As explained before, the interactions between strangers in public Red Stars are not what we wanted them to be. Starting next update, we are eliminating the incentives and opportunities for griefing (i.e. intentionally attacking or disrupting other players). In the process we are also introducing the first of many changes to make Red Stars less repetitive and more unique, exciting and likely to encourage different strategies.
Here are the changes and the motivation behind them:
Instanced Artifacts per player
Artifacts have shared up until now, enabling people to arbitrarily declare them theirs, "stealing" them from others, and abuse game rules or even other players in the chat in their quest to get as many as possible. From the next update, every Artifact each player sees is theirs for the taking. Other players taking Artifacts from the same planet won't affect their own count. This will eliminate most of the incentives for griefing.
Different public Red Star rules
Public Red Stars will behave differently in some ways, to prevent abusing game rules to destroy other player's ships. EMP won't trigger unless there's Cerberus in the sector. BOND won't be useable with Teleport. Interceptor won't attack miners and transports from players that didn't trigger them. The tiny amount of players who will see this as a challenge to find new innovative ways to destroy other player's ships will be removed from the game.
Reduced maximum number of participants
We are reducing the number of participating players to Red stars to 4, down from 5. This allows us to better balance all star levels for difficulty and number of Artifacts. It will also make it more likely to run full Red Stars in private matches, where the vast majority of Corporations has trouble filling all the slots.
More varied Cerberus configurations
Starting with this update, you'll see some more variety in how Cerberus ships spawn in RS7 and above. The changes are relatively small, but we plan to use this system more in the future to create distinct and more "rare" challenges and rewards, tailored to the number of participating players.
Sanctuary deaths and Red Stars
Battleships destroyed in a Red Star will no longer reduce the "battleships sent" counter for that Red Star, so they won't be possible to replace. This gives a much needed incentive to keep the ships alive, eliminates a large category of exploits that make it possible to clear a sector without using any strategy, and allows us to balance Red Stars for a proper challenge with future updates and new modules.
