Nomads

[sindroms]

A waste of time? Perhaps that is true, but here's my take on it.







First of all, I am noticing that most of the thread itself is populated by a highly vocal minority of players who have been wanting to rant about something and have been finally given a chance to do so. The amount of strawmen present makes me wonder if we even need scarecrows in a sal.t flat. Let me address the one main and glaring issue that nobody seems to even consider.

Yes, it is possible for me to uncloak on you near a jumpgate or anywhere else and kill you without any roleplay or warning. Understandably, this is something very ill received as rules 2.0 and 3.0 are the most heavily enforced ones on the server and you have been brought up to take them very seriously. Though let me ask you this, when you meet a nomad, do you really want to sit through that squiggly line, dot dot and asteric-laden sack of crap you've seen them doing for the past ten years? Yes, some people look forward it, but they seem to be a minority. The roleplay like that seems pretentious as hell and every time I personally have seen it, it makes me want to wear my designer glasses and get a starbucks.

What I would really like to see is for the current nomad-related groups to be merged and nomad players be used for combat purposes as their forms were directly designed to do that and have the infestees, which are actually capable to use human speech be their translators or to do the actual non-combat interactions with players. You know what happens when a Marduk starts talking to you? Your brain explodes. It does not happen.

As for the no warning crying, you seem to be focusing on one specific aspect, completely ignoring the fact that the K'Hara ID is a Terrorist ID. It does not matter if you get a /l1 /l2 /l3 or do not - you are still going to get shot and, unless you are a snub, you are still going to die. Apart from very specific examples with snubs getting instakilled - ships that COULD in fact evade the attacker if given a chance to respond, it does not matter if you jump your 5ker into a system and the nomad is waiting for you at the gate. At that point it is completely irrelevant how many /l#s you are given, you are still going to die.

For years the community has complained how Nomads are defanged and how the Keepers, later K'Hara, could not represent them in a manner that would make them a suitable extension of what we were given in the singleplayer campaign. So far so that the Liberty-Rheinland war was given to the players to offer more chance for PVP. After that, Gallia was implemented to give everyone in Sirius a new baddie to be afraid of.

Yes, we literally chose a bunch of frenchies over the signature singleplayer enemy.

As for not being able to avoid these situations, I call major BS on that one. Excuse me, but who here does not check the player list. I physically cannot imagine that players posting in this thread, members of the community belonging to BHG and mining groups - do not use the Player List. Heck, even if you do not use it regularly, surely you can notice constant red death messages involving the only nomad faction on the server in them. There is no excuse for it.



That being said. I will be the first one to say that this sort of playstyle will in fact cause negative impact on the server if it is not kept in check. Huggie already started applying limitations on how many people there can be in the faction itself and how many of them can use this sort of engagement approach. I should also note that I was given a chance to detag my ship and change its name willingly. Needless to say, I am not doing that for a reason.

In the last four days of me flying, I had Core take a trip down from the Omicrons to flush us out from New London, I had the HMS start employing cloak disruptors on a rather frequent basis (Again, it turns out that you can buy these disruptors from one of the POBs in NL and, most importantly, SELL THEM OFF AGAIN back on the base to get your money back.) I also had Order players come after us. So how about we give our anti-nomad factions a known, reasonably sized group of entities they can then hunt down.

Now as far as nomad cloaks go, the ability to cloak infinitely is currently being balanced by a very long charge time. This does not seem like a big thing, but when I kill someone and I know that the other players in the system are already seeking me out, waiting for my cloak to regenerate and trying to fly off the plane to avoid detection is harder than it sounds. It takes only one snub with a CD to pin the nomad ship down.

There is nowhere for me to run. No base I can hug. No base I can dock on. I cannot possibly kill a snub that does not want to get hit and all I can do is just sit there like a turkey until the bombers and BSs arrive.

That is my experience so far. It is cathartic as hell, yes, but I've only received 4 separate occasions of complaints in PMs ingame. It seems that the moment players get nuked by a nomad, they do not mind it as much as the vocal individuals in this thread make it seem to be.


Anyway, I in all honestly think this can work out fine, but there are a few things I can suggest from playing so far.

*Limit the amount of players having access to this sort of silent nomad terrorism.
*Limit the ship type said player uses to a snub or a gunboat.
*Increase the nomad cloak presence sound and use a warning sound similar to an Incoming Missile one, rather than the subtle hum we have now. Many players (myself included) listen to music while playing.
*Increase the sound radius to as far as it is possible. Since the game does not display sounds made by players that are not on your scanner range, it should just be maxed out. Players with different scanners will then detect from different ranges accordingly.
*Implement energy drain during cloaked mode so that uncloaking and instantly opening fire is physically impossible on caps.
*Implement a rule where Terrorist ID ships need to physically log off for 2 or more hours, rather than just changing systems.

And in the end, if the admin team thinks that this is harming the server gameplay, they can step in at any time and just set their own rules on the faction regardless of what its members or leader may think. It has been done in the past, it can be done now.







I find this new gameplay fun. I find it cathartic. But I do not just want to go around looking for easy kills, as satisfying they are. I also want to see huge piles of people amass, grab pitchforks and come after the big bad nomad as to remove the threat. I want to see people start using cloak disruptors and use baiting strategies. And I am not necessarily opposed to them achieving their goals. K'Hara.Zalktis will die. A lot. That is the point.

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