Zarch AlDain
The Establishment
Establishment
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Posted - 2007.11.13 17:07:00 -
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First off - if sticking with POS I really like the idea of basing it on planets. It makes moon selection strategic and as a simple change adds a lot of options to the game.
In terms of 'fixing the boredom factor' though I think there are two points:
1. POS warfare is boring
2. POS warfare needs big fleets
Now if there were an alternative way to defeat POSes / Sovereignty that did not involve the current POS warfare then that would make things a whole lot more interesting.
At the end of the day POS work for many of their intended roles - so I would suggest that the move to use planets rather than moons to determine sovereignty should be made but then an additional mechanism to defeat those POS/Sovereignty claims should be added as well.
This then gives attackers two choices, attack the POS directly or do it indirectly. The indirect method should encourage multiple strikes and small gang fast response combat.
For example: Sovereignty Beacon
In a POS when claiming sovereignty rather than ticking 'claim sovereignty' you could tick 'generate sovereignty beacon'. You can now only change this once per week (reason explained later).
If sovereignty is being claimed then a deadspace area will form in the system and at the center of the deadspace area (potentially through several gates) is the beacon.
For each level of sov in the system a beacon would appear (1 per sov level, not 1 per pos - for example sov 3 maintained by 1 pos still gives 3 beacons in 3 seperate deadspaces).
Pirates appropriate to the local area will automatically come to investigate this new deadspace area (no bosses or overseers though, just a few pirates to add interest).
The Sovereignty beacon itself will be in the final room of the deadspace and can be attacked. It should have enough hit points that a gang of 5 to 10 battleships take around 20 minutes to kill it. It will use area effect nosferatus on all hostile ships in the final deadspace room and use that to recharge its own shields, so the more hostile ships that are present the faster its shields recharge.
Once the beacon is reduced to 0 shield it is disabled and will remain disabled for 13 hours, then its shields will start to recharge and it will be enabled again.
Ok, so that is the beacon. You need to run in through deadspace gates (so no capital ships, no instant warping in and out). The area of effect means it is actually counter-productive to bring too many ships, etc.
But why attack it? And why defend it?
Quite simply - if the sovereignty beacons in your system are disabled the following effects apply:
25% disabled (only possible on sov 3 or 4):
No fuel can be added to the normal fuel bay of sovereignty claiming star bases.
50% disabled (possible on sov 2 or higher):
No fuel can be added or removed from the normal fuel bay of sovereignty claiming star bases.
75% disabled:
No fuel or strontium can be added to sov starbases
100% disabled:
No fuel or strontium can be added or removed from sov starbases
This is why you can only change sov claiming once per week, to stop you turning off Sov refueling then turning it on again.
So how would this work in practice?
I have a sovereignty 3 system with 3 large POS. The enemy are trying to make life difficult for me so they have roving gangs in my space. The gangs are spread over time zones so that twice every day they hit the beacons. By doing this the defending alliance is unable to refuel their POS. At first its just an annoyance, but over time it starts to become desperate as they need to defend or repair the beacons.
The defenders can mass all their forces at one beacon, but if they do so then I can just hit another.
When going in to seige POS then knock out the cyno beacons first, that means the defenders can't change their stront timers.
It's a very rough idea, it needs a lot of work - but hopefully something good can be made from the concept.
Zarch AlDain
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