This just popped into my head, let me know what you think. Currently, there are rarely any fights at bases that are near warpgates. That's just how the game works. However, it does make the game more repetitive and less interesting long term. A solution to this popped into my head a few minutes ago: instead of having three warpgates per continent, have six, and have three active at a time. This would create hexagram made of a triangle of active warpgates and one of inactive warpgates. Which triangle is active and which is inactive could either be randomly chosen or be the opposite of what it was when the continent was previously open when a continent opens. Additionally, this could allow for inactive warpgates to act as capturable bases themselves, though that would mean actually having them serve both the purpose of a warpgate and a base intended for fighting after a redesign of each, hopefully not another copy paste like tech plants, amp stations, bio labs, and containment sites (pls). If it's not obvious by this point how this would create fights at bases that normally wouldn't have any, here's an example: Let's take Indar as of writing this post. There are three warpgates: north, southwest, southeast. This system would create three more: northwest, northeast, south. These would also be the two sets of warpgates (I don't think we would want a preshattering Esamir situation on crack with three northern, southern, western, or eastern warpgates, though I would be curious to see how crazy that would be, maybe for an April fool's event or so). So when one set is active, the bases near the inactive warpgates would be the middle between the active warpgates, i.e. the starting frontline. So say the currently inexistent set is active, and the currently existent set is inactive. Suddenly we would have fights center north, southwest, and southeast. "But the northeast warpgate on Esamir already blew the **** up!" This is actually great for this since it would promote having a warpgate that isn't copy paste there, and could have some sort of interaction with the tempest pole, maybe some hybrid warpgate between world anchor and haven technology. On that note, the new sets on other continents could be haven warpgates so you could have one set of world anchors and one set of havens. Thank you for reading and considering.
Well I just found out that there is already a map in the game that seems to have been potentially designed for an addition like this in the future. When looking at Desolation from a hex and landscape perspective, it is built ready for six command center warpgates. In terms of its hexes, there are three unused hexes in the same shape of the other command center warpgate hexes, where the currently inexistent set should be located. Landscape wise, there are not three arms leading out to three warpgates, but six, which lead out to three currently present warpgates and three between these, where again these inactive hexes are located. Granted, the bases on Desolation don't really suffer nearly as much from never being fought at when there is an outfit wars match going on since it's a much smaller map, and also since they're all either the same or so similar that they're practically the same. Additionally, if the currently inexistent set would have the same lattice between bases, with NW-Akka, NW-Feros, NE-Bane, NE-Chiron, S-Etna, S-Deimos links instead of the links the existent warpgates have to their closest relics, then the lattice would be a huge center map chokepoint. So either the lattice would have to be redesigned, be vertically flipped according to which set of warpgates is active, or remain as currently is but incorporate inactive warpgates as capturable bases with their current links, effectively creating a hexagram shape lattice with a center radioactive symbol, which could be interesting as it would require capturing command centers to be able to flank when the currently inexistent set is active. Of course, these command centers would have to be actually functional bases then as well, but this would provide essentially two ways the map is played rather than something more static, though the reason the lattice and bases on Desolation are the way they are right now in the first place is because it's meant to be symmetrical and not too extreme in its own context, less about base and terrain knowledge and more about thinking about what the enemy is doing, and having command centers as capturable bases in such a way may not follow that type of design philosophy. Nonetheless, the inactive hexes are there, and the continent itself is formed in such a way that would allow for six warpgates to be present, so perhaps this is something that will be added in the future in some way, which I tend to incline to as the hexes still exist and it might have been left out for now since the game didn't and / or doesn't have code in it yet for varying between warpgate sets, or it was cut as just having three was enough. I have not played in outfit wars, let alone lead a faction in an OW match, only watched some of the matches on youtube and twitch, so I don't know details like those who've been on desolation do.
The idea of adding alternative continent starts and frontlines is a good one. I proposed similar in the past. The main focus should be offering alternative starting frontlines so that you basically start on bases you don't frequent often unless a Zerg is going down a lane. I proposed having new versions of current continents so you can redesign the lattice and also simply replace the warpgates with a large facility/base if they aren't active. It also means you can have 3 continent versions of each, with 9 possible warpgate options for a faction to start from depending on how you rotate. With your idea it would necessitate that each warpgate configuration has its own continental lattice-lanes attached to make sure it flows correctly. As for old Northern Esamir, that was a problem with the lattice lanes. There were 5 bases seperating both northern warpgates and the bases involved were fun and engaging to have fights at with few branching lattice-lanes, and the few branches led to farther away bases that were less fun to fight at. Naturally the devs saw as only solution "nuke any fight that takes more than 5 minutes". Something they did later to TI Alloys and they are now targeting Biolabs by redesigning the spawnrules inside but putting it in a list of minor changes to make it go less noticed.
Its a good idea and one of the ways of fixing a problem of underused bases. As Demigan said it is often brought up by the PlanetSide community. Here is my solution: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/make-any-base-a-wapgate-to-fight-from.254684/
This would have been a great idea back when this game was in early development, I don't know how feasible it would be to implement this now. Certainly the continents would make more sense this way rather than having 3 factions on a 4 sided board. If they ever do release another continent it would be worth doing this.
I have suggested something similar in the past. It's pretty silly that around 80% of the fights happen at around 1/3 to 1/2 of the bases. I think the game is too long in the tooth for such a dramatic change though.
I don't think it's impossible but this would indeed be a very big change. I did find out more or less recently that the original concept for Oshur was going to have bastions instead of warpgates, three per faction from what I can tell (they were testing that at some point as well on Jaeger with a Bastion Smash). How exactly these would be set up in terms of faction proximity I couldn't tell. https://planetside.fandom.com/wiki/Oshur Of course that version of Oshur was cancelled / put on hold until further notice. I have some thoughts on what the continent we'll be getting later this year will be. I might make a post explaining what I think, maybe not.
