Some simple strategy. Or playing without mind.

Ok, as you can see on pic, we have a little time to the end of alert (the rest of time can be different). But if TR stop fighting NC and start pushing VS we can make a draw. TR needs to drop some TR's territories to NC and at the same time take some VS territories to equal NC and VS territories and get a draw. So simple, right?


Why ppl don't see this? Why TR continue to
heroically capture NC territories, thinking that they making some achievement, but in real doing something meaningless and stupid, leading to a defeat?


At this time of course VS won alert and took 5VP.*
Pop on the Esamir was 33% 33% 33%.

Because people sometimes want to have fun and not hectically fight to win? Most people just log in to experience battles, not to fight for some armchair generals saying "Oh guys, you're so stupid, why don't you do THIS!? It'll totally work!" (It's terrible to play with such people, because they are gigantic salt mines that get triggered if you don't do as they say and get frustrated because they lost).


And also, judging by the picture, the situation is a lost cause. TR only has 11% of the land and has a little more than 20 minutes, it was obvious that they were going to lose. Even with even pop they couldn't do much because VS bottlenecked them in 3 bases.
Secondly, they capped the amp station and so all chances of getting territory from VS quickly is gone.

20 minutes isn't enough time to cap enough bases to even the territory control (VS having a 12% lead over NC), and because it's a percentage, they could've, on accident, given alert score to NC instead of drawing (if we assume they capped like crazy). Draws are very rare and extremely unreliable, so it isn't valid either.

TR lost from the start, NC should've pushed VS more. TR could've done nothing but help either NC or VS win.

Though I may have got a bit over-board with the words above, people just want to play the game and try to enjoy it by doing what they like. The situation for TR was a lost cause and NC could've snatched the win if they tried.

So you suggest that tr and nc should double team vs to prevent a win of vs?
But what is the point? You still lose the alert.

Draws aren't THAT rare... and like mentioned before by someone in another thread, this is a war simulator game, meaning that the objective isn't to kill as many people as you can but to instead do whatever it takes to win. For the lone wolves who just can't cooperate, those aren't completely enjoying the full experience of the game. This game is meant to be based on cooperation and strategy more than it is skill.

Now, from a perspective who plays the game as a strategic war simulator... Although I doubt it would be nearly impossible to cooperate everyone in two factions to draw in this way, it can and has been done. Its called "forcing a draw," a tactic used normally by the losing faction basically meaning "if I cant have the winning VP, then no one can." To do this, a faction has to be smart and cooperative enough to move all of their forces to the winning faction, which should be the wisest decision in almost every alert unless percentages are near even. The idea is to attack the winning faction and allow the faction in second place to advance a bit onto their territory. That way, you would be working to balance the percentages by both giving percent to the second place faction and taking some from the winning faction. Sometimes drastic measures have to be made in order to ensure a draw... for example, in the SS posted above, say VS were starting to push for a NC base and if they were to cap it, the percentages would be uneven. As TR, you wouldn't want this to happen because you want a draw in the alert, so... you get a cooperative platoon to gal drop onto the NC base thats in trouble and sabotage the VS, by possibly destroying their sunderers and armor column, enough time for the NC to push out of their spawn and retake the point. Aha TR has just forced a draw... they didn't let VS win the alert by stopping them from gaining any territory and forced them to defend on all fronts. They lost percent and NC gained percent and now they are even at around 44%.

Now that the alert has ended in a draw between NC and VS, what now for the TR? Well, 5VP is lot so you definitely didn't want anyone to have it if we couldn't. A tiny chance of locking the continent is better than no chance at all right? And now that TR forces are concentrated in the small amount of territory they have left, they are more likely to make a counter push and retake a lot of their territory back. A separate platoon starts constructing HIVEs. Another platoon works in cooperation with the other to claim territory. And about an hour later, TR is in the lead and ready to continent, easy as that. However, many players and factions wouldn't give a magical glowing crap flying through space so this almost never happens (although it most certainly can and in rare cases has happened). Whoops, I just gave away the secret to winning in this game... uh oh I hope no one reads this...

UberNoob1337101,

Ok, if all is that way, you talking, we must delete alerts.

But why you think, that to have fun fighting NC is better fun, than fighting VS and preventing alert loose? Why do you think, that having 50% discount on vehicles is about to worse fun, than to give this discount to an enemy?

I sad that the rest of time may be different. I saw this was situation, when it was 25-30 min to the end of alert. So it's enough time to drop 6% to NC, and take 6% from VS. Draw is ideally, we could make NC win (good). In this situation it' much better, than VS win. And after alert TR have enough time to fight for Esamir.

Naaahhhhh.

That's what I mean, when I talking about playing without mind.

Most people (regardless of faction) just wants to have fun and shoot stuff.

It also doesent help that the rewards to winning alerts are so low.
If you choose a good fights instead of going for alert bases you get tons more certs/kills/fun than "winning" ever would.

Basically there is no incentive for people to bother winning alerts.

There are two main playstyles on this comunity.

The first one is the people that plays in order to win, and they will renounce to fun in order to get a tactical advantage ( like those squads that lose a base and thinks: When we spawn on the previous one we're gonna spawn 68484684 MBTs to make sure we stop the incoming forces right here !
And by doing this they start a situation where both forces are camping each other because no one will renounce to their advantage, even if this means that just a few people are gonna play in the next 30 minutes. In some cases ( mostly with TR ) the camping bunch of vehicles will continue camping even when they've defeated all enemy vehicles.They wont let anyone getting near their base and neither they will go to attack. completely gamebreaking. SINCE MOST OF PEOPLE WANTS TO PLAY INFANTRY the majority of them will be at their respective bases waiting to the vehicle swarm to f*** off.
There are lots of cases where play2win morons screw the fun, but this is the most common one imo.
Another example would be the guy that spawns an MBT on previous base in order to come to the current one and blow the sundy supporting the battle. Is It a correct move tactically speaking? yes. Is it fun? Hell no. It pisses off 90% of the people.

The second one is the people that only wants fun, people that doesn't care about losing a base if the next one will provide a better and more fluid battle, or people that will let the third faction cap the whole continent if they're having a nice battle with the second one. ( which is completely gamebreaking too for the third faction ). What you're showing on this picture my friend, is a good example of the second playstyle and I beg you people that's playing to win to f*** off. Games are meant to be fun, and this first playstyle is ruining this fun. Do you guys think cheaper vehicles are worth to ruin the fun? Serious mental issues if you're answering yes.

Also, this two playstyles can coexist. It's normal if you want to win, but I think that the satisfactory win is the one that's achieved in a more or less balanced situation, If some of you enjoy capturing a base with the 70% of ally population and most of them sitting on tanks, serious mental issues detected, please uninstall the game,and come back when you install a brain inside your head.

Explain this please. You lose and get third if you attack NC. You lose and get third if you attack VS. Would it not be the best solution to get the continent locked by vs and start on a new continent where TR holding more than 11 %. Seems mindless to me to try win something on a continent with 11 % territory while getting sandwiched between NC and VS.

Also, may it possibly be that people hate playing against VS? I, for one, do hate shooting purple stuff. I literally can't stand half their stuff for how broken and annoying it feels for me, so i just fight NC whenever i can.

It's their thing, the majority of people in this game aren't some super-organized Black Ops style players who constantly play the objective, run in Galaxies and use teamspeak 24/7 etc. The strategic armchair generals need to realize this and need to realize that the point of the game is to have fun, and that term "fun" can vary wildly between person and person. While I kind of admire people that play objectives and strategize in this game and it'd definitely be more fun if it was more organized and less zergy, going bat**** insane for losing an alert/continent, blaming everything about their team and shouting strategies and plans down everyone's throat is distasteful, borderline intolerant, even.

And skill is often just as important, if not more, than co-ordination and strategy. You need skill (and appropriate tactics) every time to capture bases, so even with a perfect plan, appropriate skill must be utilized to make sure it doesn't backfire and works as planned.
It's an FPS, where an obvious and main source of fun is shooting and killing things. Isn't it meant to be based on skill as well, given that, again, skill makes you better at killing stuff?

While all of this is true and can work perfectly well...

...but this is what factions in state similar to the picture above don't have

The problem is that if a faction let itself handle enough territory and major facilities to get under 20%, it's almost always a disorganized mess and nothing can be done about it. It can be useful, definitely works and has even allowed underdogs to cap continents, you need the smart and co-operative people, which often don't pop up when a faction is in such a state, because the lack of smart, co-operative and skilled players and over-abundance of dumb, disorganized players allowed factions to get under 20% of territory.

Sometimes people find fighting NC/VS more appealing, or simply like some bases better.

Why should people focus on alerts and continents caps for their source of fun?
Fun is entirely subjective. I like shooting and capping things. Some players like shooting things, you like conquering the map and winning alerts. I've even met people who just don't care for alerts and enjoy the chaotic flow of battles.

True that, a small chance to win is better than handing the win.

Erm - I would not see the benefit of the OP suggestion as I wouldn't be looking for it tbh - I'm only here for the battle. A continent lock is the only thing that I really notice in terms of the bigger picture.

Yeah! So simple that most people will see that "dropping a few territories to NC" will mean "NC will roll over your territory to try and even the score with VS". At the same time the VS will be resisting you, so the NC will be capturing territory from you while you are "regaining" only a few, if any, from the VS since the VS will try to take the juicy TR territories.

I mean look at it! VS has a total of 5 area's it can attack and vice-versa 6 it needs to defend. The TR on the other hand also have 5 area's to attack and still 5 to defend! The NC is the most screwed in this picture, since it can only attack 6 territories needs to defend 7 territories.

The best course of action for the NC?

1. Wait for the TR to try and eke out a draw by attacking the VS, stomp all over the TR territory with a small force while focussing on the VS.
2. Keep a sizeable army around the TR to prevent them from retaking TR territory while using the rest to try and take VS territory.
3. Go to the biolab and farm the heck out of it for certs and KD, Esamir will be unlocked later again but those certs and KD are permanent (one of the reasons why the game needs the attention to shift away from KD and start including things like vehicle kills and objectives completed, which in turn requires objectives that are achievable without making the rest of the players nearby think it an injustice and that you profiteer from their work).

The best course of action for the TR?

1. Wait for the NC to try and eke out a draw by attacking the VS, stomp all over TR territory with a small force while focussing on the VS.
2. Keep a sizeable army around the NC to prevent them taking your last bits of territory and use the rest to try and take VS territory.
3. Go to teh biolab and farm the heck out of it.

The best course of action for the VS?

1. Sit on that base that links them to the warpgate for those last victory points when the alert is over.
2. Retake the base that links them to the warpgate after the alert is over for those last victory points, makes little difference in the long run but will leave your forces free to move elsewhere to prevent too much territory from being taken.
3. Hope that the TR/NC will try and farm the biolab and that you can join in before the alert is over.

See, the NC and TR both have 2 options that may pay off, but if it doesn't will result in a standstill and eventual win of the VS anyway because it's completely reliant on what the other faction does rather than what your faction is doing. The 3rd option is available no matter what you do and will pay off no matter what you do./
The VS on the other hand will have it easy no matter what. They might have more territory but they don't really have to spread thin to defend all of those bases, they are just one base shy of having as dense a population distribution as the TR faction. The VS faction is OK with almost any population distribution, since any Zergforming on their/the enemies end will only result in the same amount of territory being stolen from each other and having a balanced population distribution is only a problem if both the TR and NC combine forces and attack simultaneously, which they are unlikely to do since that's the strategy with the least chance of success.

Demigan,

If VS will try to stop TR and redirect all forces from VS-NC fight-line to VS-TR fight-line, NC (NC want draw or win too) will start take empty VS territories (and TR territories too). And anyway we'll get what we want draw or NC win.

Any way strategy i propose is the only chance to save the situation and have real chances to win.

You know what I believe... if you lock all sunndys from anyone on the same team & go fultard black ops sh#t because you is uber von megger boss man squad *******. You could win by technical default.

You know what else I believe....?

Sh#t appens.

Is I close brah.... axaxaxaxaxaxaxa

To carry out a coherent, long term (in PS2 measured by minutes) strategy, you need a command structure. And to have a command structure, you need discipline. And for discipline, you need punishments.

Currently those "commanders" do not have tools to punish soldiers, squads, or platoons that do not follow the grand strategy. Heck, there aren't even real tools to select a commander and to issue orders to platoons.

So first, you need to find a way to pick a commander or a command staff (if you go with multiple people you need to have a way for them to make a decision and not overrule each other all the time).

Second, you need to give the commander/command staff tools to enforce their orders. This could be a certain "zone" in which a platoon is allowed to operate in (with a painfield if they stray too far) or just selecting individual soldiers to take damage/die if they are not following orders.

Only after you implement those features should you worry about the strategy. Because giving orders with no way to enforce them are rather empty orders.

Be that as it may, as others have pointed out, people have the option to just not care. Moreover, maybe people just want off Esamir and to open up a different continent.

It's worth pointing out that the NC would be tactically insane (not just bad, insane) to expect the TR to just roll over on the Mani lanes. Even if the TR participation declined, most of them would probably stay there to push closer to the warp gate, as that is never an easy task. They also would be unable to capture enough TR bases until they warpgated the TR along the northern lane and were able to push into the middle lane to hedge their bets against the VS. They'd be running into time by that point.

It's not like the TR could push on the VS from any radically new directions, even while they do own the middle lane. The push into Nott Amp and its satellites from that direction is nontrivial when it's lightly-defended and this is one of those cases where it'd actually be well-defended. The plan would only work if they could push through VS lanes like butter like you theorize the NC would the TR lanes and I can tell you that won't be happening, no matter how many men you throw at the problem, not when they'd be so few places contested on that front.

The worst part of this plan is VS really don't have to do anything different than what they currently are doing and they'll still have the best chance of coming out on top. The only thing they have to worry about is an elaborate cross-faction strategy that relies on them being pushovers.

If the VS doesn't actively try to stop the TR, then they are still tough enough to win before the TR get enough territory back and the NC screws the TR over, without losing to the NC as well. So unless the TR lose everything to the NC on purpose you won't even get that draw.

And as I already mentioned, "winning" is only superfluous. Controlling a continent today won't matter tomorrow. Especially depending on the time, players might actually just leave after an alert (and since that's a nice hour of playtime at the very least, many an average player might just call it quits afterwards and not feel the negative effects anyway). So it doesn't hurt them to farm the biolab, while it can hurt them to try and eke out a draw.

FateJH,
Demigan

If you refute, you must propose better plan. Do you have it? I think, you have no plan, no ideas, nothing.
My plan was never tested, coz ppl even don't think and don't try. My plan is simple and the only chance.

Ppl see a big difference in the score, and their pants are wet, they already gave up.

And why should people really care if they lose the continent? It doesn't matter, because winning is extremely temporary at best, and there might be other continents to fight on.

The situation is too dire for both TR and NC. Too little time to acheive the decisive result, requires double teaming against an opponent with a superior position and requires teamwork between two factions, but only one benefits. It's extremely wishful thinking at best and ludicrously hard to pull off. This might be a time where factions can't do anything but see the alert end and no plays nor strategies could change much.

But of course, if someone even dares question your oh so brilliant strategy, you call them brainless... why am I not surprised...

I'm going to look at this from the perspective of the TR, as that seems to be your faction in the given situation.

Leaving the NC front undefended in order to push the Vanu is a bad idea that would guarantee a TR loss just as much as stalemating on both fronts.

The issue here is that Planetside operates on a system in which both sides are pushing. Yes, one will often be forced into a defensive scenario, but they will push forward into an offensive one if given the opportunity. This means that if one side withdraws forces from the line, the opposing force will not redirect onto another front, but rather push their newfound advantage into relatively undefended territory. In a scenario like this, where there is so little friendly territory to begin with that can even lead to being Warpgated.

The only way that sort of withdrawal works is if:

A. Both sides make the decision almost simultaneously, thus leaving little to no forces along that border. This doesn't occur often, as most fights fizzle out as individuals become bored or frustrated, rather than instantly stopping due to two massive redeploys. Honestly, this occurrence is rare enough to warrant suspicion of collusion when it does happen.

Or

B. So thoroughly routing the enemy that they abandon the lane and reroute to another front. This is more common, but typically requires a large population advantage. This means that it requires large scale redeployment from another area, leaving a large weakness in a defensive line.

Neither of these two options were viable in the scenario you have presented. You can't count on the NC to redeploy towards the VS, and the Southern front couldn't sacrifice the manpower needed to clear the western one.

Even if both TR and NC by some fluke both abandoned their northern advances in favor of pushing South, the VS already had a large forces on the southern TR border, and next to no one along that of the NC. This would have resulted in them stalling the Terran attack while being devoured by the Conglomerate forces, a scenario in which the TR still come out on the bottom.

Sometimes in PS2 there are no win scenarios, and, unfortunately for the TR, this was one of them.