So, there has been talk of an upcoming territory control system; often linked with both PvP and fleet starbases. Sounds good.

However I just had a horrible thought.

You find an unclaimed system > your fleet may now build a base there > some other fleet may now try and mug you and wreck/steal your stuff.

What if that's the full extent of it? That would be a territory control system that accommodates both fleet bases and PvP. Kinda lame though; and not much use to anyone who is not in a large fleet.

I've always been picturing something more like Star Wars Battlefront's 'Galactic Conquest' mode; where systems are captured via (in STOs terms) PvPvE fleet action scenarios. In Battlefront II, this often included both space and ground battles.

Now, I'm going to naively assume that everyone else here has been hoping for something similar (don't bother correcting me if I'm wrong :p); and ask you all to pretend for a moment that you genuinely believe that the territory control system is going to make PvP awesome.

(Doing that? I know it's hard... OK? Good. )

Show your new found enthusiasm by showing Cryptic how it's done, and coming up with a cool conquest scenario.


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Since I'm already typing, I'll go first.

Fortress Assault.

Imagine something like the Deferi map (walled city, with only a few access points, surrounded by mostly coverless countryside); now change what's inside the walls to something more like the Romulan city from the Reman FE (narrow catwalks and bridges, lots of choke points, plenty of sniper positions, and again, limited access points).

Now add in lots of turrets at key points; maybe with some kind of repair drones that try to keep them in working order.

This would be on a timer; the attackers only have so long to try and take the fort, and the longer it takes, the harder it gets.

For the first 5 minutes or so, the defenders are greatly outnumbered, and must rely on the forts natural advantages to give them a fighting chance. After five minutes, reinforcements arrive; this results in the level 'unlocking' for a certain number of other players of the defenders faction. It could also result in things like random orbital strikes being fired at the attackers, medic and security teams supporting the defenders (similar to the nurse Doff ability and the tactical captain skill respectively), medical supply crates beaming in, and similar.

The objective of the attackers is to capture the fort's command centre; this would be similar to the space capture and hold PvP, where a certain amount of uninterrupted camping is required. The objective of the defenders is simply to weather the storm. There could also be a secondary method of killing x number of enemy players; but ideally this would be the harder option, so it would need to be a pretty high number.

There could possibly be other, less significant, points to capture which could allow respawning closer to the action (some of them could even serve a function beyond that, for example, a planetary defence battery that can delay the arrival of the reinforcements); but that might be too derivative of Battlefront.

I'm also concerned that the "territory control" PvP that's often mentioned will take on little more than a "capture and hold" tech that's currently in place. The devs haven't really spoken too much about their vision as far as territory control goes.

Here's what I've been hoping for

- Large, empty space would be populated with Starbases that are either Fed or Klingon controlled
- These Starbases would start at a base level of 1, and would be guarded by a handful of NPC ships
- To capture a Starbase, the opposing faction would have to defeat the Starbases defenses, board the station and fight their way to the Starbase Captain, an NPC that would have to be killed for a successful capture
- A fleet could then "claim" the Starbase, and spend money or points to upgrade it's defenses and patrolling ships, over time
- The NPC guards inside and outside the station would take on the Fleets's logo and uniforms
- Players of the opposing faction could work to repel attackers both in space and on the station

This would be very reminiscent of the Dark Age of Camelot or Warhammer Online style.

My concern, is that there's currently a tech limitation that the devs have cited as the reason for not implementing one, large sector space map, in that too many players in a single instance cause too much lag.

For an "open world" PvP as I'm suggesting here, that limitation would have to be dealt with. I'd hate to see this turn into an instanced "capture and hold a point in space" play style like what's currently available.

Here's hoping they come up with something great!

As much as I would love to see this in STO I doubt it will ever happen. There are a lot of technical problems with video card temps, cpu temps, putting too many players into one instance, etc. Not to mention the last time open pvp was proposed it was shot down by the community in a heart beat. There were about 100:1 ppl opposing it. Pretty much based on current player standings it would be like kerrat 100 feds for every one kdf player and it would just be a land slide federation ownership of the game which does not benefit all players. Odds are though the technology aspect far out weighs the cultural balance of pvp anyways.

You can get plenty of people in a fleet action before CPUs start to melt; this wouldn't be so different.

As for the faction imbalance, well I'm thinking that a more elaborate faction conflict might encourage more people to roll KDF.

When was the last time it was proposed? last post i saw on it a lot of people were for it. but like you said they likely cant pull the tech off anyway.

I wonder if an "under-populated" faction bonus to their defense or something similar, a mechanic that's been used in other games, might be used to balance out the possible player-imbalance issue?

Just throwing out ideas

Here's another one; PvP for people who don't do PvP.

Beachhead.

Rather than fight each other directly, the objective here is to be the first to establish a base of operations on the planet's surface.

The players are each given a number of construction drone pets to control. Ships in orbit beam down a variety of cargo containers, which contain the materials and equipment required to build certain facilities (think old school RTS games; except you don't then build a personal army and go on a rampage).

Accessing one of these containers will give the player access to a holographic model of the facility to be built; which can be moved around to try to find a suitable space for the building. Once a good spot has been found, the player can order the drones to get to work. If a suitable space cannot be found, the drones can be ordered to start digging to make room (this, obviously, slows the process; so carefully managing the available space can be the key to victory).

Facilities would include things like landing pads, barracks, guard posts, communications arrays, perimeter walls, planetary defence weapon emplacements, shield emitters, maintenance facilities, sensor towers, and operations centres.

There could be sort of a points system (first to reach x number of points wins), that reflects, not only what has been built, but how the position of certain structures relates to certain other structures; for example, if the barracks is far away from the guard posts and weapon emplacements, or if there are a lot of hill/stairs to climb between then, then you won't get as many points for them than you would if they were close together and easy to get to.

This could all, perhaps, be followed by a short cinematic showing troops and ships arriving at the winners base; then moving to destroy the still incomplete base of the other team.

At a bare minimum territory control should be like the old space assault map. The other thing is defenders should have home field advantage. Something either up to a 5 man advantage or crap tone of turrets around key spots.

The only unfortunate thing I can see happening is PvE fleets will stay away from territory control maps where they actually have to defend because a team of decent PvPers will lay waste to most if not all PvE fleets even if odds are 3 to 1

OK... that's what you think would be a 'bare minimum'. Now what do you think would be AWESOME?

Hypnotize yourself into imagining STO has a BioWare budget if that helps.

Setup a mission where a pver must cross a opvp area to a pve mission. In order to cross they must be escorted by allied pvpers. An ambassador can grant immunity but the pve mission reward will be far lower quality or amount.