I think you should decrease the number of teams from three to two before you go and start disabling battlescapes. That cuts down the required team assets by a third and it huddles players together without actually changing the game in a significant way.
6 Likes
I think this is a reasonable solution, and people that are worried that surprise attacks won’t be possible forget that currently we have a single battlescape… The game would still be perfectly possible on a single planet with lower warp speed!
If we assume a Sol-like system, battlescapes are going to vary widely in size:
How do you plan to distribute battescapes?
5 Likes
Nice image.
I think the ammount of POI (Bases, Stations, Factories etc.) will be more important than distance.
Additionally Carriers will decrease the importance of distance.
And nearly forgot, gravity influence to warp could make the effective travel time comparable between Battlescape even thoigh they have different sizes.
I don’t like the idea of unrealistically placed Bodies for gamplay reasons by the way, make warp faster if travel time should be shorter.
Problem with differing warp speed is that the player will have a hard time comparing actuall absolute distances. Sense of scale will be hard to achieve, I don’t think we can do without that though.
So if the ammount of POI per Battlescape stays adequate for the current ammount of players the density should rooughly stay the same.
Altough a bit of variance could be interesting. As well as different POI density on certain Bodies.
2 Likes
If there’s less bodies, we can have the stations/bases more concentrated. The warp already works in a way that different arena sizes don’t matter too much.
This’ll work, done right!
This is already being actively discussed.
3 Likes
I’m busy at work so I don’t have time to compose a proper response which I will do tonight, but I’ll outline my suggestion of how to tackle the issue.
The issue I think people have is losing the seamlessness that the I-Novae engine does so well. It’s all very well saying that technically the system is still seamless and you can travel everywhere, but if there are no facilities there until such time as one battlescape is ‘won’ and the server spawns the bases at the new battlescape, that’s quite jarring and you lose the notion that it is one seamless environment.
What I’d like is:
- Facilities exist throughout the system at all times. [Instead of facilities only existing in the ‘active’ battlescape]
- The fight for a solar system happens in one continuous match. [Instead of the fight for each battlescape being a match]
This has the potential issue of players spreading out rather than focusing on one Battlescape. So to tackle this:
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Have two teams, not three.
- Where previously there would be three team-team ‘front lines’ (Red/Blue, Blue/Green, Green/Red), there is now only one ‘front line’ between the two teams. This naturally focuses players to 1 place rather than 3.
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Limit the top speed of ‘warp’ to a speed that facilitates easy travel within a battlescape but makes travelling to another battlescape take a boringly long time.
- ~66kkm/s would mean travelling twice Titan’s orbital radius would take 30 seconds, but travelling from Earth to Mars at their closest approach would take 20 minutes. Saturn to Jupiter at closest approach would take 2.7 hours.
- Give capital ships an even slower warp speed
-
Carriers and the other capitals have a ‘jump drive’ which is used to travel from one battlescape to another.
- This jump drive only becomes active once the ‘current’ battlescape is ‘won’
- By capturing/wining a battlescape, the team secures the resources required to power their jump drives and jump to the next battlescape
- Jump drive can be totally automatic with no extra interaction mechanics if dev time is tight
- The team that ‘looses’ the battlescape cannot jump, they must respawn at the battlescape that they have been forced back to, that the winners are about to jump to.
- This jump drive only becomes active once the ‘current’ battlescape is ‘won’
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Players can still chose to slowboat to another battlescape
- They will find facilities there [So won’t experience the shattering of the seamlessness]
- The bases will be very well defended by NPCs - more so than in the active battlescape
- Explain by saying most NPCs retreat from the ‘front line’ battlescape - the players are the vanguard
- Players won’t be able to respawn there because their carriers are back at the currently active battlescape
- If enough players slowboat across together and manage to defeat the defenders against the odds, that counts just the same as if they had won it while it was the ‘current’ battlescape.
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Arrange the solar systems in so the battlescapes are chained together and there is a tug of war which can move back and forward as the teams win & lose battlescapes.
- I’ll put together some diagrams to demonstrate this tonight.
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Another important thing: if there are facilities at other battlescapes, are these active or not ? As in, do factories in other battlescapes generate resources/credits ? Do haulers spawn and haul resources between bases ? Can a player respawn at one of these locations, or only in the “current” active battlescape ?
If factories in other battlescapes do generate resources, then as the game progresses as “tug of war”, less and less resources will be available in every match. I don’t think that’s desirable; in fact you could probably argue the opposite, where you’d like the “final” battlescape to be epic & grandiose with bigger battles…
If haulers transport resources at other battlescapes, all of these will consume server performance for no good reason ( we start to enter the “technical issues” that Keith was mentionning earlier ).
Just food for thought.
4 Likes
wise though flavien.
Aslo https://www.eugdpr.org/the-regulation.html are active now , your delaware company term do no apply anymore.
I would like to see them be active in the sense of visible NPC activities without giving any points / resources towards any team until the battlescape gets activated / captured (insert game mode here 
).
To make battlescapes active you could have to scout for the factories, bases, etc first. And if the server resources aren’t enough for full simulation, maybe limit the NPC activities in these neighboring / not “active” battlescape to a certain minimum.
The concern about thinning out the action to much with a to wide play zone is a valid point. But there’s always the possibility of introducing bonuses / extras for players that fight in a specific battlescape. So, if you help fighting in the current designated “main” battlescape you get extra resources / more stuff for your team / yourself.
Bate the players into the place you want them to be, this will be seen as something positive instead of limiting their movement which always looks negative.
More food.
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I also don’t really like the idea of having the server basically decide where the action happens.
That said, concentrating players on one, maybe two, locations will probably be critical to enable proper gameplay.
What I would propose is the following:
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One match/war consists of two teams fighting for control over the entire solar system, these matches can last hours/days
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During this match/war so called “conficts” happen, basically another word for a usual match as it is known from other games, a “conflict” has a start where a message pops up telling everyone where the conflict is at (new conflict at Eupraxia Station, Rethe Prime) and the personal kill scores are reset
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where a conflict arises is entirely dependent by the players actions!
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to start a conflict, a sizeable group of players have to launch an attack at a station or base (the size scales with numbers of players on the server, for example to start the conflict at least 70% of one team have to start the attack on the station/base), this is done by the players destroying the “automated defense guard array” of the station
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the “automated defense guard array” is basically an exposed station module that generates the stations/bases shields, as long as the “ADGA” is up, the station has an infinite shield that can’t be penetrated, flying inside the shield is deadly because the stations weapons just obliterate you (super increased station weapons damage ->instadeath)
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the durability of this “ADGA” station module is dependent of the player population, with this you can scale the needed player numbers to start the match. Only with the firepower support of capital ships you will be powerful enough to destroy the “ADGA”
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once the “ADGA” is destroyed, the stations shields go offline and players can start to destroy the structure. As soon as the stations “ADGA” is destroyed the station will start to manufacture a new “ADGA”.
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defender bots might only spawn once the stations shields are down
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once the conflict started the attacking players either destroy the station, or the stations team can defend the station till the time the new “ADGA” is ready to be deployed
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is the station not dead within this time, the new “ADGA” is deployed. Once it is deployed, the stations shields immediatly go up again and are impenetrable for some arbitrary time span, attacking then will be completely useless
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when either the new “ADGA” is deployed or the station is destroyed the “conflict” is won/lost, players will then get rewards depending on their personal performance (kills, deaths, etc.) and the team that lost/won has either lost a station or defended it
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the time it takes the station to manufacture a new “ADGA” is dependent on how much damage it is receiving, for example if the attacker group arrives and destroyes the “ADGA” and then immediatly leave, it takes the station only a very short time to rebuild it, if however after the “ADGA” is destroyed the station receives heavy continued fire from cap ships, it will take the station longer to rebuild it
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the “match” ends when all stations/bases of one team are destroyed and no more spawn locations are avaílable to the losing team
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the winning side the gets a fat personal credit/item reward, even if they are offline at that moment
Team credits and bots
- Team credits are accumulated by bots harvesting resources, they are not team wide but each station has its own credit account
- each base has one super armored freighter that carries resources from its planetary base to the station
- only when the botfreighter arrives at the station the station receives the credits
- the stations credits are used up by spawning capital ships (needed to start conflicts) and rebuilding its “ADGA”
- each station has a maximum amount of credits it can hold, when the stations credits are empty it can no longer spawn capital ships or rebuild its “ADGA”
- when the maximum amount of credits of the station is reached, the amount that is then gained will be delivered “to the home world” (lore explaination)
- as the match progresses, naturally resources will dwindle and one side will slowly gain the upper hand, I expect the match to progress quicker and quicker by the end because the odds will start to shift dramatically
Pros:
- only one bot per base needed, if there is one or two bases per planet/moon, the number of freighterbots stays quite low
- no defender bots needed outside of conflict zones, because the enemies facilities are protected by their super powerful shields
- every planet can have bases and stations
- players decide where to attack by bringing a fleet with capships to the conflict location
- by scaling the needed firepower it needs to start a conflict, the conflicts can only happen at one location each per team (two active conflicts at a time, one attacking and one defending conflict for each team basically)
- players play relatively short “conflicts” that earn them their personal rewards, similar to the usual matches from other MP games
- scouting will be a natural element of the game, because the locations where the conflict should start must be pretty devoid of the opposing team to start the conflict
- small side activities like trying to intercept the enemies freighterbots become a natural part of the gameplay and will help with winning the match by starving the enemy of team credits
- the game will have a somewhat persistant feeling to it, because one conflict doesn’t win the war for the solar system, and good planning and scouting will help win the war/match
Cons:
- You tell me
3 Likes
I would keep everything gameplay-relevant focused on the active battlescape. However, I would certainly like to see bases/stations exist at all times.
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An active battlescape can function largely as it does already, a distributed selection of bases for each team.
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A conquered battlescape could be flooded with NPC defences for that team, making it extremely difficult to return there, but doesn’t actively generate any more resources outside its own zone. There may be conditions where this could be retaken if the other team wins a zone.
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An unconquered, inactive battlescape could have neutral “civilian” stations/bases that are then commandeered by the teams when the battlescape becomes active (probably passively, or through scouting?) Until then, there would be very few neutral NPCs that could act as a little target practice if someone bothers to go there. If you want real action, go to the active battlescape.
I think only spawning in the active battlescape would keep it tighter.
And if 2 teams works better than 3, then go for it!
1 Like
I must say, I too initially understood that a match will feature a conflict spawning the entire solar system, with players deciding when and where attacks are carried out, not an algorithm.
Even if free roam remains available across the entire system, I feel that the game loses its uniqueness and advantage on the market if players are restricted to playing in the vicinity of a planet at one given time. What would be the point of a seamless solar system if the exact same gameplay could be achieved with instances/maps/sectors just like in most other space games?
For the issue of keeping players together, I feel that the game can “cheat” in a number of ways to incentivize players to congregate, without forcing them to do so if they feel like going Geronimo outside of the intended active battlescape. How about terrifying AI wings to take out lone kamikaze players who attack the wrong spot, or credit rewards only for the players who follow the “orders” of attacking in the intended battlescape?
For the server performance issue, I’m asking myself why there can’t be simply less assets altogether? Must each battlescape consist of a minimum number of assets because of other gameplay reasons?
For the resource generation problem, I don’t see how diminishing returns for the losing side at a battlescape level is any better than the same on a solar system level.
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Resources would be reset for every battlescape.
OK, so there probably was a miscommunication somewhere, as I’ve understood the same as most of the other users for the gameplay: a battlescape IS the solar system.
I’ve never quite caught the “semi-persistent” state promised at the high-end KS goal. Now we see better on your initial intents, although some of your words need more accurate definitions.
No, I don’t. MMO means what it means: Massively Multiplayer Online (game). And so far, you’ve done great work: hundreds of players can battle among themselves. An MMO doesn’t always have to have a virtual economy, nor any “persistence” beyond personnal stats / customization.
In this regard, consider PUBG / Fortnite as specific subsets of the MMO genre.
While I completely agree with this idea, I disagree with your proposed method. We’ve already got the “sandbox mode” to freely explore the system. If the battlescape can last very long period of times (hours / days if I understood) and is only set to a planet and its immediate surroundings, then the rest of the system is pure cosmetics. Which would be a shame, in my opinion, not to fully exploit it and set yourself apart from most other space MMOs.
Now, I see that you’re worried about some technical and gameplay issues, should all the bases be available.
Well, I think you’ve provided the answer yourself!
That’s it! Keep all the bases as uncaptured, save for two bases that will serve as starters for each team (or three, if you intend to keep 3 teams).
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Unclaimed bases can be captured, or destroyed if a “scorched earth” tactic needs to apply. The greater the player’s number and the bigger the ship’s tonnage, the quicker.
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Claimed bases can be captured with the desctruction of whatever defensive module you’ll imagine. Of course, destroying the production is also an option, at the risk that when captured, the base doesn’t serve much in generating resources…
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The players decide themselves how best to organize tactics and which objectives / bases to pursue.
As for the minimal threshold of players for the gameplay / game experience to be interesting, and its mitigation or solutions, well… many contributors have suggested a lot of different views, both here and in previous threads.
3 Likes
Or don’t, because PUBG/Fortnite aren’t considered MMOs by most people in the industry. They’re large arena combat FPS games. MMOs almost always have persistent worlds; it’s become a defining aspect of the supergenre.
There’s a potential issue here, which I do think should be A/B tested rather than just assumed: If the whole system is conquerable at the start, it actually encourages players to fan out at the start of a match and, basically, see nobody for the gods know how long. If that’s something Keith and Flavian explicitly want to avoid, because they’re trying to sell the large fleet battles, then it makes sense to not incentivize early-game spread.
Personally, I’m all about the haunting loneliness and emptiness of space, but that doesn’t seem to be the focus of Battlescape.
4 Likes
Sorry for the lack of follow up post last night. I got kinda busy.
I was going to write about the disappointing and frankly concerning manner of the communication regarding this issue, but let’s just crack on with the solution 
…
Continuing to add to the mechanics explained in my above post …
Example of tug-of-war 'chain' of battlescapes
Match starts with both teams fighting over a shared battlescape half facilities red, half blue
— — — 
— 
— —
Red win leaving a few facilities red, other facilities destroyed.
— — — — — —
Red win leaving a few facilities red, other facilities destroyed.
— — — — — —
Blue win leaving a few facilities blue, other facilities destroyed.
— — — — — —
Blue win red only had a few facilities as most were destroyed in the earlier fight in this battlescape. Blue destroy them all leaving no active facilities in this battlescape
— — — — 
— —
Red win the battlescape with no remaining facilities is skipped
— — — — — —
etc etc…
Separate scenario in which a group of blue players slowboat and win a battlescape ‘out of sequence’:
— — — — — —
Group of blue players take the next red battlescape while the fight for the initial battlescape continues
— — — — — —
Blue win the initial battlescape, the next one is already blue-controlled so the fight is now in the one after that:
— — — — — —
Respawning
Players would be able to spawn at:
- Player carriers, which could be anywhere in the solar system
- NPC carriers only in the active battlescape
- Facilities in the active battlescape
- Facilities in a battlescape controlled by their team which has enemies currently detected within it
Player resources
- Players’ personal pot of resources are not reset. They retain their resources when they move between battlescapes, whether they respawn or jump.
- Players only gain resources from the battlescape they are currently in.
- While a player is in the vastness of interplanetary space they receive nothing.
Facility resources
All factories in all battlescapes would generate resources even when not the focus battlescape, but when there are no players anywhere near there is no need for the haulers to actually exist with their associated performance costs - the server can just ‘simulate’ the resource gain. If a player comes within some appropriate range then the hauler can spawn.
- Resources generated in a battlescape would be shared between the facilities and players in that battlescape. (How they are divided out is up for discussion & testing)
- Facilities would use the resources to spawn new NPCs and to repair themselves. NPCs themselves would gain resources in the same way that players do and would spend them on repairing, rearming and respawning.
Battles getting progressively bigger
As a match progresses along the tug-of-war chain of battlescapes, the battles get bigger and bigger:
If we say the red team win the first battlescape, they force the blue team back into a blue-controlled battlescape.
The facilities in that battlescape have been accumulating resources for the duration of the fight for the first battlescape so have more resources at their disposal. (Up to a limit, as @Playbenni also suggests) These resources can be distributed to the blue players and NPCs resulting in more ships and more capitals on the ‘retreating’ blue team.
As for the ‘advancing’ red team, as they are attacking a blue-controlled battlescape they have no existing facilities in the battlescape, but they bring a load of NPCs from the previous battlescape and the players retain their personal resources (which on average would be more than the defeated blue players).
With their initial concentration of numbers, the advancing team should gain a foothold in the battlescape by capturing a facility and starting to gain resources there.
With a little fine tuning this should result in a reasonably balanced situation so the advancing team does not snowball getting more and more powerful, but both teams get bigger and bigger as the match gets closer to either end of the tug-of-war chain.
In our imaginary scenario, if the blue team defeat the reds in this 2nd battlescape, the battle moves back to the 1st battlescape where there’d be a bunch of destroyed facilities (not generating any resources) and a bunch of red facilities (either originally red or captured).
This gives more consequence to whether a facility is captured or destroyed.
If the next active battlescape would be one in which all the facilities have been destroyed, then that battlescape is skipped and the next one in the tug-of-war ‘chain’ becomes the active one. This reduces the likelihood of the tug-of-war going back and forwards indefinitely.
And breath. 
Actually I spent over an hour on this with plenty of thinking and breathing time
2 Likes
I know that most people won’t agree with my affirmation, but I’d also like to remind that the original MMOs were linked with RP. Persistence was kind of pre-requisite, both for consistency and enhanced gameplay / functionalities. It doesn’t mean that the absence of persistence automatically excludes a game from being a subset of MMO definition.
Fair enough, although your assumption mostly depends on the current and maximum players allowed.
OK, then for two teams, keep an odd number of total available bases (like 5 or 7) with one bases allocated for each team. And randomize the available bases, so that each restart won’t feel the same.
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I’m pretty sure that @Kichae’s point was that if the teams start with a bunch of unclaimed capture points between them, there will be a time at the beginning of the match when both teams work their way through those capture points until they eventually meet in the middle. Until that meeting in the middle, players won’t see players from the other team.
That’s assuming you meant for the capture points to be arranged in some sort of line…
— 
— — —
This being the case, you might as well start the match at that midpoint. This is what the tug-of war ‘chain’ of capture points does.
If however you meant for an arrangement more like this:
⪪ ⪫
In which case there isn’t the initial wait before meeting enemy players, but you do split the players across three separate fights. Avoiding splitting the players up is exactly what this whole discussion is about.
Not really @kichae, MMO by definition is defined by the player numbers and the game being online, Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) which was the original definition. Also from Google.
MMO
noun
an online video game which can be played by a very large number of people simultaneously.
"a well-made fantasy MMO"```I tried making a middle ground for those scenarios.
Have a area where the primary battles will play out,
and another space where u require more finesse to play out.
Imagine needing to chart out the asteroid field from the destroyed planet to enable jumps towards the opposing teams planet influence sphere to start more battlescapes.
Will need to divert strike teams for scouting and hindering the other team from doing the same,
while u can’t take to much from the early battlescapes for danger of loosing those ones.
Makes it both a line and a split at the same time.
Any thoughts? :>
1 Like