Lattice, reducing the game to 3 types of fights?

Theres a number of things that could go as "secondary objectives" for a single squad, but no matter what you add, all potential targets have the chance to be completly overrun by the zerg.

Its impossible to add something that only smaller squads would care about, without adding some way of actually restricting more people to enter a certain area. And that obviously goes against everything PS2 stands for.



We need secondary objectives. Generators that power ressource income and benefits, stuff like that.

Would have been interesting to see that.

Then right now, PS2 is the wrong game for you. It is as simple as that.


It is always the numbers game, and will always be. The potential fix, or at least something that will help greatly, is the combination of the lattice, global lattice and secondary objectives like generators or NTU stuff. Its gonna take time to get that all in, but the lattice clearly is a step in the right direction. The first step, of several.

I don't understand what is all the hate (if I may call it that), I had lots of fun today with the lattice system, the battles were more focused, on defeat people fell back and kept the fight going instead of spreading out into numerous other territories, the progress was not being influenced by the ammount of enemies most of the times, giving a chance to small groups to hold a base for longer times.

So far I like it and I am really anxious to see how it turns out in the Live server.

The PS1 base design was NOTHING without NTU and Generators, because if I remember correctly it was even more prone to doorway camping and grenade spam. Hell, I still have memories of those base assaults spent behind a dozen of my allies repairing two dudes shooting at eachother through a door.

You should not always try to separate vehicles from infantry since the only thing vehicles do in PS2 is creating a no-infantry zone.

BF3 could have been a HUGE step forward by making buildings destructible. In Bad Company 2, some maps allow a good offense to pound the enemy base to a pulp and directly shooting the Objective on the long term, forcing defenders to get out of their base at some point.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the very essence of the lattice in combination with the hack times.

Even while vastly outnumbered (we saw that folks, sorry. :/), NC could defend against a bigger force simply by being smart. What would have happend with the current hex system? NC would have ended in the warpgate rather quickly....

Please just stop with the 'combined arms large game lulz' stuff. Its a strawman of my positon and a massive oversimplification fo this entire debate. Its not simply 'BIG FIGHTS HORRAYS' vs 'I love ghost capping it are the best'.

Moreover, Its not on Miller right now and frankly i'm surprised to see someone from VC say that.

Lets just take two recent examples, remember Spec Ops, remeber Camp connery? Massively outnumbered forces managing to hold single bases. Largely because the entire empire went there, but none the less case in point.

And the literally next to nameless number of battles that I've been involved in, often fairly random ad hoc affairs in places that under the new system would have no strategic value that have been engaging as hell and haven't just come down to numbers and have often turned on things either as pivotal as a single sundy going up or down, or as trivial as a squad or two getting bored or going to bed.

Well said Basti, couldn't agree with you more.

IMO the lattice system is a huge improvement. Currently you can fight and win a huge battle in one hex, that last for an hour and is great fun, only to find yourself totally cut off and losing territory because the enemy can totally bypass any defences/battle very easily and cap territory with a couple of people. So you either continue the fight and have fun or run around the map mopping up small groups and hanging around empty bases. It's frustrating.

The lattice system is obviously going to funnel people in certain directions, but there is nothing at all to stop people changing lanes, reinforcing as necessary, attacking from the flanks from friendly bases and so on. In short nothing at all lacking from the original system. You do not have to stay on one lattice you still have total freedom of movement. Tactically, nothing has changed.

The lattice forces the enemy to attack, and forces a proper defence. Currently the only reason to defend a base is for fun. It is far more efficient to grab hexes and move on asap with as small a force as possible. The current system negates tactics because even if you do defeat a larger enemy force you will still lose territory in your rear. There is no point in fighting large battles or trying to delay a superior enemy force when you can easily bypass them.

I would much rather the battles I fight have some meaning rather than now where if I defeat an enemy they just respawn at the warpgate and recap everything around the territory for free. Chasing people around the map to resecure territory is not fun, and its not fun guarding a base the the enemy won't bother to attack.

Reffering to the lattice as a funnel or lane system gives the wrong impression. Like I said nothing stops people from attacking e.g ti alloys from crossroads even though they are in a different lane. The lattice will free people up to play tactically rather than a boring wack a mole strategic system.

Add NTU refulling of bases and the system will be near perfection.

I've seen this argument of "ending fun fights" entirely too much.

Would you really reject a mechanic like NTU because it allows people to put a term to stalemates ?
It's not like being cutoff matters, either, if you are still holding a big facility.


See it like this:
If you couldn't spawn Sunderers from small outposts, but only medium-large bases, and tanks from facilities only, what you just described would not happen. Ultimately, you'd need those big Facilities because they would act as a strong foothold that small outposts are not. You would not be able to dive deep inside enemy territory by just capping those small bases.




All a matter of perspective.
If it can be solved by another way, it wasn't the problem to begin with.

Again, Lattice as on test servers now or Hex as it is now is a false dilemma. I not pro either particularly. I the concern im really trying to highlight here is what I saw tonight, and if you'd joined up with the rest of CWA on the lane we were in, is that the system exacerbates existing problems with population imbalances in a single battle.

Backhacking for one is both boring, annoying to deal with and a consequence of the current system no one is a massive fan of.

I just worry though people are letting there desire to be rid of this nuisance, and a lack of large fights on their servers make them support a new mechanic which I think has some large flaws of its own.

See thats why my 'predictability is a two way street' concern comes in. If the force attacking is significantly larger than the force defending. Indeed, given you only need to plonk a sundy down, flip a point then camp a spawn. There's nothing from stopping them charging several bases down the line and taking them each in turn in a leap frog style fashion. We saw that tonight on the tawich-crossroads lane.

Having your actions make sense within a larger framework is definitely something the game needs a lot more of.

You yourself just did. It is what it is, its designed to funnel people towards each other through lanes.

I'm happy at least that the consensus appears to now be overwhelmingly by in favour of adding some sort of logistics game mechanic in.


One possible solution i've been batting around our mumble, during and after the test. Is to somehow have the game emulate the problems a larger force has with supplying itself and moving and gives the smaller force a bonus of some kind.

but again, the answer can't simply to be to make attacking a frustrating experience.

I think the Lattice System is great, it is doing what it was intended for (to help create a battle flow, help empires predict where the next engagement will take place, create a 'sort of front line'). But I feel the problem is in the base design, right now attackers can run through the shields of bases, run through the gaps in the walls and jump jet over the wall. A quick fix for the basses which will also help fix the lattice issue, is that the shields in the base should not allow infantry through, the gaps in the walls to be removed, so the only entrenched for attackers is through air, or jump jets, which will also give LA's a purpose. I know this will be easy to implement, because this was done in beta, when the walls were first introduced, people complained about it being too tough, but I think it would work perfectly with the lattice due to the limited routs, which means enough attackers will arrive to be effective.

They could do a NTU system thing, you cut off territory and the base has to run on it's NTU, which forces it to go neutral in like 20-30 minutes. So the link actually now has a reason to exist.

I'm with Mondando - As it stands Lattice doesn't fix things so much as substitute one set of problems for another. If the issue is that people want bigger fights you could easily have mini-alerts where a few bases are declared to be King of the Hill style fights with whoever controls them getting a bonus at the end of half an hour. The mechanics are in place to support that. it would not be a complete, drastice change to the system. Alerts have already gone a long way to encouraging bigger fights and better continent population. It was a very simple addition that did not touch core gameplay mechanics, yet it drastically changed how players play the game by introducing a new objective with a clear result.

The Lattice is not well developed and the current game mechanics do not support it well. Suggestions advanced to solve Lattices limitations usually amount to "Reimplement Hex".

As to the demographics concerned about 'Lack of Flow" - Are they playing with outfits? I lead platoons. I rarely have trouble figuring out where to send my squads next to keep them stuck in and fighting. If I can't find a fight I generally know how to provoke one. I can only imagine that the game looks very, very different to players who do not know how to read the tactical map and don't know the strategic meta-game of maneuver and lines of attack.

As i've said though, my worry in taking this route is - make every base Maginot line style fortress. Makes attacking frustrating.

Better game?

The lattice could certainly do with a few more, smaller lanes to serve as outlets for outfits and individuals that don't want to be funneled into a meatgrinder.

But how hard it is to cut off a territory, and what defines "cut off" ?


The issue with the Hex system was the number of connexions, and cutting off is very hard (without the help of the 3rd faction).

The issue with the Lattice is also how hard it is to cut off, in a different fasion:



If you can only think that binary Linked/Cut states is the option, you'll have big issues.

That's why Influence can actually be the cure.
Proportionally weakening your enemy by reducing its influence over an area. It's a gradual factor, not a binary one, which makes it much more malleable.
On this point, I feel that everyone, SOE included, is missing out on how much potential it has.

Thinking about it I kind of agree. At the moment we have too many options with the Hex system so we get back hacking and fights dispersing too quickly/too widely. However the current iteration of the lattice on Indar is too far to the extreme opposite, not enough options everywhere is just one or two lanes which limits things too much.

Perhaps a medium between the two should be explored? more constrained than the current Hex system, but less restrictive than the current lattice?

Not sure what you mean by 'rejecting NTU mechanic'

Even if you couldn't spawn sunderers etc from small bases, people would still ghost cap them. ATM you do need to take the large bases- they are the prime target and that's where most of the largest battles happen now. What would change? You couldn't spawn sunderers from minor bases in beta, still had the same problem.

You would still need to resecure multiple hexes in your rear, constantly, to avoid being cut off, just like now. People don't cap hexes because they can spawn stuff, they do it to get the territory. The problem is the hex system and how easy it is to use it to diffuse a large battle.

Likewise Matherson simply doesn't have a lot of these problems. There's always a fight on Mattherson somewhere. There are some outfits that re-deploy frequently, but they tend to be following their own tactical doctrine when it comes to deciding where they need to be fighting at the moment.