When (nearly) every PoI is an Admin Core, the game grows rather dull and Boring. I know such has driven away about 5 avid players already.
I don't know what the ratio is for admin core to non admin core poi's but I think you'll find there are many more standard cores to admin core poi's
I understood your point but I also understood what many players underlined as problems regarding POI raiding : cheesy, unfair traps and annoying or unavoidable death sequences, necessity to learn some POIs by hearth to know how to survive, which in my book resembles more to a chore than to a gaming session. At some point I also understand that criticism has to be used very delicately to avoid hurting some POI builders sensibilities, mostly regarding their "freedom to create". Unfortunately, Eleon chose to let players decide of that part of the game, but I hardly see how that can shelter POI design from fair criticism. There were plenty of discussions regarding the vast topic of POI design. Now with all the tools and options available, it's hard to believe that nothing can exist between unavoidable sequential death traps and putting a POI core in plain view on the exterior. That is just overreacting to criticism, in my view.
When a POI has an admin core, it's already not a POI for people like me to attack. I just fly on when I encounter them, assuming they're for people who prefer to either fight on foot or ally with different factions. I'm sure such POIs are lovingly made. They just have nothing to offer someone who likes to solve problems by designing ships. They might as well have never spawned. There's plenty of other POIs out there I try my creations out on. If I wanted to clear POIs with ease and little effort, I'd grab a bunch of munitions, meds, and armor, throw on a Twitch stream or YT playlist, and start face tanking my way through. Like I said before, I have no idea what motivates other people to share what they build. It's probably fair to assume the exact motivation is different for every designer. It's definitely proper to assume the designer's motivation to share aligns with the Eleon's purpose of improving Empyrion by adopting such community contributions as official content. So I have to believe that when a POI is stressful and frustrating instead of fun and engaging for whatever reason, it is so against the intentions of the person who created it. Surely it would not belong in the game otherwise.
There are 2 other good reasons to go into a POI which has not been looked at in this discussion: The possible traders inside and what I call the "Treator approach". Currently there is not much incentive for that, however if these traders would have randomized goods and prices - which is not the case atm - this would enhance the gameplay and give one more good reason to access the POI and also force the player to bother and eventually change faction reputation to access those traders. For example, it should not be written in marble that you are always enemy with the Zyrax. The fact that all traders in all similar POIs are the same is a big downside IMO and should be changed in future versions, the sooner the better. And this leads us to the 2nd reason: A 'treator' approach' is also a valid and challenging one and is an important access route for shielded POIs, you spy out the POI while neutral (these ambassadors must be good for something, no?) then start to attack with explosives when finding the core or generators, certainly a good shortcut to avoid the powerful turrets.
Speaking personally, it's quite often out of frustration that I resort to cheese or a "nuke it from orbit" style approach vs. a POI. I like exploring POI's on foot, but a combination of game limitations (how shields work, often broken LoS and hit mechanics) as well as POI design choices (things spawning right on top of the player) puts me off going in on foot. Add to this, a lot of the harder POI's seem to be very much biased towards challenging a group of players. Traps that are unavoidable for the lone player, can be trivial for two or more. In many instances, if I just had a buddy following a few metres behind me, these surprise spawn "traps" would be trivial to neutralise. Even when you know they're coming as a solo player, they often cannot be countered as the enemy will spawn on top of you and there will be clipping issues. I think, on the more elaborate POI's, the game needs an ability to scale, to a degree, depending on how many Players are nearby. That way the group gets a fun challenge and the solo player doesn't have to contend with magically appearing enemies at every turn. I traditionally like the challenge a tougher POI brings to the on-foot player. However, when that "challenge" is scaled on the assumption that there will be FOUR of me, its not so fun. As mentioned previously, while a group can often blaze through a really tough POI with relative ease due to their numbers, a Solo player cannot simply take the slow, steady tactical approach due to how many of the spawns are triggered. From an overall POI balance perspective, I think the difficulty = lots of invisible, invulnerable spawners is not the way to go, but more and more POI's are exploiting this. Having Guards spawn in a Guard Room and only then rush out to attack the player is GREAT. Having those same guards magically pop in all around the player is not. In the former there are two stages of fun challenge. First the player has to fend off the rush attack, then, in the lull before the (potentially) next wave arrives, they can tactically neutralise the visible and vulnerable spawner. Too slow on the first step? You're gonna have to repeat it with the next wave. Number of players in the POI could influence both the number of guards and the delay between waves. Fun challenge. Compare that with how it often actually works in POIs now: Loads of enemies spawn right on top of the first player that triggers the spawner trap. Only practical option is to kill all enemies. Easy with a group, harder Solo. No real tactics - other than sending one guy ahead to trigger stuff - just shooting. I want to reiterate how lots of the issues are down to core game mechanics. I used to like to play as the lightly-armoured but nimble player able to avoid much of the damage while using the terrain / structure to good effect. This really doesn't work as well as it should due to the aforementioned LoS and collision detection issues. These core issues are exaggerated by certain POI design choices. Many a time I've had an enemy spawn almost right on top of me, only to then clip through me and deal repeated melee damage while I cannot hit them. Now, they may be clipping through me directly or, in part due to where they've spawned, be clipping through a block, able to hit me where my shots just hit the block. Many a time an invisible spawner is placed in exactly the wrong position for these issues to occur. It's a shame that POI design has to be mindful of core game issues that have been around for years at this point, but it does need to be done to avoid frustration.
The answer to this is exactly as I said previously. We already have the toys to play with. We have planetary artillery, plasma, and rocket turrets; we also have manual lasers, plasma, rail guns, and two types of rockets. We don't need to add anything, we just need to make what's already there effective enough to be worth using without demanding players build at the absolute top level and most meta designs. (Because there's a point where it's no different than just cheesing the POI, but that's a different discussion).
Which is not to say an artillery turret for slamming slow moving flyers, located high on a wide disc to focus its attention away from targets below, would be inappropriate. Or two. Or six. With more an antiship defenses on surrounding BAs.
I just took out the first Drone Shielded Drone base on Reforged Eden Akua planet on foot. I used the hover bike to get in under the main turrets then took an adrenaline shot to get inside before I was gunned down. From here I used a laser rifle to take down sentry turrets and spawners while using conventional firearms for personnel. The core was still locked but I found a code in one of the four adjoining towers which were very difficult to get in and out of without dying. Finally, I was able to open the core and shoot it with the laser rifle until it exploded. I'll admit it was not ideal and I went through a lot of bandages and a lot of backup saves. I used improved medium armor.
I guess if this thread is going to come back, it's worth mentioning that things... evolved... in the months following the last few posts.
