Lattice, reducing the game to 3 types of fights?

I was leading a VS platoon. Mix of TVA out from VS Miller alliance that had jumped on to play together and pickups.
We played extensively across the eastern side of the map.



I'll briefly summarise my game experience:
---- jump down if you dont want to read this ---------------------------------

Highby reset the map.
Pull out of crown - resecure the TR that grabbed East Canyons, push to Palisade.
Assist Howling Mine, push NS storage.
Take Crimson Bluff.
Jump to Dahaka to smash the NC. Pull out when realising they're at about 22% pop.

Reinforce Howling Pass. Drop squad at NS Secure .. take it uncontested while a huge platoons+ force rages at Howling.

Start to wonder where the TR are. We never ran into the numbers or organisation of TR when attacking.
It's like they forgot to do it.
Push Rashnu.
Approx 80% through capping main base divert forces to southern satellite .. TR show up. Bit too late.
Capture Rashnu, stomp south.
Fall back to resecure Rust Mesa ..
Push Zurvan satellite ..

Finally jump diagonally across lanes to Valley storage : sunderers+inf from Zurvan, Armour rolling from Rashnu South.
End of PT.


Really good fights around Rashnu. The contests for points was fun.
Satellite progression makes a huge difference to base flow.

--- end of experience --------------------------------

We had a population advantage.
But it felt like we never encountered the real TR.
I could be pithy and say we never got the coordinated strikes and numbers we are used to TRAM throwing at us.

We had 8 minutes before the enemy could threaten Rashnu.
That meant we could take our entire platoon and hit 4 minute bases : always leaving us time to respond.


Issues:
Without reducing the battle to two empires on all lanes : population matters.
We need those continental locks and more continents.

The balance will come about as each empire realises that they must both attack the dominant population or they will be taken peacemeal.

Otherwise .. zerg fights will be zergy.
But there exists a significant role for tactical squads and platoon strategy within that conflict.


My prediction is :
If an empire has a lock, both enemy factions should warpgate them. But won't.
They can't fight 2:1 and the outcome will be decided by last stand strategy/avoidance.

If the continent is neutral : all factions will pick on the dominant seeming empire to protect their own territory.

Capping territories that offer the least resistance isn't "super tactical",
it's the OBVIOUS thing to do.

The burden of defining if a cap is Ghost or not is on the defender
When you chose to cap, you don't know if it's going to be a ghost or not.
You only assume that no one is paying attention.


And if what this person says holds true:

Then it's all a matter of will. The will to defend.
Outfits like BRTD often caught us in the middle of a cap, just like we managed last minute resecures on territories being captured by a small, unnoticed force.

It doesn't mean you cant improve the ability for defenders to do their job, or force cappers to take more risks/men when doing so. By enabling global redeployment, for example...

True, very true.

Ahhh yes, the NTU and all those ANT runs. To be honest, I would like a feature similar to that here in this game. Would make things a bit more dynamic. I did say that the base design of ps1 wasn't perfect, and yes (towers more so than actual bases imo) were absolutely horrible trying to take in terms of being just an all out farm fest of plasma grenades and that ancient tech weapon (cant recall the name, but the one that would create a pain field). Those tower fights were really bad.

I personally dont like vehicles having the role of creating an anti-infantry zone, I personally like them more as anti-vehicle (read, vehicles kill vehicles, infantry kill infantry). I don't like the current state of vehicles in the game at the moment, and hope that role does change, but oh well.

I don't know about the destructible buildings idea, perhaps this would help solve the camp-fest problem of the original ps1 bases. Or have the generator room be easier to take than it was in ps1 and have doors without choke points right inside of the door. I dunno, just spitballing I guess, but I just feel that this game can be improved greatly, especially in the flow of battle, by bringing back some of the better elements from ps1.

A quick count by one of my squad mates suggests that the TR actually has a substantially lower amount of resources in it's core territory due ot how things were shifted around. It'll need a balance pass.

So, my experience from tonight was that I had much more fun on Indar than I usually do, that may partly have been the joy of fighting with a different group of players for a time but no, I don't think that was it.

My feeling is that by reducing the variance in routes the enemy could take it was easier to surmise "If they're at base c in force then we can reasonably guess that they'll be going to base d in force next. Therefore, ignore base C, drop this galaxy squad at base D and setup a defensive whilst calling in more support." We had something like this tonight, we were pushing at TR SSW of Mao and they upped sticks and vanished, later remerging on the far right in force, there was no way a drop at NS Material Storage would succeed so we dropped in on Howling pass before they had a chance to start pouring in there and were able to delay that force then turn them back once reinforced. With the current hex system, you can't dig in like that because they could just as easily pour themselves West and go right around a defensive (and often do).

The hex system won't fix spawn camping. In fact spawn camping (both the people inside and outside the spawns) is I think a symptom of a larger problem (the perception that certs is the only thing that matters) and because people would rather sit in a spawn building trying to get safe, easy kills, they fail to fall back to a position where they can mount a defence or prepare a counter push with sunderers and tanks. Alternatively you'll have some people fall back to setup a defence but because a few other people decided to just stay in that spawn building the defenders have been denied a few extra bodies that could've made the difference.
-So the first thing I think ought to be experimented with is to have spawn generators in all facilities and if one of those is destroyed the spawn shields lose the ability to block enemy fire - The people inside are then no longer able to setup a campfire and some marshmallows and will have to actually participate in fights with some personal risk. It also increases the chance that people falling back will pull their own tanks which would in turn counter the tanks that currently on live just sit outside a spawn building trying to farm kills.

The endless thirst for cert points combined with the perception that there's no XP in defending means that people would rather attack than defend and will bug out of a defence that might actually stand just because they think they'll be able to cheese capture experience somewhere else. We need to encourage the zergs and outfits to fight and as long as defence XP is perceived as non existent they will unduly favour attacking.
-I think we need to either increase the XP awarded for defence or fix the perception that there's no XP in defence (I suspect both need to be done) - I think we could probably fix this by stealing the capture mechanic from Planetside 1* and applying it to 'facility defended' events as well as 'facility captured' events. It is critical however that players should still be able to receive the appropriate XP even though they've moved on from a base (still taking into account that fighting has to have happened whilst they're at the base in order to get any XP), also means you won't lose out simply because you spawned at a sunderer in a neutral area at exactly the wrong moment.

*In Planetside 1 when a facility is being captured it would keep a record of how much fighting was taking place in increments of time both before and during the base hack, it would also note if you were in the facility influence area during each of those increments of time. It would then give each player an amount of XP dependent on if they were involved in the battle or not, people turning up at a base at the last minute in Planetside 1 would not get any XP, because they didn't contribute to the fight and don't deserve the award. Co-incidentally, the XP award would still take place even if you left the territory, so you could still choose to move on if you REALLY wanted to without fear of losing XP for doing so (except for risking a resecure).

As an addendum, it may be my imagination but I'm starting to get the sense that people think there's very little for small outfits to do. Except, in my mind the small outfits excel for doing things that take some or a lot of co-ordination that can make the difference. It can be anything from going around doing resecures at out of the way parts of the lattice/hex system or being the people who make sure that SCU/shield generator comes down, to providing three fully crewed tanks moving as a group to give support to all the troops pouring out of the sunderers who are unable to get into the buildings due to the number/composition of defenders.

I do think the game should provide MORE things for smaller outfits to do though, more the better (As long as they aren't game breaking obviously).

External control point(s) + Influence.

It's just that simple.

One other thought, perhaps bring back the influence system in the sense that if a base is cut off from the warpgate then half the capture time/double the capture tick at the cut off bases. So there is some inherent value in going around a heavily defended base, this could apply to either hex or lattice systems.

There are already tons of fights, big and small, that people participate in with no chance of winning, that's different from being forced to play at 2 or 3 bases and each is a platoons detected or multiple squads zergfest while the rest of the bases on the map show 0% population and are untouchable because of the lattice paths. I would like to hear why you think lattice fights will benefit from your outfit's organization more than the current hex system. Also, I would like to hear why you think people will go to or fight in neutral zones. Other than landing your ESF to repair because it's an empty area.

I'm curious if you participated in the saturday test, not trying to be snarky or make it sound like you didn't, but I would like to hear your thoughts on the organization and game flow.

Yeah, The TR you fought was two Squads.
You more or less Steamrolled us through the lanes with us being unable to do anything purely due to the fact that we didn't have the numbers.

Higby Reset the Map
Sunderer up to Howling Pass.
Almost take it then a ****ton of VS pull up.
Fall back to NS Storage.
Skip over a lane in an attempt to push forward.
Try to defend Crimson Bluff, Get TK'd multiple time by BWC (I have no reason why they were teamkilling people it was just annoying as **** and just added to the frustration.)
Vanu Gals drops Platoons on us.
Fall back to the AMP Station Outlier
Get Steamrolled.
I promptly rage quit because there was nothing we could do against it.
_____________

I'm really worried about this because if this is going to be any indication of the future of the game I might as well stop playing. I like the game but they seem to be just forcing Zerg vs Zerg and the small outfit that I'm in won't survive that.

I am against the new base connectivity changes going through to the live servers. Posters above me have already put it into words better than I can, so I'll simply +1 to them.

I think there are two assumptons here tha make a purely mathamatical analysis detach from how people actually play.

1) people do tend to follow the path of least resistance. Zergs allready avoid each other and this is not making it so there is absolutely no space for that.
2) You just can't enforce population balance. We saw that last night. It was funzie onsides on 2/3 fronts, 1/3 was zerg or be zerged back and forth over the same ground for 2 1/2 hours.

There exists a problem. I think less people than not are missing it now. But its there.

I'm undecided on this, I really am. At the end of the day I look at too highly flawed systems, one sandbox, one far more linear.

With this system, as it is. the flaws you get are already pretty well documented at this point and hope the Dev's actually take note. It makes large battles at 'the front'. Happen somewhat more frequently. this is good. However, the other game mechanics as they are make who wins a given lane a mere mathematical function of their relative population size. Just like we in the Nc were complaining on yell of the futility of our situation, BRTD chaps were complaining about a lack of things to shoot.

Lets also NOT dance around this, one of the major touted gains in this system is stopping ghost capping. It does not. It will significantly reduce them, but if a lane is not populated, you can ghost cap until you run into resistance. Nothing inherently makes defenders turn up and fight, certainly not above and beyond the current system.

Now the current system, also highly flawed. Yes you already get zergs trundling around, the differences being they fairly rarely meet. We also have fairly large problems with ghost capping and backhacking a lot of the time.

However, as I hope I've also pointed out and I'd hope other outfits would reconise there is also space to do some fairly offbeat and highly engaging stuff in the old system. Mostly revolving around just going some to the flank of a zerg and poking it with a stick. In short what the big loss in the new system is and which makes it a simple 'zerg or be zerged' system. Is theres no point at which a large force really feels vulnerable and which a smaller force has an ability to worry it in virtue of this vulnerability.

But, and I'm over the moon forumsides actually pulling itself together here to have a rational constructive conversation. Most people on last night seem to have recognised this.

So, we are going to have the lattice system. Fine. Here's what I suggest.

Its not about how defensible/how many links etc etc any one part fo the system is.

It needs to stay in test, and indeed be tested with another system, and the consensus is 'something like ANT logistics' that gives a far larger force a vunerability in a given lane (and not just any one base in the lane) that can be attacked.

I think everyone can agree with that, no?

First two itens: Yes, there is a problem, but this is a problem that can be fixed.



The Lattice is not ment to funnel players all the way and always. Ghost capping still happens, yes, and there is no way to actually avoid that with a game mechanic. However, the longer capture times made it possible to spot and respond to a ghost cap.

For some odd failure at SOEs part, we now have the same long capture times on Live as we have them on Test. I didnt expect that to happen, but its good, because it shows one very simple, but important thing: Long capture times alone dont fix the ghost capping.


Right now, on live, there are always multiple captures going on. Just yesterday, before the playtest on the PTS, miller had an Indar alert. While i was busy at the eastern front against the TR, i noticed that on the western side, NC constantly ghost hacked around allatum and other places, while the majority of VS was busy within allatum. Yesterday, on the PTS, something like this also happend. Exactly the same.
But heres the thing: On live, resecures came to late most of the time, if they ever happend, because there were always multiple ghost hacks going on. On the PTS however, we could send large enough forces to resecure ghost caps, or prepare defences if we could resecure the ghost cap in time, because there were far fewer ghost caps going on, and it was clear where they would need to go next.

This is a big improvment. I could look at the map and predict what could potentially happen within the next few minutes. On live right now, thats impossible.

And that is the idea behind the lattice. Be able to predict what is going to happen, so you can set up defences, thus making the game a lot more fun. With this, we can now look at individual bases and make sure they are just as defendable as they need to be.



Also, the lattice allows Single squads to have secondary objectives. Just imagine What Benefit generators at each base could do: Kill them, and the benefit doesnt get transfered. Work with some other squads and kill te right generators, and BAM the enemy just lost tech at the front, and potentially a large chunk of ressource income.

Something like this simply wasnt possible with the Hex system, without adding a lattice on top of the hex system just for benefits and generators. But the idea is to NOT clutter up everything with more layers, but make it simple and easy to understand.

You need to be able to open the map, look at it for 5 secs, and understand where you need to send your platoon.



Who wins any given hex, or a lane, was always a numbers game, and always will be. If you defend a base with one Squad, and A full platoon drops on you, then its pretty save to say that that platoon will wipe you out completly. You could potentially delay them for quite some time, but you are not going to stop them completly forever, and you are sure as hell not going to push out against them.

But heres the thing: Lets assume your Squad is top notch, really good guys who get stuff done, and that platoon is a herd of noobs with a good Platoon leader and squad leaders.
With the hex system, they would have dropped on you, and you would have potentially beaten them in the first round, pushing them back. Now, its highly likley they would just ignore you, go around you, and leave you to die alone of old age in that base. You cannot go away from that base, because its the only thing you can really defend. Attacking a full platoon with a squad isnt going to work very well, even if they are just noobs.

With the Lattice, they HAVE to go through you, or switch to the zergfest on another lane. With proper defence, you can hold the line for quite some time, till some other squad or platoon sweeps by and just helps you out for a sec by completly mopping the floor with the enemy.


It comes down to this: In the hex system, People are chasing each other all day long. With the Lattice, people get funneled into each other.



As for the last part: Yep.

But lets get the lattice on live ASAP, and see it in the real battle, while thinking about systems to improve it even more. The lattice is a major improvment to the hex system, and i can think several ways to improve it even more. Its the first step to fix the metagame as a whole, and i rather do it step by step, then trying to make a major leap at once just because the first step doesnt seem to be 100% perfect in every way.

Indeed, such a disadvantage cannot be left to remain if this goes live.

Agreed. The system needs refinement.

Also, sorry for ignoring your friend request yesterday. I assumed it was another one of those accidental ones I get a lot on live.

However, I still don't get why they went with this solution instead of giving us a proper redeployment system (read: which does not require you to /suicide multiple times in a row to get on the outpost you want). The current one is arbitrary and randomly picks 3 locations under attack while sometimes not allowing you to respawn at the adjacent base.

And regarding the ammount of backlash it's getting, and how many people are asking for SCU changes in return, that is a big, big mistake on SOE's part.

totally agree here

People have been bringing up many many valid points and concerns about lattice. I believe it'll improve the flow of battle, but it'll come at the cost of being able to make strategic decisions. The main issue i see is the potential for population imbalances to make it completely nonviable to fight on certain continents/servers.

Now ... feedback:
The play-test last night was pretty good, but more sustained and intense testing is going to be needed. The best way to achieve that would be to push the latticified Indar to live after the WIP things are fixed. I think only starting with one of three continents in lattice mode would be the best thing you could do, as it'll allow testing of the new system while not severely impacting the play-style of those preferring the old system (= if you see pop shifting away from indar across servers, players prefer hex to lattice). Furthermore, esamir has already a lot less bases, making the flow kind of similar to lattice, and amerish is more optimised as well.

Lattice could stay on live for a week or a month, or however long is needed to test it out properly.

Right. Post disection time!

You speak as if this is LoL or DotA. It isn't. There are many, MANY lattice paths you can attack along. So maybe the one on the far left of the map you've chosen is blocked. Big woop. Mobalise, go to the other side of the map.

Because you can predict where the fight will go. It's entirely possible (and I'd say maybe even SENSIBLE) to fall back to the next hex along the lattice with your outfit and set up a defence in advance of the enemy force getting there. The nature of defense SHOULD mean (although not sure if it applies to PS2) that it is still in favour of the defenders. So line up your heavies with their launchers and murder their tanks as they come over the horizon.

If your outfit is incapable of this level or organisation, I pitty you. If you're the outfit leader, I suggest you work really hard on making it so your outfit IS capable of it.

The same reason people still fight in areas outside of the bases today, when they're pushing forwards.For an example, look at Snake Ravine Lookout. The area under the bridge (good for hiding sundies against ESFs etc) is in the 'Indar Neutral Zone'. The lattice 'follows' the roads, but you don't have to follow the roads, if that makes sense? Again, looking at the map, you could go from Xenotech or Crossroads to Snake across the field rather than along the road. Assuming defenders are ready, BAM! You have a fight in the neutral zone.

The test was delicious. It didn't require constant flying all over the map to try to find a fight. Although wish the "enemies detected" filter was in more obvious colours, shades of red against black don't work well with my eyes for some reason. And although there were always areas of the map with "platoons", there were also always areas connected by lattive with "squads/enemies" detected.


It's also worth noticing, as well, that the test server does NOT have lattice on Amerish or Esamir yet. The entire pop of the test server was confined to one continent.