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

You are aware with the new hex-lane system that if say, just as an example, the TR push the Vanu off of Indar and into Amerish, the VS aren't likely to return to Indar until they can push the TR off of Amerish, or push through the NC on Esamir and return via the Esamir-Indar linked gate, right? Granted, this concept kind of relies on the warpgate being a transport hub, instead of a foothold, or less grand in terms of modification, the VS would need a territory adjacent to the Amerish-Indar linked gate on the Amerish side before they can even think of taking anything on Indar.

In a subtle way, locking isn't so necessary so soon, because the number of continents is so low, but only as long as a warpgate can be captured or no longer acts as a foothold that provides valid adjacency.

Oh, and I forgot to add... with just 3 continents, the more populated servers are kind of in a pickle regarding cont locking. I mean... Mattherson regularly sees a pop-locked Indar with heavy fighting on Esamir and some spill over on Amerish. Imagine what happens if one empire is backinto a corner with only access to one continent... the Esamir/Amerish portions will have to sit in a queue simply because they have no access to other continents. This isn't very good for business. I doubt we'll see a real working sense of cont locking, intercontinental lattice, or home continents until we're looking at at least 6 continents, maybe 4 at the very least. One continent to a faction, with the fourth open to all 3 at all times.

A slightly more extreme alternative might be that each empire has a foothold on two of the three current continents, though I fear those with footholds on Indar will throw most of their pops onto Indar, and the remaining empire is stuck with essentially fighting ghosts and shadows.

I'll give it a try, as I like this game. I still think they can make more bang for the buck had they gone the continent locking, Hossin, daily tasks route. Hossin is delayed because they want to work on this system first. This means we're stuck with what we have for the next 4 more months.

I dunno about your server, but on connery with the current hex system Indar would never lock. Maybe at 4am.

They'd be able to do this, lettuce or not.

If they own territory that connects to Allatum, they can capture it, no matter if there's 1 path connecting or 7. If the NC don't defend, it'll be a ghost cap.
If the VS don't want to defend, the TR would push North anyways, no matter if they have 7 paths or 1.

The problem lies elsewhere, and what I think is the answer is marked in bold in the quote.

Dumbing down a game and LIMITING tactical choices is NOT good. Hello Battlefield 3!

I fear this may encourage zergs and narrow down tactical choices - but I'm happy to be wrong.

This ignores the main point - there is still no real point in defending bases. Base design and the XP system still need work. In fact, modifying certs are the best way to modify player behaviour as that, as it is, all that actually matters in the game, currently.

Cut down on vehicle spam? Simply make them worth more certs to kill and people will hunt them more energetically.

See how now spawnkills XP vs Sunderer value has totally eradicated the "leave Sunderer, farm spawning troops" behaviour. Sunderers are now swiftly eradicated.

Double XP for each defensive kill within 100m of small bases and then see how energetically they would be defended. If that doesn't work - triple it. Heck, you'd ensure at least a token defence for each base... and might get some more squad-sized fights going....

This.

My proposal:

(I did NOT put much thought into exact connections between certain regions, more of a conceptual thing)

Well obviously the map and hexsystem stay exactly the same, but some of the connections won't be viable to capture a neighboring region.

• It limits the amount of connections, obviously.
• It gives a much better predictability, where such is useful.
• It still keeps a lot of the freedom offered by the general mapdesign intact.
• It is very easy to implement or even live-test. (why the #?§& not?)

Things to consider:

• How is influence handled?

• • I think it would be okay if the influence from those regions would still play a role, but it could also be done without that.
  • By reducing the length of a connection between 2 regions it can decrease the influence that region has on a neghboring region, while still maintaining counqerability. (There is not example for that on this map. But take the Crown and T.I. Alloys for example: They share 3 edges. Cutting those which are viable down to 1 will decrease the influence on the Crown and therefor make it ahrder and hopefully less probable that people attack the crown after Alloys. It's still possible though.

• There are still a lot of basic gamemechanics, that need to be changed. This is actually even more important than changing the system to whatever it will be. (examples: Defendability of outposts, the Crown, Ghostcapping, etc.)

This design does exactly, what they are trying to achieve with the lattice system, as long as they don't OVERDO it with invalid connections.
And it keeps almost all positive points of the current system.
It's STILL VERY VERY VERY easily implemented.

What do you guys think?


(also posted here for visibility: http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...-illustrated-rant.105491/page-13#post-1458304)

try to control the zerg!

Old System:



New System:


my point of view!

So, I must be reading wrong, because people seem to love this idea - but all I read is:

"We are disappointed that the Zerg in Planetside tends to naturally dissipate after an hour or two, so we want to design a new system that prevents that natural diffusion from occurring. If you form a zerg at your warpgate, we want you to be able it to remain one cohesive group until you hit the enemies warpgate 3 hours later."

Which is why we need more non-atomic facilities where control over the territory ebbs and flows with the tide of battle. Sometimes you'll have control of multiple of the control points (large facilities should always have four or five of various point values), other times you might get pushed back to control of just one area.

Bio-Labs are a bit too microcosm because the capture points are all shoved into a single shoebox sized area. Quartz Ridge is a bit better because the control points are spread out farther. The towers which have three control points with two of them in outlying buildings is about right as well.

Amp Stations and Tech Plants are just poor design with the single capture point.

Plus, we need things like:

- Instead of a single shield generator for the walls at an amp station, there should be separate shield generators for each gate, located at least 50m inside. Ideally, they would turn the lower sections of the walls into wide corridors with an opening into the courtyard plus add a lower level to the towers. Which would give them logical locations to hide shield generators and additional capture points.

- SCU generators are too binary, they need to bring back some sort of nanites-as-a-resource with collectors, generators and storage facilities which can be destroyed to remove the enemy's buffer and impact the rate of vehicle / troop / ammo re-supply. Heroic runs in sundies, bringing nanites in from the next base back to re-supply your forces and keep the fight going. Engineers deploying nanite collectors near spawned sunderers or ammo towers or respawn tubes, etc. Hacking devices to turn them off for 60 or 180 seconds, or blowing them up with C4 and requiring an engineer to repair them.

Wrong, it is designed to bring two zergs (with leadership improvements, they can easily become proper armies) together to fight in a major battle. When one side loses, the other advances but the losing side is able to predict the enemy movement and organize a defense or counter-offensive.

Oh, so twice the zerg fun! Fantastic! The only thing MORE fun than sitting in a zerg is fighting another one! Man, I am looking forward to 90% of my deaths being to teamkills once this comes out!

It'll be the golden age for ODAM!

The whole selling point of PS2 is huge battles. In addition, it will not stop organized outfits from performing special operations, but zergs are the main, frontline armies.

I think you're missing the point - there is still no incentive for defending, nor is there - for the most part - any proper defensible base design. So, what is going to happen is the same boring-*** zerg base-capture see-saw mechanics that we have now.

There are still no effective leadership options,
There is still no good way to find where your faction is when you get on,
There is still no meta-game

You are incentivized to attack, not to defend - unless you hold Eisa; but that is the exception that proves the rule.

Why would this change promote a culture of defense when defending isn't even incentivized in this game? Why would this do anything but promote even larger zergs?

So what about all the wasted space on the continent now? You're forcing a style of game-play, and you're forcing people into bottlenecks and slamming their heads against walls. Why? I have to ask why you don't want the battles that took place on sections of lands that weren't really all that important other than a means to stop an enemy advance? This looks like nothing more than a forced style of game-play based around making people drudge onward in a slow, grinding, tedious slug fest just to capture a base. I'm guess you don't want flanking anymore? You don't want "deep strike" behind enemy lines tactics anymore? You basically just want CoD? Or am I mistaken?

I agree.

Except that once you're spawn camped, there's NO cover to get to the points... Quartz Ridge would be BOSS if some tunnels were added from the spawn room to the vehicle shield generator and north wall. Fights wouldn't end so abruptly / i.e: when the vehicle gen goes down and the zerg floods in...

Agreed.
Large facilities should ALL have 3x 2/2 Capture points (Bio Labs already do, and they're always a good fight)
Imagine if Amp Stations and Tech Plants had 2/2 Capture points with the shield generators and those locations were more defensible... THEN we'd be seeing some awesome battles at the major facilities that might actually last longer than 30mins...
Again, once the shields are down and the zerg floods in and the defenders are spawn-camped it's pretty much a done deal.
The addition of the tunnels from the spawn room however is working out well.

Agreed.
There are so many threads with so many good suggestions for how leadership can be helped in PS2.

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...on-map-and-hex-mouseover.105475/#post-1406331
This. Now. SOE?

Bigger bonuses for continent caps, continent locks, more continents, etc... in time will help with this.
But currently... Agree.

I LIKE LATTICE

that is sad. Zergs have their uses, but to force more battles to become zerg on zerg by restricting routes is just lazy.

Its a stampede. Why does everyone think they are so fun?!?!