Waterson Has Become a Nightmare As "Emerald"

They would have to possibility to capture the other Tech Plants, right, but do you really think that capturing a facility, somewhere deep within the enemy territory, would be that easy?

Remember how hard it already often is to capture the big facilities when you have a secured base nearby and some zerg with you to attack. You would ONLY have the possibilty to capture it by those links without having any outpost nearby and without bringing any zerg that growed big and fat while they've captured several other bases before on that lane!

I don't think it would be that easy as you maybe imagine but it would open a few new possibilities to the game together with a few now routes that could theoretical be used to capture some critical areas within the enemies backyard. Players would try to make use of one of those lanes and others would need to defend those areas but every single one of those attackers and defenders wouldn't run his HE Lightning within one of the big zergs!

That's the basic idea behind it.

I don't understand these posts. The POPs are insanely even. For those of you ******** about the POP when your playing late at night or early in the morning, well it doesn't matter. People have jobs and family's which means they go to bed early wake up early, get ready and then work all day. Others are younger and have school. All the same at the end of the day as far as playing hours. Hence the fact that there are "Prime Time" playing hours. Majority of the time I play or can play (Normally Prime Time Hours - 0500 - 2000 M-F / 0700 - 1100 S) its nearly an even 33% POP. Sometimes Vanu has more POP, sometime NC does. **** I'v even seen TR have the POP too. At the end of the day, Its not a game imbalance of any kind. To the DEVs the game only matters during peak hours. Why? Because that's when majority of there patrons play they game. And when the majority of us are playing the game, well, its a near perfect balance.

For those that are wondering - My main faction is Vanu, however I've had a BR 30+ for all 3 factions and throughout the week still play all 3 factions. I enjoy playing Vanu the most TR second and NC last.

Too busy working on PAL/SS

Its not pop, its organization. NC's lack, and Vanu's complete embrace of it is seriously affecting the fun levels of two of the factions on the server.

I concur, why do we keep seeing these posts? I play almost every day and the global pops are normally within a couple percent of each other, and any faction could be the high one depending on time, day, and who is running ops. NC and TR seem to win just as many alerts as vanu, and there are always conts locked with 33/33/33 pop. So why do some NC and TR players feel so persecuted?

Honestly I really don't know. I'm as confused by this rain of tears as you. Noobs are gonna noob I suppose. Maybe all these people went to a fight where VS had pop advantage once, ran out of the spawn to get farmed continuously for 3 minutes, and then went straight forumside to whine about it. Anyone who actually plays the game a lot will have realized that VS don't have overpop, and aren't really that hard to fight anymore.

Sure, I'll give you that it would be much harder than a typical base capture. But the issue isn't really that so much as it's a very bizarre change which doesn't fully fix the problem as stated, and the problem as stated is really only the reflection of a much deeper problem -- and we could fix it all through better balanced bases where defenders don't have such a strong advantage.

I agree with you about the most stuff you've written, including that my "solution" is more a kind of workaround then a real attempt to fix the actual problem(s), but, I don't think it's possible to fix it all only through better balancing of the bases.

One big problem about the bases balancing is imho the current state of the faction specific features that could be used to attack or defend a base like the Magrider, the Lock-Down ability of the TR MAX's or the NC's Raven MAX's for example. I guess it's pretty hard to (re)design bases in the matter of providing half-way equal offensive- and defensive capabilities accross the factions.

The second point is still the old problem of the Lattice system and it's tendency to create giant Zergs on single lanes while others, often those that are facing some others factions Zerg, have to remain underpopulated. If you rework the bases balancing in a way to allow easier attacking, it would shorten the time you need to spend at each base and thus make it a bit less attractive for players to "Zerg up", by spending more time "on the road" between the bases, but on the other hand it would also shorten the time at each base that's given to the defenders for setting up some half-way proper defense, before getting locked in their spawnroom(s) by the massive spam of some Zerg.

I think only some well fitted collection of changes would be able to address these problem(s) like a good mixture of base (re)balancing, adding of new Lattice links for providing more paths and reworking the Bonus-XP system in a way that makes staying away from your factions biggest Zergs more attractive then joining them. It would also help to think about the repositioning or even removing of some bases to gain a bit more space between them where attackers and defenders could face each others without any "base advantages".

I'm quite sure that I've seen most of the points I've listed (if not all of them) already somewhere else within this Thread but I don't think that there's one "holy grail" that would be able to fix the whole ****.

Sorry for any spelling errors, I'm not a native english speaker ;p

I'm not sure I believe there are significant enough faction weapon imbalances currently that really prevent any given faction from doing well on attack or defense. And when there are significant imbalances (Ravens have 77% higher KPH than Fractures), that should be addressed by tweaking the offending weapon. So yeah, this won't be solved by level design (although level designers will obviously make assumptions like "AV MAXes will use this perch to fire on vehicles, but there's also a mountain nearby which provides cover for aircraft to ambush the perch." They won't necessarily know Ravens are 77% stronger, and that just has to be solved separately.)

I think the second bit is more about the lack of meaningful benefits gained from holding territory. Because anytime you have 3 or more lattice connections with the opposing faction, zerging a single lane leaves you vulnerable to "1 step forward, 2 steps back", as a split enemy force caps two bases for every one you capture. Which results in the optimal strategy being to split up your zerg and constantly figure out how many players you need hitting each base to win each battle. Incidentally this is also why players are wrong when they say there should be fewer bases on continents (because that means less lattice links, and if you have fewer than 3 links to the opposing faction then their zerg will always win just by slamming one base at a time.)

As for seeing more open land battles? This post covers some of the general nuance to base battles, and implies that if both factions are playing things right there should actually be an awful lot of vehicle use and vehicle combat. This results in a lot of land battles, even if they aren't necessarily happening at the middle points between bases.

But yeah you're right (and I didn't mean to imply otherwise) that while level design fixes a lot of PS2's problems it's certainly no cure-all.

Its fun playing Vanu! Come join us!

I just switch to Vs when they are zerging and start dropping c4 on the max's guarding the point also rocket the sundry you spawn at this some times causes enough confusion that you can slow them down spawning lightnings and run over friendlies at sundy , spawn libs to tear up friendlly armour then when weapons lock spawn in as a nc or tr and continue the attack...just saying 40 vs vs 2 or 3 defenders requires some means to balance the playing field

If this is a troll post you win. Because my first thought is "wow, this guy is an idiot"

Actually fighting TR/NC gets me enjoyment, you know, fun.
Not all of us want to play like tryhards, some of us just want to run around and have fun shooting dudes.
I have no interest in getting better, becoming more tryhard is pointless, as VS has the majority of the tryhard players.
If you want to play like a tryhard, then you should play VS.
If you want to have fun and run around shooting dudes, fight TR/NC battles only.

I play like this:

See, I want to just run around and shoot other dudes that are running around shooting dudes.

I do not want to fight VS where every door on every room is locked down with AI turrets and maxes with support.
I am here for fun, I am not here to camp chokepoints, or to be slaughtered by campers guarding chokepoints.

I have a fundamentally different goal in this game than the VS tryhards. They are here to win, I am here for fun..

Yeah, this goddamn myth of the extremely OP Raven MAX is in reality not more then a kind of self containing joke....

Basicly, the stats for the Ravens are pretty close to be pure ******** if one tries to compare the Ravens to any of it's counterparts upon them. The reason is pretty simple and easy to see for most of the main NC players but sadly it's also a pretty uncommon thing for TR/VS players to think about in this case. The magical OP aspect is in the end nothing else then the complete lack of NON-CQC Anti-Infantry MAX weapons for the NC MAX's so the only possibility to fill this (huge!) gap is either using the slow flying Falcons or the fast flying Ravens.
What would be your choice?

If you want to compare the MAX weapons, you would have to sum up the stats of the corresponding TR/VS AV weapons with any of the TR/VS AI weapons stats and this would be still a bit like comparing the amount of cars parked around your place to the avarage time of moon-cycles of last years march. NC MAX's only have this AV Weapons option for fighting against Infantry at ranges >(8 to 10m) where the VS and TR MAX's each have more then only one useable AI Weapon for this scenario so most of them simply don't have this fact in mind when theyre coming accross the stats of the Ravens. Even those TR/VS players who really spent a good amount of their time on playing cross-faction toons are unlikley to get in touch with this special NC problem since spending 2000Certs for two Ravens, plus about 500 to 1000 Certs for the minimum MAX equipment, is something ppl maybe do BR50+ and this also only if they're not investing their certs into aircrafts or anything.

Damn, the text somehow expanded to 300% of the size it should be... ^^

You sound like a big noob, Our accuracy is probably the worst since it got ******** horizontal recoil and you can't counter horizontal recoil (we have vertical recoil too) On the gauss saw for example its super easy to counter the vertical recoil and be super accurate and we DO have bullet drop, not like it matters anyway you're not going to kill someone with an LMG from 300 meters away. and so what the magrider is more manuverable the high projectile speed and almost no drop on the vanguard and prowler makes it easy to hit unless you're a noob. And our speed boost isnt great to get out of trouble with (unlike the NC IWINSHIELD) we have to slowly turn our entire tank and leave our *** exposed to the enemy and that usually gets you 1 hit. And all ESFs are pretty much the same, a bad pilot will suck a good pilot will rock doesnt matter what ESF hes in.

On my server they started to complain about the Orion and Lasher now that they can't complain about anything else.

I play all factions, so I'm pretty familiar with how their MAX weapons work. Grinder+Slugs remains my highest KPH AI MAX weapon across all factions. I never ran the numbers on Ravens, but they're likely pretty dang competitve in terms of VKPH (and undoubtedly much better in terms of KPH).

The stats are objective reality. Those kills happened. The game recorded them, and we have stats on what happened. And Ravens came out with a very strong lead.

No cross-comparison between AV and AI weapons is needed (nor should it really happen.) But those numbers also back up the KPH advantage enjoyed by NC AI MAXes, if you care to check.

Yeah, I really hated the waterson/matthy merge.....

Its gotten better - and the TR outfits have been stepping up lately. NC seems to be struggling still.

As you can see in my sig I play VS mostly but the overwhelming VS numbers I have been back on my TR for exp bonus

No need for all the tears - only the bad players follow the herd.