Why Are Logistics Being Eradicated Instead Of Embraced?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by MrJengles, May 28, 2014.

  1. Alexanor

    I fully agree with the OP in this thread.
  2. Tuco

    Persistant objects, not forcing the player to walk/drive long distances.
  3. vsae

    Pretty much this is all what I wanted to add.
    • Up x 3
  4. Admiralty

    I don't know what's going on on Connery right now, but they need to make it so that entire outfits can't just redeploy into a base from the other side of the continent. Another major killer of good fights are 50/50 populations within a hex suddenly reaching 75/25 because of the spawn system.

    Gal drops, mass sunderer deploys are fine - that's fair and is something you can defend against. But, when it's quicker to just press a button and wait 10 seconds than to hop in to a Galaxy, something is wrong here.

    They should only allow redeploys into a base up till 50/50 until which you can only directly spawn into a hex through Sunderers or spawn beacons.
    • Up x 1
  5. vilehydra

    The first major blow to logistics was back when they made sunderers spawnable everywhere. It completely negated a map dynamic by allowing players to pull mission critical vehicles ANYWHERE instead of forcing a minimum deployment time/risk.

    It is my belief that there are two ways of reducing the effectiveness of zergs on the map.
    1) incur an operating cost for all units (infantry/vehicles/air)
    2) create explicit (hard coded resource lines) or implicit (staging/resupply points) supply lines.

    Going over option one-(in short, its late here)
    Every bullet costs a resource, each empire has a finite amount of resources at each base that somehow resupplies over time (possibly player drive, possibly automated). When fighting at (defensively) you are draining the resources from that base. Just respawned? It drains ___ empire infantry resources from that base. After running out of resources players are spawned at decreased combat effectiveness ( IE only 2 clips instead of 4, medigun heals slower, etc.,.). If attacking the resources are carried by the sundy and MUST be resupplied (possibly by another resupply sundy).
    For tanks. Ammo towers are tied directly to the bases resource pool. Spawning tanks/sundies incurs a vehicle cost from the base
    Same goes for aircraft


    Option 2- (I'll go with implicit logistic points)
    reduce the number of ammo towers, airpad resupply pads, vehicle spawns, make infantry less strategically mobile. The first 3 create scarcity, which makes certain bases more important. Back a while ago the crown was the only base that could spawn a sunderer for a few territories. This made it critical for any ground push towards any of the outlying facilities. Same goes for scarred mesa skydock, where the faction to the east held an advantage because they held the closest sunderer spawn whereas the western faction had to drive all the way across a vulnerable bridge. They created a sunderer spawn right under scarred mesa which completely destroyed the strategic diversity.

    By reducing air supply points (I'd also remove NARS from air but that is asking for way too much) you force air to resupply at certain points.

    Both of these mean that you create staging points (the crown for example) that have inherent strategic values. Some of these points are going to be less defensible which means they can be raided and disrupted. Which means that the air zerg who was constantly sending ships to a specific base to resupply, a smaller force can reduce the overall combat effectiveness of a larger force by raiding these resupplying ships. This means that it becomes much more than a numbers game because a smart small squad can whittle down a dumb platoon.

    Making infantry less strategically mobile is a controversial issue, but it's not really fair to let infantry be strategically versatile while limiting all the other aspects.

    Here's my idea on how to do to it:
    Remove hotspots, instead create 'first response' spawns basically allowing up to 12 players to spawn at any base on the same continent that is under attack by at least an enemy squad. As soon as 12 players friendlies occupy the territory (not necessarily from the first response spawn) the first response is disabled. This is to mitigate ghost caps or enemy raids.

    Restrict redeploys to the nearest lattice link base and warpgate, not linked by lattice? can't redeploy there.
    When in the warpgate the player can redeploy to any friendly linked territory, but they can only do this once per 15 minutes.
    Allow galaxy and sunderer pilots to designate themselves as ferries and designate a destination. They get a reward for every troop they drop off at the designated point. The designated point is displayed above the galaxy/sunderer.

    This means that all aspects of combined arms have a limiting deployment factor which adds strategic depth to the map. Zergs get dethroned because they can be outmanuevred. The system would still have problems but it would be a significant step up from now.
    • Up x 6
  6. Dethfield


    I think the worst part of this is that the vast, VAST majority of new cosmetics are just so completely ugly and unappealing. Many of the camos that have been released in the last 5 months or so i have never seen a single person wear. Many of the new helmets are either ugly, look almost non-functional (how does he see through that solid steel plate on his face?), or both. If their goal was to maximize their profit on these then they are just flat out doing it wrong.

    The various "T-Ray paintjobs" that have been applied to the various vehicles in the game certainly doesnt help either.
    • Up x 1
  7. TriumphantJelly

    Only spawn at:
    WG
    Sunderers (anywhere?)*
    Galaxies (squad)
    Biolabs/Techplants/Ampstations

    Done.
    *If so, maybe prevent sundies from being pulled at any vehicle terminal.
  8. DrPapaPenguin

    The logistics would imply one of two things : they would either be reliant on player co-operation, and we all know what a bag of cats that can be, or they would make the individual experience long, arduous and boring, so SOE tries to dispense with logistics wherever they can, and frankly, I'm kind of for that. With the tiny amount of time that I have to play I want to fight, not drive towards a fight, be ambushed and have all that time wasted.
    • Up x 2
  9. Tuco

    None of your ideas do anything to stop zergfits from zerging the way they zerg best.

    In a MMOFPS you can't stop zergfits from zerging the way they zerg best, the only thing you can do is give the underpopped side the tools to deal with pop imbalances: PS1 AMS, PS1 mines, PS1 spitfires, PS1 motion detectors.
    • Up x 1
  10. eldarfalcongravtank

    a solid start would be to remove these from the game:
    /suicide
    instant action
    redeploy
    squad deploy

    because if you are somewhere in the open or on the wrong side of the continent, YOU SHOULD GET A FREAKING TRANSPORT OR SOMEONE TO PICK YOU UP AND GO TO THE BATTLE WITHOUT TELEPORTING!!
  11. MonnyMoony

    How about if Ammo supply Sundies couldn't resupply unlimited ammo.

    If they had a limited stock which required them to return to the nearest friendly base to resupply - that would increase logistics and perhaps also limit the size/power of vehicle zergs.

    They could use the existing mechanic of going to ammo supply towers - but as well as resupplying the sundies own weapons - the ammo tower would also resupply the sundies ammo stockpile.

    This would also make cutting off a zerg rewarding. If you can flank the zerg and stop the ammo sundie getting back to a friendly ammo tower to resupply - the vehicle zerg would eventually run out of ammo.

    Perhaps remove ammo towers from smaller bases too - making the resupply sundie take a more important role. It may also stop vehicles spamming/faming HEAT willy nilly at small bases. If there is no resupply sundie - and they can't resupply at the small base - it may make them conserve ammo a bit better (or have to break off from the zerg to go back to the nearest large base to resupply). Again this would give an opportunity for defenders to flank the zerg and prevent resupply.

    A similar principle could apply to engineers ammo packs, repair tool and medic heal gun. Give them a large inventory - but not unlimited. This would prevent isolated engineer, medic, max combos from gaining a foothold and holding out indefinitely.
    • Up x 2
  12. Verenz


    I do not think it was the right decision, it is just another attempt to appeal to a wider audience. I don't want more deathmatch - I have patience (though me and my few friends would love the valkyrie :p), I want planetary conquest.

    It frustrates me that the game is trying to CODify itself (although in this case SOE are only experimenting I believe). Yeah COD is popular but it's still terrible and has a player base who want a new game every year.

    PS2 has literally NO COMPETITION if it chooses to try to be the large scale faction war that it should be. I really don't want it to try to copy BF/COD/HALO/etc, I did not buy them for a reason I gave you my ~£150 (no regrets, I have easily got about 15 games of play time out of it) and what I want is basically PS1 with better graphics (even though I have never played PS1 it sounds awesome).
    • Up x 5
  13. Verenz

    I don't like redeploy either but I would still keep an ability to quickly teleport back to the nearest spawn only.

    What I would love is if there were like NPC Galaxies (pilots I mean) constantly picking people up at the warpgate and flying to fights before kicking out the passengers. That would give air another goal, it would favour shorter reinforce timers the closer you were pushed to the WG.... Actually that sounds so cool I am going to go post it in ideas/suggestions :p.
  14. Sandpants

    I didnt read anything else.

    I want to agree with this.

    But the reality is that the more complicated it is to get into a game the less newer players will be interested and more older players get frustrated with newer player incompetence, as successful logistics would almost entirely rely on group cohesion. Without understanding the intricate mechanics of logistics a lot of groups would simply fail and fall apart.

    Without a way to circumvent logistics, players will just drop even trying to play.

    Part of current ingame logistics is spawn. Don't you get frustrated when you get wiped clean off the playable area as soon as you are in open space? Especially considering that the majority of the playable area in this game IS open space. Literally there is just not enough cover. So you spawn, and regardless of how long you stay alive, you might not do anything productive, get killed, and you're back on the spawn screen for the next 10s. Your next involvement in the fight will depend on the closest sunderer and/or beacon location.

    To circumvent this you have medics.

    Any other logistical additions would have to follow similar foundation.


    But I wouldn't vouch for it. EvE requires logistics. And I can tell from personal experience it can be annoying as hell when people cannot commit to a fight because their ships are 20 solar systems away cos they chose a major trade hub as their staging station in high security space far away from the fight due to personal convenience. Right? You forget how there is literally maybe 1 faction per server which has strong interwoven groups? And the rest on the server are all for themselves or smaller knit groups?

    AKA be careful what you wish for. People here are asking for removal of Redeploy,suicide, instant action.
    All you will get from doing that is even further one-sided fights. Currently organization and numbers matter A LOT on the direction of the fight. Remove ways for random reinforcements and you will just kill anything that's left of this game. People will be able to commit to only select fights (even less options than now with lattice links) due to it being completely impractical to fight an enemy with better logistical links. And then players will desire to fight in even fewer fights, because only so many will have stable allied logistics. So 1-2 fights per continent is and more cat/mouse and the infamous ghost capping.

    I DO bail from a fight when it gets even slightly uneven. You can't rely on any randoms in this game and so I'm not wasting time having my face rubbed into the ground 20 times, or sitting in the spawn room for 3 minutes.
    Remove these freedom options and force me back into the WG and it's just another reason for me to finally uninstall this game.

    Logistics is fancy word and it sounds nice, but be reasonable and stop being selfish. This game is barely standing on it's feet. Don't kick it in the kneecaps.
  15. FieldMarshall

    Because Higby is in charge.

    If this is your first experience with SOE, check out their track record and how they usually run things.
    SWG and trials of Obi-Wan may be a particularly interesting read.

    Money money money. Now. Next game pls. Repeat until rich.
    • Up x 1
  16. Kaktwox

    All logistics in this game were lost when they brought in the lattice system. Players are anticipating a revamped resource system to be the answer to a lot of the games problems, but sadly it won't be since you will still need to follow the zerg lanes.
  17. BaronX13

    Personally I'd be happy just for a simple solution. I usually just say logistics would mean more if everything on the map was the same, lattice links and all, but players can only spawn at "Main Facilities/Bases". Basically players can only spawn at Biolabs, Techplants, and Amp stations. This would allow more "room" between battles for true vehicular gameplay as well as reinforce squad gameplay as a team will still have to cap the small bases on a lattice line with their only spawn being their Sunderer. This would also bring some much needed importance to Galaxy transport again.
  18. UberBonisseur

    Hyperbole, we're not asking people to spend hours warping system from system, only to add the necessary minute of driving to create interesting strategic gameplay
  19. that_darn_lurker


    Exactly this. Most problems in PS2 can be attributed to SOE not realizing or exploiting the correlation between XP and player behavior. Lattice, and now this change, would have been completely unnecessary if SOE just rewarded our taxi drivers with XP. I hope SOE and other development shops take note of this colossal Game-Design 101 blunder and never repeat it again. Its probably too late for PS2 on the PC (its probably seen its best days), but there's still hope for the PS4 if SOE pulls its head out of its butt in time.
    • Up x 2
  20. Gearlock

    Will the new resource revamp with the introduction of the power system function like planetside 1 did?

    If anyone is unaware, there was a CRITICAL game mechanic surrounding powering bases.

    Every respawn of a player and every vehicle spawned drained a small amount of power from the base. The base's power is finite, and can only be replenished by driving a special vehicle (called an ANT) to a warpgate (there were 3 warpgates on each continent) to power it up, then to the base to give the power to the base. 1 ANT would not fill up a base either. Took a few.

    That ANT could also be loaded into a Galaxy (as well as other small vehicles which was a super cool feature imo).

    If the base ran out of power, you could no longer spawn there, leaving the base ripe for the picking. AMS vehicles could not spawn Max Suits, and you lost access to all vehicle terms. Against a large zerg, this was assuredly a huge jump in challenge to keep your base. And, at the end of the day, at some point, you had to get power there eventually.

    ANT runs were awesome. Draining a base of power and denying ANTS from getting in, was awesome. Pedal to the medal, flooring it in an ANT through a f*#k fest and barely making it into your base in your smoking, smoldering, nearly destroyed ANT, was AWESOME.

    Playing smart and sending Armor to the nearest warpgate, knowing that where ANTS were going to fuel up, was AWESOME.
    Blowing up that Armor force, freeing your ANTs from captivity, was AWESOME.

    But then again there were a lot of amazing things in PS1 that are no longer with us.

    I think the game is quite watered down in gameplay, but far more robust in character/equipment options.

    Unfortunately character options go to the wayside when gameplay is lacking.
    • Up x 3