POB Siege Balance

[Shiki]

As has been said numerous times, some "symmetry" in PoB sieges would be nice. Attackers build a siege platform which does the job of holding right mouse button with Siege turrets equipped for them (but better). This puts the defending PoB on a timer of sorts where it's going to die to the attacking platform sooner or later. Thus, the defenders need to defend their bases by killing a siege platform and the attackers need to attack the base by defending said siege platform.

Coincidentally this can fix the "asymmetry in risk" issue as well, by making the platform cost a certain amount of resources (and by extension credits) up front and perhaps making it consume some munition commodity over time as well. This way both the defenders and attackers would have something tangible to lose.

This would all have to be balanced in such a way that a platform can't kill a base overnight, and base owners can't kill the platform overnight either, so I'm sure it'd take some fine-tuning to get right. But it still sounds a hundred times better to me (and infinitely less boring for the attackers).

Sieging a PoB is the most mind-numbingly boring activity in the entire game, so it really wouldn't hurt to get a bit of an overhaul.

Can you imagine outcasts and rogues building siege platforms in Liberty?

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[Haste]

Can you imagine them successfully sieging any of the Manhattan PoBs as it is? I don't think the concept is flawed just because Liberty PoBs are inherently the most well-protected thanks to the local lawful playerbase being big and particularly cap-heavy.

And yes, I can imagine people sieging a base in Colorado or whatever and doing just fine, assuming platforms can't just be blown out of the sky while the attacking players are asleep.

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[Thunderer]

@Haste That idea has been present since Durandal's dev tenure and I've always approved of it. It allows factions that don't have battleships to be able to besiege a POB, besides also giving the boring part of sieges to a robot.

However, I have to ask, how does besieging a siege platform differ from besieging a POB?

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[Lythrilux]

Battleships being part of the siege process at all is one of the biggest issues with the whole system.

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[darkwind]

As has been said numerous times, some "symmetry" in PoB sieges would be nice. Attackers build a siege platform which does the job of holding right mouse button with Siege turrets equipped for them (but better). This puts the defending PoB on a timer of sorts where it's going to die to the attacking platform sooner or later. Thus, the defenders need to defend their bases by killing a siege platform and the attackers need to attack the base by defending said siege platform.

Coincidentally this can fix the "asymmetry in risk" issue as well, by making the platform cost a certain amount of resources (and by extension credits) up front and perhaps making it consume some munition commodity over time as well. This way both the defenders and attackers would have something tangible to lose.

This would all have to be balanced in such a way that a platform can't kill a base overnight, and base owners can't kill the platform overnight either, so I'm sure it'd take some fine-tuning to get right. But it still sounds a hundred times better to me (and infinitely less boring for the attackers).

Sieging a PoB is the most mind-numbingly boring activity in the entire game, so it really wouldn't hurt to get a bit of an overhaul.

That's something reasonable to change the status quo.
The idea to make PoBs quickly purchased and built, wasting only money instead of time is a good one too though.
PoB building and repairing should be done by money earned by the favorite method, instead of forced tons of hauling.

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[Shiki]

Can you imagine them successfully sieging any of the Manhattan PoBs as it is? I don't think the concept is flawed just because Liberty PoBs are inherently the most well-protected thanks to the local lawful playerbase being big and particularly cap-heavy.

And yes, I can imagine people sieging a base in Colorado or whatever and doing just fine, assuming platforms can't just be blown out of the sky while the attacking players are asleep.

Well, I cannot imagine sieging manhattan pobs, thats why I think that there is no balance issue as it is. Side with more attackers/defenders wins. Its about player balance and not balance dev as I see it.

I also think that forcing attackers to build pob to kill pob will only make sieges more rare. As vasko pointed out, game is spammed with pobs. Complicating mechanics to kill them adds more tasks along side of dealing with defenders and platforms as it is. It might be 2iq job to sit down and hold right click. Everything before that is whats complicated.

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[Lythrilux]

There are lots of POBs on the server yet the vast majority of them exist without causing any issues whatsoever. What's the problem? If there's ever a need to regulate them, leave that to the Staff. I think the ability for players to so easily destroy months if not years of work in a fraction of the time is both destructive and bad gameplay design. Making sieges a rarer, more thought out process rightfully equalizes the mechanics.

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[Shiki]

Also how factions with no battleships or freelacers will kill sieging platform? They can kill battleships though.

Or defenders can build counter siege platform to kill one?

Thats the problem I have with this, using pobs to kill pobs, adding more nonsense to the plugin that was a mistake from beginning.

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[Haste]

By not using the same ridiculously flawed mechanics of requiring Battleships to kill a platform in the first place.

Nobody implied they'd have to be as badly designed as current sieges.

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[Sava]

Its about player balance and not balance dev as I see it.

When defenders and attackers mainly live in different timezones, it becomes very one-sided, don't you think so?
Attackers can do their thing unopposed, while the defenders don't even have stuff to shoot at by the time they log.
Platforms or siege factories could solve this issue, as well as "equalizing the risks".

I can agree that it would be nice to incentivize regular base-building-joe to cooperate with others, in favor of fewer but better managed POBs. But arbitrarily knocking out few POBs once in a while isn't going to solve this. This is a separate issue.

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