The Vanu eastern front (and NC's western front) in yesterday evening's alert on Amerish has shown that there can be a clear front line in the hex system and people will understand it if sufficiently motivated and properly led. I can't speak for the NC side of the things, of course, but we had clear orders to secure the NC Arsenal - Auraxicom Network Hub - Bastion - Ascent line with about four platoons (a third of our total forces) and that was exactly what we did. NC broke through a few times, but each of them was contained and pushed back orderly, making sure no back capping happened. We also had orders to let NC have Sungrey and Crux Headquarters, and there were only small diversionary attacks on both. "Hold the line" can and does work currently. Even on Indar.
And the moment an alert is over and the cont population drops to normal levels then its back to ghost capping. The hex system does work better when there is an alert, but only because the continent is packed and there are no empty hexes for ghost cappers to grab. No doubt the hex system was set up with nearly full conts in mind and hence it almost works under those circumstances, but under normal conditions it fails. To many hexes are left empty, even on a well populated server like miller.
Wouldn't that be a good argument for closing off as many continents as needed to make sure the remainder is nearly full then? If you have five continents available and 1100 people from each faction online, just two of them (pick randomly or let the players decide which ones for this week) need to be fought over at the same time.
Unfortunately, that would remove the various forms of Meta PS1 had with trying to open a cont by threatening to take its benefit. Granted, it shouldn't be as easy as it was in PS1, but it should still be possible. However, once a 4th cont gets in place, that would be possible. Say Amerish, Indar, Esamir are open 1 week to everyone, Hossin is currently closed. Next week Hossin is opened and Indar is closed. But whoever held indar last retains its benefit for the week while the remaining 3 get fought over. But, down the road, once a 6th cont gets introduced, even that system fails to work because it would then be possible for 1 empire to get to many benefits and the effect snowballs w/o any way to really counter. And then we end up back at a nearly pure PS1 lattice. Albeit, hopefully not as easy to ghost. Because even in PS1, it was easy to ghost, but the links limited the amount of ghostable targets. However it was also abused with alts just ghosting a base and logging off to pull people off a main fight somewhere else or, again, people flying from link to link to pull people off another larger fight with no intent of fighting. It got bad enough at times that people just gave up on re-secures because they wanted to stay and enjoy the fights they were at. Which brings us back to requiring forces at every link. Hence, some sort of Cont locking needs to be possible, albeit in the short term. (24-72 hours IMO).
They are planning to have continental conquest in the game. warpgates will become capturable and you can use it to gain access to another continent and invade it. You can be pushed off the continent and then locked out for a while prompting you to either defend against incoming invaders or go to another continent.
Not on Indar. Amerish and Esamir have pretty great frontlines during alerts while Indar has clusters of zergs in general. Anyway, this remains true: There is a big population problem that has to be fixed. Some continents are ghost towns during alerts, especially true when the main continent is at full capacity. The Hex system does works on Esamir and Amerish during alerts, yet very mediocre on Indar. Yet Indar is still the most played continent. This is something I don't really get, if players hate ghost capping so much, why don't they go on Esamir ?
While I can't speak from experience (I've yet to see an alert happen on Indar, strangely enough), I don't see why not. There are such front lines available there too. Examples (all between The Crown and the map edge same as our front was between The Ascent and the map edge): Quartz Ridge - West Highlands - TI Alloys - The Crown Scarred Mesa or Leopardwood Nursery - Regent Rock - XenoTech Labs or Broken Arch - Crossroads - The Crown NS Material Storage - Crimson Bluff - The Palisade - The Crown Indar Excavation - Indar Comm Array - Seabed Listening or West Highlands - TI Alloys - The Crown There's just three or four territories until you hit the map edge, and most of them are either pretty defensible (at least from one direction) or can be reinforced quickly by a sufficiently mobile force. We had three territories as well: NC Arsenal - Auraxicom Network Hub - The Bastion - The Ascent Finally, there's the "resistance pocket" design if you're really pushed back and need to buy time for the guys at the warpgate to recover. Example: Indar Bay - Hvar - Quartz Ridge Amerish has more such lines, but none below 3 territories from The Ascent to the map edge, and it's simply because it has less territories in general and the length of those lines is statistically proportional to the square root of the amount of territories.
Oh, sure, there are frontlines but on Indar, you can be sure there are also Bases and parts of the map never ever contested or fought for,
That's fine. Not every base needs to be defended, not every base needs to be attacked. There might be a time when they'll become crucial for the game play but until then, it's fine if they are ignored. I mean ... is Camp Connery any special base? Not really, it's just another air tower with some buildings around it in the northern Indar. We have quite a few such there, as well as similar set-ups on Esamir. Yet ask my fellow Miller brethren about it, and they'll have a story to tell about this unremarkable and 99% of the time unimportant base. Just having those bases doesn't hurt and will, eventually, mean that there will be stories to tell about them as well. Quantity has a quality of its own.
PS1 lattice was good because it was a bit more complex than simply a line binding bases, now i gotta agree on the fact that the hexe system can be boring and tedious however if the new lattice system doesn't propose a security measure to bypass strategically an eternal frontline (like the PS1 NTU Silos were designed for ) i fear it will be as boring and tedious but in a different aspect.
I mean, there are some bases where you are pretty sure that NO ONE will bother fighting for, and no one will try to defend, for example, every base around Saurva. Or even bases stuck behind warpgates like ARC which are 99% of the time pointless. There is fat on Indar that should be trimmed.
The psychology of lanes makes inter-empire alliances a lot easier. Today, TR and NC had a hell of a time coordinating an attack to break our Indar bonus, which ultimately failed. They were both adjacent to our final hexes, and they couldn't get all their zerglings to not attack somewhere the other empire was attacking. Put two empires' zergs in lanes, and they just follow their given lanes to the target empire's warpgate.
I disagree with this, there are different behaviours on different servers or simply in different outfits/platoons. As an example, I don't like Indar much in general. But the only places I enjoyed fighting over have been removed in the revamp. The south plateau with lost end outlook up to scarred mesa skydock were great to fight over. Same for Mesa comm. station. Also, I love jagged lance mine and hidden ridge mining on amerish. I think it is good to have territory not often fought over unless crucial moments. it make them all that much interesting.
Agree with this completely. I really hope the lattice never goes live. Hopefully SOE will reconsider?
Not my experience. You can quite easily have 3-4 massive zergs at once. KOTV alone can field 4 platoons. I can imagine a situation in lattice where there will just be a stalemate - with each base on each line being guarded/defended by 2-3 full platoons.
really? so you find 200+ players in every territory on Indar? No that would be silly. Are you saying every vulnerable territory on Indar? that would be about 30 something territories, putting the number of players on the continent at about 6000. So the zerg can't be everywhere at once, even in your experience unless you're lying, exaggerating or hallucinating, which if you are I'd seek medical attention. But kidding aside, yes; a faction can field about 3 1/2 massive zergs at once (~200 players each, max pop ~666). With the average of 8 lanes open, if all you have is 3 zergs staying in their lanes, with the 1/2 one wandering or at warpgate, that leaves 5 open lanes that are empty. If you had everyone split between all of the lanes evenly, you'd have 1-2 platoons a lane, not 2-3 (666/8 = ~74). I think most consider a zerg at least 3 or 4 platoons, were it is just pure numbers pouring over you. It will certainly slow the game down, and may cause stalemates but i think that is a good thing. I've heard stories of PS1 where battles lasted hours as an enemy lay siege to a single base, with the defenders holding out or the attackers finally breaching in at the ends. That is reason I started playing PS2; to have large scale fights were the outcome meant something more than 5 seconds of gloating before everything reset. Only in Planetside can I gloat over taking something for as long as I hold it. Just look at the VS on Mattherson for holding Indar for a month, no matter how cheap they won it. The game needs much more of this. It's a unique selling point and it needs to sell it more. You just can't get that consistently with the hex system. If the developers thought they could, they would have done something to fix it. Instead they're going to use something they know works and works well.
Those fights lasted long not due to anything the defenders but because of the game design. This isn't an accomplishment, just a hand out. Those kind of defences happen to in the hex system too, but they are more a proof of merit on the defender's side. We do need persistence, but it has to be player driven. The devs chose to implement the lattice not because it was good but because they were spammed non stop by part of the community.
Yes defense happens in the hex, but rarely mean anything outside that base. Once it is done the battle has little after affects beyond gaining adjacency. When there are so many options to gain that adjacency it causes the problems we see now in the game. Holding a territory means nothing because the enemy has so many other options on how to push forward. What is the point of having a choice if most of them are the same or similar? Hex highly favors the attackers and defenders can either hold a couple bases or none. Defending is almost always counter-productive. Keep 1, loose 3 or more. Why defend when you can just attack, trading 1 for 1? Lattice will actually make defending viable. Holding a base means keeping the enemy out of a section of others. After you loose a base it is a lot easier to tell where you should fall back to so you can form a counter attack or set up defenses.
Despite being superior to the Lattice, Hex isn't perfect as is, it needs tweaks. Notably by varying the value of territories to all give them an essential role at some point. As you say, right now most territories just add adjacency, which is not enough. Influence should make a come back with a much more crucial role. It would be a great way of favouring defenders over attackers. However there is distinct purpose in defending a territory over another one. If you don't see it, it is through no flaw of the system. Lattice does not make defence viable, there is no notion of viable or optimal strategies when there are none others. Having the choice of failing when falling back means your counter attacks are all that much more rewarding.
Lattice does make defence viable. The rest of your empire will reinforce your position if it has strategic importance. Under the hex system, who cares, one hex is the same as another and everyone is fighting their own private battle for it.
