Docking ring weaponry

[Durandal]

Now that I've calmed down a bit following all the HF bias accusations, let me clarify the situation.

Well, trying to save your life inRPly is a good behaviour.

No, it isn't, because this isn't actually roleplay. To roleplay requires interaction between two or more persons. These defenses effectively exclude certain parties from interaction. That's not roleplaying, it's more akin to playing a single player game than anything else.

The issue here is not that we want to actively encourage the raiding of capital planets. It's that we want to remove the proverbial hugboxes that people can hide in to avoid interaction. It isn't about blue messages, it isn't about legitimizing raids on capital worlds. That's a concept which I think is ridiculous myself, but it is often times what unlawfuls are forces to resort to in order to interact with lawful players.

Let's talk about the implications of removing these weapons for a minute in a clear and unbiased light. Does it mean unlawfuls are now capable of camping a planet, and that lawfuls will have to respond in order to oust them? Yes. Is that good or bad? Depends on who you ask. Personally I see all interaction as being good for gameplay even if it doesn't make the most roleplay sense. This is the main issue which people are focusing on.

However, let us take a look at the other side of the coin. Lawfuls lose their safe haven and pirates/terrorists/revolutionaries/aliens/whatever are present in the system. This lack of an impenetrable fortress encourages them to actually seek out and engage the threat. There's going to be a fight one way or another; the lack of missiles at docking rings suddenly makes the prospect of fighting at the planet no more or less appealing than fighting anywhere else. Indeed, many locations may be more fortified, for example a stationary battleship in the system, or a tactically significant chokepoint. This generates more interaction and makes more sense from a roleplay perspective, which is something I hope we all want here. If not, you should probably be playing single player.

I understand the desire to say "it doesn't make sense", but unfortunately it's an issue of human nature. You can't expect everyone to act their roles and actually go out hunting their enemies or patrolling their system when they're under more of a threat away from their home base.

Anyone who thinks this is about anything other than encouraging interaction across the server is deluding themselves, and I hope this post has shed some more light on our stance and just maybe cut down on the bias accusations.

As for your concerns, Laura...

If I, as a RFP, will pursue a hostile which decides to run to Vogtland or any other unlawful base and hug it, the weaponry will shoot at me and give me hard times.

Yep, it'll do exactly that. Give you a hard time. What it won't do is instakill you and ensure the enemy victory. No other bases in the game are armed the way capital planets are; it's still possible to pursue an unlawful back to base and win. As for guard systems, well, they're getting deguarded. The defenses in them are almost always less potent than a capital planet's with a few exceptions, but those exceptions will be toned down to make interaction in those systems feasible as well.