Continent shape, geography, barriers and (mental) influence on territory held.

[Figment]

So we've seen Indar. Sooner or later we'll be seeing some other continents. So far most of us seem to be under the impression a T-split will occur on Indar, mostly due to the permanent sanctuary warpgates. I think enough has been said about that particular split.


However, what we've not really discussed is the influence of geography and base layout on the map division.

If you look at Indar, the first thing you notice is that it's one almost square landmass. This makes us as a symmetry and pattern seeking species already biased to cutting it up in equal shares. Another thing I think we need to keep in mind is that we, as humans, also like "nice borders". Hence if we divide something in pieces, we like that border to be smooth and have some sort of aesthetic appeal. Such "perfection" of border seems to generate a protective illusion of safety perhaps: the border is visualy complete and uninterrupted.


With the more recent knowledge gained regarding Indar, the T-split seems to be further encouraged by the continent having multiple "climate" zones that create more "natural" boundaries and zones exactly along the edges of the "T". The barrier can be physical and literally block you from passing, but can also be mental and self-imposed. Either through intimidation or clear separation. Typically such geographical features form mental barriers and territorial barriers as it indicates a crossing into someone else's territory.

More or less how a river or mountainrange says "this is the border", but similar mental barriers ("their side, our side") are formed by more artificial features like walls, fences, hedges, highways and railroads. Sometimes you have buffer zones, neutral territory or conflict zones as well. A canyon or open road can also create a "natural path of expansion".

Now, with PS1 it was quite easy to predict how a sequence of bases would fall due to the lattice and the lack of imagination of some people to use other lattices. Typically there were clusters of bases that would be grouped together mentally. As such, bases, towers and outposts can also be mentally grouped together as part of the same piece of territory, or as border markers.

Typically groupings were made by relative distance, but other groupings had again something to do with geography or otherwise: islands, in-crater, out-of-crater, lattice links and of course, the biggest grouping of all: continents.

In PS1 then the most noticable mental borders to say "this territory is yours and this is ours" were the warpgates themselves and entire continents were assigned to factions (home continents) or considered "neutral/free for all". On any continent itself, the borders were vague and nobody would be hesitant to move into someone elses territory once the initial barrier was passed.


So the questions I'm posing now are:

How can you design continents such that the quantity of terrain held by an empire fluctuates a lot?
What are the influences of hexagon formations, patterns and distributions?
How can you influence mental boundaries?
What is the treshold for a player to cross such boundaries?
How can you create continents such that the mental and physical control a foothold provides over nearby hexes is reduced and makes those hexes more likely to be taken?


If you have any other comments on mental and physical distribution of territory, let's hear it. :)

[Aractain]

You sounds very VS right now...

But anyway Im sure we will find a place like Amerish from the PS1 that is Home and we will keep it! Forever!

There seemed to be a large peice in the top right that wasn't part of the hex grid so is this just no mans land? (turn back warning area)


Also I don't remember CR5s going "Good job, we took the base!. I think thats all we need. Just stay here guys! We good."

[JimmyOmaha]

Resource greed, and denying them to your enemies will motivate armies to break those natural borders and want for symmetry.

I just fear reinforcements will become to great near the footholds that provide you with all the terminals and protection.

[Figment]

@Aractain:
Yeah, non-hex territory is probably no-man's land, though I'd presume mentally a part of whatever hexes are adjecent. Especially if they lay behind a foothold, they're probably considered part of enemy territory. I mean, fighting up to a foothold is one thing, beyond a foothold and surrounding a foothold is another entirely! Remote locations often. Think of how the battle would often ignore the south-south-west side of Esamir (Kvasir - Ran - Gjallar - Ymir).

This raises another point though: I would presume that these are the "out of bounds" areas. Though if you ask yourself if this design element encourages or breaks boundaries, then I'd say it clearly encourages them and discourages lateral thinking and unsuspected maneuvres. Not only as it literally is a boundary, but also because it forces you to travel through areas with other forms of boundaries or other territorial ownership.


@Jimmy:
Resource greed and need might be one type of motivator, certainly. But like missions, these may be only temporary incentives and they're still going to be considered "the enemy's resources".

And as you indicate, there's the logistical (relative distance) issue. So anything one can do about that by mere map design?



In general, I'm thinking of changing the shape of a continent, using physical barriers around a sanctuary (mountains, rivers, putting them on islands and have them further removed from hexes of the continental landmass), funnelling, creating gaps, multiple paths and "islands" in the hex grid (for instance, a section of hexgrids can be surrounded by swamp on several sides without grids, making it disconnected from the rest and more neutral), etc.

As distance plays a big role, continent/island/continent headland's size may also be an issue.

Furthermore, you could also change how a foothold works, imagine for instance if it can be captured or turned neutral (into BWG) by taking the surrounding terrain. You could even have multiple footholds on a continent as a sort of portal for moving troops from one side of a continent to the other, in doing so connecting different parts of the continent through these portal links.

[megamold]

You sounds very VS right now...

But anyway Im sure we will find a place like Amerish from the PS1 that is Home and we will keep it! Forever!

There seemed to be a large peice in the top right that wasn't part of the hex grid so is this just no mans land? (turn back warning area)


Also I don't remember CR5s going "Good job, we took the base!. I think thats all we need. Just stay here guys! We good."

i'm not gonna get into the whole mental watchamacallit discussion, but i do think they said the out of bounds area was to keep people away from flying over the ocean. so i think we are more "limited" by the shoreline than the hex grind on land.

[Landtank]

My want and undeniable need to spread freedom and liberty across Auraxis will drive me to push all non NC forces off of the continent!

But yeah, I see what you are saying. I honestly don't know what to think with this square continent, it's not like any total war game I've even played so all my strategies are iffy at best. I think it will really depend on just zerging out, taking what you can and then going for the next big base along the path honestly. I can see splitting the VS in two as a viable strategy.

I would like to see a more realistic shape for the other two continents, I agree. I don't know about having no mans land, I don't see it encouraging battles there but doing the opposite. If you give nothing to fight over then you probably won't have any battles there, that's how I see it. But I could be wrong. Islands located offshore with artillery batteries would be cool though, but that's for another discussion :P

[Stardouser]

I'm beginning to wonder if the size of the continents is going to prevent there from being any land behind the lines. It seems like they are small enough that you can have a battle going on in every hex, so long as someone can zip a galaxy past the battle in another hex.

What good does it do, for example, to send a feint team to attack one area when you really want to attack another, if every hex in the map has an active battle? Granted, the landscape might prevent you from taking a tank column everywhere easily, but that's about it.

[Figment]

Timers are also an issue of course.

Though I'm trying to steer the topic direction towards continental layouts, both resources and timers are artificial, tangible, conscious incentives (positive and negative).

Basically these are artificial bait and repellents that can lower or raise an existing treshold. But are these enough to encourage fighting over this, or like WildVS suggests, would the resource incentive be cancelled out by the timer repellent?


Geographical, continental and hex layout incentives however, are on an instinctive, more subconscious process and decisionmaking level. It may be easiest to explore the balance of resources and timers, but perhaps not the most interesting as we've done that plenty.

[Xyntech]

I'm beginning to wonder if the size of the continents is going to prevent there from being any land behind the lines. It seems like they are small enough that you can have a battle going on in every hex, so long as someone can zip a galaxy past the battle in another hex.

What good does it do, for example, to send a feint team to attack one area when you really want to attack another, if every hex in the map has an active battle? Granted, the landscape might prevent you from taking a tank column everywhere easily, but that's about it.

Some people are worried that there will be fighting on every hex. That would leave only 25-30 people per hex on average.

Other people are worried that everyone will zerg rush to the 3 way meet grinder, forcing 1000 - 2000 people into one hex and bringing the game crashing to it's knees.

Personally, I'm pretty confident that the two extremes will balance out. Some people will go for the big clusterfuck 3 way, others will go for the large 2 way fights, and the rest will go for smaller border skirmishes or the occasional behind enemy lines hex grab.

Now mark that I said "occasional" with the behind enemy lines thing. This part is important. The system is going to be made or broken by whether or not the front lines system works as intended. They need to find the right balance where it is generally ideal to attack/defend bases on the front so that most times players wont want to try to attack just any random hex on the map, while ideally at the same time making it still be possible to take a hex that's completely surrounded by enemy territory. It will probably be a difficult balance to strike, but I think we'll sort it out in beta.

Here's a mock up I did the other week to illustrate how I'm guessing the devs intend battle lines to be drawn. (click the image to enlarge):

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3766/battlelines.png (http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3766/battlelines.png)

I'm guessing that the 3 way will mostly occur where all 3 sides have a front meeting up, where they all have a vested interest in taking or defending the territory. I have no doubt that some 3rd faction players may occasionally drop in uninvited to another empires 2 way, but I don't think it will be the norm.

Along borders where only 2 empires have a front, I mostly envision those two empires fighting it out. Larger fights in more critical and/or defensible locations, smaller fights along the rest of the border.

If done properly, I would expect tactical strikes behind enemy lines to be reserved for things like resource denial. In the mock up, I have the NC dominating and trying to grab territory with a population advantage, but with both the TR and VS trying to grab some of their behind the lines territory to deny the NC access to one of the resource types.

[GuyFawkes]

Maybe one day (if) they add in some amphibious stuff to the game we might see maps with 3 land masses connected with very narrow and long strips /bridges etc , a bit like in supreme commander maps . Cyssor on steroids.

[Figment]

Maybe one day (if) they add in some amphibious stuff to the game we might see maps with 3 land masses connected with very narrow and long strips /bridges etc , a bit like in supreme commander maps . Cyssor on steroids.

Now we're getting somewhere interesting. :)

In Cyssor we often saw that despit the existance of amphibious units (and Lodestars!) to bypass bridges, the majority of combat focused on bridges regardless. In part because we had to bring AMSes and tanks across eventually, but also because amphibious units were underpowered for TR in terms of manpower.

So how do we see bridges? Not just the practical role of bridges, but in a psychological sense. What is their meaning to us? Do we feel reliant on them? I'd say yes, if alternatives lack.

The first thing I think we need to realise is that people see a bridge as a land connection with the homeland. A direct, solid, reinforcement route and "backland". An isolated hex on the opposite shoreline would not feel connected, since there's no direct route. You need specific support units to transfer from one side to the other. Now, without the presence of Lodestars, this connection is "more distant", harder to reach. The Lodestar itself wasn't a unit you could easily obtain en mass and this strengthened that water barrier. With it not being present in PS2 at all, a water barrier to me seems an even stronger instinctive repellent.


With the VS having hover tanks and vehicles, the psychological and physical barrier of water is smaller. This could be seen on Cyssor at Kaang-Gunuku-Itan. Where TR and NC would focus on Itan from Kaang, the VS would focus on the Kaang connection with Gunuku more easily.

But even to them, the water barrier between Tore and Nzame was larger than the barrier between Tore and Leza and Leza and Mukuru. But even bigger the other way around, because where Nzame is a LLU and swiftly taken, attacking Tore from Nzame has rarely be done, ever. The position of bridges greatly influenced the sense of feasibility. Even if it'd have been quite easy to keep up a Thunderer/Deliverer attack from Nzame (distracting and raiding) with Skyguard support and AMSes and Vanguards moving around the north. Yet this was effort and Mukuru -> Leza was less effort.

[CutterJohn]

1. How can you design continents such that the quantity of terrain held by an empire fluctuates a lot?

2. How can you create continents such that the mental and physical control a foothold provides over nearby hexes is reduced and makes those hexes more likely to be taken?



1. More land, or fewer people. On a continent that is poplocked by 2 or 3 empires, the fight will always stagnate in the middle somewhere. The factions are too balanced to allow any other outcome, and with such a large player population, skill will be extremely balanced as well. There will occasionally be momentary gains/losses, but any empire showing signs of dominance by taking more land will become the target of more double teaming, undoing any gains. The only way to get a high amount of fluctuating ownership in these conditions is to have population imbalances, meaning we're going to have to have more land than we can field troops for.

So basically.. More continents, without a higher population. Only then will we see 2 ways and dominations that will lead to imbalances of ownership on a continent.

Oh, and the [extremely rare] non aggression pact will also push individual empires back.


2. You cannot. The outposts near the foothold will always be the last to be taken, and the best defended, and the first lost to an invasion. They are the empires 'home territory'.

The only way to make them more likely to be taken is to imbalance the rewards from taking them based on proximity to the foothold. If a hex near the VS foothold produced 100 auraxium for the VS, but 200 if the TR or NC held it, there would be a much larger incentive to take these bases. It will have to be a very large incentive in order to overcome the sense of ownership the VS have due to its proximity to their 'home'.

[ringring]

Part of the reason that water combat wasn't so prevalent in PS1 was that TR and NC didn't cert the deliverer variant vehicles. In PS2, if similar are introduced it will be different, we will have enough vehicles but perhaps not as well specced as those of the VS.

I think Higby said the the TR quadrant (the desert one) had canyons that became increasing tight towards the North in the VS direction. Would this mean for it is more difficult for the TR attacking that was and therefore the battlefront of choice will be towards the VS?

I think it will. It would be interesting to know how far the SOE devs have explored the issue and 'gamed' it themselves.

It partically depends on populations, by that I mean if these is a big NC versus VS fight in the West that has dragged nearly all VS to it then there is potentially an opportunity for the TR to advance Northwards and from there it partially depends on the ability of the VS to reinforce their defence against the TR attack - which means the 'will' of commanders to abandon their own attack in the West (see above) and partially on the game mechanic allowing spawning anywhere, if it does in fact allow that.

[Figment]

@Cutter. I disagree somewhat, even with perma-footholds, there are ways to at least make it likely to approach such footholds.


It should be possible to design the continent such that pressure on a populace is applied more unevenly.


For instance, if you have a donut shape, the path of conquest is different from the Indar shape. By simply holding on one side, it would be possible to increase the pressure on the other and fight your way in a ring shape pressing enemies into one another.

The lattice in PS1 was often used in that manner. Now, of course it's going to become increasingly difficult in a donut to press far beyond a foothold as you up the density of players more and more in that scenario, while the foothold will start to poor out distractions behind your back.

However, it would be about multiple two ways on one continent that doesn't necessarily leads to a threeway.


You could also create a map where a donut shape or path is reinforced by canyons or mountain ranges and use a combination with the larger landmass in the middle to create multiple paths empires can take, that have some safety in the side by means of (semi-)impassable (logistically difficult) terrain.

[ringring]

Can someone post a large scale map of Indar as a visual queue of what I am talking about?

[Figment]

Better yet Figgy. Show your battle simulation series of pics.

You mean this?

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/Planetside%20Lattices/TerritorySituation1.jpg

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/Planetside%20Lattices/TerritorySituation2.jpg

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/Planetside%20Lattices/TerritorySituation3.jpg

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/Planetside%20Lattices/TerritorySituation4.jpg

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/Planetside%20Lattices/TerritorySituation5.jpg

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/Planetside%20Lattices/TerritorySituation6.jpg

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/Planetside%20Lattices/TerritorySituation7.jpg

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/Planetside%20Lattices/TerritorySituation8.jpg

Of course the details differ now we got the actual grid layout, the principle remains the same, just with even shorter frontlines due to the out of bounds territory.

[VelRa]

This thread feels like an English topics course in an esteemed vs university. In general i feel as if conquest will proceed hex-wise as rmpires try to consolidate a front regardless of terrain comsiderations, but this thread is a good way to figure out ways to mix it up.

One thing that will change the shape of comquest in the future is weather. I cant see the zerg moving into a base covered in thick fog or during a blizzard. Weather is like terrain, only terrain is a static obstacle and weather is a dynamic one. Dynamic geographical elements are the key to dynamic empire divisions. A few other dynamic features could be erupting vOlcanoes, floods, iceflows, and player-generated terraforming

Also when we talk about bridges, there are a few other considerations. Is it over Water which would let vs advance their tank columns freely? Is it over a chasm which would deny access to mags but allow air vehixles to fight below? Or over lava which could damage hovercrafts and deny amphibious? (lava continent confirmed by higby during ign interview).

When we take into account all the possibiliyies of terrain and weather pattering, i think we could easily see continents divided in very dynamic ways.

[Landtank]

That's such an unrealistic scenario because the NC can't lose because they are the bestest.

:D :D

I can see the front lines changing very rapidly, almost like high and low tides. This would be due to the push and counter push that will undoubtedly occur. Example: VS invades TR and takes a base. At the same time, the TR push and take a different base, etc. Then the NC swoop in and annihilate all the heretics and communists and freedom is the victor!

[ringring]

Nice illustration Figgy, I hadn't seen it before. I do think you overestimate the strategic nous of the TR though. :p

Is there one about that shows Indar as a topological map rather than tactical?

[Malorn]

The Bad
That simulation which was re-posted above is roughly what I expect as well. Most fighting occurs in the center, and the people taking the sides (and defending them) are the organized outfits and smaller outfits working together.

The territory control system will always want you to consolidate territory to the edges to protect the territory from capture and avoid being around the other empires' footholds simply because you can't consolidate the foothold edges and you'll always get a small trickle of forces attacking from it (unless the entire empire gets relocated there and you get completely screwed because now you are directly in between the other two empires and get sandwiched and lose everything.

Even the geography if Indar itself facilitates this setup. It's shaped like a T, with the top edge being a cliff into all of the VS area, and the bottom edge being another set of cliffs between the NC and TR. Geographically it is designed to be fought along these edges. These edges and the facilities/outposts along them will be where the vast majority of fighting occurs.


The Ugly
I really dislike the tactical layout of Indar. For each empire there are basically 3 options - center, left, and right. The mindless masses (zerg) will throw themselves against one of these three paths, and travel along expected roads.

Indar to me feels roughly the size of Forseral in overall layout, but imagine a 3 way in Forseral with one empire in the north, one in the east, and one in the southwest. Not much will ever happen due to lattice, but with lattice gone it is possible for a slow creep to one of the rear territories, but you're going to see that coming.

As a strategist for my empire, There's really very few things for me to think about.
- Where is the zerg and how is it progressing?
- How are the other flanks?
- How are rear territories - any shenanigans?

When thinking about the other enemy I basically go through the same thought process, using that to estimate where the other empires might make a move.

Then it's a matter of trying ot attack one of the non-zerg flanks since the zerg will inevitably be a meatgrinding stalemate. There's only two options for attack so even a complete moron can figure out where the attack will come from, and a decent commander will be able to determine (exactly as I did above) which location that will be.

Since territory control pushes us to consolidate, the best place to attack are the two edges, and the center is a terrible place to attack. It exposes us to both empires and creates a stretched territory line that is weak. So there's really only 1-2 viable places to attack, depending on where the zerg is. If the zerg is on a flank, the opposite flank is the place to attack. If the zerg is in the center then we have a whopping two options.

And even if we succeed in attacking, the territory we have will be fleeting, as we've exposed the flank where we didn't attack and have to make a lot of inroads to consolidate the territory.

So strategically, Indar is a steaming pile of poop. There's no real tactical options. It's just going to be a big massive clusterfuck battle. To be fair, Higby did say that's exactly what they wanted. But it's disappointing because PlanetSide had a lot more depth to it. This makes it seem really dumbed down to a forced 3-way with few options. On the surface you can look at it and "but look at all that territory to capture!" - realistically most of it is off-limits for capture because its on the other side of the continent and you won't ever see much fighting there (unless they rotate the footholds and change things up).

If you look at the simulation - look at where most of the fighting occurs and how much of the continent each empire sees. In that example each empire sees about 50% of the continent with most fighting occuring in the center. It's a good simulation to illustrate that while Indar may be big, the perception to the individual soldiers is going to be that it is a lot smaller because we only see half of it. And quite a bit of the half we do see is coastline and probably not areas where a heavy amount of fighting will occur.


The (Possible) Good
Fixing this mess isn't easy. I honestly don't see it being easily fixable without having the old Planetside Continent system back and having at least 6-7 continents. They can still keep the footholds but make them dynamic like the old warp gates. The problem is that they simply don't have enough continents for that to be realistically workable at launch.

If their plan is to continually add continents, I can see that at some point in the future they make a switch and move it to more of a classic PlanetSide model once enough continents exist. Then there could be some dynamic foothold control mechanisms, servers can be merged to get more people together, and the PlanetSide 2 world simply gets bigger and more diverse.

I think the reality of PS2 is that we're going to have some piss poor strategic gameplay for at least the first year of PS2. Maybe they'll get a lot better at cranking out continents and by Year 2 we have 6-7 and they can start switching things up.

As far as continent design goes, I'd hope they design continents with the idea that they might eventually be inter-linked. The design of Indar isn't all that bad if it was in the traditional PS1 continent system because you wouldn't always be in a 3-way battle and every foothold would have a good starting position.

While the continent design wasn't all that different from how Searhus was in PS1 it was the combination of continental and inter-continental connections that led to meaningful strategic action in PS1.


Continental Improvements

1) Bigger continents. The land needs to be bigger and Indar is cramped. The bigger continent doesn't need to be filled to the brim with land. It can have a lot of open space/ocean, etc. That's good to give us a place for aircraft to fight (or bring in boats for coastal assault). Think PS1 continents. Warpgates on edges, well away from the fighting.

2) Put the warpgates further away from the main fighting. Areas around warpgates are strategically worthless to other empires. You don't want to have interesting things right next to a warpgate other than a few outposts that you don't expect to be conquered anytime soon.

3) Create continents that don't always force us to fight for the center. Indar is a lot like Searhus where there's basically 3 directions to go - left, right, center. It would be interesting if the there was more edge-content. That would spread out the fighting but give more meaningful options.

4) Shifting warpgate locations. Instead of having 3 warpgates, put in 6 with 3 inactive that randomly shift around on the continent. Call it a special kind of continent that is unstable and ever-shifting. You might end up with two empires directly next to each other or you could have a perfect 3-way split. Doesn't matter. The point is it's different and it changes, which forces us to adapt and conjure up new strategies. It also allows us to see more of the continent.

5) FACILITY BENEFITS. Make each facility offer something tactical, so it isn't simply a matter of "which direction can we attack?" and we can actually work to either gain or deny the enemy a benefit. This, combined with more peripheral objectives would spread out the fighting and give us more tactical options.

6) Asymmetric continents. Cyssor-like continents. There was a reason people liked Cyssor. It was huge, it had sub-regions, there was a lot of tactical options on the continent, and the geography was not a big triangle or circle. It had interesting geography with rivers and such creating natural barriers to ground forces. And Cyssor wasn't nicely split between the 3 empires. There weren't clear geographical boundaries that said "this region is for NC/VS/TR". Ceryshen was the same way, very much not a symmetrical continent and that was on reason I liked it a lot and it was interesting to fight on. Don't carve up territory geographically for the empires.

7) Plan for a possible inter-connected continent system. Just keep it in mind. Maybe you don't plan on doing it now, but you might later, so make sure the continent will play well if/when that occurs. The end-game for PS2 as we understand it is to have large universe with many planets and many continents on each planet. At some point they will be inter-connected and I can't imagine them all being staged 3-way clusterfucks. That would be boring as hell and repetitive. At some point there will be inter-continent and inter-planet links and continents should be able to handle without needing fundamental changes to them.

[Xyntech]

Indar = 2x as large as Cyssor and 4x as many capture points. So I'd call Indar the equivalent of at least 3 PS1 style continents.

So considering that battles won't always flow in the exact same pattern, I'd say that Figment's scenario is not only pretty accurate, but also very encouraging. Imagine 3 of PS1's continents linked by lattice, and the way the battles would flow on them (pretending for a second that each one was a home continent for one of the factions as well). It wouldn't be uncommon to get pushed off one of those continents, but pushing both enemies off of all 3 continents would be a much harder proposition.

Remember that not every continent in Planetside 2 will always be poplocked either. Some empires may vastly outnumber the other two empires on one continent, while the populations are more even on one or two of the other ones.

If we are to compare Planetside 2 to Planetside 1 under conditions where all 3 PS2 continents are poplocked with roughly equal global populations, then we must also compare it to a Planetside 1 where all 10 continents are actively poplocked with roughly even global populations.

In such a scenario, how likely was it in PS1 for an empire to get pushed off of their home continent and stay pushed off? It certainly didn't happen very often and it didn't last very long either.

So there will be variance in PS2. Population differences and varying strategies will cause a fluctuating landscape. Certainly pushing empires off of continents will happen, perhaps even a single empire will occasionally control an entire continent. But just like the first game in its prime, these victories will be temporary and difficult, as they should be.

The biggest difference will be that continent locks are gone, which has been discussed in other threads. I've come to agree with the people who believe that continent locks are a bad and mediocre solution.

[Malorn]

Indar = 2x as large as Cyssor and 4x as many capture points. So I'd call Indar the equivalent of at least 3 PS1 style continents.
Per the other thread we established that it is actually the same size as Ishundar/Esamir/Cyssor/Searhus. That sort of derails the rest of your post.

[MasterChief096]

The Bad
That simulation which was re-posted above is roughly what I expect as well. Most fighting occurs in the center, and the people taking the sides (and defending them) are the organized outfits and smaller outfits working together.

The territory control system will always want you to consolidate territory to the edges to protect the territory from capture and avoid being around the other empires' footholds simply because you can't consolidate the foothold edges and you'll always get a small trickle of forces attacking from it (unless the entire empire gets relocated there and you get completely screwed because now you are directly in between the other two empires and get sandwiched and lose everything.

Even the geography if Indar itself facilitates this setup. It's shaped like a T, with the top edge being a cliff into all of the VS area, and the bottom edge being another set of cliffs between the NC and TR. Geographically it is designed to be fought along these edges. These edges and the facilities/outposts along them will be where the vast majority of fighting occurs.


The Ugly
I really dislike the tactical layout of Indar. For each empire there are basically 3 options - center, left, and right. The mindless masses (zerg) will throw themselves against one of these three paths, and travel along expected roads.

Indar to me feels roughly the size of Forseral in overall layout, but imagine a 3 way in Forseral with one empire in the north, one in the east, and one in the southwest. Not much will ever happen due to lattice, but with lattice gone it is possible for a slow creep to one of the rear territories, but you're going to see that coming.

As a strategist for my empire, There's really very few things for me to think about.
- Where is the zerg and how is it progressing?
- How are the other flanks?
- How are rear territories - any shenanigans?

When thinking about the other enemy I basically go through the same thought process, using that to estimate where the other empires might make a move.

Then it's a matter of trying ot attack one of the non-zerg flanks since the zerg will inevitably be a meatgrinding stalemate. There's only two options for attack so even a complete moron can figure out where the attack will come from, and a decent commander will be able to determine (exactly as I did above) which location that will be.

Since territory control pushes us to consolidate, the best place to attack are the two edges, and the center is a terrible place to attack. It exposes us to both empires and creates a stretched territory line that is weak. So there's really only 1-2 viable places to attack, depending on where the zerg is. If the zerg is on a flank, the opposite flank is the place to attack. If the zerg is in the center then we have a whopping two options.

And even if we succeed in attacking, the territory we have will be fleeting, as we've exposed the flank where we didn't attack and have to make a lot of inroads to consolidate the territory.

So strategically, Indar is a steaming pile of poop. There's no real tactical options. It's just going to be a big massive clusterfuck battle. To be fair, Higby did say that's exactly what they wanted. But it's disappointing because PlanetSide had a lot more depth to it. This makes it seem really dumbed down to a forced 3-way with few options. On the surface you can look at it and "but look at all that territory to capture!" - realistically most of it is off-limits for capture because its on the other side of the continent and you won't ever see much fighting there (unless they rotate the footholds and change things up).

If you look at the simulation - look at where most of the fighting occurs and how much of the continent each empire sees. In that example each empire sees about 50% of the continent with most fighting occuring in the center. It's a good simulation to illustrate that while Indar may be big, the perception to the individual soldiers is going to be that it is a lot smaller because we only see half of it. And quite a bit of the half we do see is coastline and probably not areas where a heavy amount of fighting will occur.


The (Possible) Good
Fixing this mess isn't easy. I honestly don't see it being easily fixable without having the old Planetside Continent system back and having at least 6-7 continents. They can still keep the footholds but make them dynamic like the old warp gates. The problem is that they simply don't have enough continents for that to be realistically workable at launch.

If their plan is to continually add continents, I can see that at some point in the future they make a switch and move it to more of a classic PlanetSide model once enough continents exist. Then there could be some dynamic foothold control mechanisms, servers can be merged to get more people together, and the PlanetSide 2 world simply gets bigger and more diverse.

I think the reality of PS2 is that we're going to have some piss poor strategic gameplay for at least the first year of PS2. Maybe they'll get a lot better at cranking out continents and by Year 2 we have 6-7 and they can start switching things up.

As far as continent design goes, I'd hope they design continents with the idea that they might eventually be inter-linked. The design of Indar isn't all that bad if it was in the traditional PS1 continent system because you wouldn't always be in a 3-way battle and every foothold would have a good starting position.

While the continent design wasn't all that different from how Searhus was in PS1 it was the combination of continental and inter-continental connections that led to meaningful strategic action in PS1.


Continental Improvements

1) Bigger continents. The land needs to be bigger and Indar is cramped. The bigger continent doesn't need to be filled to the brim with land. It can have a lot of open space/ocean, etc. That's good to give us a place for aircraft to fight (or bring in boats for coastal assault). Think PS1 continents. Warpgates on edges, well away from the fighting.

2) Put the warpgates further away from the main fighting. Areas around warpgates are strategically worthless to other empires. You don't want to have interesting things right next to a warpgate other than a few outposts that you don't expect to be conquered anytime soon.

3) Create continents that don't always force us to fight for the center. Indar is a lot like Searhus where there's basically 3 directions to go - left, right, center. It would be interesting if the there was more edge-content. That would spread out the fighting but give more meaningful options.

4) Shifting warpgate locations. Instead of having 3 warpgates, put in 6 with 3 inactive that randomly shift around on the continent. Call it a special kind of continent that is unstable and ever-shifting. You might end up with two empires directly next to each other or you could have a perfect 3-way split. Doesn't matter. The point is it's different and it changes, which forces us to adapt and conjure up new strategies. It also allows us to see more of the continent.

5) FACILITY BENEFITS. Make each facility offer something tactical, so it isn't simply a matter of "which direction can we attack?" and we can actually work to either gain or deny the enemy a benefit. This, combined with more peripheral objectives would spread out the fighting and give us more tactical options.

6) Asymmetric continents. Cyssor-like continents. There was a reason people liked Cyssor. It was huge, it had sub-regions, there was a lot of tactical options on the continent, and the geography was not a big triangle or circle. It had interesting geography with rivers and such creating natural barriers to ground forces. And Cyssor wasn't nicely split between the 3 empires. There weren't clear geographical boundaries that said "this region is for NC/VS/TR". Ceryshen was the same way, very much not a symmetrical continent and that was on reason I liked it a lot and it was interesting to fight on. Don't carve up territory geographically for the empires.

7) Plan for a possible inter-connected continent system. Just keep it in mind. Maybe you don't plan on doing it now, but you might later, so make sure the continent will play well if/when that occurs. The end-game for PS2 as we understand it is to have large universe with many planets and many continents on each planet. At some point they will be inter-connected and I can't imagine them all being staged 3-way clusterfucks. That would be boring as hell and repetitive. At some point there will be inter-continent and inter-planet links and continents should be able to handle without needing fundamental changes to them.

Your suggestions are all very good. I know I may be releasing another bull in a China cabinet here by bringing this up, but another possible solution is to insert a classic PS1 sanctuary type system in the future. Or perhaps, if there are 6-7, or even 10 continents like PS1 had, then each empire can have its home continents that have unconquerable footholds on them while empires can then use their home continents to influence the control of other footholds.

This could lead to a pretty interesting system of interconnected continents. Say for example you are tired of fighting VS on Indar, but they have a foothold. Perhaps taking another continent (or portion of another continent) could shut off or make neutral the foothold that the VS have on Indar and force them to a staging point on another continent. Perhaps the new continents that they add can have specific facilities that control foothold access to the three continents PS2 will be launching with. This could essentially lead to these three starter continents becoming hugely important if you can capture them and deny other enemies access until they capture a way onto the continent by attacking a portion of another continent. It would allow a very well played empire to farm the resources there until another empire gained access by taking one of these "foothold control stations."

Once again, the idea of sanctuaries and being able to "lock" continents always gets flamed because the goal in PS2 is to not have a lot of downtime between fights, but I think that such a system of sanctuaries and influenced footholds would be the only way to give empires different avenues of attack besides the ideas Malorn already mentioned.

[Landtank]

The Bad
That simulation which was re-posted above is roughly what I expect as well. Most fighting occurs in the center, and the people taking the sides (and defending them) are the organized outfits and smaller outfits working together.

The territory control system will always want you to consolidate territory to the edges to protect the territory from capture and avoid being around the other empires' footholds simply because you can't consolidate the foothold edges and you'll always get a small trickle of forces attacking from it (unless the entire empire gets relocated there and you get completely screwed because now you are directly in between the other two empires and get sandwiched and lose everything.

Even the geography if Indar itself facilitates this setup. It's shaped like a T, with the top edge being a cliff into all of the VS area, and the bottom edge being another set of cliffs between the NC and TR. Geographically it is designed to be fought along these edges. These edges and the facilities/outposts along them will be where the vast majority of fighting occurs.


The Ugly
I really dislike the tactical layout of Indar. For each empire there are basically 3 options - center, left, and right. The mindless masses (zerg) will throw themselves against one of these three paths, and travel along expected roads.

Indar to me feels roughly the size of Forseral in overall layout, but imagine a 3 way in Forseral with one empire in the north, one in the east, and one in the southwest. Not much will ever happen due to lattice, but with lattice gone it is possible for a slow creep to one of the rear territories, but you're going to see that coming.

As a strategist for my empire, There's really very few things for me to think about.
- Where is the zerg and how is it progressing?
- How are the other flanks?
- How are rear territories - any shenanigans?

When thinking about the other enemy I basically go through the same thought process, using that to estimate where the other empires might make a move.

Then it's a matter of trying ot attack one of the non-zerg flanks since the zerg will inevitably be a meatgrinding stalemate. There's only two options for attack so even a complete moron can figure out where the attack will come from, and a decent commander will be able to determine (exactly as I did above) which location that will be.

Since territory control pushes us to consolidate, the best place to attack are the two edges, and the center is a terrible place to attack. It exposes us to both empires and creates a stretched territory line that is weak. So there's really only 1-2 viable places to attack, depending on where the zerg is. If the zerg is on a flank, the opposite flank is the place to attack. If the zerg is in the center then we have a whopping two options.

And even if we succeed in attacking, the territory we have will be fleeting, as we've exposed the flank where we didn't attack and have to make a lot of inroads to consolidate the territory.

So strategically, Indar is a steaming pile of poop. There's no real tactical options. It's just going to be a big massive clusterfuck battle. To be fair, Higby did say that's exactly what they wanted. But it's disappointing because PlanetSide had a lot more depth to it. This makes it seem really dumbed down to a forced 3-way with few options. On the surface you can look at it and "but look at all that territory to capture!" - realistically most of it is off-limits for capture because its on the other side of the continent and you won't ever see much fighting there (unless they rotate the footholds and change things up).

If you look at the simulation - look at where most of the fighting occurs and how much of the continent each empire sees. In that example each empire sees about 50% of the continent with most fighting occuring in the center. It's a good simulation to illustrate that while Indar may be big, the perception to the individual soldiers is going to be that it is a lot smaller because we only see half of it. And quite a bit of the half we do see is coastline and probably not areas where a heavy amount of fighting will occur.


The (Possible) Good
Fixing this mess isn't easy. I honestly don't see it being easily fixable without having the old Planetside Continent system back and having at least 6-7 continents. They can still keep the footholds but make them dynamic like the old warp gates. The problem is that they simply don't have enough continents for that to be realistically workable at launch.

If their plan is to continually add continents, I can see that at some point in the future they make a switch and move it to more of a classic PlanetSide model once enough continents exist. Then there could be some dynamic foothold control mechanisms, servers can be merged to get more people together, and the PlanetSide 2 world simply gets bigger and more diverse.

I think the reality of PS2 is that we're going to have some piss poor strategic gameplay for at least the first year of PS2. Maybe they'll get a lot better at cranking out continents and by Year 2 we have 6-7 and they can start switching things up.

As far as continent design goes, I'd hope they design continents with the idea that they might eventually be inter-linked. The design of Indar isn't all that bad if it was in the traditional PS1 continent system because you wouldn't always be in a 3-way battle and every foothold would have a good starting position.

While the continent design wasn't all that different from how Searhus was in PS1 it was the combination of continental and inter-continental connections that led to meaningful strategic action in PS1.


Continental Improvements

1) Bigger continents. The land needs to be bigger and Indar is cramped. The bigger continent doesn't need to be filled to the brim with land. It can have a lot of open space/ocean, etc. That's good to give us a place for aircraft to fight (or bring in boats for coastal assault). Think PS1 continents. Warpgates on edges, well away from the fighting.

2) Put the warpgates further away from the main fighting. Areas around warpgates are strategically worthless to other empires. You don't want to have interesting things right next to a warpgate other than a few outposts that you don't expect to be conquered anytime soon.

3) Create continents that don't always force us to fight for the center. Indar is a lot like Searhus where there's basically 3 directions to go - left, right, center. It would be interesting if the there was more edge-content. That would spread out the fighting but give more meaningful options.

4) Shifting warpgate locations. Instead of having 3 warpgates, put in 6 with 3 inactive that randomly shift around on the continent. Call it a special kind of continent that is unstable and ever-shifting. You might end up with two empires directly next to each other or you could have a perfect 3-way split. Doesn't matter. The point is it's different and it changes, which forces us to adapt and conjure up new strategies. It also allows us to see more of the continent.

5) FACILITY BENEFITS. Make each facility offer something tactical, so it isn't simply a matter of "which direction can we attack?" and we can actually work to either gain or deny the enemy a benefit. This, combined with more peripheral objectives would spread out the fighting and give us more tactical options.

6) Asymmetric continents. Cyssor-like continents. There was a reason people liked Cyssor. It was huge, it had sub-regions, there was a lot of tactical options on the continent, and the geography was not a big triangle or circle. It had interesting geography with rivers and such creating natural barriers to ground forces. And Cyssor wasn't nicely split between the 3 empires. There weren't clear geographical boundaries that said "this region is for NC/VS/TR". Ceryshen was the same way, very much not a symmetrical continent and that was on reason I liked it a lot and it was interesting to fight on. Don't carve up territory geographically for the empires.

7) Plan for a possible inter-connected continent system. Just keep it in mind. Maybe you don't plan on doing it now, but you might later, so make sure the continent will play well if/when that occurs. The end-game for PS2 as we understand it is to have large universe with many planets and many continents on each planet. At some point they will be inter-connected and I can't imagine them all being staged 3-way clusterfucks. That would be boring as hell and repetitive. At some point there will be inter-continent and inter-planet links and continents should be able to handle without needing fundamental changes to them.

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/didnt-read-darth-vader.gif


But I did read, I just love the Vader .gif

I see Indar as an extremely challenging continent in terms of tactics. Because there are so few options, as there are in real life wars, a commander actually has to THINK about where he is going to attack based on the current situation, instead of using some overly complicated predetermined plan. It's fine to have a general layout, but huge war plans almost never, ever work.

You say that attacking the middle is a terribad idea, I disagree, attacking the middle with a well organized outfit could easily break the back of the enemy, and its not like you need all 700 of your soldiers in the same spot. You could have a 3 pronged assault, taking two empires by surprise etc. After all, its a game, so you can experiment with countless ideas with no repercussions.

That's why I'm so excited for this game, there's a million different ways to win and attack your enemy. All you need is one open route to attack, one way to get behind enemy lines, and the front line crumbles just like in real war.

[ringring]

In my imagination I often assume that the continental battle will have equal populations for all three empires and the same on the other two continents.

If the total world population is not maxed out then that leaves room for global strategy ands by that I mean Empires deciding to attack on one continent, to defend another and perhaps to let the other go.

As long as or whenever we don't have 6000 people online at one time the meta game will become much more interesting.

Higby has said they are going to add new continents and I saw bring it on. :groovy:

[Xyntech]

In my imagination I often assume that the continental battle will have equal populations for all three empires and the same on the other two continents.

If the total world population is not maxed out then that leaves room for global strategy ands by that I mean Empires deciding to attack on one continent, to defend another and perhaps to let the other go.

As long as or whenever we don't have 6000 people online at one time the meta game will become much more interesting.

Higby has said they are going to add new continents and I saw bring it on. :groovy:

Just like in the first game. Global pop lock hours saw change happen on the world map, but generally small change. Lower population hours saw increased territory fluctuation and a greater importance put on global strategy.

PS2 will play somewhat differently, but at the core it's going to be the exact same thing.

We better not have global population locks 24/7, because that will mean that there aren't enough servers and a huge portion of players won't be able to play during peak hours.

I hope we get universally unique character names that are unique across all servers, and that they just bite the bullet and get rid of some servers if they need to when they add more continents. Maybe the game will keep growing enough that new or returning players will fill the 4th+ continents, but if they gotta get rid of some continents, so be it. Just so long as there are so many servers that a handful of closures doesn't affect things.

Something like a transparent tracker showing how many players are playing across all servers would go a long way towards squashing fears that server closures equaled a diminishing playerbase, although it would also hurt the game if player numbers actually did drop.

[Malorn]

You say that attacking the middle is a terribad idea, I disagree, attacking the middle with a well organized outfit could easily break the back of the enemy, and its not like you need all 700 of your soldiers in the same spot. You could have a 3 pronged assault, taking two empires by surprise etc. After all, its a game, so you can experiment with countless ideas with no repercussions.

The vader .gif is funny, lol.

The reason the middle is bad is because it invites a double-team. A lot of PS1 strategy revolved around either creating or avoiding a double-team situation. Why? Because the best way to take territory is when the other two empires are occupied with each other. One of them can't defend against both of you, so you attack the guy who is stretched too thin to adequately defend, allowing you to gobble up the turf.

When you attack the center you put yourself in between the other two empires. You stick your neck out for it to get cut off. The other two empires now have fewer choices on who to attack as you are now 60+% of their front line. So who are they going to both attack? Most likely you.

The best approach if you want to take territory is to attack the flanks and not interrupt any big battle between the other two empires. That's what Figment's simulation shows. The NC/TR were engaged, VS flanked NC. People are loathe to pull out of the 'good fight' so the NC didn't respond with enough force to stop the VS until they had nearly lost everything. Good NC commanders would have seen that result ahead of time and tried to pull people out of the TR battle to consolidate and give opportunity for the VS and TR to fight each other.

So the middle = bad. But guess where the zerg is most likely to go? That's right, the middle. And anyone who tells them otherwise will get flamed that they don't know what they're talking about and they're interrupting their mindless "good fight". Meanwhile your empire loses most of its territory, which costs them resources, and then that makes them even less likely to succeed in their "good fight" in the center.

Center is also bad because it's likely to be a conflict involving all 3 empires, which means your chances of success in capturing anything are very low. On the flanks you are fighting only one other empire, so chances of success will depend on how quickly they respond and reinforce that flank. And if you succeed you will have moved the territory a little bit without adding too much exposure along your other flank. Only as you progress deeper do you open yourself up more.

[Xyntech]

Per the other thread we established that it is actually the same size as Ishundar/Esamir/Cyssor/Searhus. That sort of derails the rest of your post.

Except that it's clearly 2x the size, based on the more reliable information we've been offered.

[Malorn]

Except that it's clearly 2x the size, based on the more reliable information we've been offered.

Edit: We don't need to have the same conversation in two threads. If you want to talk about how big the continent is, do it in the other thread for that purpose and dont' derail this one. This one is about the continent design, layout, and is quite a different subject.

[Xyntech]

T-Ray said the warpgates were 2x the size, which is one reason it creates the perception that indar is smaller, but that doesn't change the fact that both the large PS1 continents and indar are both 8km x 8km.

The first Planetside 1 had an inaccurate scale. 8k x 8k in Planetside measurements is almost meaningless.

The warpgates are twice the size as before. This comes from a man who worked on both games. He knows more than any of us.

Here is a scale comparison where the PS2 warpgate is twice as large as the PS1 warpgate. Make your own scale comparison where the new warpgates are twice as large as the old warpgates if you don't believe me. Use one of the more recent Indar maps if you want. It will probably be different, but not much.

http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/8273/mapsize.png

Two times as large, at least.

Edit: I think this is entirely relevant to this thread as well. Considering continent layouts, it's important to know whether we will have 2000 players cramped together, or spread out.

But I think I've established a roughly accurate scale, so I won't debate it any more in this thread. I will be using 2x Cyssor as my baseline though.

[Malorn]

please stop derailing this thread

Talk about size estimates in the other thread. Talk about layout, geography, and mental models in this thread.

[Landtank]

I have decided that this thread is actually a TR ploy to discover the tactics of the other two empires.

[Xyntech]

please stop derailing this thread

Talk about size estimates in the other thread. Talk about layout, geography, and mental models in this thread.

Will do, but I consider my earlier points in the thread to still stand.

One way I think that you could further increase the mental barriers and flow of territory is to add different regions to the continent. I'm not talking about the three biomes, these would be separate from that.

The idea is basically that you have a cluster of hexes that when you control all of them, it gives you a regional bonus. Sort of like a continental bonus from the first game.

If these bonuses were global, it would provide incentive to fight on continents where you don't have much resource control, which is a big problem in their current system.

My idea of the system would be to have 7 regions broken up something like this:

http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/6730/regions.png (http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/6730/regions.png)

(notes: circles = hexes with bases, the flower shaped things = empire footholds. this is based on an old hex map and isn't intended to be 100% balanced)

My idea for the bonuses would work something like this:

1) Controlling your foothold region provides a global benefit to your empire. This provides incentive to stay on a continent even when you are outnumbered. Taking the other two empires foothold regions (you don't need to take their foothold itself to control their region, you only need to take the capturable territory) would provide very small bonuses to this benefit.

2) Controlling the central region would provide another global benefit. This would reward an empire for dominating the most hotly contested part of a continent.

3) The in between regions (marked in yellow) would provide some lesser benefit, perhaps only beneficial to those on the continent itself (non global). Unlike the foothold regions, these benefits would stack, getting much better the more of these outlying regions you held.

Of course all of these benefits would have to be mild. The main thing wouldn't be to make the rich get richer, it would be to provide some reward, as well as to provide some small amount of assistance for an empire to be able to try to hold onto larger amounts of territory. As long as the rewards were small, it would be well balanced by the fact that the dominant empire would be fighting against two enemies ganged up on it.

I think the idea would be open to a lot of balance tweaks. One larger tweak could be to have 4 regions instead of 7, with those outlying regions replaced by larger foothold and central regions. I think the main parts of the idea would apply regardless.

Of course this wouldn't very much change the way continents were designed, but it would alter how they played. Getting a region would be similar to controlling a continent in the first game, in more ways than one. Trying to hold or deny a benefit would help define battle lines.

And of course, if they did implement a system like this, it would likely have some influence on future continent designs. Deliberately makeing continents with an eye towards regional control would probably influence other concepts, such as the donut continent idea.

Edit: The style of regional break up (both the 7 region and 4 region versions) is intended specifically for Indar. Other continents of other various shapes could have totally unique styles of region layout. Maybe a donut shaped continent has no central region, but instead an empire must control all 3 outlying regions to gain the secondary global benefit. I think the region system is very scaleable and could be used in conjunction with a lot of other ideas.

[Figment]

The regional hex system is something I've been thinking of as well.

It's something that is used in Crusader Kings II actually in a somewhat similar way:

Empires:
http://lpix.org/660949/1_32.png
http://lpix.org/660949/1_32.png

Kingdoms:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7223/7168216208_d9f411e3ef_b.jpg

Duchies:
http://i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p543/rickinator9/CK2%20random/ck2_8.jpg
http://i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p543/rickinator9/CK2%20random/ck2_8.jpg

If you own certain territory of a De Jure part of a Duchy, Kingdom or Empire, you can press your claim on the whole and declare war to conquer it.

Holding such territory as a whole provides extra bonusses. But it does inspire wars against and amongst the AI to "complete sets of territory". In the above maps you can probably tell that the De Jure territory of Duchies, Kingdoms and Empires can change over time through territorial integration (own for 100 years). I don't think that dynamically changing such regions over time is suitable for PS2 though (it's possible that it's added to a faction's "core territory", but that could have major consequences).

Either way, this would also provide some grander strategy victory conditions or achievements, so it's certainly something to consider adding to the resource system. In that case, even denying the full region ownership would already hinder the enemy to some degree. It would mean these would be even more fiercefully defended too though.





Anyway, as Mastacheif also noted, I'd personally like there to be ways to conquer and neutralise the footholds themselves. It's also good as Malorn said to move these footholds further to the preiphery of a continent, I'd even say on islands or within craters of various sizes and shapes. After all, I'm really worried that fights on one continent cannot interfere with fights on another beyond resources and more or less and then you lose the sense of global warfare. The lattice links being blockable, lockable and openable were very interesting options for strategic combat in PS1 after all. (Especially caves).


Another observation regarding water and ravines can be made from Extinction. Back when it was added, the idea was that factions could attack through the steep ravines with amphibious units. Aside from my outfit and a few others, few used these options. I don't even think the options were noticed. In fact, I even made a map with amphibious access points for a tower taking event (to be ran by SOE) once to make these options more clear to all:

http://members.multimania.nl/hansime/Extra/Planetside/Extinction_Tower_Event.jpg

You can also see how the symmetry of Extinction, the bridges, water and ravines and the central vulcano has a major influence on who owns what and what territory is perceived as owned by who. Also note that for Extinction, due to the slightly closer proximity between north bases and west bases, most of the fighting actually took place north and west of the vulcano. Even though the relative distance difference is almost neglegible, it was almost impossible for people NOT to take these bases in a specific order, unless starting at Jarl, or having two access points to the continent at once (also Mithra/Hvar were often attacked at once to block sneak attacks on Nexus and Desolation).

[Xyntech]

Anyway, as Mastacheif also noted, I'd personally like there to be ways to conquer and neutralise the footholds themselves.

Previously, I had thought that taking over footholds would only work when we got more than 3 continents, but with the regional territory system, I think that it could work with just the initial 3.

The original idea was that when one empire took control of all territory on a continent (rare, but probably still possible), that all players on that empire on that continent would be given a vote. The vote would be which one of the three warpgates they wanted to be their new foothold. If they picked the same as where it already was, it would stay the same, but the other two warpgates would become broadcast warpgates (or stay broadcast warpgates more accurately). If they voted for one of the other warpgates, their foothold would switch to that warpgate and the two remaining warpgates would become broadcast warpgates.

This is where the regional territory would come into play. Instead of requiring you to dominate every capture point on the map, it could be made so that an empire only had to control the foothold region surrounding an enemy foothold to take it over. Once they gained control of that region, they would be given a similar choice, except that this time it would be a two choice poll. Move your foothold to the new warpgate location, or keep it where it was. Obviously if you held all 3 foothold territories at the same time, you would still be given the choice of which one of the 3 you wanted to be your foothold.

The interesting thing about the regional system would be that you could technically try to focus on capturing footholds without even taking every other territory on the continent. Sort of an encircle strategy, and then mop up the middle.

Obviously in both of these ideas, it would be vital that all empires had at least one foothold that could never be captured. Either it would be a permanent foothold on a fixed continent that never changed, or it would just be that if an empire only had one foothold left, they could never lose it.

I'm a big fan of footholds switching ownership, but I hate the idea of arbitrarily rotating footholds. I'd like to see a system, perhaps the one I described, being used to dynamically change the foothold locations around from time to time.

Limiting each empire to having a maximum of one foothold per continent would ensure that there would always be access for all three empires to attempt to fight on each continent, coming in through the neutral broadcast warpgate(s) if nothing else.

Also, with the regional version of the capture idea, not only would it be possible to implement the idea even with only 3 continents, but it would also still allow for the possibility of all 3 empires holding a foothold on the same continent. An empire would just have to claim the territory surrounding a broadcast warpgate to take control and turn it into their own foothold. Easier said than done, but possible.

It's also good as Malorn said to move these footholds further to the preiphery of a continent, I'd even say on islands or within craters of various sizes and shapes. After all, I'm really worried that fights on one continent cannot interfere with fights on another beyond resources and more or less and then you lose the sense of global warfare. The lattice links being blockable, lockable and openable were very interesting options for strategic combat in PS1 after all. (Especially caves).

Currently, the devs said that we don't earn resources from other continents while not fighting on them. This is actually a huge problem, since once an empire loses most of it's resource access on a continent, they will have little incentive to stay and fight. Better to go where the resources are, on other more favorable continents.

This is part of why I want the regional system. Providing global benefits for holding a specific region would keep players and empires wanting to hold at least some territory on every continent. Once you are holding some territory, the resource system kicks in and you will want to own more territory on that continent, especially if there are even more region benefits to take control of/deny to your enemy.

Obviously the regional benefit system would provide some cross continental interplay, but it certainly wouldn't provide anything like the warpgate lattice links. Quite frankly, I haven't yet come up with any ideas that would smoothly combine the new continent style with something similar to the continental lattice system. The neutral warpgates of my foothold capture idea would have to be broadcast warpgates to make it work.

I'm very interested if anyone has any ideas that could expand on mine/replace mine that could also provide additional cross continental interplay. The hex system is much more dynamic than the lattice system, so I would kind of hope that the inter continental lattice system could be replaced with something equally more dynamic. I have no idea what that would be though. I'm continuing to ponder it.

http://members.multimania.nl/hansime/Extra/Planetside/Extinction_Tower_Event.jpg

Slightly off topic, but speaking of battle islands, I hope that after the 3 initial continents (which I expect will all be vaguely similar in size to Indar), that they diversify wildly and start adding some wildly different continents. A small continent like a battle island would be fun. It wouldn't work as the main playable space at the start, but once that need is satisfied with the initial 3, the more diversity the better IMO.

[Malorn]

Figment it's interesting you point out the behavior on Extinction. It is a good illustration of how the typical player behaved in the game - they move to the next nearest target. While it is just as easy to move from the bottom left base to the top right, that isn't what they did. Some outfits would do that, but most and the general masses would just move to the next nearest obvious objective, even if it was only slightly closer.

We saw it all the time on Cyssor after capturing Bomazi. Wele and Aja were both hackable, but the vast majority went and sat at Aja instead of going for the more valuable tech plant. All because the amp station was closer.

That same mentality will show itself again in PS2. It's that mentality that I think will cause the TR to attack the NC tech plant west of the amp station on Indar instead of pushing north to the VS. The north has a big strip mine pit, which is a geographical barrier in its own right, but the west is the more obvious next target - the big facility. The VS will likely attack that same tech plant due to it being closest to their southernmost facility, and the strip mine also blocks them from the TR.

Like PS1, some outfits will organize and go after the flanks but the majority of the fighting will occur along roads to the next nearest objective. From the look of Indar, it will be south and west of the strip mine.

[Xyntech]

During the height of PS1, the zerg always was the main attack force while the tactical elements worked around them. I don't think it will be too bad if the zerg tends to go for the next closest target most of the time. In the end, I think it will just help define the battle lines. The more tactical outfits and players will take care of the rest.

Still, some thought should certainly be given towards making the zerg flow in directions that are positive to gameplay. We'll certainly have to see how the mission system influences this as well.

I think that even the zerg will be able to contribute to capturing something like a region though. Players like capturing objectives, such as continents from the first game, so I think we'll be able to get them to help take at least most of the territory in a region, perhaps with some tactical elements helping to mop up the last remaining 1 or 2 hex areas. Again, the mission system may be an additional help in this herding.

[Malorn]

It's important for them to understand how the path of least resistance mentality works. You can't really change it, it's just the primal instincts of unorganized humans. But you can understand it and design continents accordingly. Creating right triangles instead of equilateral triangles means that the hypotenuse will rarely be a path of attack, as Extinction shows. They can use that PS1 knowledge to go back and make Indar and other continents better.

[Figment]

Okay so to examplify the basic influence of the footholds and creating gaps in hexes by introducing simple terrain features like mountain ranges, this is more or less what happens:

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/Planetside%20Lattices/Continent_Layout_Influence.png
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/Planetside%20Lattices/Continent_Layout_Influence.png

The influence of the position of the foothold is large. You can see that whatever lies behind a foothold is automatically core territory. It is considered out of range or hard to reach without severe opposition. If you create a barrier in the vicinity though, things change somewhat, the footholds control over the territory weakens.

Now, these are a couple random blob continents where water is used as the first natural impediment factor to steer some control over areas. Note that this is about perception of core ownership, because it creates natural boundaries that are perceived as natural defenses and impediments (hard to cross == hard to hold, chokepoints == easy to hold. An area beyond a choke point would be considered "expandable territory".

If you add bridges, you can tweak the core territory further. If the bridge is far away, it'll be perceived as harder to cross. If you put several together, it'll become a stronger link. If you then add bridgeheads, bases on either side, these become outposts and footholds on their own that influence the perception of who controls the immediate area.


You will find that if you add bases in particular areas, you can fine tune the map further and further and create routes for players to follow. This can also be done by pure geographical features: if you create a valley by placing two mountain ranges in parallel, you also create directional conquest from the entrance of the valley to the exit, as well as chokepoints at the ends of the mountain ranges. If this is a ravine with two overlooking cliffs, it becomes conflicted territory as whoever holds the top controls the bottom.



The regional grouping of hexes can further stimulate the idea of areas belonging to or splitting up in core or conflict zone.


The next thing I'd like to do is show what it'd be like if you had an intercontinental lattice and capturable footholds. That's going to get a bit more complex though.

[Malorn]

Granted I didn't follow all of the diagrams but I definitely understood the point illustrated in text.

Geographical boundaries and barriers absolutely impact, but so do roads and distance. As Figment illustrates, even if there is a path (a bridge in his example), if it is out of the way then it will be considered out of reach or impractical.

Roads are an important part of the geography. When people leave a facility or outpost they naturally follow the roads. There were cases where this would lead players to uncapturable facilities in PS1 due to the lattice and the roads not being aligned.

People go to the next nearest thing and they tend to follow roads or clearly visible paths to get there. Therefore you can predict the patterns of conquest on the continent by following the roads to large obvious objectives (like facilties, which are intentionally big and easy to see), and they will capture pretty much everything along the road to that destination.

And that's how a great many players of planetside 2 will operate. Visible objectives will be the goal (facilities, even though all terrain matters due to resources most people won't notice or won't care, because fighting nets them resources anyway). And they'll capture everything along the roads between those facilities.

Outfits that understand the game and want to play a bit more strategically will take alternate paths or objectives, but they'll be the minority.

Perhaps the mission system can help here, but I think you'd have to have a strong motivator to pull people away from their natural instincts.

[Xyntech]

I've been thinking about paths of least resistance and the region idea I posted.

Basically, my idea with the regions is to replicate some of the better dynamics of continents from the first game, since Indar is like 3 continents slammed together. Obviously my idea calls for dividing somewhere like Indar up into 4 to 7 regions, but I don't think it would be such a bad thing to have smaller "continents" (now regions). The way I divided Indar up has each region with about 10 hex areas per region, with 10 capture points still being similar to the number of bases on some PS1 continents.

So here's what I've come up with:

Continents from the first game generally had the zerg spreading in the path of least resistance, and then as an empire took a majority of the bases on a continent, the remaining bases would slowly start to get mopped up, even by the zerg, because it was easier to fight on the last few bases on a continent than to warp to the next continent.

So to mimic that, I would drastically reduce the hex border benefit for capturing territory from one region to another. If I was in region X and I wanted to capture an adjacent hex in region Y, It would take a lot longer than capturing another adjacent hex in region X. Not as much longer as back hacking behind enemy lines, but still significantly longer.

Then, once all territory in a region was controlled by your empire and you had gotten the regional bonus, perhaps the capture time bonus could be returned to normal. So it would be beneficial to control all territory in a region before pushing into the next region.

The path of least resistance would encourage the zerg to capture an entire region before moving on to the next one. Especially if there was a massive XP/resource reward when you took the last hex, along with a cheesy "You won the region!" text flashing on screen for those who haven't turned that bullshit off.

Obviously there are some flaws with the basic idea. For example, if the TR owned all of region X and the NC owned only part of region Y, the TR would be at a huge advantage to push into region Y while the NC would be at a massive disadvantage to try to push into region X.

One possible way to deal with this would be to have the time penalty for pushing from one region into another be suspended in both directions for a fully capped region. In other words, the TR could push out of region X easier once they fully capped it, but the NC could also push into region X just as easily at that point.

Obviously that would create some scenarios where it would be pretty hard to defend your regions, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. A regional system with some of the ideas in this post would tend to form a lot of battle lines along regional borders, so preventing them from being such rigidly defensible lines would probably be a good thing.

I'd love to see how the T split would evolve and change in an environment with 7 regions which were advantageous (and the path of least resistance) to capture as a whole, instead of just forming arbitrary battle lines wherever the armies met up in the middle.

I feel that this system would be dynamic enough, with enough variables, that it wouldn't be as common to be fighting over the exact same hexes with the exact same battle lines all of the time. The 7 regions I drew would be polar opposites to the T intersection, so the actual battle lines would have a lot of room to fluctuate I believe.

Obviously handcrafting a continent with a system like this in mind would be that much better, but I believe even a continent that's already made such as Indar could be a pretty dynamic place with some of these ideas. You don't necessarily need to change the geography, just how you use it and how players relate to it.


Edit: Malorn, if you'll note, I deliberately put at least 2 base facilities in each region, except the foothold regions which are inherently valuable already.

I believe that towers will fight much more like bases did in the first game, but I don't disagree that a lot of the zerg will gravitate towards the biggest shit they can find. But if regions can be made to feel more like continents, as far as it being the path of least resistance to take a whole region before moving on to the next, then I think that natural gravitation would work to our advantage.

As it stands, the way the big bases on Indar were broken, up, I had to put all of them at the furthest reaches of each region. This would end up being a good thing, in that players could take one base at one end, and fight their way to the other base at the other end of the region. Even the central region has it spread out into a Y, where presumably players would tend to pick the closer of the two, but that would still be a better dynamic than an aimless T intersection.

I'm just not sure if there would be an effective enough way to make regions feel as similar to PS1's continents as I think my idea requires them to feel. I think my ideas in this thread would go a long way, but it's hard to say if it would be enough.

[Grognard]

Here's a mock up I did the other week to illustrate how I'm guessing the devs intend battle lines to be drawn. (click the image to enlarge):

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3766/battlelines.png (http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3766/battlelines.png)

I'm guessing that the 3 way will mostly occur where all 3 sides have a front meeting up, where they all have a vested interest in taking or defending the territory. I have no doubt that some 3rd faction players may occasionally drop in uninvited to another empires 2 way, but I don't think it will be the norm.

Along borders where only 2 empires have a front, I mostly envision those two empires fighting it out. Larger fights in more critical and/or defensible locations, smaller fights along the rest of the border.


Interesting, I like that mock-up, all numbers equal up to the total continental sum? If so, they may just be down playing the potential population capacity.

Very interesting...

[Figment]

I'd like to say that the zerg did not expand on the path of least resistance, it expanded on the path of least organizational effort required and largest stimuli (provocations and (biggest) nearby threat).

Known to CR5s as "the nearest base" and "nearest spawnpoint" principles.

Meaning shortest travel time to the action.

So I'd even say they'd instinctively go the route of heaviest resistance!

[Bobby Shaftoe]

Meaning shortest travel time to the action.

Q.E.D: Whenever NC/TR cap Anu on Forseral from the Zal Ascension link and 90% start footzerging Ogma (despite no link), instead of Caer.

[mynameismud]

Well if stalemating does in fact turn into the issue we think it will be during beta. They will hopefully recognize the problem and try to solve it. hopefully by removing footholds.

[Xyntech]

Interesting, I like that mock-up, all numbers equal up to the total continental sum? If so, they may just be down playing the potential population capacity.

Very interesting...

It all adds up to 1863, so there would still be room for 137 more players, but close enough. I doubt will see 2000 player poplocks 24/7, or else something is seriously wrong.

I'd like to say that the zerg did not expand on the path of least resistance, it expanded on the path of least organizational effort required and largest stimuli (provocations and (biggest) nearby threat).

I apologize, I was using path of least resistance in a more figurative sense, like lightning traveling towards the nearest conductor, not a more literal sense of actual physical resistance. Poor choice of wording on my part.

I would argue that players also tend to go towards the nearest reward. Giant battles = XP = easiest nearby reward. If capping a region provided a good XP/resource reward, I think that would provide some motivation. Zerg herding can be a tricky thing though.

[Figment]

I apologize, I was using path of least resistance in a more figurative sense, like lightning traveling towards the nearest conductor, not a more literal sense of actual physical resistance. Poor choice of wording on my part.

No need to apologise, I understood you were going for that. Just a poor choice of words indeed for those who may be rather new to this type of discussion. :)

I would argue that players also tend to go towards the nearest reward. Giant battles = XP = easiest nearby reward. If capping a region provided a good XP/resource reward, I think that would provide some motivation. Zerg herding can be a tricky thing though.

True, though I'd say the overal completionist (and perfect border) mentality humans have is even more important in relation to the concept of regions. That goes on both small scale with hexes, as well as entire continents. Which is one reason why a lot of people dislike the idea of not being able to conquer the entire continent.

That probably goes for me as well: it feels as if you can't finish up on your activity. Collectors have this need that is only satisfied by getting closer to completing the set and is only ever fully satisfied if you can get all. Not being able to get all is sometimes demoralising and frustrating to them and it sometimes prevents you from setting new goals. People usualy want to work towards a goal and finish that before setting a new challenge. Unfortunately the continent in PS2 seems to not allow working towards the biggest goal: global domination.

I fear that might eventually result in a sense of apathy once people realise it can't be done. That sense of apathy is often translated in a less complex form of command. In this case, it could be getting just enough resources to sustain a farm, rather than moving the map.

[Xyntech]

At least regions would give something beyond small hexes and larger bases to capture. One step up, to have it clearly marked for all to see that your empire owns X region on that continent.

Also, regions could potentially make it more possible to rally around attacking and defending certain territories, which eventually could lead to tactics that may bring total domination of a continent. The T split seems like it would be very hard to push one empire off for very long, much less both empires, but if you have a strong border created along regional boundaries, one empire may be able to entrench long enough to claim total victory.

I think that capping a continent in PS2 will be way more awesome and way more of a feeling of accomplishment compared to PS1. Being so much harder will make it feel more like locking the world than capping a continent use to feel. Completionists will still get that satisfaction, but it may be more like a once a month type of a thing, instead of a victory you can reasonably expect to achieve anywhere from several times a day to once every few days like capping continents in PS1.

I do hope we get a few smaller continents later on as well, hopefully ones with no footholds too. I think that capping those would happen a lot more often and cater to players who like that sort of thing. I think the current continents will cater to a lot more people than some are fearing, but I can't argue that it will be worse than PS1 in a few ways (even if it's better than PS1 in more ways).

[Figment]

Could be, but the thing about that is that you separate continents from one another. It would be like having separate worlds to conquer instead of one. Veterans didn't like the bending in that it reduced immersion and created more mental distance between fights, next to not making much sense lorewise.

When all continents were visible on one map, it felt like one fight, one war. That reduced and I think it did eventually lead to reduced care for global strategy and more farming invasions.

Broadcast warpgates also strongly affected the mentality of people to a more individual deployment. Before that, you moved as empires. After, you could more easily move on your own and logistically target selection changed too. A lot of bases physically became closer to the frontline and response was faster, making you less likely to attack certain base types that were hard to hold, but easy to expand from. Both became harder as large responses became likelier.

[Socks]

Perhaps the devs will switch the resources from time to time. This will make uncontested/less contested areas suddenly more interesting, thus shifting the frontline or making drops behind enemy lines necessary.

However for this to be an incentive resources will have to be scarce. Which i would find interesting personally. It would make you think twice for spawning that vanguard.
But as i understand the devs dont want to punish players for buying tanks (and possibly lose them in a few minutes, but thats for balance). They want to see tanks all over the battlefield.