Yeah yeah, I know petitions are lame and all that, but I just had one of those "wtf!!?" moments in Vendetta today. By now most people know I'm a pirate. I snuck into Itani territory tonight and I killed a few people with skill level points that were higher than mine. Just as it was planned, I soon became KOS with Itani. So I run for the border to reload and repair etc.

When I make it to the wormhole out, I notice two of these phallic shaped bots coming towards me, so I dodged OUT of the way because I had heard rumors about "suicide bots" that were added. Okay, no problem right? When they got within like 100m of me they both exploded and I was instakilled. That's all it took. I couldn't even dodge out of the way.

As if avoiding uber fast Vultures weren't enough, there's now uber fast suicide insta-kill bots of doom? I'm sorry, that's just way too much. It went from being able to dodge bots and recharge occasionally by hiding behind an asteroid or making quick turns... to NOT being able to recharge at ANY second safely. Literally, you don't have any time to stop.

If you run out of energy, too bad because those suicide bots will get ya. You come near those suicide bots and you're through. If you attempt to blow up the suicide bots, you get overrun by a gajillion Strike Force vultures. Either way you're way low on energy and will probably be dead very soon.

In other words going across enemy territory in anything less than a Valk with infini-boost heavy engine/fast charge battery is impossible. Please, for the love of god take those suicide bots out. Ughhh!

/me strangles Edlrad for even suggesting it

I encourage players to test this out by either using their current character or creating a new one (it's not hard to level up to a heavy battery and a nimble ship) and then pissing any nation off. You'll find that getting out of enemy territory is probably a lot harder than it was ever before (even with the uber weapons).

(Not sure what I suggested....)

I went across serco space with a hvy bat...

I guess I saw the suicide bots, they didn't strike me as particularly effective they blew up and bad times and didn't do any damage, I guess I probably just got lucky, or maybe they've been improved since the other day so they actually hit you.

Perhaps a compromise. The point of a near-invincible defense force is to protect newbies from people like you. How about the defense force surrounding the newb sectors - ie Itan, Pherona - are uber and get weaker as you go out so that border incursions are at least possible? Make them less eager to chase as well. This way you can infringe on Serco space as an Itani, catch a trader or two on the outskirts and actually get the cargo, and then make it out alive by evading the sparse defbot response.

i dont think eldrad suggested anything, he was however mentioned as an example in a few discussions with a1k0n about how the strike forces could be destroyed/avoided by a good pilot.

Heh heh. Actually, I was the one who suggested it, so you should probably be trying to strangle me.

The point of the defbots is to fortify regulated territory to protect newbies from vets.

I have an idea. How about we create intermediate gray systems between the Serco and Itani where both nations have a presence. The left side of the map being Serco and the right being Itani. These systems would be outposts, lightly fortified with weak little bots and the old turrets, nothing like the strike forces of +1 smiting we have now. On top of that we can have non-aligned outposts here. Something like the small mining villages I described in another thread. Put special missions in these sectors that you cannot do anywhere else. Make it so you cannot advance beyond a certain level (or will have to invest a lot of extra time and effort) without completing these missions. Border patrol stuff, high-risk trade missions, special higly prized widgets, etc.
This way, only experienced players will venture into these danger-zones and hopefully, a nice warzone will soon develop.
I have a feeling that as the game develops, we will have sectors like these, possibly loops of gray systems branching off from, and linking certain Serco sectors and Itani ones sort of like the ones that surround the gold systems.

He does have a point though: It is impossible to get into Itani space.

The Itani have stations on both sides of every wormhole to their territory. I was on the run (also KOS with them) and managed to narrowly escape through a guarded wormhole only to be completely destroyed not 30 secs after the loading screen finished.

Maybe two-sided defense stations are nice for more important systems, but they are WAY too powerful for border systems...

The boarders currently are lightly defended in some ways.
I wrote out a step by step how to attack people in enemy nation territory, which can be found in the thread "Station Def Bots.."
I tested it out with a mock newb and imo it was too successful, I was able to kill a character in the serco starting sector with relatively high chance of escaping with out damage. I was also able to spend significant time idling outside the station waiting for the 'newb' to exit the station. The only time I died trying this was when I ran head long into a seeker (which with practice wouldn't be too difficult not to do) when they were tailing me they were generally not at all effective, and though sometimes they did some damage but not enough to kill my vult.
This was all done with equipment obtainable at lvl 5/4/4/2 (and most likely could have been done at a lower level using tachs instead of gauss since it would be less of an energy drain).

Magus' idea is how we used to do it way back in the day in Jumpgate, before brainless carebears cried "WHAAA I'M NOT SAFE EVERYWHERE NEAR FACTION SPACE" and the devs made those sectors regulated. Making Deneb or Geira Rutilus contested would rock the hizzouse.

Either way, though, those suicide bots have to go. I can dodge the Strike Force Vults just fine, but getting past those suiciders without an FC batt is damn near impossible.

Suicide bots seem like a terribly bizarre use of resources anyhow.

Doesn't really make sense, except maybe in pirate space, where I could kinda see it, but even still.. It seems wasteful to make something like that.

Guys, it's like this:

1) The devs make a new, seemingly unstoppable defense bot

2) Everyone goes "omg! these bots are uber! take them out!"

3) Someone figures out how to get around them/beat them

4) Said person explains to others how to do it

5) Life goes on

Funny how I can fly into NT space with little trouble and kill anyone I like. Ok, the defbots are a pain, but avoidable, and the suicide bots don't like roids... ;-)

[flame deleted]

Sigh... the game is supposed to allow you to do that. Like, in that its possible. It shouldn't be easy at all, but it should be DOABLE.

And Arolte's been around for a while... yeah he's .. vocal but he knows what he's doing.

mutorcs, that was uncalled for and unhelpful. Not to mention inaccurate; First off there's no skill involved against bots like seekers you just have to know they're coming and be a bit used to them. Second off Arolte is one of the most skilled players.

If vendetta is going to keep people interested post release, it needs a good, healthy PvP system. This means it needs to be balanced, not that it needs to protect every player from getting attacked.

At the moment it's extremely weighted towards someone running away over someone chasing (this is not due to the bots but the low energy consumption of top engines, and the instant jumping to/from empty sectors). Therefore it's important to hear the voices of people who are still trying to catch other players.

Hmmph, the incident that got him blown up by suicide bots involved me.

So the point is, If you want to pirate, PK or whatever fine... just don't whine about how hard it is to hit and run in protected nation sectors. If your not good enough to do the deed and get away, don't do it!

Bye the way I know Arotle is very old school, much respect but no sympathy goes to Arotle.

Do your pirateing in grey space or put together a wolfpack if you can't do it solo... "now there's an idea"

>> begin edit<<

Keep suicide bots as it makes you think twice about open hostility in gaurded systems but it doesn't prevent it, and I think thats the point.

>>End edit<<

>>mutorcs<<

mutorcs, what you're saying is that since Arolte is playing a "bad guy" he shouldn't have input on the development process.

I agree that suicide bots should be left in cause they're interesting (maybe increase their blast radius and reduce their damage), but I think it's bad to insult players who are making suggestions just because they've killed you in the past or you disagree with their suggestion.

Well it DOES say that the borders between Itani and Serco space are "heavily defended." I think that they went just slightly overboard though. I'm a Serco, and I want to the Valkyrie at some point in the future, so I went into Itani space to do some bot killing and improve my standing. My first attempt, I got blown up straight out of the wormhole by two suicide bots that detonated nearly simultaneously. Since I was trying to improve my standing with Itani, I didn't fire back. The next time, I made the jump into Itani space, warped through two systems and then ended up in a drone system. After killing three DenTek Collectors and sustaining no damage, I suddenly blew up. Those damn suicide bots followed me in and killed me there. Because there were already a dozen red dots around me, I didn't notice the new ones. There's got to be a solution to this.

I think that the suicide bots and the powerful drones should be relegated to the inner core systems, and less powerful drones and/or turrets be deployed on the borders. If we want PvP action to occur on the borders, we make many of the higher level weapons available there (the lower level newbies in the core systems don't really need them anyway). More experienced players will put their home bases on the border systems where they can organize attacks into enemy space and defend against incursions.

No, thats not my point,

And also My tone was a bit shrill wasn't it...
I appologize, I know better.

Now my point was, just becuase Arotle got tken out by the nations defence dosen't mean that the nation defence should done away with.

As my post was shrill and reactionary so is the request to get rid of the sucicide bots becuase they got you.

Arotle has every right to his opinion and frankly, I think that there isn't nearly enough PKing or pirating but the answere isn't toning down nation defence. It's rather clear the answer is in changeing your tactics, the old way of doing things just don't work in the new universe.

Thats my point

>>mutorcs<<

mutorcs, this wasn't just a one-time incident of death followed by a demand to change things. I've tried to get in there another time, with KOS standing, and I pretty much got vaporized by the suicide bots the moment I tried to get back out of the sector. You literally have no time to recharge your battery before they blow up in your face. There is no tactics involved, as you seem to assume.

It's not an issue of making things difficult, trust me it's already hard as it is. It's more of an issue of whether something is almost impossible to do. Right now I feel like it's more of the latter than the former. The only reason I was able to get a handful of kills before was because my standing with Itani was still steadily decreasing (not KOS yet).

While this may not kill piracy completely (that can still be done in the truly neutral sectors), it will severely limit the ability to invade enemy territory and conduct spy missions, or even border patrol missions, if you've got a KOS rating with a nation. Either way, I feel that something needs to be revised so it doesn't cripple one of the biggest career paths known to Vendetta from day one.

Generally, my policy on doing something in-game is that just because Eldrad can do it doesn't mean that 99% of the rest of the community can. I like the idea of sparsely-guarded border sectors on the edges of the empire, with enforcement getting tougher as you jump inwards.