Well bloody blazes this is an interesting read. Funny fact I was the one that did the initial scouting before will and cyan. 
Reason I scouted was I was trying to figure out where ozi was taking all these autominers. I took him up on the trade and on average publicly around 10-20 players per day were taking him up on the autominer for rep and gold trade at eton. I eventually remembered zanzibar!!! I had actually with us being around 2 weeks into the season almost forgot about it. I was like OH hellz yea thats where I would take all those am3s, I didnāt need for a faction planet.
So what I thought zanzibar was before I scouted. I thought I was seeing the whole planet when it was announced. I will admit I gave myself a misconception, iām obviously bad at reading the geography in the game atm lol. When I put my pictures in the OH discord we initially tried to figure out around how many they probably had placed and we figured around 40 per pile before allies. Sounds juicy right and then someone says in public chat that its getting around 1mil twice a day per resource sounds close to right. When I joined OH the planet Inner Heaven had around 15-20ish am3s depending on how many accidental pickups there were. In a 16ish hour period (when u initially fuel them up if u place another after it takes you should get a 16hour lifespan). In 16hours on average would have between 200-250k ore and thats with 2 types 3 piles each, very very nice right.
The initial idea I proposed was either a speedy land in something that can take a hit while using other stuff to distract as many nearby bases/turrets (didnāt realize those were hvs on the outer line i never came low enough I thought they were ridiculously tiny towers XD ) to try to take as many war/pvp mats as possible mainly the penta, mag, and erestrum. The other proposal was that we do a slash and burn and destroy every am3 possible.
Many plans were starting to get drawn up and a few people even drew out cv idea concepts that might have eventually been made. When will and cyan did their scouting run is when fps was taken into consideration. Also after there divebombing we were not sure where the am3s were, only to find out a bug had somehow destroyed them all and that they were inside the bases. Honestly, very good tactic for pvp. Why leave something that would cost folks that buy from the market or npcs around 100-200k per am3 out in the open for someone to shoot, especially even if its not, 40 per pile, if its 20 or more just sounds like bad juju beans to leaveām out in the open. Since most of these were gotten through eton trades I figured either ABN would buy w/e is on the market, hit up npcs regularly, or continue the eton trade, why not right?
You might even wonder crazyfly why were you proposing speedy plans? ABN response times when I have joined in on attacks on them last season was between instant and 30/45minutesish. Sometimes its just one pilot till more can show up helping out there base defenses. So any plan to get resources had to take into account someone might show up to pick them up if the attackers are doing well. Also had to take into account ABN response times and when most of our pilots could actually participate. Timing completly and utterly crucial.
Now iāve played this game off and on since prealpha 3.4 and in prealpha I used to solo fight bases that had 100s to 500+ turrets. My svs the gnats were really awesome around that time as nothing homed in on you so you could fly around making bases drain themselves. This base setup simply reminds me of some of the more extravagant bases I used to fight. It had tons of flak and for some reason this 500ish flak turret base wasnāt shooting me. Why? Because, if you know what the serve setup was at the time I was without knowing it hurting the server, all the processors are screaming at the others help me with all these tracking calculations so of course to much is being tied up for them to even begin shooting. I stopped to take a bong rip or a bite of something and since none of the turrets were firing, but, the base is obviously powered I wasnāt sure after all the factors, if, I was in range or not. Iāve heard only 21 turrets can fire at a time not sure if thats accurate, but after that 30 secs it seemed to me like all 500 flak turrets fired at once since they no longer needed to track me.
This is relevant as it seemed like when they did there sv divebombs they should have been shredded by 30 basesish with hv support before they could pull out (I know they arenāt in range of all of them but seemed like they should have been in range of enough firepower). Now some of it might be graphical errors, just simply no visuals, but, did seem like not all turrets were firing that alone might be some worthwhile data if, true for the devs.
So knowing that fps is low and the fact that ABN and friends can bring on average 10-15 plus pilots in most reasonable, timeframes, it requires a large assault force and some of them dedicated to there tasks. 20-30 just for the bases and hvs with none of them breaking off to engage ABN pilots, the zone only told me when I was there ships class 7 so iām not sure if a cv can be there or not other zones specify these separately. But, whether they could or not you would need some ships specialized for attracting those turrets possibly ships with an abundance of generators and thrusters to continue drawing fire as attack craft focus down hvs and bases. Then you need around 5-10 per abn pilot that shows up. I know those numbers sound totally ludicrous until you realize that most of your pilots even in low numbers are going to be faced with bugs and fps lockups in this big of a fight. From bugs and fps lockups alone you should expect a 75% casualty rate. On top of the fact that sometimes when someone crashes in a zone they continue to crash or just sit at a loading screen, until, the next server restart at times even after checking empyrion file integrity and restarting there computer.
Reason I did not propose any kind of small scale attack is the ABN response times I mentioned. Also if the attack got on the scale I proposed in the previous paragraph we would literally have to run our attack plan and ships by Rexxus to make sure its all legal. This is supposed to be an event that helps collect data, iām not sure how much data one can get if we crash the zone before things even get interesting.
Now even if iām slightly off on numbers, it still would take alot more effort than anyone wants to put forth. Iām not sure about the other factions, but, we have had some setbacks in OH. Easiest one is if you had a screenshot of the OH roster at the end of last season and what it was for the first week or two of this season you would realize fast something was up. Alot of pilots did not like the bugs that came with 10.0 and others have taken a break till 11.0 anyway. Theres a few other factors but some may be more heresay than truth.
Now, I am sorry that for whatever reason my scouting run and intel gathering seems to have literally, not, only reminded people this place existed but, all the salt and vitriol thats been brought to the table.
The thing is its still an event planet maybe not the originally envisioned event planet but, ABN is still holding events here and with plans for more. I believe them when they say most of them donāt want to harvest there am3s, I have around 500 water gens I tend to them every 2-3 days takes me about 20-30 mins minimum based on if, iām typing, voice chat, or munching breakfast/dinner (iām a 3rd shifter lol). With 21 piles if, they all have 40 of just one factions am3s thats 840 am3s so with moving around from spot to spot at around 1-2 hours of harvesting and thats despite the fact of how close they are. Longer if they forget where they started and know they only harvested from x amount of am3s if, they still have power its gonna be hard to find the ones you havnāt looted.
So here are my thoughts on the matter, might be more enticing if, those resources were spread over more of the planet lets say since this a multi event planet atm, unless it were to go back to only one event, half the planet and spread out the penta, mag, and erestrum more. Another thing that might be done on the player side is ABN negotiate with other factions/alliances to be there before them. Giveām like at least at the start of the season an agreed amount of days to try to setup bases etc on said planet (iām thinking a week or less sounds reasonable). If it turned out the factions that were willing to participate escalated into war before said time ABN is more than welcome to join in as the planet is supposed to encourage lots of fighting. Since everything that uses a core effects the global limit it would make it a thinking game for anyone wanting to take these as this would effect there limits elsewhere (its a good thing mind you).
As for how it is iām not sure how to make it enticing enough for an attacker, cause even after you have to take into consideration that ABN will attack one or more times a day and as we saw on Titan last season what I think would accurately be called eve style fanaticism during times of war (god 28 players on at the same time from one side and mostly one faction to fight outstanding bravo bravo). Anyone who takes this and wanted it for resources would need almost all there pilots and friendly factions to have a similar eve style determination.
Now I canāt speak for the other factions but, as previously stated OH had some setbacks at the beginning of this season. So the chances of us attacking this isnāt nonexistant but, is definitely extremely doubtful. I do look forward to our battles elsewhere across the server.
