link

[Streamline]

Need a link pointing to anything that has been stated about what happens with outnumbered sides and what not. (120 vs 5,1200 vs 50)

[Moleculor]

http://www.planetside-universe.com/articles.php?articleId=33&page=2

Sorta near the bottom.

My question is... what if the empires are equal in numbers, but one or two is dominating over the others.... What then?

[Alias]

You drop your balls, grab a gun, and push 'em back!

PULL IT TOGETHER SCHNIDER!

[simba]

thanks mol! I havent seen that, lotsa information, thats weird couse I thought I had seen everything. ThankYou again:)

[quiet]

As far as losing territory goes the 3 empire system should be sort of self balancing.

The empire that loses the most will have the fewest things to defend so it should have a higher concentration of defenders. And if one empire conquers a vast amount of territory it's defence will be spread thin so the other empires will probably both focus their attacks on it.

Well, at least that's how I think it will work. ;)

[Chanfan]

Good point, Quiet, although continent lock should help to "shorten the front line" that you have to defend.

The other balancing factor is just the three team dynamic. The natural tendency is to gang up on the leader. So, when one group gets out in front, the other two will probably tend to spend more time attacking the leader than each other.

This can happen just by virtue of the fact that the leader owns the most potential targets, as much as by the desire to bring down the leader. If you are in second place, kicking the third place faction might be easier, but it's likely to let the first place faction consolidate and pick apart second and third while they fight. As far as potential targets, if you are on the far right side of the map, and the third place faction is on the far left, with the first place in between - who's the nearest faction to attack?

The big danger for this system is if two factions organize a truce, and cooperate on beating up on the third faction. I could see the third place faction really getting beaten down in this situation - to just their starting point.

There are plenty of things that make this unlikely, however.

Firstly, you have to get two factions cooperating. With each faction being made up of various outfits, and plenty of individuals, each with their own ideas about what's fun in the game, that will be pretty hard to begin with. Trying to get those who log on at different times all getting the same message, instructions, and agreeing with it - yikes.

Then, assuming you do get enough folks to buy in, the two factions actually have to cooperate, work together, and not back stab each other. They presumably have some arrangement about dividing territories, and hopefully no lone wolf outfits break it.

And even if this were to come about, and a faction was driven back to just it's main sanctuary, what then? There's not much for the two allies to do but turn on each other. Unlike real life, there's no reward or incentive for peace - all the fun is in the fighting.

Since you can't destroy a factions ability to fight - they don't go down in numbers, and they can always spawn from the sanctuary - you can be sure they will be waiting for one of the two allies to offer up an alliance to back stab the other, or just waiting until the former allies get to fighting, and then can make their comeback while the former allies are busy. And then - BLOODY VENGEANCE!

But most likely, the three factions will just keep self-balancing by ganging up on the leader.