What happened to these "long battles" we were promised.

Hopefully the new lattice system will increase battle times.

Well, nothing is preventing anyone from thinking a few steps forwards.
I regularly reach bases to defend and my little team has to unhack turrets, fix generators, and if the attackers are good they'll even blow the SCU up leaving only satellites to spawn from.
As such the attackers think and act ahead- even more reason for the defenders to do so as well as the first team to arrive is the one that has ground to lose and time to spare.

Bleeding out a platoon is long and painful, but in the end it's pretty fun when it succeeds, even if it takes 2-3 bases of falling back to finally get it right.

If it is anything like PS1, we're gonna have long battles even BETWEEN bases not just in them/around them

I get bored and just log off if I dont find any meatgrinders...

I actually have more fun fighting battles than trying to win terrain

Defense is not rewarding. You get a counter +1 for defending, but if you're not getting kills against the zerg, there's no reason to respawn and spend time defending when you can fall back or go back to the warp gate, then go back and recap it later.

I actually prefer defending, but I recognize that I could be gaining certs faster doing almost anything else, particularly when I'm alone against a squad.

The zerg doesn't want long battles they want to roll base's in 5 minutes in a game of whack - a - mole base exchange

In BF3 terrain and cover was fully destructible, meaning a squad of tanks could level a base and then just drive onto the flag. I only wish planetside were that cool.

I still remember that battle.

You can't stop the Zerg. Especially if your Zerg is avoiding the enemy Zerg, and its only a handful of you defending a base against 20 spamming tanks, ESFs and Libs, and 20 spawn camping shotgun toters who leave the flag to cap slowly at 0/6 to farm you if you're even dumb enough to try.

How long do you want them?

While they may not be the day long battles you want I would still consider a 3 hour siege of a Biolab a pretty long fight, and the moment when you break through, excellent.

Umm, what part of beta did you play? The beta I remember had battles lasting at most 10 minutes. The system that is in place now the community fought for.

As for the OP, I think the system we have now is just fine. 2 to 3 hours is probably the max time that people are able to stomach being in the same place before trying some other tactic. What would need to change at this point would require a change in the community. There is currently no incentive to have long battles (something else we've been asking to change) as you get the same exp no matter if it takes 2 hours or 10 minutes for the territory.

It is not that bases should be easier to take but I would go out on a limb and saying that trying to win a loosing fight is impossible with that whole Tug O War.

Now the old capture system of Hack and wait the defenders had one simple task to prevent bas capturing . Retake and hack the CC before the timer runs out. This could be done as soon as the hack on the base was made or at the last remaining minute.

With the tug of war the closer an empire gets to capturing a base the harder it is for the defenders to re-secure it as now the defenders will need to hole the control point for much longer. So if an attack is going well then they can simply move on to the next target without having to worry about a last minuet re-secure. Cause if the defenders do manage to take enough control points to start sending the capture system towards their way they still have all the time to retake and send it back to their side instead of having to start all over again.

Long battles happen all of the time. While leading my platoon today we had nothing but back and forth battles for about 7 hours.

We started during the alert and had a back/forth against the TR at Scarred Mesa Skydock. After holding out against waves of infantry and Liberators, we pushed forward to Redridge Communications. For the next half hour we held out against the platoon from before, killing sunderers and tanks while holding off infantry. Eventually more platoons came on both sides and we had a push/pull between Redridge, Spec Ops, and Lost End for another hour.

The alert ended and we were cut off, so we retreated to Regent Rock Garrison where we held off a bunch of TR assaults from all directions. They were also assaulting Paris Amp Station. After holding out for about 30 minutes we pushed forward and grabbed XenuTech Labs to cut off the TR. Then they retreated to Vanu Archives and we assaulted them with multiple platoons. We weren't getting anywhere, so we let the VS attack the Archives while we retook XenuTech Labs. For the next 2 hours we fought against VS tank pushes and tried our hand at taking Crossroads watchtower.

Pretty much what is shown below (crappy visual, better than nothing):



So yeah, it happens. You just need a platoon that doesn't just zerg or go along with the zerg. It's a sandbox game, if you want back/forth battles, you make them.

its funny that i see people here saying they have been in battles lasting "two or three hours" and consider that a "long battle"

i remember in ps1 some battles lasting days or even more - like fighting at tore/leza area for 6+ hours then logging and coming back later and its still going

hopefully the new lattice system will help with that - i cant wait

I don't know what you are talking about, I played ps1 extensively, and have been doing online FPS games since Doom, and ps1's anemic pace, and various bad development decisions stand in stark contrast to this game. In this game, you can have long battles, but just like on many historical battlefields, it can be in one place, or it can be moving all over the place. Both happen in this game, and the OP got what he was promised.

lets hope so, but i have my doubts from what i seen, its to corridor like

unfortunately once its updated i doubt they will roll it back if it does not work.. its very risky in my opinion.. but we see

Old tech plants before the gens were outside, we had a fight at Mao on Waterson that lasted about a day. I was there off and on for more than 12 hours myself. Most of the day less than 2 NC platoons held that plant from an (at the time) higher pop TR. The only time when I was there that we almost lost it was to an across the continent VS push; but they lost most there forces to a crown fight.
There was a fight over Eisa earlier that same week that got a write up on reddit. Higby even posted some stats from the fight. Soon after Tech plant changes (I.e. defense nerfs) were announced.

Thing is I was at this fight, none (or so few it had no effect) of the TR who attacked used any strategy. Sundy after sundy parked in the exact same place where one had just died. Person after person would run through those same two back doors to die again and again. Only about once a half hour or so would less that half a squad of light assaults jump over the shield doors. Usually only one LA and often that LA would start the shield disable or flip the point before he was noticed.
The VS almost took the base with a big LA push, but didn't have the force to push the back doors as a diversion or to keep the push up, or they would have taken it.

The NC only had about two platoons worth holding the base most of the time I was playing. During lulls in the battle the about half platoon I was in that day would push out to the (then) TR warp to draw them into another fight. (And for those who'll cry scat max, there were very few, engis and medics and HA's were more effective at Techs)

So many cried for changes though, there was post after post saying "Tech plants untakeable", "nerf techs", "tech-plants slaughter-fests" ect. Anyone bringing up Light assault pushes, shield beakers, or any other strategy than running thought the back door was ignored or flat out mocked. They wanted less defensible tech plants, well they got them; and everyone else went to the crown or a bio lab. (I do think changes were needed, just not the ones they chose)

Defense hasn't been very well supported in this game. Vanu Archives and Scarred Mesa Skydock aren't really defensible per se, they are just hard to take without equal forces to the defenders do to poor access to the base in general. This most obvious at Vanu Arc when you look at how hard it is for defenders to hold the C point there. These bases aren't defendable so much as they are slow losses.

If both forces are equal (in number and coordination) the defender will loose. That is the case at every base currently except the Crown and maybe bio-labs; and they're about to change The Crown.

I don't think the "Lattice" will fix that. And, until they fix Defense the games strategy options will suffer.

I've been getting some reasonably long fights on Ceres VS, where we're holding a biolab (usually allatum) and keep enemies (at platoon+ detected) out for a good few hours. Trouble with that is, guys on orders chat start moaning because we're losing the rest of our territory since we're outnumbered on the continent.

This is surely part of the problem. Maybe the main cause: as it is today Planetside 2 is such that players are punished if the engage long-lasting battles. On Miller we use to say "Take the Crown, lose the continent".
I don't know if the Lattice Hex system will fix this, but I hope so.

TR on Briggs held Crown for about four days under constant fire a few weeks ago. (at least I think we did, every time I logged in during that time we had Crown and I stayed there till I logged off)