Easiest solution to all the xp imbalance problems of the game

If you want a healthy player population, you might want to consider a less hardcore ship loss mechanic, losing a C6 is just game over at this point, the grind/time require to get it back will be too much for most casual and moderate players. How about having insurance like in EVE?

 

New players will love fighting lvl 5 officer ships...

 

i think you mean "Reduce AI kill XP TO 60, 40, 20, 10, 5 of current"

 

Vesuvius thank you! These changes sound great and i cant wait until they are implemented.

I just want to add that we still need an exp catch up mechanic for new players, for semi casuals that work all week and just have some time to play the weekend and for old hardcore players that just want to take some time off the game from time to time.

Lets say you implement these changes and then reset the server or the season ends after 2 weeks and we start in a clean state. With these changes we still have the same problem of 16+ hours per day no lifers oppressing the rest of the population that wont be able to stay competitive. The only difference now is that the new players that will die in 1-2 rounds wont rage quit forever but for just 1-3 days until their weaker ship "resurrects". The game will still breed huge imbalances and a hostile environment for those that are not obsessed with farming all day.

You know better from all of us the best and easiest (technically) solution to implement. It could be increased exp gains for lower lvl players or daily cap on exp gained for top players and then diminishing returns or something else we haven't thought so far.

 

Removing perma loss... a huge step in the right direction, Thank you

 

On the fence about that. No losses means everyone eventually gets to a big ship, and no/significantly reduced AI xp means you can only progress when there are enemy players that stay in a fight AND the leading edge players will be forced to bang on noobs/anyone they can find for XP once captain rank is too high.

You cannot progress unless you have opponents... opponents who can always avoid you and waste time. If the player base was big enough, I'd suggest having hardcore/softcore servers and different rulesets per (or a system where players vote on the rules of an upcoming server for a week before it starts).

I like the supporting change of Honorable Death and Medic though for if and when the 'ship in for major repairs' system is implemented.

Glad to hear you are going to wait until new server scenarios be fore implementing such game changers.

No loss of ships = suicide runs at stations, now with all classes...

 

I'm totally against getting rid of permadeath. If there's no risk, there's no fun to be had. Oh well.

 

Tried to test this with a sol c3 for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Couldn't find a single c7 in the game. I managed to get a few hits on some c6s and calculated that you get exactly 9,5 exp per 1 damage or 76 exp with the 8 damage the free orchis has.

The average player at the top 10 leaderboard has now over 50k exp accumulated. Shooting c6s with a c3 provides about 500xp/h according to my tests. How is this a viable catch up mechanic when a new player starting now or an old player that plays casually will need 50k/500= 100 hours of extremely boring grinding to catch up? Even if he is crazy to go through all this grind he we still be left behind because the top players in the mean time will accumulate even more exp and at higher speeds.

 

Well if the enemy players dodges fight they don t get XP/HP too

About the timer when death, should be also a delay when damaged because having a ship warping out with low crew/hp and coming back at next transit fast fully repaired/manned is a bit boring

 

You are right and after more people get durable ships with these new changes its going to be a big issue. I think a 30 minute timer to come back would be sufficient.

 

I support the removal of permadeath as outlined. Perhaps you could add a coin option to reduce the fade time by half? This could be a significant source of income.

 

Consider 1 min / missing hull point so low tier ships will need less timer repairs than bigger ones that barely escaped destruction. About missing crew, its war so we can understand a lot of crew is waiting on battlestations for assignement on a ship so refill time is low

 

I was thinking a way more simple solution from a tactical standpoint that wont take too much programming resources.

If a ship decides to attack or defend X sector after it "enters" the sector it should "commit" to the objective. Right now we have fights where one big ship can take half hull damage then go out risking nothing when it wants with high initiation and come right back after a minute with full health +rally + stress engines and any other one time ability. This creates a cat and mouse situation where its very hard to kill someone or die yourself while defending/attacking an objective for a long time.

After the new changes where losing your ship will be less impactfull people should be more inclined to commit to big battles. If someone decides to leave a battle and not commit (no matter his hull points or abilities left) he should be denied of reentering for a period of time. This will ensure that teams will need to risk their ships to capture sectors or defend their own.

A ship that doesn't commit to a sector should be free to attack/defend another sector ofcourse. The whole point of this idea is to create situations where you need to risk in order to achieve goals. People will have a "one time oportunity" with their initial hull points/abilities to achieve the objective. This will also increase the value of repair/troop/other future support and utility ships because people wont just go back in base to heal in 1 minute.

 

Yea, super easy to implement, it wont cause any bugs and 30 minutes sounds great if you think that the average time to capture a sector is 30-60 minutes.

 

They might complain but in this case they would be wrong You're always going to have people wanting more free stuff, but this would purely be a quality of life improvement. That's also why I didn't suggest just coin to remove the cooldown completely, because it would make death completely meaningless. I like the idea of a penalty that doesn't completely reset a player's progress.