suggestion Bear Cannons and Why There are 1,200 Players Left

[Kast 96]

There are a lot of reasons why players have moved on from Atlas, but, on PvP servers, the constant demolishing of everything one has built (often when offline) is going to be in the top three. The bear cannon - one single asset has probably cost Atlas hundreds or thousands of players. "Hey, it's a PvP game! blah, blah". Yes, I know. I play for the PvP and I've blown into many a base and sunk dozens of ships - I've used it a lot, and I'm telling you that the bear cannon is a ridiculous weapon.

We've done a lot of testing on both official and private servers, and a manned bear cannon will out range ANY NPC-manned defensive weapon. That means that all of those defensive positions around your base are utterly useless if you're not also there at the time of the attack. And since there's no in-game notification (other than the log) of an attack across grids, chances are that you won't be present when any particular attack occurs.

So, two suggestions:

1. Cut the range of bear-mounted cannons by 50%. Not 10% or 20%... by 50%. It's a serious change, and the folks who enjoy running off your new players will certainly cry bloody murder, but it'll make base defense meaningful again. Seriously, when in all of military history has a towed weapon ever been able to out range a fixed gun emplacement?

2. Allow weapon-mounted NPCs to notify company members (across grids) when they've agro'd on a pathfinder.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Kast