Bases no long blow up when destroyed to mitigate the losses to the loser of a galaxy attack. Jeff himself added this idea (which many were against at the time), however with the current mechanic, that mitigating effect is totally lost.

If you can blow up a gal of bases, all you have to do is drop your outpost, own the gal, then EVERY base in the gal goes unowned. Whats the difference between that and the bases blowing up?

Jeff, your response is the only one I'm personally interested in. Why would you allow something to go in which makes the concept of destroyed bases totally pointless?

Not Jeff but here's some quick observations...

1. With the current system, if something stupid happens (like say someone on your team adjusts some commod, and does so incorrectly and the base fills up, runs out of rations, and then runs into a sun...) the base is destroyed but you don't lose everything on the base. So damage is much more limited due to simple mistakes, or even *bugs* which might cause base death like sleepy gal syndrome which made slaves go inactive (rations slave doesn't xfer rations, base runs out of food, sun or incidental AI aggro finishes the base). With the old system, one simple mistake or a rollback at the wrong time and BOOM, prod base completely gone and completely irrecoverable. The new system is vastly more forgiving, although not 100% forgiving, of incidental/bug related base death.

2. A team being forced to drop an outpost and own the gal means you have a LOT more time to recover gear and possibly even the galaxy. The first point is you have to kill *every* opposing base in the galaxy, meaning you have to wipe out every last one. If the owner is on, they can dock at any destroyed bases and repair/quickly recover the goods in a sing sphere. The onus is on the attacking team to try and prevent this. Good luck stoping someone who can instantly teleport with a sing brake and has ample hull for a million grav blockers/assorted tweaks. The second point you get another chance is when the outpost is dropped. If you can kill the outpost you have a chance to delay the claim and at least buy your team more time to drive off the attackers.

So what this system says from the design is very simple. You don't suffer ANYWHERE near as bad as old system where the complete annihilation of a base due to unfortunate rollbacks, bugs, or carelessness results in base death. That much is crystal clear. It also says you have time to respond to an attack on your galaxy and attempt to reclaim precious gear, or to prevent any bases from being taken over period, as every single base must fall before the galaxy can be claimed by an enemy team. It does not say in any way shape or form that the new system will prevent a smaller team, or a team that build very poor bases, or a team that isn't as well geared, from being crushed by a larger team capable of applying overwhelming force such that all of the above measures are negated. That should also be crystal clear from the implementation.

I ask again: what's the point of capping bases if you can just use this tactic to claim them outright?

You make fair points about the system but we all know it is an unintended mechanic.

If it's unintended then therefore a bug I expect the whole contents of Thermal's Sing Sphere to go straight to mandy =)

The point of capping would be that it works for a quick reward against a woefully poorly geared base. You can cap 1 base out of range of defending bases and pirate it for its goods, without killing the whole galaxy for example. The balancing factor is that a properly radiation resistant base is exremely difficult to cap.

More importantly why are you complaining about a mechanic that was planned during the discussion with players in the Dev Notes extensively. I certainly understand you may not like it, and if you do not like it, do not start wars.

You were saying?

Twisting my words a bit there, it was obviously planned to work that way but looking at the original discussion on it nobody thought about it's consequences when the attackers won. What Hooch said fully stands, these are the current game mechanics and I find it incredibly lame how Traders and DM are now complaining about game mechanics now that they're obviously losing a conflict that they started.

I am saying it is easy oh so easy to forget what was planned and is still in the dev notes, I'll find the thread after I post this, when they have 350megs of source code to sift through.

Seems apparent to me some people understood the consequences of the new system while others did not... I remember when I rejoined at the end of last uni, Trev was able to explain exactly to me how the outpost strategy worked. This system also causes problems when someone leaves a team and doesn't pack first...

Reguardless, under the old system the base would simply be destroyed and its contents would be scattered to the solard winds to decay whether anyone is there to scoop them or not.

To be honest, I have *never* really liked the pvp system in Star Sonata as typically all it does is drive people away, instead of immersing them and causing them to appreciate, play, and enjoy the game more. If I play a PVP game it should be with clear goals, and structured such that there is a clear winner, a clear loser, and full of interesting decisions to make to allow the players to exhibit skill.

In Star Sonata, typically what happens is someone posts or says something, another party takes offense, and whoever has more/bigger guns goes in and blows up all the crap of the less well armed/geared purely out of spite. So pvp/pvb really revolves around talking smack and getting your ass handed to you, or just incidentally rubbing someone the wrong way. That's what really happens in an open ended pvp system where a single vulnerability from a cunning foe can be exploited, or simply enough force can be applied to blow up all the stuff in less than an hour that you've been working on for several unis.

I'm pretty sure Jeff_L understood exactly what was happening when he was watching us in Ceyx and would have done something if we were actively exploiting a "bug" though. So don't get your hopes up...

Ah I see, THATS where the bug is. Time to increase base resists and shield regen %500,000! Maybe now wars will revolve around killing slaves or perhaps scrap collecting contests?

While that would take a fair amount of time, it seems a rather harsh mechanic if intentional. Thats just far too efficient of a way to pirate.

You all don't need to get all sore over this.

These types of responses were not unexpected though, which is why I put that little part about me only really caring about what Jeff thinks. We'll see if he'll show up in this thread still...

You really think this will NEVER happen to you?

Traders isn't in any aggressive wars right now, so I'm not sure what you are talking about us losing something...

Don't be so annoying, you are supposed to be adults.

-ERMAN

Erman if you had really wanted this for Jeffs eyes only you would have done a ticket, I call bullshit on that.