Mattherson 8:00 PM Saturday. NC pushed TR hard, had a good skirmish outside of TR warpgate until the NC went around the main force to ghost cap everything else to the west. Hex after hex of no contest of what could have been hours of back and forth. Get rid of these hexes, and the resources.
This is the one thing that annoys me about the game design. We will be doing ops on say, indar which NC are in 1/5th of the map on. We go start pushing up towards howling pass (which by the way has a really stupid spot for the A point to be on) and then we want to start moving in on Mao. But of course as we go forward we realise TR are back capping us and we are gonna get cut off so we redeploy. Kill all of 7 TR then move up again only for a different half a dozen TR to do the same thing. It is clever on their part but honestly It is annoying to have to go back and forth becaus the entire NC zerg is at Tarwich and refuses to leave even if they are going to get cut off
What do you think the result would be if we were to remove the reward for capping bases altogether, or removed or reduced in the case that the capping is sufficiently uncontested*? * We can figure out what that means later.
You don't have to redeploy much to deal with back-cappers. Spot it early, first send one or two guys in to judge the situation, then react accordingly. You have the advantage of the spawn room, and probably have air superiority, so keep an eye on the map and cut them off before they actually manage to cap more than a sector. Air power is often all that is needed for to stop this sort of attack. If you react disproportionally then that's not a game design problem, it's an organisational problem.
Manipulating the zerg has always been a part of planetside. It's half the reason certain targets used to be picked or gen holds were done. This sounds less like "bad game design" and more like you guys arn't taking zerg into account. The mindlessness is why they're called zerg...
I didn't say remove the reward for capturing, I said get rid of the hex system, the map needs to be more linear and have a flow to it. There is no flow to this game, you get 1 or 2 good fights a day when you could be having one good fight lasting days. The first game was linear and a fight over a continent would last a long time, inch by inch.
We do take the zerg into account but they are always in the same place. (exaggeration) and We like to change it up so we wnt up that howling pass side of indar. Was still awesome fun though. The ghostcapping is just more of a perosnal "Bah I was just there" sort of thing. But thinking about it now, it doesnt actually happen as often as I made it out. SO i actually apologise for that
sounds more like poor coordination than bad game design. the map even tells you how many enemies are in each hex. stop camping the wg for a moment to check the map and this wouldn't have happened.
I understand your complaints about the hex system, but I don't think that would help with the problem you prescribe. In this case, it's part of the "no one wants to defend" issue with their being three parties in this who aren't defending properly: the NC zerg at Tawrich, the NC platoon you are a part of (either of which should be filtering into the bases you've just captured), and the TR who are interested in backcapping (who should be defending Mao, in your opinion). You can argue that your goal was never a defensive one, that makes sense, but what are you if not another zerg if you just plan to move on? the fact that you went back when things got messy already elevates your effort above thoughtless zerg, but then you complain about it. The TR, whether or not it's their goal, are actually doing the setup for most strategically logical thing and attacking your weakest flank - the places you've already captured, e.g., your back, and your situational awareness for Tarwich (which doesn't care). What they then should be doing quietly is positioning forces in Mao to attack your "front" when you have it turned around, naively dealing with what seem like minor flare-ups in the regions you've already captured. You'd be surrounded eventually. More likely, every TR who should be doing that is wasting time at the bloody Crown. It was a nice thought, though. What I mean to say is: taken from another perspective, the reason the conflict doesn't move inch-by-inch is because people keep pushing forward and not caring about what they've already captured enough. They expect that to be someone else's fight; they're "moving forward."
I read: "We had a reasonably even fight until NC employed some tactics and flanked us to take down our supply lines, we did nothing so we lost. This is unfair." The problem is the lack of incentive to defend and people not wanting to leave the biggest zerg not the hex system.
PS1 had a system like this. Heavy fighting at a base resulted in a big chunk of XP when the hack when through and not much at all if no one tried to stop you.
Poor coordination is the result of bad game design. There are really not many organizational tools. I actually miss the command channel. People used to complain about it, but it helped develop an empire-wide consensus on what should be done.
There is no incentive to defend .. that is a major flaw .. also bring back CE lol i always used it on major bases
Xp should be removed altogether from this game. The game should be objective based. We should have a central command, and one that is not directed by players but could be augmented by players. How war really works. However, just look to Planetside 1. That is the answer to this problem. Rewards based upon the intensity of the fight itself, almost no reward for empty captures.
Seems like the issue comes down to defense, both because it is very hard to defend most bases (Thanks to an over abundance of air and armor resources) and because there is absolutely no incentive to do so. You get no exp (save for that gotten from killing the attacking force) for defending a base, that is just nonsense. Also the only reliable way to do anything tends to be with a Zerg. Small squads have no hope of doing anything against a large force and forget doing anything behind enemy lines. Perhaps to would be wise to make it possible for small squads to disrupt enemy supply lines (i.e. resource gain) through harassment of enemy bases (Your faction would not get any benefit, but neither would the enemy). Like the OP said initially when the enemy meets enough resistance they just flow around it and capture the surrounding area; at which point the defensive force is helpless to stop the enemy from running rampant. It seems to me that without control of the "Big base" in the area (Tech Lab, Bio Lab, Amp Station) you should not be able to capture any of the surrounding "Smaller Bases"; which is to say, without the primary you cannot take the secondaries.
