I would like to briefly address where we’ve come from, where we are at, and where we are going as far as base versus base combat (BvB) is concerned in Star Sonata.
Previous to our base rebalance about a year ago, there were a number of problems with bases, but foremost was that it was too easy for a player or couple of players in very strong ships to fly through and destroy an entire galaxy worth of bases with no cost to the attackers. It was just too easy to attack, and it was too important to be online in order to defend.
Many changes were proposed, discussed with all the devs and the players on the forum, and agreed to. Mainly, bases were made much stronger in comparision to ships, so BvB supplanted PvB as the way to attack galaxies. This has been tremendously successful in deterring wanton griefing and piracy of bases, as used to run rampant. Now, if someone wants to attack a galaxy, the attacker has to declare war, put down and defend an outpost, have that outpost survive counter-attack for 24 hours, then spend the time and effort to actually BvB at great cost. Not only is it no longer cheap and easy to destroy bases, but the defenders have a real chance to actually defend. Since the base rebalance, we are not aware of any base griefing or piracy as used to occur, and the only bases destroyed in anger have been in wars between teams.
Balancing bases and BvB will continue to be an ongoing project. We already had in the works a change so that, starting next universe, bases will no longer be able to equip or use any gear that isn’t specifically for bases. This includes weapons, shields, tweaks, augmenters, grav disrupters, etc. This is to address some instances where very expensive or rare ship gear feels required to compete at the highest levels of BvB. We are also creating some new base items to fill the slots where we consider that ship gear is currently legitimately being used on bases, and the BP’s for the new gear will come out in advance of the next universe, so people will have a chance to build the new items.
In addition, we have a proposal that I would like to put forward to the players to discuss, and that is a new rule in the game where permanent bases and drones in a galaxy owned by the same team can not be aggressively tractored. This means no dragging out drones or bases one at a time in order to isolate and kill them, and less need for the defending team to be online in order to fight off tractor ships or pop disruptors. The defenders can still tractor attacking bases, though. The dev team feels like this would be a good change, but we would like to hear what you guys think.
Discuss in the Forum