Not a troll post, no animosity, just curios. A lot of people in my outfit enjoy squading up and rolling around capping bases with few/no enemies, and they're clearly not the only ones. My question is, why? As far as I can understand there's little benefit to it, you get less certs than in large battles, and (although fun's relative) it seems like it'd be less enjoyable than actually fighting. Is there a side to planetside that I'm not seeing?
I used to do it, because I thought it was helping regain territory, helping my Empire. Now it just seems like a pointless endeavour, especially if any Enemies do react; they'll just slaughter me. I don't take a Sundy, so I'll just die (mission failed) and respawn several kilometres back to where I started - nothing achieved. I guess you can make fast secure advances, flanking enemy platoons and all that fancy stuff, by making sweeps through unguarded territory. There must be some strategical advantages, outweighing the lacking XP/Cert rewards.
Definitely. Thing is, if you're destined to be warpgated, it's going to happen one way or another. But why not make it hard for your enemy? Who cares about XP? Sometimes you can ghost cap and nobody will come and you'll take the base behind enemy lines, not even connected to your warpgate. Then others will come from there and cap the bases around it. It's like a little insurgency deep in enemy territory. That's fun. Being annoying. Making the TR/NC zerg work for their caps. But they don't want to work for their caps. They just want their certs.
If you do it solo, it's probably pointless, unless theres absolutely no resistance. But doing it with a squad, can easily cut of a techplant under attack or something, so it favors you faction fighting there.
Only time I'll ever ghost cap, is if I see a Amp Station, Tech Plant, or Biolab that is totally empty. Then I'll head there, cap all the sats first, then get the gens and SCU, then get the base. I figure doing that usually starts up a larger battle. My troops see we have it and will head there to start capping surrounding areas, the enemy will head there trying to resecure. Good way to get people moving away from some pointless battle over some obscure base that doesn't matter.
There's more to this game than just finding the biggest battle and shooting at everything. ------------------- Why it's done? Well, free certs, trolling, and trying to win. These 3 things are why I'll take a territory if it's right there and you're not defending it. 1.) They are free certs so I won't get behind by not being at an Amp Station or something. 2.) I know it frustrates the hell out of lazy players who feel entitled to having safe territories without doing anything to make them safe. 3.) It helps my faction win. It's something that you don't need a zerg of 50 people to accomplish, yet actually affects a battle. New thread title should be: People who think their bases don't need defending, why? ---------------- Pro Tip: If you can't defend your territories, then you don't deserve to have them in the first place,
THERE IS NO GHOST CAPPING, SIMPLY CAPPING. Whether the defenders chose to react or not isn't my decision. We strike where there is the least resistance. It is the most efficient way to gain territory for your empire. Some people have not forgotten that the goal of the game is to conquer. But then again it's all pointless since in the end you will be stuck at a Biolab and those territories have little to no effect on the outcome of the battle.
+1. It is shameless laziness on the part of the defenders, who continue to paint the ghost cappers as the bad guys when all THEY are interested in is farming certs.
As far as the forums have tried to make me aware, there is a difference between capping when there are no defenders and capping and not even hanging around for the XP. When I tried to argue the former in a prior thread, I was told that people were using the latter definition for - capturing the points, but not waiting around even for the experience, maybe not even to see if it works, before moving onto the next territory.
Ghost capping is only useful if you're trying to harass out lying territories. And only a small force can effectively do it.
Ghostcapping is handy for breaking an enemy zerg when you are about to be waprgated if you don't otherwise have the numbers to beat it back head on. When severely outnumbered and about to be warpgated by a pubbie zerg, my outfit will send small teams to each of the points behind the zerg and keep doing this until the zerg dies. Since pubby zergs are uncoordinated, this causes many of them to take pressure off the warpgate as they go and try and reclaim the ghost capped areas, they all split into different directions and that gives your forces that are amassed at the warpgate a great opportunity to breakthrough with force.. and once the floodgates open, the remaining enemy pubbies left at the frontlines lose their drive and the roles quickly become reversed.
+1 When my outfit and I go for a base, our objective is to capture it. It's not to cause a pseudo-crown battle. It's simply to capture the base. Once your base is attacked, it's all on you. You can either defend it or not. It's a complete logical fallacy. If you choose to not defend it, then it suddenly becomes "ghost capping". If you choose to defend it, then it's legitimate? So essentially, you blame the defenders for your decisions.
The order of capture is determined by factors: -Population -Assets (vehicle spawns, turrets, location) -Adjacency (which cap will it open) When I'm just trying to capture behind enemy lines, either I have no choice and I am force to capture an empty territory, either I chose to go for the easy one (again, empty). Path of least resistance At no time I'll think: "Hey, this territory has a red alert going let's capture it !" However, as I said previously: If the game had proper strategic mechanics, taking those small territories would have meaning. Sadly it doesn't have any and it always end up into a neverending Biolab siege PS: is it too easy to flip a point and go away ? Yes, but do not blame the capper, blame the capture mechanics.
depends on if there is an alert on. right now the favorite tactic is to lure the enemy main zerg into a facility (biodomes for preference leave enough of your sides zerg there (those who don't understand whats happening for preference) The enemy zerg is stuck inside defending while the rest of your forces cap as much territory as possible. Outside of Alerts sometimes you just want to have small battles squad on squad or individual cat and mouse games. Then there are the people who really believe that quickly capping as many bases as possible gets them more xp then long drawn out fights that last hours. Probably because they like to see large numbers every 10 minutes rather then small numbers constantly.
I don't have a problem with squads capping undefended bases. I have a problem with single players stalking around, flipping points, and hiding somewhere in the bushes while the base effectively caps itself. Defending against the latter is a boring snoozefest.
People shouldn't take it into a negative light. It's more strategic in nature than "cowardly" as people see it. When people don't "ghost cap," then all you'll see on your map really is that your empire owns only your WG and a few surrounding territories and maybe a biolab because your entire empire is stupidly only fighting there and not checking their maps to counter the enemy's movement. You don't need a zerg to gain/regain territory for resources or more places to respawn and mount an attack.
Because territories in PS2 don't give much of a benefit, a negligible resource bonus is about it, not worth sacrificing my time/enjoyment to drive around denying lone attackers. Not that I mind if some one else wants to, but that's why I don't value bases, unless of course it's an alert.
