The state of PS2 and what I feel must change.

Which is why I'm asking this: Why do we even have AI weapons in that case. AV weapons are superior for both roles in every case and generally don't need to adapt to any situations unless you use AA. Flak and Shield Cap being baseline with a better upgrade is going to make AV/splash spam less attractive. We already have the growing trend of HA's using their launchers on infantry because if they hit its a 1 shot or are even close you are going to be critical. Where is their need to adapt? Same goes for rocket pods.

This is why I don't see the bad part about this. The render distance is already being fixed which was the largest problem in infantry vs armor/air balance. Flak never effected direct hits regardless.

+4052049849645021204.2

The real issue is that there are so many shacks everyone splits up and goes every which way. It's either spawncamping or ghosthacking. I guess some people like it that way.

Good stuff, though should put this on reddit as well, since the devs rarely use their own OFFICIAL forum.

You do NOT speak for "We". You speak for yourself. I'm sure a HUGE majority of people, if given the chance to experience PS1 lattice system, would choose it over the hex system.

It's posted on reddit already.

I'm sure a HUGE number of people would not choose it as well.

Yeah how about we don't start claiming things like "the huge majority". You also don't speak for everybody.

Because not all AV weapons are suited to taking out a person, at longer ranges, they are somewhat avoidable and the fact that AV weapons are limited in ammunition. While you can go out of your way to sit ontop of an ammo pack, the reload time does not improve and smarter infantry will spread out versus come in a clump, which makes the effectiveness of an AV weapon as an Anti-infantry weapon less productive.

The standard AI weapons, while yes, you use more rounds to take down a person, you can fine tune your shots for ranged engagements if you are a bit more disciplined. Also, the nasty backlash at close range is more of a problem with AV than it is to spray some rounds at the enemy.

The real problem right now is the fact that a lot of the satellite bases are designed with badly placed Spawn points and even worse, badly thought out Cap Point locations.

Defensively, even the new Spawn Points, are still foolishly placed where vehicles can just spam with impunity. Some of them have 'covers' at the worst locations, making really big blindspots for infantry to push out from. The Cap Points, there are several of them still exposed to the outside, making orbital or fly by spamming too easy to really attack/defend in the situation. And while the 'roof' of the spawn room is there to make it a little difficult for libs to spam roof defenders, it also makes it a bit difficult for the defenders to keep air back a bit as well.

How long does one have to keep pounding that PS2 hex system is no different from PS1 lattice system... The problem is not the meta-landscape, the problem is the landscape itself.

I didn't say "Huge". I said "Huge majority". Please read carefully. Every argument has two sides and yes there will be a lot of people against the lattice system.. But the people against it are people afraid of change, andwho know nothing about the lattice system and havn't played PS1. A MAJORITY (M.A.J.O.R.I.T.Y.) of people, I think, would prefer the lattice system. And I didn't say "We think" because I'm not going to put my opinion in someone else's mouth. Let them decide.

Wonder what reddit will say about lattice vs hex.

Flow:
Pain fields would be a mess to properly implement as well as making little sense (why would the base turn a pain field on its own owners?) a quicker and more logical solution would be to drop the spawn room shields along with the tubes when the SCU is destroyed.

Definately agree on restricting spawn options, it is kind of rediculous right now that I can win or lose a fight at one location, and then respawn on the other side of the continent without any prep work. For this reason I'd also suggest expanding this to include the nearest available Sunderer.

On the topic of Sunderers, the logic of a mobile spawn being able to vomit fully kitted troops at a faster rate than a permenant spawn facility defies me, if there is no intent to implement some kind of time penalty for multiple respawns in a given time to punish mindless zerging can we at least swap the timers to give the home field advantage to the defenders?

Bringing SCUs back to smaller facilities yes, but they need to be placed logically, a wide open building the other side of the base from the spawn room is not logical.

Influence:
Getting rid of influence is good, it's a bad system serving as a crutch for a worse (hex) system. Unless the shift is the old PS1 style hack and hold, I would suggest keeping cap points which impact on a set timer visable to all via the map, with the caveat that in order to have that impact you need to fill the point, in other words you need 6/6 on a single point base to start and keep the timer running, thereby focuing people on the objective.

Action:
Agreed, again PS1 had this right, as a soloist you could get into a fight within 15 seconds of logging on via instant action, or if you wanted to pick something more specific or join up with your outfit you had to wait up to 5 minutes on the HART.

Indar:
I'm not sure individual bases (even the Crown and Allatum) are the problem, the problem is that they are still 100% effective even when totally cut off from the warpgates, PS1 had a solution to this in the NTU mechanic, if you couldn't keep the base powered, eventually you lost it, this lead to some pretty awesome seiges and some frantic fights over the silos as efforts were made to resupply. I'm sure how to bring that back with current mechanics, but it would certainly be one solution for bio/crown farms.

One thing I would definately agree with changing is to cut down the sheer number of bases by merging the existing ones into larger territories with the bases shifted to more logical locations.

Mergers:
Yes, Like Buzz I don't claim to know the ins and outs of the business aspects, but I do know as one of the 10% if Mattherson ever got to the point where my only option was a paid transfer to another server which may or may not be better in terms of population I would uninstall the game.

SOE made the mistake of opening too many servers, it their job now to fix it by merging those servers and charging players for the privilige is only going to cause ill will.

NDZ/Cloak:
How about each cap point projects a no deploy zone (could call it a sphere of influence maybe?) within which:
1. Hostile AMS cannot deploy
2. No drop pods may deploy
As stated cut down the sunderer interference range to compensate, but combined with the timer changes I raised earlier would reward more team oriented play from the attackers, cloaking fields on the AMS would be required so they aren't just nuked from the outset.

Random annoyances/turrets/base benefits:
Agree on all points

Restrictions:
My single biggest beef right now is that there are no restriction in this game, anyone can pull any vehicle, any plane, any class of infantry to meet the situation they face, spam begets spam, and vehicle spam in particular can only be countered with AV spam, which led to the inevitable whining about the Annihilator in particular and lock on weapons in general.

I'm not sure set territories is the way to go, as any inbalance in said territory would be siezed on as "evidence" of "dev favouratism" but that said there needs to be some kind of limits, either resource or personnel or skill/cert based, which can serve to limit the number of "X" on the field, whether X is Libs, Tanks, ESFs, Lockons, etc. Make people choose what they want to be.

Outfits:
Agreed on all

Lattice:
Cannot agree more, this combined with the territory rework proposed in the Indar section especially will make for a much more enjoyable game than we have at present.

The lattice let you deep strike bases that were topologically far away but adjacent by lattice.

A lattice system overlay on the hexes would promote deepstrikes on facilities while outposts were being fought over.

Everyone vote for the OP's posts if you haven't. These are all excellent points that need attention.

My only thing I disagree on, is the removal of the influence system. I say keep that, but on everything else I wholeheartedly agree with the OP.

Actually, I'm an old PS1 Veteran (From Beta to now) and the Lattice System was not much better than this system. While it was obvious where the enemy was going to go for the most part, the Hex System was also something many of the PS1 players wanted to INCLUDE into the game to promote trying to HOLD areas between the bases. And mind you, capping was just between the 5 different types of bases of varying number.

The current system allows a bit more flexibility in a fight. The current problem is more of the situation where fighting in a large massive pack is more beneficial than several groups. Defense is practically non-existent in most cases due to the fact that a lot of the designs for defense have been gimped so bad to make attacking easy, making any meaningful defense is about as tedious as it is to attack in small groups.

There's a substantial and important difference (namely their completely different things) between balance shifting to giving infantry a distinct advantage vs. air and vehicles relatively, and there being no vehicles and aircraft used in combat.

Namely, I did not suggest the latter would happen.

Really? Go to page 5 of this thread to see how wrong you are.

Fortunately the devs already have their eye on this thread, and have responded in here. Our job here is done!

Actually, no... The Lattice system did not promote 'deep strikes'. The lattice system put a stop to what originally annoyed everyone Prior to it being put in there which was the merry-go-round effect of chasing people from base to base, trying to capture a base someone else took. It created 'logical' steps, some of them, rather illogical, to where to go to next. At the same time, fac benefits forced strategic holdings. You want that Tech Ability from the Tech Plant up north? Better make sure you don't get cut off from it with those two bases connected to it.

If you also looked at how SOME of those Lattice points were setup, along with the Warpgates, those were some long stretch treks to try to get a foothold into a continent. Some of those treks were even disadvantageous to take at times, not because they were 'deep strikes', but simply damn obvious those were weakpoints and long stretches to mess people up with.