Continent without bases

I would love an ever changing procedual map. Like every 2 weeks it's a new place. Even better the whole solar system could change somehow. Like the planetmen are being teleported through multiverses periodically. One day it's a tidally locked planet around a red dwarf, other times it's a binary star system.

That kind of gameplay would have it's flaws.
For example, a platoon or Zerg could do PMB bombing, in which they seek out weaker or unattended PMB's to annihilate and steal all the resources. Since you can't man and protect all PMB's, especially far from the frontlines where attacks are less frequent, it would make for whack-a-mole gameplay where you try to protect bases that might not be protectable by the time a large enemy force jumps on top. You could perhaps try things like building and maintaining early-warning systems against this, but you would still have guess and organize entire counter-offensives before the enemy arrives, assuming they arrive at all since they won't automatically know where all the PMB's are located at. This puts a much higher burden on the defenders than the attackers, and mean that minimalistic gameplay with only a few large bases is key. Those same bases would best have as small as possible supply routes, so they would be build as close as possible to those mines. This would again mean extremely stale gameplay and relatively little of the terrain would actually be used.

These idea's need multiple PoI's to work. Mines, early warning systems, reasons to build in different places without one position being the best, area's where you can build special units or capture lattice-links etc.

There seems to be some idea that procedural generation is so complicated that it would need to wait until Planetside 3, or a massive influx of dev money. While it would take some time and funding it's not actually hard and the engine appears to support everything needed already. I have no doubts that if they implemented a P-G system the first few maps would be awful, just awful. Pukachu, myself several years ago, and others have the right idea though, have a new P-G continent every 2 weeks or so. The true power of this is the sheer speed of iteration. These P-G continents wouldn't be random, they would be curated. A couple of devs have a few weeks to cycle through a ton of seeds to find a good map. They even have time to run really advanced path checking algorithms to make sure there aren't horrible dead ends or other problems. Then, instead of gigs to download the new ENTIRE CONTINENT is just a single 64bit number, the seed. The word "word" takes more bandwidth than that. Then, with the remaining space you can have a dev tweakfile, little handmade changes that might make the map better. It would be rocky at start, but the fact that every two weeks the algorithm could be updated, and the dev would be getting constant practice, would mean it would get really good over time.
I would literally program that **** for free. I love this game.

A few more ideas on how to solve the potential problems brought up in this thread.

Points of Interest-
Right now the bases are what draws fighting across the map. So their core purpose of territory control would need to be shifted to the construction system. A system that has a player base somehow granting hex control would be needed. A simple voronoi calculation of powered bases by faction should suffice. (These diagrams are used by police precincts to determine power projection of gangs and where violence is likely to erupt, so it seems apt). This new barracks/power relay/FOB hq thing would need to have some exclusion zone, but it should also need to be placed in some radius (and perhaps line of sight) to a previous power transmitter. This should incentivize placing it somewhere smart, but spaced out to maximize terrain capture. Put in some faction speed limit on these things being placed (I'm imagining a drop pod building thing like Dawn of War), and a bit of voting on which spot to next drop one, and you have a nice setup for some interesting initial colonization gameplay.

Just blowing up bases-
Make the bases actually do something important, make them take a long time to build, then make them captureable. We know this is possible because the entire game is built around capture points, and you can hack the player made vehicle terminal. As soon as you have fragile things that both you and the enemy want, it's a whole new game. Do we come at this base to capture it, or is it being such a problem that we are just going to shell it into oblivion? Do we want it more than we don't want them to have it? These are real strategic questions. And could lead to some interesting events "Oh wow, fort kickass finally fell? It was there for almost a whole week!"

I like Indar, and revisiting places that were fun-
Obviously keep the continents that exist now. And keep the old generation code, seeds, and other stuff. If players really liked a continent, have all the factions re-invade. Either give whoever locked it an hour head start, and ally the other two factions for an hour start (or something, iteration guys, come on), or have an entire recolinization thing with burned building husks from the old battles (I know they keep heatmaps of deaths).

Resources-
I think this would be most fun with resources being revamped. While myself and friends really enjoy trucking cortium (cross country trucker simulator got pretty intense once the airstrikes started), it's just not feasible to have players ferry enough stuff around to keep everything operational. Base level, just say everything is sent through power beams n stuff. Next level, Say underground pipes are laid after the base is held for a few hours. S rank: AI truckers truck resources around inside faction territory. (Maybe AI air patrols too...). Having resources be stealable would be something they could implement right now. Imagine if an ant could remove resources from another ant or silo (allied or enemy). Now your silo can be robbed by things other than greifers. Or if you sneak up on an enemy ant in your ant and he is quite confused because you have been draining him dry. Also having destroyed silos or ants drop resources would be nice as well. Anything that makes it more possible to fight over the resources.

What are we fighting for?
And here Ill just bump my fave idea for long term game goals. Every x months (imagine 3) whichever faction does the best, gets a new empire specific thing. And the other factions get smaller buffs. Everyone's power level goes up, but only the winner gets a new toy. (Yeah, it's a crazy idea. THAT one would take a mountain of dev money).

Procedural generation isn't complicated. Good Procedural Generation is complicated. You have to make sure a tree doesn't block the entrance to a door, you have to make sure that bases are connected through viable roads, you have to make sure that bases won't be farmfests because vehicles can park at the edge and get free kills, you have to make sure that there are safe Sunderer deploy area's, you have to make sure the Spawnpoint isn't dumped on top of the cap point, you have to make sure the cap point isn't in a building without exits, you have to make sure of a ton of things and build exceptions and rules as to what has to happen for a proper game to ensue.
And asking a Dev to check through them is ludicrous. They would have to check every, square, inch. Because if there's places where infantry or tanks get stuck easily and not get out you have a problem, especially if it happen on roads and there's no indication that this could happen. You let the devs check to make sure that the PG hasn't screwed up somewhere and that the fights would have a good flow not in favour of one faction, and that means going over every single detail. This would be less intensive as building an entire map, but still incredibly intensive in dev time and the amount of ways the dev could still miss on a crucial problem like a wall that you can clip through.

As for the "entire continent is a 64 bit number". That's great! We can start comprimising everything in such a way! Let's comprimise PS2 in the same way, after all the seed of PS2 if you reverse-engineered it would be the same for everyone so the only space PS2 would really take is the specific program to recreate the game from the seed each time you start it up. Because that's not going to be a resource-intensive job for your PC! Ofcourse not! Especially when you have to load up an entire map from a 64bit seed each time you start it up and ofcourse you don't want to load in the entire world in one go because that would take up even more resources but having to constantly unpack parts of the map is going to be resource intensive too...
I think you are too in love with the idea to see all the flaws it brings. If comprimising the map into a 64 bit seed was that easy we would do it with all our programs.

And exactly how is this going to improve matters?
Devs currently work hard to build unique bases everywhere. Their goal is to incentivice people to fight each other and to make it as balanced as possible while trying to make each base a unique playthrough.
Players don't have that incentive. Their incentive is "keep them out". We already see where that goes: Bases are build with the intend to discourage enemies entering. Bases are build in such a way that it becomes as hard as possible to destroy it. Bases are all build the same. You have only a few variations: This one is using rocks as indestructible shelter, this one is in the open field, this one you can attack from above assuming you can down the air-shields. But otherwise all these bases will have the exact same method of attack and destruction. All you've done is build a unique PG world only to make all the fights more stale than we have now.
Now I can hear you thinking "but current bases are also all the same! You park a Sunderer, get the points and cap the base!". But that's far too simple isn't it? You have tower bases, AMP stations, Techplants and Biolabs. The "generic" bases also have a ton of variety. Howling Pass, The Octagon, Indar Excavation, Quartz Ridge. These bases are all completely different from eachother with a completely different way you move through them. While the actions are still the same (park Sunderer, cap points), the way you achieve them differ per base.
Even though PMB's would be unique as players would place things a bit more randomly, the setup would still be the same everywhere. Walls, turrets, modules would have slightly different placement each time, but nothing so grand that you actually feel it's a different base because each base will be designed with the sole purpose of "don't attack me, go away".

You would have to redesign PMB's from the ground up, and give players reasons to build certain objects in their bases that change the way the attackers and defenders go about their business, just like a Techplant, Biolab or AMP station has a completely different way the base is maneuvered through during each stage of the attack.

Considering the bases are currently build with "don't come in, go away" in mind. How exactly are you going to create ways for people to cap such bases? Swarm the enemy? That's another problem with current construction: You need more people to break it than you need to defend it, far more.

I already mentioned the problem with how bases would need to be maintained, and the question of who's going to do it. There's not enough players that like to go to the middle of nowhere behind the frontline and build viable PMB's, only to leave the PMB later because you ran out of buildings to place (which is a necessity to keep the servers from overloading) and you then have to hope that people will keep your PMB intact and protect it if it gets under attack. You would have to start with streamlining the build for starters, for example by giving access to drones that can place the building blueprints quickly, without having to return to the Silo each time and from a birdseye view to reduce the time required to set up the entire base. But somehow you have to disallow cheap placement where it would be hard to reach (top of the mountain of Xenotech labs for example) and disallow quick replacement of destroyed objects.

AI truckers would require a lot of work. Whenever I suggest some kind of AI supply route I always go for either having to go through the path the AI has to go yourself so that the AI doesn't have to path it's way (which is incredibly resource-intensive on PS2's maps because the server resources for pathing goes up exponentially with distance you need to travel). Or you use flying/hovering supply ships that take a direct route a few meters above the ground, and will levitate up and down with the terrain where necessary.

Ooooh yeah, let's have factions do what we already have: Make sure one faction wins to get the goodies! We really need more of that 4rth faction gameplay to nuke everyone's want to play.

The best goals would be relatively short-term: capturing points, flags, destroying vehicles or special structures etc. Things that encourage playing the game and reward players for doing so without encouraging farmfests like the KD craze does.

This is where I'll refer back to my other idea. Bases need to have a regional effect of some sort, maybe a lattice link, radar, resource acquisition.... whatever. But...... let the power of the base not be determined by a core stuck in a sundy garage with shield and repair modules, let the influence of the base be determined by a set of random *** buildings. When I build bases, I specifically avoid all structures in the interior because it blocks turret LOS. Make these random buildings huge with multiple entries so that bases cease being a little fortress in a corner, and instead become little cities for urban warfare. They could even add a little "no deploy" area around critical structures so that bases can't become as impregnable as they currently are.

Having thought about it, I think this is the best bet so far to get construction where you guys want it.

How I would envision it:
You go to an area (possibly in a construction Valkyrie or something for excellerated placement of the base layout).
You pick the type of power-building you want to place, which would give the area its purpose and the local bonuses. The building itself isnt necessarily big, and the type of building placed is randomly chosen by the computer.
The size of the building determines the amiunt of "free" construction pieces that arr allowed for the region. "free" construction placements dont limit your personal placement limits.
Placing more buildings increases the amount of "free" construction pieces (and type, allowing more advanced pieces to be placed).
Each power-building would have an expansion slot thats randomly picked to be at its front, back, left or right. Building more power buildings would happen from this location. So While you do have the power to guide where the expansion slot goes, it also means you have to choose between where the expansion slot goes and what side of the building faces outwards. By forcing the expansion slot(s) onto each new power building piece you are creating a building chain that players can fight through. Ofcourse, each expansion would again be a random size building piece.
Possible reasons to incentivice building expansions and fighting in these buildings: more efficiency to your base, stronger local advantages, the ability to destroy powerbuildings only from within and ability to capture powerbuildings from within.

Just spitballing.

PMBs don't need to stay faction specific either. If there weren't traditional bases you could capture the points on the enemy's PMB, take it over, and then build from there without destroying anything. One option would be to siege the thing, the other being an infantry take over. I don't know how this engine could handle this but by the end of an alert all of north east Indar could be a giant city.

That just sounds like the fun part of programming. And a lot of those concerns wouldn't be, because there would be no procedural buildings, just ones placed by players.

They wouldn't need to. As I said, algorithms could do a lot of the leg work. And the PTS could have a few candidate seeds on it who would gladly scout out the potential continents. They could even have the testers mark places where they get stuck, things for the tweakfile. It would take work, yeah, but it's one every 2 weeks or even longer, so it does not seem like a lot of work given that timeframe.

So, yeah, using a seed and P-G would not compromise your generated product, and if done correctly would load faster than reading map data from a hard disk, and if it didn't you could just download the seed, and generate the map once, then saving it. And we do use algorithms to make data smaller only to use the CPU to turn it back all the time.

I am very in love with my idea. This is why I spend my time developing them as a game developer. I know they have flaws, but flaws are no reason to not try something.

Yeah, I actually like that. I think it would need tweaking, yes, but the fact that player bases are actually built with defense in mind makes them actual fortifications. I like that, their function drives their form. Of course something would need to be tweaked so bases cannot be insurmountable. But when laying down my bases I take things into account like how I'm going to get ANTs in and out, get the vehicles from the terminal out, and how to stop the enemy from getting in. If there was more to that, like allied vehicles needed to get back in for repair or ammo, or drive through the base, or something, then base designs would open up.

GOD YES, PLEASE! That would be so awesome! I like your ideas!

I think the current capture mechanic would work fine. Just put an exclusion zone between spawn room buildings and capture points, maybe nerf the AI turret a bit. I never really have a problem getting into a base as infantry. Most of the even fights with bases seem pretty even, unless a base is built into some really good terrain, like all ways in are through skywalls, but then you just siege them. Or you tweak and update the system.

Yes, there are few players who like to base build. I do, I'm having a huge event on Feb 2nd with all my friends specifically to build bases (it's our favorite aspect of the game, let me know if you want an invite), but I understand we are the minority in the PS2 community. I do believe, however, that if this hypothetical base building and empty procedural continent thing were to be made, it would draw more new players that like the base building aspect of games. You just need to make the bases more meaningful and important. To protect bases you can have only the ones on the front line (of base lattice link system from previous post) be vulnerable to capture or destruction, something like that. I don't think a major revamp to how buildings are placed would be needed. Simply making squad members capable of seeing your held item preview would allow construction coordination. A base taking time to set up is fine. People attacking places being built and people defending them would be fun. The attackers and defenders have real player driven goals.

Oh yeah, pathfinding can really bog things down. I was trying my implementation of A* on a 28k node array and it took like 30 seconds to path. If you wanted to have like a sunderer with a tank on it's back or something you would defintely need to have it stick pretty hard to a road or something where you can reuse the path. I would make it just stick hard, but nannite away if it was rammed off the road. I usually imagine a Valkyrie with a tank instead of the passenger area. It would be amazing though, having resource lines to attack. Probably best to stick to the pipes/beamed power idea though.

It was the biggest incentive I could think of. And I do actually like it, I posted about it years ago when there was a "Suggestion" forum here. I really like arms races. And motivations that go on longer than a few hours. Also- what is a 4th faction? I hear that a lot but don't actually know.

The following can be found on PTS patchnotes, I think it can help this thread to see which direction dev team want to go.
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/pts-update-1-11.248266/

I like all the new links, they should make stopping a mindless zerg just a little bit easier. No mention about purgatory...... It's a HUGE mistake keeping that in game. Construction is moving in the right direction.

Wow, just wow. I am speechless.
THIS is the final nail in the coffin for base building for me.
Seriously what are the devs smoking to get these ideas from?! With whom are they testing the gameplay? Monkeys?!
I have never seen small bases being able to withstand ANY attack of even half a platton, doesn't matter if defended or not.
You know what the worst nerf here? Not the skyshield, the repair nerf:
Right now it is that your turrets die within seconds and are totally useless anyway if any serious attack is coming.
So the only thing that keeps vehicles outside of bases are the invulnerable walls. Infantry has to get inside to "unlock" the walls first.
With this change there will be no more bases soon. I can tell already what is going to happen:
1. Kill turrets.... 10 Sec. later turrets gone.
2. Kill ONE Wall.... 10 Sec later wall gone
3. Kill Hive .... 10 Sec. later BASE gone.

If these changes go live i will quit building bases.

I do'nt share your point of view : small or big, if a PMB is attacked by enemy that are far superior in number, it should fall. Assuming what you call "small base" are build by 4 people, I think it's normal that defender can't hold 24 attacker.
Don't forget you now need less cortium to build a base.

You assume wrong.
I don't know what server you play on but on cobalt a 4 man base is already somewhat "big" and rarely seen.
Most bases are either from total beginners, meaning it is a wall with a hive...
Or from 1 or 2 dedicated builders, who for the most part own every constuctible.
Getting more to build is somewhat impossible. It it very cert costly, which is why a lot choose not to do it.
Also they know exactly how fast bases can be taken down even by small teams. So they say, clearly from the experience the builders in our outfit have, that the will not make the investment ever.


Bases already have a hard time. The scaling is pretty bad. Currently if i build a 1 man base and a 1 man mbt shows up, all my turrets are as good as dead. There is zero chance to defeat or hold. But the good part: He cannot get in, he cannot destroy the rest if i built carefully without gaps.
Also the turrets are nerfed so hard by now, and the AI is dumb as hell, that you can litterly drive through a base and you will survive. Same for walking through it. The turrets are slow, low dmg, a lot of blind spots.
It used to have some bite, but they took it away. Because it was not dumb-player-friendly enough...

If the changes quoted go live then 1 or 2 man bases are effectively dead when just 1 mbt show up and thinks he wants the xp-pinata called base.

Bases need to hold out a lot more not less. This has been an issue fromt the very begging of the construction system. And now they will make them hold out even less? This will kill it.

I agree with absolutely everything else you posted when applying it to current base meta. But the end goal is making huge PMB fights the standard, not the 1v1 infil crap or bases where no one can physically enter. I'd like them to eventually be a link to combine lattices or at least be another obstical that's required to be fought over on the way to the next base. Maybe AI turrets and everything could receive a substantial buff until the enemy takes the next base, to make sure the base fight isn't ruined before it starts. They could even be mini-alerts to make sure they're populated. Plus, building them along current lattice lines means that they'll be accessible and not these annoying cancerous things we're used to.

Wow, just wow. I am speechless.

Are you truly so caught up in your own lone-builder fantasy that you want the construction system to revolve around you in a hole somewhere, instead of being one of the best steps to revive the damn game but at the cost of a tiny minority that uses the construction system right now?

The only reason bases currently have their turrets destroyed so "quickly" is because when finally some tanks arrive the base is usually not really manned. Because you know, construction is build in the deepest darkest holes of PS2 with the intent of not being attacked in the first place.

By changing the construction system from "build it as far as possible from anyone or anything" to "let's build it in their faces to protect this thing out in the open" while simultaneously making sure people show up and collaborate building, defending and attacking bases you make sure the construction system is used by 50 times more people than it is now (because besides building people will actively defend and attack it like a normal base) and it becomes more enjoyable than attacking some hole in the ground with a shield over it.


If you stop building bases, no problem. We'll get 10 times the people back to build bases and it will actually support the battle flow. It won't be perfect since the construction system itself isn't perfected yet, but with changes like ANT's becoming siege equipment and walls no longer being completely impervious they are well on their way to making this system a perfect addition to the game, rather than the lopsided side-show that was only connected to the game's battles because it was more or less build in the same gameworld.

Shhh... We do not speak it's name. Lol

I think you're missing the point, PS2 already has established plantlife, some more could be added, yes and perhaps even animals.
No-Man's Sky was using procedural generation to create the creatures and plants out of standard unchanging parts. Firstly they applied procedural generation poorly and secondly Terrain Generation is much easier to do.

While Minecraft is not an exact analog it does serve to demonstrate my point. No two places look identical, further you get cave networks and the ability to dig tunnels/trenches in Minecraft. If a hypothetical PS3 had similar features I'd be extremely happy.

They could even release a Map Editor to the community so that people could design some fixed facilities, towns bridges etc. In such a manner they'd end up with a constantly revitalized game as well as a backlog of saved maps available for re-use.
If they just revamped the maps once every 2-6 months, it would help keep the game fresh.
Or better yet have each Map be only a part of the greater continent. Eg. Hossin, with each update the battle moves to another part of Hossin, you could go back an reuse certain regions as needed, say Hossin getting unlocked might randomly select from any of 5 Hossin Maps.

In this way you'd still allow people to become more familiar with the maps as there wouldn't be constantly new maps being produced and becoming unlearn-able.

no matter how good the Precedural generation: battleflow and balance would still be terrible and i'd rather them slowly learn how to design a level than trying to make more variations of their current level design abilities.