[PoB] Weapon platforms and PoBs part 2

[darkwind]

Background: Soon going to come into an effect change regarding weapon platforms. They will not be triggered by small damage done by neutral or friendly ships. But there is second idea after that, which will remove threat of weapon platforms completely, is it needed, or not? Here the idea:

Name:Weapon platforms change Part 2

Description: Removing from bases hostile to many players defense mods (to remove weapon platforms hostility by default) and replacing them with nodocks regulations only (based on base IFF and/or friendly/foe lists).

Making exception to allow mass hostile mods (based on base IFF and friendly/foe lists) during clear siege situations (sieges would be identified automatically by additional damage counting conditions, and by siege state of nearby bases).

Effects #1: No more hostile bases to anyone, unless siege happened to base.
Some hostile unlawful passes lawful bases? PoBs do not take action
Some lawful pass unlawful base? PoBs do not take action anymore.
No ship will be able to hide behind pobs with this change.
PoBs will defend only themselves or their neighboring Pobs, and that's it.

Effects #2: Since weapon platforms will be fulfilling only their role to protect the base, they can be made stronger to fulfill their role better.

Effects #3: People who like to burn pobs will be in theory looking at pobs much more calmly, because PoBs will stop being a threat that blocks NPC bases/jump gates and e.t.c.

Sketch of idea in more details:
different levels of trigger happiness based on more damage levels.

1) base suffered less than 400'000 damage by any player and has less than... lets say 4 million damage from all players in 24 hours. (those numbers before shield modifier again)

mod = most friendly or neutral to everyone (peaceful mod)
defensemode 2 does IFF based nodock
blacklist IFF only does nodock
blacklist shipnames only does nodock

2) base suffered more than 4 million damage in 24 hours (those numbers before shield modifier again)

mod = trigger happy (anti-siege mod is on)
in any defense mode IFF attitude to baserep begins to trigger hostility
blacklist IFF hostility begins to trigger hostility
blacklist shipnames begins to trigger hostility
turns nearby bases to trigger happy mod as well

hmm, still window for abuse.
what if 4 million damage is done by friendly abuser who wishs to trigger IFF based hostility?

well as a choice, 4 million of damage must be performed by players which would be hostile based on IFF or blacklist anyway

P.S. for a pob to attack a particular one player, it still enough to cause more than 400'000 damage. While anti-siege mod is not triggered, it will attack only this particular offensive player.

I feel like people are drawing the exact opposite conclusions of what this change actually means.

Platforms are currently fairly useless against a competent sieging force. A while ago I was part of a siege against a base with a decent chunk of platforms. Our solution to that problem was to have one player in a gunboat press one of his TS keys and hold it down for a couple hours (can tab out or press enter to keep it pressed, if you want). This made the platforms permanently miss and kept all our Battleships safe and sound.

Platforms are currently an area denial weapon: they annoy people and make them not want to play in a certain area. They are of very little use in situations where PoBs are actually threatened*.

We could make platforms do a better job at defending from sieges if this change passed. They could be more accurate at longer ranges against capital ships, the anti-small-ship platforms could effectively create a deathzone for smaller ships to prevent them distracting the anti-cap platforms, etc. However, we currently cannot do so as half the game universe would be rendered unplayable by angry PoBs.

*) Unless you go full New London, of course.

Just tell me why a base should not be shooting at an enemy ship? All NPC bases do it.

Very well. I have an alternate proposal, then: reduce the combat effectiveness of a base's combined weapon platforms to be comparable to a Station armed with standard Station weaponry. If you want to compare apples to oranges, allow me to turn the oranges into apples.