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Add scarcity to conq station utility.
The main problem with conquerable stations right now is not the conquering mechanics (though those certainly have room for improvement), but rather the utility the stations offer. Currently, the benefits one gets by owning a station do not dilute when shared. That means there is no incentive to be greedy and hog a station to yourself, other than to deny utility to others. Whether or not others have access has no impact on your own ability to reap benefits, and in fact sharing access helps to secure your own access by increasing the number of people who defend it.
What needs to happen is for the benefits to dilute when ownership is shared. The most obvious way to do this that I can think of is to put a station-wide daily cap on how often each mission can be taken. So for example, Latos I-8 could be set to only allow 20 FCP to be manufactured every day (this number is just for purposes of example). If five people are sharing the station, they could each make four, or one of them could make twelve, and the others would only make two, etc. If the station were shared among 20 people, each person would only be able to make one FCP. Perhaps have a method (possibly through keys, but preferably a "Station Control Panel") to allow allocating turns.
This could be extended to the free repairs and reloads, by giving the station a fixed amount of money every day which is expended by each RR. Once it is empty, the station can no longer RR people. Perhaps there could be a way to deposit money into this account, so that larger groups (or small groups that need frequent repairs) could continue getting RR services once the free funds for the day are expired. The cost of RR should be higher than at normal stations, to contrast with the initial free period.
The state of the station's counters should persist across conquerings, or perhaps diminish (in the sense of having fewer resources after being captured). I think it would be best of the station replenishes itself gradually throughout the day, rather than all at once at the turn of the day, to prevent situations where somebody conquers a depleted station at 08:00 and has to wait 16 hours before it is useful.
Someday in the future when player owned stores can be hosted in a conq station (or maybe player-posted contract missions), there could be an option for station owners to collect a percentage of every transaction and split it among themselves.
In conclusion, the main idea here is to give an advantage to being a small group owning the station, to balance the fact that a larger group can hold a station more securely. Then it becomes a question of whether you prefer lower returns with lower risk of station loss, or higher returns at a higher risk of station loss. It also potentially makes trustworthiness of your cohorts more important, if there are no controls in place to restrict use of the facilities. By doing this, stations would be much more likely to be fought over, rather than simply shared among all the friendly people.
Obviously, the actual conquering mechanics need work as well. That is discussion for other threads. And again, the numbers I used were just examples. I have no idea what an appropriate number of FCP per day would be.
What needs to happen is for the benefits to dilute when ownership is shared. The most obvious way to do this that I can think of is to put a station-wide daily cap on how often each mission can be taken. So for example, Latos I-8 could be set to only allow 20 FCP to be manufactured every day (this number is just for purposes of example). If five people are sharing the station, they could each make four, or one of them could make twelve, and the others would only make two, etc. If the station were shared among 20 people, each person would only be able to make one FCP. Perhaps have a method (possibly through keys, but preferably a "Station Control Panel") to allow allocating turns.
This could be extended to the free repairs and reloads, by giving the station a fixed amount of money every day which is expended by each RR. Once it is empty, the station can no longer RR people. Perhaps there could be a way to deposit money into this account, so that larger groups (or small groups that need frequent repairs) could continue getting RR services once the free funds for the day are expired. The cost of RR should be higher than at normal stations, to contrast with the initial free period.
The state of the station's counters should persist across conquerings, or perhaps diminish (in the sense of having fewer resources after being captured). I think it would be best of the station replenishes itself gradually throughout the day, rather than all at once at the turn of the day, to prevent situations where somebody conquers a depleted station at 08:00 and has to wait 16 hours before it is useful.
Someday in the future when player owned stores can be hosted in a conq station (or maybe player-posted contract missions), there could be an option for station owners to collect a percentage of every transaction and split it among themselves.
In conclusion, the main idea here is to give an advantage to being a small group owning the station, to balance the fact that a larger group can hold a station more securely. Then it becomes a question of whether you prefer lower returns with lower risk of station loss, or higher returns at a higher risk of station loss. It also potentially makes trustworthiness of your cohorts more important, if there are no controls in place to restrict use of the facilities. By doing this, stations would be much more likely to be fought over, rather than simply shared among all the friendly people.
Obviously, the actual conquering mechanics need work as well. That is discussion for other threads. And again, the numbers I used were just examples. I have no idea what an appropriate number of FCP per day would be.
-1 as proposed
Imposing a hard daily limit is a bit contrived. Plus it would favor people in certain timezones who are hardly affected by the limit at the beginning of the day, opposed to people who at the end of the day would rarely ever see the missions available.
Rather than set a hard limit, it should be implemented as an inconvenience that increases in severity as the number of players/manufacturing increases. This could be implemented as some sort of queue, where each person has to wait their turn to be able to use the manufacturing facilities.
On second though, that wouldn't be all that easy to implement with the current system, so perhaps a better idea is to have a maintenance mission that must be taken every X manufacturing cycles (station-wide). Just one person would have to take the mission to deliver a variety of goods needed to keep the facilities running, which would then allow everyone with station access to do an additional X cumulative number of manufacturing missions. Then if no one takes the mission, the facility would be shut down for something like 3 hours.
That way, the burden of keeping the manufacturing facility up and running becomes greater as more people are using it.
Imposing a hard daily limit is a bit contrived. Plus it would favor people in certain timezones who are hardly affected by the limit at the beginning of the day, opposed to people who at the end of the day would rarely ever see the missions available.
Rather than set a hard limit, it should be implemented as an inconvenience that increases in severity as the number of players/manufacturing increases. This could be implemented as some sort of queue, where each person has to wait their turn to be able to use the manufacturing facilities.
On second though, that wouldn't be all that easy to implement with the current system, so perhaps a better idea is to have a maintenance mission that must be taken every X manufacturing cycles (station-wide). Just one person would have to take the mission to deliver a variety of goods needed to keep the facilities running, which would then allow everyone with station access to do an additional X cumulative number of manufacturing missions. Then if no one takes the mission, the facility would be shut down for something like 3 hours.
That way, the burden of keeping the manufacturing facility up and running becomes greater as more people are using it.
+1 to making them more useful. Selling exotic weapons would also aid in this, perhaps at inflated rates which add back to the station funds.
I will echo my comments in the previous thread. This should happen and in my view the manufacturing missions available at the conquerable stations should be highly resource-efficient alternatives to the current missions which should be moved to regular unconquerable stations.
It was stated that tridents are not guild only content, but with the current conquerable station implementation I do not see how this is true in any way. The only way a new player can hope to achieve a trident is to cooperate in some way with a guild to receive keys, or to conquer the stations as part of a team. It is a highly unrealistic proposition that a builder of a trident could complete the process without having to get involved in guild politics in some way shape or form.
I think it is therefore more commensurate with the original developer goals to have the missions moved to regular stations and to implement this suggestion to have the conq stations act as substantial benefits to those who are able to attain them.
1+
It was stated that tridents are not guild only content, but with the current conquerable station implementation I do not see how this is true in any way. The only way a new player can hope to achieve a trident is to cooperate in some way with a guild to receive keys, or to conquer the stations as part of a team. It is a highly unrealistic proposition that a builder of a trident could complete the process without having to get involved in guild politics in some way shape or form.
I think it is therefore more commensurate with the original developer goals to have the missions moved to regular stations and to implement this suggestion to have the conq stations act as substantial benefits to those who are able to attain them.
1+
There is a difference between "guild only content" and "content that pretty much requires group cooperation". Building a trident is much easier with the help of a group, but they do not have to be in your guild.
Meridian, note that I did say I prefer an implementation that replenishes gradually all day long, rather than all at once at the turn of the day. So depending on who all has access, there could be some timezone issues, but not as many. Also, since this would encourage smaller more trusting groups rather than sharing a station with every trustworthyish non-pirate in the game, it would be feasible for people to simply come to an agreement about who gets what resources, and kick out anybody who doesn't play nice.
But yeah, it is pretty contrived.
I kind of like the idea of maintenance missions. The burden would need to scale exponentially though, because if it were linear it wouldn't discourage large alliances - you could just say "every member has to deposit X resources as dues when you use the equipment", and then adding new members would not increase the burden on existing members. If the per-user burden of keeping it running increased, however, it would work. And that makes sense if you think of it as diminishing returns as you operate the factory harder.
So (crude example), if the mission is run once per day, it might only require 1 coolant per run to keep the factory happy. If 10 missions get run, it might require 25 coolant per run. If 20 get run, it would require 100 coolant per run.
It could be handled like asteroid heat - each manufacturing run heats up the factory, and the hotter it is, the more coolant it requires to continue operating. Ceasing manufacturing would result in it slowly cooling down. People playing at less busy times would have an advantage unless the rather than slowly cooling, the heat remained constant for 24 hours.
Meridian, note that I did say I prefer an implementation that replenishes gradually all day long, rather than all at once at the turn of the day. So depending on who all has access, there could be some timezone issues, but not as many. Also, since this would encourage smaller more trusting groups rather than sharing a station with every trustworthyish non-pirate in the game, it would be feasible for people to simply come to an agreement about who gets what resources, and kick out anybody who doesn't play nice.
But yeah, it is pretty contrived.
I kind of like the idea of maintenance missions. The burden would need to scale exponentially though, because if it were linear it wouldn't discourage large alliances - you could just say "every member has to deposit X resources as dues when you use the equipment", and then adding new members would not increase the burden on existing members. If the per-user burden of keeping it running increased, however, it would work. And that makes sense if you think of it as diminishing returns as you operate the factory harder.
So (crude example), if the mission is run once per day, it might only require 1 coolant per run to keep the factory happy. If 10 missions get run, it might require 25 coolant per run. If 20 get run, it would require 100 coolant per run.
It could be handled like asteroid heat - each manufacturing run heats up the factory, and the hotter it is, the more coolant it requires to continue operating. Ceasing manufacturing would result in it slowly cooling down. People playing at less busy times would have an advantage unless the rather than slowly cooling, the heat remained constant for 24 hours.