PvP = RP - I was ganked

[Lythrilux]

Weren't you the same guy who promised the same "If you come in our home-system, expect heavy resistance with minimal warning" to all Order/Nomad/Non allowed faction players who entered rho for the same reason Core entered Mu/Gamma some time ago? When The Core built Invicta Research station to be more precise.

Indeed I was. However I didn't make that statement with the basis of "RP > Gameplay" in mind. My justification was Invicta itself (although I guess from one angle that could be seen as an RP reason, but our reasons related to the ooRP enjoyment and desires of the builders). Now POBs are a tricky matter here, and actually I'm glad you brought the point up as it'll be good for the discussion. I'll expand upon my point.

Now normally you'd have each aforementioned faction raiding each others home systems respectively. Normal PvP etiquette would apply (or at least in most of those systems, as certain factions have a very sketchy view of etiquette much like some viewpoints expressed in this thread). So for example Core would raid Gamma and there'd be shooty shooty and Corsairs would raid Delta/Rho and there'd be shooty shooty and the end product would be a normal raid. However the construction, and later siege of Invicta Research Complex, flipped this on it's head.

Core spent hours upon hours and invested much time supplying, upgrading and maintaining IRC at this point (you were one of those players Carter). When the Corsairs decided to come and siege it we were literally only a few dozen loads of RA or so to a Core upgrade. Prior to this there was some sort of mutual agreement between the Core and Order playerbases as both factions had POBs within their home systems and didn't want to cause upset to each other nor create the sort of storm the Corsair side initiated. Admittedly I did try to warn the Corsair side prior as a POB siege cannot be differentiated from a raid, and therefore we'd be fighting with much more ferocity. Unfortunately they did not listen, and the end result was a huge wound inflicted by both sides on each others respective playerbases. I'd like to say it's healed considerably since then though. Anyway, as soon as the siege had begun things had just hit the fan. The Core side couldn't trust Corsair ships being even one jump away from Omicron Rho because a dead Core ship meant one less ship to defend IRC from Corsair attack. We had to treat everything as a potential attacker. And when the eventual Rho raid occurred The Core side didn't have the option to hold back because if all The Core ships died in combat there'd be no one to protect Invicta. This was also back when The Core had little in terms of indies, therefore Core| were the only reliable defenders for Invicta. And thus the entire siege devolved into a gank fest. Due to the flimsy POB mechanics we had back then we didn't have the opportunity to wait for the POB siege to timeout, so it became a matter of trying to demotivate the Corsair side from raiding Invicta.

And it's the same thing back when I was leading JM and we had PLR and other Rogues trying to raid Spire. We pulled no punches. As soon as we saw a hostile Rogue near Spire we piled on it with whatever we had because either A. That Rogue might want to kill some potential defenders early so they wouldn't be around to assist against the main siege, B. That Rogue might want to shoot the POB and so it'd be efficient to clean it up quickly or C. Killing it ASAP would mean we'd be able to dent the Rogues numbers prior to the main siege.

Tactics, and defence of a player asset in which endless hours of time that had been invested in it were at risk, overwrote notions of fairplay and gameplay because we didn't have access to that luxury. POB siegers won't play by the same rules as POB defenders. It becomes a game of dog eat dog. And whilst unfortunately the siegers would be very unhappy that they got the sort of defensive response they did and were unable to destroy the POB (but is that even a bad thing?), if the POB was destroyed there would be much upset and no ounce of fun for the defending side.

In my experience POB sieges are just hugely stressful and aren't fun at all. It's a horrible process for the defenders to go through because they have to worry so much about the POB itself and they're forced to stomp anything that tries to shoot it, and it's a horrible process for the attackers because they have to put up waves upon waves of multiple, merciless ships willing to defend their POB to the death (and that's on top of the POBs own health).

tl;dr POB sieges are a horrible part of Disco that honestly bring out the worst in everyone.

Nowadays because not only do we have better POB siege mechanics (still not perfect, but much more manageable), but also Invicta is Core 3 (or 4?) as well as the fact that Core| doesn't own IRC anymore, Rho raids and even Delta raids pose no risk. We don't have that element of needing to worry about IRC being attacked and therefore we don't need to go HAM on anything that comes near Rho. Being able to relax is such a nice feeling and these days I couldn't care less if someone blows us up in Rho. It's a great joy being able to function with normal pvp etiquette, as I assure you going out of your way to curbstomp is neither fun nor ethically pleasing. It's just a shame that Rho feels so... out of the way in the Omicrons? It's hard to explain, but I wish people raided it more often.

I digress though. This has nothing to do with the 'RP > Gameplay' topic as our decision was not RP based. This was more about the effort of players being at risk rather than their fun (although if you find fun in supplying a POB for hours upon hours then I guess that's your shtick) and if that effort was to, quite literally, explode in a ball of flames there would be much upset afterwards. The difficulty was that the actions we would take would also upset the other side however. In the end, when it comes to POB sieges, no one benefits nor wins. Everyone loses, regardless of the outcome.

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