter, I enjoy the challenge of fighting them, which renders them a nice idea for events or special occasions, I also have enjoyed watching them go boom against our TAW towers. But I wouldn’t waste my gold on them, not until I have maxed everything and can spend a billion a season without thinking about it.

[imtimex]

1. Anti Grief Zone (AG) / Land Claim Zone (LCZ)
Land claim/Anti Grief zones are great and should probably stay. The only real problem I have with them is that you are able to N-connect a core anywhere within a 350m radius (or whatever the setting is).

That means you can go from completely stripping a base of defenses, including removal of land claim… which is both fun and exciting, to digging for 2 hours to find a core, which is not fun at all. If cores were required to be placed within structures this would make sense and base assaults would actually be base assaults and not mining runs if someone is taking advantage of a poorly thought out mechanic.

350m radius is fine too. The goal should be to assault the base and take it, not find the 5x5 wall hiding the land claim and dig all day long.

So, LCZ is good, but also bad.

2. Offline Protection (OP)
The OP settings are fine, they protect smaller factions from larger factions for the most part and letting them “sleep in peace” is a good thing for the most part. For larger factions OP is basically not considered, someone from faction or alliance will almost always be online.

It’s a little cheesy to have OP work on playfields that give a reward just for having a base on the PF, but it is what it is, a small 3 person faction is not going to be online 24/7 to defend, and if there isn’t OP, a larger faction will almost always destroy the base. I call that stomping bambis and I think things like that hinder new PvP players/factions from sticking around and growing.

OP should probably be adjusted to turn off weapons completely. Guns on bases are there to defend the base and make sure it’s not damaged… and if it cannot be damaged, why have the weapons on. That’s something for Eleon, I know, just putting it out there.

3. Blueprint Spawning / Elite Builder League (EBL)
Spawning is fine in my opinion, I’m still slowly learning how to get better at building and I do so in single player, not in a PvP hot-zone. Any time I am to go to a builder league planet I go with someone who is better than I am at building and provide support. If that were a global thing, I would not like it very much.

4. Terrain Deformation
It seems fine on class 1 PvP planets. Class 7 will already have some lag from large structures, but once terrian gets deformed it lags a whole lot more. For instance, I did not lag at all during the recent skirmishes on Titan, but once the drilling started, even I started lagging pretty hard.

5. Playfield Restrictions
Admin structure land claims:
AI bases that players can go into for some benefit (NPC Trader/No Guilty) need their own anti-grief/land claim. I guess we’ve met some very nice Aliens who allow us to put permanent guns at their heads while they do business, but from a player perspective, I think the goal should be to take the area and respond to nearby alerts, not cheese it and place guns in the admin base, so I think that needs a bit more restriction.

Class size limits:
A major problem is purposeful abuses - the beginning of the season started with this and I’ve seen it happen all mid-season as well. Up-classing WILL happen on ships during combat due to Eleon’s poor calculation of class size. A designer can build around this, test for hours, and still up-class during a battle. I don’t really have an issue with this as most good designers will take the ship back to creative and fix the issue, trying to stay within the limits.

On the other side of that, people purposely abusing limits by bringing, say a class 1.7 or even class 5-7 into a class 1 playfield is a huge problem and things like that make the gameplay frustrating, so I think that is a problem that needs to be addressed moving forward.

While it is true that everyone has the same limitations and restrictions, and just anyone could bring in a class 7 ship on GG and take their automated punishment for doing so, I and many other people prefer to look at the limits of the PF and only bring a ship on the planet that meets those limits. From there, upclassing may happen, but I refuse to abuse the system just to get a win by doing so.

Having ships getting taken faster and having the timers not reset by simply leaving and re-entering the PF seems like a good idea, but if it’s an up-class scenario then that doesn’t work, or if I’m in a class 7 taking the warp path from Homeworld->BH->Titan, that may be a problem too. So no solutions for you here RexXxuS, only problems, you’re welcome.

Another note on limits I guess is weapon limits. I enjoy the garage miners, but the ships with additional lasers make for very boring gameplay when they are the primary source of lag-shot (or armor penetration, whatever Eleon calls it these days). All the person in the garage ship needs to do is spam lasers and hope for a hit, and the person not in the garage ship won’t have an actual fight to participate in. These garage ships should be powerful, but not over-powered, we’re now up to ships with 12 over-limit lasers with the sole purpose of getting a lucky lag shot (16 lasers??), that’s both crazy and boring to me, some balance in actual combat still needs to be considered when approving these ships, if not by the designers, then by the person approving their use.

Anyway thank you RexXxuS for putting this out. I have a lot more to say about both PvE and PvP but will remain within the limits of this discussion for now. I have participated in PvE and PvP this season, a lot less than I would have liked but look forward to the future as always.

[Remeey]

So far The only thing i can see from a pvers point of view is that some times i find that ores are to close to a poi and cant be mined like on the freelancer moon almost all ore was at or under a poi land claim so i wasted all that time and effort to go there and look for them just to not be able to mine there and as a maker of custom empyrion play fields and pois I know there are setting to prevent ore from spawning to close. Maybe just take a lil time to go over and check them again its easy if you use the epd. https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-alpha8-v1-60-6.37581/#post-236128 .

[Aphetto]

Great thoughts and very constructive all around. One thing I want to add is some things like whether or not to have land claim is kind of dependent on the rules of the specific playfield, IMO. For example, let’s look at the Titan battle last week on NA. That playfield had no limits on amounts of structures. It looked like TAW/F_U had somewhere in the neighborhood of 20+ bases/HVs clustered together. The lag that this unintentionally created (along with all of our dead ships as we kept trying to assault it) made it impossible for the sieging side. It became a slideshow. You couldn’t do any manual firing which made SVs pointless.

The people defending the base were saying from the start that they weren’t getting the same kind of lag that we were. Of course we assumed they weren’t telling the truth and just trying to say we were making excuses. I honestly think now though that it had something to do with the fact that TAW/F_U mostly had their backs to the bases and that helped with the lag, or that since they were so close to the bases they stayed rendered in. Since we were flying around facing all of the bases and coming in and out of render range over and over, it was completely bogging us down. Days later when we dug their bases out below them, they started dealing with the same lag we complained about all week due to the ground rendering issues. I’ve been in every major NA battle this season. I participated in the GG assaults against the huge lag bases last season too. I can say that Titan was the worst lag I experienced in this game so far.

So all this is to say if we are going to have a playfield where there are no restrictions to size class or structure limits, then all bets should be off. No land claim, no anti-grief. and possibly make that a builder league planet.

[Vengeance]

This may, or may not help with Space PvP lag, but what about that blue/gray patches of haze and white dots that fly past you while traveling through space? I’m sure it’s there to give the player something to look at while traveling through space. But if it doesn’t have to be rendered on the screen, that may help with some of the lag.

[Senti]

My major gripe is that the anti-grief zones are way too large. From both offensive and defensive perspectives sapping is a really fun aspect of PvP on Empyrion that simply isn’t present on this server. Anti-grief as large as 350m not only hugely limits tactical options when assaulting bases but without concern of sapping bases are very narrow in design, and are often repetitive. An LCZ either extremely close to or directly at the structure makes for a more dynamic PvP environment and forces people to be much more creative in their base defenses, resulting in much more design variation. Considering how torn opinions are I think shrinking the LCZ would be a good compromise.

I don’t have any other strong opinions on these subjects other than terrain deformation relevantly being an integral part of what makes Empyrion fun and should be allowed as much as possible. Indestructible terrain is lame.