This is war: sometimes you have nowhere to hide or escape. But in PS2 redeploy and restart is always an option. Personally my hope is that base redesign goes on so that bases and spawn rooms become even easier to defend, like they were in Planetside 1 (did you see Snake Look Ravine recently?) . With such structures number should matter less so that defenders could stop the zerg, or at least slow it down until they get some reinforcement. Current map gives everyone options to retreat and attack somewhere else which is not bad for outnumbered forces, but personally it makes me feel like my faction couldn't influence battle flow in any way: the fight is everywhere, base timers popping out everywhere, and we can eventually take a continent only when all the enemies redeploy elsewhere. Honestly I started hating hex map 1 week after I joined the beta in September.
TL;DR: I have attempt to answer to all the comments in this thread without repeating myself too much. You can read only the parts addressed to you, but you'll get a wider view if you read also the parts that are in larger fonts. Do read the other colored part in the end, it is my overall conclusion. /TL;DR Honestly, this has to get in the game. Those base redesigns are awesome. But they have nothing to do with the lattice system. It does not validate nor invalidate it, it's just world design. It should go to live even without changes to the territory system. In the end, you are not completely correct. Of course there are tastes, but there are also consistent and quantifiable principles of game design. The Lattice System goes against some of them, in the sense that it removes/reduces some valuable aspects of the game that would let players test specific subsets of their skills. Notably, Valuation of targets. We could argue that it would still be present in the form of picking a lane, but it would be too diminished to be a differentiation factor between players. Target choosing is already too streamlined, the game needs further depth and breadth to be able to hold up the test of time. After a period of time varying amongst players, everyone understands the hex system enough to make it a binary skill. Meaning that it becomes a have or have not. I still make mistakes, and when I join other platoons, I see them doing mistakes as well. And this is great for the game that we can fail. Once everyone catches on, we'll all be playing a game of tic tac toe where no one can win. We already see part of that now with the endless stalemates of Indar since that map is the most familiar to most leaders. The lattice system makes that process even faster, and this is why it is a dead end. Even if we ignore the hard logic, and go just with feelings and taste: As I put it elsewhere, why should a change ruin someone's gameplay to slightly improve someone else's ? Why not go with changes that would improve both aspects? Strategical and tactical depth can be both pursued at the same time, and can even be synergistic. I don't defend the hex system as is, I defend it's potential as a system that can improve on both levels. You are completely right, and this is something that should be improved rather than accepted as is. People that do not have experience in leading do not realise this, and believe a simpler system would improve their gameplay. It may in the short term, but of course, it isn't true on the long term. That's why I'm using the word "inexperienced" rather than calling them "stupid". As you do, I know it has nothing to do with intellect but learning from experience. Some people just learn slower or lead less often, but there should always be room for improvement for those that do learn fast or lead a lot. The Lattice system is an easy way out of trying to implement strategical depth in the game. All those tactical aspects you mention are already true and possible. The game is already very mature regarding tactical depth and breadth. It's just the players that aren't good enough yet. I would say this is future proofing Planetside 2. What the lattice would remove is the strategical application of those words(flanking, surrounding, etc). It removes one layer of game play. I'm on Miller too, we've worked together before. Collaboration on the tactical level has happened, but it is rare simply because we suck as an empire. Not compared to other players, but compared to the skill ceiling of the game. As a faction, we don't have yet the collaboration necessary to handle well on a strategical level. or maybe we simply don't have the drive. On the first alerts, it was amazing because previously silent leaders just appeared out of thin air and we finally did stuff as an empire. Alerts are a perfect proof that progress and victory is achievable at equal pop. We did progress, and if people didn't move out once the alerts dings, I'm certain some of those times we would have capped a continent. The sad part is that we could have been doing this everyday since launch, we just needed greed to unite us. (NC roleplay I guess) I've seen you lead, you are the best tactician I know, almost to a fault. Your tactics suffice you to win engagements or hold your own in battles you should not have chosen. I do not have your ability to micro manage my squads. However, I pick different fights than you do and remain successful that way. You hate redeploying, while it is my playstyle to be that one platoon that moves around ,and it is amazing to be able to both coexist and have fun. Why should they fix it? It is not something broken, it is an advantage of the system. It's not like you cannot do it to them or couldn't do anything about it. All players had all the information necessary to make decisions since launch. We now have superfluous infos like timers and ally presence. You could have seen it coming, you could have reacted in time, you could have reacted before it was out of hand, you could have decided to send only one squad or ask on leader chat if someone could rather than redeploying everyone. You could have used scouts to get exact force composition. You could even kindly ask the randoms to go trough orders. What is important is that all those things were possible, but we don't do it every time. It means we have room to improve, we have room for making mistakes and being blind sided like we can do to others. This is giving lifetime to the game. This isn't the full truth. It could be over simplified to this, but it wouldn't take into account some stuff. In a mathematical/programming context, both are graph, but the lattice system is a simple graph while the hex is a valued graph.(not sure of english terminology) Due to the notion of influence, not all links are equal. And this makes a great deal of potential depth they could and should expand upon. I don't know if you ever had to work on the travelling salesman problem, but it is a classic and it is exactly what us humans are good at doing. It is something you can make more complex in a game without having complexity for the sake of complexity, we will always get better at it. This is a good skill to test in a game. Instead of removing influence, they should have made it more of an impact than just changing the capture time. In addition to capture time, I would love to see: conditional links like bridges being blown or not, neutral hexes serving as impassable bariers, sub objectives influencing how much a territory is worth in influence, more strategic advantages like the teleporters in sub bases. Theses are just what I can think off as of now, I'm sure more people can find more improvements. Did it really? Or was it just a band aid fix that was kept until the end? On a strategical level, there is nothing appealing in the lattice system. All it did was to make sure there was fighting. And I am certain it would accomplish just that on ps2 as well. But is it worth sacrificing an aspect of the game? And more importantly, is it worth sacrificing the potential of that aspect in the future of the game? To be fair, it was already an accomplishment that ps1 managed to nail tactical combat at the time. We should expect more from ps2. I am not interested in team deathmatch, no matter how awesome or tactical it is. I and others came to this game because the devs mentioned it was an RTS disguised as a shooter. Right of the bat, you show how little you understood my post. I do not have only two arguments, and they certainly aren't those that you took away from reading me. Streamlining isn't a fault. Variety for the sake of variety is bad. Hence a great deal of what you said was irrelevant to discussing my point of view. What a game needs is depth and breadth. I recommend some reading to understand those notions. http://chocolatepi.net/articles/ Read at least the preface. You are also mistaken if you believe I am satisfied with the current state of the hex system. My original comment was mostly trying to talk about the lattice alone. However, if you read my conclusion again, you will see that I consider the current strategical play to be weak. And I will be clearer here: The current implementation of the hex+influence system is shallow. However it can be expanded upon. Back to ps2, we need the game to be developed on both the tactical and the strategical level. It doesn't matter how popular or not those changes are. Honestly, it doesn't even make sense trying to talk about vocal minority, we all are part of it here. Those enjoying the game are silent and playing at the moment. We are all completely stuck in a confirmation biases. All the people I know dislike/hate the lattice system. Those you know do not. Whoop dee doo. A game should not be developed through popularity contests, maybe prioritised by it at the most, but the devs need a vision and design principles. And there are some very universal paradigms that they should try to follow to a letter. Amongst those is the concept of depth. The notion that for every move, there can be a potential set of reactions which themselves can have a set of potential reactions. The more level of reactions you can go before looping back over to the first move, the deeper the game is. Breadth is the amount of non redundant options you have at each level of depth. Currently, we have some level of depth, but nearly not enough. The lattice simply throws everything out of the window and goes to no level at all of strategical depth. We always loop back to move on to the next base in line. The breadth of possibilities are always either move forward or pull out. It could be tolerable if it added tactical depth, but it won't change anything on that aspect. It doesn't add any new tools. It wouldn't really be needed anyway, we already do have a pretty good tactical game. One false positive aspect of the lattice is that it would just be revealed faster, reducing life time of the game. Same thing happened lately with the strategic layer of the game. It was always in the system, we were just too lazy to use it. The alert system revealed the potential of it if we were motivated by proper incentives (greed). In my opinion, the alerts put the nail into the Lattice's coffin. It proved tangibly that fights could happen and that back capping isn't a problem when proper rewards are implied. You mentioned some great suggestions, but in a mixed heap of strategic and tactical tools with most being completely agnostic to the type of capture system implemented. And in the end, you prove your confusion by urging people to be creative in tactics. This just shows that you do not get where I am going at with my posts. Either you don't see the difference between tactics and strategy, or as you mentioned, you simply don't care much for strategy or want the game to be focused on tactics only. But it is important to have both in a game, as in it gives a more diverse array of skills to test for a player to perform better or worse and differentiate each other. This comes into play for the competitive aspect you mentioned. Strategy > tactics > execution Pick a viable fight > Approach it in a viable way > execute your choices in a viable manner Defend a back cap > chose smg infiltrator and use darts to locate enemies > uncloack just when necessary and do only headshots There are other solutions to provide fun fights to all, solutions that are proven to work and do not sacrifice a core aspect of gameplay. Just like the current alerts, use the players greed as a tool and give organisation into the player's hands: Player created missions More alerts of various types A mysterious roadmap entry called Regional Priority System, probably more xp incentives in certain locations Defence incentives(link to click) A better instant action system so that someone that doesn't want to think can always find fun fights
Areed this should go live asap but imho that's not just about world design. One of the main flaws people complain about in lattice system is that outnumbered factions get steamrolled as they have less options about where to retreat, a this causes them to be trumpled by attacking forces. The main reason why this happens is that attackers are allowed to do this: And it happens on hex map as well. In such case defenders are outnumbered and it's not even worth for them to try to save the base: once tanks and ESF are everywhere, in front of the spawn room and all around the capture point, then battle is over. Best one can do is sitting behind the spawn shield and try to kills some noobs, then recall a few secs before the timer has expired. On hex map the above mention situation is a minor issue as people can always redeploy and restart the war somwhere else, but with lattice system lanes can turn into a deadly trap: attackers advance, you just can't stop them and you lose more and more bases as you're pushed back. But more defensible bases could change this: bases could turn into bottlenecks where outnumbered defenders could take advantage of the structure to resist attacking waves (remember the Battle of Thermopylae, THIS IS SPARTA!). New base design should encourage attackers to leave the tanks and try to take the point with infantry, instead of camping the whole structure with cannons, and it would lead to longer-lasting fights that are not just over when the spawn room is camped. As you wrote this is a major game design issue: devs should put very high priority on this, and fix it ASAP. Luckily the're at work at the moment, new design of Snake Look Ravine makes me feel like they're on the right path.
It wouldn't be a zerg fight thing if they would add resources back in and ANTs. This would enable spec ops deployments behind enemy lines to drain an enemy base. This would cause some pressure to be relieved on the front as the spec ops team calls in reinforcements, and the team that owns the base redirects defenders to the base. PS1 had this. Lattice by itself causes problems. The other features have to be in place, as well as more continents and continent locks, in order to be worth something. If and when the devs implement the other stuff, the Lattice system will not only make more sense, it will not seem like such a zergfest. The zerging thing is only an issue as long as teams are limited to what they can do. If they can only deal with frontlines territories, then zerging is all you'll ever have. The large-scale battle thing is great and everything, but PS2 is and always has been a variety of zergfest because options are not available.
I agree but it is irelevant to the discussion. As you said, it exists in both systems and even if it's a minor annoyance with the hex and even if it would be exacerbated by the Lattice system, it wouldn't be caused by it. It will be solved trough base design and requiring peopel to be on the points on foot. (maybe go back at a maned point system, but with 24 slots instead of 6 necessary for max capture speed?) That however is incorect. It is perhaps the worst thing to do. Once the situation is apparantly lost, redeploy and come back with tanks of your own, or scavenge the surounding of the fight to pick off unaware targets. Or take more time to lay traps ahead. There are many mroe useful uses of your time than spawnroom camping, and most more lucrative cert wise.
Agreed, but the idea that the best way to defend a place is to leave it to the enemy, redeploy somewhere else then counter-attack feels somehow wrong to me. That should be the extreme solution to prevent enemy from capturing a point, not the only possible strategy. Shouldn't the counterattack come from the base itself? It's pretty sad that surrounding the spawn room with tanks is more than enough to give defenders no other option than redeploy. I mean... I've found bases on Amerish where anti-tank turrets pointed at the spawn room... and it's one of those small spawn room with 2 exit doors. 1 Infiltrator hacking the turret can force a full squad to keep the head behind the shield. As long as bases are like this attackers will always have the job very easy, and lattice will exacerbate the situation.
Don't you think that is a proof that the lattice system is bad? Ps1 was a great game due to those other mechanics, the lattice was just being carried by them. Systems should hold on their own or be ignored. For instance, the ANT runs are a great mechanic, completely agnostic to what type of territory control system is in place. They could be added to PS2 no matter what.
You can't put in air without putting in g2a counters. Proof that air is bad and is only carried by g2a lock-on game play mechanics.
Except that g2a aren't game play mechanics but sets of tactical tools. You are being of bad faith here. What you are sarcasticly refering to is more a matter of power/balanced, not gameplay. For that matter, your example is wrong. They could implement air without g2a counters if they wanted to. They nearly did anyway. ESF are already a good(best?) counter to air, g2a are mostly deterrent to good pilots while most dogfights encounter finish with a kill. A game system should work on its own, especially something as close to the core of the game. I stand by what I said. Ps1 was a great game because it had many great mechanic, but it doesn't mean that all where good, or that all would work in this current formula. The lattice system is being wrongfully considered good, but it was just dead weight on a game strong enough to carry it. Ps2 is strong enough to carry it as well, but why bother with a popular demand of a bad system rather than taking another direction that improves the game and does something ps1 couldn't do?
Look, my primary argument here is that I think the "you must continue to grab territory in order" thing to be absolutely bad. Frankly, in a real warfare situation, you would have spies, spec ops, saboteurs (take your pick) going behind enemy lines to cause chaos and/or create a foothold. PS2 is lacking this feature. PS1 had it. Although, after giving it some thought, it seems that the Lattice System wasn't the actual aspect of PS1 that allowed for deep captures.
Exactly, deep capture was a whole other mechanic. I believe hacking and ant runs were what made the whole continent interesting, despite the lattice. I'm a bit hardcore, but I'd like to have the server based enemy/allies presence removed completely to give spies and liaison officers a crucial role. Something like this would be amazing to me:http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/18y1l5/suggestionmap_arrows_and_player_driven_scouting/
Dude, these aren't real warfare situations. You watch too many movies. Never played PS1 but these "deep captures" currently don't exist in both systems. For this the base design needs to be changed drastically. I don't think that the lattice system itself is a problem. The problem is the size of the bases. Big bases with wider areas and restricted areas for vehicles would be perfect. Every cap point should be important and allow platoons to form strategies of approach. Additionally there should be some important things to hack to give some diversity in objectives. Seriously you don't have only 1 path to take. You could have 6 battlefields at the same time and which outfit doesn't enjoy it to take bases which are actually defended? This system may disable some tactics but it adds some as well.
Well, I'm not sure if turning every fight into platoons vs platoons is going to be a good or bad thing. Maybe we need the ghost caps to make the real fights interesting. I still think the best fights are 2 or 3 squads against equal numbers. I think we need to specifically define what the lattice is trying to accomplish, what that will imply, why we want that. What the will or wont do. What specifically does it destroy, or remove from the game that people enjoy, and how we can preserve those mechanics while still accomplishing what the lattice wants to do. I think there's a lot of thrashing going on as to what meta game is, what people want, and what are the low and high level properties that make it happen, why it's not happening, and what we can do to make it happen. People don't like Hex because too many choices, people don't like lattice because too few choices. Some would argue influence was a weighted lattice, currently that weighting is gone. I think there must be a middle ground between the amount of hex connections, and the amount of the current lattice connections. Maybe just having more cross-overs between lanes is required. There is obviously a way to have a middle ground between the two systems as currently there's something like 200 connections on indar lattice is like maybe 40. There has to be a middle ground, maybe we need to look at somewhere in the middle. fewer than Hex but more than the current lattice. I personally think every base needs 4 connections. 2 ways forwards, 2 ways back. the whole 1 way forwards thing is dumb. and leads to a bio-lab sized force coagulated at a 1 point base. Test server doesn't even have a lot of people, and there are already platoons vs platoons fighting for hours over a biolab satellite. Crazy idea, probably belongs somewhere else. Here's a crazy Idea, to spread things out a lot more force logistics and spec ops stuff to be much more important. Introduce Neutral bases. This may be crazy, it may not work, but I have this idea. Capturing a base, makes all enemy bases next to it neutral. We combine this, with adding a few more lattice connections, and what you have is a much wider engagement range ie: the span between 3 bases. So not only would we have more targets to attack, but since the enemy is Forced to be "Defending" from a farther safe base, there is more physical territory worth fighting over. the enemy is not spawning out of your target, so you're not focusing on containment, but once you wiped out the people in the target, you're then defending it from outside counter attacks until it flips. Which is what people should be doing anyways instead of camping in the spawn room. Madness, that would be crazy!!! What's crazy is everyone relying on being able to spawn at a spawn fortress even if the base is completely over run. Just like in BF 1942, a base which is under contention should not be where the defenders are spawning. The defenders should be the people who are in the base, not the spawn room. So, you're thinking this will consist of 2 forces, each sitting on their base as it's flipped neutral, they're already all over it, and then it immediately starts flipping back to their team to then flip the enemy who's doing the same thing. Back and forth forever, that's stupid! But what it actually means is that people have to legitimately organize, some people actually have to get into position to attack the enemy base when it goes neutral. The "defenders" (previous owners who are set up) wont be able to rely on a hard spawn, so they'll have to rely on their sunderers which can be destroyed, just like SCUs. The attackers have to destroy that, and steal the base, before the previous owners are able to flip the base back to their side, and then be on the attack again. This will remove the stale meat grinder elements as people spawn into each other over and over. Every wipe generally means you capture/lose the base Shield generators will be hackable The funny thing is, it would actually work as a way of assaulting a warp gate. If you capture all the bases adjacent to the warp gate, it flips to your faction, and the bases on the next continent adjacent to the warp gate become neutral.
You can make it as deep as you want. Or at least, there should be the least limitation possible for that. I remember the first time I had an infiltrator play the role of scout, he helped us maintain granite valley garrison just next to the TR warpgate with only one platoon while being the focus of the TR zerg. He was in the mountains, an engy came by here and there to resupply him and we were the only two speaking in platoon chat. He announced all targets, I ordered them in priority, we held. If you see a movie, try out what you see in it, it may just work And again, base design has nothing to do with lattice/hex systems. They need to be well designed on their own. I agree with what you say, but it isn't relevant here in this thread. On the 6 battlefields to chose from, don't you think it is very limiting? Especially comparable to the 20 variably important choices we have now? Also, they all have the same value. It's not a choice you can do based on reflection but based on taste. The only thing you could think about is go on the one with the least percentage of your faction. As I said in the start of this comment, we should be able to go as deep as we can. You or I may not be able to see all tactics or strategies possible, but some players can. Why should the game not allow them to use that proficiency they have? It is unfair to them and to us. Them because they have no more impact than a lesser skilled players, us because we don't have a game urging us to improve and progress after we reached the "just good enough" level of skill.
This is a very interesting and smart reflection. It's actually one of the core element of some of the most successful MMO games. We need the downtimes and lows, (like travelling, harvesting, looking for a fight) to make the highs such impressive events that get us addicted to the game. Even though the lattice doesn't prevent ghost capping, and isn't aimed at that, I still wanted to highlight that remark you made. I haven't played ps1, but I have learned enough of its history to be convinced that the Lattice was also a bandaid fix then. Let me explain what I gathered, the problem was similar to what we are facing now: "Some people didn't understand how the battle flowed, or weren't directed to objectives enough and it prevented them from experiencing the full potential of the game" The lattice was an easy way to create a new flow that was understandable by the masses: always forward. Also, as it provided only one or two ways to go, it didn't require any incentives to be followed. People could enjoy the game as they always found fights. It didn't really solve the problem, as it won't now, because it is just side stepping it. A real solution ,and what is necessary to find in ps2 10 years later, would be one that would have kept the flow as it was, but found a way to explain it/incentivise masses to create their own coherent strategic path. Currently, ps2 is at a state where there is barely any strategy. What the lattice promises is to remove it altogether so that it won't be a problem anymore. Instead, we should be focusing on making it something deeper and rewarding enough to get interested in. I have mentioned some of my suggestions to attain the same goals while not sacrificing depth. The core idea is to exploit the cert system to reward desired behaviours and the notion of influence to direct the pace and flow of the battle. They already understood that: If you need people defending a losing continent, increase continental bonus. (I'm often at +50% more xp due to that) The influence worked well as people chose targets due to it. It just needed expanding and the defence rewards I've mentioned elsewhere. The hex+influence system was a solvable problem with all possible moves apparent. Very simple for the human brain that wants to solve it. Without cheese at the end of the maze, rats don't learn how to navigate them. Give incentives and players will be motivated to learn complex systems. That won't suffice for all players, some really don't want to think. For them, a correctly constructed hot spot/instant action system should be developed. The current one is buggy at best and there are no drawbacks to invest time in improving it. I actually don't like the current hex system because it has too few choices. It is a very simplistic system as of now. It lacks the depth necessary to support a game on the long term. There are no middle ground attainable, it needs to get deeper. But the amount of connection and their weight(influence) aren't the only way to increase depth. Value of a territory is important, strategical advantages are a must (facility boosts, teleporters, resource generation, special terminals, etc) As I said earlier, we need reasons to fight. I actually like this idea, some kind of king of the hill scenario. It sorts of behaves like that when saving an amp station after it has lost its SCU. I wouldn't see it for all bases but definitely for some. It could also be one of the strategical advantages I mentioned or rely on a secondary objective/certain conditions like an scu generator or weather. Those kind of concepts would Improve the depth of both the strategical and tactical level of the game. Here is my crazy idea of an alternative to both the hex and lattice system. It is based in the hex+influence system and lets call it "Hex front lines" I'm suggesting a mixture of strategical and tactical changes: I like the front line aspect of the hex system where progression is made by a tug of war of 2-3 parallel territories. This is something that should be strengthened in the game. I feel current Esamir represents it the best It is mostly flat lands back and forth around black ridge garrison parallel to the bulwark, bl-4 and frostfall overlook, old shore checkpoint and everett supply. The territories in that part all come in pairs going in the same direction from facility to facilities. sw WG <-> Elli Amp <-> Ymir biolab <-> Nott Amp They all support each other due to influence and make it easier to keep facilities connected. Amerish , while being more of a directed progression, has interesting concepts of air space connections. The links there aren't only limited to roads and I like this. Here is the feature list: - Inactive hexes for natural barriers like mountains/water, - conditional hexes based on secondary objectives(a bridge broken/repaired) - one way relations (raven landing has air pads so can attack auraxicom substation, not the other way around) - more bases on smaller territories(2 to 4 hexes, some extraordinary bases and facilities remaining unchanged). - substations are now their own territories (like on the test server. they provide strategic advantages: jump pads and teleporters) - No more allies/enemies detected information - Player driven scouting and server driven frontline progression arrows - Facilities have very strong advantages worth fighting for and keep connected to WG - Bases have defence rewards - Bases have capture reward pools divided as follow: reward = territory_pool_unit X defenders / attackers + minimum_reward - Influence notion is back, based on more factors like size and type - Capture time reduced by 1% every 2% influence (100% influence = halved capture time) - base classification: - Facilities: facility level cap, high influence, high resources, awesome bonus- Military: slow cap, high influence, no resources- Civilians: average cap, average influence, average resources- Checkpoints: fast caps, average influence, no resources- Production: average cap, low influence, high resources- Strategic: average cap, high influence, no resources (substations and bridges)- Manned points are back, but changed: - more points on bases (like bl-4 crash site)- one person impacts much less the capture speed (1 = 3% cap speed)- up to 24 slots divided between points,- points flipped for attackers, with less than overall 6 people on them = no progression (max +54% cap speed)- minimum cap times are with full slots: fast 2min30sec - average 7mins30secs - slow 15mins, facilities 20 mins- points flipped for defenders have direct progression starting with 0 (0 players= 3% recap speed, max +75% recap speed)- capture timers are still in, but showing worst case scenarios (10 mins to cap shown, but you could have more time to muster defence) - SCU changes: - more facilities with scu (not all though, only the longer to cap)- the scu shields goes down 1 min after base is 50% capped- once scu is down, spawn room shields go down too In details: This would mean much much much more connections than the current hex system. With neutral boundaries to segregate them and some bases as simple checkpoints easily flipped. Most bases would be set in a way that they are parallel to each other rather than linear successions. In a sense, it takes one of the goal of the lattice system and makes it more interesting. We would have several frontlines rather than rush lanes. In addition to the influence notion, we would have more varied strategical advantages due to meta game incentives(resources, teleporters, facilities having tangible bonuses, increasing influences for valuable caps, etc). Here is an example on Amerish, open a map to see what I'm talking about: Vanu and NC would be fighting over Silver valley arsenal, east hills checkpoint and mekala. There are even buildings looking like a base east of splitpeak pass, and a bit west of silver valley. Enough room to make three territories instead of one. Silver Valley arsenal would be the one giving infantry resources, have access to south east substation but would be more defensible and provide more influence due to being a military base. However it could be bypassed on the west by that small set of buildings we could call "Silver Valley checkpoint" giving access to the two south substations of Onatha, but with much less influence, providing no resources and being easier to flip. We "flatten" the biolab to be a line of four hexes, we modfy the road that is currently part of silver valley arsenal by making it lead straight to the biolab and name it "East Hills crossroad". The two south substations are now neither connected to the north one or that new crossroad. The new bases "Shadespire fork" would only have access to the north substation, "East Hills crossroad" and Shadespire farms, being an alternative for the vanu to gain access to the south from crux mining rather than shadespire, or to gain more influence on the north substation. All this would make the Onatha biolab more defensible. It would be a roadblock similar to what splitpeak pass is to the south for the NC. And unless you win on two fronts at the same time, surrounding and cutting Onatha off would be really hard, leaving the vanu always connected to a now much more impactful biolab bonus. Just this configuration permits many strategical choices with numerous ways of gaining and losing influence on the biolab, having strategic advantages for its capture (teleporters) or simply bypass it completely to cut off the vanu from its bonus trough east hills. This is choice. Not just turning left or right.
I don't agree with all of this (shields going down based on percentage of time is particularly distasteful, as it means the fight is over at a set time before the game considers the fight over), but a lot of it makes sense.
No, they don't exist in PS2. In PS1, they did exist. One or more infiltrators could go deep behind enemy lines, destroy everything (to trigger the base's self-repair system), can do what they can to guard the place until the base's resource pool was used up repairing everything. Once that was done, the base would go to a neutral state. The infiltrators would then repair everything, grab an ANT (which, I believe, could be airlifted by Gals or something at the time), and head to the nearest friendly resource structure to gather resources for the base. They bring the ANT back, and start refilling the resource pool. At some point, they could take the capture point because the base was no longer tied into the enemy's security network. Also, if someone was doing that to your base, you would have plenty of warning (Empire wide) to let you know that a base was being taken. The diversity of objectives thing you talk about? It was in PS1. There were plenty of consoles and stuff to hack. It actually wasn't uncommon there for someone to take control of sensor and radar systems, disable turrets, destroy generators, hack the spawn tubes themselves rather than destroy the SCU. PS1 was superior to PS2 in many ways. After considering Frosth's arguments, I've come to realize the Lattice isn't necessary for these things. But these things (resources, ANTs, deep captures, multiple objectives, multiple capture techniques), do need to be restored to the game.
Despite all the arguments against it, I really think the lattice system is almost identical to the hex system, save that it has far fewer connections, which I think is currently the biggest problem, lattice system needs more connections. I also think, that since massed infantry is the strongest thing in the game, we need to put logistical constraints on outposts to stop them from turning into a meat grinder every time 2 platoons meet at a base. There needs to be more incentive to pull back to warp gate or a main facility, regroup and push out in an organized force. Either every base needs an SCU that can be destroyed, or there needs to be a growing spawn timer every time you die, but it's always instant at warp gate. I think if cut off territories projected no adjacency, that would be a great start, and might be all we need to really push that meta game in the right direction.
