Sneak peek of new hex adjacency graph for Indar and a bit more!

And the changes will cause the zergs to occur in completely different lanes. Nothing changes except the chances of the zergs randomly meeting goes up because the artificial lane restrictions. When the zerg vs zerg battle is over, the losing zerg is just going to try to pick a different lane. Why?!?

Defending XP stinks. There is no reason to defend when you can make a ton more XP by capping.

I cannot tell you how many times I've been in a platoon where this happened: "Ok, the vanu just owned us, lets go back to the warp gate and move on the TR." Only difference is now you have less options of finding a winning platoon. After being crushed 2 or 3 times in a row, people are just going to log off.

It is like SOE is trying to change a lightbulb 12' in the air with a 4' ladder and when it doesn't work, they try a different 4' ladder.

Fix defense first!

MY problem here however, is that thats not adding any 'logstics' on top of what the game allready has. If we are to define logistcs merely as the movement of troops (you can just about do, though its normally far more supply focused). Then everything in the game is logistics, and it becomes rather nebulous.

Furthermore, as i've noted a few times now, this is hugely contigent on waht time of base as at the active frontal part of the lattice, what im calling the active node. IF its a small base only capable of spawning sundies or flashes, then fine some sort of logistics route for armour and air will have to exist, in order for that battle to have friendly armour or air. However, if its a tower. No logistics necessary, that node is a battle all unto itself.

True, but their also no more vunerable than any other part of the battle. What I'd want ideally, is something that is vunerable enough, that the forces of that empire, do not have to simply worry about the capture points at bases with active nodes. But also have to worry about the supply lines extending across the 'friendly' part of the map leeding to these nodes.

Whether the strategic value would be equal, is an open question. However, it means that beyond the large (and linear) battles from one node on the lattice to another, their is a second layer of that must be attacked/defended across the entire map and the functioning of which, effects the performance at the front some how.

THats what I mean by logistics.

Yes, but the issue here is the greater predictability resulting in a side quitting a map en mass as soon as they perceive the cannot win. Whether or not this is 'loosing' largely misses the point, as soon as there is a perception that 'its pointless'. Said empire starts hemoraging people to another continent or they simply logg off, leaving a zerg to steam roll over the rest of the map.

I think thats a very, very realistic possibility. Indeed we see a lot of behavior like this allready based on whether a cont is or is not perceived to be 'winnable'. Indeed the case study if the issue of 1 fraction per continent we have several times now on Miller.

Just copying this from another thread where i posted it:

Since they killed IA i've been seeing a lot more defence and a lot more thought out attacks rather than ghost capping everywhere. If they "fix" territories giving adjacency whilst being flipped and let us spawn in more locations on a redploy i can honestly see the entire lattice system not being needed. Though the current phenomenon could be a passing phase. Still interesting to see what IA has done to things...

Reducing connections in half won't make players defend more. Esamir has half as many territories, does that means players defend more in Esamir? no it doesn't. You'd have to go WWIIONLINE and limit attack options to ONE per 500 players (attack objectives) if you want players to defend more.

You want players to defend more, give us tools like the PS1 cloaking AMS, PS1 mines, SP1 spitfires, and PS1 motion detectors.

+1 for the public test server thing. That has been a long time coming.

Have you considered a hybrid of the lattice and hex system.
- Lattice between the major bases & major outposts
- Hex system in between & at outposts

With a hybrid of the two systems, you could implement a secondary capture mechanic, which would force the base to go neutral, if the attackers managed to capture all the adjacent hexes and cut the defenders off from a link to their warp gate through adjacency and thus help break the siege or at least put a time limit on the defenders to push out a bit or have someone come in an save them. PS1 besides having the latices system also had a secondary capture mechanic, which required the defenders to re-supply the base with nanites from a warp gate or the base would go neutral, thus forcing them to push out and attempt to break the siege.

I really like the idea. The only thing I would add is defending is still not worth it. As someone else pointed out losing two or three battles and it's back to the warp gate to find a new fight. The losing side either A) logs or B) finds a new fight they may win.

The main concern about this idea seems to be that people will give up once they encounter heavy resistance, but they pretty much do this now anyway. At least with this proposed system, if they truly feel like giving up on one route, the platoon that beat them will be more restricted to stay in their current route and the new path chosen by the beaten group may not be reinforced as quickly. I think the restrictiveness of available paths will not be affected that much. There will always be several options to approach your foe.

Also, smaller numbers could choose to fall back to more defensible locations rather than just give up. I do think more could be done to increase the value of defending rather than attacking, but as someone mentioned earlier, vehicle rewards are much better now, so if defending gives you a much better chance to destroy vehicles it makes it much more lucrative than attacking. Destroying 2 MBTs awards more experience now than capping any sized facility.

I really like the idea of adding more strategy into the game by incorporating a more sensible ruleset about supply lines and routes. I think it makes the game more realistic (in a good way).

My stomach! It's in my larynx!





And that is in no way healthy but I don't care 'cause I'm excited.

Unhexed spots are basically completely soulless area's for Air to pass over? More then they are now? You can try flanking but it doesn't seem as significant looking at the map

You've got big patches of land in there that are basically useless at the moment outside of a shortcut once you've progressed, but otherwise useless and it's weird because I can still see current outposts there, but not represented on the hex.

Are these area's going to be used for gathering Resource or something?
Why have such huge unused patches of space?

ya, they could expand on that little mound of rock in the center of the bridges and turn it into a little outpost of some kind.
Twin Bridge pass?

This is my biggest query since beginning to play this awesome game a week or so ago (ya - total noob). Over and over again if you successfully defend a base you get an exultant announcement "You have prevailed etc" and a flashy screen icon to indicate such, but NO XP??

What?? I don't quite get that bit. Can anyone enlighten me as to why defending is NOT rewarded XP-wise?

Thanks in advance...

PS: The proposed changes seem ok to my noob eye. I'm easy....but the no defend XP does grate.

i agree with changing the connections and the worth of certain territories in order to bring about a more controlled battle flow that will keep things interesting but i'm not too sure about taking away the the capture time based on people standing there. i agree the bonus is a bit too much but i feel simply scaling it down a little would suffice. plus more people standing at a capture point means there are less people fighting in the field. even though this is only like 4 or 5 people difference that could be the difference between 5 tanks and 2 tanks go heavy infantry XD.

Modern military doctrine also advises not sending all your troops straight into set up killzones.

Smaller force would not be able to defend against a larger one with this change because base layout forces defenders to have 1:1 ratio at the least to have a chance to hold out for any period of time.

You make it sound like it's difficult to open up your map screen and see with one glance where enemy will go next. Galdrops and sneaky sunderers may surprise you, but armored columns can't.

Perhaps the best suggestion I've seen. +1 to this.

Except that there is literally no reason to bring any of that out of your warpgate when you can spawn them on the frontline. The Tech Plant is the only thing that can affect that at all - and only in case of MBT.

Playing this game makes me feel like SOE's abused housewife.

Some days Higby comes home and he's so nice to me and he brings me a beautiful lattice system and I feel like we can make this relationship work with a little time and patience.

Then the next day Smedley comes home drunk and smacks me in the face with his massive MLG Esports royalty cheque and leaves me crying on the kitchen floor.

Artistic interpretation of your relation with SOE:

I can't believe even after they added in the XP tool tips that say exactly how you are getting XP boosts that people still think you get no XP for defending. Really shows how much lower the IQ is on these forums.

You get XP for defending. You can actually get way loads more XP than an attack depending on how well/long you defend and the size of the battle.

Ever notice how you sometimes get 5-15%+ XP depending on where you are in the map? That's your XP defense bonus. Facilities give an extra 15% XP to everything you do if you are defending them. Towers/bases give 10%, and small outposts give 5%.

This means if you are fighting for an hour in a base you are defending or completely thrwart an attack from happening, you garuntee you make more XP than the attackers ever would from their attack bonus. However if you do a ****** job at defending, or there simply isn't much to defend against, then the attackers (if they win quickly) will get a reasonably easy boost in XP.

You don't get a reward when you defend a base because if there is nothing to defend against, then you have no reason to stick around - head to the next base to attack or move your defense elsewhere. You get XP for actually -defending- ... AKA making kills, resecuring objectives, etc. You don't get XP for waiting on some artifical timer on a base you already own. Also it prevents XP exploits from happening where a point constantly flips for 30 seconds, meaning you get an easy bonus XP just because one infiltrator decided to try and flip a base you clearly already own and there isn't any real force attacking it.

Defense exp bonus is fine, but it's only fine in the battles where you are actually able to fight back instead of being steamrolled.

But in those battles, a little bit of bonus exp isn't really needed to begin with since the amount from kills alone is probably greater than what you'd get from doing something else elsewhere.

The fights that need more defenders are terrible for defender exp, regardless of the xp bonus.