SmedBlog: Seamless Continents/Naval Units

[Hamma]

I'm doing targeted feedback threads on all items from Smed's Blog (http://john-smedley.livejournal.com/2412.html). This one is for seamless continents.

Water between continents - seamlessly - this is really hard tech, but our goal is to make the whole planet seamless and allow water based vehicles.
Thoughts!

[IHateMMOs]

I doubt they have enough tech to make Planetside 2 take place on an entire planet with no loading screen, but I can see water based battlefield.

[Levente]

I doubt they have enough tech to make Planetside 2 take place on an entire planet with no loading screen, but I can see water based battlefield.

I think they can. Remember its PC EXKLUSIVE game. we have a lot of power. last true pc game was crysis 1 back in 2007. :cool:

[ringring]

I quite like the thought. But I have doubts.
I imagine it would be way down the line too.

[IHateMMOs]

I think they can. Remember its PC EXKLUSIVE game. we have a lot of power. last true pc game was crysis 1 back in 2007. :cool:

I don't think even the strongest PC can handle something like that.

[Stardouser]

Maybe this isn't possible in 2012 but in 2016? Quite possible. And that said, seamless planets, or in the case of other intellectual properties(ie, other companies that make MMOFPS), megacontinents, or at least huge areas like what ArmA 2 is located on(that's ONLY an example for the size, not for ArmA 2 gameplay) IS the direction that MMOFPS is headed. No question.

[IHateMMOs]

Maybe this isn't possible in 2012 but in 2016? Quite possible. And that said, seamless planets, or in the case of other intellectual properties(ie, other companies that make MMOFPS), megacontinents, or at least huge areas like what ArmA 2 is located on(that's ONLY an example for the size, not for ArmA 2 gameplay) IS the direction that MMOFPS is headed. No question.

Of coarse, we can expect space combat as well for the future, and a higher Player limit, but only in the future, but right now, most likely not.

[Hmr85]

It would definitely add a new dynamic to the game play. Could you imagine D-Day landings as you try to get a foothold on a new cont.

[JPalmer]

Amazing if it can work. They would need some really smart technology to do that. I think it be more of tech and server issue than a player's computer issue right?

I would love to be a Captain of a huge ass ship though.

[Atheosim]

Yep, right now we simply don't have the hardware for that type of thing, but in 5-6 years? Quite likely. I look forward to it.

[Zebasiz]

Looking forward to a naturally occuring re-enactment of the Normandy landings. :cool:

PS: Indeed Hmr85

[Blackwolf]

Don't think it would be a big problem personally. Problems I see are people bypassing the ocean entirely and using Warp Gates.

Unless bringing naval power to the battle has a serious impact on it, people aren't going to waste time trying to drive a 40kph vehicle across the ocean.

It would be awesome if such vehicles could serve as artillery (battleships), and repair/rearm stations for aircraft (carriers). Would be the ultimate raid formation, but I think it would be easier to just go via warp gate honestly. Depending on what the capabilities are, you could make a very effective off shore base to attack from, complete with spawning and vehicle creation.

[ringring]

It would definitely add a new dynamic to the game play. Could you imagine D-Day landings as you try to get a foothold on a new cont.
Now that would be cool.

[Stardouser]

Don't think it would be a big problem personally. Problems I see are people bypassing the ocean entirely and using Warp Gates.

Well, here's the thing; warpgate is a convenience, but they could be camped too. Or, you can fly your Galaxies/naval landing ships across the ocean, the whole ocean can't be camped. If necessary, they could remove the shielding on the warpgate to enhance its status as a possible convenience, not a safe route.

AND, if they make it so you can only cap adjacent hexes, or beach hexes if you have no adjacent hexes, it would force beach landings.

[Akrasjel Lanate]

Would be interesting but thats rather longer term goal

[AnamNantom]

I'm doing targeted feedback threads on all items from Smed's Blog (http://john-smedley.livejournal.com/2412.html). This one is for seamless continents.


Thoughts!

Submarines, FTW!

I doubt they have enough tech to make Planetside 2 take place on an entire planet with no loading screen, but I can see water based battlefield.


Yeah they do!

[Tatwi]

Thoughts!

http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/img-thing?.out=jpg&size=l&tid=38161178

I'm down with naval units.

[AnamNantom]

I don't think even the strongest PC can handle something like that.

Of course it's possible. Why would it not be?

[Akrasjel Lanate]

Of course it's possible. Why would it not be?

Well it must be aveilable to everyone playing PS2(not only those with strongest maschines), he said they dont want to divide the community.

[Comet]

Make it so you can travel to each continent using land, air and sea. If it's limited to just one of those options, the gameplay might become too predictable, IE, if you know the enemy is coming from another continent, you also know they must come by the sea.

[ComerEste]

My first thought of this was something like BF1942/1943 in the Pacific, was always fun to jump in a Destroyer and shell an island. Knowing how SOE designed the look of all the vehicles and aircraft, it would be interesting to see how they would do "futuristic" naval ships. VS would probably all be hover ships, NC probably be like space ships that have been re-purposed into being naval ships, TR probably be close to real life modern navies from like US or Russia.

Should they work on the idea? Hell yes. Even if takes a while for them to do and they tell the teams that they can work on it at their leisure. Would be cool if they designed a whole new set of bases specifically for the water, like an oil rig or something.

[Mox]

If there is nothing but sea between the continents it would be boring.
We need a lot of islands between the continents. Perhaps with outfit bases on them.

[Duskguy]

there is a ocean continent thread in the ideas forum here. suggestions for vehicles and maps and how infantry would fit in.
http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=43018

not sure how far down the line a seemless world would be, but in the mean time i am sure SOE could make continents based on water. i made a suggestion in the above link about having a map based on an land locked sea like can be found in some C&C games. would have a large, but not overly large water area as well as plenty of land around it and islands/labs spread in the sea.

[Satyxis]

There are a lot of places this could go wrong... we're talking about potentially adding a LOT of geography (playable real estate) to the game world... would there be a way to "up" the population to maintain a playable density? It could get boring really quick if you were just running around in your ship looking for other boats to sink between your continent and others...

I am afraid it will end up similar to the caverns that turned me off of PS the first time around (I did eventually come back, but still despise the caverns).

[Stardouser]

There are a lot of places this could go wrong... we're talking about potentially adding a LOT of geography (playable real estate) to the game world... would there be a way to "up" the population to maintain a playable density? It could get boring really quick if you were just running around in your ship looking for other boats to sink between your continent and others...

I am afraid it will end up similar to the caverns that turned me off of PS the first time around (I did eventually come back, but still despise the caverns).

That's what seamless worlds mean, multiple physical server machines handle different areas of the gameworld, and all of them can handle their own player counts independently and you transition seamlessly between them. There does have to be a balance between, on the one hand, you don't want people to have to spend 5 minutes looking for a kill, but on the other, you don't want people forced to meatgrind, or for there to be such a dense population that every continent has battles raging on it because the server is packed full.

I'm guessing that oceans would be done with hexes just like land, but the actual capturable areas will be located on small islands, oil rig-like structures which you can see go down to the ocean floor to mine resources, etc.

And an interesting aspect to ocean is, OK, let's say you're going to fly a Galaxy to the target. On land, if you get shot down early, people bail and walk. In the water, though...haha!

[RSphil]

Water based combat would be cool. If aces high 2 can have massive battles over a very very big area I'd say planetside 2 could have the tech to do this in the future. All aces high 2 was missing was infantry combat.

[Goku]

I doubt they have enough tech to make Planetside 2 take place on an entire planet with no loading screen, but I can see water based battlefield.

You can still load between areas on screen. Vanguard SoH did this. Although there was lag when entering between zones, so you did notice.

[XxAxMayxX]

sounds like it may allow for more of a smooth travel system and the whole naval thing sounds fun. However performance is allways a concern of coarse.

[Ruffdog]

Sounds interesting!
Make parts of the water into resource tiles so there's a meta game and something to fight over, not just a line between A and B?

[Sledgecrushr]

Umm its just my opinion but i think water navy is a dumb idea when your air power can literally fly forever. Why float at boating speeds when you can fly at jet speeds. Interesting idea for modern battlefield 4, not so good for sc fi ps2.

[Stardouser]

Umm its just my opinion but i think water navy is a dumb idea when your air power can literally fly forever. Why float at boating speeds when you can fly at jet speeds. Interesting idea for modern battlefield 4, not so good for sc fi ps2.

Why would you drive an tank on the ground? why would you drive a Skyguard on the ground? Those can't drive on the water, so for surface based AA, you need ships.

That's only a sample.

[Sledgecrushr]

Why would you drive an tank on the ground? why would you drive a Skyguard on the ground? Those can't drive on the water, so for surface based AA, you need ships.

That's only a sample.

Wtf? Why would air assets engage against naval units in the middle of the ocean? If you put a platoon on a ship and sent it out into the ocean thats a platoon that is going to be lost to you for a long while as it floats along. Navy is great for projecting force, except when there are no fuel constraints and then navy is just a waste of manpower and resources best spent on air power.

[Notsononymous]

Love the sound of water between bases, and making the whole planet seamless. It'll be tough (I imagine the netcode is already tough enough for a single continent let alone 3 (or more if they're added - but as a friend of mine once said, netcode is what SOE do). Only thing is I'm not sure what good water vehicles would be if they have no objectives to fight over. Maybe have oil-rig bases and underwater bases in between the land based continents, or you could even have the three land based continents arranged around a future island based continent. Actually I think that's an amazing idea, I'm gonna flesh that out below. :D

Island based continent! Like the archipelago map type in Age of Empires, only with objectives in between the islands. That. Would be frickin' awesome. Then you could have little D-Day-esque landings to take over bases on islands and stuff, with amphibious tanks and troop transports. Or you could add certs to make existing vehicles amphibious (obviously the Vanu MBT is already amphibious, not sure how that would balance - maybe you have to add a cert for traversing "deep" water?). Then more certs for increasing speed over water. Amphibious Sunderers and Vanguards, excuse me while I giggle with childish joy. :rolleyes:

[Noctis]

Why would somebody fight for ocean?

Simply, Oil (resource) Stations.

[p0intman]

pretty much the only decent idea in his entire blog outside of outfit bases. i have more to say in this thread (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=45336)

[Sotonian]

It would definitely add a new dynamic to the game play. Could you imagine D-Day landings as you try to get a foothold on a new cont.

With coordinated galaxy drops in the mainland at the same time, would be epic

[Whitetragedy]

I can see this happening in 8 years...

[Stardouser]

Wtf? Why would air assets engage against naval units in the middle of the ocean? If you put a platoon on a ship and sent it out into the ocean thats a platoon that is going to be lost to you for a long while as it floats along. Navy is great for projecting force, except when there are no fuel constraints and then navy is just a waste of manpower and resources best spent on air power.

Why would air assets engage anything on the ground in the middle of nowhere? Why would they engage anything? Enemies have to be destroyed or they will come and capture your bases. Those ships will be coming to land on your beaches and capture your coastal hexes.

Also, I think you're overestimating the time constraints here. Do you really think the size of the ocean between two continents is going to be significantly larger than 64km square? A naval ship crossing a 10km wide body of water isn't going to take THAT long. Sure, it might take 10 minutes instead of a 2 minute flight, but they will bring things to the battle that air doesn't.

[SpottyGekko]

A very big YES on this one :D

I was a big fan of naval combat in WWII-Online, even though it was quite limited in that game.

If the ocean hexes contain resources, they can be fought over.
If there's islands out there, they can be conquered.
If there's water, we need Navy SEALS.
If the world gets bigger, we'll have a use for EW radar stations (and jammers).
Carriers that can function as a full base with infantry,vehicle and air spawn terminals (and can be boarded, fought over and captured... or sunk).
Troop transports that can travel underwater (or cloaked) and deliver "little surprises" behind enemy lines.
LC's that can deliver 2 or 3 MBT's on a beach and deploy to act as an infantry spawn.
Jet-Ski's that can be the water-based equivalent of the Flash.


The only drawback of a very big world is that it requires a very big population, else people become too spread out. WWII-Online had a massive world map and had to rely on an artificial mechanism (only certain towns very cappable at any given moment) to keep players concentrated around a handful of fighting objectives.

[RSphil]

navel battle was good in aces high 2. you had aircraft carriers and destroyers. though the maps are alot bigger then planetside 2. ( takes an hour to fly one side to the other in a spitfire ) while your landing craft headed to the beach head to capture the town or base air assets from the carrier would cover them and destroy key facilities to make tha capture easier.
while all this was going the destroyers where shelling gun emplacements and nailing the town and airbase. also guys would need to man the AA to defend the fleet from the enemy.

was great fun and i think it would be a good addition to planetside 2 in the future. a navy is alot handier then an air drop. a navel force can bring the entire army, vehicles and all. air drop just brings troops atm and air cover.

[Foe]

I have to kinda laugh at the "we/they don't have the tech crowd" I mean if you can have a world as big as skyrim on the xbox and ps3.

But it is not do-able on the pc? Eve Online shows what is possible and has for years now.

[Tzitzimitl]

It seems like a concern is why take boats when you can just fly over with galaxies. I possible solution could be the addition of fuel to aircraft so as to limit their range.

[Stardouser]

It seems like a concern is why take boats when you can just fly over with galaxies. I possible solution could be the addition of fuel to aircraft so as to limit their range.

In order to have a seamless planet, they would pretty much be forced to adopt the system of only being able to capture adjacent hexes(or beach hexes/hexes right outside of warpgates). For the current continent I was not in favor of the adjacent hex capture only mechanic, but for this it would become mandatory.

And that, in turn, answers the question of why people would take ships instead of Galaxies - since, indeed, you will only be able to attack a continent you don't have a presence on by attacking either warpgate adjacent hexes, or coastal hexes, the enemy could set up a ton of Skyguards on the coast. So in order to bust through those Skyguards, you take naval ships(which might also be able to land tanks). That will force the enemy to defend with vehicles other than just AA vehicles.

[Duskguy]

Love the sound of water between bases, and making the whole planet seamless. It'll be tough (I imagine the netcode is already tough enough for a single continent let alone 3 (or more if they're added - but as a friend of mine once said, netcode is what SOE do). Only thing is I'm not sure what good water vehicles would be if they have no objectives to fight over. Maybe have oil-rig bases and underwater bases in between the land based continents, or you could even have the three land based continents arranged around a future island based continent. Actually I think that's an amazing idea, I'm gonna flesh that out below. :D

Island based continent! Like the archipelago map type in Age of Empires, only with objectives in between the islands. That. Would be frickin' awesome. Then you could have little D-Day-esque landings to take over bases on islands and stuff, with amphibious tanks and troop transports. Or you could add certs to make existing vehicles amphibious (obviously the Vanu MBT is already amphibious, not sure how that would balance - maybe you have to add a cert for traversing "deep" water?). Then more certs for increasing speed over water. Amphibious Sunderers and Vanguards, excuse me while I giggle with childish joy. :rolleyes:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=43018
this thread covers a lot of what you just mentioned.

[RSphil]

i lol at the people who say the navy is a wast of time. if done correctly it will have troop transports and vehicle transports. gals can not carry tanks ect atm so a navel fleet for a beach landing D-Day style would be the best way to get an entire fighting force over the water. troops alone cant fight tanks ect.

lets hope if the do get it sorted it is done correctly and not half assed or in a stupid gimmicky way.
fingers crossed soe :)

[Phisionary]

Yeah, I don't see why water-borne invasion forces couldn't be (almost) as effective as one by galaxy drops. If you had a naval transport vessel that could act as a spawn point, or large ships that could be repair bays for air support. On a continent with a more inclusive approach to water features, particularly around capture points, I could see that being very effective.

[p0intman]

Yeah, I don't see why water-borne invasion forces couldn't be (almost) as effective as one by galaxy drops. If you had a naval transport vessel that could act as a spawn point, or large ships that could be repair bays for air support. On a continent with a more inclusive approach to water features, particularly around capture points, I could see that being very effective.

This.. basically.

[Blackwolf]

Well, here's the thing; warpgate is a convenience, but they could be camped too. Or, you can fly your Galaxies/naval landing ships across the ocean, the whole ocean can't be camped. If necessary, they could remove the shielding on the warpgate to enhance its status as a possible convenience, not a safe route.

AND, if they make it so you can only cap adjacent hexes, or beach hexes if you have no adjacent hexes, it would force beach landings.

You're on to something there.

Remove the shields from the Warpgates and make them capture points as well. With Naval battle as a means of spanning continents, capturing a Warpgate on the other side to facilitate faster reinforcement and travel between secured continents and potential battlefields would allow a naval fleet to actually secure a "beach head" at the warpgate. Or if the fleet was strong enough, it could simply form it's own beach head anywhere on the continent and engage the enemy head on. I like that idea.

[sagolsun]

Naval units is one of those ideas that sounds good and never is.

True enough.

A few downsides:

1) water makes for visually boring terrain. Blue on the bottom, yellow sun up on the top. NC will feel like home.

2) water is uniform on all sides, ergo not possible to use terrain to your advantage.

3) water is flat, meaning maximum viewdistance, meaning snipers have a field day and the client needs to suck a lot of data. You'd be shooting at two pixel high enemies a server away.

4) infantry are useless on water, which would require movable ships on top of which you have soldiers. no game has successfully solved the mover-on-mover problem yet - though BF2142 got close.

5) land vehicles are useless on water, meaning you need to create a lot of new assets to replace them

Though I also see the potential for an additional layer of gameplay here.

[Neurotoxin]

Ranges are key. If you render everything in a 1km radius, it doesn't matter where you are. Servers would essentially need a seam-stitching method to tie all the individual continents and the servers running them to the open waters without any hiccup in the action.

I feel like there could be additional limitations... expand the boundaries and add a few captureable ports, make boats the key for water transition. They could either extend the energy radius for the empire (think of Protoss nexus crystals) and maybe smaller aircraft only have 30 seconds of battery outside the massive energy radius of a broadcast ship.

The Galaxy is probably immune to these effects, and a Galaxy can even be fitted with a smaller energy radius module to help friendly aircraft get further from the ships. Land-friendly watercraft may or may not have the same energy limitations.

The energy broadcast areas would reflect areas that the server should focus on more. Where there is empty water with no nearby energy, the chances of seeing or having to render anything there is greatly reduced, so the server can essentially ignore those dead-zones aside from processing weather patterns in those areas.

[FuzzyandBlue]

2) water is uniform on all sides, ergo not possible to use terrain to your advantage.

3) water is flat, meaning maximum viewdistance, meaning snipers have a field day and the client needs to suck a lot of data. You'd be shooting at two pixel high enemies a server away.

When I think of oceans I don't really think of the massive wide open spaces we have here on earth. I'm thinking of islands, Floating platforms, and rock formations jutting out of the water.

If anyone ever played crimson skies I'm think of the islands that were in that game.

The most important thing to prevent sniper heaven would be to not make the oceans to large. I don't see any reason why the oceans can't be smaller than the average continent by quite a bit.

[super pretendo]

Anyone who thinks there isn't feasible hardware for this is living in a dreamland.

[Blackwolf]

My first thought of this was something like BF1942/1943 in the Pacific, was always fun to jump in a Destroyer and shell an island. Knowing how SOE designed the look of all the vehicles and aircraft, it would be interesting to see how they would do "futuristic" naval ships. VS would probably all be hover ships, NC probably be like space ships that have been re-purposed into being naval ships, TR probably be close to real life modern navies from like US or Russia.

Should they work on the idea? Hell yes. Even if takes a while for them to do and they tell the teams that they can work on it at their leisure. Would be cool if they designed a whole new set of bases specifically for the water, like an oil rig or something.

I don't think VS ships would hover. Wouldn't make sense if they did, and yet couldn't travel across land.

Wtf? Why would air assets engage against naval units in the middle of the ocean? If you put a platoon on a ship and sent it out into the ocean thats a platoon that is going to be lost to you for a long while as it floats along. Navy is great for projecting force, except when there are no fuel constraints and then navy is just a waste of manpower and resources best spent on air power.

Because resources such as ammo and repair facilities don't fly along with you. No matter how fuel efficient aircraft become, they will always need a place to land for one reason or another. And no matter how effective aircraft are in controlling the war, no battle in history was ever won by air superiority alone. Naval forces have the potential to press in with ground forces, and supply long range bombardment for easier beach heads and landings. If a fleet could act as a fully functional base (that is destroyable) then why WOULDN'T aircraft head out to attack it?

[Stardouser]

You're on to something there.

Remove the shields from the Warpgates and make them capture points as well. With Naval battle as a means of spanning continents, capturing a Warpgate on the other side to facilitate faster reinforcement and travel between secured continents and potential battlefields would allow a naval fleet to actually secure a "beach head" at the warpgate. Or if the fleet was strong enough, it could simply form it's own beach head anywhere on the continent and engage the enemy head on. I like that idea.

Ah, now that's an idea. If they're capture points they could indeed be strategic targets to bring in faster reinforcements.

And even if they can't be made capture points, sending in an airstrike team to bomb the campers just before the rest of your forces come in through it would be great tactical depth.

[Celfoid]

True enough.

A few downsides:

1) water makes for visually boring terrain. Blue on the bottom, yellow sun up on the top. NC will feel like home.

2) water is uniform on all sides, ergo not possible to use terrain to your advantage.

3) water is flat, meaning maximum viewdistance, meaning snipers have a field day and the client needs to suck a lot of data. You'd be shooting at two pixel high enemies a server away.

4) infantry are useless on water, which would require movable ships on top of which you have soldiers. no game has successfully solved the mover-on-mover problem yet - though BF2142 got close.

5) land vehicles are useless on water, meaning you need to create a lot of new assets to replace them

Though I also see the potential for an additional layer of gameplay here.

1) Agreed. Yet with a neat and ''dynamic'' weather system, it wouldn't be so bland methinks. Have you seen the naval combat in Assassin's Creed 3? I watched a small bit of it from E3, anything near to that even just in concept would make naval warfare a much more interesting event.

2&3) ^ . So long as there's anything that has semblance to how the ocean really moves, snipers are going to have a pretty hard time making a shot from a boat that bobs up and down.

4) This is a problem. D:>

5) As a Vanu, I'm okay with this. ;)

Edit: It would be neat to see outposts or even small bases out at sea, on islands, etc. I definitely wouldn't want the sea to only be used as another angle of attack.. it should be contestable space too. Maybe that's stretchin' it though.

[RoninOni]

I quite like the thought. But I have doubts.
I imagine it would be way down the line too.

It would be... probably at LEAST a yr post launch.

This is a long term wish list item, and as power increases, so do the possibilities.

And of course, Adding Naval support would mean adding Naval vehicles....

I have big dreams on that one :D

[Duskguy]

True enough.

A few downsides:

1) water makes for visually boring terrain. Blue on the bottom, yellow sun up on the top. NC will feel like home.

2) water is uniform on all sides, ergo not possible to use terrain to your advantage.

3) water is flat, meaning maximum viewdistance, meaning snipers have a field day and the client needs to suck a lot of data. You'd be shooting at two pixel high enemies a server away.

4) infantry are useless on water, which would require movable ships on top of which you have soldiers. no game has successfully solved the mover-on-mover problem yet - though BF2142 got close.

5) land vehicles are useless on water, meaning you need to create a lot of new assets to replace them

Though I also see the potential for an additional layer of gameplay here.

#1-2 you realise the oceans have islands, rock formations, etc. that stick up out of the water an just below the waterline, right? and i assume if they add in water, they will add water based capture points such as oil-rigs.

#3-4 none of which i am picturing would be able to truly be vulnerable toa sniper, like:
-a sunderer type boat as a transport,
-an aircraft carrier type boat that can spawn small attack craft/air units when stopped = water based galaxy
small, quick jet skis for quads
-and small destroyer type boats with a pilot based minigun and a pair of turrets for passengers, one front, one back, to cover the position of tanks.
-with these, only the jet skis would be vulnerable to snipers, and the distance... you wouldnt be able to shoot as far as you can see due to bullet drop and in the case of the VS, damage/distance returns. and being that the aircraft carrier type would have to be stopped to spawn the vehicles, the moving on a moving platform would be solved

#5 if the above vehicles are too hard (i doubt), a cert could be added in for land vehicles and galaxies to traverse/land on water.

the problem would be how fast these vehicles traverse the water and how large of an area the water covers and how many bases are added in between the major lands. i mentioned earlier that there is a naval and continent thread in the ideas section that someone mentioned certs for infantry in the water, such as a way to traverse the water and even a device for LA to dive instead of fly.

[RoninOni]

There are a lot of places this could go wrong... we're talking about potentially adding a LOT of geography (playable real estate) to the game world... would there be a way to "up" the population to maintain a playable density? It could get boring really quick if you were just running around in your ship looking for other boats to sink between your continent and others...

I am afraid it will end up similar to the caverns that turned me off of PS the first time around (I did eventually come back, but still despise the caverns).

I don't think you'd just mindlessly patrol waters looking for kills....

There'd be some few resource platforms in the water to contest over,

and you'd be able to use Naval units to assist in coastal territory battles, even providing a close Air Fighter spawn in the form of a Naval Carrier, as well as some serious bombardment options.

the REAL advantage IMO is that it would allow the warp gates to be 'shut off', forcing a faction forced off a continent to make a DDay landing to regain presence.

[Blackwolf]

And let's face it. It wouldn't be a bad idea. If you could locate and engage a fleet in the ocean, more power to you. But the fleet's ability to launch an all out surprise attack from any direction on a continent would be it's biggest advantage. An organized outfit could cause some serious havoc on enemy forces by deploying a fleet to it's flank.

The fact that ships would function as destroyable vehicles would keep things balanced.

[Envenom]

Aiming high. If they can make it work, awesome. Though I'm sceptical.

[SurgeonX]

They've already mentioned that ForgeLight is extensible, and able to cope with future graphics advancements, so I'd definitely see it as a possibility from a tech perspective.

A giant, seemless world, with no loading screens?
That'd be absolutely amazing.

[Smed]

this tech is possible with our Forgelight engine. It's just a lot of work. We're going to do this. May take a good while though

Smed

[Stardouser]

this tech is possible with our Forgelight engine. It's just a lot of work. We're going to do this. May take a good while though

Smed

Being able to drive a ship across the sea with a load of guys, land on the beach, fight your way to a space launcher deep inland, launch to an orbital station, capture it, then drop pod back to somewhere on the planet to reinforce a fight would be the ultimate victory for MMOFPS. Thanks for seeing beyond ground based infantry combat!

[Electrofreak]

I'm just afraid that the oceans of PS2 will be the caves of PS1.

(For those that never played PS1, after initial interest wore off, the caves were rarely played in, as the benefits they offered the surface were minimal when compared to the time and effort needed to capture the caves. That manpower was usually better invested on the surface.)

Seamless continents would be cool though. At least it would significantly expand PS2's bragging rights regarding map size.

[NewSith]

I would rather have every map border to be a warpgate, so we actually load other continents by crossing the certain line and staying there for a certain period of time instead of making it seamless.

I think having 3 seamless continents may result in extreme stress for server/client.

EDIT: Extreme Stress for Server/Client means more unnecessary glitches, bugs and CTDs, while noby minds the absence of it. In fact it will, in my opinion, become hated if there's any problems (that are destined to be, there's no other way) with it after implementation.


TL;DR, no need for seamless stuff, we're not THAT persistance-twisted.

[super pretendo]

this tech is possible with our Forgelight engine. It's just a lot of work. We're going to do this. May take a good while though

Smed
Cool, I thought as much.

I love how these smug people in this thread for some reason assumed it wasn't possible

[Astrok]

Yep, right now we simply don't have the hardware for that type of thing, but in 5-6 years? Quite likely. I look forward to it.

in about 5-6 years we dont have desktop pc's anymore.

u just buy a box the size of 2 inches and everything put in their.

buildt in screen ofcourse that pops out of the 2 inched box.

[AnamNantom]

this tech is possible with our Forgelight engine. It's just a lot of work. We're going to do this. May take a good while though

Smed
See, told ya'll!

[Harasus]

If they can do it, sure. IF they can do it and people can play on it...

[Duskguy]

this tech is possible with our Forgelight engine. It's just a lot of work. We're going to do this. May take a good while though

Smed

really hope for a few things to keep in mind since you and the team plan on doing this, which im all for.
A- sea bases/capture points/islands generously dispersed through the ocean/seas to keep the game play action oriented rather than sail around for ages not finding anyone.
B- actual boats of some sort, which i sort of discussed in a previous post.
C- more players, lots more players. if you are combining the world, you would need the 2k players from each continent + any new continents + all the ocean space, otherwise the game will get boring as no one will be able to find anyone and will be much like conquest in BF3 on consoles.
D- the server/client actually being able to support all these players, because after more continents are added, we are talking around 12k players at least

[Stardouser]

B- actual boats of some sort, which i sort of discussed in a previous post.
C- more players, lots more players. if you are combining the world, you would need the 2k players from each continent + any new continents + all the ocean space, otherwise the game will get boring as no one will be able to find anyone and will be much like conquest in BF3 on consoles.


Obviously, the more playable territory there is, the more players will be needed, and that DOES mean server merges - no way around it.

But, I don't think all the continents are going to be packed to the gills with 2000. Let's say that there comes a time when there are 6 continents with a maximum of 2000 each, and the ocean around and between can hold another 3000. That is technically 15000, but I have a feeling such a server would actually be capped at 10000 so that there won't be combat going on in every hex of every continent and every ocean hex at the same time.

[Blackwolf]

really hope for a few things to keep in mind since you and the team plan on doing this, which im all for.
A- sea bases/capture points/islands generously dispersed through the ocean/seas to keep the game play action oriented rather than sail around for ages not finding anyone.
B- actual boats of some sort, which i sort of discussed in a previous post.
C- more players, lots more players. if you are combining the world, you would need the 2k players from each continent + any new continents + all the ocean space, otherwise the game will get boring as no one will be able to find anyone and will be much like conquest in BF3 on consoles.
D- the server/client actually being able to support all these players, because after more continents are added, we are talking around 12k players at least

A - Naval conflict would probably occur as an accident. You wouldn't launch a ship or an entire fleet with the sole purpose of looking for a fight on the high seas. You'd launch your fleet with an intended goal and destination. Travel between point A and B would leave you open for attack if someone got wind of your fleet and intercepted it. It might be boring for the most part if you are the scout air craft meant to keep an eye out for the fleet, until you find one and call for reinforcements.

I just plain agree with B - D.

[Toppopia]

I don't want to buy a new computer though :cry:

[Blackwolf]

I don't want to buy a new computer though :cry:

Why would you have to? The concept isn't even all that new. Plenty of games have massive areas that are seamless. SWG and DAoC use the same technique that I'm betting PS2 would use for this.

[Baneblade]

this tech is possible with our Forgelight engine. It's just a lot of work. We're going to do this. May take a good while though

Smed

Smedlonius, we both know that Air Cruisers are the way to go for a naval expansion.

[Sledgecrushr]

The way I see it is the aircraft we have will be certed to be able to go under water. This way you can be both fast and super sneaky and they wouldnt have to do much to the craft but a little cosmetics. This way the water navy fans get their boat and its not dumb.
Edit@ IMHO the only navy I would like to see is space navy.

[Stardouser]

Smedlonius, we both know that Air Cruisers are the way to go for a naval expansion.

You mean like Valiant from Dr. Who? Well, that's a flying aircraft carrier, but same idea.

[Toppopia]

Why would you have to? The concept isn't even all that new. Plenty of games have massive areas that are seamless. SWG and DAoC use the same technique that I'm betting PS2 would use for this.

As long as they can make it so it still works fine on old computers.

[Baneblade]

You mean like Valiant from Dr. Who? Well, that's a flying aircraft carrier, but same idea.

Pretty much, just with no overpowering the ground war.

[Duskguy]

A - Naval conflict would probably occur as an accident. You wouldn't launch a ship or an entire fleet with the sole purpose of looking for a fight on the high seas. You'd launch your fleet with an intended goal and destination. Travel between point A and B would leave you open for attack if someone got wind of your fleet and intercepted it. It might be boring for the most part if you are the scout air craft meant to keep an eye out for the fleet, until you find one and call for reinforcements.

I just plain agree with B - D.

way i meant point A was bases like biolabs and such. which would feed into your idea of sailing from one place to another with a set destination. and if incorporated in the hex system the continents use, would provide clear front lines of battle for even the sea.
the hexes for the sea would likely have to cover more area since you cant have THAT many capture points, but would still provide a reasonable outline for the front line.

[Electrofreak]

I don't want to buy a new computer though :cry:

I don't know why everyone is so certain that being seamless would require a huge amount of resources. It doesn't!

When you move from one zone to another in a game, old textures are removed from memory while new textures are loaded into memory. The game is generally paused while this occurs because it takes time.

However, if you go into an area that's large enough with generic textures (wide expanse of ocean) the textures for the old continent can be removed from memory (as the land is no longer in sight) while new ones are loaded for the new continent. As long as neither land mass is in sight, it's not an issue.

Think about the loading screen between zones in Assassin's Creed. It doesn't stop the game... it lets you run around a blank, empty playing field while the new textures load. The concept is the same, we'll be able to zoom towards the other continent as the textures load. As soon as they do, the land mass will start to become visible. If you turn around and go back, the land mass disappears, the textures for that continent are unloaded, and the textures for the new continent are loaded. You continue to see ocean all around you and then, after the new textures are loaded, you see the new continent appear on the horizon.

Hopefully that makes sense.

[fb III IX ca IV]

Why would you have to? The concept isn't even all that new. Plenty of games have massive areas that are seamless. SWG and DAoC use the same technique that I'm betting PS2 would use for this.
I'm pretty sure the Just Cause 2 map is the size of a few PS2 maps scattered in an ocean. And that game ran on consoles.

[Baneblade]

It doesn't even have to be done like that Sean, pretty much every mmo works like this already, it is just a design decision to segregate zones. WoW's continents are seamless, but I know you don't load Kalimdor as a whole when you port to Darnassus.

A seamless PlanetSide is not a big stretch in the design phase, it just has to be 'built'.

[Bruttal]

Can't wait are my thoughts

[RoninOni]

really hope for a few things to keep in mind since you and the team plan on doing this, which im all for.
A- sea bases/capture points/islands generously dispersed through the ocean/seas to keep the game play action oriented rather than sail around for ages not finding anyone.
B- actual boats of some sort, which i sort of discussed in a previous post.
C- more players, lots more players. if you are combining the world, you would need the 2k players from each continent + any new continents + all the ocean space, otherwise the game will get boring as no one will be able to find anyone and will be much like conquest in BF3 on consoles.
D- the server/client actually being able to support all these players, because after more continents are added, we are talking around 12k players at least
Server can determine dynamically which players, and what data about those players, your client actually needs to track and only transfers that information.

They already have that in place to an extent... your client doesn't know all the details of the players on the other end of the continent... just that they're there.

You'll just get lump stat's... like "600TR/500NC/565VS on Ice continent" or something

[Brusi]

everyone talking about the tech not beina available... i'm sure they don't mean client side tech.

Server and networking tech, maybe?

[Electrofreak]

It doesn't even have to be done like that Sean, pretty much every mmo works like this already, it is just a design decision to segregate zones. WoW's continents are seamless, but I know you don't load Kalimdor as a whole when you port to Darnassus.

A seamless PlanetSide is not a big stretch in the design phase, it just has to be 'built'.

True, a lot of games do the same general thing.

[RoninOni]

Pretty much, just with no overpowering the ground war.

Simple... make them prohibitively expensive.

They'd be rare cause only very large outfits could afford them, with pooled resources. It'd be like a flying air base. And having it get shot down... well, you just lost a lot more resources than that facility your fighting over is worth. A LOT more.

Naval units have an advantage, gameplay wise, over space carriers though... by having that element restricted to the waters and borders, it can be made much more significant without making everything else pointless. It's restriction actually helps gameplay.

Additionally, even though they may have tech for space craft, those MASSIVE space craft can't fly in low orbit... they don't have the aerodynamics to fly and they're too big even for Vanu's magentic fields.

Thing's float on water... BIG things. MASSIVE things. Then all you need to do is be able to push it. Vanu could be explained by being able to power the magnetic field to keep it barely above the surface, but to move it actually displaces water from in front of it (or whichever direction it wants to move) to the opposite direction, so it can't move over land. (Basically it creates it's own water current)

Space stations supposedly exist as that's where the drop pods come from.... there's just no fighting over those orbital platforms.

That could be something else added entirely, and destroying an enemies orbital station (should be no easy task) over a continent would remove drop spawn ability for x hours (for that continent/region) while a new one is commissioned and deployed, significantly affecting their ground wars tactical options for the duration.

[Drakkonan]

If they were going to devote a ton of manpower to any of the ideas Smed's proposed, I'd hope it would be this one.

That being said, I really doubt we'll see it before Planetside 3.

[RoninOni]

If they were going to devote a ton of manpower to any of the ideas Smed's proposed, I'd hope it would be this one.

That being said, I really doubt we'll see it before Planetside 3.

who said anything about PS3?

This isn't EA/Activision....

This isn't CoD....

They built on an engine with VAST future power potential with the intent to expand PS2 more and more over years and years.

They are hoping people are still packing the servers in 10 years, and plan to keep adding content to make that reality happen.

More and more land masses is one of those ways. As will be new equipment and certifications.

Whole planets with connecting oceans will be another, adding an entire new facet to the war... Naval Combat.

And yes, this gets my vote as the #1 on the wish list.

The supply line/harvester idea is a much more realizable and immediate project however so likely we'll see that one well before Naval Combat

[Drakkonan]

Heh, that's the point. I don't expect the tech to be there for 10+ years. That might be an exaggeration, but when it does become possible, I've got to imagine there'd still be a ton of work required to get the engine to support it.

[RoninOni]

Heh, that's the point. I don't expect the tech to be there for 10+ years. That might be an exaggeration, but when it does become possible, I've got to imagine there'd still be a ton of work required to get the engine to support it.

I don't think so...

everything is moving into cloud networking... it's what makes this possible in the first place.

Your client isn't tracking every little detail all 2,000 players are doing... only a fraction.... only what is relevant, to you. Most of the players your client is merely aware of their existence and hex location.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be a massive project... it would.

Plus they couldn't do it till they had all their main continents finished, and they'd have to make a world map and add isle's, resource nodes and crap too to give the ocean real value.

5-6 years is certainly possible IMO. Optimistic maybe, but possible I think.

[berzerkerking]

I you can do this. my firstborn Son will be named after you

[SixShooter]

This would be the most amazing thing ever!

[vVRedOctoberVv]

This would be fine. Naval units are entirely doable at present, provided they have sufficient water to make it worth messing with. As for the other, large persistent world... Basically talking about Eve, there. One giant concurrently run complex, where each continent or world is divided up amongst "blades" that you pass between as you move. While doable, it isn't something likely to be seen in the short term. Talk about requiring an overhaul of "how things work"... By that I don't mean "game balance" I mean "programming" :)

[Phisionary]

Your client isn't tracking every little detail all 2,000 players are doing... only a fraction.... only what is relevant, to you. Most of the players your client is merely aware of their existence and hex location.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be a massive project... it would.
Exactly. On the client side of things, it really shouldn't be a big problem. It doesn't care how many players are in the world, as long as you can't see them all at once.

The server side of things... could be a very complicated engineering problem. With the right team of software engineers, very possible. I would imagine you could have multiple co-located servers hosting a single 'super-continent' even, and have the player be transparently passing from server to server all the time. I doubt there are any big reasons that couldn't be done today... just one of needing to sink a $1,000,000 or so into development.

At that point, 50,000 players on the same land-mass, not a problem.

The servers handling it well when two (or three) armies with 2000 players each come together at the same place, that's the tricky part.

[BUGGER]

Are population locks still a problem here? I imagine that wouldn't make ocean travel very seemless...

[Smed]

I would rather have every map border to be a warpgate, so we actually load other continents by crossing the certain line and staying there for a certain period of time instead of making it seamless.

I think having 3 seamless continents may result in extreme stress for server/client.

EDIT: Extreme Stress for Server/Client means more unnecessary glitches, bugs and CTDs, while noby minds the absence of it. In fact it will, in my opinion, become hated if there's any problems (that are destined to be, there's no other way) with it after implementation.


TL;DR, no need for seamless stuff, we're not THAT persistance-twisted.

the way the tech works it doesn't really matter. We stream a lot of stuff anyways.

[Roy Awesome]

the way the tech works it doesn't really matter. We stream a lot of stuff anyways.

Curious, are you guys working on location based server instances? I know there is a small team of people doing this in the Unity3d engine with Erlang (the same group that did the 1000 person FPS and took your world record away :P).

Since you have full control over the tech, you could grab all the players in the area and simulate them on one process, while simulating other people in other areas on other processes.

Actually, can you just poke your Tech Director and have him do a technical blog on how you are cramming that many people into the game? There are quite a few people that are very interested in it :D

[AnamNantom]

this tech is possible with our Forgelight engine. It's just a lot of work. We're going to do this. May take a good while though

Smed

Curious, are you guys working on location based server instances? I know there is a small team of people doing this in the Unity3d engine with Erlang (the same group that did the 1000 person FPS and took your world record away :P).

Since you have full control over the tech, you could grab all the players in the area and simulate them on one process, while simulating other people in other areas on other processes.

Actually, can you just poke your Tech Director and have him do a technical blog on how you are cramming that many people into the game? There are quite a few people that are very interested in it :D

Well, I'm thinking one thing... the mention of streaming makes me think of GaiKai. I've spoken with the guys before, had one of them give me the tech pitch of how it works. It was at one point that I could have had them collocating with a company I worked for at the time, if we had the right locations. I know Sony is buying GaiKai. It's very interesting stuff. I'm sure the tech is not taking anything from them as PS2 was developed before that buy, but it may be related.

I'm quite sure a CDN and strategic clustering of colo may be involved in some of the elements. More than likely, the static content. Though, GaiKai does stream interactive content, and that's very interesting. Come to think of it, SecondLife streams content constantly. They were founded by the former chief tech officer of Real Player (an early adaption streaming video company).

Ok, done pondering :)

[fod]

this would be so fun if it could be done
it would make planetside 2 feel even bigger than it is now which is great because "size always matters" :p

[cellinaire]

I doubt they have enough tech to make Planetside 2 take place on an entire planet with no loading screen, but I can see water based battlefield.

This isn't a launch day feature, ya know? He said it as a 'future' plan.

There already are things like 'Infinity : Quest for Earth' or 'Outerra'. So It they can do some serious research, then why not?

I mean, they pulled off the Forgelight and 2,000 players on a single continent. What makes you think it's 100% not possible? ;)


And to Smed : Don't rush it. Take your time for research and I think your programmers and engineers will be more than capable of it. I have faith, you know =)

But just curious about one thing : what about pop migration? I mean, in making the whole planet seamless, there will inevitably be some possibilities of all players converging on a single continent. What way to control their destination?



+ one last thing : If I cared so much about player density, then I would have never paid attention to MMOFPS genre.

[Smed]

Curious, are you guys working on location based server instances? I know there is a small team of people doing this in the Unity3d engine with Erlang (the same group that did the 1000 person FPS and took your world record away :P).

Since you have full control over the tech, you could grab all the players in the area and simulate them on one process, while simulating other people in other areas on other processes.

Actually, can you just poke your Tech Director and have him do a technical blog on how you are cramming that many people into the game? There are quite a few people that are very interested in it :D

Forgelight has had seamless world support for quite a while now. We don't really discuss how we do a lot of our behind the scenes tech stuff for the simple reason that it's part of what gives us a competitive advantage. We use some pretty interesting techniques to deal with a large amount of players interacting with physics. Look at what we did with DCUO for example. One hero in New York can quite literally throw a bus and have it bounce off a guy in Austin while another guy turns it into a block of ice.

I don't want to make any of this sound easy. it's not. We have some truly brilliant engineers. I see tech demos all the time. I saw that one with 1,000 players. We didn't make a big deal about it but we've had more than that before.

For us it's the whole package. lots of users. supporting that on both the client and the server in a way that allows a great user experience. It's not easy but that's the "secret sauce" for us.

[saltyorange]

The idea definitely sounds extremely awesome. I was thinking the same thing as cellinaire, what happens with the pop limits?

[Tatwi]

I still wish you'd buy these guys,

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php

Really, it's just one smart guy doing the programming. The concept has so much potential.

[cellinaire]

Would be interesting but thats rather longer term goal

I would rather have every map border to be a warpgate, so we actually load other continents by crossing the certain line and staying there for a certain period of time instead of making it seamless.

I think having 3 seamless continents may result in extreme stress for server/client.

EDIT: Extreme Stress for Server/Client means more unnecessary glitches, bugs and CTDs, while noby minds the absence of it. In fact it will, in my opinion, become hated if there's any problems (that are destined to be, there's no other way) with it after implementation.


TL;DR, no need for seamless stuff, we're not THAT persistance-twisted.

If it's possible with reasonable framerate and low lag, then why shouldn't they?

Yeah, it's not one of these things that "this seriously needs to be done", but it can always be a nice bonus to players like me, you know? ;)


And guys, let's not ask Smed to tell his company secret.

[AnamNantom]

I still wish you'd buy these guys,

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php

Really, it's just one smart guy doing the programming. The concept has so much potential.

Yeah I'd heard of this from my corp mates in Eve Online. I will have to try the demo again as I couldn't get it working previously.

[Roy Awesome]

the way the tech works it doesn't really matter. We stream a lot of stuff anyways.

Forgelight has had seamless world support for quite a while now. We don't really discuss how we do a lot of our behind the scenes tech stuff for the simple reason that it's part of what gives us a competitive advantage. We use some pretty interesting techniques to deal with a large amount of players interacting with physics. Look at what we did with DCUO for example. One hero in New York can quite literally throw a bus and have it bounce off a guy in Austin while another guy turns it into a block of ice.

I don't want to make any of this sound easy. it's not. We have some truly brilliant engineers. I see tech demos all the time. I saw that one with 1,000 players. We didn't make a big deal about it but we've had more than that before.

For us it's the whole package. lots of users. supporting that on both the client and the server in a way that allows a great user experience. It's not easy but that's the "secret sauce" for us.

Yeah, I understand it puts you at a disadvantage if you go spilling tech details everywhere. As an engineer who is really interested in this kind of stuff, it saddens me, but It makes total sense

[Crator]

Now this, I must see!

[Justaman]

It would definitely add a new dynamic to the game play. Could you imagine D-Day landings as you try to get a foothold on a new cont.

And instead of having "warpgates" that are ALWAYS under your factions control, the continent is only access-able from air/sea.

F T W.

Seamless continents are completely possible, it just takes work to program the memory management. Given the distance between, there's more than enough time to load the resources wile you travel to the location. So even lower end computers could handle it.


Also, it would be an entirely different meta game, as an assault would be reliant on the naval spawn points and gaining that successful foothold on the beach. If you didn't win the assault, you wouldn't be able to try again till you regrouped/respawned all the naval ships you needed to form up a new assault.

/droolz

[DarkMesa]

Now I would really like to see small islands in which the entire island acts as one large base.

I feel as though it would allow for very intense land-sea-and-air-battles.

[Ertwin]

TR & NC show up in destroyers, VS show up in a fleet of magriders. I can see that happening. Although I suspect all but the biggest ships would probably be faster than the Mag.

[Malorn]

Seems like a cool thing. I'm not seeing the value of seamlessly connected continents other than being neat. What's the practical purpose of it?

The ocean surface is a rather uninteresting thing. Just a big flat plane. Unless there will be islands to fight over and that sort of thing there doesn't seem to be much point in it. You could just as easily have made those continents.

And if the seamless connection is the only way to get to some places that seems like it's just tedious unnecessary travel time. Just make it a continent, throw some warp gates on it, and be done with it.

[exLupo]

I could maybe see this working if they wanted to expand the playscape but didn't want to add new conts. Warpgates already on the borders of the landmasses so they would, by default, also border the water areas.

Like has been said a bunch, it could just expand the hex control map. Mobile, water based spawn areas (carriers). Static control sites (rigs, islands, undersea domes, whatever) are focus points. It'd also provide for a whole other cert point sink later in the game's life.

I can get the why and the how. But, really, all I see is caves. *sigh*

[EVILPIG]

I doubt they have enough tech to make Planetside 2 take place on an entire planet with no loading screen, but I can see water based battlefield.

WWII Online. It was done over 10 yars ago.

A seamless world is what we want.

Naval units is lame in my book. Naval bases, yes. Futuristic flight makes boats a no go. Doesn't mean we can't fight for naval bases. It doesn't even mean we can't fight in the water. Futuristic flying machines would be able to go underwater too.

[exLupo]

The main point I could see for actual naval vehicles would be mobile bases. Places to spawn aircraft and reinforcements. Add a water-based apc so you could get another troop transport without actually adding an air vehicle to compete with the Galaxy. There'd be a lot of air, of course, but you'd still need to get boots on the ground and I'd rather not rely on Gals for everything.

Maybe water based megatank analogues. However, to me, that leads directly to coastal shelling. I don't want to deal with arty.

[RoninOni]

Yah, I could see Naval mobile bases... basically oversized aircraft carriers that spawns any vehicle but a battleship. These would cost an immense sum and take outfits weeks of saving to purchase. You do NOT want to lose your mobile bases.

Battleships that can spawn from shipyards that would be some serious heavy firepower at a far more reasonable cost than mobile bases (which would be prohibitively expensive) but still very expenses and not something to throw away at all.

Finally TR & NC would have landing craft for taking tanks from the mobile bases to the shore. TR & NC may additionally sport small, cheap naval fighter boats that would be relatively inexpensive. VS would just use their Gravs which need no transport.

Air vehicles (all or some, fighters at least) could be underwater capable as well.

The ocean itself would have isles & islands as well as resource nodes for drill type platform bases. These would likely be player constructs which can be captured or destroyed by enemy (capturing saving the victors from needing to purchase it). These resource nodes would be one of the key elements for naval unit purchases & upgrades.

If pushed off a continent, likely a nearby island or isle would first be secured as a close by spawning base and naval yard for allowing a sustained assault on the main land.

[exLupo]

You'd have to make it so Mags couldn't go on open ocean. Say the water is too choppy for their lift systems or something. Otherwise it'd be a funky balance point. Either they would be useless or overpowered.

[RoninOni]

You'd have to make it so Mags couldn't go on open ocean. Say the water is too choppy for their lift systems or something. Otherwise it'd be a funky balance point. Either they would be useless or overpowered.

TR/NC simply have a cheaper, but more restricted (can't go on land), naval small fighter unit, which would also be better suited for naval combat. (Say on water VS tanks lose a lil speed or something).

in order to keep VS naval units restricted to water but still thematic... they still hover but due to their size they displace water from the direction they want to move to the opposite side of the craft, in effect creating their own water current. This efficient propulsion system only works over water of course.

Oh yah, and jet skis :cool:

[exLupo]

Jet skis? We need some photoshop up in here. First person to provide a pic of TRay motorboating (either type) wins a million internets.

Reference photo:
http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/2453798828/l4r9ywusp8rbji7kp9b5.jpeg

[RoninOni]

Jet skis? We need some photoshop up in here. First person to provide a pic of TRay motorboating (either type) wins a million internets.

Oh you know if there were jet ski's you'd get with your outfit and just storm a beach with like 50 of em (well, 48 lol) :lol:

[exLupo]

Oh hell yes I would. In fact, I'd get a line of Mags to use as ramps.

Reference awesome:
Megaforce Flying Motorcycle Scene - YouTube

[RoninOni]

hahaha old movies are so cheesy

[Sunrock]

They tied to do this in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes but never got it to work really.

Its a fun idea but I really wonder if they can pull it off.

[OcO]

Forgelight has had seamless world support for quite a while now. We don't really discuss how we do a lot of our behind the scenes tech stuff for the simple reason that it's part of what gives us a competitive advantage. We use some pretty interesting techniques to deal with a large amount of players interacting with physics. Look at what we did with DCUO for example. One hero in New York can quite literally throw a bus and have it bounce off a guy in Austin while another guy turns it into a block of ice.

I don't want to make any of this sound easy. it's not. We have some truly brilliant engineers. I see tech demos all the time. I saw that one with 1,000 players. We didn't make a big deal about it but we've had more than that before.

For us it's the whole package. lots of users. supporting that on both the client and the server in a way that allows a great user experience. It's not easy but that's the "secret sauce" for us.


Sorry I did not play PS1. What is the connection between PS2 and PS1 as far as the game world map goes? Is this the same planet and setup that is currently running live in PS1 getting a big upgrade so use the existing world maps or is this a new world that the devs are using the old continent names for and are free to build a new world with as they add each new continent after release?

If Forgelight CAN effectively build PS2's world from the ground up seamlessly then the dev's should most definitely look towards making that a reality. Plan a new "World Map" that better suits being a actual planet surface with the eventual goal in mind of being able to go from any point on the world map to another in real time just like RL. The PS1 "World Map" was not created to represent a 3D world since each continent is actually a separate "instance". You are not physically connected in the game correct? You cant fly in game from one continent to other in PS1 right?

If Darkfall could have Naval combat in a "seamless" world then I would most certainly hope Forgelight can do better. There is no reason to not add in a Naval option to Land and Air combat if they can do so with this new engine. If Smedley thinks they can do it and do it right then yes please do add even more ways for us to fight and kill each other in a war for global domination.

If they add Naval combat of course they'll add new islands/oil rigs/resource nodes/reasons to use navy ships. That should go with out saying. Adding all that with the idea of making it all seamlessly interconnected though adds a whole new dimension to the game. Some continents could even be physically connected through bridges and island chains. A faction could be fighting a combined Land/Sea/Air push from one continent to another.

You don't have to have the current setup of each faction having a non-contestable safezone/sanctuary to fight on a continent as long as there is way to get there and fight for it. I've seen numerous posts about being able to take over a continent and push the other factions out completely. Planning for one huge seamless world allows this to work even better. The term Frontline could refer to what continents your fighting what faction for at any given time, not just what base on each continent!

When you combine this with Smedley's ideas on adding outfit bases and resource harvesting then individual outfits could have an actual "Homebase" in the game world they fight from. Adding more RTS/logistical options and "meta-gaming/sandbox" world options goes a long way to creating a more "Living and Breathing" virtual world instead of a series of isolated game maps.

[JHendy]

I doubt they have enough tech to make Planetside 2 take place on an entire planet with no loading screen, but I can see water based battlefield.

I doubt you're basing that on anything.

[Stardouser]

BTW Smedley, what do you think of the possibility of something like water that you can manipulate, that is to say, bust a dam(or simply open it) to flood the valley below it?

And on a somewhat related note, volcanic disasters like lava flows, hurricanes, etc? Can your engine do these?

[berzerkerking]

Smedlonius, we both know that Air Cruisers are the way to go for a naval expansion.

Dude no. those must stay separate . A naval ship would have the power to sink an air cruiser easily. (no way for it to attack the ground) unless the air cruiser sent out a fleet of scythes:D
:vsrocks:

[Duskguy]

BTW Smedley, what do you think of the possibility of something like water that you can manipulate, that is to say, bust a dam(or simply open it) to flood the valley below it?

And on a somewhat related note, volcanic disasters like lava flows, hurricanes, etc? Can your engine do these?

sailing through a hurricane over the ocean in a destroyer type boat would be AMAZING!

the seemless world for those wondering what it would do, it wouldbring all the continents together and you could travel between them rather than logging out and switching, or however you will switch.

andfrom my understanding OcO, the world is the same. the continents are based on the ones from PS1, but, as i understand it there were more than three, and SOE plans on adding continents later on.

[SeanNewBoy]

Only if done well, would be a nice add on later.

[Artimus]

I don't think he would take the time to tell us if it was not possible. I think alot of you are underestimating forge light. I have my doubts also but this is probably the best thing they can do for this game and not ruin it.

[Baneblade]

Dude no. those must stay separate . A naval ship would have the power to sink an air cruiser easily. (no way for it to attack the ground) unless the air cruiser sent out a fleet of scythes:D
:vsrocks:

No, I mean air navy rather than having a water navy.

[PoisonTaco]

I haven't seen naval combat done right in an FPS since Battlefield 1942. If we get things like battleships and aircraft carriers this game will just get that much better.

[Ivam Akorahil]

if i think of naval combat in ps2 i imagine this :

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cbG9Zd8I_EI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

i want carriers and fat warships and when you have all the tracers flying about you gotta have fighter formations flying over you
:D

[IMMentat]

would be fun to have a "world" to play in but i think getting more gameplay mechanics in like the harvesting and some overland BF2142 titan style zeplins/support platforms sould be a higher prioroty for now. Expand the options before adding in (essentiually) a fourth continents made of (instakill as we cant swim) water and slow moving ships that can't affect the other areas.

[Morphic]

Naval units sound like they are only good for travel unless they have more bases near water then I imagined.

[Phisionary]

I think an aircraft carrier would be pretty cool. Some side hanger bays for fighters, a large flat deck with space for several landed galaxies. The galaxies could be spawn points, or the ship itself could be one. If they do allow seamless cont. to cont. war, I imagine that could be interesting.

Being part of the skeleton crew on the ship for the crossing might be a bit of a bore, I suppose. You could reduce the necessity of that by making the distances short or the ships quick, but maybe a limited detection range of carriers could balance that (though I have very little understanding of how remote sensing will play a roll in aircraft play). So a ship in mid-ocean could use the automated defenses (maybe 8 automatic, but mannable, AA turrets) during the crossing, and the mission system or spawns to crew the vessel shortly before reaching a destination.

I have a vision in my head, of doing scythe strafing passes on an enemy naval vessel, surrounded by ocean storms and huge crested waves, with a cloud of 50 wingmen and defenders dogfighting all around. It might take some special balance work for that to even make sense, but it sounds like it could be fun.

I'd like to think a multi-gal-drop to do a hostile ship takeover would be appropriately epic as well.

A caveat-- big naval vessels lead to bigger naval vessels, as well as things like long range cannons and destroyer-class vessels (ship to ship combat). I dunno how that would fit anywhere in this game.

[RoninOni]

Large ships could have 'auto pilot' that just follows a course the 'captain' sets.

Obv in combat you'll want to be at the wheel, but it would allow you to get up and go to the bathroom, grab something to drink, or smoke while you wait on your ship to cross the great sea.

The ship AA defense turrets should have automation, but be player seatable as well... and the AI should mostly be to just harass enemy fighters, not be particularly effective... mostly it would serve as a warning system as well as to prevent fighters from knowing which AA turrets are actually manned and which just nuisance AI.

[Sledgecrushr]

Large ships could have 'auto pilot' that just follows a course the 'captain' sets.

Obv in combat you'll want to be at the wheel, but it would allow you to get up and go to the bathroom, grab something to drink, or smoke while you wait on your ship to cross the great sea.

The ship AA defense turrets should have automation, but be player seatable as well... and the AI should mostly be to just harass enemy fighters, not be particularly effective... mostly it would serve as a warning system as well as to prevent fighters from knowing which AA turrets are actually manned and which just nuisance AI.

So a giant ai ship with ai defense. So we can spawn new airplanes off of? You see with nanites you dont have to have a giant ship to spawn vehicles off of. This whole water navy idea is going to sink to the bottom of the ocean. If you guys just want to fight in a cave just say we want caves back because essentially a large boat is nothing more than a giant floating steel cave. There is zero reason for water navy. You all come up with a reason and I can put a hole in it and sink your boat.

[sagolsun]

There is zero reason for water navy

Did you put the water part there deliberately?

With the option of putting in FLYING aircraft carriers the standard floating variety just seems pointless.

http://img.youtube.com/vi/4tKqhkkGXRI/0.jpg

And let me tell you, titans in BF2142 were mind-blowing and absolutely amazing.

[Phisionary]

Giant floating steel caves! Now THAT is an idea. :) I like it. +Support


If you wouldn't need a ship to spawn vehicles, why do you need a base to spawn vehicles?
These boats would float better than your logic does...


Although, flying aircraft carriers? Also awesome.

[Sledgecrushr]

Giant floating steel caves! Now THAT is an idea. :) I like it. +Support


If you wouldn't need a ship to spawn vehicles, why do you need a base to spawn vehicles?
These boats would float better than your logic does...


Although, flying aircraft carriers? Also awesome.

So you are going to sit in the middle of the ocean on your aircraft carrier and what? Watch the algae grow? If I wanted to see algae I would read more of your posts.

[sagolsun]

So you are going to sit in the middle of the ocean on your aircraft carrier and what? Watch the algae grow? If I wanted to see algae I would read more of your posts.

I'm sure there's a seaman joke waiting to happen in there somewhere.

[Sledgecrushr]

Having a seamless world to me is a noble endeavor. To load up the outfit and fly across the ocean and attack from a vulnerable flank would add ton of tactical gameplay. To establish a beachhead all you really need is to take over a lightly defended manufactorum and hold it as you forces swell within the defensive perimeter of the base. Yes to me having a seamless world opens up many opportunities for awesome gameplay.

[RoninOni]

So a giant ai ship with ai defense. So we can spawn new airplanes off of? You see with nanites you dont have to have a giant ship to spawn vehicles off of. This whole water navy idea is going to sink to the bottom of the ocean. If you guys just want to fight in a cave just say we want caves back because essentially a large boat is nothing more than a giant floating steel cave. There is zero reason for water navy. You all come up with a reason and I can put a hole in it and sink your boat.

Those ships would be too valuable to just leave unattended FWIW...

They'd be MASSIVE outfit investments for the tactical advantage they provide... but it also puts a FAT CHUNK of resources out in the field as a target.... worth FAR more than that base it's there supporting the attack or defense of.

If a battle's going badly, or it's getting too badly harassed, it's going to need to pull back to friendly waters where it can have more support. Too valuable to throw away.

It also likely wouldn't get too close, so unless it starts getting harassed, then you wouldn't want to have to keep it fully staffed, just a couple guys waiting on aircraft cooldowns or something who use whichever AA guns are in the best position and the AI ones, while not particularly effective, at least don't make them as easy targets.

basically it's a mobile base for outfits. most of the time you'll keep it in well guarded areas safe from harassment, and bring it out in coordinated efforts or for tactical advantage.

Coastal bases would likewise have anti ship canons aimed at the sea, as well as the standard AA and other turrets.

[sagolsun]

Those ships would be too valuable to just leave unattended FWIW...

They'd be MASSIVE outfit investments for the tactical advantage they provide... but it also puts a FAT CHUNK of resources out in the field as a target.... worth FAR more than that base it's there supporting the attack or defense of.

If a battle's going badly, or it's getting too badly harassed, it's going to need to pull back to friendly waters where it can have more support. Too valuable to throw away.

It also likely wouldn't get too close, so unless it starts getting harassed, then you wouldn't want to have to keep it fully staffed, just a couple guys waiting on aircraft cooldowns or something who use whichever AA guns are in the best position and the AI ones, while not particularly effective, at least don't make them as easy targets.

basically it's a mobile base for outfits. most of the time you'll keep it in well guarded areas safe from harassment, and bring it out in coordinated efforts or for tactical advantage.

Coastal bases would likewise have anti ship canons aimed at the sea, as well as the standard AA and other turrets.

Replace water-borne vessels with levitating ships (same movement mechanics and size though) and you'll start seeing the possibilities.

[Ivam Akorahil]

So a giant ai ship with ai defense. So we can spawn new airplanes off of? You see with nanites you dont have to have a giant ship to spawn vehicles off of. This whole water navy idea is going to sink to the bottom of the ocean. If you guys just want to fight in a cave just say we want caves back because essentially a large boat is nothing more than a giant floating steel cave. There is zero reason for water navy. You all come up with a reason and I can put a hole in it and sink your boat.

only if we follow the lore to an extend that it denies interesting game play additions

[Whiteknight]

... You all come up with a reason and I can put a hole in it and sink your boat.

Naval Bombardment of coastal bases and areas on the land mass, similar to an orbital strike or the PS1 artillery.

See? There is a potential reason for the boats.

[Sledgecrushr]

Replace water-borne vessels with levitating ships (same movement mechanics and size though) and you'll start seeing the possibilities.

+1 on flying airships.

Naval Bombardment of coastal bases and areas on the land mass, similar to an orbital strike or the PS1 artillery.

See? There is a potential reason for the boats.

Prolonged artillery fire would be dull. You sit inside the base waiting for the seamen to nut up and come and face you in a good fight. Hopefully the devs wont think this is there idea of fun either.

[RoninOni]

Replace water-borne vessels with levitating ships (same movement mechanics and size though) and you'll start seeing the possibilities.

I covered this in another post....

carrier type vessels can't fly in low orbit. They're too massive and the energy expenditure is simply too massive to maintain it for any extended period of time.

They stay in orbit. They'd prolly even be built in space to save the energy of takeoff, though they would likely be capable of take/landing and even a short flight where they enter into the atmosphere and then exit back out maybe 30 min later.

The water on the other hand is great because you can have GREAT BIG MASSIVE objects and if they're designed right, THEY FLOAT! Then all you need to do is push that massive sucker.

I would love for space carriers to be added but that would require a low orbit system (and then maybe multiple 'worlds' could be connected into a system :eek: ) to be added, which very well could also be possible with Forgelight... I don't know but it could make for some awesome potential.

For example, the squad beacon drop pod spawning system is using said orbital platform, in theory, they just aren't physically in the game. Those bases which would cover a region of the world, could be attacked and factions could remove another factions ability to use drop pods in that region for a period of time, which could make the difference by in the ground fight by crippling a tactical option of the enemies.

[Sledgecrushr]

I covered this in another post....

carrier type vessels can't fly in low orbit. They're too massive and the energy expenditure is simply too massive to maintain it for any extended period of time.

They stay in orbit. They'd prolly even be built in space to save the energy of takeoff, though they would likely be capable of take/landing and even a short flight where they enter into the atmosphere and then exit back out maybe 30 min later.

The water on the other hand is great because you can have GREAT BIG MASSIVE objects and if they're designed right, THEY FLOAT! Then all you need to do is push that massive sucker.

I would love for space carriers to be added but that would require a low orbit system (and then maybe multiple 'worlds' could be connected into a system :eek: ) to be added, which very well could also be possible with Forgelight... I don't know but it could make for some awesome potential.

For example, the squad beacon drop pod spawning system is using said orbital platform, in theory, they just aren't physically in the game. Those bases which would cover a region of the world, could be attacked and factions could remove another factions ability to use drop pods in that region for a period of time, which could make the difference by in the ground fight by crippling a tactical option of the enemies.


With the recent invention of anti gravity, creating a very large airborne vessel has just become more practical. The trick is the initial input of energy has to offset the mass of the object that you are levitating and then it is a permanently levitated object. (idea created by Robert Heinlein in his book The Doorway into Summer, 1957)

[Masterr]

If the devs want to make AAA water than we should utilize this water with naval units. A reason for ships?

-Mobile spawn point

-Heavily fortified floating fortress (has a shield, takes lots of damage, dishes out lots of damage)

-Far reaching missle bombardment. (open your map, select target, launch missle)

-If they add a fuel mechanic to aircraft, that would limit your flight time. Fly through a nanite regeneration ring (which is made slightly above the carrier, away from the aircraft spawns on flight deck, nanites will be your fuel) this will refuel and resupply your aircraft. If you fly from continent to continent you won't have much fuel to move around when you get there.

More about fuel. If your over land, this will not be an issue. We can make up some story that you are actively using the lands resources while your over land because nanites are working like waves/energy beams. Over land your actively being fueled. Over the water....these beams can't reach you, your too far from the warp gates and other bases that utilizes nanite. You need to be fueled, hence....warships with onboard nanite generators. boo ya!!

-Ships will have an advantage of heat seeking missles and lots of AA turrets

-Aircraft can be accompanied with warships to help protect it.

-Enemy Galaxies can do Gal Drops and take over the Aircraft carrier, essentially the aircraft carrier is a mobile base that can be destroyed. Think of it like taking over a mobile/destructible outpost.

Now if those features are put into naval combat.....yes, there is a reason for a navy.

Different types of ships....

Aircraft carrier - aircraft spawn/mobile spawn/aircraft resupply
GV carrier - Ground vehicle carrier, transports tanks, mobile spawn point (just like aircraft carrier in terms of scale and weaponry)
Warship - All offense, helps out the carriers (Empire Specific Naval Units)
Patrol boats - Boats for a squad, could board a carrier in the night and attempt to take it over, stealthy option.

[Ivam Akorahil]

With the recent invention of anti gravity,

i certainly hope you mean that - in-game lore

the most realistic version of anti-gravity is magnetic levitation and not practical for hovering a titan in the air.

even tho theoretically possible to create anti gravity by negative mass and thus allow for negative space time geometry - which is normally excluded by gravitational formulas
It theoretically could create a repulsive effect .however the amount of energy necessary are equal to creating a gravitational field of the same size, ergo the amount of energy you have to provide to life an object into the air would be equal to the energy stored in the mass of the object in order to achieve a repulsive gravitational field that counters planetary gravity.

or in layman terms astronomical amounts of energy
(ill run it down for you)

e=m(c)squared

energy = mass x (lightspeed x lightspeed)

weight of the USS nimitz ~ 100 000 tons

energy (in joules) = mass (in kg) x (lightspeed x lightspeed ) (in m/s)

E = 100 000 000 x ( 299 792 458 x 299 792 458 )

E = 8.987551787368176 000 000 00

E ~ 898 755 178 736 817 600 000 000 Joules

to give you an idea how much that is :

The barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) is a unit of energy based on the approximate energy released by burning one barrel (42 US gallons or 158.9873 litres) of crude oil.
5.8 × 106 BTU59 °F equals 6.1178632 × 109 J, about 6.1 GJ (HHV), or 1.7 MWh.

E oil = 6 117 863 200 J / barrel

E oil = 38 501 341 J/litre


Or in short to amass the energy necessary for levitating the USS nimitz constantly youd need to burn
23 343 477 276 202 343 ( 23.3 quadtrillion) litres of oil per second

this does not take into account ony form of heat or energy lost in the process

But even this idea does not work in practic, while theoreticaly you could levitate the object, the bent space time gravity itself still gets pulled and affected by other gravity, Yes the ship would levitate, but the new gravitational heavy spot that it levitates from gets attracte ditself by the planets gravity, so inevitably the ship would be pulled along its own gravity pocket towards the centre of the higher gravity and thus it would fall down again

not to mentiont hat the technology for transforming energy into punctual gravity is far beyond what we can imagine

:*(

TL;DR ships are alot more efficient for their purpose than replacing them with enormous hovering aircraft.

[RoninOni]

If we can float massive carriers... why are the NC and TR still using tracked tanks?

Why is the VS tank so small?

Also, VS tank could maybe be less maneuverable or fast on water to prevent VS from having a terrible advantage as Naval Vehicles would be a better purchase.

[Sledgecrushr]

If the devs want to make AAA water than we should utilize this water with naval units. A reason for ships?

-Mobile spawn point

-Heavily fortified floating fortress (has a shield, takes lots of damage, dishes out lots of damage)

-Far reaching missle bombardment. (open your map, select target, launch missle)

-If they add a fuel mechanic to aircraft, that would limit your flight time. Fly through a nanite regeneration ring (which is made slightly above the carrier, away from the aircraft spawns on flight deck, nanites will be your fuel) this will refuel and resupply your aircraft. If you fly from continent to continent you won't have much fuel to move around when you get there.

More about fuel. If your over land, this will not be an issue. We can make up some story that you are actively using the lands resources while your over land because nanites are working like waves/energy beams. Over land your actively being fueled. Over the water....these beams can't reach you, your too far from the warp gates and other bases that utilizes nanite. You need to be fueled, hence....warships with onboard nanite generators. boo ya!!

-Ships will have an advantage of heat seeking missles and lots of AA turrets

-Aircraft can be accompanied with warships to help protect it.

-Enemy Galaxies can do Gal Drops and take over the Aircraft carrier, essentially the aircraft carrier is a mobile base that can be destroyed. Think of it like taking over a mobile/destructible outpost.

Now if those features are put into naval combat.....yes, there is a reason for a navy.

Different types of ships....

Aircraft carrier - aircraft spawn/mobile spawn/aircraft resupply
GV carrier - Ground vehicle carrier, transports tanks, mobile spawn point (just like aircraft carrier in terms of scale and weaponry)
Warship - All offense, helps out the carriers (Empire Specific Naval Units)
Patrol boats - Boats for a squad, could board a carrier in the night and attempt to take it over, stealthy option.

The one thing that would make water navy work and be relevant would be limited fuel for aircraft.

i certainly hope you mean that - in-game lore

the most realistic version of anti-gravity is magnetic levitation and not practical for hovering a titan in the air.

even tho theoretically possible to create anti gravity by negative mass and thus allow for negative space time geometry - which is normally excluded by gravitational formulas
It theoretically could create a repulsive effect .however the amount of energy necessary are equal to creating a gravitational field of the same size, ergo the amount of energy you have to provide to life an object into the air would be equal to the energy stored in the mass of the object in order to achieve a repulsive gravitational field that counters planetary gravity.

or in layman terms astronomical amounts of energy

TL;DR ships are alot more efficient for their purpose than replacing them with enormous hovering aircraft.

Ive worked 27 days in a row now and my brain is mushified so I apologise for throwing out a half developed concept.

[RoninOni]

I'll vote yes on limited fuel on aircraft.

These oceans should be like 3x the width of a continent, so being able to cross a continent and back on 1 tank would be enough.

I also plan on being a pilot, so I'm actually voting for a restriction on myself lol :lol:

[Greenthy]

BF1942 Midway comes to mind :)

[Stardouser]

Aircraft fuel has little to do with naval ship viability. An aircraft would be highly vulnerable to AA fire and would not be a beach landing tool. And since they would have no choice but to adopt adjacent hex capture only for seamless planets, only a combined arms assault, including navy ships, would be viable for beach assaults.

HOWEVER, I could support fuel for other reasons, so if adding fuel to aircraft makes people feel better about naval ships that's fine.

[NewSith]

Did you put the water part there deliberately?

With the option of putting in FLYING aircraft carriers the standard floating variety just seems pointless.

http://img.youtube.com/vi/4tKqhkkGXRI/0.jpg

And let me tell you, titans in BF2142 were mind-blowing and absolutely amazing.

I challenge thee:

Outfit Specialization Idea (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=36750)

EDIT: The post is rather dated, but, hell the genral idea is awesome =)

[Masterr]

I'm glad people are liking my idea.

@ Stardouser, I agree with you.

@ Sledge, if you go in with just aircraft, you'll be dominated by a navy. The Aircraft Carrier itself...will have HP points around 4x that of a galaxy. Troops can spawn from the Aircraft Carrier and launch aircraft from it. It would also have AA turrets, it will be escorted by faster warships which also have AA turrets. You will get crushed. I would want the Aircraft Carrier and Ground Vehicle Carrier to be a mobile capture point...hence....its viable for capturing or destroying, it is a 50/50 decision. Which is partly why I want the HP of the Carriers to be very high. With my idea I have offered a couple of things to the table people have been asking for.

Naval Warfare
Mobile Capture point (Ground Vehicle Carrier and Aircraft Carrier)
Destructible Capture point (GVC and AC)
Seamless Continents
Beach combat (D-Day)

Also just using aircraft would limit in-game vehicles and customizations. For seamless continents to work, and for navy to work, I find my idea works best. It keeps pilots in the continent happy (they don't have to worry about fuel) and helps add a navy.

Having an Armada adds to the War. Who knows....if harvesting resources becomes integrated in the game...you could essentially cut off seaports...hence...cut their supply lines.

If more people like my idea, I might make my own thread to put all ideas together and grab dev attention.

[Duskguy]

aircraft have limited ammo as it is. making limited fuel is not really needed. just make a specific ship able to resupply ammo and repair.

[Sledgecrushr]

Why would I want to fight navy? Navy ships would be in the ocean. Im not a fucking fish. I like to fight on land where everything is happening. So whats the point of a navy if youre just trolling around in the ocean?

[Masterr]

Why would I want to fight navy? Navy ships would be in the ocean. Im not a fucking fish. I like to fight on land where everything is happening. So whats the point of a navy if youre just trolling around in the ocean?

To stop a force going after your base.....is that a real question?:rofl:

[Ruxios]

Why would I want to fight navy? Navy ships would be in the ocean. Im not a fucking fish. I like to fight on land where everything is happening. So whats the point of a navy if youre just trolling around in the ocean?

just cause you dont want to be part of a naval force why should that limit others i for one think it would be excessively cool to have different stations on the ship that must have all of them working as 1 in order for the ship to survive but that is just me, speaking for myself i would love to be a guy aiming a coastal bombardment gun and awaiting the order to fire or being given the fire at will command

[Ertwin]

For those of you arguing that you don't need naval vehicles because you have aircraft, it's just like saying you don't need land vehicles because you have aircraft. Why bring a tank or a sundie, when you can bring air cav or a galaxy?

As for the mobile spawn point naval vessels, I don't think they should be destroyable. The defenses on them yes, just like any other base. You take it over, and it's yours. This would give people more reason to go after them. If there's a limited number of naval bases, you can bet people will fight over them. Forget continent locking, imagine trying to take control of the entire navy. This in addition to stationary resource well bases would make the ocean just as viable for combat as ground.

[Masterr]

For those of you arguing that you don't need naval vehicles because you have aircraft, it's just like saying you don't need land vehicles because you have aircraft. Why bring a tank or a sundie, when you can bring air cav or a galaxy?

As for the mobile spawn point naval vessels, I don't think they should be destroyable. The defenses on them yes, just like any other base. You take it over, and it's yours. This would give people more reason to go after them. If there's a limited number of naval bases, you can bet people will fight over them. Forget continent locking, imagine trying to take control of the entire navy. This in addition to stationary resource well bases would make the ocean just as viable for combat as ground.

I understand what your saying...I must say that I do find it a little silly that you couldn't destroy an aircraft carrier. If shipyards/naval bases were not plentiful and the GVC (ground vehicle carrier) and AC (aircraft carrier) are quite costly to make in terms of resources....and all my other parameter mentions are met....I think people will fight over the carriers and not just destroy them.

[RoninOni]

I understand what your saying...I must say that I do find it a little silly that you couldn't destroy an aircraft carrier. If shipyards/naval bases were not plentiful and the GVC (ground vehicle carrier) and AC (aircraft carrier) are quite costly to make in terms of resources....and all my other parameter mentions are met....I think people will fight over the carriers and not just destroy them.

Exactly... If you can CAPTURE an enemy AC, that'd be a HUGE resource swing.

You'd have to disable multiple systems, which they have the ability to repair (takes time? probably activate some AI nanobots to repair which takes time to repair component... enemy can come back and hack to stop repair)

After all systems are disabled, you can then hack the command bridge which would be the last system.

Once captured, you then need to repair all the systems. :D

They'd also be destroyable I'd think, but they'd take a LOT of punishment... a LOT. however being disabled is a far bigger risk.

[Masterr]

Exactly... If you can CAPTURE an enemy AC, that'd be a HUGE resource swing.

You'd have to disable multiple systems, which they have the ability to repair (takes time? probably activate some AI nanobots to repair which takes time to repair component... enemy can come back and hack to stop repair)

After all systems are disabled, you can then hack the command bridge which would be the last system.

Once captured, you then need to repair all the systems. :D

They'd also be destroyable I'd think, but they'd take a LOT of punishment... a LOT. however being disabled is a far bigger risk.

Me and a friend have been thinking up some more naval combat ideas and ideas for seamless continents it so much its worhty of its own thread, ill make it some time soon.

[Stardouser]

I understand what your saying...I must say that I do find it a little silly that you couldn't destroy an aircraft carrier. If shipyards/naval bases were not plentiful and the GVC (ground vehicle carrier) and AC (aircraft carrier) are quite costly to make in terms of resources....and all my other parameter mentions are met....I think people will fight over the carriers and not just destroy them.

Ohhh now there's a concern. The devs might make naval bases uncappable which would mean that you can't deny ship spawns to the enemy by capturing them.

Obviously we don't even have a framework in place to inject ideas into, but one idea I was thinking is that, by the time we have this, we're likely to have more than 3 continents, and, since the planet would be seamless, there would be no need for uncapturable footholds on each continent; each empire would have one uncapturable base located somewhere on the entire planet.

There could be several naval bases per continent and each naval base could have the ability to spawn say, the aircraft carriers and heavy naval cruisers as well as lighter ships and landing craft. The heavier ships could have a long cooldown, whatever is necessary, whether that's an hour, 6 hours, or even 24 hours. Whatever it takes. Or, the heavier ships could also somehow be tied into the outfit system, so that you don't have a situation where one outfit pulls the ship and everyone else is SOL. And of course the lighter ships could have much shorter cooldowns, especially landing craft. Landing craft perhaps would only have a 5 minute cooldown, if you have exhausted your heavier ships you could still try to do invasions using landing craft plus air cover.

Think about this scenario:

There are 9 continents by the time naval ships come in.
1. 3 of the continents contain an uncappable home base of the empires.

2. Each uncappable home base is also a naval base, guaranteeing a minimum level of naval ship availability.

3. In addition, throughout all the 9 continents, there would be 3(for example) other naval bases per continent, for a total of 27. Let's just say, 6 of them are capable of spawning aircraft carriers and heavy cruisers, the rest of them are more minor and can only spawn landing assault craft, destroyer sized ships, torpedo boats, that kind of thing.

4. Capturing more naval bases for your empire could have various effects: It could reduce the empire-wide or outfit based cooldown on heavy ships, or it could literally provide an extra spawn point with its own separate cooldown.

The above isn't perfect because it could cause the "rich get richer poor get poorer" issue, however I invite anyone to come up with alternative ideas.

And just as an aside, I would expect that unless an aircraft carrier is running organized scouting or other types of protective maneuvers, a squadron of 10 destroyers(which to me, would be 2-3 crew members at most) ought to be able to zerg one down. Also, it's the future, destroyers would be quite fast compared to a carrier...

Additionally, there would have to be a choice between heavier ships being automatically shown on the radar in order to balance them and allow them to be found for combat, or not showing them and forcing scouting missions. I do not say this lightly, but I do think it might be necessary to do this.

Exactly... If you can CAPTURE an enemy AC, that'd be a HUGE resource swing.

You'd have to disable multiple systems, which they have the ability to repair (takes time? probably activate some AI nanobots to repair which takes time to repair component... enemy can come back and hack to stop repair)

After all systems are disabled, you can then hack the command bridge which would be the last system.

Once captured, you then need to repair all the systems. :D

They'd also be destroyable I'd think, but they'd take a LOT of punishment... a LOT. however being disabled is a far bigger risk.

As you say, they'd be capturable too, through infantry assault. For balance purposes I'd like to think that acquiring one in this manner would trigger your own empire's cooldown...after all, you just took one away from the enemy and they are probably suffering a cooldown.

[Ivam Akorahil]

Ive worked 27 days in a row now and my brain is mushified so I apologise for throwing out a half developed concept.

haha :D your forgiven!

[FortySe7en]

Yep, right now we simply don't have the hardware for that type of thing, but in 5-6 years? Quite likely. I look forward to it.

Lolwut? Of course we have the hardware for that. We do AND they do. Unless you are sitting on a dell from 1998, most quad core processors with a decent GPU behind it could handle something like that.

Its not tough. DayZ does it with crappier graphics, and people on crap computers can run that. They could definitely have something like this in planetside 2.

[Ivam Akorahil]

allright gents what we basicly need to stop swiveling in a circle is a proper frame work, certain key points would have to be worked out in terms of gameplay mechanics, gameplay fun, plausibility and co.

i think we should take advice from other games who implemented similar concepts rather well, as an example eve online.

So lets say for the first question : Why would we need a Navy? - why do we have navies in real life?

we have aircraft that can fly around the entire globe with air refuel, BUT that is more costly that shipping 100 aircraft fighters around the globe, and also they take way way longer to get there. So as a basis the amoun t of water between the continenents has to be large enough to be an inconvenience for a player to fly there on his own, but also small enough that if you actualy deploy a slow moving navy force it wont take you 2 hours of silly /no action happening/ shipping to see any land ahead.

And it also must be valuable enough to have a reason for aircraft to get to the continent rather quick, which is the main reason for a Carrier to be deployed.

Then again there is no point in having a navy consisting out of carriers alone, you would want at least 3-4 different types of larger vessels in style of a galaxy that are multi person manned with alot of turrets and act as mobile spawn.

But in terms of gameplay nobody is going to use the navies if there is no combat, no enemies or no fun in it whihc means the navy combat would have to be channeled, because having navies possible to deploy in the entire ocean around continents does not only spread out players and take them away from land combat drasticaly it also spreads them out on far more square kilometers than we have land and it would be mroe than likely that the fleets miss each other on their way. which ofc wouldnt be good.

so you need semi narrow shipping lanes that are flankt by out of bounds areas between continents to actualy focus some navy action.

but as mentione,d it spreads population so without increasing the pop cap on servers this would have a major negativ effect on the game at the same time.

There are alot of details that would need to be fleshed out accordingly and i thinkwe can forgett about water based combat if the server cap stays the same.

[Baneblade]

Why would I want to fight navy? Navy ships would be in the ocean. Im not a fucking fish. I like to fight on land where everything is happening. So whats the point of a navy if youre just trolling around in the ocean?

Your outfit will be all over the naval scene when one comes around, so don't argue too hard against them ;)

[Pancake]

I would love to be a Captain!

Starboard men! Faster you fish brained scallywags! Prepare the Port cannons!

[Duskguy]

3. In addition, throughout all the 9 continents, there would be 3(for example) other naval bases per continent, for a total of 27. Let's just say, 6 of them are capable of spawning aircraft carriers and heavy cruisers, the rest of them are more minor and can only spawn landing assault craft, destroyer sized ships, torpedo boats, that kind of thing.

4. Capturing more naval bases for your empire could have various effects: It could reduce the empire-wide or outfit based cooldown on heavy ships, or it could literally provide an extra spawn point with its own separate cooldown.

The above isn't perfect because it could cause the "rich get richer poor get poorer" issue, however I invite anyone to come up with alternative ideas.

And just as an aside, I would expect that unless an aircraft carrier is running organized scouting or other types of protective maneuvers, a squadron of 10 destroyers(which to me, would be 2-3 crew members at most) ought to be able to zerg one down. Also, it's the future, destroyers would be quite fast compared to a carrier...

Additionally, there would have to be a choice between heavier ships being automatically shown on the radar in order to balance them and allow them to be found for combat, or not showing them and forcing scouting missions. I do not say this lightly, but I do think it might be necessary to do this.


as for #3, i would like to see bases on different continents enable players to spawn certain units. for example one continent's base can spawn destroyers and 2 man subs, another can depoy 1 man subs (like lightnings) and patrol boats while another allows battleships (5 man?) and aircraft carriers (galaxy passenger size?)

^^ would more or less solve what having more bases does for an empire and would encourage empires to take over certain facilities on certain continents.

dont think scouting missions will be especially needed as most times ships will be travelling straight lines from point A to point B. perhaps having AC always show on radar since they will likely be able to spawn units as well as players and could sit off in the middle of the ocean just spawning waves of aircraft and small boats never being found; although that could be a part of the game that would lead to more tactical play.

ships i was thinking of were:
-1 man jetskis
-2 man patrol boats (pilot gets a MG, passenger gets rotating turret to be customized for AA or torpedoes)
-3 man destroyers (pilot with dual front facing guns, a forward turret and a rear turret which can be customized for torpedoes)
-5 man battleships (pilot= no weapon, forward turret, rear turret and a turret on each side. none of which get torpedoes)
-10 man Aircraft Carrier (pilot= no weapon, one front turret, one rear turret, neither torpedo compatible. the rest of the spots are for spawning jet skis or liberators/fighters.
-12 man transport boat (im thinking a sunderer type boat, possibly even a certed sundered made for use in the water)
-1 man submarine (quick, low armor, 4 torpedo sub)
-2 man submarine (slower, more armored, 4 torpedoes for pilot, turret for passenger, torpedo/gun customizable)

when AC passenger selects a liberator, it should queue up so that other passengers can switch seats or simply select it to load into it. and then the pilot can launch it. or just launch it right away.

all torpedo turrets would have 4 torpedoes before needing a reload as they will be lock on or free fired high damage weapons. lock on could do slightly less than a free fired one to balance skillfull use vs ease of use.

AC carriers could act as repair and rearm points as well, making them a nessecary part of any sea assault. but to balance this each faction could only have say 5 at any one time, and cost massive amounts to build and have a long cooldown.

[Artimus]

So you are going to sit in the middle of the ocean on your aircraft carrier and what? Watch the algae grow? If I wanted to see algae I would read more of your posts.

Well there could be capture points in the ocean, and bays and ports that will give access to different parts of a continent. just a thought.

[Stardouser]

^^ would more or less solve what having more bases does for an empire and would encourage empires to take over certain facilities on certain continents.
.

ships i was thinking of were:
-1 man jetskis
-2 man patrol boats (pilot gets a MG, passenger gets rotating turret to be customized for AA or torpedoes)
-3 man destroyers (pilot with dual front facing guns, a forward turret and a rear turret which can be customized for torpedoes)
-5 man battleships (pilot= no weapon, forward turret, rear turret and a turret on each side. none of which get torpedoes)
-10 man Aircraft Carrier (pilot= no weapon, one front turret, one rear turret, neither torpedo compatible. the rest of the spots are for spawning jet skis or liberators/fighters.
-12 man transport boat (im thinking a sunderer type boat, possibly even a certed sundered made for use in the water)
-1 man submarine (quick, low armor, 4 torpedo sub)
-2 man submarine (slower, more armored, 4 torpedoes for pilot, turret for passenger, torpedo/gun customizable)


See, I'm not sure exactly how to do bases from a standpoint of rich get richer....if there are multiple bases that allow aircraft carriers/battleships and you cap them all, that could allow one empire to spawn several where the other 2 can only spawn one from their planetary uncap.

Then again, maybe that's not a big problem. You see, as far an aircraft carrier, right now we have a situation where you can spawn an unlimited amount of aircraft from your warpgate. Aircraft carriers can't go inland, so by definition they would always be farther away than the warpgates are now. Yes I'm aware that under my above idea I assumed that footholds would be removed, so technically the aircraft carriers would let you spawn a lot of aircraft off a coast, but, if ACs are always on the radar, then, go kill them...

either way, the key is to find a balance between letting every outfit have an occasional chance to command a battleship or aircraft carrier but not allowing them to be too spammed. And yes, I did say outfit, I don't know if non-outfit individuals should be able to spawn battleships, especially if they are empire-level assets.

And this reminds me : there should be no instant seat switching in battleships and carriers. You hit E to leave your station, say, the pilot station on a battleship, you will have to run 20-30-50 whatever meters to enter the main gun turret station.

Now, also, I believe we're going to note that we have a situation where falling off a ship means sinking like a rock, except for light assault. This would make LA the king of infantry combat aboard ships. Other classes could play but they would basically be stuck on the same ship they spawn on, except to the extent people use Galaxies or the small transport boats to ferry the heavier classes to other ships. Which, could be a good idea if you're planning to defend them from infantry assault. However, the more you defend your ships against infantry assault by putting infantry on them, the easier you make it for the enemy to decide to blow your ship up instead of capturing it.

also, I think we might need to design ships with some compartmentalized damage mechanics. That is, a certain number of hits to the turret would destroy(or temporarily disable) that turret, a certain number of hits to the engine area would slow the ship. Especially relevant for battleships, because you definitely won't want one sitting unopposed off your coast. It can't go inland but it definitely would be able to pound the hell out of coastal bases.

[Masterr]

@stardouser - Naval bases need to be cappable. If a base either provides resources or provides spawns, it needs to be contested over.

As far as people having a naval base that can't be capped....I have another idea.

There will be 3 home continents.....Now on these continents...everything is contestable except for the "home warpgate". So in theory you can push a faction to its home warpgate and take over its home continent. (pushing an enemy to it's warpgate, is a current game mechanic...just think that in the entire planet there are 3 warpgates)

Naval bases will be capped by infantry of course...so if the continent your on is under attack and you don't have a navy, grab some tanks/aircraft/infantry and take back the naval base. Once taken...you can have a navy again.

Your idea of compartmentalized damage....i like it. Disarm an AC and try to take it over.

@Dusk guy - Idk about submarines man....everything else is good but subs would be a pain technically and I think are a bit unnecessary. If they do it though...I won't cry about it.

@Ivam - The "water needs to be big enough to be a pain to fly over" idea is not a very good one. Planes are faster than ships...much faster. If the ocean is that huge it would be very boring to be in the navy. Which is why I propose the Aircraft needs Fuel mechanic...once over water, its in a previous post. That will make it impossible for aircraft to fly from continent to continent. Aircraft carriers will have nanite rings floating above their ships, fly through it, you get refueled and resupplied.

Looks like I'm gonna have to make my own thread. lots of ideas to be put out and things to be addressed.

[MrBloodworth]

Yep, right now we simply don't have the hardware for that type of thing, but in 5-6 years? Quite likely. I look forward to it.

Uh... The world has the tech right now. In the MMO space, its been done for years. Disk streaming is old hat.

[Duskguy]

what if ships could take x amount of hits, but a hit or two (depending on the ship) in the rear would make turning slower, the middle of the ship would reduce speed while the front would just do damage.

as for turret damage, i would say only put it onto the battleships and AC as their turrets would be bigger than those of the smaller ships.

i was working under the idea of pilots not being able to switch turrets at all, just the passengers. however i think it could work out if the pilot could only switch while at a beach/dock/coast, etc. just the fact that you would have to be on or near land.

as for the AC always showing up, perhaps only when a vehicle is being launched it would show up. the defense to this being that enemies cant just "go kill it" because it has defensive turrets, will have at least a heavy amount of armor from above the waterline and will have it's own aircraft being launched that can defend it.

as for players exiting ships, perhaps a floatation device type of cert that would allow them to swim. the LA would obviously be the biggest naval asset as they would be able to float as well as fly, and could have a cert that allows faster movment through water instead of flight.

and figure that that, even if one empire has all the AC naval spawns, that means its likely that another has destroyers and yet another has subs.

way i was seeing it was:
-jetskis and transports are mainly for travel.
-patrol boats for taking out jetkis and to some degree, subs while providing light support (kind of like a lightning)
-destroyers would be slower than a PB, more armored, and be able to counter PBs and larger subs and to some degree when in larger number, battleships and AC.
-Battleships- would be the main end all for above water ships and land artillery support but be vulnerable to subs and torpedoes in general.
-Aircraft Carriers would be spawn and support based, resupplying and repairing ships and aircraft, but having no true offensive armament, and so being vulnerable to mainly torpedoes and battleships and liberators
-both subs would be vulnerable to destroyers, patrol boats and other subs, but be direct counters to battleships and AC and to some degree destroyers and PBs

and as defensive armamnents against torpedoes, i would say that a heavy caliber turret should be able to destroy them if shot a few times and the release of something like a sonar depth charge to destroy them, to act like flares. i say shooting them because unlike a jet that can break lock on missiles, a ship wont be able to do that, and the gunner would have to locate the torpedo first anyway.

and like the sunderers cant repair each other, an AC would have to travel to a beach and have engineers repair, or go to a dock, or naval yard or whatever they end up calling ship spawn points.

also i said earlier that all torpedo turrets would have 4 shots. to distinguish a destroyer from a patrol boat, it would either need stronger torpedoes or more since it's main job would be taking out subs

edit: yeah, subs are a stretch, but if done right as i said above, everything would have a proper counter. not sure hoe exactly you would counter battleships without a sub.

[Masterr]

@duskguy

I meant for compartmentalized damage to be only done to the carriers (GVC - ground vehicle carrier and AC). Since the carriers are mobile capture points, disarm its defenses, board the carrier, take it over.

As far as seat switching goes...since it IS a mobile spawn point/mobile capture point, I would like for it to be just like defending an outpost...that moves..on water. There doesn't HAVE to be someone in the driver seat but someone that is certified to be a captain, or the outfit guy who spawned it, i hope joe shmo cant drive it because that is a very resource heavy piece of equipment he is using.

Shoot at the carrier's turrets, lowered defenses, shoot at its hull....sinks the carrier.

Battleships will be empire specific they are the "MBT"

destroyers "lightnings"

Patrol boats "holds 6 members for beach raids"

Jet ski's "ATV's"

I would like for infantry to be in the water, but they can't swim all day...stamina bar of sorts.

For the GVC, i'm either thinking this carrier has a special hull where it could pretty much beach itself and start deploying tanks....or it pushes out "naval loadstars" at the terminal you can select what you want in the loadstar, you jump in the loadstart that has one lightning and one MBT...for example. I rather have the first option though....fewer steps is better.

I'll put my ideas of how capturing the AC and other details...in-depth..when i make my own thread.

[OcO]

ON SEAMLESS WORLDS:
Some good ideas starting to get tossed around. Early brainstorming on how to add this type of feature that both makes sense and enhances the over all game play is important IMO. I really think it is important for SOE to make a decision early on that this is something they plan to do or not, especially in regards to making the world seamless.

Naval aspects can easily be added with new content in the form of oil rigs, islands and other offshore objectives. If the devs do not plan on a seamless world down the line than they can basically throw offshore objectives around a continent willy nilly since each continent is basically separate. However if they do want to be able to one day open the planet as 1 huge seamless world than they need to be designing the planets surface layout with that in mind now.

As someone else mentioned the biggest hurdle to a seamless world is population density. Each continent is currently designed for roughly 2k players. Each continent added means the servers either need to be able to handle the possibility of mass 2K/4K/6K+/etc population swings from continent to continent or there needs to be some realistically explained way to avoid having half an outfit unable to cross the invisible border from 1 local server to another cause the area is population capped. I will leave this to the devs to work out.

ON NAVAL ASPECTS:
First off to people asking why have a navy at all when you can just fly across the oceans? Simple answer is you can't fly there. With the upcoming weather system it is very easy and game play realistic for the devs to limit aircraft to within a specific radius of each continent due to continual wind and electrical storms which could exist over deep water. No need to add a fuel mechanic which limits land based play also.

I can see a few options for how to handle the largest Mobile Naval Bases(MNB). I think we are limiting ourselves by just thinking of the biggest model as a aircraft carrier. We should instead be thinking of these as naval versions of the massive ground based installations we have to fight over. It is entirely possible for the largest unit to be capable of spawning both land and air vehicles if it "beaches" itself. If you at least allow part of it to land than tanks can drive off it and head inland. As long as it can touch the shoreline ground vehicles from any faction could depart from it and not just VS since they don't sink. Another option is to allow smaller ships to be spawned from MNBs so you can take landing craft and ferry ground vehicles ashore that way.

It was suggested that each faction would have at least 1 uncap-able naval base so they always have a ship spawn point. I would suggest making the largest MNBs globally limited and linking each MNB to a specific uncap-able home port. Give each faction 1 or 2 and make the MNB itself uncap but destroyable. If destroyed it begins a very long timer before another is spawned at its designated naval base. IMO these super large MNBs should not be outfit spawned as they are indeed empire-level assets. In this way you avoid the "rich get richer" problem as no faction can have more than a specific number of MNBs at a time. You also don't have to worry about situations where individual outfits don't want to spawn these to combat attacks from other factions cause they just plain cost to much resource wise.

Now I said make these MNBs uncap but destroyable however I actually mean a combination of the two and not how many of you are going to read it. I suggest that the MNB itself is not destroyable much like any other major base but instead by successfully capturing/hacking and maintaining control of a number of key points inside it for a set time you can cause it to self destruct. Should the win conditions be met a 5 minute or so countdown timer would begin and everyone on board would have that long to get away or be blown up along with the MNB. This provides an entirely new type of base capture mechanic than the current bases' faction flipping.

I would indeed add plenty of outfit-level and individual player spawned naval craft of varying types as well, as Duskguy had started to list out earlier. However like I mentioned if the largest model MNB was invulnerable to regular fire and limited in number for each faction than a zerg navy would not be invincible due to sheer DPS potential and the defending players can keep repelling the attackers if they work together better. I would have some outfit-level MNBs that are both cap-able or destroyable however.

As an empire-level assets it should require some heavy cert spending to be able to drive the largest MNB. Not just anyone should be able to do so. I'll leave specific naval certs for now though as those can be worked out after other much more important aspects of naval warfare are covered.

Thoughts/comments/concerns?

[Duskguy]

ON NAVAL ASPECTS:
First off to people asking why have a navy at all when you can just fly across the oceans? Simple answer is you can't fly there. With the upcoming weather system it is very easy and game play realistic for the devs to limit aircraft to within a specific radius of each continent due to continual wind and electrical storms which could exist over deep water. No need to add a fuel mechanic which limits land based play also.
Thoughts/comments/concerns?

rather than not being able to fly over the water, there is a simpler answer.
it is easier to shoot down an aircraft than it will be to sink a boat.

aircraft are reasonably light, therefore reasonably lightly armored, and boats i assume will have the ability to shoot at aircraft. aircraft can shoot at aircraft as well.

boats simply have to be bouyant, and can therefore have more armor than an aircraft. they can shoot at aircraft that attack them, and if they add a setup anything like what i proposed on the previous page, boats will have armor against aircraft, and so would have an advantage in boat vs aircraft situations.

[Masterr]

ON NAVAL ASPECTS:
First off to people asking why have a navy at all when you can just fly across the oceans? Simple answer is you can't fly there. With the upcoming weather system it is very easy and game play realistic for the devs to limit aircraft to within a specific radius of each continent due to continual wind and electrical storms which could exist over deep water. No need to add a fuel mechanic which limits land based play also.
I dont like this idea, it limits aircraft in naval warfare. Plus my idea does not limit land based aircraft, my proposal was that u have infinite fuel on land and u have finite fuel on water. why would this make sense? you could say nanite is wave based/beam based and the aircraft are being actively fueled by these nanites that are being pumped around the atmosphere from facilities, the majority of the oceans do not have facilities...hence the need for fuel.


I can see a few options for how to handle the largest Mobile Naval Bases(MNB). I think we are limiting ourselves by just thinking of the biggest model as a aircraft carrier. We should instead be thinking of these as naval versions of the massive ground based installations we have to fight over. It is entirely possible for the largest unit to be capable of spawning both land and air vehicles if it "beaches" itself. If you at least allow part of it to land than tanks can drive off it and head inland. As long as it can touch the shoreline ground vehicles from any faction could depart from it and not just VS since they don't sink. Another option is to allow smaller ships to be spawned from MNBs so you can take landing craft and ferry ground vehicles ashore that way. Already said this, I proposed a GVC (ground vehicle carrier). I rather have more than one carrier than an all-in-one. GVC would have water loadstars or beach itself. They COULD make just one carrier but the thing would be massive. Is there any bases in planetside 2 that can both spawn aircraft and ground vehicles? The idea of just one carrier is been made even more enticing.

It was suggested that each faction would have at least 1 uncap-able naval base so they always have a ship spawn point. I would suggest making the largest MNBs globally limited and linking each MNB to a specific uncap-able home port. Give each faction 1 or 2 and make the MNB itself uncap but destroyable. If destroyed it begins a very long timer before another is spawned at its designated naval base. IMO these super large MNBs should not be outfit spawned as they are indeed empire-level assets. In this way you avoid the "rich get richer" problem as no faction can have more than a specific number of MNBs at a time. You also don't have to worry about situations where individual outfits don't want to spawn these to combat attacks from other factions cause they just plain cost to much resource wise. I don't think uncappable naval bases is a good move, mentioned why as well in another post.

Now I said make these MNBs uncap but destroyable however I actually mean a combination of the two and not how many of you are going to read it. I suggest that the MNB itself is not destroyable much like any other major base but instead by successfully capturing/hacking and maintaining control of a number of key points inside it for a set time you can cause it to self destruct. Should the win conditions be met a 5 minute or so countdown timer would begin and everyone on board would have that long to get away or be blown up along with the MNB. This provides an entirely new type of base capture mechanic than the current bases' faction flipping. Don't like this idea. If your going to go through the trouble of capturing and holding key points on the ship...you should just take it over since that's better than destroying it.


As an empire-level assets it should require some heavy cert spending to be able to drive the largest MNB. Not just anyone should be able to do so. I'll leave specific naval certs for now though as those can be worked out after other much more important aspects of naval warfare are covered. agreed

[Duskguy]

masterr, the warp gate is an uncapturable land spawn point, so why wouldn't it, or a similar device work for basic sea vehicles.

in my proposition about certain naval bases on certain continents allowing the build of certain advanced units, the warp gate would allow thigns like AC carrier and basic units while the naval bases allow advanced units.

it might even work better if the naval bases allowed for more (numerical) advanced units. such as base A allows for an additional AC while base B allows 2 more battleships and base C allows 2 more 2 person submarines, or something along those lines.
it would be a case of the rich get richer, but then those "rich" factions would have more area to cover on a seemless world and you could spawn at a different warp gate with naval, land or air units to get around any possible blockade

[Masterr]

masterr, the warp gate is an uncapturable land spawn point, so why wouldn't it, or a similar device work for basic sea vehicles.

in my proposition about certain naval bases on certain continents allowing the build of certain advanced units, the warp gate would allow thigns like AC carrier and basic units while the naval bases allow advanced units.

it might even work better if the naval bases allowed for more (numerical) advanced units. such as base A allows for an additional AC while base B allows 2 more battleships and base C allows 2 more 2 person submarines, or something along those lines.
it would be a case of the rich get richer, but then those "rich" factions would have more area to cover on a seemless world and you could spawn at a different warp gate with naval, land or air units to get around any possible blockade

So your trying to sell me an uncapturable naval base...hmm. The thing with that is....according to lore...warpgates should remain the uncapturable entity. Also lets say that your defending against a navy. The first thing the navy would want to do, is to take over the shipyards and such, its a part of their strategy. The navy would have to contest against tanks, aircraft, infantry from the land when they are taking the beaches...they don't want ships hitting their flank. That would take away part of the strategy of attacking the naval assets. Also, on land, aircraft and ground vehicles are all contestable everywhere, I don't see why naval units will get to be special and not have to worry about being taken over. Shipyards would be hit by air,infantry,ground, and from the water. Many vehicles. Now for certain shipyards spawning certain ships....i can dig it. Small shipyard spawns patrol boats. Naval base spawns everything. Naval bases will be large bases with 3-6 capture points needed to secure the base. Will also provide rare resources for naval units.

Rare resources, I was discussing this with a friend earlier. Aquarius - new resource. It will take 2000 auraxium to make a carrier it will take 1000 Aquarius to do the same thing. (of course these are ballparks but just showing you want im getting at)

The base that would yield the most aquarius would be offshore bases...think like a biodome in the middle of the ocean. Only reachable by boat. No places to land a plane. Capture this base, you get Aquarius and be able to spawn more ships.

How to acquire aquarius? Take naval bases/ship yards/offshore facilities
What yields the most aquarius (in order)? offshore facilities/naval bases/ship yards

This idea will be put into my own thread coming up soon. Writing in this thread to bounce back idea before I make my final proposal.

[Duskguy]

i was thinking, why not have land and air units come from one side of the warp gate and naval units come out the other, in the water. would no longer need a sperte facility, and again, wouldn't be able to create all naval units, just the basic ones so that the faction can try to recapture naval bases.

otherwise you end up with land/air/sea potentially facing a warp gate that can only create land and air units.

[berzerkerking]

No, I mean air navy rather than having a water navy.

that kills the fun man

[Masterr]

i was thinking, why not have land and air units come from one side of the warp gate and naval units come out the other, in the water. would no longer need a sperte facility, and again, wouldn't be able to create all naval units, just the basic ones so that the faction can try to recapture naval bases.

otherwise you end up with land/air/sea potentially facing a warp gate that can only create land and air units.

OH! well why didn't you say so?! lol, yes I like this idea, I just didn't understand what you meant by the way you proposed it. Will add to thread. Currently Warpgates can spawn everything under the sun...so it should be able to spawn naval units as well.

[Baneblade]

that kills the fun man

Eh???

[RoninOni]

With carriers, there should be a 'captain' list of authorized players who can be captains. When an outfit purcahses an AC they get to determine who is allowed to pilot it to prevent some random lowbie in the unit taking it off into enemy waters by himself.

[julfo]

As everyone else has said, epic idea, but for later on rather than sooner.

[Zapa]

That would be badass. Kinda hard to do but i am sure its possible (server side). Its more about how much time they want to put into doing something like that. but a lot of it depends on what we cant see, the code.

my thoughts: it would be awesome if you want to take the time. (I cant see how it would mess up the game play)

[OcO]

A little rethinking on my Mobile Naval Base suggestion. I rethought my original idea to make this more of what I originally had in mind which is a super massive naval base to fight over just like the ground based installations we have atm. I think the following would work better, and allows for Masterr's suggestions on separate GVC and ACC and resources.

One problem with anything labeled as an empire-level asset is who gets to drive it. If something is spawned by a particular outfit they can lock it down to whomever they wish to give rights to.

My new idea is instead of 1-2 MNB per faction make 1 per continent. The MNB circles the island at a set distance from shore and at a set speed and can not be driven by players. If you want to attack one continent from another you are still going to need the GVC and ACC suggested as this MNB is not technically a ship but as the name suggests this is simply a slowly moving naval version of the ground bases we currently have to fight over. It would not be destroyable. Each faction would fight to cap it and try to keep control of it.

I would make it very slow moving. While exact rotation times could be worked out, I'm thinking something like 4-6 hours to circle the continent once. You want it to be slow enough that it would be considered a threat if an enemy faction had control of it when it passed behind your frontlines and gave them access to coastal hexes you controlled.

Allow aircraft spawns and some smaller naval vessels though maybe not the larger GVC and ACC suggested by others. In this way for each continent each faction would have naval spawning available from their warpgates and 1 faction at a time would have a second naval spawn point.

Another problem to consider when adding any offshore static objective like islands and oil rigs etc is that 1 faction will always be closer and thus have an easier time trying to control it. Combine this with the suggested ideas of having naval specific harvested resources and chances are whichever faction is closest to the resource node will control it more often and thus be able to build more naval units. In addition to being a mobile spawn point to base attacks from, make the MNB itself a resource node. I would even make it THE resource node and worth more naval resources per tick than any static location. Since the base is constantly moving each faction has equal access to it as it passes closest to their warpgate/sanct.

I will think on this a bit more but I'm trying to think this up as a companion to ground and air carriers and give more meaning to why have naval fighting not as a replacement to them. The MNB offers a dynamic naval battlefield that can be incorporated whether the game world is made seamless or not.

[Naz The Eternal]

Umm its just my opinion but i think water navy is a dumb idea when your air power can literally fly forever. Why float at boating speeds when you can fly at jet speeds. Interesting idea for modern battlefield 4, not so good for sc fi ps2.

Ever seen how much antiair a ship can hold? Much more defendable than aircraft.

Great idea, making it work is going to be tough, if accomplished it will be yet another frontier of gaming that planetside will have created

www.ToxinGamers.com - Posted via Tapatalk

[Kipper]

I haven't read through the whole thread but for my 2p worth, I wouldn't redefine the game to have giant behemoth movable ships with 40 crew slots etc. There's no need for it imo.

For me, to add naval combat to planetside you just need tanks that have boat hulls instead of wheels - they still require 1, 2 or 3 people to fully crew, they still have turrets, they move fairly rapidly and carry some inertia when they turn to give them a 'boaty' handling feel. Aircraft are still viable but compared to boats (as compared to tanks) they'd be made of paper.

'Water continent' (assuming it wasn't seamless) or open water areas would have water type bases - such as oil/resource rigs of varying designs which extended up above the water with access from the air; with capture points at the air pad, a couple of control rooms, the engine/drilling room etc that allows for infantry and air to play together, with lots of walkways and cover so that air isn't just able to farm. Bio labs could be structures that extend below the water allowing for tight infantry only zones with choke points - maybe that was easier to defend but didn't have its own spawn tubes (or you could cut the power to them from an external structure) so you could grind defenders down over time.

I'd like to see inland water areas too - lakes, bridges, rivers, anchored vessels, dockyard installations - all that could all allow air/boats/infantry/tanks to mix and fight over them.

I just don't think there's a real need to totally deviate from the formula and start imagining up new game mechanics - just some fitting base designs and vehicle designs would do it for me. Lack of terrain cover on the ocean could be compensated by speed and better AA. Lack of infantry fighting areas could be compensated by water structures that had plenty of opportunity to run around and get lost in, with indoor and outdoor sections and tunnels.

[Masterr]

A little rethinking on my Mobile Naval Base suggestion. I rethought my original idea to make this more of what I originally had in mind which is a super massive naval base to fight over just like the ground based installations we have atm. I think the following would work better, and allows for Masterr's suggestions on separate GVC and ACC and resources.

One problem with anything labeled as an empire-level asset is who gets to drive it. If something is spawned by a particular outfit they can lock it down to whomever they wish to give rights to.

My new idea is instead of 1-2 MNB per faction make 1 per continent. The MNB circles the island at a set distance from shore and at a set speed and can not be driven by players. If you want to attack one continent from another you are still going to need the GVC and ACC suggested as this MNB is not technically a ship but as the name suggests this is simply a slowly moving naval version of the ground bases we currently have to fight over. It would not be destroyable. Each faction would fight to cap it and try to keep control of it.

I would make it very slow moving. While exact rotation times could be worked out, I'm thinking something like 4-6 hours to circle the continent once. You want it to be slow enough that it would be considered a threat if an enemy faction had control of it when it passed behind your frontlines and gave them access to coastal hexes you controlled.

Allow aircraft spawns and some smaller naval vessels though maybe not the larger GVC and ACC suggested by others. In this way for each continent each faction would have naval spawning available from their warpgates and 1 faction at a time would have a second naval spawn point.

Another problem to consider when adding any offshore static objective like islands and oil rigs etc is that 1 faction will always be closer and thus have an easier time trying to control it. Combine this with the suggested ideas of having naval specific harvested resources and chances are whichever faction is closest to the resource node will control it more often and thus be able to build more naval units. In addition to being a mobile spawn point to base attacks from, make the MNB itself a resource node. I would even make it THE resource node and worth more naval resources per tick than any static location. Since the base is constantly moving each faction has equal access to it as it passes closest to their warpgate/sanct.

I will think on this a bit more but I'm trying to think this up as a companion to ground and air carriers and give more meaning to why have naval fighting not as a replacement to them. The MNB offers a dynamic naval battlefield that can be incorporated whether the game world is made seamless or not.

I'm trying to like your mobile naval base idea. So this replaces static bases but not the ability to take over an aircraft carrier. Its hard for me to determine a reason why a base is moving. It would make for interesting combat though...the MNB rounds a bend and another factions armada was sitting there...waiting for it.

I understand your concern about empire proximity to static defenses but thats the same for all bases. There won't be just one static naval base thats close to a continent. In the end...a number of static water bases/outposts and one Mobile Naval Base seems like a toss up for the devs to decide..if they take our ideas seriously.

[Stardouser]

Personally I don't want ANY base, naval included, to be uncapturable, but there are two issues:
1. Rich get richer
2. If you have zero naval bases, then any naval unlocks you paid for you can never use

I was thinking that putting one naval base inside the planetary uncap of each empire would provide a happy medium - naval ships won't be that fast, so you'll still want to capture naval bases throughout the planet, but since you can always at least spawn sub-battleship ships at your planetary uncap base, no one will say "but I paid for unlawks and cant use them1".

[Masterr]

Personally I don't want ANY base, naval included, to be uncapturable, but there are two issues:
1. Rich get richer
2. If you have zero naval bases, then any naval unlocks you paid for you can never use

I was thinking that putting one naval base inside the planetary uncap of each empire would provide a happy medium - naval ships won't be that fast, so you'll still want to capture naval bases throughout the planet, but since you can always at least spawn sub-battleship ships at your planetary uncap base, no one will say "but I paid for unlawks and cant use them1".

Warpgates can spawn anything, including ships.

If all the naval bases on the vanu home continent (the continent that has the vanu home warp gate) have been taken over. You can either take the base back with air/infantry/tanks or you can spawn naval ships form your home warp gate and take the naval base by air/land/sea

[Duskguy]

Personally I don't want ANY base, naval included, to be uncapturable, but there are two issues:
1. Rich get richer
2. If you have zero naval bases, then any naval unlocks you paid for you can never use

I was thinking that putting one naval base inside the planetary uncap of each empire would provide a happy medium - naval ships won't be that fast, so you'll still want to capture naval bases throughout the planet, but since you can always at least spawn sub-battleship ships at your planetary uncap base, no one will say "but I paid for unlawks and cant use them1".

i did mention a base or the warp gate itself being able to spawn ships....