I would like to solicit suggestions on what to do about low level base kits. The problem is that on the one hand, we want to limit the number of bases in a galaxy so that 1) it doesn't get too laggy, and 2) it doesn't become completely invincible, but on the other hand, if a team can just fill up all the slots, then there can't be any BvB, and BvB has become extremely important in Star Sonata.

I'm pretty sure that anything we try to do along the lines of "the owners can have X slots, and other people/their enemies can have Y slots" won't work, because people will just make alts or fake enemies and fill up all the slots anyway.

There are 4 possible ways to address this that I can think of, none of which is completely fleshed out, but I would like to hear other suggestions as well. Here are the ideas I've thought of so far:

1) Eliminate all low level base kits - make tech 9 the lowest one in the game. This doesn't really fix the problems, but at least it's more expensive in terms of slots to fill up everything in your galaxy.

2) Change the way base slots work so that each base, regardless of tech level, takes up one slot and each character has something like 5-6 total slots with bonus slots that are account-wide. Same as 1) in that this doesn't necessarily fix the problem, but it makes filling all your slots in much more expensive. (We are going to do this change eventually, just haven't gotten around to it and don't really want to do it mid-uni.)

3) Remove the hard cap on base slots in a galaxy, but make additional bases after, say after 10ish, cost increasing amounts of slots. For example, the 11th base could take 10% more base slots, the 12th could take 20% more, up to the 20th takes double slots and on up. (Number subject to change and refinement, of course.) The cool thing about this idea is no hard-caps, so it maybe seems less arbitrary, and also there's a balance between attack and defense. The defenders choose how many bases to put in their galaxy and they will have an increasing cost based on how many bases they lay, but they can never make it impossible to BvB. But they essentially make it more expensive.

4) Allow temporary increase in the number of bases per galaxy, but any bases over the cap have a time limit. For example, if the galaxy is all full of bases, you can still lay more bases, but your new bases will die in 1 hour unless you clear up some slots for them by destroying existing bases. This option would allow some truly epic BvB going on, but of course, since the bases decay after an hour, we won't end up with galaxies that permanently have ridiculous amounts of bases in them.

As I said, still at the brainstorming phase. Please submit any other ideas or possibilities that we should consider.

EDIT:

5) Add a 5 minute per-player cooldown on deploying bases.

Edit2:

6) Add 2 extra base slots for a specific team per bordering owned galaxy. If that team owns multiple bordering galaxies, it gets 2 slots for each.

7) (alternative to 1 and 2) level 0, 3, and 6 base kits all take the same number of slots as the level 9 base kit. So f2p's can still deploy a level 6 base if they only have tech 6 station management.

As soon as a base is destroyed it no longer takes up a slot?, that would kinda prevent low level spamming and make BvB more interesting =o

That code is already live....

XD have not built for a while, excuse me

Yes, because we have already patched in the code last uni where a destroyed base no longer takes a slot, we considered the problem "mostly solved" and were going to leave it at that, but apparently we need to further address the issue.

Imo we should deffinetely do both option number 1 and 2. And then either 3 or 4.

jeff why dont u make it soo you can only deploy T 9 and above in W3 ?????

Why dont you give it a max of 20 stations to a gal from a team so there is always slots to BvB it will be up to the opposition to how much they will fortify

Just go back to being able to have extra slots in a galaxy from team B if war is declared... and actually enforce it with temp bans if people use this to their advantage. Imo, none of these suggestions solve anything without taking away a big portion of the game.

cant you just make dropping kits in an owned galaxy an aggressive action that you cant turn off aggro? If team A fills up 25 slots and then has an unteamed alt drop a base to try to fill up the spare slots, then the 25 bases open fire on the new base. Can't mark friend. Should be pretty easy to find when people are simply filling slots 10k out. Also, in order to place those extra kits in the full galaxy, the unteamed alt or fake enemy has to own an adjacent galaxy to deploy "bvb" which i just dont see happening.

I suppose 2 teams could help each other out by filling each other's extra slots, but again i dont see how that wouldn't be easy to detect, not to mention the constant aggro caused by the arrangement.

The time limit is a good idea but 1hour is too short. Ablatives take WAY too long to kill. now try and take out 20+ bases in 1hour ?

I think there should always be 2-4 base slots nomatter what is in the galaxy.
So if a team spams low tec kits it would be pointless as you can still lay your BVB base.

Dead bases not taking a slot is a nice change, however it doesnt help if you cant get your BVB down to kill a base. galaxys are pratacly unkillable right now if you cant lay a base.

PVB does not work against insane galaxys with 20kits in them lol.

My suggestion would be make it so you can only BVB if your team has a score of X amount. maybe a new score factor called War Score or something stupid ..

basactly meaning alts cant fill the slots in a gal to prevent BVB because they have to of gained a high enough score that you get from pvp/pvb ect

So take this as an example.

Torchwood vs Light Comerce. Every time someone on TW gets a kill the score goes up by 2 , every time you die to a wared team your score goes up by 1 . every time you kill a T20 base you get 20 points , every time you loose a tec 20 base you get 10points.

once your team has accumilated 500 points your now able to bvb that team.

This would however restrict bvb to teams that have been fighting for a while.

Just a stupid idea tho

[quote="JeffL"] 1) Eliminate all low level base kits - make tech 9 the lowest one in the game. This doesn't really fix the problems, but at least it's more expensive in terms of slots to fill up everything in your galaxy.
[quote]

Now Jeff I honestly think that taking Lower kit's OUT of the game is the wrong way to go.

Why ? Well the reason being is that the lower players in a team which are trying to build kit's who are F2P will have No idea about base's when they go P2P. Now i dont know about you lot but when I was F2P I built low tech base's and building things from BP's was fun the biggest person for this that i know of from building base's from REALLY low level is Sharky.

When sharky first started he used kit's just like every low level player at the start of their time in the game, They build base's to build items or have their own home.

Although the downside of this descussion if you add a descussion about this then the longer it takes for something to happen the more defended the galaxy will be which will make BvB basicly impossible with the Ablatives atm so something needs chosen soon but taking away low tech kits isnt the awnser.

Unless you take it away from player which are higher end and keep them avaiable to the lower end of the game.

Sorry for Bad Spelling and Grammer.

xDrag0nx

can we just only make the attacking 5 slot rule work if the attacking team has the correct score ( linked to what you think would be a good limit to stop newly made team doing this) and has owened the Gal next to defending gal for 24hrs.

This way attacking team will have to work in a way that is right for the game and because of owning the gal next to the defending team the would then get 5 base slots

You're right, options 1 and 2 do not fix the problem.

Unfortunately, neither does 3 or 4. Option 3 plays straight into the hands of the richest teams. This will further separate smaller, poorer and weaker teams, from the long established , massively rich ones.

Option 4 again does the same as option 3. Smaller teams will not have the capital to waste on temporary bases. Especially considering the cost of using base augs and pre-building the base gear etc.


I think what you need to do is replace the whole base system, and start from scratch. You said that BvB has become a very important, and more importantly, a captivating and enjoyable, part of the game.

I think the best option is to separate the essential BvB aspects from the day to day economic side of bases. One possible solution is to adopt the system you have for slaves, ie. combat bases and trade bases. You could actually take it even further and have a five tiered system which is galaxy based :

Tier One : Attached Colony Base
Tier Two : Non-Attached Trade Base
Tier Three : Non-Attached Storage Base
Tier Four : Attached Combat Base
Tier Five : Non-Attached Combat Base

The price of each base, both in terms of initial cost and running costs, should increase from Tier One to Tier Five.

There should also be limits on these bases depending on the size, defined by the number of planets, of each galaxy :

Tier One should be uncapped, but in reality is defined by available slots on planets.

Tier Two should be something like "number of planets / 3". So for every 3 planets, you're allowed to have one Non-Attached Trade Base.

For Tier Three it should be a minimum of 1, and an additional base for every 5 planets.

Tier Four should be equal to each planet. This way teams could have a protective base for each colony base.

And Tier 5 should be limited to something like "number of planets / 4". It might be an idea to change the number depending on the Team's position on the leader board. Weaker teams should be allowed to have more Non-Attached Combat bases. The thinking behind this is that if the team is weaker, then the strength of the base will be weaker too.

In addition to this, take out the link between base slots and tech level. This should be handled by an algorithm similar to the one mentioned above for Tier 5. You could apply it across the board for working out all the slots per galaxy.

A new set of base graphics might help too.

Yeah, nobody ever builds lower tech bases anymore, as they were removed from f2p use, and everyone else just uses tech 9 or above.