Example 3 (usual disclaimers apply)
Outpost Wars
OOh lookey! PvP!
The problem
OP was currently heavily favour the attacker. Attackers always have the advantage of the initaive. They can choose when and where to attack. But on top of this, they get to be in the zone first. They get to be within the fortified walls of the outpost. They get to cover the exact areas defenders will be approaching from. In short, they currently get the bonus of both the initative
and the advantage of being in an entrenched position. With the current state of the UG system, its only by the generoisty of the attackers not barreling that allows op wars to happen at all. If you have reasonable numbers, really there's nothing to stop you taking the whole map this way.
Also, they're too fast. An organised group of attackers will have layer 2 down by the time the defenders have all logged to op-war characters, got out of whatever cave etc they are in or back to a GR. So the defenders have those few moments to stop layer 3 and save their op. Which forces use of the direct-rep and out the UG really. If you own an immediatley neighbouring op you can just about get there. Just about. But if you only own the one or a couple of slightly seperated ones, coming from elsewhere isn't practical.
So, our problems really are this: attackers have the advantage: we need to turn this to the defenders, and that the term "war" seems a bit false for something that lasts 10 minutes tops (unless there are lots of incompetents involved). In addition, many players feel that hacknet is poorly implemented and spoils the action of op-wars.
The Solution
Well, first off: outposts are to a greater or lesser effect fortified structures. Mines are barley foritified, factories slightly more so, labs heavier still, uplinks even tougher sand fortress really are. So we want to actually have the defenders taking advantage of these defences, rather than the attacker being inside. People tend to talk about doors as being the solution here. But there are various ways around doors, and if it means having every op team dropped in by carrier, then every op team will be dropped in by carrier. Instead, going to take a hint from planetside here (this is inevitable if you've played the game - its effectively 24/7 opwarring).
Force fields. Basically, a shield (needn't be a neat dome a la planetside) prevents people from entering the actual op area, ideally in line with the GR rules. It still allows weaponsfire through though (Not sure how possible it really is, again obviously coding needed). OK great, but now how do the attackers get inside? Well, a side effect of this shiney new forcefield technology thats been instaled on all the ops is that the field has to be generated from outside. Hence, the generators are rather vulnerable. So these have to be disabled in some way. Turning to the old classic of hacking is probably the best soution here. However, the shields don't drop as soon as the controls are hacked - instead, hacking puts them into overload. Once hacking is completed, the defending clan recieves their first warning - that the outpost shields will overload in 3 minutes. Now the defending clan has a chance to take positions and defend. And for the first 2 minutes, they can prevent the overload. The final minute however has acheived unavoidable overload. (this time is intended to allow a touch of recovery time for the two sides, so we get something more like 2 rounds of combat than one. All times are of course, tweakable). Once the shields are down, they can't recover for let say 15 minutes (to prevent a sneaky reset spoiling the fight).
So now we have moved onto the fight proper - the attackers trying to break through the op's walls. We can expect to see AoE and such of choke points used here of course. The way to break through these may well to be to use vehicles to blast through and get inside. Now, we could let everything procede as it does now from here, but its fun to suggest some other changes. Rather than the old 3 layers at the hackterm lets tweak it a bit. Somewhere in the op is the security control matrix - this is the first target after the shield is down (its invulnerable while shield is up) and it has to be destroyed. Next target is to hack the operations control. This can either be hacked at the old fashioned hackterm, or as an
alternative can be tagged in hacknet. However, a large-collision box hacknet NPC sits on top of the hack tag that has to be destroyed first. AFter this second layer of security is deactivated, the underground becomes open to all. The attackers have to get into the underground and hack this. Concern here: defenders barreling the zonedown on the UG. Possible solution: offer an alternative somehow. Perhaps another hacknet alternative, or a second way of entering the UG. Either that or have the final hack location be upstairs again, I just like the progressive nature of moving from outisde, to inside, to underground.
[edit]About 3,700 words now, and I haven't even written "the effects" bit for these op changes yet... :eek: [/edit]
