Basing

[Hiro]

THE TOPIC

I feel that basing needs to change in Hs. I am pretty sure the reason why Hs' pop is now 1/5th of its pop at one time is because of three things

1. Ammo Aka new item system

2. Reset And server change

3. Basing

 

There are already several topics on the first two points, yet the third has yet to be pointed out as far as I know.

Basing is now very unfair. The attackers cannot rush, and the "new kick!@#$%^&*" item system, as said by Brain, shows us that repels, bursts and thors now cost money per use. I am not disagreeing with this new change, i like it to be honest, however, Hs needs a way so that the attackers can make some progress.

 

THE PROBLEM

Right now, hs basing for the attackers is sitting at a place untill the defenders run out of ammo. Actually, scratch that. Hs basing is dead. All the attackers do is sit there, and all the defenders do is sit there. Even the old basing system with the massive amounts of weasels were more fun than the new basing. Now all non-defenders play in center or turret. There is no point to basing anymore. The Non-defenders do not make money basing, and so, give up on it altogether.

EDIT=Plan b had a very good point to add. Here is the quote.

plan b> i think a lot of player mentality when basing is..if they dont push, someone else will

Directly relevant to this quote was googol.

Googol> i dont mind buying reps but i always end up as the solo repper, and i dont appreciate that.

THE SOLUTION

Make basing more fair for the attackers. How could we do that?

A possible solution could be to position safes along the bomblines or gunlines of the bases. This way, if a rusher could rep for the lanc, and the lanc could make it to the safe, then the whole base would be moved back, and thus, the attackers make progress. However, we should make the safes in those blines be vulnerable to repels, so if the attacking team could repel the lanc out of the safe, then it would still be possible to clear them.

Another possible solution would be to Increase the price of the repel mount, but make the reps cost less, such as $5 per rep. More people would buy them, and might actually get somewhere. Same could be said with bricks and bursts.

 

CONCLUSION

Make basing less lame and more encouraging for attackers so they will actually do something.

Edited February 19, 2008 by Hiro

[Dr Brain]

Thanks for a well thought out and articulated post.

 

I haven't played long enough to know whether your suggestions would help, but I'll be sure to make basing a top priority for the devs.

[Deathmonger]

I don't really think minisafes will solve the issues since defenders will use them, too, to never lose a base.

 

Basing issues:

 

1. Guns and bombs are now relatively much more powerful. These bases are skewed towards the defenders, but when the wzl was made uber it kind of balanced out into a wzl item spamming match. With the present settings,

 

a. Recharge is extremely slow, attackers are more vulnerable

b. Guns are more powerful

c. Bomb splash damage range and amount of shrap from L1 bombs like falcon are increased

d. Speed is reduced

e. Summoner price is tripled; no attackers can afford it. See recharge.

f. Reps and bursts are less powerful

 

All of these things have swung the balance way towards the defenders.

 

2. Upgrades/Items are now much more expensive and weaker

 

a. Close combat mounts went from $5500 to $16000 for the equivalent items (2 rep, 1/2 burst), plus ammo costs of $20-24. That means you have to spend 2.5x as much up front AND around $100/life. Also, you need to make 2-3 kills/life in order to just break even. Attacking with these items doesn't make money anymore. I guess that's the idea; but attackers don't have any motivation to attack if they lose money.

 

b. The low and mid level reactors/sublights don't deliver a lot of performance for the buck. They are mostly 2x the cost and deliver a fraction of the performance improvement of before. I think the intent was you buy other items to deliver small benefits (like inertial damper), but now you're talking $12k per 3% perf increase. I haven't seen any successful rushing configurations so far.

 

I'll mention some other non-basing-related issues in passing:

 

1. Bountying rate halved (was 10 pts/kill, now 5)

2. Bountying killed by ammo outage/visits to safe

3. Weaker recharge makes ganking of center bountiers easier

4. Smaller gun E cost has actually increased gun spamming, IMO. E.g. Plasma spamming is now popular because of the reduced E cost.

 

I'm actually good with most of the changes in concept--ammo, more stuff, more slots--they allow greater customization of ship loadouts. However, the actual numbers used have thrown a lot of things out of balance--player progression, basing, and bountying. In particular, player progress that once took 20-30 hours now takes like 150 hours.

[Suicide_Run]

Basing is pretty much dead since before ammo system was changed. Defenders has a slight advantage...now its just they have way more advantage than before.

 

I personally dont think minisafes in a base would help as deathmonger said: they can be used by defenders as well. Besides iff the lanc is in the safe, it cant be repped out of it but it may be bricked.

 

Seeing how the problem in basing is not being able to p!@#$%^&* choke points due to a stream of bullets/bombs, my solutions are gonna focus on repping. Heres a few solutions I thought of:

 

Solution #1:

Change Deflector Shield's RepelMax +1 to Repel +1....so you get 1 repel ammo every life which means you get 1 repel every life.

Or you can add an item you can buy which gives you Repel +1 with a max of 1 per ship. Im not sure if the coding is possible since you get a repel ammo every life and then you get to buy repel ammo so you can hold more than 1.

 

Solution #2:

Make the cost of buying repel way less....to less or equal to $10 per repel. That way, it will just force people to remember to buy them but not take alot of money.

 

Solution #3:

Just remove repel from the consumable category so you get prized every life instead of buying them. And make it so you can have a max of 2 repel. Then put portal and/or rockets on the consumable list to balance the amount of items you spawn with that you dont need to buy ammo for.

 

Imo, I think solution 3 is best since new players wont need to worry about buying reps to help out in basing. You can make it so combo mount gives 1 repel and something else with lower exp requirement gives another. That way, longer playing players can rep more. Also, it simplifies things because new players wont need to constantly replenish ammo since I figure new players will go for weapons/reactor/sublight instead of items.

Edited February 19, 2008 by Suicide_Run

[Hiro]

Basing is pretty much dead since before ammo system was changed. Defenders has a slight advantage...now its just they have way more advantage than before.

 

I personally dont think minisafes in a base would help as deathmonger said: they can be used by defenders as well. Besides iff the lanc is in the safe, it cant be repped out of it but it may be bricked.

 

Seeing how the problem in basing is not being able to p!@#$%^&* choke points due to a stream of bullets/bombs, my solutions are gonna focus on repping. Heres a few solutions I thought of:

 

Solution #1:

Change Deflector Shield's RepelMax +1 to Repel +1....so you get 1 repel ammo every life which means you get 1 repel every life.

Or you can add an item you can buy which gives you Repel +1 with a max of 1 per ship. Im not sure if the coding is possible since you get a repel ammo every life and then you get to buy repel ammo so you can hold more than 1.

 

Solution #2:

Make the cost of buying repel way less....to less or equal to $10 per repel. That way, it will just force people to remember to buy them but not take alot of money.

 

Solution #3:

Just remove repel from the consumable category so you get prized every life instead of buying them. And make it so you can have a max of 2 repel. Then put portal and/or rockets on the consumable list to balance the amount of items you spawn with that you dont need to buy ammo for.

 

Imo, I think solution 3 is best since new players wont need to worry about buying reps to help out in basing. You can make it so combo mount gives 1 repel and something else with lower exp requirement gives another. That way, longer playing players can rep more. Also, it simplifies things because new players wont need to constantly replenish ammo since I figure new players will go for weapons/reactor/sublight instead of items.

 

Personally, Solution 3 and solution 1 are not possible solutions.

The reason they made Repels consumable in the first place was because there was too much repel wars...

Here is the basing with repels per spawn.

Spawn, Attach, Rep, Rep, die. Spawn, attach, rep, rep, die.

This is the same for the defenders, thus making basing Repel wars, Who has more repels?

I agree with the 2nd solution.

A possible solution would be to reduce the price of repels and and make bursts the way they were before the new reset.

Then, you would have to pay for bursts, but they would actually MAKE A DIFFERENCE in basing. With the bursts this weak, basing is impossible for the attackers.

[Matrim Cauthon]

i think the most problem is when the levis with 18 shrap with falcon, since no 1 has shrap armor, it does alot, maybe make coils not a sig?

(a couple times when priv vs priv games, the priv without a levi with l3 shrap usually has a harder time)

[tiss61]

u know what could fix all this?

1.) to change back hs to they way they used to be

2.) to make the mounts give what they give instead of buying in the consumeable list

3.) to make the consumeable wayyyy cheaper like others have said.

 

(wierd one has to do with mapping.), But 4th, maybe at places in base put those special "item-proof" tiles in places where people seem to have a hard time rushing through, so it'll be easier for attackers. just a theory.

[oid]

Its way easier to attack now, since there aren't 10 ppl constantly spamming reps at you. And it only takes like 4 shots of plasma to kill most people in base, so it isn't that hard to break through the defenders.

 

The only problems I see are bases w/ 20 blines that the defenders can just camp with a few levs and hold back like 20 ppl and once the defenders actually get pushed back to the flag room they just grab flags and warp out.

[Hiro]

Lies. If 4 shots of plasma can kill them, that means 1 shot of 4 ppl spamming can kill you. And if you can hit them, it means they can hit you. At least before you could rep them too =/ Now all you can do is thrust shot and hope it kills someone :b

[tcsoccer and neptune]

This is by far, the worse I have seen Hyperspace in all the time I have played it. Back about two years ago, there was rankings. Not rankings that are attached to your name, but rankings in the social pyramid that got you onto better or worse teams. Part of the fun of Hyperspace was working your way up that pyramid, and becoming the rich person. Since now there are huge basing games, basically the person who gets the richest, is the person on the biggest team, since skill isn't much of a factor in bases anymore. No, I wasn't up with all the vets basing, but the games were still even. Even if it is semi-good people vs. people that have been playing for five years, the attackers had a chance, because there wasn't one bullet for every pixel on the map. Back then it was mostly skill, and a bit of luck. Now basing is a one-teamed affair. If the defending team has 25 people, and 5 of them choose to be a lanc, it will be near impossible to get even close to killing all of the lances at the same time (within the 3 second respawn time). Everyone complained about vet dominance back then, but the truth is, that is how it is suppose to be. If you suck, you can't expect to beat someone that has played this game for 3 years. Yet another thing, if you have 25 people on your team and you want to win it (and so does everyone else on the team), the average jackpot will be about 50k. 2k for the jackpot?

 

My Solutions:

 

For basing:

 

-Restrict 10 people to each team (9 people on privates because of team name)

-Make bases more open

 

For the jackpot:

 

-Don't divide the jackpot among the team, have everyone get a certain percent of the jackpot

-Make the teams smaller so the jackpot doesn't get divided so much

 

thanks for reading.

[Hiro]

This is by far, the worse I have seen Hyperspace in all the time I have played it.

 

I stopped reading here. I started jumping for joy because somebody finally has some common sense =)

[Matrim Cauthon]

Restrict 10 people to each team (9 people on privates because of team name)

that will just degrade basing to 1 large defending priv, and 3-4 different pubs flanking each other

[Choose Profile]

Neptune, if you want smaller teams and bigger jackpots, play on a priv team.

[Kilo]

HS used to have 5 people per freq. Guess what was a huge problem? Flanking. Personally I liked the game play of smaller freqs better (everyone took responsibility, no liabilities and no moles), but now HS is too large to allow that. A good private team right now can still hold back a pub team almost twice its size right now (because the bases are super rigged towards defense).. and they're the ones who generally collect 20 flags first.

 

In regards to the first post: you don't know what you are talking about, and ammo is not that big of a factor yet. Even if you run out, you just suicide, then use your macro, and get back into position while your 19 teammates keep up the line. But in any case, attacking freqs take bases all of the time. Part of this is due to stupidity on the part of the defending freqs (just as failure is stupidity on the part of the attacking freqs.)

 

I have been a part of successful attack freqs more times than not lately. The biggest problem I see when things aren't moving is that people do not know when to move forward, or seem to think their record is so important that they shouldn't risk dying when they could gain huge position. (By the way, slowness and exposedness in moving forward is a big innate weakness of the big ships. I don't use a basing javelin to show off, you know. Freqs with more of my kind or warbirds will do much better.)

[Unix]

Hmm.... About private teams, that's completely false. Since the reset, the priv teams have yet to win consistently, and even then, it was 6v8v8 and the attacking team was being flanked. They've only one once as of recent (other than runwins).

 

Problem with ammo is you cant bnty as easily. If you run out you'll have to have an "ammo run" which completely disrupts things in the base, not only that, how about antiwarp?

 

The problem with attacking is, no one wants to, they're afraid of dying now.

[Hiro]

Hmm.... About private teams, that's completely false. Since the reset, the priv teams have yet to win consistently, and even then, it was 6v8v8 and the attacking team was being flanked. They've only one once as of recent (other than runwins).

 

Problem with ammo is you cant bnty as easily. If you run out you'll have to have an "ammo run" which completely disrupts things in the base, not only that, how about antiwarp?

 

The problem with attacking is, no one wants to, they're afraid of dying now.

I think you meant 6v18v18.

And of course you wouldnt have anything against that, seeing as how you're in every priv there is

 

As a response to kilo, you just insulted brain. But besides the point, how many wbs did it take to get rid of the bline in base 5?

And consider this, How much money did they defending team make?

[Unix]

Hiro, Idk if you were there or not, but I was on the private team and it was not even close to 6v18v18.

 

Nor have I seen a successful priv team attack as base successfully if teams are 6v10v10 even. It's just a lot harder to priv now.

[Syrith]

Restrict 10 people to each team (9 people on privates because of team name)

that will just degrade basing to 1 large defending priv, and 3-4 different pubs flanking each other

 

PRIVS FTW! I'd rather be on a smaller team of competent players than a swarm of noobs.

Edited March 4, 2008 by Syrith

[Kilo]

I insulted Brain?

 

Anyway, my point was only regarding private teams on defense. If they get the flags, they're not losing them until they're quite outnumbered (unless they are a bunch of low exp players..who don't generally priv it up anyway.)

[Hiro]

In regards to the first post: you don't know what you are talking about

Meanwhile, read the first reply to this topic, by Brain =/

Edited March 4, 2008 by Hiro

[Dr Brain]

I said he articulated himself well. Arnk was talking about his content, not how well he conveyed his meaning.

[Kilo]

I thought maybe you understood the difference between "first post" and "first reply," Hiro.

[tiss61]

omg i swear man Hyperspace is CHAOS and i'm speaking from the heart. the ONLY ONLY reason i still check on hyperspace is i still have the hopes that HS would turn back to the way it used to be. It used to be the best zone ever now it's worse than Desert Storm which have like no pop.

[Hiro]

Ok you know what, Kilo, Let's drop this. I could have said something, but i wont, because me understanding the difference between first post and first reply is irrelevant to the topic. Anyway, i dont know about you, but i wouldnt want to die at 500 bty just to get ammo, would you?

[Kilo]

I'm fine with dropping it, but maybe you should read more carefully before finger-pointing something bogus in the future. Maybe I'm being unreasonable by taking exception to someone saying something untrue about me.

 

If I got up to 500 bounty I wouldn't care if I died or lost my bounty for any other reason because I would have already made a crap ton of money (at least 26k, and certainly much more especially if in a base.) And since getting that amount of bounty is ridiculously easy if given the effort, so what?

 

Bottom line regarding money rewards: if you want (1)higher/easier/faster rewards overall, then you also want (2)resets more often, or you want the (3)zone to stagnate in lieu of a reset after a couple of months because there is nothing to do with money except field spam all day. If you don't want (2) or (3), then you don't want (1). If you want (1) and not (2) or (3), yer livin' in a dream world.

This is how HS works. I am not saying it's perfect, but I am saying this is how it is. Money grows on trees, but there's a reason why that also doesn't work in the real world forever.