John mentioned that the border skirmish is planned to have a final battle every week at a certain set time at the weekends.

I don't like it. Vo is not a Usa timezone only game. The playerbase is worldwide so bringing on more events which have a fixed point of time to happen may exclude you from the fun because you live in the wrong time zone.

instead i would suggest a player driven escalation of events.

have a look at borderskirmish. ok every 4 hours, this works good everybody may participate. but the final battle i would suggest should depend on something else. maybe not happening for even 2 weeks if the playrs don't care but maybe if the players force it happening twice or triple a week.

the idea is like. this final battle also includes drones.
Each side collects them either by crafting them or (new game concept) capture and reprogramming hive drones. Those are gathered in a system somewhat away from the border.

one side has accumulated a certain amount the event is triggered and the nations channels are given message that the event starts now "intel reports xxxx(itani serco) droids were deployed. deploying our forces. every Itani/serco is called to arms.... meet at the actual border system/sector"
leaves a 20 minute timewindow to get to the border for the players to support the troops and the droids there in order to win the next - "gatheringtime kind episode whatever".

so the side first finished gathering the bots also triggers the event and because of having more bots is more likely to win also.

So even if you may not be present at the fight, by collecting them you know you did your part. but most likely the event is going to go off when a few people want it to go off because they actually collect them and then hand them over together also with the purpose of then fighting and supporting their forces together in the battle.

i also kinda dislike how the ctc thing is set on a specific time.
what about the neuts actually are really made out of the xith.
the nation able to gather 1000 xith has a total stock of 50 neuts about 4 hous later. the delivey bots are constantly delivering 8 xith every hour but move at reasonable speed not to get killed by collectors in storms. so the nation first able to collect 1000 restarts the cycle anytime.

For uit bringing home xith to the itani or serco additionally to fame and money gives them collectable tokens. a few of these again may be turned in for having access for a pair of neut mk III for purchase.
like you bring us 16 xith you are allowed to buy 2 neuts...

i mean this would keep the battle constantly going not just focusing it on a specific time in the early mornings, late night, mid of school, trafficjam time whatever.

That's a very thoughtful idea. I really think it has merit.

if nothing else, then spawn the CtC bots more often.

But yeah, sure

About the bots, the only problem there is that the people who collect the bots might not be the ones fighting. For example, if you need 100 bots, and 900 are collected, then people leave, and a very few number get the rest, two humans may actually be the ones in the skirmish.

In order to actually make it smart, you'd need to think about what *actually* starts a battle.

I would hope that everything would eventually be event-based. However, I get the feeling that this will be time-based until the devs put most of the actual content in production, simply because it's easier for event A to happen at B time as opposed to adding conditions and such.

It's a good suggestion, but give the devs a little credit. In the beginning they'd probably look at the usage graphs and schedule major events for peak attendance. After that, I know they'd be open to making sure that there is something for everyone.

Uh...
Yeah, I think that the idea of a larger battle should wait a bit.
I get a framerate of, on average, 7 in BS. Now, call me selfish, but that seems a bit much to handle as is.
I know, I need to upgrade, but VO does not like my Mac Mini G4 (1.33 GhZ) that much.
I think we should find a way to optimize a bit, then we could talk. OF course, this is just me.

Not everyone who plays VO lives in the U.S.; they may have to be up in the middle of the night to catch the battle. Of course, not everyone in the U.S. works by day and sleeps by night; they may have to be up at the time they

I'm just pointing out that It cuts both ways. But the majority of the people who play this game tend to be on during the time the battle's scheduled. I'm sure that was the deciding factor on it's timing. I don't believe it was biased to benefit United Statians.

A variable timing is more realistic, especially one that can be driven by the players, but the longer the time stretches between battles, the exponentially easier it should be to hit the trigger for the battle to begin. Atleast this way, there's some regularity as to the frequency of the climactic fights.