What was The Old Crown?

The real reason most people liked it was because it was the ONLY place infantry could viably fight once the Tech Plants had the shield gens split and moved outside (and the spawn room transporter to the plant removed).

Back in the first 5 months of this game HE was INSANELY powerful. A single HE round from a Lightning could take out 3-4 people. Rocket pods (for the first month) could wipeout entire platoons in a single pass. The game was almost unbearable to be the boots on the ground because NONE of the bases were infantry friend, except the Crown.

The Crown had a clear line of sight for 500m in any direction to shoot down enemy air. Tanks could only go to the hill between the Crown and Crossroads or to TI Alloys. So HE spam was at an ABSOLUTE bare minimum. Once you put it just infantry vs infantry, it still stayed tilted. Most bases were always favoring the attackers even without vehicles around. The Crown, on the other hand, could allow a faction to fight numbers up to 3:1 and still hold it.

This was also back in the days when you can Instant Action (think spawn beacon but for ANYONE), onto a base and outfits abused it to hell and back. They'd instant action 50+ people to take a base (and it was a normal tactic as well). The Crown could easily withstand these abusive tactics and keep on going.


So taking it was almost impossible if you had haflway competent players on the hill. Two were generally two methods for taking the Crown, and both involved using spawn Sundies to setup spawn points. They are as follows:

1) Get 10-15 Sundies with the AMS equipped and all drive together. Drive up to the Crown and the survivors that make it up the hill setup spawn points. Then the entire faction starts respawning using those spawn points and cut off the defenders from the tower since the spawn point wasn't in the tower but rather on the SE side of the hill.

2) Take an Infiltrator, cloak and carefully sneak up the south side of the hill going from place to place without getting noticed (this was back when friendly Infiltrators didn't have faction colors so people shot at them a LOT less as you could get a weapons lock if they turned out to be friendly). Then hide in the bush on the SE corner of the Crown tower so you could recharge your cloak. Then recloak and carefully but quickly run into the vehicle bay and get to the vehicle terminal. Uncloak, then hack the terminal and quickly spawn an AMS Sundy (it helped to have it set as your primary Sundy loadout so you could do it faster), and as soon as it spawned, reverse it back onto the vehicle pad in the bay, and open up the AMS.

Then go to the terminal on the side of the Sundy and quickly change your class to engy. Pull out your repair tool and just hold the mouse button down doing nothing but repairing. It would usually also help to crouch down and hide under the Sundy.

It would take about 5 seconds before people would start to spawn from your Sundy and about 10 seconds before you had nearly every player in the territory spawning from your Sundy. So you had to keep your Sundy alive that long and if you could, the Crown was almost guaranteed to be captured because you'd have taken the tower and the spawn room would be cut off from the A point as well as the B point.



It was probably THE BEST base in the entire game because it was someplace you could actually play infantry and not just get HE farmed by a vehicle.

Actually, neither of those is "Ghost-Capping". A ghost cap is when you go to a base with zero enemies in it, start the cap, and while it is capping move away from that hex to cap some other base. Mean-while the base is still being capped without anyone being in it. Hence the word: "Ghost" Cap.

Well, alright, I'll say it -- those days sucked. We had three continents, but the only place you could find a meaningful fight was in the Allatum-Crown-Crossroads-Zurvan diamond. The rest of Indar, along with all of Esamir and Amerish, were largely irrelevant.

I did that with UBGL at Ti Alloys, Inc. Resupplying GL was bugged back then, so you had to go to the terminal most of the time. Fly to the roof, shoot 2 GL rounds, take out 8 people, go back to the terminal to resupply.

Sounds like it was fixed as intended then.

Miller had sufficient population all the way from release to the day they killed the Crown, and the Crown was a jewel, not a cancer.

I mostly stayed on Amerish and Esamir for squad/squads fights, while Indar had platoon/platoons.

It was the only base that I cared about being taken of lost by my faction.
I would bury my k/d and sph into the ground without second thought if it was needed to defend the Crown, because, when captured, it lasted for weeks without changing hands.

Nowadays, I couldn't care less if my faction is "losing" or "winning", I just go where farm is good.
Continent lock? Why should I care, map will be reset after I walk my dog.

Man, **** you, seriously

Hex system, different resources, good ole Crown, why do you have to hurt us with these beautiful memories?

The old crown was actually my very first fight in Planetside. I created a new character, and it instant-actioned me to an insane battle there. It was the best time in my gaming life up to that point, and it was utterly, awesomely, epically magnificent. I miss it.

#BRING_BACK_THE_OLD_CROWN!!!

Which with the hex system was easy to do. Fly around to all neighboring territories, flip points and move on to the next territory. The difference between hex and lattice was the cutting down of available territories that could be flipped.

Became extremely tedious for those defending as they were chasing "ghosts" and there was absolutely nobody to fight... not even a single guy. Was it a valid tactic... yes... was it fun? Not for the defender... and this was the main problem and complaint. It is... afterall... a game... not a real war.

The term has morphed into including a squad+ sitting on an undefended or lightly defended base... but that's more of a zerg'd base than it is a ghost cap.

*bows down in respect in the direction of Sniper-Mecca*

*is immediately C4'd from the cliff above*

It was glorious.

Righteously named for all to fight for.

My first experience right after Allatum Biolab.

That's what hooked me into the game.

The scale, the number of players the hardship of taking that base.

Felt like truly fighting over something, not just walking in and claiming it without efforts.

It was a swirling wonderland of sparkling, white pleasure. Let it fill your senses with cascading fluffy pillows of confort and excitement as you have never felt before.

No it wan't. But please... carry on.

The old crown was FUN !!!!

It was a brutal meat grinder that gave you the feel of what a Massive battle was in this game.

We traded that for Lane Zergs...

The only base that ever mattered, woulda traded the warpgate for it

Seeing as how the primary draw of this game as opposed to every other FPS out there is the scale of battles, I'd say admitting that only one continent could sustain such a thing in the Crown days doesn't really speak that highly of Crownside.

I miss the old Crown

And thats still the case for much of Indar. Absolutely garbage base design, the north half in particular, that allows for tons of mindless shelling into completely exposed bases.

Indar needs a major revamp.

Is that why so many people pine for the old crow, they never leave indar....