I suppose it's already exploitable ain't it?
The state of PowerPlay and PvP
- Thread starter geoffrey.hdt
- Start date
There are no such things as exploits in this game ;-)
So...back to my initial topic...is PvP practically non existent among all Powers out there?
Is it worth jumping in my Courrier and check the current active contested acquisition systems where ALD and Archer are involved to confirm if PvP is to be found there?
So...back to my initial topic...is PvP practically non existent among all Powers out there?
Is it worth jumping in my Courrier and check the current active contested acquisition systems where ALD and Archer are involved to confirm if PvP is to be found there?
Seems like the same reason you don’t get trade rank for trading at player FCs.
It’s eminently exploitable.
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The problem is, PVP is an inherently offensive action, but you need to create a system that makes the DEFENDER want to play.
The only method I can think of is to make it only possible to ATTACK Stronghold Carriers in Open. That way, the defender doesn't actually need to win the fight; just slow down or stop the attacker. And they can respawn right there, too.
That would create a system that could actually lead to organic large-scale pvp.
The problem with most proposals is they operate by trying to force the DEFENDER into Open, when that won't achieve a dang thing. You can't force someone to do something they don't want to do, they just won't play. You need to make defending FUN.
Regardless of the Hotel part of that idea, it would need "attacking Stronghold Carriers" to be adjusted to be a viable thing at all first [1], which would need "Undermining enemy Strongholds" to be a thing which anyone is trying to do.
Leaving aside Fong Wang this week as a special case (various large Powerplay groups from a range of Powers have agreed that it should be given to Yuri Grom), the highest net undermining any Stronghold system has received from any cause is about 22,000 control points for Minerva - which, given that it's a near-max strength Stronghold for LYR, won't actually worry them at that rate for another 40 weeks even if it wasn't some one-off thing.
To actually encourage PvP it would need:
1) Stronghold Carriers to be such a target that you couldn't simply outpace an uncontested attacker CMDR-for-CMDR by doing PvE stuff elsewhere in the system
2) Further, to be such a target that hanging around at a Stronghold Carrier defending it (where you get token merits for friendly NPC ship scans, and maybe a bit extra for any PvP kills you can get in) while slowing down the attacker is anywhere near a better use of time than fighting them elsewhere / hanging around at a Stronghold Carrier in case someone shows up to attack it [2] is a good use of time at all
3) There also to be some way to follow up the attack once the system drops to Fortified. If you can only effectively undermine systems while they have Stronghold Carriers in them, there's no real point in doing that because the other side will just let you do it, then reinforce it back up the next week. So that gets back in to either shifting away from the current situation where the only way to successfully undermine a system is exploits, or not doing that.
Encouraging in-instance direct PvP over Powerplay ultimately can't be done until and unless the abstract asynchronous PvP over the system's control sliders exists first. And it doesn't. Following the shutting down - with significant collateral damage - of the recent data exploit, there is essentially no aggression taking place in Powerplay (and there really wasn't any to speak of even with the exploit). Powerplay is about as useful a place to expect PvP as Exploration is - sure, explorers could be out there killing each other to protect their first discoveries, but for very obvious reasons that's not how the PvE side of exploration is played so there's no PvP side to it. Powerplay is in basically the same place, just with slightly more cultural understanding that it should be a fight even if no-one actually wants to do the fighting bit.
[1] Of course, the slightest hint that it might be was sufficient for massive player complaints and for Frontier to stop that.
[2] There are a bit over 400 Stronghold Carriers in the game. Good luck picking the right one to defend.
The problem there is that there's a high skill floor to PvP and a lot of chasing the meta. Back in the beta days, it was fun to get in the occasional fight because everyone was flying stock ships, usually with just MCs and pulse lasers. Maybe you'd win. Maybe you wouldn't. Now you get jumped by someone flying their Ultra Turbo Player Killer 9000 and die in two seconds.
It seems to me like you can go all in on PvP or do none of it. There are no small doses to be had.
It's actually difficult to have anything but small doses unless you sit in a hotspot. For powerplay related PVP, the people engaging in that are working towards a goal, and the PVP is disrupting someone else's progress toward that conflicting goal.
Speaking of said disruption, the current respawn mechanics putting you back where you last docked unless you're wanted kind of takes some wind out of those sales. There should be some kind of location penalty similar to when you get sent to a penal colony. For example, you get sent to the nearest friendly stronghold system if you die in a situation where your death would give merits were you an NPC. If you're in a friendly stronghold when you explode, you get sent to the next closest one. Would make disruption of other players merit farming more impactful.
You can do PvP at any sort of level wanted, but it has to be an arranged thing possibly in a PG?
There's probably three levels of ship rather than two to consider.
1) Paper haulers - not designed for combat of any sort but can run away from NPCs
2) Multirole ships - they have shields and weapons capable of reliably winning PvE combat, but might also do other stuff
3) PvP (or at least combat-only) ships - they have a lot more shields and hull than 2, but not necessarily more weapons because a hardpoint is a hardpoint
So you then get:
- paper haulers die just as fast to the multiroles as they do to the PvP ships (that the multirole has weak defences, a cargo hold and a discovery scanner doesn't matter if the hauler can't fire back!)
- the multiroles can safely run away from the PvP ships or other multiroles without problem, but can only hang around and fight other multiroles (or splat the haulers)
- the PvP ships can fight anything and can afford to take a few minutes to decide whether to run away from another PvP ship
The further catch, of course, is that loadout is semi-invisible (you can see shield and hull percentages of an enemy ship, but not the actual numbers) so you can't tell for sure on interdiction whether you've been attacked by a multirole or a dedicated PvP build (though it's only multirole defenders who need to care) ... but you can probably assume it's the dedicated PvP build because a multirole probably wouldn't bother attacking unless it was certain you weren't.
(So there's an option here for multirole pilots to bluff-attack other multiroles on the expectation that they'll instantly run even though they could in fact win the fight)
My limited PvP experience in Powerplay (flying a multirole) has been
- see some obvious PvP ships it's a waste of time for me to try to take on; switch to doing stuff in the next system over because there's 10,000 of them and most of them aren't guarded (then come back to that one later when they've given up patrolling)
- precisely once see an enemy ship that I could plausibly take on in a situation where I'd get merits for trying while I'm flying a ship which has an interdictor (and even then it was a complete waste of both our times for me to actually attack and no fun for either of us)
- 99.9% of the time see no-one at all, not even allies
It's an interesting idea, though generally hits underminers (who are probably going to get sent at least 30 LY most of the time, maybe quite a bit more) worse than it hits reinforcers (who are maybe just going to get sent to the adjacent system if the power has already got a bunch of Strongholds down), and underminers already have far too much going against them.
But that is not what is wanted by PvPers I believe. It seems that they want more organinc PvP by flying around and fighting whoever they come across, regardless whether it is a fun, fairly balanced experience for both.
I have done on foot PvP with a group of friends, but we had ground rules. Suits and weapons were restricted, unmodded G1 (maybe G3 which are still fairly easy to obtain) iirc.
Sure, but I meant more in terms of commitment than time. It seems like unless you're willing to put together a dedicated PvP build, do all the engineering for it, and probably go through some training in PvP techniques, you're just going to get annihilated by the people who have. And that's way too much effort for those of us who don't have much interest in that side of the game.
If you want to encourage more people to get involved in PowerPlay PvP, it would need to be something they could do in whatever PvE combat ship they happen to have, but then it wouldn't be fun for the PvP folks.
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Ironically nerfing NPCs like Fdev means players used to fighting them have lazy/bad habits from PvE which immediately burn them in a PvP fight. You can practice flight & pip management vs the high difficulty assassination missions though since the pressure is similar at least.
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I see your point and I don't completely disagree, I'm going to talk generally, a lot of the below is not aimed specifically at what you said, kind of side points.
The super player killer ship 9000, of which I have I think about 7 fully outfitted for pvp, meaning that every module is as optimally engineered as it can be to provide maximum advantage against any other human configured ship, is simply a function of one aspect of the game: the engineer grind, and by extension the materials grind.
Before I continue, I want to acknowledge what you said about the old days, pvp was, in the old days, both better and worse. It was better for the reasons you state, the power disparity was smaller, but it was worse because the ships were unresponsive, difficult to fly optimally and again, poorly used by players who didn't practice the playstyle required. I would further offer that success in pvp is far more reliant on practice than the engineering grind. It is definitely something you have to want to do, but then again so is exploration, or mining. These professions require equal levels of specialisation to 'compete' with the average player of that playstyle.
So, disclaimers and acknowledgement aside, the engineer grind is something that we almost all do eventually undertake even if it's for exploration. In my heyday the grind for materials was utterly insane. You could search for literal days and not find any of what you were looking for, and then when you used it, you got a very random outcome and crazy amounts of those materials were needed. Some modules were engineered over 200 times to get as close to that god roll as possible.
Since then, the engineering system has been hugely improved, materials gathering similarly hugely improved, to a point where you can decently predict how long it takes to get some materials and get a consistent result equal to that of your peers. Materials are plentiful, getting them isn't more grindy than for example grinding bio data, and I am happy to provide anyone with a build for any ship for any purpose (and there are many other theorycrafters like me, many better than me).
Having said all that, what you say is true, you won't be able to build a ship and you won't be able to fly it optimally, if you don't 'get into' the pvp scene. Like anything if you want to be good at it you need not just a lot of practice but coaching. So then I maintain, it's the desire that's the issue and I think that the game could do more to assist in creating a little desire now that the majority of barriers can be overcome with only a little dedication. Lastly, in game death is barely an inconvenience too.
The barrier to Elite pvp is lower than that of many other pvp oriented games, imo.Oh my, so true!
I had to quit the game (and video games in general) for personal reasons right after I finally managed to grade 3 engineer ONE ship.
The grind and frustration of little me hunting for fragments of meteorites in my SRV (listening to specific noise patterns on the scanner) to collect like 10 mats on a good day, finding that one data material after endlessly wandering in SC...then getting a RANDOM experimental that I did not need.
Ughh...that was bad.
New players nowadays don't know how easy they have it now.
That is something that I don't get and disagree with, both in the current state of the game and as it was 8-10 years ago.
It sure is easier to farm NPCs using a full pulse laser fat big ship, but you can also do just fine in a PvP capable one. I have always been able to rank in the top 25% of each combat CG while efficiently fighting other commanders.
Same goes for hauling. When I bring my Cutter to a CG with lots of gankers hanging around, on top of some permanent lower-class HRPs I equip it with a class 8 shield and have some SCB's available. Then, when things calm down, I would trade the big shield for a big cargo rack, and outfit a smaller shield instead.
Some would complain that it's too much of a hassle, too complicated, that they are here to relax...and most of them would eventually complain that the game has become too repetitive, unchallenging, and boring (but maybe some like it that way, I guess).
Aaaand...I'm off-topic again
Back on topic, I hear very often players complaining that PowerPlay is a pure repetitive boring grind. I believe PvP, or/and more player involvement like the NEED to wing up to successfully perform some highly rewarding CHALLENGING PvE activities, is the key to spicing things up.
Indeed, I love this example of a pve fight that you can use as a bar to evaluate your skills, and feel that I can even lay down a metric for anyone that's interested...
Take on a wing assassination with the standard composition of 1 FDL and 2 Vultures. Now, I'd be the first to say that this will not teach you how to be good at pvp, but it is good for two things, as an 'effective health' check (effective health is a metric based on a combination of the ships HP, your skill with pips, your decision of what countermeasures to equip and when to use them, and your ability to control range and position in a fight) and a damage output check. You must kill the FDL and at least one of the Vultures within a reasonable time (6 to 8 minutes for both) and your ship should still be serviceable at the end.
As mentioned, this will test your damage output and it will test your defensive skills, ship management, chaff/heatsink usage, and biweave management if you choose to use a biweave ship. If you can't comfortably kill the target and one of the escorts within reasonable time you are not ready for pvp as you simply don't have the defense or damage output to compete.
Once you do have some skill, and can do this without sweating, take on the next level, a wing assassination with the hardest composition (FDL and three vultures) and kill them all. This is still challenging for me, the last vulture seems to most of the time get away (they jump out about 5 or 6 minutes after the FDL target dies, and it's extremely difficult if you leave the FDL to last, I normally do one vulture, then the FDL, then another vulture, and frequently run out of time to get the third).
If you can do that, you won't be terrible in pvp cos you got the basics of doing and mitigating damage, the rest can be learned by practice.
Perhaps a good way of doing this could be to rework how the Propaganda Hauling mechanic works. It's too basic right now, to the point where it's basically not worth doing at all.
My thought is that you buff their effectiveness, then make stronghold carriers natively produce propaganda materials at a certain rate, which can then be used up to fortify or acquire nearby systems effectively. Not excessively effectively, but decently well, especially on a per-load basis. The production of these propaganda materials could be tied to the activity around that stronghold, so you'll tend to congregate activity in the most active zones.
However, attacking the stronghold carrier prevents the production of these propaganda materials in addition to causing the local undermining. More than that, attackers could STEAL them, and the stolen propaganda materials could be used to fortify their own nearby systems.
So attacking a stronghold carrier is useful on three levels; it undermines, it prevents fortification, AND it fortifies your own systems.
If you have a particularly active stronghold carrier, this could create situations where there is ongoing organic pvp nearby, as pirate ships come to attempt to steal propaganda materials at a constant enough rate to make it worthwhile to have dedicated defending ships there, to prevent the enemy from getting more benefit from your stronghold than you do.
BTW, am I mistaken or do headquarters systems (like Harma for Archon) serve no real purpose compared to other stronghold systems?
I believe FDev dropped the ball on this one. If these could be a reason for players (both from the Power itself, and opposing ones) to regularly engage in offensive/defensive activities, these could become PvP hotspots (to whoever wants to participate in Open, that is).
I believe FDev dropped the ball on this one. If these could be a reason for players (both from the Power itself, and opposing ones) to regularly engage in offensive/defensive activities, these could become PvP hotspots (to whoever wants to participate in Open, that is).
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If Undermining was possible, then the ability of the HQ to guarantee support for all systems in 30 LY would mean that a struggling Power couldn't be completely wiped out with a single targeted strike, and it stops a Power being put into a potential death spiral from losing all their Strongholds while they still have decent system counts.
Certainly for a Power which is doing well, which is and always will be all of them, they're just yet another Stronghold.