Defensive walls are probably the most controversial feature in Perpetuum we have ever had so far. On one hand they are supposed to bring more sand into the sandbox and provide passive defense for whatever you want to defend. On the other hand, many of you have voiced your concerns that it also greatly hinders everyday small-scale PvP warfare, which is hurting the game on a global level.
The first introduction of walls went not without issues and we have learnt the hard way that too much freedom can be bad. Based on player feedback, the majority of you think there is still too much freedom regarding wall placement.
Initially we didn't want to restrict the building of walls to outpost owners, because we didn't want to shut out the rest of our players from using them. Nevertheless, it seems walls are primarily used for outpost and SAP defense, so we decided to reconsider that stance.
In our next patch (planned for March 9), we will restrict wall placement to a fixed belt area around outposts. It's a belt because the 1000m inner no-build limit from outposts still remains, but there will be an outer limit of 3000m as well. The picture on the right should help you imagine it better. As you can see, some of the teleports' no-build areas also take their share. (Update: the image has been modified to include SAP areas too - thanks for the notice Arga.)
Another change is that only the outpost's owning corporation can build walls, and only around the owned outpost. Of course in case of an ownership change, the old walls won't fall down, but only the new owner will be able to place new ones. Unfortunately this also has a negative effect, namely that allied corporations can't help you placing walls around your outpost until we do a proper alliance feature. (Contrary to popular belief, we didn't abandon or deny an alliance feature at all, we just didn't get around implementing one yet.)
It's important to note that currently deployed walls won't be affected in any way by this, as long as you keep repairing them, they will stay there. However you won't be able to place any new wall units outside of the allowed areas.
And lastly, to steer things back towards the next part of the PBS series: yes, you will be able to build walls around player-built bases as well, but only around a certain "occupation" area of your own buildings.
Commence cheering/grumbling.
Comments for this post
1 Gremrod
2 Jelan
3 Mark Zima
Make some real PBS-linked hub-supported walls. (And maybe allow building them on beta as part of outpost-pbs unification.)
4 Arga
Also, probes without walls are useless, and putting a probe 3k from an outpost is also useless.
On gamma, this would make sense, becuase the outpost is attackable. On beta, all you've done is negated the use of walls to create choke points, because a few, not a majority (did you take a vote?) voiced some concerns.
5 Winnetou
6 Gremrod
I agree it seems the walls are better suited for the PBS system.
7 Line
8 Arga
At least behind walls, they were there, even if elusive. Now roamers can freely move about and find ... nothing at all.
9 Arga
10 Arga
The band has to be closer to 5k. Probes only work in choke points, and only behind walls. 3K is not far enough to allow defenders to respond, nor to find suitable choke points on the terrain (since you can't make them in beta).
11 Tamas Vitez
12 Celebro
13 Celebro
14 MoBIoS
"..until we do a proper alliance feature."
Didn´t the Dev´s clearly state in an interview, that they´re not interested in alliance features, wich furnaced the "popular belief even more? Whatever, I am glad they reconsidered:
"...(Contrary to popular belief, we didn't abandon or deny an alliance feature at all, we just didn't get around implementing one yet.)"
15 MoBIoS
16 Sundial
Sounds like a fine change to me which makes some outposts more desireable than others.
17 Dazamin
18 Baal
19 Lupus Aurelius
20 Kane Shafter
21 Duma
22 Allak Hazaam
23 Allak Hazaam
24 Allak Hazaam
Can the band be increased by an outpost owner through the use of the aura system? or be based on the stability of the station eg. 2km band at 50 growing to 4km (for arguement sake) at 100? can graphical indicators on the terrain be added so that it is easier to know what is within the radius so it is not randomly guessing or an effect shows up which enables wall construction eg. like the OP ownership aura?
25 Dan
26 Qin Tzu
27 DEV Gargaj
I think that's a misunderstanding: when you had the podcast roundtable, the question "do you need alliance features" was generally answered by the CEOs with "no, not at the moment", so we re-prioritized it. We never crossed it off the list completely.
28 Lonwolf
29 Exomorph
In my opinion the 1-3km area is just fine to defend your outpost. If you want mining op than put out "defenseless" detection probes around tps and even 5-8km away from your outpost. The beta cannot be the surely free mining zone without any harming force from outside (like the Alsbale - Brightstone area nowadays). And don't forget how annoying is beta artifact scanning with walls everywhere, even when you have level 3 artifact just 30m on the other side of wall, where you can't go!
This is good job from DEVs, but i would like still more limitation on wall deploying on betas, couse this wall feature needed to be feature for gamma islands ...
30 Tux
31 Shelts916
32 M Piquet
33 Arga
Looking at the terrain, you can see there are some great choke points within 3km band. The only thing wrong with the picture, is its dependant on slope capacity.
Making a wall implies it has to stop all traffic, not just mechs. Meaning, if a light bot can go around the end of a wall, then it has effectively avoided your choke point. And light ewar bots are the ones your detectors will not pickup unless they are choked.
For those saying 3km provides plenty of protection, are the ones that are going to be 'attacking' not defending, so of course they're going to agree.
For those arguing that 5km would allow overlap, even at 3km, you can see there is already overlap between outposts, so technically that's not an issue, and there's no operational reason why 2 corps shouldn't be allowed to place wall tiles in the same areas.
34 Grazskin
just a thought
35 MrCeeJ
Equally knowing that some random name blew up an un-walled probe on the other side of the map does not help much..
36 Ulviirala
Thanks!