I can't speak for other servers, but on Connery right now what seems to happen over and over again is that 3/4 of the population from the two northern warpgates fight at Mani Bio lab the whole time the continent is open. The southern warpgate wins a majority of alerts, typically with a landslide. As a frequent squad and platoon lead, this is infuriating. I attempt to lead in a manner that balances the strategic interests of making my faction win, while still giving my platoon a fun fight. Although the ISO from winning alerts is nice to have, it's not fun for my platoon when I can't find a good fight for them, and end up joining the Mani fight. From either of the other two warpgates, it's also infuriating to not be able to get help anywhere other than Mani. So, what to do about this? I'll start with what's good about the continent: The western line is well balanced, a Biolab at mid field, with a large base north and south of it makes for a decent run between warpgates. Additionally, the three large bases close to the center are great. Mattherson's might be one of my favorite bases in this game. I also have to give a nod to the attempt to give builders somewhere to play, with the 3 1-minute bases that can be built on. After that, it's time to talk about what I would suggest changing. 1. Rotate the position of the Eastern Warpgate clockwise. I personally would put it at the 3o'clock position. 2. Mani and Ymir would subsequently need to be rotated to maintain them at mid field between warpgates. 3. Adjust Waterson's, Mattherson's and Saerro so that it is ambiguous which warpgate each of these bases "belongs" to. This is because while they are good bases which I enjoy fighting at, attacking them is usually strategically foolish, as it has an effect of wedging opponents apart and inviting a double team. I have other ideas, but I see this becoming a tldr post, so I'll put the rest in some follow up. It seems like this forum doesn't let me easily load up screen grabs like EU4 does, so take my word for it that I have one from an alert where we have 75% territory with little resistance, and one from a different alert where we have 91%, have taken all 3 of the NC's wargate satellites, and still the NC are fighting the TR at a cut off Mani Biolab.
I know this may sound arrogant, so just forget about judging me and simply, if you would, look at whether I am saying is true or not. Channeling population on a continent, managing where players spawn, where they fight, it's a hell of a lot more complicated than most people think. A hell of a lot. Probably more complicated than what the devs think tbh. But I won't get into that. I'll just skip to the end. (my personal opinion) What you see on Esamir happens on Cobalt too, and I'm sure it happens on every server. And it's been happening a hell of a lot more since they installed spawns inside the biolab. It used to be that if you triggered the shield generator, waited for 2 minutes, then did the same with the SCU, the biolab was basically yours. That was it, end of biolab fight. When they introduced the spawns, they channeled players into a fight that never ever ends. Like never ever ******* ends, ever. Not only that, but try cliucking "join combat", and it'll make you spawn there. You'd think they did that on purpose. Anyway, that's the reason Esamir is so biased for the southern warpgate. Don't believe me, don't take my word for it, just pay attention next time you fight on Esamir, whether there are open biolab fights or not. In particular, if the Mani biolab is cut off, the North West and North East factions would usually tend to push the Southern a lot more and the whole continent would be a lot more balanced. PS. same thing for the south eastern biolab on Amerish, and the cente biolab for INdar. Same thing more or less, for any biolab really. __________________________________________ Side note. Before those biolab spawns, Esamir would suffer from a similar issue, except it wasn't with a Biolab, but with the one and only Tech Plant at the center of the map. The same thing would happen back then, there would usually be 2 factions fighting for the tech plant with high number of population while the 3rd faction would take over all the bases on the continent. If anyone remembers, a long time ago, the exact same thing would happen with the Crown on Indfar. They fixed that though (a long time ago). ___________ Solution, if you're a player of the NW or NE faction, cut it off. If you can. If you can't, let them cut it off. It's better to lose those bases but then have the manpower to fight for the rest of the map rather than spend 4 hours with most of your faction's population fighting for it or fighting in it.
Ok, something derped and I couldn't connect to the forum for an hour, anyways, here's part 2: I now want to return to my point about the attempt to give builders somewhere to build, it really is just that, an attempt. Tapp Waystation, Untapped Reservoir and BL-4 Recovery Point are rarely relevant enough to warrant building on. I've seen a couple instances where a nail-biter alert comes down to these once there is less than 4 minutes remaining, but that's only a couple times. It's not likely enough to warrant the investment of constructing a base that could hold out in such a situation. If you want to give builders somewhere to build, put the bases somewhere that matters, and give them more than two lattices. As things stand right now, while I've found a couple places worth building on, they almost feel like exploits. I say that because they are clearly not places that the devs planned on me building, but rather places they failed to stop me, as the red bubbles seem quite slapped together. I'll leave this point here, as I could fill a page on how builders are the least loved players in the game. Next point, the BL-4 territory line. This is another example of a cool base that is strategically foolish to attack directly. Now I know that Terran BL-4 crash site is not quite unique, Hayd Skydock on Hossin is another Bio-ruin, but these aren't common, so it's nice to see them. The trouble is that Esamir has that giant diagonal push lane that can be snipped by two small base captures. It is far more common for Echo Valley Substation and Ymir Mine Watch to be taken to cut that territory off than to actually fight for it, making for a massive wasted opportunity. It almost feels like there's a whole missing lane here. The frozen river is easy to drive on, so it feels like there should be a line connecting Recovery point to Geological survey camp, and another connecting the crash site to The Bulwark. If these lanes existed, then fighting for these bases would be more common than cutting them off. I think I'll make one more point before stopping, and if you're still reading, thank you for being here, this is the one I need you to bear with me for. Eisa Tech plant is quite a special case, as this is the only continent to have only one Tech plant, and this is intended to be the tank focused continent, so hamming it up a bit for this one wouldn't be out of line. So here goes, make Eisa Tech Plant have big base satellites. Specifically, pull Mattherson's, Watersons's and Searro closer to the middle to serve as the Tech Plant satellites. This way, the only way to secure the Tech plant is to take and hold all 3 big bases. For the rest, I tried to describe it and it was confusing, here's a craptacular drawing: (I don't see a "preview post" for a reply post, so we'll see how this looks) To rest of map . \ Blank Base-----------Saerro / / \ Mattherson's------EISA Blank Base----to rest of map . \ \ / Blank base----------Waterson's / To rest of map *edit*^ well crap, it got rid of all the spaces between the lines and won't let me put them back. Hopefully you can figure it out, sorry about that. The points are, you have to fight through a big base to get to Eisa and you have to take all 3 big bases to secure Eisa. If you want to shut out one of the factions, you have to take the associated blank base and build on it to keep them out. If you've been shut out, you have to smash a player base to take a 1 minute base, then you have your choice of which big base to take before finally advancing on the tech plant. Finally, to maintain connection, you have to watch for heavy pushes against the blank base behind you, but being the only faction pulling MBTs and Libs from anywhere other than warpgate, you should do well in the open tundra.
@NotziMad I fully agree with you there. Part 2 at least on Connery is that our NC want it that way. I've learned that if I want to win anything, the first thing I have to do is make my Bio Lab less accessible to the NC than the TR's Bio Lab. Then wait for the NC to do their thing, then win. I don't get why they do what they do, but I get what they will do and can use that to herd them. Like, if all they want is an FPS with nothing else, there are better FPS's out there. Planetside's strength is not in being the best at anything, but in being so many things at once. If you don't want real time strategy, or armoured combat, or air combat, or base construction, but just want FPS, why play Planetside?
Final solution would be finally have some kind of event that actually locks down some type of structure leaving available only a specific type... es. 2h alert for towers only, biolab only (not needed imoXD), tech plant only...and so on and so forth... Also considering that as i was saying into another post the lattice system totally screwd up all free tactics, so let's drive the bullet even further and force this kind of zones every here and there randomly on alert... Honestly i would love to see a free tactics game as PS2 used to be in 2013/2013... But this is the chosen path so... Walk it in the right direction at least....
