This last release added turrets around the wormhole of Verasi O7 as a testbed of possible future border defenses. These defenses need to be in place during the whole FF/faction change, such that when people are (temporarily) banned from their own space for assaulting characters of their nation, there is some meaningful difficulty to returning and harassing people.

The only negative feedback I've heard so far was from LNH, but I wasn't really clear on what he was saying. I didn't think the missiles were insta-kills.. I managed to avoid them in testing, but it sure wasn't easy.

The intent of the defenses is to prevent those who are Hated/KoS from having an easy time crossing the border into territory where they are not wanted. Pirates, smugglers, newbie-killers, whatever. It is not to make such incursions impossible, just rather difficult. Borders will be one level of security, within the actual nation space the Capitol systems will be entirely Guarded, yielding another level of security for raw newbies. In non-Capitol systems, a pirate who successfully crosses the border will be able to find some respite after escaping from whatever strike force pursued them. I actually want pirates and spies and whomever else to be able to theoretically penetrate enemy space (potentially on specialized missions, etc), I just want it to be dangerous and difficult.

The purpose of this thread is to give me some feedback on whether Verasi O7 is a reasonable level or not. Is it too easy, is it too devastating? Etc? I thought it struck a reasonable balance.. with a fast ship and an immediate plan, it was possible to avoid both the shots and the missiles and make a jump to another internal sector. But it was dicey, and I did only a limited amount of testing. More feedback is welcome.

1) It'd be nice if the rockets weren't faster than the warning signal. Right now the missile warning goes off, followed almost immediately by the explosion of the rocket hitting you. Perhaps slow them down and/or make them less uber-tracking? If players are limited to ships that can only do 225m/s and rockets that only do 95m/s, then NPC's should be as well.

2) If you kill a turret, it stays dead for only 2 or 3 minutes. This makes it impossible for even a force of 4 or 5 to reduce the defenses. Ideally, a determined force should be able to knock out the defenses for some period of time -- say 30 minutes as a start?

3) All the turrets start firing before the jump sequence is even complete. Perhaps a slight delay so that you at least get ship control back before they all open up on you?

4) If the plan is to stick these all over the place then nerf the Aerna Seekers. Tiny ships like that should either be fast or explode powerfully, not both -- were would the energy come from?

If you ask me, it should take upwards of twenty players to disable such border defenses; a group of four or five should be able to preoccupy such emplacements, certainly, but such if such a small force was able to disable the turret-grid, then it might almost never be online. Assaulting the defenses of a nation should be an effort that requires the support of a guild, although smaller, corporate-owned stations could have weaker defenses.

I have never seen 20 guild members on at the same time, let alone working on the same mission. 5 is reasonable. The turrets should stay dead for a while.

I also do not think a group of four or five people should be able to knock out the border defenses of a major Nation (but, as visitor says, maybe a minor corporation's outlying station). These turrets will probably not be the only Nation border defense, either. There will also likely be a capship and a patrolling strike force.. but again, this is only at border locations, not any deeper within the Nation's space.

Also, these turrets use capital-class weapons, not fighter-class weapons. I don't consider them comparable to anything available to the userbase, and I don't think that's unfair either. These are the emplacements developed by a given Nation to defend their borders from assault. Not on the level of the theoretical "Goliath Cannon", but still intended to mount a serious defense.

The other comments.. on the timing for emerging from a wormhole and missile proximity/warning, are good thoughts and well received. I want difficult, not "insta-death".

Continued feedback is welcome.

Currently with the player base we have, bashing the crap out of the defenses isn't feasible. Sure, I could use a dozen trials to act as decoys, and it'd not be a bug, but it'd still be lame, well maybe not the first time, but it'd get old fast. Currently the most you can expect is 8 pirates, and that's rare.

Perhaps we could make the number of turrets proportional to the number of people online, kinda like how theirs more station guards around stations when theirs more people in the system, only expand it to see who's in Verasi and Edras. It should probably bottom out at 5 or 6 REALLY well coordinated players being able to down them for a while.

The gauss turrets actually seem just right, they pummel the hell out of you if you sit still, but you can evade their fire in most combat rigs. The missiles, their insane. You can't outrun them, and you cant out maneuver them, their speed really wouldn't be so bad if their turning radius more resembled a stingray.

Or a medium/high density asteroid field would work, it would add some strategy to surviving the turrets, and even if you found a totally safe spot, you can't just sit there, the strike force will come after you.

In my short foray through Verasi O-7 in my standard tri-sunflare Valkyrie, I had no problem getting to the wormhole and out of the sector from a warp in from Verasi I-5. However, shortly afterward I pressed the activate button in the wrong spot and, to my horror, was warping back into Verasi O-7 by accident(Did not bypass the 60 second timer).

So, while waiting for the timer to run down so I can warp out I was pretty much forced to evade the defenses and whatnot by flying from the wormhole, through the asteroid belt around the station, and back to the wormhole. I noticed the missiles flying past me, but they always seemed to detonate behind me and I didn't think them much of an issue. The guass cannon looked quite impressive and gave me quite an incentive to keep moving as fast as possible. Once I was hit by the concussion of the cannon, but didn't take any damage. I figure it hit something chasing close behind me.

Overall, it seemed to me like faster ships, with proper energy management, would have no problem slipping past the border defenses. However, slower and heavier ships would probably be destroyed nearly every time they attempted passage through. A downside for me though, I ended up losing my valk as I jumped out of system via the wormhole to Edras. Something painful hit me as I was jumping out, it was probably one of the missiles fired by the turrets.

It seems like there are two different scenarios here.

I think I understand Incarnate to be envisioning a lone pirate being able to penetrate the defenses and escape to a relatively safe haven (at least, safe from other pirates) behind the defensive line.

Others are discussing a direct assault on the defenses.

I think that perhaps the defenses are designed to consistently repel such a force. There's always penetrating the defenses individually and then regrouping...

Evading the turrets is not a problem, if you are simply *running on by* but if your intended target is in a sector with them, forget it (unless they are running in a straight line at max turbo).

I think this makes sense. Sure, the missiles that are fired are a little over-powered, and maybe just a little bit too fast, but I think this is a good thing. Yes, sure, the way the faction system works now, it only adds an annoyance to pirates, and the likes, but once they are added to Serco/Itani borders, and the faction system is changed, yeah, it starts to make a lot more sense.

Yes, to confirm / reiterate, I was looking at single pirates (or small groups) that were only intent on crossing the border to get to some location deeper in Nation space. Slipping through, losing their pursuers with judicious jumps and then carefully negotiating the different security areas for whatever goal.. like a "going behind enemy lines" kind of thing. Adds a lot of possible intrigue/espionage/recon type gameplay.

Keep in mind, I only intend this level of defenses for major Nation borders, that is just Serco / Itani / UIT. For a group of players to want to frontally assault a major nation's border station.. well that's a pretty damned gutsy bunch of people. I would expect that more "station blockade" or assault type activity would be played out on minor stations (and probably minor factions) in grayspace, not the lynchpin defenses of a major Nation and military power.

To frame this as an analogy.. consider the Serco and Itani as say, the Soviet Union and US during the cold war, and the UIT as say.. the UK (note: don't read anything into this analogy, I just came up with it on the fly). Yes, the former two are the major military superpowers, but all three are very economically powerful and capable of immediately responding with overwhelming force to practically any kind of "private" military incursion. If a rogue enemy invaded any minor city on the borders of any of those nations, there would be an immediate, and massive, response.

Compare this with attacking a minor faction (corporation, Axia, Ineubis, whatever) might be like assaulting a umm.. Ford plant. They probably have some security, who are armed. They call the police, who are also armed. Or even scale it up a bit to some kind of scary military contractor.. maybe they have some pretty heavy-hitting security, automatic weapons and helicopters and things. But aircraft carriers are not going to get new orders based on attacking their building, several divisions of armored infantry aren't going to come rolling in. Very different level of response, very different speed of escalation.

So where I'm going with this is.. the concept of directly attacking the outlying "station-city" of a major nation is probably not going to be commonplace. Even if we make the turrets easier to disable or whatever else, there will be fleets arriving and vast amounts of military power arrayed to crush the invaders.

I'm not exactly sure what the gameplay point of frontally assaulting a Nation's border station would be, either. Although I do want to get into the whole blockade thing and even station conquest and other cool stuff.. it would play out in grayspace, not major Nation territory. I cannot risk the stability of the newbie environment: the universe will grow and change, but some degree of safety has to pervade within the major nations, to allow new people to find their footing before having to face Evil Giant Pirate Guild or whomever.

Does this make any sense? Anyway, continued feedback welcome. If I'm missing some critical awesome future gameplay that centers around invading major nation space, please post about it. Thanks.

I like the turrets. Makes it fun to traverse to nation space from grey. And if it is a pre-requisite for getting rid of FF, bring it on!!!

One thing though:

While it is not that hard to move past the turrets INTO nation space, it is much harder to EXIT as Scuba Steve found out. Maybe place the turrets on the "grey space" side of the wormhole instead of the "Nation space" side? Then is would be hard to enter but not too bad to exit nation space.

PS: I never heard CLM described so nicely before;)

i like the idea of turrets on the Grey side...but not replacing the dtations turrets, put them in grey also. not nearly as many though. just 4...(subtracted from the nation side)...at the compass points of the WH. thus its more difficult to actually enter nation space.

and the full on assualt, for those who wanted it would have a challenge but not sn ipossibility.

Putting border defense turrets on the outside of nation borders is silly.

And "the gameplay point of frontally assaulting a Nation's border station" is nonexistent in the foreseeable future, unless VO gets player controllable capships and a few thousand active players.

Border defense is fine like this for the current player-base and state VO is in.

Now give VO a realistic FACTION SYSTEM and you will get an instant influx of active players. Who cares about POS everywhere guys, yes they will be a it disappointed but its life, you cant be loved by one and all.

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. :P

I do not agree Bojan. I fail to see why it should be harder to exit nation space than enter it. Surely defence of the nation space is more of a priority than keeping unwanted persons inside. Although it has some historic precedent (East Germany anyone?).

Expand nation space to the other side of the wormhole and protect the entrance, not as much the exit.

That aside, realistic faction system FTW!

@Azumi

I said: Border defense is fine like this for the current player-base and state VO is in.

Some things regarding border defense and a lot of other improvements were suggested long time before this like the one here: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/16489#208446

I will just ask you one question:
What is more important, you being able to run thru nation border defense whenever you want or fast implementation of a REAL FACTION SYSTEM on which a myriad of other VO improvements can be implemented?

If you look at the whole picture... you don't have to run thru defenses if you can buy a forged ID from Corvus and pass customs and border patrols pretending you are a modest UIT trader and smuggle contraband PRONDISKS that will make you filthy rich:P
Lot of things like that can be implemented in game once we do get a real faction system.

Real faction system, hands down!

But as a quick fix (which I assume that the Devs want) could be the described.

I completely agree with your devious mind on the factioning and look forward to it immensely!

"Putting border defense turrets on the outside of nation borders is silly."

yes, you are correct...I can think of no instances where a nation has forces outside of its borders. I cannot think of perm/semi perm garrisons, DMZs, consolates, embassies, entire military bases in foreign lands...etc...etc...

nor can I think of any situation where a military force divides its troops in close proximity, or any strategy which uses a multi unit system. I cannot think of a single precedence for a military force using a smaller force to weaken an enemy force....etc...etc...

""the gameplay point of frontally assaulting a Nation's border station" is nonexistent in the foreseeable future, unless VO gets player controllable capships and a few thousand active players."

right again! I can think of no time in VO when a group of pilots attempted a take over of...for example...UIT space, flw in and proceeded to attack traders, military, SF...etc...etc...
nor can I think of any missions of a nature where in one military attacks another nations borders on a regular basis...though these missions would be cool...the Devs could call the mission...IDK...border battle and border skirmish...or some thing.

I'm with Incarnate on this one. There is no reason players ought to have the strength to take down border defenses. Not until a hundred players unite to that single goal should it be.

I'm fresh out of UIT hated pilots, so I can't give a clear picture of the level of difficulty.

From the sound of it, Inc says that Capitol systems will be 100% monitored/guarded. This is long overdue. Hide in Metana/Verasi/Betheshee all you want, but you should find no respite in Itan/Dau/Sol.

To answer one of your questions, Incarnate, the gameplay point of specifically targeting the defenses is a clear thumb on the pulse of today's ingame "pirates." They are used to having the ability to act with impunity. Allowing border turrets to be knocked down would enable pk-hunters and newb-killers to continue their craft barely hindered any more than they are today.

It always seemed to me that pirates should be bound to grey space- for reasons of profit and continued freedom from prison. Most of today's ingame pirates do not conceive of a historically accurate reality of being the hunted whenever they venture out of the Corvus corridor.

@Ryan Reign

Lets just imagine VO is not a real word policed by American imperialism with american military bases in every poor, underdeveloped but rich with natural resources country in the world but a space game.
Give it a rest, your lonely brain-cell is overheating.

From the sound of it, Inc says that Capitol systems will be 100% monitored/guarded. This is long overdue. Hide in Metana/Verasi/Betheshee all you want, but you should find no respite in Itan/Dau/Sol.

Wrong. I think the current system of monitoring most useful sectors in these systems is fine. The idea that every vacant sector in there is blanketed with sensors is just silly.