Having been in the recent test and having been able to think about it, I have what I feel is a better system than the "Meltdown" as now planned. Please read below: Firstly: 1. Institute locking rewards as now planned. There needs to be a real incentive to locking the continent. 2. Disable the current alert system as now planned. It is not helping the game and causes too many locks. Then, in PLACE of the proposed new VP system, institute the following VP system: 1. VP system is composed of 20 points as it now is. 2. Instead of the "checklist", VP are generated solely by territory control and HIVE control (which has changed). 3. HIVEs, instead of generating permanent VP, now "charge up" and when full become a VP. 4. Victory cores still exist, so HIVE VP are limited to the number they now are. 5. While HIVEs do still increase in efficiency based on time active, the placement of victory cores is STRICTLY based on distance from enemy WG. That means a 100% HIVE that started as a 1% near the friendly WG will be immediately replaced by a fresh 14% HIVE. Exceptions are, as now, if that HIVE does not look defendible. 6. If a HIVE is destroyed, the VP is lost. Hence HIVEs can't lock contintents by themselves but still help. 7. Further, instead of giving a recurring xp income to everyone, HIVEs now give the maker a single (larger) bonus when it becomes fully charged. They also get a recurring bonus for maintaining the HIVE thereafter (if it takes 25k to get the VP, the recurring bonus is every 10k after). This is NOT given to everyone in the faction. We want to use people's self interest here. Effects: 1. Territory control becomes king again. A faction needs the vast majority of their VP from territory. A truly determined HIVE effort will make a difference however, which it should. It should still be possible to get 20 VP via territory control alone although it should be a far more difficult choice compared to building some HIVEs. 2. This system incentivizes people to go for the best places which in turn will reduce people making "backline" HIVEs (near their WG) as the victory core will move forward if someone builds a HIVE further in. People will want the more dangerous HIVE locations and will need the proper force to protect such. 3. People must take HIVE defense seriously, which should promote larger fights at them (that was the original goal of the construction system). Remember: locking gives real rewards now, so people will care more about defending their VP, which HIVEs are. 4. This heavily incentivizes the construction system. People will want to protect their HIVEs better than they do now which means more turrets, more modules and the like. Similarly, more people will want to blow them up, which means more OS and IPCs, etc. 5. Thus, while territory is king, those who want to intercede in the usual flow of fights with HIVEs can productively do so, and it's very likely that these people will use their base resources to build other bases too. If you want to see that happen more though you need reduced no-deploy zones for construction (which I call "no-build zones", this being a parallel system to the no-deploy zone we have now for sunderers). Comparison to "Meltdown" system: 1. Double teaming is much less of a problem. As territory control is key, no faction can focus too much on one enemy. 2. Making more than two HIVEs remains beneficial; in fact, HIVEs become more meaningful than they are now. Under the Meltdown system I predict a lot of backline HIVE building; under this system that won't happen as much. Other Needed changes: 1. Institute a 100m no-build/no-deploy zone around the rim of the map to prevent players from using the out of bound zone as a back wall. A LOT of HIVEs are currently built there, which is an exploit. 2. Change skywalls so that they no longer do infantry damage. This will ease assaulting a base as people won't need to worry about being lit on fire when they stood on a skywall in the ground and such. Skywalls should instead be barriers against infantry, both friendly and hostile; they will still provide defense but will deter "seals" as friendly infantry won't be able to get in either. 3. Also, make skywalls barriers to all vehicles as well to deter enremy "galaxy ground drops" and the like while also making it so that friendly forces can't use vehicles to get in and out of an otherwise sealed base. 4. If it looks like people are blowing up their same factions' HIVEs in order to enable them to create their own (for ths xp income) you need to institute a hard punishment for that, such as a 2h instant weapon lock. This only applies to active HIVEs as inactive ones are too fragile; active HIVEs, however, are never ever destroyed by accident by their same team (would require massive damage). Lastly, a note: to anyone who thinks this is a massive nerf to skywalls, it's not. Anyone can simply place a skywall generator off to the side and get most of the benefit while allowing enough of a gap to get in and out of it. Further, being able to shoot enemies through a skywall when they can't do the same to you is still a big deal.
Addendum: this means that refined cortium will now be tracked individually for each HIVE and should show up on the tooltip for VP (i.e. each lists how much it has). This is so that attackers know how far each HIVE is towards generating a VP. There is no need to track the recurring xp bonus cortium it may generate afterwards, however. Further, 25k and 10k were arbitrary numbers. I don't know how much refined cortium a single HIVE should store before generating the VP or how much should be needed for each recurring XP bonus afterward; this would require evaluation.
