Remove WARZONES, make a TUG of WAR across the system instead

[Haleks]

Not sure I agree with everything the OP suggested (sounds a bit... complicated for FD), but hell we do need to see the back of those Conflict Zones!
What I hate the most right now, along with the "let's all RDV there and have a fight", is the total absence of consequences for siding with one side or another : all griefs are magically forgotten when you jump out.
Heck, you can even come back right away and have a go at the other side, just like players who grind military CGs...

I would love seeing an interdiction zone around stars, some kind of super checkpoint, where authorities would ask players to pick a definitive side or remain neutral - that would be a start...

 

[tarragon]

Here is the thing, right now the conflict system is a bit absurd, just go to a random place in space and kill thousands of ships until the side with most kills wins across a timespan of several days.

War should be more engaging, dynamic, less grindy, with a feeling of accomplishment, progression, and a community effort.


My proposed changes:

The war for each planet will be fought in two stages:

Space stage:
Several military outposts, squadrons, relays, and battleships will spawn around the planet. Those will all be fixed locations.
When an objective is taken, it will be replaced by a similar asset belonging to your faction.
Some objectives are easier and can be done solo, and some are too hard and require wings.

When all orbital objectives are accomplished, any stations in orbit will be taken by that faction and it will open the planet up for the ground invasion.

Ground stage:

SRV and skimmer patrols, bases and outposts are spawned in fixed locations belonging to the controlling faction, and some to the attacking faction.
Conquering those bases will switch them to your faction.
SRV and skimmer patrols can be taken out by a single commander in a ship or an SRV.
Outposts can be taken out by a group of SRVs
Bases can only be taken out by a combination of SRVs and Ships (SRV to take out powerful AA turrets, and ships with heavy ordinance to destroy an armored command bunker)
Once all outposts and bases have been taken, the planet is conquered.


When a planet is conquered, the front line moves to the next planet in the system.
The invading faction will start controlling half of the orbital objectives in the first planet of the system
Non landable planets will only have space stage.
This is how naval rank should be increased, instead of random missions.
Joining and independent faction should have a bigger cash reward to make up for the lack of naval progression incentive.
There should be an easy to access list of conflicts in Galnet, as well as a dynamic E.T.A and location finder (similar to current community goals)
Conflicts should be announced beforehand to give players time to prepare and organize


When all the planets are conquered, the war ends and the system is taken by the winning faction.

You speak game design. Fdev speaks mockup/pretend language. They don't understand.

 

[doombadger]

Definitely a +1 from me. Love this idea.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Well the instancing thing can be addressed by having each "goal" persistent in the universe, and players just add to it, much like a CG.
More or less mini CGs.

Example: rather than fly to a random spot in space, you side with faction A, by docking at one of their stations, they then tell you we need to weaken faction B at Station X/planet X/or attack all ships on sight in system X . (Via the BBS?)
The background sim will generate random losses for both sides that generally work in favour of the stronger faction.
Player actions influence the balance of power more greatly. But not so much you can win a war for your side single handedly. The more players contribute, the more effect on balance.
The balance of power can be updated daily, or 6-12 hourly as a progress report.
Once a side loses, a fun sort of 'final push' zone can be generated with limited ships on the losers side, an unwinnable battle. Just visible way to mop up the remains. Once it's done, the zone disappears. Obviously with capital ships, you'd just need to get them to flee. Which can depend on their heat sinks, and if they're the only thing left.

 

[Bomburban]

Implementing things that make sense and are fun? This will NEVER pass!

 

[The_Quasar]

Great idea, well thought out. +1

@Ydiss, would you mind expanding on this for what you've proposed before... sounds very interesting.

 

[Dathayn]

I approve. Make it so! I imagine this is what a lot of us wanted from power play. Conflicts def need to be more 3 dimensional

 

[Cynaqq]

Great ideas.

Shame it would require FD to change the entire way the game works.

You can't do things like this, because the whole thing runs off a database which get's updated at certain times, and this proposed system requires almost constant updates, or updates upon completion of some specific thing. There's also the instancing issues which would interfere with this.

It would be great if the game worked like this, but it doesn't and never will. It's an unfortunately hideous design flaw.

It doesn't exactly require constant updates. It can be designed around the current BGS updating intervals. It can even use the same mission and CZ mechanics as far as the background work goes. We just need the context through assets. For starters, a CZ which takes place around some kind of base or station would be perfect. FD can design it such a way, the instancing will not interfere such as making the overall durability points of the station defenses really high and update the collective damage dealt by players just like tracking CG commodities. Do damage tiers even to make it visible in stages. First tier reached, the foremost small cannons go offline, second tier, small defense drones stop spawning and larger craft start to appear etc.

This is totally workable within the current BGS mechanics with a little creativity and out of the box thinking.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Well the instancing thing can be addressed by having each "goal" persistent in the universe, and players just add to it, much like a CG.
More or less mini CGs.

Example: rather than fly to a random spot in space, you side with faction A, by docking at one of their stations, they then tell you we need to weaken faction B at Station X/planet X/or attack all ships on sight in system X . (Via the BBS?)
The background sim will generate random losses for both sides that generally work in favour of the stronger faction.
Player actions influence the balance of power more greatly. But not so much you can win a war for your side single handedly. The more players contribute, the more effect on balance.
The balance of power can be updated daily, or 6-12 hourly as a progress report.
Once a side loses, a fun sort of 'final push' zone can be generated with limited ships on the losers side, an unwinnable battle. Just visible way to mop up the remains. Once it's done, the zone disappears. Obviously with capital ships, you'd just need to get them to flee. Which can depend on their heat sinks, and if they're the only thing left.

Ninja'd! +1

 

[askavir]

I really like this idea. Rep+.

I never go into combat zones because they are just silly... Endless spawned waves of ships in a perpetual battle that can't actually be won or lost. It does not feel like a battle in a war, feels like an arcade machine where I put some coins to play space blaster.

 

[Cmdr Mnumen]

I could not agree more with the OP. We need a more engaging, gameplay dynamic for system wide conficts and wars.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I really like this idea. Rep+.

I never go into combat zones because they are just silly... Endless spawned waves of ships in a perpetual battle that can't actually be won or lost. It does not feel like a battle in a war, feels like an arcade machine where I put some coins to play space blaster.

I currently just treat CZs at endurance test of my current build. Lol
If I can stay until my SCB/heat sinks run out. It's a good build. If I end up legging it before that. I need a new Setup.

 

[Doctor Ymath]

The only technical limitation I see to my proposed system, is how the instancing works, where there could be players in two different instances generating different results.

The solution would be that when attacking an objective, the system only generates one instance to get everyone in.

If the rare event that the instance gets full, it could generate a secondary instance, but the result of that one won't be saved and wont count towards the goal (but it will count towards earning rank and money). Neither will the solo and private group players. So while they CAN participate, they actions wont be in conflict with the main group.

This guys gets it, thats the main issue I have with ED, feels like nothing you do really makes that much of an impact.

 

[GilliganTX]

That sounds like an awesome mechanic.

Would give you the feeling that you have actually participated in a war, rather than just swung by one for a bit.

 

[mill4176]

+1 from me as well....This is what I had kind of hoped for in Power Play.

 

[Junky Juke]

War should be more engaging, dynamic, less grindy, with a feeling of accomplishment, progression, and a community effort.

The entire game should be like that

BTW Nice ideas!!! Two thumbs up and +rep to you

 

[Henri]

+1 oh yea!!!!!

 

[JosiahD]

The only technical limitation I see to my proposed system, is how the instancing works, where there could be players in two different instances generating different results.

The solution would be that when attacking an objective, the system only generates one instance to get everyone in.

If the rare event that the instance gets full, it could generate a secondary instance, but the result of that one won't be saved and wont count towards the goal (but it will count towards earning rank and money). Neither will the solo and private group players. So while they CAN participate, they actions wont be in conflict with the main group.

And as nice as the idea sounds, this is where it falls down. ALL modes are equal. Resulting in a situation where only those in the first instance (and only in open mode mind you) can actually influence the outcome is utterly unnacceptable. You cannot (and should not) exclude the solo and private group player actions from influencing the outcome. Nice try, but if you exclude any part of the community from influencing the outcome on that basis or simply because they can't get into the first instance, well that's a mechanic I woudn't support.

 

[Bacalao]

I just thought it could be exploited to be inside the station to recover, and cause all sorts of AI issues. Plus it would be too easy to repair and get back in the fight.

Unless anyone taking part in the CZ wasn't allowed to dock. But anyone else can.
But then you'd need more persistent CZ rules, where low waking out doesn't reset the faction you chose.

Isn't that all the advantage of having station control? It's like having a capital ship (which will hit you if you get in the way and it hurts). It should be ridiculously hard to take station control, either you have to rip it from them at the gates, or you have to crush them everywhere else in the system so that they relinquish it as they have no other choice (this is basically what happens now, governed by the influence rating).
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I don't think we'll see AI SRVs for a long time (AI, plus ground....just look at AI and asteroids). I think fighting around stations is more of a technical issue than anything (frame rates and all that). I would love to see CZs expire, move and be won. You kill all their ships and reinforcements (or swing the battle so heavily in your favor that new ships get annihilated) and the CZ ends, you won it, your faction gets the bump in influence, etc. Win them all around the planet and your faction gets a boost to ship numbers, loadouts and type for the remaining conflict zones (increased resource availability). There needs to be a way for the other side to claw their way back in though.

 

[StewartScott]

Interesting concept OP. Something needs to be done for sure, it would be nice if all the battling for one side or the other meant something, you would feel like you were fighting for a difference, instead of feeling like it's endless spawning of ships to kill for creds.

On the only down side I see to the OP's idea is that a handful of select groups who played 24/7 would soon take over all known occupied space.

Probably be fun though.

 

[Iori]

Interesting concept OP. Something needs to be done for sure, it would be nice if all the battling for one side or the other meant something, you would feel like you were fighting for a difference, instead of feeling like it's endless spawning of ships to kill for creds.

On the only down side I see to the OP's idea is that a handful of select groups who played 24/7 would soon take over all known occupied space.

Probably be fun though.

There are player groups in all factions, and there has to be a war in a system first before expanding, and yet, if they have the dedication and the ability to take it and defeat everyone who opposes them, then they would deserve that result wouldn't they?