Thought I'd see if anyone has any other ideas to integrate tridents into nationwar.

Last week I was successful in helping to draw in one trident per team, but the results were not as exciting as I had hoped. This was probably mostly due to the lack of experienced players across the board, but also everyone seemed to be a bit more defensive overall.

I still feel that tridents could make nationwar MUCH more interesting, but figuring out the best configuration is something we've yet to arrive at. My guess is that it would require a much more controlled setting, with a proper balance of skill and players on all sides -- something that is historically almost never found in NW.

Some other ideas I think are worthing trying:

1) Restrict total teams to two (i.e. with one trident each). Three tridents just seemed a bit too much, though possibly because we didn't have enough players.

2) Have just one, universal trident. The host (or some other neutral designee) be the only one with a trident -- with all teams having a key. Only reps/reloads would be allowed (no turret fire, no TU mining from the trident itself, etc). When the largest team reaches 2 players still active, trident vacates battlefield for final showdown.

3) If only one team wants to bring a trident, allow a buy-in of some kind (some per-enemy-player fee the trident team pays everyone else for the ability to have a trident). Possibly restrict this only to teams who have the odds stacked against them.

Thank you for this Input, Greenwall.

The last NW was indeed a little funny as no Trident really exploded. I agree this was most likely the case
due to a lack of participation, 17 Players on 3 Tridents is not enough it seems.
I'd like state my thoughts regarding your ideas.

1) Restricting Teams to two is almost impossible. How would we go on about it? Divide them by skill? That'd be impossible, as there is no one who could "judge" one's skill. The idea of splitting up UIT and giving half to Itani and half to Serco is also a little silly.

2) This is an interesting idea, however it would bring some problems with it. E.g. Trident Camping, clever People starting to bomb the Trident to erase it from battle early and a couple more things People could think of. Making a rule to forbid all of it will be tough.

3) Also possible to do. Anyhow, the other team has to approve of that. Making that happen will also need reasonable rules. As to how much the opposing Teams can charge etc.

Genrally I am not opposed to the idea of Tridents at Nation War. It was still a really enjoyable Experiment and required some tactical thinking. It's very likely that we would have seen Tridents explode if there were more people coming. I do my best to advertise NW in a way that doesn't annoy and spam people but that does inform them by dropping remarks on 100, informing newbies about it, having it posted to the event list etc. but as we know, VO's playerbase is not that amazingly big, even though it'd well deserve it to be...

I thought the more defensive approach that players took was a refreshing change from the usual turbo mashing runaround that NW has been for years.

I believe most Trident pilots dont want to participate why dont have a serious weapon to defend ....Gemini is so useless and used only to try to kill a roid and firecrackers is only for celebrations....why someones need to loose and a TU mine for nothing?

Until devs give us a real good dent weapon ...is very difficult to see many dents online same time...

To reload a TU mine cost 500k as to rebuy a dent....to lost a dent and TU mine hurts ....to build a new TU is painful....

Cheers...

Please keep in mind that I don't normally do Nation War.

I thought this last war was decent, though I don't think that the Tridents really had the impact that they could have. One of the reasons I don't do Nation War is because I don't particularly care for the once and done aspect. It's kind of like my wife complains- 4+ hours of hype for 15 seconds of glory.

In this respect, I think Tridents could have had more of an impact if they had been utilized more for rep / repair. At least on the UIT side, I think this could have been emphasized to all participants more. Aside from that it opens up a fair amount of strategic planning as far as using them- of which I could see none. All of the Tridents, for the 15 seconds of fame for which I survived, simply sat at their starting points. Get them sob's out there for support once it becomes secure enough. Why am I having to fly all the way back from the Itani starting area to repair? We took out the bombers. Get your bum closer to the main conflict darn you!

Anyway, I appreciate the Trident bonus that you put in to make this weeks event happen. I don't like it. But I appreciate it. I'd rather not have to pay people just to show up is all.

My take on it is, let's push for more three Trident NW's and see what happens. In retrospect I can see any number of things that could have been done by the teams that might have made it even better.

At any rate, I'm not against, but not terribly excited about the OP's suggestions. I would

4) Make having a Trident a requirement for any nation to participate. Put the obligation on the players to anti up.

Watching the three Tridents tango without their fighter escorts was a little bit like watching some kind of futuristic Battle of the Ironclads; they couldn't do much to harm each other, so by the time it got down to the end things naturally edged toward a draw. Future events will undoubtedly provide additional insight.

The only rule I can think to propose for consideration would be to allow one to return to the sector and continue fighting until one's Trident is no longer in play.

Here's what should happen instead of nation war.

The devs should spawn a constellation with no faction alignment in the center of an asteroid sector in sedina every week. The constellation should be full of a random selection of capship parts and the sector should be announced when this occurs.

That's it, sit back and watch the chaos as teams do their all to grab the parts.

No more of this stupid runny shit, objective based combat and no more fake teams.

+1 to RTSs idea of groups fighting for floating capship parts or some such. That would be kind of interesting.

I agree an event with dev spawned capships and prizes would be cool (and admittedly far superior to the current NW), but lets not kid ourselves -- we aren't going to get anything like that anytime soon. In the meantime, I still think we can figure out a way to make it fun with 100% player-run events.

TRS's suggestion is solid, but should be done in addition to NW, not to replace it.

There should be a few different flavors of NW scheduled about 30 minutes apart, to make the event longer and to appeal to more people.

TRS is definately thinking in the right direction, but I'd rather see something like that in Deneb.

I'd also like to see on the dev's part, more of the capture the flag game.

For Nation War, another of my problems is that there isn't really a solid objectve apart from not letting all of your team members die, but what if the goal was to keep your trident alive? Once a teams tridend has been destroyed, that team is out and can no longer participate.

This gives clear offensive and defensive objectives. It removes the tradition of only the surviving team members get paid since everyone is hopefully still involved at the end. It eliminates the once and done problem of dying once and your out.

Just make sure your trident lasts longer than the other two. Or even better, if teams are able to put in two or more tridents each! Just so long as the teams start even. I'd do a 500k grant to each trident owner for the cost of replacement.

I like many of the ideas brought up here and will consider them all. Especially Fluffy's summary sounds good - Make the Tridents be the key element. If we set it up so that that a Trident is required for victory, focus would of course be set on destroying them.

However we must not forget that we have a playerbase problem... The idea of 2 or more Tridents per team and fair and intense battling is great but that is barely possible with uneven teams and participation numbers between 15 and 20 people...
That is why I keep saying I don't see such NWs in the near future. And unless somebody Comes along with a great solution on how to lure more members and Trident Captains to NW, it is really not going to happen.

"TRS's suggestion is solid, but should be done in addition to NW, not to replace it."

You're thinking about a world where nation war isn't already dead. It has been a pretty dead event for a long time time now; events need dev intervention yesterday. So sure, this doesn't have to be a replacement for nation war, but as something like this comes along, people will not bother with nation war. At the moment the universe is only big enough for one event per week.

NW is not dead. It may not have as heavy vet participation as it has had in the past, but that's VO in general, not just NW.

+1 TRS
Also, just by making any cap ship in deneb have a small drop rate of random cap. ship parts would be a minor fix that would make deneb more competitive and less of a bot hunt.