DBG Devs; The Gentle Cure to Zerging

The solution to mitigate Zerging is actually really simple and probably equally easy for DBG to implement.

For every percentage point you out-pop the enemy in a zone your experience is reduced by 2 X that percentage and the enemy's is increased by that same percentage.

DBG already tracks that information in-game, it just doesn't use it yet for experience calculations at a "local" level.

So, 60/40 fights are pretty common, we'll use that as an example. The 60% pop would only be getting 60% of their normal experience, whereas, the 40% pop would be getting 140% of their normal experience. This bonus/penalty would also be calculated before any/all other exp modifiers are attributed to give it more meaning and teeth.

The net effect is, it would attract players, especially good ones, who can cope with and enjoy out-popped situations. It would also make those same players tend to not want to create too much over-pop by joining already lop-sided fights.

DBG was on the right track with experience incentives on a continent wide scale. All they need to do to curb the zerg-festing is to expand that same concept to encompass local zones, problem solved, gameplay improved dramatically.

Daybreak's standing policy is to implement carrots, not sticks.

How exactly would it be fair to expect a group of base builders in a hexto participate in a fight when they're 500 meters away? Or if I start an attack and people simply join me? Or if I cannot find a fight that doesn't have more friendlies? Or what's stopping me from going to a full enemy fight that isn't even on my lattice?

What would happens if someone camp the warpgate and there are no lattice link ?
What could happens if there is a 96+ (TR) vs 96+ (NC) and 1 vanu join the fight ? All TR and NC get 0xp while the vanu get over 9000% xp ? Same population but with the lattice link for a tri-faction fight.

Experience is a bad, bad motivator. You need to change the enjoyment for the affected players. If the Zerg doesn't enjoy it because of bad XP multipliers, who's going to leave? If you stay and others leave, you get to have a blast of a battle with good XP. This means they will start a game of chicken to see who value's their XP more than their gameplay. Also you shouldn't be punishing players because some outfit decided to jump on your team or because you were doing a Biolab and needed 2:1 odds just to break through those chokepoints and get inside. That's not something you want.
Also the defenders still don't enjoy being outpopped, you need to adress that. If the defenders can enjoy being outpopped the problem is gone. Focus on that, rather than arbitrary systems that completely kick the attackers in the teeth for no reason at all.

So, give the positive effect and not the negative?

Which I don't think is a bad policy. I would be in favor of increasing XP incentives for playing a down-pop faction, but not penalizing people for afking in a tank during a zerg. They are already penalizing themselves, after all, by participating in a zerg and not a fair fight. I play TR and notice more TR zergs and generally leave when they start because it's boring just sitting in a vehicle never shooting.

To expand, increasing the XP incentive for playing down-pop causes players to consider fighting against the odds by providing them with increases in certs for participating when they otherwise would not.

Seriously, people are quick to shoot down ideas around here, with no reasons, solutions, constructive criticism or anything. With a new owner who apparently listens to players, an active test server and huge changes in the near future, being constructive on here could make a difference.

As long as infantry and vehicles are so spammable, numbers almost always mean victory. If that massive invading force couldn't constantly spam out of the many replaceable Sundies around the base then the smaller team could catch up in the fight. But as it is, it's all about numbers, and it would take bigger changes than this game will likely make to change that. Equal fights are more fun, so while people are initially drawn by the certs, things should balance out and turn in to good brawls eventually. And if the faction XP bonuses went through the roof, I'm sure you'd see even better balance between the 3 factions.

Not this again... Well, I'll start off as usual, we are talking about players that already are gimped on experience, since they simple can't get as many kills, revives, ammo drops etc. etc.. They already don't care to be efficient with their experience gain and hampering that even more, will likely not change that fact.
After that comes the idea that this is a MMOFPS, if we try and **** everyone into having purely 50/50 fights, why even exist as an open world, when such fights are the completely same experience as every single other shooter that exists. And even then there are simply bases that are takes far too much coordination or force multiplier to actually capture, hence over populating can be a necessity and gimping people for making a strategical choice like that is dumb.
Lastly, zerging isn't particularly effective, it is easily outplayed by even simple strats of multicapping with smaller forces. Come play TR cobalt and watch something like zerg russ, who will push two-three bases deep and then be backcapped and then stunted in their effort and quickly dispatched back to where they started, while the enemy force have taken 3 other bases across the map and we can't do anything, because a large force is zerging and the enemy is better coordinated in smaller skirmishes.

I swear that one day I hope it gets into people skulls that this is an aspect of this game, and trying to remove it or make it not happen, takes away one of the most unique aspects of the game not to mention the entire genre of shooters and gaming overall.

Edit: oh and you already do get more experience for being underpopulated as defender.

Just because infantry and vehicles are spammable does not mean that victory will be attained automatically.

Biolabs are primary examples. The moment you have a sizeable defender force in a Biolab the attackers need 2:1 odds to break through.

Now that's not exactly a good base design if every single base you have became build like this, but that doesn't mean that objectives for instance can change depending on the overpop, or that the defenders can receive perks they can exploit in the defense of the base. Perks such as getting increasingly accurate spawning methods, allowing highly outpopped players to spawn in almost anywhere they like. Outpopped players could also get access to special items, such as a vehicle spawn utility. You buy an MBT spawn utility at the base. Yes, you buy it and it's gone if you die, although you get a (partial?) refund if you didn't use it to prevent it being punishing. After buying it you go somewhere flat and without a roof, then place your vehicle. This gives the defenders safer and easier access to vehicles, it also offers them much better surprise attacks such as working as a team and having a small vehicle-army spawn in without warning to kick some enemy butt.
It still doesn't offer the defenders extra health, damage amp or similar, it offers them the same tools as always but under different rules to overcome the problems you face otherwise (not being able to safely access vehicle terminals, having mines and 2 enemy tanks wait for anyone foolish enough to spawn etc).

And why shouldn't you even make this a challenge for the attackers? Imagine if the defenders got access to Colossus tanks and Galaxy Gunships:



Now those would be free power for the defenders, but it could potentially give the Zerglings a run for their money to attempt to take them down.

I also mentioned changing objectives when you are being outpopped. One idea would be to add a tunnel system that players can fight through under most medium to large bases. Underneath the Spawnbunker an SCU is present that can be destroyed with small-arms fire, first team to repair it gains access to the base. However, the attackers will need to fight through the tunnels and various chokepoints to get through.
In the meantime the standard capture points are disabled, you can see it as a deliberate attempt from the faction generals to delay the enemy: Take the entire base off-grid and stick to something much easier to defend, but with drawbacks for the overall faction (the base doesn't offer anything for the faction as long as it's off-grid).

I'm sure there's better idea's and alternatives, but the main goal of these alternate objectives would be to allow an outpopped force to easier defend the base they are in. Maybe they could do something with attrition? Imagine this: The moment the attackers outpop the defenders, every death they suffer is 10 seconds extra to the capture timer (vehicles also count as 1 death), but every defender they kill will knock off 5 seconds off the artificially added seconds. Zerglings suddenly get punished for greedily vying for kills, exposing themselves to the defenders in their greed. Suddenly dying matters a lot more, and the defenders can hold out for ages if the attackers don't do things right. Now imagine a smart attacker who pulls back to prevent the spawnwarriors from easily getting extra time on the timer... And the bets are off. Good defenders wouldn't rush the point while outpopped, they would start a guerrilla war. Get a KD of 1 and you already extend the timer with 5 seconds each time. A cat-and-mouse game starts with the superior forces of the attackers trying to both stay alive and murder the defenders effectively to cut down on the extra time while the defenders are picking off stray Zerglings to keep the capture going on forever. The Zergling mentality suddenly turns into a big disadvantage.
Ofcourse key would be to balance this out. For instance, the more you are outpopped, the less time the attackers gain back for killing a defender. 2:1 odds? 5 seconds back. 3:1 odds? 2 seconds back. Just spitballing here with random numbers, it would have to be calibrated so that even with 10:1 odds the defenders stand a chance to extend the capture indefinitely while not making it take 15 minutes at minimum the moment you outpop your opponent.

I'm just saying if your enemy didn't immediately re-appear, then the lower pop could catch up in a fight if they play their cards right. Maybe something like a spawn timer that increases the more you die. That would also lessen repeated suicide flash c4 runs and non-stop LAs pouring out of Valks.

Thing is, I like the idea of cheaper emergency maxes in a 75 to 25 fight, but what's stopping a squad from simply going so defenders get that bonus and coming back?
You can't control the population in a hex, that's the sad truth of it, however base builders will get a laser that will hopefully crush pathings for zergs. Preemptive tools for zergs should be the way to deal with them, not instant I win tools.

Teamwork.

The squad might know teamwork, but that doesn't mean the players who stay behind know it as well. Also getting enough players for a MAX crash is tough enough, and you would have to repeat this redeploy tactic several times to get those MAX's. That's more than 20 seconds of redeploying each time where your squad isn't doing anything, that's a big disadvantage.

If it somehow is still a problem you can create a delay system, so that player need to be outpopped for X seconds (half a minute?) before the outpopped advantages take effect.

The solution to stopping large overpops is logistics. Since there is no cost to dumping people from one side of the continent to the other and no cost for maintaining massive numerical advantages it's rampant and widespread.

As an example, sins of a solar empire has a system where you can increase your max population but you must pay more upkeep. It's a good system in my opinion because it creates a trade off for having more units in that you will have less economic muscle to replace them. Rather than simply having a pure more is always better approach.

I would add a nanite cost to redeploying. You can redeploy within the same hex for free as many times as you want, but every lattice link you travel along to get to your destination costs 75 nanites.

Would be nice if they somehow linked cortium and nanite generation together as well. If more nanite use in a territory was connected to what cortium supplies you had it would make it a lot harder to maintain massive zergs, since they would rapidly exhaust the available resources and then lose vehicles or items like grenades and C4. You could also increase spawn times if cortium supplies are running out.

That way massive zergs will naturally dissipate, but you can maintain them if you provide good logistics. But those same logistics become vulnerable targets for the smaller opponent to strike at.

That only stops redeployside, not the forming of overpops. Although logistics can improve a lot of the game, it wouldn't improve the situation for overpopped defenders.

I would rather limit the amount of times you can redeploy per minute. The option to redeploy somewhere else keeps players better engaged, instead of players being in transit for most of the time. Although if base control and traveling became more important it would be good for the game. One problem to think about: Galaxies. If you make transportation more important you switch from redeployside to Galaxyside. Most players won't be making use of the ground vehicles to form tank columns and travel to places, they would just redeploy once to the warpgate and take a Galaxy, and territory control would still mean little.

My solution: Every base has a Cortium silo, each vehicle/infantry spawn sucks a tiny bit of resources from it. As long as the base is connected it will regenerate the Cortium to a minimum amount, the rest needs to be collected. If you run out of Cortium, spawn times increase as a punishment. Additional punishments could be added if necessary, such as all things like ammo packs and ability cooldowns taking twice as long until Cortium is returned.
Deployed Sunderers draw Cortium from the nearest lattice-linked base. This means you can use scorched-earth mechanics: The Zerg sucks away Cortium faster. If you suck your own base dry of Cortium, the Zerg will start with an empty Silo when they capture it and their assault on the next base starts. Zergs are also notorious for not having much teamwork. So there won't be many ANT's driving around to replenish it, and any coordinated defense team could actively hunt and destroy the Zerg ANT's to keep their Cortium supply low.

I'm not convinced affecting xp will achieve that much. Players are more attracted by the quality of the fight than by the xp itself.

Imho the way is to affect nanites regeneration and respaen timer. That's the only way to make zergs grafually less efficient ad they get bigger.

I meant you could redeploy once but it would total up the cost of each lattice link jumped. So it would actually let you jump quicker and easier than now, but you need to pay in nanites. That has the added bonus that a redeploying platoon probably won't necessarily be able to start dumping out tons of maxes straight away.

Galaxies would be a viable way round it (and rightly so, as long as they get nerfed a wee bit) but redeploying to the warpgate is still going to cost a lot of nanites.

A platoon doing that might have to travel say 4 lattice links to get to the warpgate, that would be 300 nanites per player in my system, then getting 4 galaxies is a further 1800 nanites. Total nanite cost: 1800 + 48 * 300 = 16,200

Compare that to simply the cost of maintaining transport vehicles and you quickly see that it would be prohibitive to move large numbers of players using redeploy unless it was absolutely vital they get there in an instant. Galaxies would be a way round as I said, but at least in theory they can be intercepted and shut down before they get to the target (right now they're so tough that's not really practical though).

Yeah this was pretty much my thinking as well. Resource zones would need to be less RNG based though as I believe it's random as to whether you get a large cortium crystal or a small one on some of the spawn points. While it wouldn't suit everyone, there are a lot of players who would enjoy trucking desperately needed supplies around and saving allied forces that way.

I already get an XP boost being in a low pop area and I see no XP boost when I am in a zerg.
If I feel like travelling in a superior force, I will. If I feel like fighting against a superior force, I will.

Problem solved.

Warefare is full of stories of being outnumbered, outflanked, yet still victorious:

As a result of the powerful American defense to the north and east, XLVII Panzer Corps commander Gen. von Lüttwitz decided to encircle Bastogne and strike from the south and southwest, beginning the night of 20/21 December. German Panzer reconnaissance units had initial success, nearly overrunning the American artillery positions southwest of Bastogne before being stopped by a makeshift force. All seven highways leading to Bastogne were cut by German forces by noon of 21 December, and by nightfall the conglomeration of airborne and armored infantry forces were recognized by both sides as being surrounded.
The American soldiers were outnumbered approximately 5-1 and were lacking in cold-weather gear, ammunition, food, medical supplies, and senior leadership (as many senior officers, including the 101st's commander—Major General Maxwell Taylor—were elsewhere). Due to the worst winter weather in memory, the surrounded U.S. forces could not be resupplied by air nor was tactical air support available due to cloudy weather......
.....It was on the 22nd of December that General von Lüttwitz submitted the following demand for surrender to his American counterpart commanding the American forces in Bastogne, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe:

To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.

The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Our near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.

There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honourable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.

If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours term.

All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well-known American humanity.

The German Commander.

Shortly thereafter, McAuliffe sent the following communication to von Lüttwitz:

To the German Commander.

NUTS!

The American Commander.

So outnumbered 5-1 McAuliffe didnt beg for mercy, imagine if he had....
What he did was dig in and wait for reinforcements, keeping hold of key territory and really putting a dent in the morale of the German soldies. ''A handful of troops can keep us at bay?'' would not be a question id want to hear my troops uttering.
And these guys did it 'for real', not on some computer game.

Im sure there are many who will know this story, and there are many more stories of similar theme, also with big hollywood film productions behind them:

''The enemy outnumbers us approximately 3-1, good odds for any Greek'' - Dilios

Image if he said ''**** actualy lads we're outnumbered, forget everything i said, lets go to the forums to complain''

My thought would be to decrease spawn timers relative to the amount of population in the fight. Standard fights would have a normal timers (12-24) but from there timers would increase to 15s or maybe even 20s.

ofc things like spawn beacons would remain unaffected and this might require people to then spawn at different bases and find transportation to the fights.