What are your guys thoughts? Dont turn this into a nerf this and that thread. Keep it on topic please. From my point of view. And as a small outfit we are now forced to fight far greater numbers. Going behind enemy lines is now alot harder due to the pure front line between outposts. Which are all manned with lots of AA, AV and everything you can think of. And we have limited options on where to fight That was patch night. But i suppose things will calm down. And a positive side, Indar is now in favour of infantry. As for mods closing this. Keep it open please as its constructive to our server. And util you make a sub forum for Miller this one will have todo.
Only got to play for an hour last night as our Op was on Esamir but so far this looks good from the point of view of good battles and flow of battle but didn't get to try taking any large facilities as the only one under pressure was Mao Tech plant and we got stalled at Briggs labs (was only 1 squad at the time) but the front quickly filled up with allies and enemies and it turned into a massive 45 minute battle which I thoroughly enjoyed tbh. Not played enough to give a real overall impression but certainly from my point of view this looks promising for promoting large scale encounters and my only real concern is if this does push small outfits under as now more than ever it makes it more about the numbers, having said that there were small squads deploying around the base we were defending and being really damn annoying so maybe all hope is not lost for the little guy.
I only played for about 30 minutes or so but from what I saw it made the fights more infantry based with the vehicles keeping their distance and shelling other vehicles due to the high number of AA and AV in the fights, I'll give it some more time tonight but so far I'm liking what I see.
I have not tested the sytem extensivly yet but as far as I can tell it is good (shame about spec ops tough, never forget!) allowing to counter a zerg by strategicaly retreating, eating away at their tank horde per outpost. I say give it about a week before we start drawing conclusions.
So far so good, but I have to play a bit longer to make any conclusions. Shame about some bases disappearing though (south ridge at NC warpgate for example). Still have to figure out the layout of some of the new bases and changes to existing bases. One thing I can say is that this change seems to be advantageous for VS and NC fighting the TR, since it's more difficult for the TR to overwhelm their enemies with sheer numbers spreading out over several bases at once (which has been a Miller problem the last few weeks).
Given the sandbox nature of the Hex system and the consistent predictability of zergs and such , smaller sized outfits like Goon ,Deimos , INI have been able to counter the huge masses. Not so much by fighting head on , but my moving 'sideways' , kicking the legs from under them , going for the throat as such. Considering how much work has already gone into this new system , I very much doubt there will be a rollback to the Hex and as such , I am concluding the new lattice is almost 100% bound for Amerish and Esamir. If that does happen , I am afraid that small outfits like Goon , which only average 2 squads a night , are going to be forced into this meatgrinder by which we have little control seeing has fights last night were made up of 4 platoons vs 4 platoons. I mean sure , outfit squads can still effective to a point , 2 squads nesting in a area of prominence can be a real pain in the *** for some. But that still in reality does not matter , so a armor column rolls by , you have 2 squads of AV nuking everything , taking out platoons worth of vehicles. That does not change the fact that 48+ guys just died and are now running straight for you Big outfits may love this new change , seeing as they may be the only people capable of putting enough force on point in an effective manner capable of enacting an actual cap. But I can see alot of us smaller 2-4 squad outfits bailing to Esamir and Amerish ,to enjoy them whilst there still fun.
Seems pretty good, it was a fun fight versus you guys up north near camp connery atleast until VS pop started to drift off to Tawrich. Think we need more time to judge it but I enjoyed last night.
The lattice is great but it needs more, they need to put in back hack or benefit denial that spec ops can use to help the empire. What ever they do should require at least 7 guys to do it and have warning signs. Could build a generator bunker at each base that requires you to take the single linked outpost (4minute hack) this hack would then lead to the bunker shield gen being vulnerable blowing this shield gen (1minute) would allow access to the bunker (very substantial and defensible bunker) You could then overload the main facility generator (2minutes) blowing this gen would stop the facility benefit, kill all the terminals in the base and slow the spawn timer down to 30seconds. Used in a techplant scenario the facility benefit would need beefing up so perhaps loss of a linked tech plant would stop people spawning liberator, vanguards and lightnings. (esamir could be tricky here but i do live in hope they take the redesign opportunity of the lattice to put 2 more techplants on that cont.). They also need to bring back NTU.
I'm not so pessimistic. Sure, we can't cap or neutralize an amp station/tech plant behind the zerg anymore, but even in the bigger fights smaller, coordinated squads will still be able to hold or clear important buildings, destroy sunderers etc. We have to be closer to the zerg now, but I trust our squad leaders to put us in the right position. Yesterday we held off the respawns at several bases until the zerg arrived to mop up and cap the point. while it's of course awesome to cap a base against the zerg, the action is still good, i got almost 20k xp/hour as medic with barely getting any kills before the amerish alert ended.
Yeah we have got our Tactic's set up for indar. But when you throw x4 Your numbers into the mix you cant contain them.While we are forced to work along side the main zerg. And the way TR are they don't bother moving to point they rather sit 600m away in a tank shooting walls for an hour. We still have Amerish and Esamir that hasn't changed. But tonight should be fun.
I'm not sure yet. Gonna try it out today. Have only played 30 minutes yesterday. I read a lot of worries in other threads on the forums where people worry that this system will kill smaller outfits.
In one way I understand their worries but I think it just means that the smaller oufits got a new role, like sneaking up behind and taking out enemy sundies while the main zergs are fighting eachother or focusing on AA or AV during the battles or just harassing and drawing the focus from the enemy armor.
Since it's only cap orders that are restricted not actual player movement I think if small squad outfits are willing to adapt their tactics they might well become the most crucial aspect of defending or pushing attacks on a large scale. I'm not going to go into detail because I don't want everyone doing what I plan on doing with this but it will be a change of gameplay because if it does work out the way I think it will then it will reduce a lot of the up close and personal base fights that have until now been the mainstay of infantry gameplay in 1-2 squad number fights and whether or not smaller outfit squads will enjoy the new gameplay is very much an unknown factor at this time.
Its not that bad. We are now for instance forced to attack a heavily defended outpost. That is covered in AA/AV. Thats not the problem. As we now cannot cap the base on our own. But the problem is that other larger outfits cannot get close to the base to lock them in. This leaves us right up **** street ally.
To coin a phrase , its what I've started calling "Effective Strength". Assume for a moment your the only outfit currently present in a 3 platoon zerg , and your outfit makes up 2 squads, making your zerg population 84% blunt hammer with 16% Effective players. The problem starts when the fighting begins , funnily enough . Because the fights are so big your effective strength is further diluted , in a 3 vs 3 platoon fight like last nights , you become a measly 8% of the "Effective Strength". You know what needs to happen in order to win You know when it needs to happen You know how it needs to happen But you cant inforce your solution now because 2 squads is simply chump change
Well, all today NC have been WAY higher pop, and so they're slowly moving forward on all fronts. But the maps is now much more static and there are way bigger fights, that usually don't go anywhere until one side gets tired of camping and leaves. Flying is a non-thing. If you take up an ESF and go within a few kilometers of the front line, you are immediately shot down by the 25 bored flak-MAXes that have nothing better to do than sit in the spawn waiting for their side to magically win. If there were fewer people, we might see some large fights and some small, so small outfits could make a difference. But with the current, high population, every fight is a zergfest where two huge forces meet head-on and no one can get anywhere. It might end up getting fun eventually, but as it currently stands, it's one long camp from BOTH sides. You have to turn your sound down, as the continuous explosions merge into a single, nausea-inducing rumble that never stops.
Since Furious is a small outfit as well I'm also wary. The map looks better and it might make orders more relevant but my biggest fear is that large outfits that are able to field multiple platoons will be able to put themselves against randoms down lattice corridors, i.e. one platoon fighting smaller organised outfits at point A but they're large enough to have another platoon fighting randoms and consistently win at B simply by virtue of co-ordination until the randoms give up and leave that corridor uncontested which rewards more territory than previously when they'd disperse into adjoining hexes and keep slowing the advance down in that general area. On the other hand the best case scenario here is that they disperse into a different lattice corridor and manage to push forward there, which is an improvement. Smaller outfits are also probably more easily countered by large outfits who can spare the manpower to stalemate them along the line of their advance which is now more predictable and less avoidable, at least in the context of contesting territory which is really the only thing that matters at the moment. This also applies to the population at large and not just organised players. Speaking of general population I'm also curious if the lattice will make any difference in the case of uneven pops on a specific continent, which is to say if it makes any difference in the case of a f.e. 26/37/37 population split or thereabouts which has been fairly frequent as of late, not to mention continent specific pop differences which can be much larger (assuming they'll bring lattice to Esamir / Amerish). Haven't had that much playtime with it yet, though. And yeah, I'm sure hour long pitched battles with a few hundred players that goes nowhere makes for great War Report footage but large meat grinders aren't that interesting to play through (Battle for Camp Connery was pretty amazing but that was a bit of a special case and was far more varied than what I've heard about the lattice stalemates and I would personally not want it to be a frequent occurrence). I don't see lattice making us spend more time on Indar at the moment, rather the opposite.
As for BRTD, we had 4 squads last night - for combined arms, the nw of indar was a wet dream - as we could flex a broader front and encircle the now "tunneled visioned" enemy. In certain areas we knew the vs next target and acted on it early. However, as an outfit which will (under hex) send squads to diff bases and on a wider scale have a "bigger plan" and an order of capturing bases to achieve such objectives i felt that my "route" was too pre-determinded, i could not side-step, i could not send forward units to prep, i could not move forces in an inconspicuous manner (lane pretty much tells enemy my next target) we were always "expected" and on-the fly situational changes (as in opportunities) were lacking, and we generally felt herded down a traintrack with little to no junction boxes. In hex, if a base is too heavily defended - you just go for something else and let them come to you, eventually draining said base of defenders - now you HAVE to fight them on their terms and when in hex - a zerg could go its seperate way, now its got its own gps. force can only be met by force. (Might as well build trenches, over the top comes to mind). it just seemed that i had no choice but to throw manpower down a lane and keep doing so untill my horde of men out-attritioned the enemy blob of men. Feels more like a tug of war at times - that said , that was only from the open deserts in the nw, god knows about anywhere else. that said, i enjoyed it - at a gameplay level but on a strategic map-reading way = not really. (as in, not being able to go diff places and probe for weaknesses, and instead having to throw everything in one direction but on a broader line of advance. (although it was epic to see armor,inf on all sides trying to use the "now dead" areas of the map to flank etc.
