Outpost Control

[Kanedax]

So everyday when my clanmates and I log in we should attack and take all the op's the other multi-op owning clans have? We could do that easily, we play in the US primetime most of the big clans have few or no members online. So I guess since they can't defend when we are on then they dont deserve the OP's.

Do you see the problem here? This behaviour creates a cycle of pointless ninja hacking.

Aye, shit our clans were ninjaing the shit out of each other for about a year straight back on Terra. I think Faid has the right of it. Limiting the number of ops a clan can own will definitely promote diversity on the map without seriously effecting the op fighting its self. I don't see a real downside honestly.

@Torg: The ninja hacking has almost nothing to do with whether or not one clan "deserves" to hold an OP and, frankly, who are you to arbitrarily determine the criteria that allows a clan to "deserve" holding an OP? This is more of an issue of different time zones than anything else.

[Jest]

Limiting the amount of ops that a clan can hold is a good start. I'd recommend that the limit be based on the number of clan members over a certain level (**/55 perhaps). With a minimum of 2 ops and a maximum of 6. So a clan with 6 members might be limited to 2 ops while a clan with 50 members might be limited to 6.

To address the objection that a clan is unable to take an op while at cap, perhaps make it so that a clan at their limit will set all ops hacked after that limit to neutral. The owning clan will then still have incentive to come and the defend the op and we wouldn't see the wasteland in a cold war state if all of them are at their limit.

Having a select few clans diving up the wasteland has always been bad for PvP. What you want is more people attacking and defending ops, not less. A more diverse wasteland brings exactly that.

[hatmankh]

I've got an alternative idea, no limit on how many OPs you can own but the more you own, the easier they are to hack, so you could own say 6 OPs* with no penalty but after you take another, one of your layers becomes easier to hack, take another and it becomes even easier, then at 9 OPs* you lose one of the layers entirely so an attacking team would only have to hack 2 layers before entering hacknet. This process continues until you own 12 OPs* or more, at this point your security is just 1 layer + the hacknet part.

An alternative penalty could be the time people have to wait between hacking layers, so instead of 1 minute it goes down by 5 seconds* for each OP you own after a set amount.

So no limit on OP ownership, they just become harder to defend the more of them you control. Now it's up to you if you just want to focus on holding a few OPs and defend those with everything you've got or if you think your clan has what it takes you can try and take most of the map, you could also decide you're ok being somewhere in the middle, having a smaller penalty on your security and owning between 7 and 11 OPs.

*All the numbers I've given on how many OPs and the penalties are completely negotiable, this post is just to give the idea of unlimited OP ownership with a dynamic security penalty, the more OPs you own.


As for clans getting around it by making loads of different clans, that's fine, it will probably be frowned upon and will get you lots of enemies, not to mention the fact that it becomes harder to communicate and co-ordinate your clan this way.

These changes should see a much more colourful map with OPs changing hands more often.

[demonssword]

If limiting the number of ops a clan can hold several things in my opinion might happen.

1) Larger clans break up into smaller clans of the same faction, but still continue to play with each other and help each other continually so they can hold more ops, but just have to do it under 2-3-4 names.

2) Ninja hacking will still happen. I cant count how many times STD have had an op and when logging in in the morning 1-3 ops have been taken over by CS, TSU or TT or whatever at about 3-4am when there is either no players on in STD or only 1-2 max and on going there see a 6-10man zerg.
I know its our own fault kinda for having people in only 1 time zone until recently, but still no need.

3) A system would need to be introduced to mean if you could only have X number of ops you can choose which op to give up, as if you have a system of oldest one is the first gone then you might find that people get annoyed that they lose a factory or lab or something. Or if like Rockshore Surf Club would lose Rockshore.

Another thing would be does the lost op become factionless, because then anyone can take it from the no defenders, and you may just end up with a whirlwind of people taking ops no one wants anymore.

An interesting alternate idea would be if a clan did have more than X number of ops people on attacking clans got a "bonus" to skills in the same way a fortress gives T-C or whatever. This could mean that the side who are over extended are then weakened or at least not as buffed against their enemy.

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I prefer a limited lockout system that means that maybe for 1-2 days after an op is taken it is not at risk. Though this doesn't stop people from ninja the ops when your all asleep.

Another option to maybe at a cost block hacking of their ops for a certain limited number of the hours of the day between X-Y time at increasing cost the longer you have the lockout last for. The trouble with this is that it might mean EU vs US type of situation where the US clans will forever have their ops as they block 3pm-11pm GMT stopping people hacking their ops while they are at work, and EU keeps there ones as they block 2am-10am GMT stopping the night hacking for them.

A declaration of war type of system seems like a nice idea. So you have to pay a fee at a city comm to make X op be hackable in X number of hours.
So you as a clan know you will want to do an op war between 9pm and 12am, you go to the city comm and clicky on the ops list and choose the op you want to attack. On paying a 100-200k "bribe" you have then opened that window for you to attack the op. Lore reason being that you are paying off security / NCPD to look the other way or hiring independent hackers to lower the security of the op / making a backdoor into their systems. You have done this 1-2 hours in advance. After a short window the clan who is to be attacked may / will get a warning. Maybe depending on how much you pay for the bribe depends how much notice they get, or the length of time you need to wait before you can attack.
This would mean the clan should have enough opportunity to know if / when an attack should be coming, even if the case if they know they are going to be offline. This also has the added bonus of being a potentially a small or large credit sink to help keep inflation down and discourage people who grief by hacking 1 layer of an op when they know the only people on are grinding MC5 / DOY / Ceres or whatever.
HOWEVER as far as I can tell this would also add something bad in that you couldn't just log in with a bunch of mates on the fly and randomly go off and do a bit of PVP if you aren't a regularly active clan, or if you find out that more people than you expected are online.