Dark Sectors, Alliances, Solar Rails, And Why The Current System Doesn't Work.

[Oridius]

Dark Sectors and Solar Rails are another nice addition to the game, finally giving the infested another constant place on the map.

 

They way they work, however, is not nice.

 

There are currently 24 Dark Sectors on the map, 2 for every planet except Mercury. Each Dark Sector can have a single Clan's Solar Rail placed on it in order to control it, and in turn, be contested.

 

This is not a good, viable or economically sound setup.

 

When a Dark Sector is contested, no player may access that mission until one of the Solar Rails is destroyed, which may take up to 2 days.

 

This'd be fine and all, except for the fact that every single Dark Sector is currently contested. There are literally thousands of times more Clans than there are Dark Sectors, and there is absolutely no incentive for anybody outside the Clan/Alliances doing the contesting to actually go in and bother helping one side or another.

 

There are simply too few Dark Sectors to actually make this a viable system, simply because any given player can only access a Dark Sector roughly 1/3rd of the time, the entire day after the conflict until the next Solar Rail is deployed by one of the thousands of other clans looking for a Sector to control.

 

My suggestion to fix this is too add more Dark Sectors; simply adding 4~ more Dark Sectors to every planet will spread out the control, and the amount of Clans trying to control them. Furthermore, to prevent repeats of the current scenario where every sector is being contested and none of the new content can be accessed, placing a limit on the amount of Sectors that can be contested per planet. Having a limit of 4 Maximum would allow the 2 remaining sectors to continue to be accessed and enjoyed by players on a permanent basis, rather than just 1/3rd of the time available.

 

At the moment, it's 1 day of Dark Sector, 2 Days of waiting for the Dark Sector to pop up again.

 

Rinse, wash, repeat.

 

Not fun.

 

Furthermore, adding more mission types to Dark Sectors, other than just Defense and Survival, would increase how enjoyable the Dark Sectors actually are. At the moment, there's just 2 mission types, and that's it.

 

Adding more will increase the variety and increase the amount of fun that players can have.

Edited April 14, 2014 by Oridius

[Sasquatchias]

I agree with this, its a bit frustrating to be locked away from new-ish content for so long so frequently.

[notionphil]

But the dark sector contains no new content. Just play ODD for the same experience. If you want new content the contested maps are the closest thing.

[Ameretat]

While I agree with this, DE are probably playing the waiting game figuring "aahhhh in a few days people will run out of towers and it'll be fine" Which, it may. Highly unlikely but...

 

We'll see.

[Zarbain]

But the dark sector contains no new content. Just play ODD for the same experience. If you want new content the contested maps are the closest thing.

that isn't the point of the dark sectors, the dark sectors are a loot place and without the ability to loot it it becomes absolutely useless

[Volt_Cruelerz]

It was interesting to see though how quickly battle pays plummeted.  I'm guessing the 4k and the 4.5k rewards were just far too high for those clans to support.

 

Regardless, to the list this suggestion goes...

 

1. Construction (and probably maintenance costs, but we've yet to see) increased by 50-100 times to make a Solar Rail something that a single MR14 player could do by themselves.

2. Grineer and Corpus can challenge Tenno holdings periodically.

3. All planets (aside from Mercury) increased to 5 DS nodes

4. Controlling the majority of nodes on a planet gives an alliance a moderate reward (such as +30% affinity/resources) on that planet.  Owning all results in a major reward (perhaps something like Lotus matches the Alliance's battle pay, so if they put up 10k, the game gives the other 10k to give each Tenno fighting for the incumbent 20k).

Edited April 14, 2014 by Volt_Cruelerz

[PhantomCovenant008]

I think that they should remove Domain of Clan of Sector and make them accessible only through Clan that can only have one or two rails.

 

So clan seek alliances with other clans to access other rails of the maps and encourage people to join clan to access dark sectors.

 

Sorry for my bad english.

[JudgeDreddX]

agree too, actually it is very bad that the dark sectores are blocked while they are in conflict :(

[FierceRadiance]

What about a "cooling down" period, after a conflict has concluded, where a SR can't be contested for 48 hours, 72 hours, or similar?

[Volt_Cruelerz]

What about a "cooling down" period, after a conflict has concluded, where a SR can't be contested for 48 hours, 72 hours, or similar?

Nah, that'd just give abusive clans time to recuperate.  I'd rather there simply be a financial strain of continued assault.

Edited April 14, 2014 by Volt_Cruelerz

[ioeshepard]

Actually thought these would be new sectors which would become accessible via Solar Rails ... hm, guess i was wrong - same old grind as ever.

 

Do like the Alliance idea for sure.

 

Posted my comment on dark sectors here - every Alliance could fight without stopping - even opens up doors to a story driven future

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/213524-advanced-alliance-invasion-mode-dark-sectors/?view=findpost&p=2487437

 

Regards

[F1UXie]

What if they limited the amount of contesting that can take place to half? Where there are 2 maps on every level, make it to where only one of those can be fought over at a time. This will leave one free node to gather resources while the other one is in conflict. I think that adding more dark sectors just means that there will be more battles taking place between alliances.