Sneak peek of new hex adjacency graph for Indar and a bit more!

this is, without a doubt, the best ps2 news since the release date announcement. while i definitely am still a little tiffed about not having continent locking, this gives me hope for ps2. excellent work guys. the only problem i have is that this goes against your mentality of spreading fights out for fps gain, though i'm sure that can be solved. for now, this is exactly what planetside 2 needs and i applaud SOE for listening to their players. if and when this and continent locking go in, i can almost see myself signing up for another 6 month membership.

This concept is amazing and I can't wait to test it out!

Are you sure you are on the same page? If the OP is to be believed, there won't be any "taking everything else". Maybe you should actually read the suggestion proposed in this thread. It will actually funnel the fights, very heavy-handedly so.

We haven't had a REAL large scale war in a long time. I'm not saying current conflicts around the world aren't wars, they just aren't large scale.

Such as?

Really I'd like to know.

By and large, with the obvious and notable exception of the various asymtetric conflicts. What i've said applies to WW2 (at least to the winning side in most cases in a given threater), Most of the Isareli-Arab conflicts, most of the Pakistan-India-Bangladesh conflicts, arguably several of the more conventional aspects of the conflicts in Sub-sharan africa.

The lattice system only resembles 'large scale warfare' if we are talking about maybe, pre naploenic warfare. But with tanks and planes in space. Attacking from defended location to defendended location in a series of predictable moves has been pretty obivously a bad idea for a few hundred years now. Fairly conventional wisdom is that you hit the weak points at the flanks, and them move behind or exploit said breakthrough in a manner that forces the opposing force to quit its defensive position. THe notable exception to this is WW1 which had an obession with establishing and taking down mega fortresses by their own version of the footzerg. Which went, not so well.

Whether or not this makes for compelling gameplay is another matter , but thats (insofar as its possible to give one) a fairly encompassing sketch of how its done '4 realz' and how its nothing like the proposed lattice system.

Did you flunk English? I didn't say anyone was advocating slavery. I said that the people in question are couching their true meaning by using fluffy language, ie. "small outfit tactics" instead of ghost capping. This is the same thing that the south did (and some still do) by using "states rights" as a veneer for prejudice. That is not the same as saying people who disagree with the new lattice system are would-be slavers. I am merely calling them out on their obfuscating what they really mean.

And no, what many people call "flanking" here is sending a handful of people to capture a base that just flipped to enemy control, because the game currently doesn't incentivize defense in any meaningful way and the current hex system doesn't provide for anything resembling a logical battle flow. It's a *********** of connectivity that allows ghost capping to happen. That is going to come to a glorious end very, very soon. Real flanking would be attacking your enemy from the sides or from behind by surprise, not capturing an empty base that was just taken.

Hmm... seems to me to be a simple question of how much free roam warfare do we want to sacrifice for a meta game?

I agree with your post, but you gotta use simpler terms for alot of the forumsiders. Terms like 'veneer' or 'Obfuscation' tend to glaze their eyes over. And you had to know that analogy would be taken out of context.

You can still roam freely. The unshaded areas don't become restricted areas. There is just a clear progression to how bases can be captured and you can't ghost cap bases anymore.

Laying traps, guerrilla attacks (vehicles have respawn timers and cost resources in case you didn't notice), NTU draining (if they ever add silos back in). JUST ATTACKING SOMEWHERE ELSE. Zergs are largely un-coordinated, this generally means they will only occupy one/two lanes at most since they all like to cram in together in one giant mosh pit. Unless you are pushed all the way back to your gate the chances are you are gonna have 2 or three major facilities under your control, and each of those will have two or three branching paths.

Besides why should people with toasters ruin it for everyone else?

Ghost capping - a guy on a flash comes to your base, flips a point and goes somewhere else. And it continues to cap until some one stops it or it completes. With no one actually on the point.

Flanking - you go from Ti Alloys to Ceres and then all the way to Mao instead of feeding all your players to those clowns sitting on the Crown, thus getting a real chance to warpgate the team at northern warpgate.

Know the difference.

I like it, but of course with some changes to the connections (for example, it makes no sense that Ti Alloys and Crossroads are not connected). I also would make it so that this change doesn't incentive zerging, in order to do that I'd propose 2 things:

1) Give XP bonus to less populated continents (aside from the bonus to the factions with less pop). For example, if Indar has 2000 guys, and Esamir and Amerish both have 500 guys, give a 30% bonus (or something like that) to everyone that's playing in those 2 continents (be they VS, TR or NC)

2) Give XP on capture in an inverse relation to the ratio attackers/defenders. If you take a Bio Lab in a fight 10vs10 you should get more XP than if you take it 100vs10. This should make either zergs of both sides involved collide, or make them split (of course, I'm assuming the zerg to be mindless and only be motivated by cert farming in this case)

Which would work only if that route connected somewhere people had to spawn something to an active battle on the lattice network.

As above, to add to which, if the active node on th lattice has vehcile spawns e.g. it being a tower, will involve a lot of sitting around wating for enemy troops to roll by despite them having no reason to

As I've said numerous times in this thread. I have zero problems with these proposals is they accompany some sort of logistics metagame, that gives the game another layer of strategy, and objectives to attack/defend beyond 'capture this base, then this base, then ..'

As things stand though, not an option. I asking in terms of what in and of this proposal, and the current game mechanics are options. The answer to which is.

Basically,

See my problem is here, if this system acheives its objectives, all viable attack vectors, will at a given time be manned to some extent allready by both sides. I have nothing inherently wrong with this, indeed. I do actually like larger battles. However it reduces the game to just this. I can take my Squad or Platoon to fight in Battle A B, C , D or E. Or Esamir, Amerish or Indar. So to be charitable and assuming the system mirrors what is being proposed, there will be in total 15 choices per server for any sort of gameplay that allows for some sort of strategic impact.

Again, if these system achieves what it intends to, people won't all cram into one or two 300 man zerg. They'll split around the 80-130 mark, per 'corridor'. Which is fine and all. Again to restate very clearly my point, i'd like there be something more for a squad to mutliplatoon sized outfit to do, then simply. "Which node today boys?"

THats a fair concern is it not?

Well I don't have a 'toaster' you hardly need to have an MBA to understand how a F2P funded by subs and a shop - which ignores the huge number of gamerz without i5/i7's in its game's accessibility and enjoyability, might run into a few problems with its revenue streams.

Or sending six people to an empty base, taking it, then moving onto the next empty base and pretending you're useful while another small enemy force takes the bases you just took because nobody is there to defend, thus completing the "small outfit tactics" circle jerk made possible by the current hex system.

This is flanking. You actually engage the enemy from the sides with your squad (or platoons), hitting them from two or three fronts and making them fodder for your larger force.

Avoiding any yellow, orange, or red hexes while moving through green hexes to capture a large base in a green hex is not flanking. That's avoiding fights to grab easy certs. That is going the way of the dodo with the lattice system.

Actually to be fair, depending on how the map is fleshed out, at presented at present the node connectivity can engender prehaps as much as 8 choices for battles per cont. However, these would have several 'battles' involving diffrent vectors of approch on large bases.

Your talking about the tatical level, people raising concerns here are talking about at the strategic level.

Good points, I'll accept my statement was bad. However, the big difference is that they do it that way because they can't respawn. If they COULD respawn, the foot zerg battles would happen a LOT more, enter PS2.

Indeed, but as I've said. ITs an open question which is more compelling.

Space WW1

or

Space WW2?