[Suggestion] Remove Ghost Capping

Bring back the cap influence system, starting a timer and then leaving a hex should revert the timer back to the faction that holds the territory.

Don't recall why this was removed, to be honest. Was that before or after WDS?

We never had this. We did want this at some point.

Outside of off-hours, I've not recently found a base that got captured completely uncontested.

Ghost capping mostly went extinct when they added the battlefield on rails mechanic.

If a base gets flipped without a zerg vs zerg battle but more of a small <10 player skirmish, what is wrong with that? Some people prefer to take the less dense route/fights.

That's not what he was talking about, though that does remind me that part of the reason for the removal of 0/n capture points was that it inconvenienced small groups (who were then chained to the capture point, even if they wanted to stage counter-defense elsewhere in the base).

From what it sounds like, DQCraze just wants to remove bases that are contested but there are no attackers (anymore). Despite that, I would ask him what the difference is between a contested base with no atttackers present in the region and a contested base with 1-12 attackers who are standing on the very outskirts of the region, waiting for the point to finish flipping so they can cross over to the next base? They're still technically "not there."

Only if they implement a Forces Ratio Cap Time.

If you have 30 people all at an empty base with zero enemy it should cap in 1 minute. Not 4-5 minutes of 30 dudes all standing around waiting for a base to flip.

A system that detects if the hex is contested or not. If the enemy abondons a hex why do people have to wait 5 minutes for it to flip?

I can understand if only 3 people are Ninja capping with zero defence maybe 4-5 minute flip.

But 20-30 people all standing around for 5 minutes waiting for a flip? Bad design.

If there are ZERO enemy defenses it should flip in 1 minute, assuming your whole platoon is capping the empty base.

Although also need detection for if the base WAS being contested but all the spawners and sunderers died. Would suck to loose your NCU and suddenly the cap time leaps down to 1 minute. Give people time to bring the sunderers back.

But if the game can detect that a base is TOTALLY ABBANDONED then forcing all the players to sit around for 5 minutes is pretty crappy. Half the platoon will just scatter to other far away fights instead of leading the push. If the enemy isnt smart enough to defend and all the bases are abandoned then why does it take 5+ minutes each base?

SHouldnt you just walk in and go "ok noone is comming to defend this... easy cap mode activated until defenders come."

Maybe have the system alert the defender team "Enemy is leading a Blitz... Defend our bases immediately!" and give players a nice bonus for stopping a blitz.

Imho the point is simple: if no enemy is in the territory the capture cooldown should stop immediately and revert back to the initial state.
Infiltrators landing, flipping points and taking off again shouldn't be a thing.

While I certainly feel your pain, there is a reason bases take a while to cap, particularly important ones. This prevents one guy from taking 3 point amp station all by himself with out ample time for defenders to respond, and like-wise even a larger force shouldn't be able to roll up and immediately cap a base. Defenders should have enough time to redeploy and mount a defense. If it takes 1 minute to cap, by the time a squad sees that the base is being capped, the squad leader moves the waypoint and gets everyone to redeploy, the base will be lost or have a few seconds left.
Also, zergs. If bases capped faster when you were unopposed and had a large force, a single zerg could rampage up a lane faster than any other forces pushing in the opposite direction, meaning that any attempt to cut it off or simply to fight somewhere else, would be in vain. Having zergs wait 5 minutes to cap bases encourages them to split up, which is good, because unopposed zergs are no fun for anyone.

Before

Ghost Capping: A term invented by people that won't be bothered to investigate enemy activity.

Capping an Undefended Base: a valid and sometimes vital tactic to splinter large enemy forces.

Stop trying to censor the behavior of others by appealing to those who regulate. Not only do you humiliate yourself, but you also put yourself into a frame of mind that can only benefit from the charity of others.

The more you take, the more you need.

But the infil, or whoever, has gone to the trouble of transporting themselves over to the hex, went into the building, and hacked the point.
Granted, this isnt too much 'trouble', and is easy as all hell to do.
But if thats the case, why cant you do the same in response?

Too lazy maybe?

If an empire is too lazy to go and recap a ghost cap that has no attacker present then it really is that empires fault they lost the facility.

Loosing a base to a ghost in PS1 was embarrassing, it was a piss-takable offense for anyone in command chat at the time to not notice and deal with it.

The game puts the owness on YOU to defend your territory, its your territory.
The game shouldnt be resecuring bases because the players are too lazy to do so.

Presumably this system would also mean defenders dont even need to recap the point, just remove the enemy from the area and it'l re-cap on its own. No thanks.

Ghost capping was coined during PS1, its not a derogatory statement and was a valid tactic often requested by the top leaders, although the request wasn't 'ghost hack dagda' it was 'put a ghost on dagda'.

Though an incredibly aggravating tactic when used by forces allied to an already large enemy population.

I've been though that routine where you're in an already impossible defensive battle when your PL asks you to go reset a point in another base with no enemy population (map-wise), then asks you to wait and engage anyone who presses the point again, only to not have any enemy ever show up. The moment you get recalled to help the rest of your forces just barely hang on to what you have, someone goes and flips that point, then leaves again. Don't know where he went, or which base he came from, much like the first time, so you can't pursue. Rinse and repeat until total disgust is achieved. Granted, that was back when we had Pure Hex Adjacency; holding onto any sort of territory under any sort of low continental population conditions was absolutely hellish, and burnout eventually lead to players refusing to go put out unattended fires altogether.

There can be strategy but there also must be fun.

In any case, I do agree that the OP is being overly sensitive. The Lattice does not allow anywhere near as much territory bleed as the Pure Hex System, so ghost capping, no matter how derisive you may be of it, is exceptionally more manageable.

Did you even write what i put? I said of 30 people all zerg an abbandonon base. Not ONE SOLO LONE person.

It would be impossible for 1 person to ghost cap 3 bases because the timer would just reset every time they left.

But if 30 of you and your friends zerg an abbondoned lattice and no defenders ever show up then the cap time switches to 1 minutes until defenders show up.

And if you stop this quick lattice blitz and defenders show up then you get extra points for stopping the blitz.

Early on in the game's life, I found it very annoying, since it was not what the game was supposed to be about. But these days, not only do I enjoy ghostcapping as a break from big battles, but I think it's a good way to hold onto a small percentage of players who prefer that, and might leave the game if it were removed.

It's a matter of opinion, but I say leave it in at this point. There's no need to change it now and removing it could actually do harm. Ultimately, we can all pull up the big map and defend and retake bases that are being ghostcapped if we want.

Yeah, we did. I remember when I first tried ghostcapping, watching the timer flip the other way when I left the region, and having to return and wait it out.

What you want is total nonsence basicaly: all folow 1 line, because you can not attack territories without enemys so just tell all dont go defend it and battle will never start elsewhere.

Seriosly you have latthice system, so there is less number of bases you can attack/defend. You still want more people on one place with some nonsence system ? Its 100% you fault that you didnt defend it...

It was more fun without latthice system cut enemy territory from behinde and force them creat smaller defence forces on both sides.
( but people didnt like reading in map and think where is good place for attack/defend/ambush = curent latthice system where you dont have to think and you can just folow lines... )

With latthice system game lost big strategic part for SL/PL,

Never worked like that. And you can't ghost cap in the lattice system. At most you normally only have 6 lattices you have to worry about. If there's only 300 people on that continent, you can put a platoon at each one.

You don't need to zerg by putting all six in one lattice.

Was this back in an early Beta?

No, I didn't start untill the tail end of beta. Actually, now that I think about it, when I came back this time, after over 1 1/2 years away, I remember being surprised to see it had been reverted, so it was definitely in the game post release, just not sure about the exact window..

Why would they remove something they're actively promoting with the lattice unlinked construction system?
Honestly, what was the point of making it without requiring ownership of the territory you build in? I thought they idea was to encourage actual battles at major hexes, not force people to babysit the back lines of their own territory.

if there is no enemy in the hex then they are not making a true attempt to take and hold the cap points to take the base then they shouldn't be able to keep flipping the points.

it would actually mean that one lone player couldn't cap 2 or more bases at a time using an ESF as a taxi.

if you want a base cap the points and hold them against defender counter attacks.