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

[Axel Deathrage]

This sounds really fun! I approve!
+1

 

[Saool]

War zones are meaningless.

Whoever is the underdog just shoots authority vessels at the stations of the enemy and trashes their influence to win.

Further more murdering police and civilians counts as kills for 'war zone' missions. So stack up a few, then go shoot police. Kill two birds with one stone. Total joke.

 

[Frenotx]

A cool idea presented well. +1 from me!

 

[Ginrikuzuma]

I don't even care if someone necro-ed this this idea is too good to stay buried.

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.

+1

Fighting over a station should happen outside the station too.
During which time the station is offline, and cannot be docked at. Or destroyed.

Arriving at a CZ should also give you a counter for each side. every time a ship is lost, that sides number drops, larger ships costing more. Also reinforcements can randomly arrive and boost that number.
At 0 that side loses. That way its not just an endless battle with random ships spawning...

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.

I like this as well. Faction choice here in addition should have some sense of permanence (you should count as being part of that faction in regards to the war up until you either hi-wake out of a system or for X amount of hours/days).

I think docking should be allowed, just have external station weapons offline as they don't want to hit their own ships.
It will just be dangerous, like running the gauntlet to get food and combat supplies into the station. You could have a trade CG for it.

Again also agree with this, the faction that has control over the station should allow docking for those part of their faction as well as civilians. The mental picture I get of a trader / blockade runner go past stray fire to deliver requirements is great and allows those that don't want to participate in combat to still get something out of it. Certain goods (food, medicine, weapons, and other necessities could gain extra value while luxury, certain metals and other goods could suffer value since they are of no benefit to the war machine).

Make it that station services are disabled apart from commodities should work. And I agree about the low waking, once your decision is made thats it. You should lose all rep with the side you choose to go against, but maybe this is getting too complicated.

I also think that when there are wars going on in systems, the place descends into an anarchy system, so you can't get bounties for destroying your rival faction ships, also makes the whole place a bit of a combat zone as well.

I feel the controlling faction should also have access to repairs and rearming after all they have the home base advantage. not sure how I feel about losing all of your rep but you should lose a sizeable chunk if possible.

I also do like the idea of the system turning into anarchy (all resources are being focused on the war effort). Pirates could attack traders attempting to make a profit from the war. The entire system aught to be a warzone imo. You should be free to interdict enemy police/military and not incur a bounty.

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.

Aaaand here is where you lose me. The war revamp is good, trying to turn this into another O vs P vs S thread is going to end up de-railing your own thread.

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.

Again agreed, the faction controlling said station aught to have the advantages of having a station. Although considering how OP stations themselves are (in comparison to captial ships) I have to agree with other sentiments that station weapons aught to be offline (under the impression of not wanting to hit friendlies).

And I agree on no enemy SRVs for land combat. Remember how long it took to simply get the docking computer to work without having someone open a thread about how the computer crashed their ship at least once every other week. On land where terrain can be all over the place, the work MoM (and all the others that work on AI ) would have to put would be a nightmare I imagine. Skimmers on the other hand should be fine.

While I would love to see a much more in-depth strategic war system I am not familiar enough with the limitations of Elite's BGS/networking and updating.

As a quick fix for systems at war I would suggest the below.
- War zones should be dangerous, whether a player wants to participate or not. Players who don't want to be part of the war shouldn't enter the system.
- War status is shown on the galaxy map as some kind of easily visible warning.
- Players entering a system at war are given a big warning on their screen "DANGER! ACTIVE WAR ZONE" plus an audio warning.
- Players are automatically aligned to the faction that they have the most reputation with.
- If conflict is between Federal/Empire/Alliance factions then your major faction reputation is the primary decider.
- Military ships will aggressively attempt to interdict enemy CMDRs in supercruise.
- Enemy ships will blockade target stations (remaining outside gun range) and attack enemies who appear (this results in a blockaded tag on the station name in SC). Destroying enough ships will clear the blockade temporarily. In extreme cases a capital ship will be the blockade.
- The war as a whole acts like a mini-CG/Powerplay and tracks your contributions in terms of instances won/lost and ships/CMDRs destroyed. Probably using the same/similar interface to the CG/Powerplay one would be fine.

- Endless Conflict Zones are replaced by various kinds of events.
- Distress Beacon: Friendly non-combat ships under attack (or combat ships outnumbered). Destroy attackers to win the instance.
- Distress Beacon [Capital]: Friendly capital under heavy attack. Destroy attackers to win the instance.
- Engagement: Result of an interdiction. Basically a small Conflict Zone that has a very limited number of combatants.
- and others I can't think of. The main point is that none of these last forever and can be won for bonus points towards overall victory.

- Bulletin board missions give you more advanced events.
- The mission description gives you a good idea of what you are up against so you choose suitable missions.
- Base Assault: A small, destructible, space or surface structure (mining/refinery/munitions dump etc.) with some defenders. There could be different variants depending on your assigned objective in the mission. Destroy the gate, knock out generators, suppress defence guns etc.
- Convoy Assault: Destroy a group of enemy transports (or maybe pop their cargo hatches to steal war supplies or secret information).
- Recon: Get in close and scan some stuff. Enemy presence is very high so stealth/speed would be preferred strategy. Gives smaller ships some jobs just for them.
- Assassinate: Hit their military leaders.
- and of course the same missions but from the opposite perspective (defence).

- The overall system victory is based partially on ships destroyed but a bigger contributor is "winning" the missions and instances and destroying enemy CMDRs.
- If we had system where information/recon missions added to an intelligence rating for the faction which then unlocked higher value missions for all players that would also be a step in the right direction.

Just random thoughts, maybe some interesting ideas.

CMDR CTCParadox

I also like this idea if for nothing else as a temporary "fix" to combat zones. Having more variance to the instances that can spawn and events that can happen during war time would already improve the war mechanic and make it more fun.

And I doubly agree that systems in a war state aught to show up on the system map. Currently all we have is a weekly(?) galnet report on a fraction of the systems that are at war as well as 3rd party websites that try to let others know when a system is at war. There should be an easier way to know when a system is at war. With the suggestions others have provided knowing where a war is happening would allow A) combatants to aid / hamper the war effort and B) allow traders to know whether they should avoid the system or head for said system for the added risk to their potential profits.

If nothing else is taken from CMDR CTCParadox's suggestion at least what I put in bold please [squeeeee]

 

[Soliluna]

I've been suggesting this since beta and it's even more awesome potential with horizons now being out.

Been agreeing with you and suggesting it myself since launch, no movement or even word form FD on any kind of development like this.

I have surrendered to it not happening, at the moment it takes over a year to get bookmarks on the galaxy map.

Great idea, but sadly, not happening in the next few years.

 

[Infidel Deity]

@OP
A very interesting idea, indeed!
But I can see that some will oppose.

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Another +1 from me.

Hiding the 'war' in combat zones disconnects the feeling of a struggle for the system.

I really agree withwith this.

 

[Infidel Deity]

This is such an amazing idea... Trying to revive this thread because I just discovered it off google. Should talk about it some more. FANTASTIC ideas.

And I thank you very much for it!

 

[xondk]

Here is the thing.

Hmmm it is a good idea, but I think it might have scaling issues. And the whole issue with people wanting to be 'special' which just doesn't work out right, though I suppose if it is tied into factions rather then individual players, say, go to a station get mission to support faction at x location to overthrow it, if enough people get enough targets (mini cg basically?) then it could work and scale better? main point being that there are several points, where peopl would want to attack/defend, maybe could be kinda like a team death match-ish of sort? though again with syncing and similar, maybe no mission but instead the 'progress' is shown at stations so you can say hey I want to go help there, mini cg style?

 

[Badben]

That definitely sounds a lot more interesting than what we have now, however, I do see a major problem with this system. You say certain stages should only be achievable with wings, or multiple srv's and so on. The problem with that is that at any one time there are probably hundreds of wars going on in the galaxy, and a large proportion of those have absolutely no CMDR's involved in them. If your idea were implemented, there would be many stations or bases that never get flipped because there's actually no one interested in the system. Anyway, definitely a neat idea though, keep them coming.

 

[[VR] Deggial]

Let me state first of all that I like the idea and agree, that something should be done to make CZs more appealing.

Making them more diverse is one important step in this direction, as is making them "winable"!

The later, however, has its issues! You have to remember that ED is a multiplayer game. If I did understand the OP correct, he wants to place a finite amount of POIs all over a system that can be "finished" by a succesful commander. This won't work!
- Wars would be over in one day - and what about all other interested pilots arriving only halve a day later?
- What happens, if multiple players enter a POI (in solo or group modes) and finish the "local" conflict zone? Maybe even fighting for opposing sides? Who has won then?
- Additionally, ED is (currently) not capable to update the server on a daily basis - much less in hours or even minutes, which would be necessary to implement the OP's idea.

What could work, however, is what was already mentioned in this thread:
Infinite, procedurally genrated, instanced, "small" conflict zones of various types. In general, they would work like the current CZs (which is: count "wins" for each side and evaluate after one week/tick, which side has won).

Unfortunately, this will only replace "endless streams of ships in few large conflict zones" by "endless streams of small conflict zones with limited ships". However, the big difference will be that each local CZ is "winable" and create the feeling of achievement.
"Completed" CZs might be more valuable to the end-result then just killed ships, too, thus encouraging players to pull it through. Furthermore, cleared CZs migth add a higher payout than the sheer amount of killed ships.

 

[lysan]

I agree +1 @OP

One more thing could be done, rebels or resistance forces. Remaining forces will hide on the planet in rebel bases. These bases are not on any map and need to be found and defeated. As long as they are there, they will send waves of attackers to the bases on the planet. (FPS potential)

If they are not defeated, they will overrun the settlements or cities and the fraction will shift back to them again.
If you are on the defeated fraction, the location of the rebel bases will be obtainable by doing missions for the fraction from orbital stations.

NOTE:

I don't think these wars will be over in a day if they are done right. Large settlements would have a strong anti "air" defense, and you would need to take it from the ground or combined with "air" support. However if FD will implement NPCS who can fight on the planet in the "air", pilots will be very busy to fight them all day. You could easily have waves after wave of fighter ships coming from the settlements and only after X number of fighters was killed you could gain access to "air space controls".

 

[Infidel Deity]

I agree +1 @OP

One more thing could be done, rebels or resistance forces. Remaining forces will hide on the planet in rebel bases. These bases are not on any map and need to be found and defeated. As long as they are there, they will send waves of attackers to the bases on the planet. (FPS potential)

If they are not defeated, they will overrun the settlements or cities and the fraction will shift back to them again.
If you are on the defeated fraction, the location of the rebel bases will be obtainable by doing missions for the fraction from orbital stations.

This is really good stuff!

Saw this thread for the first time yesterday.
And it has made me really happy!
This is not a whining thread.
It is a constructive thread, and I love it!

 

[Sethur]

Adding my +1 to the OP, these would be fantastic changes

 

[Kylby36]

I do know that they're focusing on gameplay this season... But I just can't see FD actually improving missions. I see them just adding more useless content into the missions and say "Oh, the players can imagine they're helping someone. Cool."

That being said, I'm glad that people are okay with this thread being dug up from the past. Usually it's frowned upon, but this is just too good to leave in the dirt.

Definitely think that war should have progression as well. Battles start in space, end up on the ground when the defending team gets pushed back (vehicles and ships), then when FPS comes out, inside bases when defenders get pushed back even more.

EDIT: Just noticed someone posted the same thing above me. Whoops.