Lattice System.... Not a good idea.

Discussion in 'Test Server: Discussion' started by Rhapsody, Apr 28, 2013.

  1. zukhov


    Good example. Unless an empire has a massive pop advantage they won't be able to get far as a mindless zerg. On that map, assuming a TR zerg has just pushed to Peris Amp, the NC can attack it from the North and south directly, or cut it off in two places. If they manage to zerg right up to the warp gate then what? With no link to the other WG lanes they are stuck. They would have to roll their zerg half way back across the map and start again from broken arch/crossroads, and leave enough people behind to hold the Peris front. Assuming even pops on that map there are plenty of strategic decisions to make and opportunities for people to work together towards a common goal. So, all things being equal there is no way a mindless zerg can win by rushing another empires warpgate. Therefore the deciding factor in taking territory has to be skill and teamwork.
  2. VSMars

    Really?

    Because I see two bases VS can attack (Quartz Ridge and Mao South-East), two they need to hold (Dahaka South and The Palisade) and two they need to withdraw from (The Crown and Seabed Listening Post). Alternatively (and more defensively): Hold Indar Excavation, Seabed Listening Post, The Palissade and Mao; withdraw from The Crown; attack Indar Comm Array. Either way, you can only meaningfully attack two places at once before you overextend yourself.
  3. zukhov

    A mindless zerg would not think like that.

    Yes. If you factor the VS into that example and the situation gets a lot more complicated and strategic. Where to attack, where to defend? And you have to properly attack somewhere, not just look for a low activity hex and grab it. If you zerg forwards on the lattice system with no thought you are going to lose - under the hex system you can just blob a a zerg around the map following ghost hacks.
  4. VSMars

    The mindless zerg is strategically irrelevant. They are barely a tactical threat, and that's purely by their numbers.

    Strategically, the lattice presents very few possible venues of action, for example in the map above, the VS has all of two routes they can usefully attack (attacking anything else at the same time is a stupid move and should never, under any circumstances, be done). They have ... some three or four strategies they can chose from, if we're generous.

    The same goes for the other factions. The TR needs to consolidate their front line first before attacking anything at all (they are overextended already at Peris and need to fall back to Regent Rock, concentrating their defence there; they need to reinforce Zurvan and retake its northern outpost, defend against or delay the inevitable VS attack from Mao to Rashnu and try to take Crossroads and XenoTech Labs). The NC has the most venues of attack (Indar Excavation, Dahaka South, The Crown and Tawrich are all valid targets), but it foremost needs to try and cut off and destroy the TR forces at Regent Rock before doing anything else, which again limits them to exactly one optimal strategy for the next hour or so.

    Compare that to the amount of valid strategies (not the amount of total possible strategies - 90% of them are crap and should under no circumstances be used) and counter-strategies possible with a better inter-connected lattice. Yeah, a zerg won't use any of them. The thing is, they keep on not using them and being a hindrance at best to your faction's world domination in this version of the lattice too.
  5. zukhov

    Surley that depends on how the NC/TR/VS have deployed their forces. What the best strategy is is debatable and depends on the numbers and deployments on the map. You can imagine a scenario where that is the best strategy, but I could imagine another one where it isn't. Unlike the hex system you have to take account of enemy movements and defend or attack crucial positions, not just look for a low activity hex on the map.
  6. VSMars

    The strategy varies very little with the actual deployment of enemy forces. The enemy disposition matters not at all for bases you plan to defend (you just reinforce the ones which are more heavily hit, but that's an operational detail, not a strategic one). Bases you have to withdraw from can be attacked by one person or one thousand for all you care. The only thing where the actual enemy force and composition matters is in places where you decide to attack - in some (few) cases you can be forced to abort the attack and re-evaluate the global strategy. That's it.

    "Enemy activity" display can as well not exist anymore, by the way. You can hide whole platoons (plural!) worth of troops by putting them in the "neutral areas". That's especially "fun" in places where you would naturally drive outside of the marked areas for most of the way, like between Camp Waterson and Mao Watchtower.
  7. Vanu2013

    only people who dont use their brains like the lattice. DOWN WITH THE LATTICE!
  8. Kaale

    I like the idea of going back to a system where you must be connected to the warp gate but SOE will not go back. the lattice is in so no-one is going to say "that was a bad idea" but it could be Adjusted like everything else in the game already has. Add a few more links at a guess I'd say around 8 on each continent and you can keep a lattice system but still have a degree of tactics and choice.
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  9. MasonSTL

    Um no... just the opposite. I was in an outfit that prided ourselves on fast deployment to counter ghost/ small squad caps. It was easy to do our job, hell waaaay more easy than it is now. That outfit has now been disband, but to tell you the truth its for the best. I have seen waaaaay more epic and fun tactics than I have ever seen since December. Most of the stuff in my earlier outfit was mondaine, yeah we had a sense of accomplishment but we didn't encounter much in the way of opponents.
  10. tissueissue

    While I hate lattice, it is actually non sense arguing A is better than B as is apple and orange.
    We have 3 continent, instead of forcing people to play lattice all the time, why dont just let 3 different system live together, so variety of people can enjoy their favorite gameplay.
  11. VengeanceIsMine

    When on lattice and you want to capture the next base you must completely control the previous base. If the enemy starts the timer on the base you just left you cannot capture any points of the next base. Why don't they expand this on lattice when your empire gets cut off from the warp gate, those bases that are now shaded as cut off... cannot be used as owned bases anymore to move forward to the next. Resources for those areas are not available due to not being connected to the warp gate correct? Neither should the ability to move forward mindlessly, until the cut off is reattached. Cause right now if your faction works hard to cut off an enemy, the zerg still moves forward. They disregard the cut off base and push forward. I contend adding this feature would force good things... what do you all think?
  12. Lonecompany

    I'm against the lettuce system, but i'm all for making everyone happy.

    The fact is, before the optimization updates, the lattice system was an even worse idea because it concentrated forces in an already laggy, crashy, low FPS game for some, and made it even worse after they implemented the system because now there's even more players and effects happening in one area. Besides that, there's spawn killing, and the bunch, but one of the only reasons I dislike the lattice system is because it just dumbs down the game and says ''Hey, go in a straight line to this next facility'' and doesn't really add FREEDOM that games are supposed to achieve for players. It was more fun with a squad to jump from hex to hex wrecking havoc and capturing small bases plus making an entire faction's forces to move and try to stop you, more fun than following a Zerg around in a road, decimating any poor players who don't have the numbers to fight back. It's fun to be the Zerg destroying another faction, but it's not fun being said faction who's being destroyed, and defeated again and again until the enemy Zerg team is gone.


    How it was back then, PRE-Lattice, you still had a large number of players fighting so you still got that ''big group VS big group'' fights, but not all of it was concentrated in one area, so you had small fights and medium fights as well. And now, for servers that the playerbase has decline, you have a large population faction inbalance, and the players, lets say TR vs NC (NC being the faction with more players), the poor TR players will no doubt get steamrolled over and over, causing 4th Faction problems and just a negative view of the game itself, causing players (and potential or customers who already paid for the game) to leave. Now I doubt SOE is going to reverse the Lattice, I myself just wanted to say forget the lattice system on Hossin and Amerish so they'll have more time implementing other features on the roadmap. However, there's tons of threads out there that bring a pretty good idea to make everyone happy, while keeping the lattice system on.

    Hopefully one day it'll all get solved.
  13. Regpuppy


    The problem being back then was that participating in those "large fights" more often than not damned your faction to losing most of it's territory. If you had a platoon fighting over an amp station, you had an enemy splitting up into half squads and rapidly capping bases with little resistance. I've been on both sides of this type of gameplay and at least in this lattice system I'm able to actually fight more. I won't say the lattice is perfect, but at least it accomplishes that much.

    Unlike the Hex system where it still had the issues with overpopulation causing issues, but with the added minus of marginalizing the actual capturing of territory unless it was needed for an alert or a good farming spot. Sure, there were some scattered small squad fights but what the system encouraged was either greatly outnumbering the defenders or not fighting. A lot of the time, equal fights took so long you lost all the territory you gained behind you. Just because you may've enjoyed capping small bases with little fighting. That doesn't mean it made for meaningful gameplay.

    Also, don't pretend 4th factioning is something brought on by the lattice. It's been around since the beginning, but wasn't a huge issue until servers stopped having populations capped at primetime.
  14. Lonecompany



    Never meant that the 4th faction was brought on solely by the lattice system, it's a thing that affects most if not all games at times.

    Also, the Lattice still encourages large fights in one or two certain areas, and still causes stalemates and outnumbering, but really, that's going to happen no matter what, lattice or no lattice. And i'm not saying I don't like huge fights, heck, when I was first playing PS2, one of my fondest memories was taking a big tank team through a big field in Esamir to attack a biolab. I've been around more or less since the game came out of Beta, and I just had less frustration before that lattice system was implemented, but i'm sure people are now less frustrated now that the Lattice exists.

    I'm just asking for SOE to find a middle ground and make everyone happy with the issue.
  15. Regpuppy



    I'd be fine with some sort of middleground, but since I haven't seen a decent one made up in these forums yet. I'm sure it's not as simple as just saying it. Though, there was some thread around at some point that involved putting the main facilities in their own lattice and have some loose system with the outter territories that I found myself not being able to properly argue for or against.
  16. khai

    The lattice is fine sure its more limiting and takes away all strategic flow beyond the zerg but that seems to be what the majority demanded. There are just a couple of things that I find annoying primarily that there are some roads that the terrain and flow of battle scream out for a lattice connection that simply does not have one, more then once have I been following the terrain taking bases and suddenly have to stop and look at the map because the lines of the lattice have veered off away from what the terrain and flow of battle tell me should be the next to be attacked. The other is that the satellite outposts on the major facilities should connect to the other satellite outposts not even to bypass the the facility, you could have that not work for all i care, but so that you can get an actual encirclement and completely cut the major base off.
  17. UberBonisseur

  18. VSMars

    You mean, just like in the PS1 Lattice?
  19. Regpuppy


    Sort of, but one that simple can't work with PS2. Since it isn't just a few towers scattered around, like in PS1. It's a crapton of small bases taking up the bulk of the map with a lot more players involved. I thought I saw an idea on that topic to address that issue, but I can't find it.

    Though I do mostly approve of Uber's video and remember seeing it awhile back. Not 100% sold, but it's interesting.
  20. OldMaster80

    True, maybe. But the hex system imho is much worse. It forces people to leap from a base to another to stop ghost-hackers. Defending conquered territories without teleporting around like the Star Trek crew is next to impossible, which completely screws the sense of "battle flow". Players don't feel part of an army that is advancing or defending because they keep jumping around.
    That's why "defending" used to have almost no meaning before the lattice: there was no point in defending a structure as long as enemies always had a way to pass around a structure.
    They could improve the hex system in many ways, maybe lattice is not the best solution but it's definitely better thatn that hex crap.