I am not sure what you mean by "retaliation" but if the attackers in a BGS/PP ganking present no target and are therefore unidentifiable, then counter-sniping is impossible. All you can do is play defense, or lash out blindly possibly making the situation worse. Maybe you can clarify what you mean by "retaliation" but it sounds like you are assuming that the attacker can be magically ID'd. Playing defense imo doesn't qualify as "counter sniping" since it is a wholly uneven encounter that favors success for the aggressor and worse still the only thing at risk is the defender's assets.
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I am not sure what you mean by "retaliation" but if the attackers in a BGS/PP ganking present no target and are therefore unidentifiable, then counter-sniping is impossible. All you can do is play defense, or lash out blindly possibly making the situation worse. Maybe you can clarify what you mean by "retaliation" but it sounds like you are assuming that the attacker can be magically ID'd. Playing defense imo doesn't qualify as "counter sniping" since it is a wholly uneven encounter that favors success for the aggressor and worse still the only thing at risk is the defender's assets.
When you see your influence in your system going down, you can work the BGS to increase that influence again right?
Even if both groups are playing from Solo/PG, the defender risks everything in this encounter. The attacker risks nothing. Do you honestly see this as a coequal interaction?
I honestly said it is possible to counter influencing the BGS by influencing the BGS yourself.
Again, ganking is also asymetric, the ganker also risks nothing. I am drawing parallels here, not talking about the how balanced the actions are.
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You said "counter-sniping" was possible. Sniping is a form of attack. Defending your system isn't not an "attack". This isn't just semantics. These words have meanings. If the attacker doesn't present any target whatsoever, not even a CMDR name on a local news list, then "attacking" them is impossible. They risk nothing, not even identification. That's not "asymmetric". That is literally a 1-sided encounter. There is no parallel for this kind of action in PVP because it is functionally impossible to kill someone anonymously, at the very least, your attacker is ALWAYS identified when you die.
See why it's not sensible to argue through analogies?
Yes it is. Dropping the analogy it becomes: Influencing the BGS can be countered by influencing the BGS.
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Sounds like a fair balance for the combat situation then.
That's just the way ED works. You can not defend the BGS against a well organized group with combat. Not even if both sides stays 100% in Open. It would just turn in to an instancing war. The meta would be more silly than anything we have seen so far. People would log on and of, wing on and of and switch, friend and unfriend to get the advantage. Squadrons will add another layer of tools for manipulators.
I think it's better to leave it as it is and just accept that direct interaction is't a functional tool in BGS conflict.
If words are meaningless ie defending == "retaliating" then yes all forms of communication become meaningless.
By this logic, combat gankers are "influencing" the hull of your spaceship and you can "counter" this by "sniping" at your own bank account and paying a "retaliatory" rebuy fee to return the hull to 100%.
This is how ridiculous it sounds when you use these same words to describe the defenders options in a stealth BGS attack.
Words seem to be meaningless. Case in point, what you quoted was 'it's not sensible to argue through analogies'.
If your case would have been: is countering through influencing the BGS yourself not better described as defending, you got a point. I will happily concede that, since it detracts nothing from the main point I am making.
By the way, I just checked, you introduced the word 'retaliation' in this discussion.
By that logic, combat gankers can be countered by PvP tactics, like evasion or defeating them in combat. As PvE tactics can be countered by PvE actions.
Do you disagree with: "Influencing the BGS can be countered by influencing the BGS"?
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In reality the only counter to BGS attacks, is BGS defense. It's all about filling those buckets. Anything else is window dressing. Do nothing but stop 50% of your attackers attacks through PvP, 50% still got through, and the defenders get burnt. Outpacing the Attackers is the best, and only defense. The rest of it is the old "I got a hammer, show me them nails'" stuff.
On top of that, Solo/PG is available to everyone at all times. If you are being beaten over a simple game mechanic, you deserve to lose. Just as you take advantage of the mechanics of Ship Outfitting, and Engineers, you should be ready to take advantage the Modes. They are, after all, just as much part of the game as Outfitting and Upgrading.
On top of that, Solo/PG is available to everyone at all times. If you are being beaten over a simple game mechanic, you deserve to lose. Just as you take advantage of the mechanics of Ship Outfitting, and Engineers, you should be ready to take advantage the Modes. They are, after all, just as much part of the game as Outfitting and Upgrading.
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Powderpanic
Banned
Squadrons is going to break this games issues WIDE open.
There is that optimistic wishful thinking I have come to expect. Is Squadrons going to fix instancing? Is Squadrons going to remake the BGS? Not likely on either count.
Not really. It's just not going to be what you're thinking, and absolutely not what yer fella who keeps calling it "fleets" is expecting.
But then hopefully the gangwar folk will just pack up and leave so the rest of us can get on with the game rather than just trying to spoil it for others to force the devs to do what we want.
You cant 'fix' instancing in a large scale conflict scenario. Instances are limited in size. Player groups are not.
Instancing will also always come with a set of rules. Those that care enough will find out what the deciding factors are. If you win instancing, you win the conflict.
It's better to drop the idea that combat can be used in any form of territorial control, in the open game.
For it to work FD would have to implement PvP combat zones. These would have to ignore friends lists, wings, block lists and squadrons and only focus on 'even teams'.
I was pointing out that Squadrons won't fix some of the barriers to large scale conflicts, and won;t change how everything is filtered through the BGS. I found myself writing only to that poster, and through some other dialogs we've shared. I could/should have expressed myself more broadly.
I fully agree. Squadrons will only add to the complexity. The chances of bumping into someone that is not friend, wing man or in your squadron gets smaller in busy systems.
The reason to argue via analogies is because you seem to have an issue empathizing with points of view you with which you don't initially agree. To the point where you can't see obvious parallels that would otherwise help you to understand the dilemma and frustration of open players.
Here is the crux which you are not getting:
For Open players their BGS group or PP faction is as much theirs as their ships are theirs. An attack on these in game assets is taken the same way you would perceive an attack on your ship filled with thousands of hours of Exploration data. This is because these factions are in fact imbued with the sweat of thousands of hours of dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of CMDRs each. The total time invested is much more than any single ship or player can claim.
When two groups interact with each other to compete to destroy or defend the above, the only ones risking their historical time investment in the game are the defenders.
If you don't see how this interaction is currently utterly twisted by the ability to attack without any similar risk for the attacker, not even discovering who the attacker might be, then you must have zero empathy for the massive time investment of the defending BGS/PP player.
There is no such thing as a PVE counter attack. There is only PVE attack and PVE defense. As long as this remains the case, then Solo/PG attackers will always hold the high ground, and this is what is fundamentally flawed about allowing Solo/PG to influence the Galaxy map for everyone else.
This issue can be fixed in other ways besides forcing everyone to play in Open. But those ways would be very complex and require that something like player squadrons exist as a buffer for player anonymity. I really hope that's a big part of where Frontier is going with this whole "Squadrons" update.
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Well organized post.
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