Outfit bases? How about Outfit space stations instead?

[FortunadoAE]

There's been a lot of discussion about outfit bases, but I think just putting them in space (Spaaaaace!) would solve a lot of the problems.

Outfit stations would be self-contained, with an armory/locker area, access to planetary VR shooting/vehicle ranges, a briefing room, a command room, and of course a drop room. In practice, a lot of outfits/squads would just say "recall to sanc" and then drop on a place, anyway.

Pros:

-You and all your buds have your own place to meet up and hang out.
-Not resource-intensive or land-intensive. Giving everyone a clubhouse on the sanctuary continent isn't realistic. But giving outfits a space station that doesn't even require an exterior model is super-easy.
-Coordinate drops more easily. Everyone gathers in one room and the commanding officer drops the pods.
-No territory concerns. Fighting over bases is fun until A)You're a huge outfit that can't get a base on the home continent that's been locked for three months or B) An outfit pulls out of a fight JUST so they can take back the base and reclaim it as their own.
-You could link them to the orbital strike ability. Tying the strike to an actual piece of outfit-related hardware would be a more effective limit than just a timer (although it'd have a recharge too). Less orbital strike spam. You could also credit the strikes to the outfit instead of the individual who called it down. Prestige and infamy to the outfit with every strike!

Cons:

-Vehicle coordination is harder. Sanctuary is great for loading up a Gal, stations wouldn't be. Dropping on a forward base or sanc is a solution of sorts. An orbital dropping Galaxy is another one (That'd be cool to see!)
-Sanctuary would be a bit emptier than normal as outfit populations rose.
-You wouldn't be able to fight over them. Yeah, you could put in a feature to do it, but it would never be pretty.
-It'd be hard to develop a system for inviting/allowing guests aboard.

If you limited them to a certain number per empire, they'd also have the side effect of a natural population control for outfits. But that's kind of a complex afterthought.

What do you guys think?

[DviddLeff]

Hmm, I like the idea of having a place to hang out and coordinate operations, but it would be better to have it in the rest of the game world.

Sure having instanced stations would be easier to fit into the game without affecting anything else, but then that reduces the usefulness of having it in the first place.

[Baneblade]

So you want a treehouse that Billy The Bully is not allowed to siege with paintball guns, because your dad knows a really mean lawyer.

[FortunadoAE]

No, I want an outfit bases system that doesn't have a skewed incentive system.

There's no way to set up in-world outfit bases that doesn't result in a conflict between outfit incentives and empire incentives.

As it is, there's only an empire incentive to capture bases. It's simple: Turn the base from red to blue. Throw in outfit ownership and there's suddenly conflicting incentives, which isn't good for anybody.

Moving it into space is a simple abstraction which solves the incentive problem. It also potentially solves the orbital strike issue.

It's not a "carebear" sentiment, either. You should be fighting over *every* base that belongs to your empire like it's your home base. Because it is.

[Tikuto]

War Barges that station in-orbit and in-planet. Moving from place to place at will and providing Outfits with team-based abilities.

Sorry I haven't read the thread. Will do next time I come here. :p :lol:

[FortunadoAE]

War Barges that station in-orbit and in-planet. Moving from place to place at will and providing Outfits with team-based abilities.

Sorry I haven't read the thread. Will do next time I come here. :p :lol:

It's a long thread!

I do like the idea of "moving" the base. I think with a space station you'd have to synchronize orbit to a continent before you got the benefits. That way there's more of a tactical element to it.

I played a few years ago and I really hated the orbital strikes. I never had the command to use them, and every time I got killed by them it just felt completely unimpressed. It was just something to deal with, like lag or disconnects.

[Baneblade]

I still think outfit air cruisers is the best way to have outfit bases that dont really impact the empire with conflicts of interest, yet still have them be vulnerable, relevant, and inclusive.

[Goku]

I thought SOE at one point where planning to implement outfit bases. The outfit owner could equip the base with better weaponry, better pain fields, and some other cool perks. This could be a good way to use outfits points, while also allowing that outfit to advertise itself more.

I always liked the idea of a space station being implemented too. Though I would prefer to fight in them. Could have more to do with OSes if your empire owns one less timer or being able to fire the OS on certain conts or something.

[Grimster]

I am bit unsure regarding space stations. Assuming that is something you would fight over it could be really cool if it for example could help control whether or not you can call down a OS.

At the same time I believe it could potentially split up the forces and reduce the large battles that I believe the majority of us love with this game. In my opinion Core Combat with its caves also contributed with this, if I can call it drawback.

So space stations would be cool if done right but it could also potentially hurt the population on the continents.

[FortunadoAE]

Grimster, you're completely right. I think the developers ignored population control (not just size but location) issues and that hurt the game.

Without fighting over them, they're an alternative to Sanc, and really only hurt Sanc pops. When you add fighting, it starts to threaten the actual game pops.

There's probably ways around this, though, if they really wanted to make them "fightable." Perhaps they could be an instance of sort only available in off-hours, and only able to be "challenged" every day or so. An outfit could do a 12v12 against another outfit to try and take their station. Could be interesting.

[Sifer2]

I posted something similar in another thread. Making it an instanced station or cruiser in space would be the easiest way to implement it. Without it getting in the way of the ground conflict.

Since you do not want outfit ground bases. It will only lead to trouble with people on your own faction wanting your base an so trying to make you lose it somehow like intentionally causing you friendly fire. An there will be whiners that demand their base only be attacked at certain hours of day.

I like the idea of it being a cruiser that you could move to orbit above a certain continent providing drop pod spawn an oribital strike support. I'm trying to think of a good system of how to make it vulnerable though. You don't want it to be all the time or Outfits will be recalling home to defend their ship all the time instead of helping the ground war.

[Koopak]

I like this idea without the vulnerability, like it was said it drains to much of the population, if we were to use a vulnerable base you would want to limit to a "clan match" of sorts and if you don't wanna do the "get together and find a good time to challenge eachother" route then you could have a system of choosing when the station is vulnerable.

Baring that the Orbital Strike effect would be nice, having to move the station and sinc its orbit could take hours, and the station itself would have only one orbital battery allowing a single strike every few minuets, and this battery could be determined by any number of things, the easiest would be an outfit population cap, say you get 100 members (not saying that's a good number just hypothetical here) then you get OS capability.

A better idea would be the points and allow you to buy upgrades to your base (IE the terminals necessary to outfit yerself there rather than at the sanctuary) and OR purely aesthetic things, like potted plants...lol

[Duffman]

no outfit crap please

thx

[Raymac]

no outfit crap please

thx

Yeah, why would a game support an organized community? :rolleyes:

[krnasaur]

Yes, do it like the City of Villains system, where you can use outfit points to upgrade the base and make it super sexier.

To solve the vech issue, you could have a "loading bay" a large area with your own Vbay and AVbay to load up your armor

[FortunadoAE]

I posted something similar in another thread. Making it an instanced station or cruiser in space would be the easiest way to implement it. Without it getting in the way of the ground conflict.

Since you do not want outfit ground bases. It will only lead to trouble with people on your own faction wanting your base an so trying to make you lose it somehow like intentionally causing you friendly fire. An there will be whiners that demand their base only be attacked at certain hours of day.

I like the idea of it being a cruiser that you could move to orbit above a certain continent providing drop pod spawn an oribital strike support. I'm trying to think of a good system of how to make it vulnerable though. You don't want it to be all the time or Outfits will be recalling home to defend their ship all the time instead of helping the ground war.

Good idea. A space-based ship would have all the same benefits, but be easier to justify moving around. Also probably has more cool factor.

There's this old computer game called Wulfram II that had a parallel orbiting capital ship combat system. The rules to move around the ships were kept extremely simple. It'd work something like this for PS:

You're attacking Hossin. Your outfit moves in their ship and you have drop support. You'd also have orbital strike support, cargo drops, and vehicle drops depending on your upgrades.

Another outfit on the enemy side is defending Hossin. They move in their ship. The ships engage in battle (all automatic, remember they don't even have external models, although maybe you could see them really tiny up in the sky). Neither ship loses HP as they duke it out.

HP loss only happens when yet another ship moves in. This time it's a friendly outfit. The enemy ship starts losing HP slowly, and has to pull out or, in about 20 minutes, it'll be destroyed. Move in another ship to bring that number down to 15, or 10... well, you get the idea. The limit could be four or five, which puts a limiter on the number of orbital strikes you can ever face during a battle.

Destruction would be pretty rare, but if you put the right amount of pressure on an outfit that wasn't paying enough attention, you could pull it off. And it'd be humiliating!

Wulfram II is super fun (and super old) and worth checking out, by the way. The system's a little bit complicated, but that's what commanders are for, right?

[otomotopia]

My question is, do we need separate outfit facilities?

If we do, do they have to be inaccessible to the public?

If they do, can't we just have them all in the same place?

[FortunadoAE]

My question is, do we need separate outfit facilities?

If we do, do they have to be inaccessible to the public?

If they do, can't we just have them all in the same place?

Yes, absolutely.

MMOs thrive due to game mechanics and popular appeal, yes, but the social factor is what really keeps people coming back.

In Planetside, that's outfits. Get people joining outfits and making friends, and you suddenly have a glue to hold the entire game together.

Sure, WoW doesn't have guild halls or anything, but they do have private instances where it's *just* the guild. Guilds will often gather in a safe place in the instance to discuss strategy and such. Planetside has a completey shared, uninstanced world, with the only "safe" areas being Sanctuary continents.

The problem with Sanc isn't so much that it's full of inane people who will disrupt and grief any outfit gathering, but rather that it's so far away from the battle. WoW players can huddle in an instance, then run right into the next room to fight.

Outfit ships would provide that same feel, and provide it perfectly. Maybe it takes 15 minutes to move the ship to a new continent. That's 15 minutes to get everyone on the ship, get organized, get a plan together, get the right armor and loadouts, and then do a HART-style drop when it's in position.

It actually works a lot like HART, but with these improvements:

-Instead of an arbitrary world timer, the outfits determine the timing.

-Outfits also determine where soldiers can drop, in a more organic way than HART (and instant action).

-Obviously the drop-pod facilities on a ship would be open to use by anyone on the empire, in HART-like fashion.

-When you wanted to use the drop-pod system, you'd be able to click on ship names and see the associated outfit. There weren't a lot of ways for outfits to "advertise" to solo players in PS. If one outfit is always in the thick of it with a great drop point, players will start to remember that name. Crediting orbital strike kills to an outfit instead of a player is another way to do this.

Perhaps most importantly, it shifts a lot of the strategic complexity of the game to outfit commanders, instead of newbies looking for a place to fight. HART was confusing. There were dozens of places to click and get lost. With this system, there'd be ships grouped by continent. "Oh, there's five ships on Esamir." You click to get the map of Esamir, then you pick a ship off the map to drop from. You can get a quick idea of where the action is by where the ships are clustered.

[Hamma]

no outfit crap please

thx

Yea agreed. No guns either imo.

:confused: