It's not a waste though. The point of a private, custom server is to make things better, not maintain the status quo or leave terrible implementations of things in place.
There are so many QoL changes that could be made in regards to Sentries, Guards, and Cannons, from improving AI and abilities to cannons being faster, deadlier, more accurate and more numerous in number. These are all parameters that can be modified.
Guards were already given siege damage, which kind of helped, but more can be done. The entire system was clearly an after thought by the original developers, and has stagnated since the beginning of the game. The fact that someone with high burst damage like a darkrunner can kill you and stealth away fast enough literally two feet from guards is an issue. The fact that you are in a warzone next to your own base loaded with cannon sentries and you can be killed by your own faction with no consequences is just trashy implementation.
Well it wasn't originally discussed HOW such changes would be implemented, with an accompaniment by increased guard/cannon numbers, aggro range, etc etc...
As it stands the original thread only wanted to have guards/cannons/etc turn on purplers and
it is a wasteful change if done in
isolation.
Since as everyone knows, the guards/cannons/etc are shit...
But if you are talking "more complex" changes as you suggest... it still seems pointless cause most of the time your not in range of cannons whenever you are doing things in zones there are cannons present somewhere....
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Directed more generally to the discussion as a whole:
So, considering we're talking about cannons in their current state:
1: they aren't even in the places that you'd probably want protection in Diamond Shores - if purplers or reds wanted to steal your archeum pack in DS they could do it when you are AWAY from the cannons rather than right on them... So doesn't fix the problem of "preventing purpling" or even reds attacking... Doing bunker is always dangerous and no one cares about dying during that.... Farming mobs and you'll die... Like realistically how "protected" can you be before we start asking for perma-peace in Diamond Shores....
2: reds always hit-and-run even in range of cannons and they are effective at performing such hit-and-runs.
i.e. cannons aren't good at what they are meant do anyways... Making them turn on purplers will not "prevent purpling" just as they do not prevent red hit-and-runs...
3: you might as well make Diamond Shores perma peace if you want to be doing anything there without getting killed which is... silly at best.
However, if they were to consider adding guards and decreasing things such as time-to-aggro and rate of fire etc etc
I can see that being somewhat more effective than just "adding purplers to list of aggro" for the guards/cannons
But still Point number 1 stands still:
If you are gonna get attacked it will happen in areas away from cannons/guards that you need to do stuff... Like shooting bunkers, handing in your Archeum pack, farming mobs....
And getting attcked at the portal spawns or while afk'ing "eg "East/West Housing Zone"... we can live with that it is only a minor inconvenience