What about this: Put in the old bot turrets (the immobile or barely-mobile kind), and give them 1000/hit frigate cannons. It's cool to have bots that can take you down in 10 shots, but it's not cool to be unable to flee from those bots because they can always chase you down. Instead, place them strategically. Three by the flag. Three between the station and the gate. six in the adjacent sector, scatterplotted along the lines between the gates. Thus, the adjacents are also a challenge: Face the turret-bots for the shortest route, the newbie-bots for the medium route, or a clear but longest route through open space.

I say, the solution for capping is to make a respawn delay for the debots. Right now, the delay is ~30 seconds from death to relaunch. If there was a 5 minute delay, there could be a REAL battle. Where people engaged the defbots, and if they killed them, took the flag. Then they gotta hustle out of there before the defbots respawn.

I like it! But we would have to add turrets too. Not the frigate turrets, just the ones we had before the bots were uberized. Give them a 5 minute respawn as well.

Even better, the respawn of the bots is done on a scale versus the amount of people on. If there are no golds on and you want to cap the gold flag, then they'll respawn in 30 seconds. If there is one gold on they respawn in 1 minute. The graph can grow on a logarithmic scale based on how many people are on. Never going above 5 minutes or something like that.

Ummm, guys...leave as is. I like the ability to solo-cap. It brings a sort of Pandora's Box appeal to me. As for the million dollar spread, that's fine with me....kill it. But, if you do that, I say crank up the reward to about 2.5 - 4 mil. So that the capper can distibute as he/she sees fit.

However, that's not in line with the Devs' stated goal of having capping be a team affair. Right now, the teams required are just too large for the current community. Yes, a few people know the bots inside and out and can dodge them easily, but the rest of us are just baffled.

Dodging not required, I say no more. It's more of a puzzle. Look at it that way.....

if dodging is not required to make a solo cap than it's a bug in the software, (IMO) since the devs have clearly stated that they were aiming to make capping a team event, and that the bots were overpowered to compensate for the fact that the AI sucks.

CTF is. But there still might be missions that require entry to an enemy sector. And if they do make sectors capturable, would you want to have to fight off -these- bots just to recapture a sector from one guy?

just remember, CTF IS going away.

/me hopes it dies a painful and quick death SHORTLY!

Currently, you can cap without fighting the bots AT ALL.
Solo caps take about 7-8 minutes now. The bots are WAY too dumb.

Solo caps with no defenders take 7-8 minutes. Add a defender, and team size goes to excess of 10 people and time goes to excess of 30 minutes. When we capped gold alone, we could solo cap. Magus came on and we couldn't do it with 10 people.

hehe

That's the element that will make it a team effort - humans! Give the game time to grow, then it will *have* to become a team effort before long.... unless the players are as dumb as the bots. :)

In fact the most interesting gameplay I *ever* had is when blue took on a bunch of gold trying to cap, and red was solo-capped simultaniously... twice! It was a nice twist! Even blue had an attempt.

In fact, why not schedule all nations to attempt a capping frenzy! All nations try to go after all flags! It'll be a hoot!

Well that explains why some newb was telling me that capping was easy cause you could home in s12, 4, 6.

Actually, just sector 12 station.

"In fact the most interesting gameplay I *ever* had. . .'

The most fun I ever had was when we used to have huge battles for control and had to fight for every meter of space we moved the flag. The kind of battles you can only have when there are defenders online. Those were the days.

Ohhh, those battles were fun!

But now it's just, "Blues, fuck off."
>:(

well, you could always have a kinda check and balance for this kind of thing, because I think if you can solo cap, you damn well deserve the money, now, not every one on your team may deserve it.

with that out of the way, I would like to state, that i really hate the defense ships, its made capping really really too tedious to get it out of the home sectors, and once you're out. Most players are say somthing along the lines of: "meh, ill get em next time." Where as I remember the days of calls for help from a capper/defender on team chat: "Uhh, could I get a little help here? I have the flag and i have xxxx on my tail, in s#" or if you defending: "HELP! 6 Reds/Blues/Golds! only 1 of me! AHhH" or it could be " Some one head ahead to the next sector and wait for them to warp and try and catch them, 1 other person go with xxxx, I'll try and distract the escorts." I really miss those days. What I suggest for while we still have flag capping, is that you can buy defenses that only last like 10 minuets, and their would be a limit for the amount of defenders a whole team can buy and place in a home sector. That would be hard, but cool at the same time. And you could have the defenders cost a lot of money and be really really good, or have them be really good, last 5 minuets, and sell them at about 60,000. (This would be hard to pull off, but i think it would add to the game, They did talk about having robot escorts at one point also. So it would be something along those lines+ a script that gets rid of mines that are idle.) I would love to see that! If it can be pulled off. If i knew how to program, i would be working on it right now. but i dont, and if you dont like the idea, so be it. I think its cool.

Along the lines of reset, I think its needed, lots of people have wayyyyy to much money to burn. I hope the dynamic economy makes it harder to earn money.

Exactly Sheepdog. That's why I think my idea of a respawn rate that grows logarithmically with the amount of people on. That way, it'll actually be easier to cap with real defenders instead of capping with no defenders. Capping will be much more fun for all.