Ikanam Biolab

I do. Biolabs are way too complicated to capture because of multiple choke points. If defenders are prepared there is no way attackers manage to get it. Biolabs battles often turn into huge stales of farming through shields or the two balconies.
Take Allatum: it's now the new The Crown (remember the old motto "take The Crown lose Indar"?).
Personally I'm glad they're making changes. The they are not changing every biolab, just some like they did with Amp Stations.

The battle won't spread out to the satelite bases, since the defenders have no real chance of getting out of the biolab, once one or to tanks and a dozen mines control the single vehicle spawn the defenders have to use to get to the satelite bases, when they can't use the jumppads anymore.

Its good but a few things i think might be a problem....one is that the teleporters in the bio lab might still be camped, but this time right when a attacker does it they will get killed right as they teleport up there, but at the same time to camp all places would need more people. and as you said, high risk but good reward if you make it. it also wont be one of the few places to go in too so thats good. the jump pads at the air dock is good too. but for the bottom where there is a place for whoever owns the bio lab to get tanks n things, its only one spot to do that and thats perfect for an attacker to know where tanks and things might come out so if you was defending youl prob get a tank and just run right into the attackers tanks or mines because there is only one way out for your tanks n stuff. otherwise i think its very good and will make bio lab fights better!

From playing this game from beta. This is my first real experience of being completely ignored by an SOE employe. All of the feedback (is that not why this server is here) was negative. No players wanted this change it does not scale at all. You are really ignoring your player base here.
At no point was a time scale given as to when this would go live. No sense of hurry and comment was given.
To say that you are clueless and have no idea how this will scale is being polite.
The changes are redundant they are pointless and have a negative effect on battle flow and player experience.

The current changes on the live server for ikanam fail to improve game flow and this is from someone who leads platoons nearly everyday. I've led a platoon a couple times in attacking the facility from Ikanam Triage Station. Here is why I think the current Ikanam iteration on live sucks:
1) With there being no immediate access to the facility with the removal of teleporters and jump pads, the platoon has to zerg 200m to the nearest jump pad, and further to the gravity lifts near the air pad after taking the facility. The progression of battle for the attackers is now disjoint.

2) As a defender, you are more isolated from the outposts. The removal eliminates tactics like rallying up inside the teleporter room and max crashing the outpost to resecure it. The defenders are isolated from the outposts further in that there is no jump pads to lead an assault. This is devastating if the enemy spammed a lot of armor in two ways:

(a) Infantry are cut off and will get farmed w/o long range av

(b) With the recent changes to the ground floor vehicle spawn area, it is even more cramped than before making it harder to even attempt a counter assault with vehicles.

The defenders in order to break out must either stay in the biolab, get farmed trying break through with infantry, or fall back a couple bases to rally armor which could potentially mean losing the biolab since the enemy can cap it between the enemy getting set up and locking it down and the short cap time with the absence of bodies within the facility.

3) The new teleporters make no sense to use for the defenders or attackers.

As an attacker, I have to footzerg the 100-150m to the teleporter, wait for everyone to rally up, then go. They are in a no deploy zone so max crashing through them is harder since must walk or drive over with the maxes from elsewhere. The next issue is that the enemy can see it coming easily on the minimap so unless the defenders are not organized, it will be a massacre for the attackers.

As a defender, they make no sense to use since they go to the vehicle bay area; you are unprotected and open to being farmed which is going to be the case the majority of the time since the attackers always camp the vehicle spawn with tanks to begin with! It is further redundant in that the defenders have the teleporter that takes them into the vehicle spawn inside which is protected by a shield.

4) Essentially the defenders need to guard two entry points now: both air pads. This is bad for attackers since they are further restricted and pushing into the biolab from the air pads usually becomes a clusterf***ing mess since they are easily campable and farmable. With the old iterations, defenders had to worry about a minimum of three entry points and maximum five.

After leading two assaults on ikanam, no one in my platoons could see the logic or liked the changes done since they disrupt the game flow dramatically.

If you want to improve the biolab experience I have two suggestions for the old biolabs on live:
1) Make the teleporter room inside the biolab that is next to the cap point in the building by the spawn room less campable. Assaults out of this room usually fail due to how easily it is to defend against attackers because of how it is awkwardly situated and its close proximity to the spawn room.

2) Make the vehicle bay shielded area a little bigger, it'll make life easier for platoon and squad leads defending the facility.

Hard to capture does not mean the base is complicated. The new amp stations are complicated. The new biolab will be more complicated. Old biolab is simply hard to capture. <,<

if you wanted to fix that you would be putting capture points outside the biolab.

It would be nice to have more backdoors in large bases to make infiltrators and light assault troopers more effective at drawing attention away from the defensive line.

Biolabs are too small interior layouts. They're great for 48v48, considering the scale biolabs are roughly equal in dimension to your traditional BF map. There's plenty of ideas previously mentioned. I like the idea of a triple dome layout, that could entertain some interesting gameplay, as there would be 3 exterior airpad entries as well teleport rooms.

I'd try a layout that maintained the traditional dome layout, with spawn system.
Under / around each leg I would place a series of multi structured buildings with an outer wall layout. As well a garage bunker for AMS. Each leg would house a node(s) of importance, 2 would hold teleporters, 2 would house lifts (to the airpads above), there would also be a hackable "teleport shield" panel room that could disable the teleport shields for whoever controlled it. Add a proximity xp tick to those terminals for promoting defensive play for controlling faction.

Now extend the outer ring on the bio domes, this could add some more interesting gameplay as you create more assault mechanics. Widen that use able outer ring area, make it wide enough that perhaps a tank could theoretically park sideways on it. Then add some "battlement" style railings, liter the catwalk with mixed varieties of cargo style cover. Now the Biodomes all have recently been updated with 4 airpads, 2 airpads have terminals, and 2 do not. Lets call the airpads with terminals the Departure pad, an the airpads with no terminals, are considered the Arrivals pad. Make the lift pads as well the lattice linked satellite base jump pads all tie in to the Arrival airpads. Keep the jump pads at the "departure" air pads, but move the actual jump point to a single elevated position situated where the original decent/ascent lifts were. The departure Jump pads go to the Satellite lattice facilities, these departure jump pads should land at or relatively near to the capture location of those facilities, very similar to how the jump pad from J908 goes to capture point Charlie.

So what happens here is any "arrivals" (jump pad or lift pad) to the dome, have to traverse the catwalk access to the entry ways, in order to reach the entry chokepoint. The Chokepoint entries now act as quick exit/rapid deployment (assault/defense) to reach the external satellite bases. You basically create a dynamic situation here.

For instance an attacking forces has recently overwhelmed the defenders at a satellite lattice linked facility to the biodome, instead of endlessly trying to spawn out of that base to combined arms meatgrinder, they opt to respawn at the biodome. The traditional jump pad just outside the chokepoint on the airpad, will land them practically right beside/ontop of the capture point of the satellite facility. Unawares, the attacking force has sufficient numbers as well foresight to this possible card being played. An advanced group is already setup for a crossfire containment of the chokepoint to ambush the defensive response. Or, perhaps the advanced elements have been already engaged an a pitched fight for control of the air docks/outer ring is currently underway, while the rapid response defense group punches through the skirmished line to the jump pad for the MAX crash resecure of Satellite linked facility.

Remove the Teleporter and make a Stair or Ramp from bottom to the top *But dont use the damn Bumpers (grav lifts) ... i find a normal stair is 100% better than this damn Grav lifts ( And i want my Doors back from PS1 xD )

stairs? really? oh boy. in before flame.

So ran around this thing. And two thoughts.
one move the gen to the now empty teleport room. right now other then for flanking there is no reason to go there. This will change how you take it and how you have to attack the center. I would put some plants and boxes in B building where the gen use to be then for advance cover area.
second is flow. the two open areas at bottom as well as there teleport points at top are just kill zones. I can see in a way makes more sense and more like loading areas you expect to see in a biolab area. But there no place to defend from. few short walls but you can't push out.
My opinion is this. if you had the satellite bases more as power points. As in you need to take Base A that removes ground shields. Base b removes domes shields (entrances on top near landing pads) And base c lets you hack the bio lab. this will make the outer bases the main battle.
This basically sets it up so you have to surround the biolab first. making biolabs large remake of the battle of Alesia defending and attack at same time. Expanding the conflict play area to match populations of players. And the use of combined arms play. As is normally everyone ends up having to ditch there vehicles and run into a bio lab. sucking everyone into one big cluster fight. This lets some of the battle be outside. And possibly lowering the amount of bodies inside the biolab. 48/48 mix battle or lower is manageable and entertaining.

Other then that I like the concept. The new base looks more what I would expect from a scifi story line look. Most bases only have one vehicle term and yes they are normally mined like hell. Why should a biolab be any different? Oh and the plants on ground floor in planets. the loading dock side one at a angle looks out of place there. And can you put for looks a computer? As it does look like a loading dock. And on the planter side some more crates maybe and a door way rather then bay entrance. I think you can use the wall part on it maybe a second floor with windows. And just because can you put walls and posts around vehicle pad and center it in room with the terminal behind it when you come out of the teleporter? There is more then enough room for it. The current layout looks weak a little loped sided and out of place.

Don't use teleporters at all.

Teleporters DEMAND firing squads camping the hell out of it. Discontinuous flow like teleporters and the lack of knowledge of what is on the other end of the teleporter means you have to post guards and these guards are most effective pointing at this one tube where people come through fully disoriented, while all you have to do is aim at the middle of the tube at head height to ensure easy kills.


This is the same "neutral teleporter" design you used in Alpha/Beta. Such teleporters are camped with tanks at the bottom, firing squads at the rooms.


Defenders cannot allow a teleport room


Seriously. It's been two years and you people still don't realise teleporters must be destructible and capturable IF they are used at all as solid points?



Btw, some useful background info on teleporters in PS1:
Router teleport pads in PS1 were manually placed, but also destroyed with three shotgun rounds or by destroying the Router vehicle. This meant that the one placing them would place them in a region that was somewhat protected with doors and some distance behind enemy lines, but most of all, somewhere where the enemy didn't camp them yet. It was used as a temporary surprise attack with crippling potential. It also meant that as soon as it was discovered, there would be a massive counter-attack by the defenders to stop the influx and destroy the pads. This HAS to be done or you're doomed. You can't afford to camp them because of the vulnerability it provides, so you would have to control it with risk or destroy it. (Could also be used for counter attacks, but only because the people on the other side would not be waiting for them).

People in PS1 have used Router pads to setup traps for the enemy players that would try to use them, either with people just waiting for anyone to come through, but more often placing the Router such that anyone coming through would immediately get into a deployable automated turret / motion sensor deathzone and with a TRAP in place to both launch the player out of the Router teleport zone and preventing anyone from reentering the zone. Some players placed such pads in the actual spawntube of a spawn room, blowing up the other two tubes, so that anyone coming through would be coming through in their spawn gear.


The only fixed teleporters in PS1 were a huge amount of cave based cliff-cliff, rock-rock, building room-building room, indoor-outdoor teleporters. If they were one way directions, especially from inside spawn areas, players would camp these pads and all other exits, knowing that whoever would come through would have no idea where you would be at that time, so an easy kill.

Some people used them as a means of escape, then back up a meter upon exiting, so that anyone following them through would be in shotgun range and in front of them with their backs turned towards them.




Teleporters are therefore a very precarious tool to use and typically provide tons of ways for abuse. The only proper designed teleporter in PS1 was the Router, mostly because it was an easy to destroy unit and pad that provided a temporary AND (in)directly counterable tactical link, rather than a permanent contingency.

PS2 teleport design, whether faction only or neutral is a permanent contingency that requires camping per definition.


JUST DO NOT USE IT. If you're going to use it, make it so that you need to capture a console next to it that only controls that end of the teleporter, so that people can activate and deactivate a teleport link (and as long as it is active, make it go both ways for all factions). This creates a tactical shortcut that isn't in a permanent state of camping, but a tactical objective.




As for the jump pads... Again, that's a huge discontinuous flow. And it's again, one way.

And jump pads will be camped too. With the sole difference that you might clear a jumppad's end. On the other hand, defenders can't really easilly clear the jump pad base. And if they try going there, the attacker meanwhile flies overhead. There's no push-pushback flow. THAT is your problem with the flow in general. Pushing and counter pushes should be continuous fights. There should not be bypasses for one side, let alone two sides. All the terrain in between should be fought over by both sides, as this is the only way you can guarantee that one side doesn't require a "guard detachment" to stay behind, camping a zone once they've been cleared from an area.

Why do you lot think in camping-requiring attack/defense procedures?

Oh btw, one more thing: with PS1, using the teleporter, you could go through cloaked, sitting, or in any position you want, holding whatever weapon you want, charging any weapon you wanted. With the lag and positional requirements and the specials disabled requirements of the PS2 teleporter, you just make camping a LOT easier.

Ok Freeze74, why you asking for feedback when you aniway bring it out like it is on the tast server, now its on live server whitout any change, so i am a little bit confused, so many idears here, and just no answer from you.

I hate it. I would rather log off than fight at Ikanam, and i have several times.

Its impossible for attackers to do anything other than get farmed, unless you surprise attack it with massive numbers.
The teleporters are camped on the other side, sometimes both. The landing pads are camped by defenders.
Bridge leading the the bottom leteporters are deathtraps, but you cant jump off because then you have to run back and start over.

The redesign creates stalemates and meatgrinders for the defenders.
By the way, whats the point of asking for test feedback if it just gets pushed to live without even acknowledging the feedback.
Guess it doesent really matter what people think.

I basically agree with everything here and would only add that SOE needs to look at how many times Ikanam has been captured when defenders number 48-96 or 96+ vs the average number of captures for other Bio Labs with the same number of defenders since I can't remember a single instance on Emerald of that happening.

As it is right now Ikanam is the hardest base in the game to take if it's defended and the easiest one in the game to defend.

We kind of knew it would go live, as they want more data, but the problem with this is that the base gets ported to live and stays there for what seems like an infinite amount of time despite being broken as **** or having obviously glaring errors.

The changes are dead-on-arrival. It should be obvious to anyone with just a little bit of experience with PS2 (and PS1 for that matter) is that this game is all about having actual units in combat. If the attackers cannot respawn anywhere close and thereby fast enough to rejoin the fight, they will lose. Same with defenders.

In such Bio Labs the defenders always respawn at a more or less safe spot while the attackers don't. Therefore the defenders have the advantage. In fact the advantage is so big that Bio Lab fights tend to be endless stalemates without a winning condition (unlike PS1).

If these new changes go live, the teleporters will just be death-traps that get camped forever. No chance to win such a fight for the attackers whatsoever - well, at least with somewhat even population.

Now here is a reminder how things worked in PS1:
Every base had a silo with energy. That energy was slowly used up by people respawning and pulling equipment until it finally ran out. At this exact point the base would turn neutral, so nobody could use the spawntubes anymore. What the defenders had to do in order to keep the base was to refill the energy silo. You could do that by driving a small vehicle (called ANT) to the warpgates and load it up with energy and drive it back to the base. You could even transport such a vehicle in a Galaxy. In any case, this energy-timer would prevent a stalemate, so that no fight would last longer than 45 minutes unless the defenders actually managed to sneak an ANT through. The fun part about it was that last second rescues were possible, similar to hitting a hail-mary pass in sports.

I do very much agree with you on the limited energy thing, that would make the gameplay even more interesting for big bases. Maybe the lattice network could provide power to bases, and there could be some way to knock it out to cut off power, but there could also be a way for defenders to rebuild the power line. I'm just chucking out ideas here, and I hope they're good ones.

Whatever you did - it just isn't working - the bio-lab has become a go nowhere proposition, its just beyond bad really. The guys in the bio-lab need to have an easy way to get out to the satellites... removing that ability just causes all the defenders to stay inside and never push out. It becomes a total pointless grind.

I hope you aren't planning on these changes elsewhere, you'd just make all bio-labs totally FUBAR.