I just have some feedback for the season 9 config with regards to pvp.
1st:
175 Metres is too close and causes a lot of framerate problems for players because of the constant proximity. It also heavily favors those with better ping times as they are able to adjust their flight faster then those twitching and lagging around.
I recommend a range for SV weapons of about 400, maybe higher if that is possible.
2nd:
Having only two gates out of the PVP system is very bad and should be addressed. Currently, there is no way to warp out from the PVP system and you are forced to use gates which are often camped. When large factions abuse this, it can lead to newer players being camped and killed, or just a generally uninteresting fight until the victim dies because there is no escape.
I recommend having some sort of cooldown system or rule in place for camping the gates, so that players dont camp it 24/7.
For example, maybe a player can’t use the gate with an enemy nearby until they remain around the gate for atleast 5 minutes, this way a legitimate “kill” can be made and a fully healed CV who just got camped can get away.
OR
Just make gates a non-camp-able structure as a rule.
I haven’t had a chance to venture into PVP myself yet but after hearing about the new restrictions and changes I’m heavily considering not even bothering.
175 meter range for SV weapons is just absolutely ludicrous. The ranges that were set in HWS8 were perfectly fine and they didn’t really need to be adjusted with the exception of railguns. I thought they should’ve been reduced in range slightly and by slightly I mean like 50 meters less than what they were set at (360 IIRC?) That way one player can’t sit just outside of turret range and snipe off turrets. 175 is just suicide for trying to take on a base especially when you’re already limited to an extremely frail 3k block design. There’s just no feasible way to assault a base in SVs now. But then again, maybe that’s the point? Use HVs to attack bases? But 175 is still entirely too short for SV vs SV engagements. Especially when it’s a big 5+ vs 5+ fight. Everyone’s going to just hairball in the middle and hope their 3k SV is built in a tankier fashion than the other players… It’s just a poor design choice, IMO. I would recommend reverting weapon ranges back to how they were in the previous season with the exception of railguns. I would prefer to see their range decreased by no more than 50 meters of how they were last season.
On the matter of the supergates, I originally thought the idea of not being able to gate out in the middle of a fight was a good one but seeing how it’s currently implemented I am 100% against this change. Homeworld should have at least 1, if not 2, ways to warp out especially when you’re in a fight. It makes targeting the warp cores much more important and allows players the chance to actually escape if they don’t want to fight or if they hop into the system to explore and find themselves outnumbered 5 to 1.
Also, as I understand it right now, I can build a CV, park it near a supergate and go do whatever I want and the mere presence of a CV at the supergate will prevent players from being able to use it. That’s a serious design oversight. If I’m misunderstanding the mechanic tho please feel free to correct me. As I said at the beginning of the post I haven’t physically gone into PVP myself this season.
Well Rex, I personally like how you change the system around. I (unlike others) enjoy what you have done with EGS. Yeah the range on some weapons are a little too close but at the same time I like it. I don’t think anything needs to be changed. You did a great job with 9.0! Don’t let others tell you otherwise. From what im readin, seems like some people don’t want to adapt to your changes, but would rather have the server adapt to their playstyle.
Thats a fundamentally flawed argument because it implies the server is not here for the enjoyment and benefit of the players who are on it.
These changes are simply causing more issues then they resolve. I would also like to point out that as a member of ABN, who has overall benefited from these changes, you may be overall biased towards them.
@VCross
That is a good point which I had not considered before. Explorers that are new to HWS may be drawn into a situation in which they have no other option but to die. If a system is one way only, they may not be able to escape or know about the gates to begin with.
I agree the ranges are a little short. I did like the ranges last season, I think they were a good mix. With the current ranges you have no choice but to facehug your opponent which leads to a lot of incidental contact.
As far as supergates being the only way in or out, I also agree that this leads to camping to trap people in a sector. I do not think having a bottleneck on either PVP or PVE is a good idea. While this might be a viable tactic to “get kills” for a pvp faction, it stagnates PVP as you see people not willing to venture out if they are going to be trapped that easily. There is no fighting chance to leave, as there is with a warp drive. I think having a couple warp routes would solve the problem.
Or, maybe a cool idea would be logic to disable the supergate if a switch or something is flipped for 5 minutes. I’m not sure this is possible, but it would eliminate the blanket camping for more strategic disabling of the supergate at a slight risk to the person disabling it.
edit: or a egs command (costs RP) to disable SG in current system for X time.
I have still not fighted around a supergate but before people disappearing magically even without the warp drive was really frustratring. People before just fight around a supergate and when they were nearly died poof magically disappeared.
I prefer 1000 times more this system.
Hey we are fighting, wait i need to get out from my sv to switch the supergate disabler preventing you to get out.
No sense
Atm there are 2 supergates to get out from HW and the sg command is very big to warp out. You can also warp to titan/blackhole/nova to escape enemies.
Anyway your problems could be fixed just enabling one of the titan/nova or blackhole supergate to get to walla or cebo.
A warp-out is something I think would be good to have. Bottle-necking PVP is a really bad idea. At least with warpdrive, you can core the target.
To add to this, what about an ability lawless has to shutdown the gates with a command for a cooldown period? Say la:disable which disables the nearest gate for 10 minutes with a cooldown of 4 hours? This would cost say, 10RP.
people has voted to negate the possibility to warp out from sg with enemies near.
your proposal is ridiculous. in 10 minutes i even not scratched a cv and you can escape like before poof
Just add a warp out route in another sector to get cebo or walla - via supergate so you can spawn your mini cv and get out - later in the season if people still complain.
I believe the changes are good for the benefit of pvp n the orgin Lawless… If it goes back to the easy way out I see no reason to even have the orgin in place… I for one cant comment soo early on the subject when things haven’t been fully fixed n in place. Like paxxo said, Plenty of warps still in place n if cebo/walla gates worked it would help as well. Maybe let rexx get it all set up first before we try to change things right away. People are learning new routes n with time adapt. I seen a couple new factions out trying to pvp and cv’s aren’t working atm. The old players still manage to get away. If the new guys are learning n adapting why can’t we all. Again, this is still in the works. PVP goes both ways… Whats the point in being strategic in pvp if players could easily run. With lots still being worked on I don’t see y we need things changed just yet… Lets get it all worked out n see how things go. Then n only then should their be change to better pvp areas… Till then adapt or stay out imo… N for weapon damage/Range as long as fights don’t last hours n cuts down on lag I’m all for it. Which is what rexx has been working on im assuming for the reasons he did these changes.
r/gatekeeping?
Range has nothing to do with cutting down lag or reducing fight times. Range just makes everyone clump together too close. This isn’t a matter of “adapt” this is a matter of these game mechanics being flawed from the get-go.
Not enough range to kill a base, no sir, just enough range not to be in a laggy clump of other SVs. At 400 meters, you should still be out-ranged by bases. If that is not the case, then we should increase bases to say, 700 meters as well. That way there is enough room for everyone
I do not favor any faction or origin over others. And while the “new players” argument from veterans come up often it’s simple as that: PvP is player vs players. And if a new player want that risk, well it’s his decision. I have tons of missions, events, daily rewards etc. setup to get new players going fast.
So everyone has the same chance to adapt to anything. And that larger factions have a benefit - we all know this.
Ranges of Pulse are not touched. Don’t know where this is coming from. See here: HWS Config / Effectiveness Weapon System (EWS)
BUT Eleon changed the density stuff. Maybe that is why. I will revisit all ranges again but it would be helpful if you could create a table.
Weapon
Current Range
Playfield
Requested Range
SV Pulse
xxx
yyy
zzz
…
As I said, it was requested and I just slightly added these “PvP/PvE” split. If Eleon implements EMP weapons, there will be even more conflicts I guess.
I know you have no “Save game” option in Empyrion and if you lose, you lose everything. But my intention behind an Universe PvP Space game is exactly this:
Adventure, Exploration, risk, reward.
Camping around the SV ONLY Supergate is not a legit word to use and there are other Supergates.
However, once I implemented the Walla, Cebo, etc. Supergates, I might link them together from the hot-PvP Zone.
Once I’m done with all Supergates, I know it will be a quite crazy network of travel systems and good old times come back, where you need a pen and paper to draw these connections - but that is also what I like
One other big issue of course is, that the Supergates are set to Alien Faction and you have to know the pattern that above the Planet Supergate 1 is located and below Supergate 2. I try to improve it with an Admin dummy base pointer.
But if the Community do a poll after a while, I might add two-way-warps to Cebo / Walla.
Your decision.
If the goal is to reduce lag or reduce the length of fights there’s a simple solution: Increase weapon range (in this case changing the atmospheric density calculations) and increase weapon damage (probably by a factor of about 3x). I’ll submit actual numbers and graphs after the holidays. Fair warning tho, graphs are not at all my strong suit.
Increased damage at farther ranges means being able to shoot down or destroy enemy ships faster which will decrease active devices (specifically thrusters) on a playfield which will increase overall FPS quality and lag. SVs shouldn’t be designed like tanks. They should be designed like fighters. Fast, maneuverable, high damage output, easy to disable or destroy. As an added side effect, this could also make pirate style CV raids a viable tactic in PVP space. A group of 5-6 fighters could attack a CV and potentially disable it (assuming that CV turrets have been fixed). That could be a new and welcome addition to PVP as well. Instead of just running around with 60-80k block CVs and hoping that someone else shows up in an equivalent size ship that can put up a fight.
That being said, HVs are getting left behind and forgotten about again. Right now, HV turrets have less base range than SV weapons, which makes sense gameplay-wise since they auto track and there’s no need to manually aim but at the same time it makes SV vs HV fights quite one sided. To balance HVs vs SVs, I would recommend giving their turrets greater range than SV weapons but decreasing the damage (compared to SV weapons) so it takes a few volleys to shoot down an SV. All of this, is of course working off the increased damage numbers I’ll be posting after the holidays but for now the basic idea is:
-Increase SV weapon damage by a factor of 3x
-Increase HV weapon damage by a factor of 2x
-Increase HV weapon range to be greater than that of SV weapons by approximately 15%
-Increase CV weapon damage by a factor of 2x
-Adjust range calculations in atmosphere so that ships aren’t hugging each other
In conclussion, this would make confrontations even in large scale fights much quicker, would cause veteran players (who have built up entire OCDs full of resources) to expend more resources to keep up an active number of ships and would help to reduce lag and increase FPS in most playfields.
I agree with the change to force pvp if people choose to venture into pvp. Don’t go to pvp if you don’t plan to fight. Not a fan of campers but campers can be beaten down with an organized group. Just my thought on the matter.
This is true, my only issue with supergates is that there is that just sitting on it was not what it was intended for.
The complaint was that once people had their warp drives gone, they’d go use the supergate to escape. Now that the supergates cant be used with an enemy close, that fix works but introduces the tactic of just sitting on the supergate, depriving others of warping while risking nothing.
We talked about the EMP thing and rex did mention it above. That’s why I mentioned a chat command that could disable supergates in current sector. It would actually add strategy to the supergate system in the same style as an emp would to deprive warp.
to be clear, I’ve never had an issue with people camping supergates. It’s never affected me personally. I’m viewing it from an outside perspective as a cheesy tactic and side-effect of fixing the combat supergate use problem
Good i am always ok with weapon damage increase.
This season the damage of Sv was reduced and seems like to fight against invincible structures. Fights need to be fastened up by a lot.
If i hit you with manual fire than you need to take huge damage. Requires good skill of dogfighting and good aim to take down your opponents.
