[actual discussion] How can we promote more field fighting?

Planetside 2 has these massive continents with great scenery with cool and unique locations, yet we always jump straight to the base fights. This is in part the reason for the demise of the hex system, lattice helped for the first little while (some of my most memorable battles were immediately after they introduced lattice) but now you can see that unless you're in the canyons of the southwest a loss at one base just means everyone redeploys to the next one down the line while the aggressors make a bee-line rush to get there before any defence can happen.

Battles because of this become just cookie cutter replicants of each other, oh its another tower battle yay. Soon this, if not already, will get repetitive.

There are multiple contributors to this, any tank actually being used as a tank is dead meat, infantry based AV is so stupidly long ranged that vehicles have no role in the attack (other than sundies) so we get these massive deadzones in between bases that can't have any battle occur at them because the fights can't be sustained. Now even if we did get people fighting in the fields then they'd just have guys gal drop behind them into their base which has no defence or defenders.

resource update won't change this, neither will continental lattice. We need an additional system at least for certain areas.

This is the reason guns like battle rifles and burst weapons have no reason to exist, why short range harassers are more important than tanks, why the NC's long range advantage goes to waste.

This is a tough problem with no easy solution but I have some (admittedly fledgling) ideas.


1. reduce range on infantry based av to reasonable levels.
*Don't even bother bringing real life into this because irl the tanks would still out range you and have far stronger magnification and velocity.
Don't talk about vehicles shelling spawn rooms either, thats not what happens when there's actually a fight happening. In most cases if your spawn is being shelled its because you already lost the point, the shields, the turrets, the walls, and all other defensive emplacements, you've lost the base.*
Because every field battle is always in av-turret/lancer range the vehicles have no staying power, that kinda negates their whole point.
This needs to happen no matter what but I felt the need to include it here.

2. (optional) Increase distance between bases.
not much to this other than creating more room for it to occur.

3. (optional) decrease top speed of ground vehicles (and make them tougher)
Though the maps are huge in scale they still don't require much time at all to get from one base to another, lowering the speed at which things happen leave more room for strategy and help create an evolving fight rather than brief skirmishes.

4. (optional) mini bases
small subterranean bunkers just large enough for a spawn room with a 30 second capture timer, destroyable spawn tube and such.
you put these up and link them to the lattice in between bases, obviously only in places where there are actual fields to fight in.
would work great with option 2

5. (optional) lower the number of bases
replace a lot of the small bases and towers in the middle of nowhere with systems of those prior mentioned mini bases.
For instance instead of Indar excavation sight, you'd have 3-4 mini bases along that stretch of land, since you aren't totally reliant on sunderers pushing in this region would be a lot more fluid and the AMS can become more of a strategic tool rather than a necessary to fight requirement.
bases like quartz ridge and the crown need to stay though, we strategic hardpoints to fall back to.
you can still have those clusters of buildings and stairs though, would be a good way to break up fighting types and provide cover.

any way that's all I have for now, how would you guys encourage this?

I don't fight in open fields because that's where the vehicles are.

Would maybe go for the number 5 .. Especially on Indar ..

Remove some bases .. In their place add some objective based cap points ( no spawn room )..

Even as infantry the battles between bases can be some of the most fun in the game but atm in certain areas you can't swing a cat without hitting another base.

arguably, the easiest way to get more field fighting is to increase sunderer health by perhaps 2x// get stealth fields working again... Then they could actually deploy out in feilds and live for a bit.

right now.. spawn sundies either get to the base and deploy in cover next to the walls.. or they die.

if we did that composite armour sundies would murder tanks even more than they can right now.

I would have a different, more dynamic territory system that is based on land traveled over by armies, rather than just tied to bases (bases would have some territory tied to them, but less). By encouraging battle lines there are more likely to be more open-field battles.

Give them the option to activate more armor connected with the spawn-mode. If you sundie is deployed as spawn-point you get more protection. If the sundie is mobile the protection is deactivated.

still all this does is increase dependency on sunderers which if you've been watching some of the more recent dev streams they believe to be a problem.

If i want more battles in the area i need to give more ways to survive on open field. If i deploy (spawn-mode) a sunderer on open field i´m done by enemy air-force and other stuff. A sunderer gives more power to infantry. I don´t say a sunderer needs to optimize other vehicles.

In my opinion, I think that the lattice should only connect Main bases and large outposts. All of the smaller outposts between and around the main bases and outposts, should work on the adjacency mechanic. The trick is to not allow the adjacency hex's to daisy chain around the continent allowing players to snake around the map, but give them more flexibility between and around the major bases. I made a post and example of how this might work using Hvar as an example in the link below.

Example of a Hybrid Lattice/Hex

I also agree, reducing infantry based AV to 300m would also be a big help, but that needs to be coupled with base re-designs, that impede vehicles and give infantry the advantage over vehicles as vehicle get too close.

I also think that objectives should be placed in those big open areas, that would benefit vehicles, such as a docking station that would allow a player to swap out their vehicles weapons, accelerated re-arming or even a buff to the vehicles in the region around this outpost if they control it. For example if there is small outpost and it is surrounded by a large area such as around Helios solar. We could remove the spawn rooms and make the capture area much larger, like 50% of the HEX around the outpost and all vehicles in the area contribute to flipping the point rather then infantry.

Bases should be mostly infantry vs Infantry, The 300m radius around a base should be infantry vs vehicle territory and the open areas in between should be the realm of vehicles vs vehicles.

sorry, it doesn't matter how tough the sunderer is, you'll still get rocketpodded, libbed, tanked splashed, harassed, wraith fury'd ect
sundie buff isn't the answer.

I don't think you'll see much Infantry fights in the open with how mercilessly effective the Harasser is at the moment.

Agree, I think if a Sunderer wanted additional protection, perhaps we could add defensive abilities to the weapon slots. For example, allow the player to remove one or both of their weapons, then allow them to attach shield emitters in place of the weapons, therefore we could greatly improve the durability of the sunderer, but at the cost of removing its offensive abilities. or even allow a cloaking device to be installed in place of the weapons.

It would be awesome to add capturable objectives without a natural spawn location nearby. They could be defensible encampments like turrets. Or could give benefits to whoever owns the capture point in the nearby territories, like faster regenerating shields. They could be just 1-3 buildings, or even just an antenna or satelite. But again, no natural spawn point nearby.

I have the pictures of C&C Generals in my had. The terrorist bus goes in to "bunker-battle-mode" and the units inside the bus using rockets and machine guns to destroy enemy tanks and helicopter.

Absolutely, I would love to see a defensive outpost, with no spawn room. If you want to hold the objective you need to bring your own AMS and protect it.

of course i mean head and not had

Number 5 is the only real option here that would do anything. Currently, each base is within a stones throw of another. There's no real room for the terrain between them or even the bases themselves to "grow" into something more complex. The focus should be fewer larger and more fleshed out bases with interesting terrain between each of them. This makes more sense with the possible battles brought on by lattice. Fewer and better infantry friendly bases means you can then buff tanks and/or adjust infantry AV to make vehicle combat more meaningful. The resource revamp would then round everything off and hopefully solve some of the vehicle spam issues. Which is something they'll also have to fix before having strong vehicles. Disposable costs for a tough vehicle isn't good either.

Only option 4 would work to some degree, because it is the only one that addresses the reasons why it doesn't happen in the first place. The best solution I have seen so far was the reason post by Wrel on the whole game design (including base design and increasing the base size with substations.

I think I love you.

@ OP: Remove squad beacons/squad deploy or greatly rework them.

You can bypass the open field phase completely by using an ESF as a ferry, and having 11 people pop out of your *ss like it's a clown car. Gal drop + squad beacno means they can pick where they spawn and stay there for an extended period of time. 1 man S-AMS moving up and deploying bypasses open field combat because people who die from the open field combat can just spawn further up if a sundy makes it/sneaks past/approaches from a different base.

Gals should be the only form of transportation that allows you to bypass that open field phase and squad spawning needs to be reworked so that if your squad wipes then you are forced back into the squad combat or redeploying from a gal.

Squad beacons/deploy also play into how poorly base fights can work out at times and are easier/cheaper and more reliable than a gal drop. People Spawn past defenses and kill zones that bases are designed around. Both attackers and defenders getting a choice in where they spawn in a base. Anyone with any class can go "I feel like spawning on the roof and shooting defenders in the back" which treads on both the risk/reward play style associated with the LA/Infil + LA/Infil can even bypass the risk/reward that they are balanced around. It's terrible.