Old NC starting area on Indar - the empire crippler?

I noticed that the NC starting area geography was often very crippling for them. They would be pushed back into the canyons, while the VS and TR had relatively flat geography and could maneuver forces with relative ease.

With the rotated spawning locations, VS has the same issue now. Not to mention, the NC very often have a majority of Indar (at least on my server) just as the TR did before the flip.

It's very interesting to me. Too much discussion about empire weapons being the issue, not much of the actual geography of the starting locations, which in my opinion, is even more important.

Yes. No really, that is a big deciding factor on Empire performance when it comes to Indar. Indar is a poorly designed and balanced continent. Its just the one everyone plays on :-/

In all honesty on Indar, the northern WG is the superior WG. It allows for better movement aside one scar that runs to the impact site. Other than that spot on the western side of the WG it's got more movement potential than the other two being crammed into corners. If you noticed on Esamir and Amerish the WGs are more to the corners and none of them are as centralized as the North WG on Indar.

My 2 Cents:
Indar was the test continent created specifically for the purposes of testing as many variables of terrain, outposts, travel times etc. as possible during TT and Beta. That's why it has 3 unique areas and so many dang outposts. My guess would be that, had they had a few more continents ready at launch, Indar wouldn't continue to exist. However, It's been in game for too long now, and as a result is a part of the game.

EDIT: The worst warpgate is almost a test area of terrain for Ishunder, possibly even Ceryshen. Northern area is likely a throwback to Old Oshur. Seems to flat for Solsar. The green area is flatter where it doesn't abut the other areas, could be Forseral.

Well hopefully this will be less of an issue once we're able to lock continents and capture warpgates, so we get proper rotation rather than just swapping sides every other patch.

It is my opinion that the Indar warpgate is the biggest reason for the VS drop but the tank balancing is still a significant factor.

Not to mention the Northern warp gate has little resistance to the left and the right. This isn't the case for the TR and VS now as to their sides, there's a constant struggle. I was hoping for an equal triangular Warpgate setup.

I agree. As long as the Warpgates rotate on their own eventually, I really don't see this being a problem, because every now and then it's fun to be challenged in this way. Just not ALL the time.

The northern area is guarded heavily by several checkpoints and the Crown. Moving the checkpoints northward a tad and adding a set of checkpoints southward near Tawrich would help.

The scar makes it extremely easy to keep yourself from being warp gated. Ground attacks on one side can't easily switch to the other. Meaning either one of the factions has to size the bottom half of the map THEN fight up, or both factions have to attack the north at the same time.

Once we get intercontinental warfare eventually, the maps themselves don't matter as much as now since you could propably attack the same continent from multiple warpgates.

And from the sea if they still want to put in the naval warfare

I seriously can't wait for continent locking and warpgate control, it's going to make the game 10 times more exciting, at least for me. I wish this feature was already in the game on release.

This has been called out since the Tech Test back in July. The canyons are crippling. Movement in the Southeast corner is entirely predictable and linear creating bottlenecks that hurt the defenders more than the attackers. Air power is also not an effective equalizer there compared to the other 2 warpgate locations simply because, again, canyons are forcing the pilots to be predictable and receive little help in the form of AA because line of sight is often blocked due to... canyons!

I would laugh if every empire that cycled through the Warpgate of Doom suffered a series of boost/nerf patches that were subsequently undone as they rotated to a different gate.

Then again, forcing a cont-lock on all three conts should subsequently cycle WG's automatically on all three conts, instead of having to wait for the infinite mercy of the developers.

Pretty much.

Here is the big issue with SE warpgate:



It's intuitive for the INVADERS to get the high ground, while the OWNERS have little to no control of the canyon tops. The Zerg throws everything down into the bottlenecks and gets murdered by lock-ons.

It has to be fixed by adding ways up the canyons for the defending force.

Adding a sort of bridge between the south and north of copper ravine could help.
Elevating the warpgate by a good 50m and slowly going downhill
Breaking the canyon rocks to turn them into a steeper hill (thus making them vulnerable to tank shells)

How did continent locking work in PS1, anyway? I always read that capturing a continent made it so no one could attack for a set period of time. But once that time is up, how would they actually get on the continent to attack it? All the territories and warpgates would belong to the presiding faction, right?

The one redeeming factor i found there is that it has lots and lots of spots to hide from rockets when you fly. It really is nice for dogfights and areal combat in general... but then it applies to the enemy too so yea...

I do hope that they will make some tweaks to the map as the game goes on so they balance things out a bit.

P.S. Well regardless of map balance i find it nice that they do the rotations, keep the game fresh. Cant wait to get the old VS starting base so it freshes up indar a bit for me.

it was possible because those warpgates were neutral. and they were just that: Warpgates. not a whole base where you could gather an army.
Every empire had its own Sanctuary continent, linked to another continent. by that link they had a stable connection to the continent and could cap it. If the Cont was capped, the warpgates were only available for the empire that conquerd the cont. But if the cont was not capped by anyone, the warpgates were all neutral and everybody could use them to travel between the conts.

just invert the elevations. make the high points low and the low points high. bam, problem solved.

no one in their right mind would put a base in a spot like that. buried in canyons and surrounded by cliffs? ugh. you would put it on a hill in the middle of a valleu, not in a valley surrounded by hills.

I think its a more sucky warp gate for the Vanu that it had been for the NC due to the nature of Vanu MBT.

But you cant the similarity in Population numbers with the NC when they had that Warp Gate.