[Suggestion] Base Capture Alterations / Meta refinement

So rather than continue to whine on in typical armchair-critic fashion of an array of issues I think PS2 fails to deliver on, I figured I'd actually get all constructive and try and come up with what I would like to think is a workable solution to one of them. But first to define the problem, the one which I think is truly undermining the overall experience more than anything else currently and that is, the meta-game. All be it a somewhat indirect alteration to how capturing bases plays out and the significance of those individual bases. I think a few tweaks in such areas may much improve how the meta-game progresses on any given days fighting.

Here are two widely reported grievances I see in the game / reported on the forum
- The Zerg That gigantic convoy of armour and air that pick a direction and steamroll base after base, more often than not empty bases leading to being part of the zerg more often than not being a series of short trips between idling for points. Then once your zerg has lost it's momentum and the enemy zerg has picked up, hopping to the other side of the continent, or to another continent entirely to avoid serving as a small cert bonus for those idling between aforementioned short trips.

- Insignificant Territory Holding ground in this game just seems to have very little value. On an individual basis territories feel for the most part entirely worthless. They're merely focus point of where you may find some action and offer very little towards an overall tactical game that could be playing out. This seems to be down to a few factors; the resources gained or lost don't matter a great deal; the XP bonus from capturing is lack luster; the territories change hands so often in such a short period of time that no real investment can ever be made to entertain the idea of holding onto them

Now there is a portion of the meta-game I'm not going to touch upon here. That is the continent locking, I know from previous SoE posts that they already have plans for this and how it would gain more depth as they add more continents to play on. So just to get that out of the way.

So how could you go about resolving these two issues? well to tackle The Zerg I'd say the solution would have to achieve the following aims:
1. Break it up.
2. Have a valid tactical benefit to breaking it up (IE not arbitarily punishing large numbers via some contrived mechanic)
3. Make defending a base from a zerg be part of a larger tactical game over contrived mechanics (defender's XP bonus)

On the Insignificant Territory I'd say it's much clearer what needs to be done:
1. Make all territory significant.
2. Slow down the exchange of territories.

So onto the proposed alterations. Those that I would foresee not only making the battle to battle gameplay more fun but would go in someway to refining the sense of how the meta-game plays out on the day to day.

It could ultimately be summed up as Linked Territory (not to be confused with the lattice of PS1) This would be to have individual territories provide an active benefit to adjoined territories beyond increased capture speed. I think I'd best illustrate this with an example; an Amp Station.



So here you can see Freyr Amp and several of it's surrounding territories. In the current state of PS2 either a force that will set it's sights on Freyr and will begin by capturing it's way towards the adjoining territories, perhaps taking a couple around the base to get the ball rolling on an attempt for the base. Once it's time to go in, it's all in.

The fight then becomes centered solely upon Freyr and it's surrounding spawn camps for the majority players, with the attacking force without any cause to leave it's hexes beyond their annihilation or the successful capture of the base. The surrounding territories are still play, they will change hands to those on their way into the battle at Freyr, those who happen upon them, perhaps even those who intentionally steer clear of large battles for whatever reason. But still, the base at the centre of it all, Freyr Amp, has become a black hole sucking in the majority of players around it.

The zerg hits something in it's entirety and goes nowhere until it's been destroyed or the base has provided them their XP bonus and it's time to move on. It's clearly a clumsy and largely unnecessary to go about fighting a war for a continent, yet the current game mechanics favour this behaviour, so thus the players are only able to oblige in going along with it.

So what is Linked Territory and what can it do to alleviate this?

I'm sure you're quite aware of the capture mechanics behind Amp stations, the various generators around the courtyard of the facility that lower shields to enable entrance to and ultimately the capture of the base.

What if we offloaded these capture mechanics to the surrounding territories? linking them to the Amp station in purpose and importance?

On the image above I have overlaid several coloured arrows in order to illustrate this

Main Shield Generators In this instance Snowshear Watchtower & Esamir Munitions Corp. What if the generators were no longer an objective to be armed and destroyed but rather an effect of holding a (or in this case two) base? Holding both of these territories would lower the vehicle bay shields protecting the capture point / SCU.

Gate Generators The walls have the shield gates preventing enemy vehicles from entering the base which are disabled via the small generators just inside the courtyard. The small buildings containing these generators could themselves be protected by a shield preventing access to arm the gate generators. These shields are only lowered by holding the territory, which in this example would be The Traverse.

You get the idea right? Here I have just tried to use this idea to modify the existing mechanics. I think to redesign the capture mechanics behind bases like Amp Stations from scratch could lead to a whole lot more ways to have the surrounding territories play vital roles capturing the larger bases, perhaps even having secondary benefits to other small bases around those again to tie it all into a flowing and logical battle to gain the major assets of a continent whilst ensuring the smaller bases still play their role.

Going back in the post to where I outline the goals that a change would have to achieve to curtail the initial problems and how I think Linked Territories would meet those criteria:
The Zerg
1. Break it up Now a platoon commander or outfit leader would have to properly delegate the resources at their disposal. Do they assign the main force to hit the Main Shield Generator territories all out? do they split them between them? how many do they leave behind to defend them when it's time to move on the main base? how much value do they place in secondary targets such as the Gate Generators that aren't necessary a capture but could go someway to help? All of a sudden a large tactical element opens up beyond sending a gigantic force at a single base.

2. Have a valid tactical benefit The reasons above in my book are valid tactical concerns in tackling taking down a base, the territories surrounding a base now both for fill both vital primary roles in capturing the large base as well as important secondary roles.

3. Make defending a base from a zerg be part of a larger tactical game The defenders aren't going to get it easy now either. No longer can you just go all in behind a choke point and try and farm your way out of it. Smaller bases aren't just some throw away set of resources for attackers to get an XP bonus from, sending an expedition out of a sieged base to try and reclaim and then hold a Main Shield Generator territory could sway the battle in your favour. Or a the very least delay the onslaught long enough for reinforcements to appear or a better tactical opportunity to emerge.

Insignificant Territory
1. Make all territory significant With Linked Territories your imagination is the limit of how important a territory could be. It doesn't have to stop with the immediate territories of the larger bases, small bases could provide various defensive services for other surrounding small bases that would make each as important as the next

2. Slow down the exchange of territories Ultimately, I think this would make it harder for attackers, which is how I think the game should be weighted. That you have a battle as big as any you get now, only spread out over a larger area. Once the base was eventually captured, you'd feel that you'd just took part in one hell of a campaign to take it... if the previous owners want it back then they're going to have to work for it.

So wrapping up I'd only say that this is just one idea to remedy one area of the game people are concerned with in a forum full of them. Any feedback would be great. Is it a stupid idea which would lead to the game being worse? is it too narrow, could it be expanded upon much more?

We aren't getting Smed's 6 months plan for a while yet, so regardless, I'd say to all forum members the next few weeks are probably the best window to have any influence over what ends up in that plan.

TL;DR Merry Christmas HoHoHo.

Did I really make this that unreadable?

Looks good! I think it would make for a much more interesting, team-based game. You'd have to coordinate with your gate teams, and the enemy should have teams covering each 'generator'.

I like the idea of breaking up the zerg via a tactical reason instead of arbitrary rules, and this would do nicely.

I like how this is a brand new idea, not someone calling for something endlessley debated as well. I like it

One thing I'm slightly concerned about would be communicating this/explaining how this works. Given the general lack of explanation, could you make this intuitive enough to pick up?

Also slightly concerned about would be that it might end up being too hard, so maybe only have 1 or 2 of these per cont (kinda like the crown), and make it easier for a zerg to coordinate squads. (i.e insert joins a squad whose leader is nearby instead of random)

Some interesting ideas here, that's for sure. Especially that 'make territories significant' part.

I think it could certainly be shown via the UI. On the map level mousing over a territory could highlight it's connection visually and what it provides towards the main base by holding it. Also the much requested in-game tutorials could cover base capture mechanics regardless of how complicated they could be, so long as people have a basic idea of how something is playing out they need only get down on the ground for a few hours to pick up the rest. But this is also why I say about platoon leaders / outfit leaders because ultimately the co-ordination required would be in the hands of people who do understand it and are able to delegate squads / platoons accordingly.

The difficulty being higher for attackers is something I genuinely think this game needs to just slow down a rampaging hoard. But I definitely wouldn't want to see this done via just making it take 2-3x longer to capture bases, I'd only want it slowed down because of a much tougher capture mechanic that puts much less emphasis on brute forcing everything and more emphasis on how best to approach a battle and how you will ultimately be best splitting your force up to achieve different objectives spread over a larger area that support the single large base cap.

To make sure I'm reading this correctly, a gross simplification would be analog to the capitol shield on home continents in Planetside?
I like it, adding in benefits that are intrinsic to the outlying areas increase not only their value but the likelihood that they will be defended, in turn increasing the odds that we'll see combat at those locations during a larger campaign.

I wouldnt tie the surrounding bases directly to the shields- it would spread out the defense a bit too much- but i like where the idea is heading.

I would maybe make outside bases tie into extra peripheral defenses to what we already have on the main base. What if every large base had some sort of automatic AA gun, which i would imagine should be possible in the future. The only way to disable this gun could be by capturing a surrounding smaller base. That o rmaybe make it so that generators take twice as long to blow if the surrounding bases arent captured.

i just wouldnt want to make the extremely vital parts to base defense to be THAT spread out. There needs to be a bit more strategy to zerging though

The forums need more posts like this one...
Some really great ideas.

I agree with the generator rooms, they need some sort of barrier to stop people just wandering in and around in a circuit of all of them on a base.

And also a class specific action to destroy/overload them.

I would suggest doors that snipers could hack or engineers blow with action specific explosives. They can plant them by default even if they don't have a C4 unlock.

Then the generator has to be overloaded by an engineer only.

That would mean having to get at least an engineer safely to both objectives and protect them while they do their work.

And maybe make it so that engineers only can disarm/stabilise. This would mean more class specific roles and making them more important and complex to play.

And to throw another one in, remove the ability to self repair any vehicle/aircraft you have just exited.

Although as in BF2, you would likely just get pairs of engineers going around together in an orgy of mutual repairing.

Fine for armour, but it would be a massive irritation to pilots.

Yes pretty much. Just with more specialized roles for the territories, with some being almost directly like the capitol/sub capitols in that they're required to take the base and others still having an effect but in a secondary sense, that they aren't required but will give a beneficial effect, like lowering other shields to enable easier access.

When the defence of smaller territories become either vital and important whilst simultaneously making it harder for attackers in having to simultaneously hold several key objectives to take large bases not just only over the few hexes the base resides but in surrounding territories as well you will get a situation where battles become a much more engaging and tactical as they're fought over a wider area.

I want more people to see this, so.... bump!

It is only the surrounding territories so it wouldn't be like you need to hold a small base on the other side of the continent. The zerging will just always occur so long as everything required to take a base is situated within a single hex. Which even big bases whilst taking up several hexes, the actual generators and capture points all reside within the space of a single hex... so having several hundred people trying to clamber into that small area is always going to have even the most coordinated attacks appear to be nothing but a mindless zerg.

Bump.

I really like the idea! BUMP!

I LIKE THIS. we need more posts like these from more people. good job

A very elegant and practical solution to the clearly identified main issues that plague the current state of Planetside 2. A 'two birds with one stone' approach that SOE needs to seriously sit up and take notice of. I also appreciate the OP's time and effort in producing a well considered and detailed post that is both constructive and well presented, something that is unfortunately lacking on these boards.

cheeky bump.

Look, right now I see three valid tactical benefits, yet very poorly exploited:
Influence, Resources and Logistics.

Influence:
At some point in beta, you had multiple control points placed outside facilities (in satellites, which was a bit far). But by playing on Influence, you could basically siege a facility from outside and provided you had a great ammount of influence, usually more than 80% of surrounding territories if not all, you would capture it without even going inside.

Resources:
You can't deprive opponents from resources inside an hex, because the lock only works one-way. Also, getting XP in that particular area grants you resources. If somehow, you could impact resources costs directly inside the sieged area, it would be significant enough to starve the defenders

Logistics:
Simply put, satellite bases (little outposts around facilities) give too freaking much of everything. Most of the time, they give MBT spawns (which is RIDICULOUS), Turrets, Air pads, and of course reliable spawn points.
It makes other "valuable" outposts outside useless; in your example why would you bother attacking the NC watchtower on the west, let's say to secure more Tank and Air spawns, when you can just grab satellites around the facility which are usually much easier and faster to take



In the end it's about create enough secondary objectives to make it worth spreading around the facility instead of steamrolling it. But your way of handling it is kind of heavy handed. It's like placing base objectives, but located even farther which makes defending near impossible.

I like it bump

I'd actually say the opposite, that it makes attacking more difficult than defending. It's not that I don't think resources are in a sorry state either and need to be made meaningful or that there shouldn't be a logistics game going on that is open to disruption, but I wanted to make this thread more specific from the outset, I've made threads before that were more general whines about every issue I could think of in the game. This time I thought more down the lines of developing a single solution that would remedy the two problems defined, not that it was the one stop fix for every issue in the game.