A few ideas: Reduce the cost of Lightning by 50 Nanites when you can pull an MBT (Vanguard, Prowler, Phagrider). My reasoning: I found that the one (only?) significant advantage of pulling a Lightning over an MBT is cost-effectiveness, and only to a marginal extent. This could be emphasized to some extent. Reduce the cost of ground vehicles pulled from the Warpgate by 10%, 5% for air vehicles. My reasoning: this would give a warpgated faction some direct advantage against an oppressing force, as well as give a marginal boost to tank columns organized at the warpgate, possibly to reconquer a Tech Plant. Reduce the cost of MAX units spawned at the Warpgate by 100. My reasoning: those MAX units need to be delivered to their destination by coordination. This could emphasize Warpgate-assembled heavy strike forces, as well as offer some additional local bonus to a Warpgated faction. The bonuses stack (e.g. pulling a Lightning from the Warpgate costs 265 Nanites).
5% for air, means they'd pull from the warpgate every time. As an aircraft has the speed & since it ignores terrain, can reach anywhere from the gate in seconds... No reason to not pull it from there, to save 5% of 350, 450, or similar. So ESFs would be even quicker to regenerate. But beyond that, your idea does give some value to pulling tanks from the gate rather than the front lines. The Maxes are a little scary however, due to Galaxy drops of entire squads of them for only 250 a pop.
It'd like to see PMB hives used to generate nanites for each faction, the more population you have the higher the demand. Make this effect the rate of nanites received per minute for each player. (With some kind of minimum even when no bases are present.) Lower populations might be fine without a PMB hive, or only need one weak 30% base for max nanite generation.
I can't agree with that. For aircraft:5% of 350 is 17.5. Base rate for nanites is 50/minute. It takes more than a minute to cross the entire map, not considering that you may be intercepted when going from warpgate to front. Plenty of times I have pulled an aircraft to stop or secure a base cap, attack an isolated tank or hunted down an aircraft I damaged. Every second counts in these situations. As for tanks: Many times I have spent 800 nanites to pull a single MBT by first take an ESF to enemy territory, hack a tank terminal and attack from rear, circumventing highly contested areas which I would have little hope to fight through. I wouldn't stop doing this even with a 100% discount. On 2x exp day playing on Hossin pulling MBT from warpgate would be like... 50-100 certs not earned because I am driving around in a swamp rather than fighting.
The cheaper price is better for aircraft than vehicles, due to the ease of mobility, and ability to reach everywhere from the gate without any real time difference. If an ESF, it doesn't really take long at all. By comparison, for that 10% off a tank, you actually take minutes to move into the next hex. An aircraft flies through several well before that. As a vehicle can't make the discount matter with the distance. An aircraft gains a lot more from the warpgate, as there also isn't any dangers that can't be evaded for aircraft. So this becomes drastic on hossin, where vehicles are further impaired, but aircraft are not.
Perhaps I should've made it clear that I only threw in some random numbers here, the emphasis should've been on the perk that the bonus is negligible for aircraft (or downright non-existent, now that I think about it), and minor for ground vehicles, which in practice will scale the closer a fight is to the Warpgate (as the bonus will be there unchanged, but with a decreasing travel distance).
Any nanite cost reduction for aircraft is better than for vehicles. As the distance is a cost to vehicles by itself, for aircraft, it's already cheaper than the counters, with more power. As well, unlike for vehicles, the speed of aircraft reduce if not remove any distance cost for practical deployment. Recall when one continent had the perk of cheaper aircraft? Recall that most aircraft are pulled from the Warpgate first as well. It wouldn't be affecting pilots, that are engaging forces at the nearby warpgate hexes, it would affect them all. Unlike vehicle operators, would feel it nearly solely when dealing with such threats and doing long-distance movement which usually refunds the nanites anyway due to time to cross the distance.
I like the idea of incentivising or rewarding ground vehicles being pulled form warpgate and rewarding that. There are some other incenstives yu could possibly provide, such as automating the AA/AV turrets near warpgates whenever a faction has more than X lattice links away of territory. Could possibly give some slight security for those driving from the warpgate? Not too sure about this. What if driving a ground vehicle through the warpgate shield gives you incresed movement speed, and or an EMP Field that destroys any deployables and lasts ~1 minute? Galaxy drops make sense for warpgate organizing but ground vehicles don't really have any strategies that need warpgate massing so perhaps we're looking for solutions to a problem that doesn't exist. Especially now that warpgates are truly a thing of the past.
