[Pic] Current Lattice System

Discussion in 'Test Server: Discussion' started by Stealth1, Apr 8, 2013.

  1. UberBonisseur


    I've yet to see them; the test server is fairly empty.
    Just like some people are doing knee-jerk reactions against the lattice, you're doing a knee-jerk in favor of it.
  2. Noivad

    I have been on the test server, I like the changes to the bases. Disclaimer: I do NOT have anything against Large Outfits. I do NOT like the funneling that the smaller hex accomplish to move the zerg. I do NOT like the removal of bases that were fun for small Outfits to play on.

    In PS1 the Zerg was Infantry, with less vehicles. They went from yellow line attached base to another. There was no adjacency Rules as there is in PS2. You could go anywhere you wanted to even with the lattice lines that connected bases. Yes you could back hack and take out vital bonuses to an empire faction by doing so. There is no such Meta in this game.

    In PS2 the zerg is equal to large Outfits moving from point A to point B and Non Outfit members following them through narrow avenues of approach to bases. Terrain in PS2, except on a few planets / continents had wide avenues of approach. It is Ironic that that people wanted more places to attack in the PS1 neutral zones where no fighting took place, and in PS2 originally, the Maps had them, and now there is a movement by SOE to make more none fightable areas again.

    While the Large Outfits may not be Zerg Outfits in their tactics. They are on the avenues of approach from point A to Point B because that is the only way for them to go unless on rare occasion they fly. In PS1 you would see Outfits forming convoys and moving out organized. Now all you see is a cluster **** of vehicles all rushing from point to point.

    The new Hex system fixes nothing. It is the same avenues of approach that existed prior to the small hexes. There is NO CHANGE in the map in that regard. Just pretty little colors for the dim witted to follow. The bases have always been connected to the roadways.

    To add injury to insult, Some very fun, small bases, that were usually Infantry only with very little Armor or Air to spoil it are being removed from the MAP. They are making the Map less complicated for the dumb ***** who don't know how to read one, and the tactically NOT proficient. If you look at the Map Grid on their Map, anyone who has ever read one knows that SOE knows nothing about reading one properly (left to right and up).

    These changes are to make fights bigger, so that even more people can lag in them. To show us the way to the battle because we cannot read a map. To cut down the number of contested areas to fight and make them more Amerish and Esamir like.

    All those greyed out areas when you look at the new map are no longer fightable. They no longer have meaning. Only the mini hex areas do. SOE is taking away your choice of free movement to attack small fight areas. The Idea of conquest is moving towards base capping instead of area conquest. Any idiot can take their large Outfit and say. Hey just follow the yellow brick road. The battle is at the end of it. Look at the other end of the rainbow for you colorful fighting. What tactics are involved in that. Who needs indicators on a map to tell you where to go to a fight. Why use your mind at all. Lets all just drop in by pod and start fighting.

    So if you are an Outfit that prides itself in its ability to find the fight, kill, and conquer, you are no longer needed except for maybe transportation to the next battle on that small hex line. Join the Zerg. Be happy, No thank you.
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  3. MarthKoopa

    Why not just go full Lattice and SOI? Keeping the hexes seems silly.
  4. Wasdie

    I think the hexes allow them to be a bit more flexible around bases and keep the map clean at the same time.

    I would love to see some sort of a dynamic "front line" option on the map that kind of overlays over everything.
  5. VSMars

    Nope, they're just an æsthetics thing. They are strictly equivalent to a points-and-connections display. As for being "cleaner", I wouldn't be so sure; simple graphs are very clean and easy to read.

    In addition, switching over to a graph would allow them to make "crossing" influence lines, for example adding a link between Arroyo Torre and Valley Storage crossing the link from Old Auraxium Mines to Feldspar Canyon.
    • Up x 1
  6. McFatal

    So I wanted to note something, while I was watching a livestream, Higby messaged the streamer saying that the current hex-lattice is not the final product. It is there now because it is functional, but he said it is most definitely temporary. As in, they are working on a cleaner lattice to bring in as well as other features to play into this.

    So, with that we could deduce that they plan on refining the lattice based on feedback which, positive and negative is good for us. It goes without saying though, that with the amount of work they're putting in, and the fact that the most recent "Sneak Peek" interview that SoE had which mentioned Hossin being designed with lattice in mind, that Lattice will go Live.

    So, with that said, it is best to offer feedback on what to do with lattice to most benefit the game, rather than discuss why not to put lattice in since that topic is confirmed to be moot.
  7. Eugenitor

    Why? I don't plan on playing with it. We're on a huge 8km x 8km map, and I have a similarly huge games library. If I can't do productive things to benefit my empire (that don't involve running head-first into "platoons detected" or getting farmed on defense by same) on the former, then I'm going back to the latter.
    • Up x 1
  8. McFatal

    Well, if the lattice that we currently see on the test server isn't the final product, yet some form of lattice is bound to go live, and our efforts are to make the game better then we must make suggestions within the confines of the lattice network. Basically, you could talk about the reasons you don't want it in the game, but I think the developers have already made their decision. I'm not asking you to stop providing negative feedback, that's good for everybody. I'm just saying, to discuss why the lattice concept should not be put into the game is a pointless topic to discuss. Rather, it is better to discuss the current negative impacts it makes and try thinking of how to fix the problems that are present while still preserving the lattice network.

    One of your problems with lattice is small outfits vs large zergs, right? Well, lattice or not that problem exists to a certain degree. Maybe it is in our best interests to discuss how to make such an engagement a more enjoyable experience and ultimately, a fight rather than a slaughter for the small outfits.
  9. Ash87

    This is just not the way I've seen the Test Server Operate up to this point.

    I spent a good bit of yesterday evening fighting Azure Twilight in the north of Indar. Eventually we were able to dig in at a biolab and drive them back. They left to go to another lane. They were running multiple galaxies, with air support, and pulling sunderers up after the airdrop prevented any kind of retaliation. They were pulling what, for the scale of the test server, I would call a zerg. And it got stopped at what I have always considered infantry friendly bases down the east side of the map. Longer cap times will stall the zerg as well, meaning that people can prepare or just Move if they wish. Also you wont get people steamrolling from point to point like a constantly moving horde of insects, because moving up lane makes no sense until the initial point has been secured.

    The number of points that were removed is paltry at best. Spec ops, lost end, archaeological dig site, and 1 or two others. This is ignoring that the bases like Spec ops and lost end were mostly vehicle free, but were air-tastic. Also ignoring that what we are viewing in the test server is not the final product. If you look at the new bases in place, and the changes made to base design, they are trying to make all of the bases much more infantry friendly.

    The issue here is too, is that without adjacency there is no reason for people to care about bases. I mean adjacency isn't Much of a reason itself, but there is NO reason without it. What we need, is something that makes these bases more worth it. Just removing adjacency (While I see what you are saying, and agree with you in theory) will do positively nothing. I get no benefit from holding Crimson Bluff Tower, unless it's cutting me off, or it is cutting someone else off. And until that changes there will be no chance for anything you talk about, to take hold. In the current system small outfits and units are Useless. Saying they'll be useless after this new system is useless for that reason. As is now, small outfits have no place, as is then, small outfits Might have a place. If we keep going in the same direction, things wont improve at all. At least this way there is enough of a change it could encourage some kind of change to occur.

    Battle flow is a step in the right direction. The next step, the most important step, is giving some meaning to all of this. And for that, we need to get Battleflow done first.
    • Up x 2
  10. Eugenitor

    But that's a contradiction; any small outfit (or, more usually, small pick-up platoon) that's destined to fight a large one (nowhere else to go that means anything!) will lose, and they know it. Unless it's an artificial scenario like an agreed fight, you're practically never going to be able to win anything but a slaughter in your favor, because everyone who realizes which way the wind is blowing simply bugs out. Does this mean that they'll abandon their territory, even if they can't capture any other? Yes, yes it does.

    The only real other thing for lone wolves/small outfits to do is to simply ignore the "conquest lanes" entirely and spend their time being a dick to the enemy by backhacking as an inf and throwing down mines. Which might be a possible unintended consequence of the lattice: The people you're trying to fight simply stop doing anything meaningful involving territory, and just run around playing a gigantic game of TDM until you leave.


    By the way, you'd think that a large outfit with platoons fighting under its banner could more than easily stop ghost cappers right now. One squad, four bases, three guys on lookout each. Or, if you're really spread thin, one squad, six bases, two guys on lookout each. Voila, you spent a squad to stop all one-man ghosts and scout against enemy forces.

    Heck, Higby could put an end to all ghosting right now, not by messing with capture mechanics, but simply by incentivizing small-group defense. Assuming that you don't have any grief, give a +1000 defense bonus, divided by the number of players with you, for every three minutes you spend out of a spawn room and within 100m of the cap point without an enemy touching the cap point. (Only for cap points that an enemy can actually flip, obviously.) Problem solved, defense is now guaranteed. (The reason for the no-grief thing is to stop players from shooting each other over "their share" of the exp.)

    Then, incentivize ghosting (yes!) and aggressive play in general by making it so that if you were on the cap point when it flipped, and that flip led to the base being taken, you get a large capture XP bonus. This will make it so that people flying around in Scythes grabbing points against no defense will get huge bonuses for doing so- which means that everyone will be doing it, so it won't be ghost capping anymore. Defenders will be practically guaranteed a series of erstwhile "ghosts" to shoot at. This also encourages people to get out of their damn tanks when at a base.
    • Up x 4
  11. Ash87

    Honestly wish I could like this twice.
  12. McFatal

    It looks good on paper, but if you give people XP to sit at a base and do nothing, then you're rewarding people for essentially not playing the game. I mean I understand they're keeping lookout and all, but if you have to give players incentive to go sit on a point and do nothing until an enemy arrives, don't you think that maybe that sends the wrong message? This post actually made me think, that maybe they already had thought of that but from a developer standpoint, if you're sitting around and not shooting people in your FPS then something is fundamentally wrong. Even if you do incentivize ghost capping, I could imagine there would still be instances of people sitting on points doing nothing and waiting.

    This post made me think, that maybe the lattice isn't being put in to solely prevent ghost cappers, but rather to make sure that people aren't sitting around covering up a potential hole with nothing to do. Maybe it's to make sure that everybody has something to shoot at.

    I'm not saying that it's the right answer, but rather maybe that's what it was that made the decision for the devs.

    I just want to say, I'm impressed with your idea. I would actually like to test YOUR idea on the test server to see how it compares to the lattice, it is the first idea I've heard of that sounds feasible and that might actually work.
  13. Eugenitor

    It requires very little special handling (a few calculations, involving code they're already familiar with, for some extra certs), so they could probably just test it internally and stick it on live right now if they wanted to- it'd take less than a day. I actually wouldn't put my idea on the test server, because the test server has next to no numbers. People could just go on when absolutely no one's playing and milk it.

    By the way, the current system already encourages people not to shoot at things, and that's not addressed in lattice at all. I'm talking about the capture reward XP; I've seen way too many people hanging around a bio lab waiting for it to flip. If one platoon's already got the damn thing secured, why have two?! Can't count the number of times I've seen people hanging around for several minutes, not on a cap point and knowing they'll never have a chance to shoot at anything, just hanging out waiting for it to flip. Me, I try not to be Pavlov-conditioned so easily, and I usually get in a Sundy and deploy it at an adjacent base, then jump out and wait it for it to become flippable.

    In fact, an outfit that prides itself on its discipline and tactics and wasn't composed of cert farmers (hint, hint) could really abuse the hell out of the lattice system, because you know where they'd have to try to defend next- so why let them even get anything set up? Leave your zerg followers to kill anyone still spawning at the flipping base, but send your outfit on ahead to spawn camp the next base before it's even flippable. Make them regroup all the way back to their warpgate.
    • Up x 1
  14. McFatal

    Idk about it taking a day, but yeah it could probably be done a short amount of time. And you're right, it wouldn't be good to test on the test server since there's nobody there.

    I mean you definitely have a point here, I feel though that the cap XP is the reward for shooting the bad guys and playing the game. It doesn't always work out that way which is unfortunate, but the cap XP is the most basic form of flow that we have right now. If you cap a base you get XP, and everybody wants XP so everybody goes to bases until they meet the enemy. In a way, the ghost capping thing sounds like a semi-inverse form of that, where you might have a bunch of guys standing around doing nothing on both sides. Of course, too many people and that 1k divided up sucks, so you'd push out because at some point the cap XP of the enemy base is better and you'd very likely find a fight there because there'd be the other guys on the enemy team going through the same thing. And so I find myself at the beginning of this paragraph trying to offer negative feedback, and at the end of the paragraph I come to realize that it's actually positive. Again, your idea is really worth trying. (I type as I think, instead of compiling information and then unloading it all into one post. Hence this awkward paragraph :p)

    Sounds like my outfit all right, but it really depends on the fight at the first base. If the base we originally attack is being well defended, and there's a fight even if we are on the point, we probably won't leave. However, even in the current system we have fielded multiple platoons and sent out one gal per territory into a massive web behind enemy lines. The first squads cap what is originally adjacent while the rest sit and wait behind enemy lines until they get link. So, this is definitely possible in the lattice network, but in my opinion it seems that it would actually have less impact in the lattice network than on what we have now, since you can only go one territory ahead each time rather than two or three.
  15. Scientiarum

    This might be the only bit of freaking strategy that this new strategy leaves in there for people... otherwise it would be a 100% zerg funnel. With that satellite mechanic at least is is only a 95% zerg funnel :rolleyes:
    • Up x 1
  16. Eugenitor

    Then this conversation's right back where it started, because now you get to send all your forces in one big group instead of smaller gal drops that could (individually) be fought off by smaller outfits.
  17. Cl1mh4224rd

    One more potential issue I can see with the conquest lanes: In the live game, I've noticed a lot of "advancing on the next base that you can see".

    If your empire has just captured a facility and you're cleaning up a bunch of enemies who are spawning at a Sunderer out in the field, that often puts you within line of sight of another facility. Fairly often, people just continue on toward that facility.

    Unfortunately, with the conquest lanes, there's a fair likelihood that you won't actually have a connection to that facility (from the facility you just took, anyway).

    Hell, there are a number of facilities visible from other facilities without actually needing to head out into the field first. I don't remember the location right now, but I remember standing at a tower and looking at another facility that was right there, a mere several hundred meters away. Bizarrely, there was no direct connection between the tower I was at and the facility I was looking at.

    Granted, this could be viewed as an issue with the current layout of the lanes rather than a fundamental issue with the lanes themselves, but I feel that it's the entire concept of the lanes that creates these layout issues.
    • Up x 1
  18. McFatal

    Which is true but only temporarily. Once the first squads secure their territory, the second set of squads are now double strength and reinforced with the first set. It's a blitzkrieg style snowball effect, we spread out among a bunch of territory and as each wave of territory is secured the frontlines gets stronger and stronger. We have run into small outfits before using this tactic, but the sad part is that even if they fend off the small squad, that gets reported through our chain of command and then we come there with a larger force to squash them, which of course brings us in a complete circle of this discussion, where the small outfit splits up to cap surrounding territory.

    I understand the outcry from small outfits, but no matter what ideas are spawned in hopes for small outfit vs large outfit, it has to be in a fair manner where the small outfit must outplay and outsmart the large outfit in order to achieve victory because numbers do have to play a role to some degree or there's no point in numbers at all. I feel like the game offers enough variety already for small outfits to outplay large ones, it's possible but it's inherently dependent on the large outfit's lack of tact where the small outfit fills that role. If a large outfit is playing tactfully and correctly, it's only natural that small outfits should lose. No mechanic will or should change that, in my opinion. To be clear, I'm not trying to say small outfits don't have a place in this game.
  19. Eugenitor

    Actually, it sounds like that's what they're doing. There aren't that many territories in this game. If you're fanning out in a front-line blitzkrieg but then re-concentrating every time you meet any real resistance, of course people are going to go to the places you just left undefended. Every man you send to squash the small squad is a man not protecting or attacking every other part of the front line. Economy of force is a very real thing in hex-based PS2.

    And so, the lattice system, where you don't need to worry about force concentrations- you can just send everybody...
  20. McFatal

    I agree that there is strategy within that, and for the small outfit it's probably loads of fun. From the perspective of a normal member in a squad from the large outfit, it's annoying to be sent around the same few territories. But I mean, maybe that's the difference between you and me. I love the big fight, and while I enjoy the map-wide strategy to a degree, I much prefer micro battle-tactics, the strategies within the engagements that determine the victor. To me it seems like you more prefer splitting up a large outfit. And, looking from that perspective, that does actually sound kinda fun.

    So, maybe it's only natural for me to want the lattice, because it means more big fights where those opportune battle tactics exist. And, in your case, maybe it's only natural for you to hate lattice because it ruins the way that you enjoy the game. I can understand that.