Instancing with 50-100 players is out, now 1000 players?

[Lexicon]

sovereignty is the awesome feature

I have yet to see what SC will provide with game design that exploits our territorial instincts

what will be the conflict drivers?

Right now it seems like "Own a Bengal!" is the big territorial conflict driver. While I like it on principle, and the idea of a MacGuffin that can actually be used to defend itself earns many +1s from me, I'm concerned for lategame stagnation of Bengal fights.

The RSI Forums don't really have a clear answer, and I can't dredge anything from the Wiki or the various videos, so lemme ask you guys:

- Can Bengals be destroyed? There was a lot of talk about "derelict Bengals can be repaired" around when the Crucible came out, which makes me worry. If the supply of Bengals isn't somehow restricted (either by a limited number of Bengals existing or the prospect of Bengals being destroyed), eventually every corp could have a Bengal - which limits their utility as a driving force for conflict.

- Can Bengals be built? Very little has been announced about crafting, and nothing at all about making ships - though you can deliberately feed the tradelanes that supply major manufacturing companies to accelerate/cheapen their productions, which could apply here. Again, if Bengal supply can be influenced, it inversely influences the ability of Bengals to be conflict drivers.

- Does anything limit a corp from having multiple Bengals in the same instance? If a Bengal is supposed to be a conflict driver that pits corp against corp, and is supposed to be difficult to take, the presence of additional Bengals might compound that difficulty - making it harder for multi-Bengal corps to lose their Bengals, and eventually leading to a consolidation (and stagnation) of power.

 

[Xist]

Derelict ships will despawn if nobody is actively working on them for a while.

You CANNOT produce ships. At all. Ever.

Nobody can buy Bengals, but pirates can try to steal them from the UEE.

In general, they will be exceedingly rare.

If an org has one, they will probably be under almost constant attack.

 

[rogesh]

Derelict ships will despawn if nobody is actively working on them for a while.

You CANNOT produce ships. At all. Ever.

Nobody can buy Bengals, but pirates can try to steal them from the UEE.

In general, they will be exceedingly rare.

If an org has one, they will probably be under almost constant attack.

Also I think I heard somewhere that you can't insure these kind of ships. So lost is lost

 

[Lexicon]

"Almost constant attack" sounds a little much. I doubt they're going to be that easy to find; yeah they're great hulking balls of steel, but unless they've got the same comms-beacon strapped to the side that stations do, people are going to have to scan them down. I also doubt everyone and their sister is going to keep a capship-killing fleet on perpetual rapid-deployment - so even if some schmuck does manage to scan down the Hypothetical TEST Bengal, we could just warp it off to somewhere else. Space is big.

That being said, I guess I've been thinking too much like EVE. We're not capsuleer space-gods, where ten thousand of us can shatter entire sectors of space or hold empires hostage. We're dudes, where ten thousand of us can't even hold an occupied world, let alone stand up to the UEE Navy. By that logic, how often are players even going to get access to a Bengal period? And what is the common spaceman supposed to do to acquire spaceland?

 

[DrunkenTeddy]

Hiding a Bengal will be tough with all the Spai's in our midst.

 

[thedeadlybutter]

I also doubt everyone and their sister is going to keep a capship-killing fleet on perpetual rapid-deployment

*ahem*

https://testsquadron.com/threads/bomber-squadron.2448/page-13

 

[Xist]

"Almost constant attack" sounds a little much.

Could be. Nobody really knows how it will shake out.

I'm pretty sure if anyone has one even remotely close to us, they will be inundated by constant barrages of drunken Auroras. They will need 24x7 defenses on it to keep us from accidentally crashing into the bridge and taking it over.

how often are players even going to get access to a Bengal period? And what is the common spaceman supposed to do to acquire spaceland?

CIG said once in a great while there will be Bengal wrecks that can be captured and rebuilt.

However, if it will be a major challenge to rebuild a Javelin (supposedly it will) then think what a monumental task it will be to rebuild a Bengal!

Any org that wishes to try will need a massive fleet of miners, traders, haulers... Massive.

And during this time, other orgs will likely be actively trying to steal the Bengal for themselves.

As for how to acquire "land", I don't think that will be possible. I could be wrong.

 

[megatopkick]

I will settle for nothing below 9,000..... How else will be take a test squadron group picture :)

 

[RedLir]

sovereignty is the awesome feature

Eve's sov mechanics are a little stilted but they tap into our instinctive territoriality

the big fights happen because everyone is like, "we must win at all costs!"

I have yet to see what SC will provide with game design that exploits our territorial instincts

what will be the conflict drivers?

for TEST to hang together long-term we need goals beside 'more beer' to unite around

it's my biggest [CONCERN] For SC

That's the big question I'm looking forward to being answered. What mechanics will they put in, and how would a mechanic like this be handled with instancing? The time dilation in EVE isn't the perfect solution, but it allows all those interested, to be a part of the action if they so choose.

 

[GrammarGestapo]

1000 player battles.... that would get me out of eve. Here's to hoping.

 

[rogesh]

As for how to acquire "land", I don't think that will be possible. I could be wrong.

I think it will be somewhat possible. Like dominating am area in lawless space. I mean if you have a mining station or similar somewhere out there you want to protect it don't you? And wasn't there something like starting colonies on new found planets?

 

[JackAvalon]

My understanding is exactly what @Xist said, Bengals will be super rare. That said the more common conflict drivers will be resource nodes. Think newly discovered systems, rare mineral belts, alien ruins/wrecks, etc...

Also, I can't remember where I heard this from so take the following with mountains of salt, but I thought that CIG did not like the Eve model of null sec. Where u have few major alliances/factions owning vast amounts of space essentially locking it down for other players. Kind of a join us or die mentality. They (CIG) wants all their systems to be accessible to all the players provided u can safely navigate the jump points.

This brings up an interesting thought. If large orgs are unable to carve out a section of the galaxy for themselves to explore/mine/defend, then aside from having the large support/resources that a large org provides and huge operations, what benefit is there?

My hope is that this proves false and large orgs will indeed be able to have a controlling interest on the fringes of space. It will bring massive amounts of emergent content and when large org wars happen(and they will happen), it will impact the Verse in interesting way and may even lead to the addition of in game lore.

All in all, I will be a proud drunk Test pilot trying not to steer my Aurora into one of yours while flying formation. Can't wait to see what SC becomes.

 

[FireEmblem6]

So I thought I'd work my instance, right? To counter their instance. We got cross-instanceation, and their heads started exploding. You know, that thing, and I ended up in my knickers here, with some beers and then...

 

[Stalinator]

RIP other pleb orgs Aurora swarm back in action

 

[Xist]

If large orgs are unable to carve out a section of the galaxy for themselves to explore/mine/defend, then aside from having the large support/resources that a large org provides and huge operations, what benefit is there?

This is purely speculation, but I think the rarity of the Bengal is the answer.

We can't own space.

But we can own a Bengal, which will be extremely rare, and everyone else will want one.

Thus instead of trying to take our space, they'll try to take our Bengal.

It's the same thing you guys are asking for, but it's a ship instead of a large physical space that you're trying to block people out of.

And as was brought up before, if we find valuable nodes, we'll want to try to keep people from taking them, which is like defending an area of space, even if we don't outright own it. However CR has said if we do too good a job defending it, NPCs will swarm us and we'll probably get overwhelmed and that will be the end of that.

Also, we can invade Vanduul space and try to take a Kingship.

If we have a Kingship, even MORE people will want to take it from us, we'll likely have an even harder time defending that than we will defending the Bengal.

None of these things will be available to small orgs - at minimum an org will need probably 300 active players to even consider taking a Bengal or a Kingship.

 

[JackAvalon]

This is purely speculation, but I think the rarity of the Bengal is the answer.

We can't own space.

But we can own a Bengal, which will be extremely rare, and everyone else will want one.

Thus instead of trying to take our space, they'll try to take our Bengal.

It's the same thing you guys are asking for, but it's a ship instead of a large physical space that you're trying to block people out of.

And as was brought up before, if we find valuable nodes, we'll want to try to keep people from taking them, which is like defending an area of space, even if we don't outright own it. However CR has said if we do too good a job defending it, NPCs will swarm us and we'll probably get overwhelmed and that will be the end of that.

Also, we can invade Vanduul space and try to take a Kingship.

If we have a Kingship, even MORE people will want to take it from us, we'll likely have an even harder time defending that than we will defending the Bengal.

None of these things will be available to small orgs - at minimum an org will need probably 300 active players to even consider taking a Bengal or a Kingship.

I really hope this wont be completely the case because gameplay would then consist of mine the minerals before NPCs kill you to constantly having org members Manning massive ships that just sit there unless you are at war. Either way it forces orgs to maintain a warlike stance all the time. This would mean that a player who is a part of a large org then could do very little without the support of said org. This would effectively kill solo gameplay for players who are a part of an org. There has to be peacetime in order to differentiate from wartime otherwise SC becomes COD with ships(shoot first ask later scenarios 100% of the time).

These are just my opinions and I am hopeful that SC will be the best damn space sim ever. I guess I just don't like arbitrary controls placed on large org players for the sake of the smaller org / solo ones.

 

[maynard]

The reason Eve developed a sovereignty mechanic was because the players hated playing time-zone ping pong where everything you gained one day was lost to another group after you logged off, and then you took it back the next day, ad nauseum.

SC is going to need the same thing for the same reason, whether it's capital ships or solar systems we're trying to own or occupy

 

[thedeadlybutter]

This brings up an interesting thought. If large orgs are unable to carve out a section of the galaxy for themselves to explore/mine/defend, then aside from having the large support/resources that a large org provides and huge operations, what benefit is there?

You're on the TEST forums right now, you could also join Discord. In the PU you'll have access to all of the drunk pilots you could ever need. You don't need territory to provide value!

 

[Lexicon]

And as was brought up before, if we find valuable nodes, we'll want to try to keep people from taking them, which is like defending an area of space, even if we don't outright own it. However CR has said if we do too good a job defending it, NPCs will swarm us and we'll probably get overwhelmed and that will be the end of that.

Can I get a source on that? That sounds both really disheartening and really difficult to code, and I'd be interested in reading CR's exact words.

 

[Xist]

Can I get a source on that? That sounds both really disheartening and really difficult to code, and I'd be interested in reading CR's exact words.

I paraphrased liberally.

Generally he has stated many, many times that players should not be allowed to own sections of space.

Also, that npcs would actively seek out any and all valuable resources, and they being 90% of the population, they would actually take a very large percentage of those resources.

Further that if we want to defend a resource, we will have to kill many, many npcs, probably resulting in them placing contracts on us, which if there are sufficient numbers of them, would be really problematic.

All of which left me with the distinct impression that he really did not want us to control space, or resources, at all, which is what he keeps saying.

And finally, one of the beautiful aspects if this game, he has repeatedly stated that the Vanduul can, and will, wipe out any players that are abusing mechanics to play in a way he doesn't like.