Pilots!

In today's entry of our developer blog we'd like to talk about our work on the long-awaited, exciting updates to “Sector Conquest”! This important update will be installed on Star Conflict Servers next Thursday, and you can find out about upcoming changes right now!

The previous season of “Conquest” was very busy, corporations engaged in intense battles for control over locations, and we are pleased to announce that the new concept will help make the “Conquest” a more exciting part of the game! So, how do we envision this new system?

For starters, let's list the three main points that we would like to explain in today's blog:

• “Battle (PvP)” Mode
• Sector Conquest
• Map changes. End of the first season of “Sector Conquest”

As you can see, our pilots should expect major changes pretty soon, but let's not get ahead of ourselves and analyse everything in order.

1. “Battle (PvP)” Mode

As the name implies, this entry mostly concerns corporations. Therefore, before proceeding to the main part of the blog, we would like to tell those pilots not in corporations that we are preparing a new main battle mode called “Battle (PvP)”! As usual, the pilots without a corporation or those who are new to the game can easily find challenging battles. matchmaking for this mode will be based on improved squad rules:

• If one team has a squad of more than three pilots, then the second team also must have a squad.
• All squads will be balanced with each other based on their power. At the moment, the system is configured so that the spread of balancing is at 25% (i.e. a squad may get into a fight with another squad that's 25 % stronger or weaker).
• Two or more squads in the same corporation will not get into the same fight — that is, situations when squads from the same corporation are fighting against each other or are in the same team will be completely excluded.

Because of these changes, matchmaker will pick the most interesting and fair battles for single players. And players who are most interested in a team game, will enter battles with worthy adversaries.
All you need to do to start a battle in the new mode is click the “ENGAGE” button! And when the pilots want to take part in more prestigious and brutal battles, they can try their hand at “Sector Conquest”, which you can learn about in the second part of our blog.

2. Sector Conquest

Let's start with the first aspect of the updated “Sector Conquest” — corporate participation. Since the main forces fighting for this Precursor sector are pilot corporations, only the corporate pilots can participate in “Sector Conquest”. Accordingly, the mode itself will get quite a bit harder. What are the battles going to be like?
Only pilots from corporations will be able to participate in the conquest as soon as they reach rank five. However, since this mode will be much tougher and more competitive, it will be completely devoid of matchmaking queues. Thus, all the pilots of ranks Five and above will get into battles with each other. And if the pilots really want to achieve the best results they will need to have the most powerful and technologically advanced ships! We are confident that the latest feature “Fleet strength” will help our pilots in this regard.
In addition, “Sector Conquest” will also see the introduction of side of conflict division based on corporation jurisdictions — that is, all the corporations and their pilots on the side of the Empire will fight for the Empire, and not the other sides of conflict.

Selecting a location for battle
Location selection follows the same rules as before — every 12 hours three new locations are automatically selected for battles, and this selection is done with such a condition that each party simultaneously defends and attacks a location (although, depending on the controlled locations there may be exceptions). The more links this location has to other locations, the greater the likelihood that it will be attacked. Of course, there is a small element of surprise, but locations like these are more likely to be attacked.

Rewards for location capture
Many of our pilots noted that capturing locations of other sides of conflict was an important aspect, but getting involved in it was almost never encouraged — corporations constantly fought on the front lines and gained new locations, but only received rewards for the battles, and not for the actual location capture. We also tried to deal with this problem: soon, all the players who participated in battles for specific locations, which later moved to their side of the conflict, will receive remuneration in the form of loyalty vouchers!

Let us consider an example: if you took part in at least one battle for a location (and won), you get a reward when the location is captured! All pilots who fought for the location will be rewarded with loyalty vouchers from one of the two factions. Amount received will always be the same, regardless of the number of fights conducted by pilots.

Our veterans immediately put forward a question: “What kind of vouchers will be available? Each side conflict has two factions”. Currently, the system works this way:

• When the Empire captures the location belonging to the Federation, all the pilots who participated in the capture receive Legion loyalty vouchers. When a Jericho location is captured, pilots receive Warden vouchers.

  
  



• When the Federation captures a location belonging the Empire, its pilots receive Armada vouchers. After the capture of a Jericho location — Vanguard vouchers.

  
  



• When Jericho gets control over a Federation location, players who participated in the capture receive Raid vouchers, the capture of an Empire location yields Tech vouchers.

  
  

Resource extraction. Rewards for control location
In the improved “Sector Conquest” corporation can apply for location control. Fleets arrive in Precursor sectors not only to expand their influence and conquer new systems, but also to extract resources. Those corporations that control sector locations, will be given the opportunity to extract these resources and make a profit, which will be distributed among all the pilots of the corporation. What can the corporations that control some of the locations in the sector get?

“Battle” map will feature three main types of resource locations:

• Locations that produce Artifacts.
• Locations with active extraction of important resources, generating Credits.
• Locations with extremely valuable minerals, generating Galactic Standards.

Artifacts, Credits and Galactic Standards are distributed among all corporation pilots automatically.
Important: by capturing enemy locations, corporations are expanding the number of locations available for control.

Applying for location control
As you know, in many games area captures are carried out mainly by the largest associations of players — we have tried to build a control system in such a way that each corporation could take part in it and get a reward. How do we want to achieve this?

Every sector battle (regardless of whether corporation pilots are attacking an enemy location or protect their own) will bring each corporation pilot one point of influence. These points will accumulate in a shared “bank” of the corporation and will then be used to apply for control of a certain location. Just think about it, to control a location, the corporation must prove that it's good enough, right? Thus, in addition to getting a reward for capturing locations of the other side of the conflict, pilots will be able to receive rewards for defending their corporation's locations.

Applications will work as follows:

1. CEO of the Corporation applies for location control. In one cycle (12 hours) a corporation may submit only one application, which can always be moved.
2. At the end of the cycle, scores for all the interested corporations are calculated. That corporation that has the most points wins the application. All the corporation's points are included in the count.
3. When the winner is decided, all points are reverted to zero for the winning corporations — this will allow all corporations, even the small ones, to participate in seizing control of locations. While a location is controlled by the a corporation, another corporation can not control it.
4. A corporation is entitled to control a location for a period roughly equal to 10 cycles — 5 days (Different locations have different cycles). Corporations can own multiple locations at once — until control time runs out. After this period, location becomes neutral again and is available for capture.

Updated leaderboards
The next important aspect of our concept is the leaderboards update. As a result of some changes, several of the previous lists cease to be relevant, so we are planning to change them in order to reflect the planned changes.

3. Map changes. End of the first season of “Sector Conquest”

As you can see, some parts of the previous variation of “Sector Conquest” cease to be relevant, however, we have prepared a special achievement for all pilots who participated in those battles so that all corporation pilots are mindful of their contribution. The more active their corporation was, the more interesting achievements they will receive! If you still haven't had the time to grab a couple of locations in the sector — hurry up!

In addition, as many of our players understand, the end of the first season of “Sector Conquest” and the following extensive changes require another important action: at the end of the first season, all captured locations will become neutral — when the updated “Sector Conquest” is applied to our servers, all corporations will have equal and fair chances!

We are waiting forward to your comments and impressions on updated “Sector Conquest”! After the update, we will continue improving this updated mode with various interesting features, based on your suggestions as well!

Sincerely,
Star Conflict Team