48 v 48 fights are poisonous to the game as they currently are.

Sorry for the overly dramatic topic title. Anything less tends to wither and die. Kindly read the post to see my reasoning and explanation.

Planetside promises large battles, and it does deliver. However, there is more then one way to make a battle large. Large in scope, not just cramming people into a base. Unfortunately, Planetside does more of the latter. What ends up happening is what I refer to as 'critical mass', where only sheerly incredible numbers from one side can disturb the stalemate. Killing at that point becomes largely fruitless, as medics become plentiful. That is, if you can even approach an enemy. Getting one kill and reduced to atoms by four guns and three tanks isn't very fun, after all. It's the same way with armor. Because the 'important' space is so small, armor has only so much to focus on. So it ends with tower camping.

The examples go on and on. The classic representation? The biolab. Or biofarm. They typically turn into crap fests, staring at doors waiting for some poor idiot to make the foolish mistake of stepping outside. Pointless farming has no better representation. Some may view this as fun, and it is certainly unique in the gaming world, but is it really fun? Meh. Most players I communicate with treat biofarms as obstructions, because they know that they're functionally impossible to take without sneaking in to take it when the enemy isn't looking. That's not 'epic' in scale, that's a pathetic ghost cap. Biofarms are actually an interesting arena to fight in when the numbers aren't stupidly heavy, as there are a number of paths to take and flanking opportunities. The issue lies when critical mass is hit and there are more players then are sensible in the area.

People largely regard Amp stations, and to a lesser extent, tech plants to be the superior bases in the game. Do you know why? Because of defenses, and because the fights are spread out. It isn't always always 200 guys crammed into hallways spamming explosives at teleporters. There is a large breadth of roles. Infiltrators can get onto the tech plant or walls and snipe defenders, infantry move through the back area. Armor attempts to hold the outer walls or facility and so on. You're not simply reduced to staring at a spawn until the very end.

We simply need to apply that philosophy to more bases. Spread the fight out over the hex rather then just the base. Flinging points further out then a cluster of buildings may assist. Alternatively, to save on another complete redesign of Indar or Esamir, bases can be condensed into one 'hex'.

An example would be Scarred Mesa. Currently, a hell to try to cap. The two launch pads can be camped endlessly. Zergs die there. Taking a page from the Crown and spreading things out. That little island between the two bridges can have a point and spawn there, and one can, perhaps, be stuck out in the bay. There's a reason to actually venture out from the easy to camp places. Rather then packing two platoons on A, you'd need to split forces. You can eliminate armor and secure the field. Tanks would have a reason to prowl around, looking for enemy armor. The entire hex is the battlefield, not just the base. The only flaw with the crown is that defenders don't have enough options and can't easily reach the outer points. This could be solved by destroyable spawns at those locations. The defenders always have a solid spawn at the 'original' base until the base is capped.

Or connect, say, ayani labs, Vanu archives, and NS research into one hex. Each has their base and point, but needs to be locked down to secure the entire hex. The fight gets more spread out, you need to field push.

A hint of this was in when facilities had outer bases that were easy to flip. The fight wasn't always located at the center where the one single point is. The only flaw there was that the outer bases weren't important enough. They provided a spawn, but not much more. No reason to post a defense there to hold against counter attacks until all your sundies got popped.

The resource revamp would go well with this, too, as with the fight spread out further, ANTs could get through a little more easily. So units would need to be more vigilant to keep a blockade. Armor doesn't need to camp the spawn to get certs! They hunt ANTs and their escorts. Air doesn't get smashed with the fist of an angry god because there are four AA maxes on the point and can opt to go elsewhere in the hex.

Jeepers, you shoulda gone for a TL/DR

tl;dr: Bases are too small for the numbers they play host to. This can be solved by spreading bases out over the entire hex, or compressing bases into a single 'hex' to spread the numbers and fight over an area then packing 200 people into a cramped base interior.

Sorry if I bust in an try to steal the thread but I kinda worked on a Hex/Lattice hybrid that reintroduces the concept of influence, but also forces fights within a region or Cluster, instead of linking individual bases, including outposts too small to handle 100v100



I named it the Cluster system and it will probably never happen:


Here you can see clusters linked together. You can only progress to the next cluster if you own the facility of the Cluster, but you don't have to hold every outpost

Remember, Influence ?
The more surrounding territories you have, the faster the base is captured ?

Turns out it is not exploited at all

Back in beta, Facilities had multiple control points, some of them located OUTSIDE the facility.
Unfortunately, those where placed in the satellites, far away from the actual base which left attackers no choice.
It was an interesting concept. By controlling a great majority of surrounding territories, you could slowly but steadily capture the sieged base. You would lock defenders in until the capture process ended, but you also had to hold those adjacent territories for this plan to work.

This was the best part and probably the only real strategic gameplay this game had.
By managing influence in a controlled environment it's much easier to prevent ghost cap and arrange facilities within a cluster for a balanced fight.



There are multiple cluster dispositions available:


Satellites always hold 50% of the adjacency/influence of the facility


Some examples:

I'd like to see some limitations on revives to help stop the numbers zerg.

- Limit MAX's to 1 revive. Cannot be revived if killed by rocket or C4.
- Players can only be revived once every minute (on the same life ie. if they get revived and die within a minute, no more revive).
- Death by headshot make players unrevivable.

This way, you can make it so medic spam doesn't become an overwhelming issue like it currently is.

That could work, but in all fairness the resource cost of a MAX would need to be reduced to make it fair.

Gels well with what I believe should be the population control mechanism:

Increasing the vulnerability of the overpop faction (i.e. how many avenues for defense it must cover) whilst restricting its choices of points to attack such that a lower pop faction can defend itself more easily (as critical mass results in a 'speed bump' kinda effect) whilst allowing it to 'guerrilla' the overpop faction into splitting up to defend more else it will lose twice as many territories as it's capable of taking in a given timeframe.

With a system like the above, the amount of the cluster you have to hold yourself could change with population.

Even if that never happened, I like the pretties

48+ vs 48+ is not fun because base design is bad in PS, almost all of the bases are bad. There are some well designed ones. I like the new Crown. It's defendable but not impossible to take. There is enough place for infantry fight and vehicles can't **** them by bombarding.

Biolabs are just terrible. I know a lot of people like them because they can take their max suits, nades, noobtubes and all the easy-to-use high reward weapons. Probably best places for cert farming but these "fights" are only spawn camping competitions.

Towers like Indar Excavation Site would be fun but tanks can shell all floors from miles and it kills infantry fight very fast.

I would like to see some bases with large open fields with some cover where infantry can push forward without killed by "MLG pro dedicated drivers / pilots". Maybe they could but huge shields above and around main bases. Infantry could go through these shields and small arms fire can penetrate it too but no rockets, no vehichles. Burster maxes can not shoot through either.

Vehicle users can say "Wait! What shell we do if you put shields everywhere?". My answer is SOE should remove almost all small bases and vehicles have a new role. They should stop the enemy before they reach the other base with the huge shield. Just imagine there are no small crappy bases between Allatum and Dahaka. While the zerg is on its way from one base to the other Libs can bomb them, ESFs can attack them tank vs tank battles can happen everywhere. Both sides would need anti-air and armor and transport vehicles.

The other thing they have to change is to remove the timer on vehicles so drivers can join the infantry battle and wont lose their tanks/planes or just bring back the decronstruct possibility with a timer on it. You press decronstruct and in 20 sec it disappears and you get back your resources.

Spreading out fights over an entire base? Yeah that'll be fun with a 20 man battle. Try not playing during primetime, 48/48 fights are rare, there is almost never any support, it's every man for himself. Nobody is ever reviving anyone, I laugh when people suggest revive limits.
Also, OP doesn't know what ghostcapping is.
Ghostcapping is NOT capturing an empty base. It involves going to a base, taking the points, then leaving for another base. Defenders spawn only to find nobody there, hence the name ghost cap.

pfft poisonous, I look for 48+48+ when I log in and head there as quickly as I can, the day there are no more 48+ battles is when I leave, dont care what size the base is, crown to amp, biofarm to outpost if theres 48+ im omw

Yes. Exactly. This.

I eagerly await the day Bio Labs are actually fixed for large fights. They're the worst base in the game and you will never have a good 48+/48+ fight at a Bio Lab.

I disagree with topic and the OP.

Big fights are the only driving force for this game, its not the combat nor the air ground armor thing, its big fights. Only thing you dont see somewhere else done better.

I can agree that base design can still be perfected more, but making the fight spread on too large ground will just make the fight more mild experience.

Rather just fix the spawn option system that is has a radius spawn option so you may spawn on any bordering friendly hex, not just the "tube" ones. That would allow counter attacks and more flexible tactics.

Pretty much agree with your post but even Amp/Tech bases degenerate into a mess when the battle reach's endgame .. Since regardless of the base size it all revolves around 1 cap point ..

Why I suggested the following ( far from perfect )

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/change-to-base-capture-mechanics.161656/

For larger facilities they just need to add a few more capture points or objectives to spread out the numbers. When it comes to smaller 1 cap point bases people just need to realise that 48 people is a waste of manpower most of the time on a 1 flag outpost style base.

Overall i think its ok at the moment, the L2P issue is strong in this topic though. People need to understand appropriate force distribution beyond simple zerging.

I played from release then quit for ~8 months, reinstalled for OMFG. Let me break it down, Large battles shine in the field, not in the facilities. Fighting in bases is like pulling teeth, you take away all creativity from the individual and replace it with tank spam, max whoring, nube tubing, popping in and out of shields. There is no flanking, there is no other way to overcome apart from having more numbers, bases should be able to be defended with less numbers then there are attackers. The bases are frustrating to fight in, for the number of players that are shoveled into them they are way to small / poorly designed.

Another thing is how pointless capping bases is, Capping bases should be extremely HARD and epic, and so the reward must be massive. You have outfits who for example push towards the crossroads and only cap 1 of the 3 points and set up defensive farm positions and sit there for hours purposely not capping the base because of the high cert farm. This should be punished heavily.

The game is being ruined and it's potential being diminished by constantly tweaking weapon balance and not actually making the core game play tweaked. You tweak the gameplay first and once the gameplay is where is should be then you balance weapons and everything else around it's concept. Right now, they are balancing, then when they change the way resources are made or introduce a new item, they start balancing all over again.

- Fix battles in bases
- Make bases extremely difficult to cap even with 48+ players or even numbers then give MASSIVE rewards for a cap.
- Encourage battles in the fields between bases to be the main focus of large scale battles including infantry, tanks, air.
- Stop balancing weapons before fixing the core gameplay
- Stop encouraging defensive farm positions on bases.

Biolabs are the worst, you accomplish nothing here, you fight as infantry and you experience 10% of what planetside is about, combined arms. You run around like a headless chicken, holding shift to sprint everywhere waiting to encounter people around corners, the control points mean nothing to nobody in there, the longer the biolab fight remains in equilibrium, the more certs are handed out in a pointless contest of which the base once capped means nothing. Inside the Biolab you are playing a SCI FI version of COD, mindless infantry combat. I don't care about you people who only play infantry, your poison to this game, i don't see air only bases, tank only bases, use your resources and play planetside, if your tank and air resources are constantly sitting on 750, your not a planetside player, your a dumbarse. People who pump certs into hardware needs to be encourages and used more often by everyone.

I was about to agree that smaller fights would probably die, but not quite. Consider, the suggestion I was making was linking several spawns and bases together. What it could simply change to is a daisy chain. The attackers hit an objective and kill the spawn, then push to the next one. Making the spawns more difficult to repair could alleviate having one hero undoing all that process. Perhaps the need for an ANT run? Or a long, obvious repair to alert the attackers.

Given the collective intelligence...though I use the term a little loosely when referring to the forums, I think we can make a solid suggestion.

48+/48+ armor fights are incredible. ( forgetting AV turrets ofc)

Fact is: Game want big fight like 48+ , but base are designed for far less...

How can you contain a 96 player fight in base where building are separeted from 10m each other...
That's why, as you said, only really good big fight are AMP Station and Tech plant, because there is planty of space and there fore it is more heterogeneous...

Basically atcually it's just line versus line , made of infantry tank and other... and one of the line get back a bit to finnally die and hep, go to the previous facility etc etc...


We need more space and more things to do in base because actually a simple 3 cap point is not well designed for reall BIG battle...

I just LOVE this idea, I think THIS is the thing for big battle, THIS is the thing for WAR.

I mean influance in the region etc... this is just inteligent and exactly what I think about when I saw the decription of PS2.

I just discovered this with you post but I honestly imagine things similar before when I think about what PS2 said it will be (and when Dev speak about base improvement and objectives etc...)

I don't know if you made a thread about this but the Devs need to see that and think about this !

Great for high pop fights during peak times. Which becomes whack-a-mole game play during off peak, not so great.

I disagree. 48+ vs 48+ is what makes this game fun for me. if i am playing planetside and i am not in a fight that large it just does not feel like planetside. What helps is being part of an outfit and having a full or mostly full platoon with each squad acting independently with their own objectives and working towards a common goal. if you just Yolo-Solo especially against a platoon you will just feel especially lost in the mix and just get facestomped every time. When 48 wandering solo sheep happen to come against 48 wandering enemy sheep i agree that the fight itself can become a *********** but what do you expect out of two armys charging at eachother neither side having any leadership?