Question from Malorn: Continental Lattice Mechanics

[GeoGnome]

Quote from Malorn from the main forums, in regards to how you would capture continents in the upcoming continental lattice.

You may notice every warpgate on latticed continents has 3 adjacent outposts. This was done as a possible method of warpgate capture in the future. The central idea being you have to hold all three of the adjacent territories to neutralize the gate (instead of the tower), which allows passage. If you do the same thing on the other side the gates become footholds until another empire neutralizes either end of the gate. The current lattice layout supports this design with no changes if we go that direction, but I can't say for sure at this time how it will turn out.

One of the challenges is the awkwardness of moving through gates to attack objectives on the other side. It has an awkward flow, a lot like a bio lab fight where the enemies are coming from one direction but in order to stop them you have to go to another direction (or in this case, another continent). But then again it's similar to how PS1 did warpgates and it worked out OK.

To help foster the conversation a bit, here's a few things to consider in warpgate conquest mechanics.

Downtime. If an empire abandons a continent what to do with the downtime of gobbling up undefended territories? It was a boring part of PS1.
Warpgate camping. If the opposite happens and two empires fight hard to control a gate, what does that fight look like?
Non-static gate assignments. How would you like to see warpgate positions handled? Do you want to fight for them, or do you want assigned gates that rotate on a schedule?
Empire compression. What happens if an empire gets reduced to 1 or 2 continents? Those players have to go somewhere. Folks on Connery have been seeing the limits reached, and that's with 3 continents!

These are the sort of things we think a lot about when discussing warpgate capture and continental conquest. Loving this discussion, please weigh in on the sort of things you'd like to see.

[KarrdeBRBU]

He's right, that's kinda a tough problem to solve without adding something like control stations or having to go back to the other cont and retaking the bases. I think we can conceptualize it like this. For the purpose of warping and warpgate control the 3 bases on either side act as points A, B, C, D, E, and F in a base, contributing to the overall capture. If you get 3 on one side it will eventually neutralize the gate. This will allow bidirectional travel for both empires on the gate. The attacking empire can use their side's terms, and the defenders can use theirs. However the WG just became a weapons/damage allowed zone on both sides.

The goal would then be to push the enemy zerg out of their own gate and into their 3 sub facilities. As you capture them, the gate capture speed increases until it is "locked" to the attacking empire. If at any point the gate is captured before all 3 bases are, the remaining bases flip in the attacking empire's favor in order to give them a fair foothold. Once locked the empire specific shield goes up and the zone returns to weapons safe.

[ringring]

Q1. Downtime. If an empire abandons a continent what to do with the downtime of gobbling up undefended territories? It was a boring part of PS1.
Q2. Warpgate camping. If the opposite happens and two empires fight hard to control a gate, what does that fight look like?
Q3. Non-static gate assignments. How would you like to see warpgate positions handled? Do you want to fight for them, or do you want assigned gates that rotate on a schedule?
Q4. Empire compression. What happens if an empire gets reduced to 1 or 2 continents? Those players have to go somewhere. Folks on Connery have been seeing the limits reached, and that's with 3 continents!

A1. There's no answer except perhaps to reduce the cap timers. However, if the enemy leave I suspect there will be no shortage of people willing to go around ghost capping for the xp.

A2. Hmm. Yes, as long as there are always two options it should be fine. This means the lattice proposed will not work as it only has one home warpgate (there is a thread on forumside that proposes a solution but requires more continents and a sanctuary iirc).

A3. Either for me. rotating warpgates aren't as important with an global lattice as they are now because you with the lattice you will see the figth from different persepctives naturally.

A4. You need sanctuaries there's no doubt and at least two options of attack out of it. I'm sure sanctuaries aren't difficult to create, they can be quite plain, but I think the issue lies with Higby he seems dead set against them although we've been asking for them for *years* (seems like).

The pic below is stolen from this thread https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/continental-lattice-warpgate-capture.169521/
http://i1159.photobucket.com/albums/p631/ALTIfromAUT/Continental_Lattice_WIP1.png

[GeoGnome]

Why do people persistantly ask for sanctuaries, when we already has something that performs the function that they are trying to cram sanctuaries into? I mean what people keep pitching (This happened on the main forum thread too) was that the sanctuaries would be people storage.

... We already have people storage with the VR Room. So doubling the people storage, solves... pretty much nothing. It just means twice as many people can stand around staring at each other.

[Chewy]

"A4. You need sanctuaries there's no doubt and at least two options of attack out of it. I'm sure sanctuaries aren't difficult to create, they can be quite plain, but I think the issue lies with Higby he seems dead set against them although we've been asking for them for *years* (seems like)."

I like this for finding a place for players that are being over run and are loosing WGs.

But I think it needs another bit from PS1. The HART and being able to drop on maps that you don't have a WG on. The HART maybe is able to drop you ONLY on maps where you don't have a WG.

Just getting to a map is one thing. You still need a link to cap bases. PS1 did this from finding a power drained base that turned neutral and take it over. It would give reasons to have an ANT and to have chances at smaller teams doing some nasty back stabbing by dropping unknown at an empty base, hacking terminals, and pulling some armor to have a bit of fun.

[bites]

Why do people persistantly ask for sanctuaries, when we already has something that performs the function that they are trying to cram sanctuaries into? I mean what people keep pitching (This happened on the main forum thread too) was that the sanctuaries would be people storage.

... We already have people storage with the VR Room. So doubling the people storage, solves... pretty much nothing. It just means twice as many people can stand around staring at each other.

Being dropped into VR however for a noobie isn't very conducive to a good first experience .... if you had not played the game before (also assuming that you probably not payed attention to the VR training thingy like most joe bloggs "Click to Accept" people), the VR would be a terrible place to start.

[Obstruction]

VR would be a terrible place to start.

why? i don't see your point at all.

half the new spawns i see pull tanks at the warpgate and spend an hour running over friendly ESFs that landed to repair.

the other half get greased on the battlefield while staring at their keybindings.

[GeoGnome]

Being dropped into VR however for a noobie isn't very conducive to a good first experience .... if you had not played the game before (also assuming that you probably not payed attention to the VR training thingy like most joe bloggs "Click to Accept" people), the VR would be a terrible place to start.
Yeah that is my point. People are going to start out here, and if you make it so that excess people are dumped not only in the VR, but in the Sanctuary (Which would effectively be VR 2: Electric Boogaloo). People who are being shuffled off to someplace because they can't fit into the main fight, need to be given something to do.


This is my suggestion for all of this:

Question 1: Downtime. If an empire abandons a continent what to do with the downtime of gobbling up undefended territories? It was a boring part of PS1.
In regards to downtime, I honestly think you Have to have a few minutes downtime on both sides. This is my way of thinking: So the bases around the warpgate take a few minutes to flip, but once they flip, the defenders loose that warpgate as a spawn point. They aren't immediately pushed off the continent, but they will have no spawn (Unless you go with something I suggest down on Question 4, faction Fortresses, but more on that in Section 4). Now, the attackers will have to bring the Macguffin (LLU or what have you) Up to the warpgate to put it into their network. The defenders who were left behind can thwart this if they want. Now, the LLU is brought to the warpgate, and takes a few moments to activate when it gets there. Once it activates, on the next continent, the attackers gain not only the warpgate, but the 3 territories adjacent to it, and turns the next row of 3 bases up the line neutral. This means, that the defenders will now need to flip 3 or more bases, before gaining access to the 3 bases that line the warpgate. This means, that it will give the attackers time to make the continent transition and get lined up. In terms of times, I would say that the bases right around the warpgate should require 10 minutes to cap, and the LLU or whatever should take 5 minutes to activate. So you are dealing with at least 15 minutes on the cap, 5 of which is mostly just down time.

Another option, would be to allow attackers to transition while the LLU is setting up, so you give them an extra 5 minutes to get established. That is to say that once the 3 bases were captured and the attackers gained the warpgate, they could transition while the Macguffin was charging up to give them the 3 bases around the warpgate and neutralize the three bases beyond that. That would give those people who transitioned quick additional time to get ready. Either way you are looking at 5-15 minutes there that people can get ready and get moving.

Question 2: Warpgate camping. If the opposite happens and two empires fight hard to control a gate, what does that fight look like?
Well the defenders would have an advantage, because they could move between all three bases freely, while the attackers potentially could have a weaker front. This would mostly be a groundwar I'd imagine, because there is so much AA around the Warpgate that Air would be kind of stuck.

Question 3: Non-static gate assignments. How would you like to see warpgate positions handled? Do you want to fight for them, or do you want assigned gates that rotate on a schedule?
I want to fight for gates. I think it would be challenging to find people who Didn't want to fight for gates.

Question 4: Empire compression. What happens if an empire gets reduced to 1 or 2 continents? Those players have to go somewhere. Folks on Connery have been seeing the limits reached, and that's with 3 continents!
My kneejerk answer is, make more servers. To be frank, I really see the max pop for a server being somewhere around the point where you can fill 1-2 continent. If you are filling 3 continents with people, you have way too many people to compress. So with Connery bumping up against filling all 3 continents, open another server and offer free transfers to that server for 2 weeks. Not only do you spread that pop out somewhat, but you also make it so that you have Another server you could potentially fill.

That doesn't really solve the problem though.

If you really want to keep combat going (Which is the point of Question 1, and seems to be the goal of PS2's development as far as I can see), you could make it so that you never technically 100% boot people off a continent. What if there was a "Home bases" for each faction on each continent. Looking up to Degen's awesome suggestion, he mentions having the "Home base" on the home continents. What if there was 3 of those on each continent, one tied to each faction? "Locking" a continent has always been something that people expect to be a means of population control, which is to say that on smaller servers it would mean pushing the fight over continents, so that you didn't perpetuate indarside. Well, what if you had a base people could go to on the continents, that wasn't attached to the lattice, but could serve as a home base with limited resource spawning capabilities. You could limit the way of getting there if you had no warpgate, to requiring that you transport there from the Home base (So home bases could transport people to any of these) but if you did not have a warpgate you couldn't spawn there without going back to the home base on your mother continent. This could also serve as a staging area when people were about to transition to take a warpgate on another continent, thereby allowing people to go to the home base, warp to the other faction fortress on that continent, and get tooled up (The Wire is a great show) to go help the guys pushing through the warpgate. I don't know if I am describing this well, so I will try to put together a visual aide for it tonight.

Further, if you -really- want to give someone in that fortress something to do, as opposed to just making it people storage, you could put something in place as part of the resource system, where it is a good way to boost your faction's resources by running resource loads on that enemy continent back to your faction's fortress. This way you never really take combat off any one continent, it just becomes a different type of combat, something more about skirmishing than about slugging it out with platoons of people. So, if I am TR and Esamir is otherwise locked, and I spawn at my TR fortress on Esamir, I can go out with an ant and collect resources I then bring back to the TR fortress, which are transported back to the TR home base and diffuse out into the rest of the TR in the form of Extra resources (Faster regen or just MORE resources given). Or you could make Fortresses an incentive, so that resources are Horded there, and once your faction retakes a hold on that continent, they bolster the whole faction's resource haul for a time. So now you have people storage, you have fighting that can happen Beyond the lattice (Which gives smaller groups something to do), and you never really let up on the throttle. It'd be in the interest of the faction who is getting their home continent raided to stop it, because you could let people drain resources out of existing bases, so that if and when the home continent is reentered, it could be in a state where most of the bases are drained (Thereby making their capture easier for attackers, and introducing some kind of spec ops element), so people will be fighting over the secured continents in smaller engagements, over a wider and more open area.

Something else here, is that with putting a Home base or fortress for each faction, on each continent, you could Rotate the whole continental lattice, so that one week, Hossin is the main base of the TR, and the next week it is the contested continent. The difference between it acting as the "Faction's HQ" one week, and acting as a disconnected "Faction Fortress" the next, could be a lattice link.

And hell, make these Faction fortresses have a faction specific look. You could add a great deal of identity to these bases that way, and people are Always looking for something that is Empire specific. An Empire specific base would be truly amazing.

I will be honest, I see the whole problem of empire compression becoming less of a problem as more continents are added, when we get another 2 or 3 continents, you could institute proper locking, so that people would well and truly LOCK a continent, not allowing people to spawn at their faction's fortress on an otherwise enemy continent.

[bpostal]

Why do people persistantly ask for sanctuaries, when we already has something that performs the function that they are trying to cram sanctuaries into? I mean what people keep pitching (This happened on the main forum thread too) was that the sanctuaries would be people storage.

... We already have people storage with the VR Room. So doubling the people storage, solves... pretty much nothing. It just means twice as many people can stand around staring at each other.

I can't think of a faster way to get someone to stop playing than housing excess population in the VR. Even if you called the VR a sanctuary and moved on, anyone who has to sit there for any length of time to wait on a queue will flip their shit regardless of what you call it.

Sanctuaries also existed to give people a chance to regroup (As well as providing links to home conts via the broadcast wg's). I should never have to tell a platoon 'Fall back to the VR and pull armor for a counter assault!'

Call 'em what you want but if you're stuck there for more than a few minutes however, it doesn't matter what you call it. It'll boring and everyone will hate it (and continental lattice).

In the end, storage is storage as long as it's temporary and the home continent/sanctuary/VR/Valhalla gives a faction room to regroup and push out then you should see satisfied players.

What if there was 3 of those on each continent, one tied to each faction? "Locking" a continent has always been something that people expect to be a means of population control, which is to say that on smaller servers it would mean pushing the fight over continents, so that you didn't perpetuate indarside. Well, what if you had a base people could go to on the continents, that wasn't attached to the lattice, but could serve as a home base with limited resource spawning capabilities.

So...same thing as what we have now except remove the lattice link to the WG itself? I'm not sure if that's what your talking about. I should mention that, to me, cont locking is more about adding permanence and a sense of satisfaction (that PS2 is currently lacking) than population control. Population control shouldn't be a major issue until we have more continents.

[Dougnifico]

I really don't understand the logistical trouble behind adding sanctuaries. They don't have to be super pretty. They don't have to be conductive to gameplay. You could just have some rolling hills with a random texture and lego-in some of the already made buildings and a pair of warpgates (or even just terminals) and BAM! Working sanctuaries.

For even less effort, make a large part a giant, flat dirt or grass field for tanks and crap to assemble on. Sanctuaries are easy. lol

Bonus easy points for SOE: Just ask a member or two from the community to build it for you. Just give them to tools. Now its done for free!

[typhaon]

There are going to need to be tighter overall population controls on the servers.

At the very least, measures to prevent 4th factioning (faction switch timer like in PS1) will have to go in.

If SOE does not do this - the overall game will take the form of your basic "territory control" alert.... and we all know how those go when the population of one empire gets to about 40%.

[SgtMAD]

I find this all pretty funny due to the fact that when I brought up all these issues before Beta even started,
ppl on this forum told me that it would never happen, that you couldn't lock up continents in PS2,that there was no way an empire could take out the other two.

this is all pointless if SOE doesn't add a couple more continents and I don't think we are going to see Hossin any time soon.

SOE let the bean counters decide that PS2 was ready for release instead of listening to the beta playerbase,which was telling them that the game needed more time in beta,that it wasn't ready.

and if SOE is serious about warp gate defense and being able to push out successfully,they need to re-site all the towers around the gates so they can actually be used effectively,
replace the gun turrets that have been stripped in the last two patches and quit mounting AA turrets on the back side of the towers,I mean who in the hell looked at that and thought it was alright?

[Edfishy]

GeoNome is spot on (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showpost.php?p=953843&postcount=8) with 2, 3, and 4 (#1. I think might be a tad complex and requires an LLU).

1. I'd just suggest an empty continent will have faster cap times and have the lattice automatically hack enemy bases for your empire.

2. As GeoNome suggests, enemies camping your warpgate will (with the resource revamp) be too far away from their own warpgate to collect resources fast enough to compete.

3. Warpgate rotations would be fine.

4. As GeoNome suggests, providing protected empire Fortresses on other continents that you could stage an attack from but not actually capture territory would suffice. Players would now have missions to siphon resources from back territory or try and shut down ANTs from powering the main offensive that's closing their empire off. More continents eventually solves the problem altogether since there's plenty of room for everyone.

[libbmaster]

Why do people persistantly ask for sanctuaries, when we already has something that performs the function that they are trying to cram sanctuaries into? I mean what people keep pitching (This happened on the main forum thread too) was that the sanctuaries would be people storage.

... We already have people storage with the VR Room. So doubling the people storage, solves... pretty much nothing. It just means twice as many people can stand around staring at each other.

No, the point is to give outfits a place to regroup and pull vehicles before shipping out to contents.

If MBTs and heavy vehicles were only available at sanctuaries and Tech plants, we would have much less spam and thus grounds to buff said vehicles.

[Calista]

No, the point is to give outfits a place to regroup and pull vehicles before shipping out to contents.

If MBTs and heavy vehicles were only available at sanctuaries and Tech plants, we would have much less spam and thus grounds to buff said vehicles.

Someone asked Matt in the last CC about warpgates actually warping vehicles etc and he said it was not planned anytime soon. It kinda sounded like to me that even after continent linking you would have to use that terminal to spawn over to a new cont.

[bpostal]

Someone asked Matt in the last CC about warpgates actually warping vehicles etc and he said it was not planned anytime soon. It kinda sounded like to me that even after continent linking you would have to use that terminal to spawn over to a new cont.

That is kinda disappointing. I was hoping for 'sooner' rather than 'later' but so are we all I guess.

If it's years down the road before they start looking at this then I may have to ask about a deconstruction station (dependent on the resource revamp).

[Vashyo]

I think sanctuaries are a really good idea still, since they would allready add 3 more continents to attack from. I'd prefer instead of making new sanctuaries, we would just turn the VR rooms into Sanctuaries. They don't really have to be big or anything too fancy since they will just be used to move up to other continents.

[Babyfark McGeez]

So...14 months after going live they are now/still brainstorming how to implement the main fucking core base mechanic of the whole game. Yeah, sounds about right.

Here's my tip for them: Check up this very forum, hit "search" and look for the countless good ideas that have been posted in the past 1-2 years.

[ringring]

Someone asked Matt in the last CC about warpgates actually warping vehicles etc and he said it was not planned anytime soon. It kinda sounded like to me that even after continent linking you would have to use that terminal to spawn over to a new cont.
Yea, it's on the roadmap ("Vehicle Zoning") but down as unscheduled.

For me the new continents, inter-continental lattice and zoning need to come in together and and as someone has said everything discussed here are 'core mechanics'.

Instead we get more events and WDS which, with respect to Malorn, are to me at best placeholders and possibly also act as distractions.

[Calista]

Yea, it's on the roadmap ("Vehicle Zoning") but down as unscheduled.

For me the new continents, inter-continental lattice and zoning need to come in together and and as someone has said everything discussed here are 'core mechanics'.

Instead we get more events and WDS which, with respect to Malorn, are to me at best placeholders and possibly also act as distractions.

And how far overdue is Hossin from the original plan? I remember someone asked Maggie about Searhus and she rolled her eyes and said that is WAAAAY down the road. I really hope this game takes off on PS4 because that is about the only thing that is gonna kick this game in the pants and get it moving again.

[NewSith]

My suggestion on the whole thing, since Malorn didn't indicate in detail what his system implies:


Add outpost designs into each warpgate, so it's not just an open shooting range.
Add spawnroom protection for spawns.
Keep triple adjacency rule for the warpgates.
Once a WG is link-opened, disable the shield.
Add 1-3 CPs on each warpgate that activate only after warpgate shield goes down.
Empires compete for the control of the warpgate.
Once captured on one side, the other side of the warpgate loses the warpgate shield, points activate and spawnroom changes ownership (along with spawnroom painfield).*
(Optional) 20-30 Second delay is issued when WG loses ownership when the WG becomes neutral, but the shield remains. After that delay A pulse destroys every enemy inside the warpgate, before shield goes down.**
(Optional) This is all assuming there isn't going to be vehicle zonning, otherwise the area where vehicles are teleported to should also get some kind of spawn protection.


*The other side of the warpgate changes ownership as long as controlling empire holds at least 1 WG, not counting the one in question.
**There has to be some visible notification of it. Also the warpgate shield should go up for that delay even if the three bases on two sides belong to non-controller empires (Like 3 NC bases on one side and 3 TR bases on the other side of a VS warpgate.


----------------------------


Downtime. If an empire abandons a continent what to do with the downtime of gobbling up undefended territories? It was a boring part of PS1.

Keep it. Didn't we already encounter situations where zergy-go-rounds took over the entire game, because attacking empty bases wasn't de-incentivised. Imagine what happens if you INCENTIVISE people to capture empty conts.

Warpgate camping. If the opposite happens and two empires fight hard to control a gate, what does that fight look like?

This is what I started my suggestion with - make warpgates just another kind of a base. My suggestion is based on the basic idea of capitols from PS2 btw that happened to be quite fun.

Non-static gate assignments. How would you like to see warpgate positions handled? Do you want to fight for them, or do you want assigned gates that rotate on a schedule?

Dynamic warpgate connections with 3 continents, static when the number hits at least 5.

Empire compression. What happens if an empire gets reduced to 1 or 2 continents? Those players have to go somewhere. Folks on Connery have been seeing the limits reached, and that's with 3 continents!


There's a very low chance that an empire gets reduced to 1 continent if the pop balance is somewhat equal. Truth be told, I would rather have server pop limit being equal to continent pop limit. That's just my imho, and I know what people have to say against it.

[GeoGnome]

Okay folks, come on, at this point this is getting close to being derailed (Thank you btw Sith, was writing this Before I saw your post) so people can rail at the game's progress. Lets get back on topic: Continental Lattice, and how it should be done. If you want to be unhappy about this, go punch a pillow, or post on Reddit :D

I really don't understand the logistical trouble behind adding sanctuaries. They don't have to be super pretty. They don't have to be conductive to gameplay. You could just have some rolling hills with a random texture and lego-in some of the already made buildings and a pair of warpgates (or even just terminals) and BAM! Working sanctuaries.

For even less effort, make a large part a giant, flat dirt or grass field for tanks and crap to assemble on. Sanctuaries are easy. lol

Bonus easy points for SOE: Just ask a member or two from the community to build it for you. Just give them to tools. Now its done for free!

It's not a matter of making them, as much as it is a matter of why are they there? They are there for people storage, or that is the role they would have at present. People storage isn't great. Imagine logging on for the first time, not being able to get out of the VR, because your faction is down to one continent. That would be really annoying. People storage does not have to be so much of a waste.

No, the point is to give outfits a place to regroup and pull vehicles before shipping out to contents.

If MBTs and heavy vehicles were only available at sanctuaries and Tech plants, we would have much less spam and thus grounds to buff said vehicles.
As was said, "If vehicle zoning was a reality" if it were, I'd agree with you... somewhat. I still think that the sanctuary is unnecessary if you put in something like a fortress (See my post). It'd fill the same function, wouldn't have to be a world space, and could perform a function, even if there is no one around (Reduce the ability to pull ES items, limiting to basic terminals, and let resource runs go there, where they will boost the faction's recharge on resources to home base connected bases)

why? i don't see your point at all.

half the new spawns i see pull tanks at the warpgate and spend an hour running over friendly ESFs that landed to repair.

the other half get greased on the battlefield while staring at their keybindings.

I don't see your point here either.

People -start- at a warpgate already. Starting at a warpgate carries the possibility of you quickly getting to a fight, you have time to set up all your bindings there. What you are saying, is that people would start at... well, nowhere, they would start in a VR Room clone, with nothing to do, and if people are in VR by necessity, because they are driven back to their home gate, well... now they are Stuck in the VR.

That doesn't sound like a better system

[Baptist]

Ok so the continent is capped the faction who lost the continent is beaten back, I'm not going to formulate what conditions need to be made for this to be met but what about some sort of bridgehead feature, like an alert some sort of text goes off in game saying a bridgehead is forming on a captured continent, it would have to be more than one and have to be spread out but it's an idea.

[Rahabib]

I can't think of a faster way to get someone to stop playing than housing excess population in the VR. Even if you called the VR a sanctuary and moved on, anyone who has to sit there for any length of time to wait on a queue will flip their shit regardless of what you call it.

Sanctuaries also existed to give people a chance to regroup (As well as providing links to home conts via the broadcast wg's). I should never have to tell a platoon 'Fall back to the VR and pull armor for a counter assault!'

Call 'em what you want but if you're stuck there for more than a few minutes however, it doesn't matter what you call it. It'll boring and everyone will hate it (and continental lattice).

In the end, storage is storage as long as it's temporary and the home continent/sanctuary/VR/Valhalla gives a faction room to regroup and push out then you should see satisfied players.



So...same thing as what we have now except remove the lattice link to the WG itself? I'm not sure if that's what your talking about. I should mention that, to me, cont locking is more about adding permanence and a sense of satisfaction (that PS2 is currently lacking) than population control. Population control shouldn't be a major issue until we have more continents.

I kind of agree with GeoGnome. I think with the VR is just fine. Apart from being able to spend resources on vehicles etc. whether you are dumped in a sactuary with nothing to do or the VR, would be the same experience.

Besides, you select from the terminal the continent you want to go to. You spawn in that warp gate anyway, then pull your vehicles and such.

I guess if you wanted you could copy and paste a warp gate into another continent and call it a sanctuary you could.

I think that the Q1. of ghost capping is the bigger issue. It is boring. Even if its free XP its boring.

[Baneblade]

The first thing that needs to be done is to add at least two more continents.

[Mordelicius]

Quote from Malorn from the main forums, in regards to how you would capture continents in the upcoming continental lattice.

Some good design questions.

1) Surrounded maps should gradually flip when a certain % a continent is taken. If abandoned, the turnover rate should increase or altogether counted as "taken' if all resistance has ceased.

2) It is really contingent on how continents are capped and population movements. Unless that mechanic is elucidated, this can't really be answered.

3) Dynamic / Temporary "home bases"! I made a post about this months ago: http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=55871.

A dynamic warpgate system provides the most possible uncertainties, unpredictability, configuration, strategy and gameplay, maximizing what PS2 has to offer. Basically, everyday can be little different from other days! If one is to take all the continents into 1 map and visually make a pattern, that pattern could be different on any single stretch of time.

4) In my suggestion above, empires can be 'pushed' and trapped in Battle Island Warpgates. All Continental WGs are conquerable. Since it is highly difficult to achieve complete continental WGs control, there will be always that pressure of overextension fighting the two other empires.

In default state, Battle Island are innate and inaccessible. If a Warpgate is conquered or taken, then, the Battle Island is activated and the losing side are pushed in. If the attacking force wants them locked in that BI, they have to attack from the OTHER side and conquer the opposite WG from another continent ! Thereby putting that BI on the locked state. But the trapped defenders can still sally forth hence the difficulty of overextension of forces of the conquerors trying to hold TWO warpgates on two differerent continents. Then again, that's just one link! There are other continental links making it even harder to just zerg all over :D. It will take strategy, finesse and cooperation just to take 2 continents (given all the links!). Three or 4 or even more, good luck!

If they take the EASIER route and attack the Battle Island instead, the defender is again pushed to the next continent and that Warp Gate 'locked' and unassailable. Hence, if an Empire wants a total multi-continental domination, they have to overstretch and attack on all sides, hence locking the other 2 Empires on the Battle Island Wargpates! This would be extremely difficult to achieve if one can imagine.

Lastly, on the separate question of 3 WG adjacent bases, just make special connection among them that only activate when a continental capture threshhold is achieved (say 75%).

[Timealude]

People -start- at a warpgate already. Starting at a warpgate carries the possibility of you quickly getting to a fight, you have time to set up all your bindings there. What you are saying, is that people would start at... well, nowhere, they would start in a VR Room clone, with nothing to do, and if people are in VR by necessity, because they are driven back to their home gate, well... now they are Stuck in the VR.

That doesn't sound like a better system

just making a correction here, i dont know if its a bug currently but it seems like on the test server you spawn in a deploy screen when you first log in into the game.

[Ghoest9]

Bring back the "back hacks."

[bpostal]

Bring back the "back hacks."

Better idea, bring back drains!

[Ohaunlaim]

Gave it some thought. These are hard questions within the limited scope they are giving us to work with (few continents, no vehicle warping, etc). Anyway...

1. A continent will be considered "locked" once all Warp-Gates on a single continent are owned by a single faction. When locked all continental bases, outposts, towers, terminals, turrets, capture points, and so on will revert immediately to the faction that locked the continent.

2. To claim an enemy WG the three connecting outposts must be captured by a single opposing faction. Capturing these drops the warp-shield, the safe-zone status of the WG area is removed, and capture points activate. The WG can now be captured similar to any other base.

Once a WG is captured the shield, safe-zone, and capture points revert to their normal status. In addition any enemy troops and vehicles within the warp-bubble deconstruct immediately. The capture of the WG also causes the connecting WG (on the next continent) to also become owned by the attacking faction. This will unlock any continent that may have previously been locked. The resulting energy pulse also causes the three connecting outposts on the next continent to malfunction and become neutral.

Neutral outposts have all their systems shut down (spawns, terminals, generators, turrets, etc) and require slightly longer-than-hack-times to reboot and capture. This can be done at standard capture points. From here the attackers must push forward to capture at least one outpost or, if the defenders re-capture all three, risk having their new WG on the next continent become capture-able (as per the system above).

3. At the initial introduction to this system all WG ownership should be as they are now (each empire owns one on each continent). This will also determine initial links (which may change with time and new continent introductions). After that let the players determine all WG ownership using the system at hand.

4. The obvious answers are Battle Islands, Hossin, Searhus, and all the other continents that need to be in game (hurry up plz). With enough continents this shouldn’t be a problem. But everyone knows that.

Before you can release such proper solutions, here are some band-aids (none of which I really like)...

a. Dynamic pop cap. Once a continent is locked by one faction, the other two factions gain an increased population cap on all other un-locked continents in order to accommodate displaced forces. This helps in re-taking WGs and unlocking continents.

b. Send them to VR. This is a shit idea, but can be done in desperation.

c. Force-unlock a WG on the least populated continent for the faction with the least WGs. Another shit idea that breaks immersion and takes control away from the players.

[SgtMAD]

none of this will work until we have more continents.

the way the game is now, you could have an empire completely locked out of the game,you have to go back to the (dirty) planetside model,but then they have to add sanc's so ppl have somewhere to log into all the time.

this game isn't built for any of what I just wrote LOL

and there isn't anything in the dev's timeline about completely retooling the game

[MrMak]

none of this will work until we have more continents.

the way the game is now, you could have an empire completely locked out of the game,you have to go back to the (dirty) planetside model,but then they have to add sanc's so ppl have somewhere to log into all the time.

this game isn't built for any of what I just wrote LOL

and there isn't anything in the dev's timeline about completely retooling the game

You do realis this will only happen AFTER Hossin iand 3 battle islands to serve as buffors between the current 3 continents wil lbeo ut right? The current continents wil lbe home continents assigned to specific emppires a they il lnever be completly kicked out of those.

The issue is where to put the overflow on a full server.

[Baneblade]

You do realis this will only happen AFTER Hossin iand 3 battle islands to serve as buffors between the current 3 continents wil lbeo ut right? The current continents wil lbe home continents assigned to specific emppires a they il lnever be completly kicked out of those.

The issue is where to put the overflow on a full server.

That isn't an issue. PlanetSide handled it perfectly fine.

[Timithos]

Someone asked Matt in the last CC about warpgates actually warping vehicles etc and he said it was not planned anytime soon. It kinda sounded like to me that even after continent linking you would have to use that terminal to spawn over to a new cont.

Yeah, and that would suck. "Vehicle Zoning" as they call it is set as unscheduled on the roadmap. Vehicle Zoning would throw off the balance of the Resource Revamp since players don't need to use up new resources, but just drive their vehicles through warpgates. So the entire Resource Revamp might need an additional revamp again just to accommodate Vehicle Zoning. It makes sense for them to first introduce Vehicle Zoning before the revamp is finished, and to coincide Vehicle Zoning at the same time as continental lattices.

[Timithos]

none of this will work until we have more continents.

the way the game is now, you could have an empire completely locked out of the game,you have to go back to the (dirty) planetside model,but then they have to add sanc's so ppl have somewhere to log into all the time.

this game isn't built for any of what I just wrote LOL

and there isn't anything in the dev's timeline about completely retooling the game

Yeah, I've always found it silly to talk about Continent Locking when we only have 3 continents. Planetside 1 had 10 continents at launch using continent locking. Their plan is to introduce Hossin at the same time as Continent Locking, so we'll have 4, but if each empire locks one continent, we're only fighting on the single continent left over, and maybe a couple battle islands. It's silliness. Their resources should be focused on Hossin, resource revamp, continental lattice, vehicles zoning, Searhus, and then leave continent locking for last. It's a little less silly with 5 continents, but it's still silly.

[Timithos]

Quote from Malorn from the main forums, in regards to how you would capture continents in the upcoming continental lattice.

Where is this post on the official forums? I can't find it.

[NewSith]

Where is this post on the official forums? I can't find it.

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/continental-lattice-warpgate-capture.169521/#post-2435518

[Redshift]

I'd like to see an actual hack and hold base connected to each warpgate, like PS1. That way if you go through the warpgate and they backhack you it only takes 1 good offensive to retake the CC and restart their timer, that should discourage repeated zerging back onto the same cont.

The warpgate link should be active even if you've lost control of the CC on the old cont, so the whole push can't be scuppered by 1 guy in a mossie.

The ghost hack to finish conts can be rectified with a conditional timer, ie. if your pop is over 100 theirs is under 10 and you own 80% of the cont hack timers are halved... or whatever values work.

Give us sancs back, ie. clone the shooting range and put in dancing girls....(or whatever) On those rare occasions we get sanc'd allow for the sanc'd team to have queue priority so they have superior numbers to push out. Or allow us to drain bases so we can open up our own new fronts.

[Rolfski]

I posted my continent lock ideas already in the 4-way continent locking proposal (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=57504). It seems that some of them (control 3 outposts to capture a Warpgate) are very much in line with Malorn's ideas.

[Baneblade]

I believe there should be no specific continent locking mechanic other than the natural lock that would occur when an empire has wrested control of the warpgates from the others. In other words with what we have now, and keeping the warpgate = sanc thing, only one empire could truly lock one continent at a time and only by actively invading the other two.

[Stanis]

Mostly 'needs more continents'.
Also the concept of 'neutral' bases.

The ability to actually fight an immersive war rather than a terminal driven game requires warpgate traversal. We need to fight on enemy territory we don't otherwise have links to, to avoid population lock out - we need a drain mechanic.

Q0. What does a warpgate look like when they are latticed?

If we don't have warpgate traversal yet HOW do we get to another continent if we don't have a spawn there .. we really should be going through the warpgates to reach enemy territory.

This means that the home continent warpgate is faction locked.
Other warpgates are just weapon locked - so the zoning capability has to be faction neutral.



Downtime. If an empire abandons a continent what to do with the downtime of gobbling up undefended territories? It was a boring part of PS1.
Warpgate camping. If the opposite happens and two empires fight hard to control a gate, what does that fight look like?
Non-static gate assignments. How would you like to see warpgate positions handled? Do you want to fight for them, or do you want assigned gates that rotate on a schedule?
Empire compression. What happens if an empire gets reduced to 1 or 2 continents? Those players have to go somewhere. Folks on Connery have been seeing the limits reached, and that's with 3 continents!





A1. There should be fronts between Empires. Whether they are actively fought over or not. Someone went to the trouble of contesting them and may have chosen to either sacrifice them or use the buffer they provide to make gains elsewhere.

'downtime' is modern speak for lack of patience. They can hack the bases back as slowly as they were taken. If a squad wants to do that rather than throw themselves into a fight - fair play to them.
If we have to incentivise that by handing out rewards .. we havent got the rest of the game structure right yet. Capturing territory, increase in resource income, security of lattice lanes. Should be reward enough.

A2. Well PS1 warpgates were no-combat zones. If the warpgate as-is because attackable it will be a HE camp fest unparalleled elsewhere.
The 'foothold' will have no ability to regroup. Low to minimal resource income.

The warpgate should remain intact. The 3 satellite methodology seems logical. The terrain, placement of towers, Line of Sight .. probbably needs to be revisited. Trees or mountains blocking turrets is a bugbear of mine.

A3. In the long term I would like many more continents.

The rotation of 'home' continents has to happen. I remember the days of rarely seeing a continent because it was the TR or NC home .. if we can't all play on Indar there will be severe withdrawal.

In PS1 the opening and closing of caverns created windows of opportunity.

I would rather see a system where warpgate linkages are 'vulnerable' or 'modifiable' during (server) peak times so that players can plan their attack or defences rather than 24/7 off-peak ghost caps or alarm clock raids.

If this means either by certain warpgates being active/inactive or their link nodes 'swapping' if captured .. fine.

A4. Sanctuary. Sorry to say that the offline rearm and regroup point was a key element to faction and empire identity in PS1. I miss it. And the Hart.

We have VR make that a room/subset of Sanctuary.
Sanctuary could be an Orbital Platform in which case 'HART' and Orbital Strike make sense.

As for being kicked out .. compression of players should lead to an intense fight and struggle and PURPOSE to the fight.
Oh wait .. it'll also lead to logging out and 4th factioning due to lack of identity.

4 continents is the issue not player compression. So fudge the mechanic.
Inactive warpgates. Vanu Crystalline nodes. Orbital Insert timers (2min hotdrops).
Whatever the fudge is : use it to get players back into the fighting.

Finally .. introduce the concept of a neutral base. With a drain mechanic.
We can get back some spec ops, behind the lines stuff. Start fighting in enemy territory.

[Ohaunlaim]

Another bandaid...

Since we cant "gate" our vehicles: All players of the winning faction on a continent that has just been locked should receive 350 air/ground/grunt resources in order to continue their momentum on the next continent.

I would also like to see....
(assuming WGs are static-linked to other WGs)

A fairly obvious button/option, when accessing the continental warp terminal, that allows one to simply jump to the WG linked to the one the player is currently in. Even better if the players can run to the center of the WG on the platform there and this option pops up on their screen ("Would you like to warp to Searhus South East Warpgate? Y/N")

[Baneblade]

Being able to refund your vehicle at a warpgate terminal for resources and a timer reset would probably be easier than continent transitioning them. But it could only be done at the warpgate connecting to another continent.

[Hetman]

How about Sancutuary beeing a Space station With limited ability to drop you on continent controlled by enemy. Give To site that lost too many territory possibility to start guerrilla war. Limitation depends on how much you lost.

I dont think it would be difficult to do, just building with alot of windows and no ability to go out(if you do you die) cool view on plante and space, few embellishments like shooting range, mabey someday something usefull will be added.

[Dkamanus]

Why the hell are we even STILL discussing this? The devs won't give the basic Sanctuary because they don't want "downtime" for the player. Well guess what, 24h action makes the game dull as well.

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE DOWNTIME! GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULLS SOE!

There is no work-a-round on this matter. Not when we are talking in gutting core mechanics that would make the game more meaningful. People don't mind 1~2 minutes downtime, they mind 10 minutes downtimes (which there isn't unless we are talking an alert, where people want to get in that continent because there's great fighting.

Giving sanctuaries solves half the problems continent locking brings. Just do it. Stop fighting it.

[SgtMAD]

Why the hell are we even STILL discussing this? The devs won't give the basic Sanctuary because they don't want "downtime" for the player. Well guess what, 24h action makes the game dull as well.

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE DOWNTIME! GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULLS SOE!

There is no work-a-round on this matter. Not when we are talking in gutting core mechanics that would make the game more meaningful. People don't mind 1~2 minutes downtime, they mind 10 minutes downtimes (which there isn't unless we are talking an alert, where people want to get in that continent because there's great fighting.

Giving sanctuaries solves half the problems continent locking brings. Just do it. Stop fighting it.

AMEN

someone else finally gets it, this is pointless without a major overhaul of the whole damn game and that's not on the dev's timeline,
they couldn't dump the old PS model fast enough and now it bites them right square in the ass.

a bunch of ppl on these forums tried to tell SOE this shit all through beta but they had that finish date in mind and thats what mattered most to the bean counters

[GeoGnome]

Why the hell are we even STILL discussing this? The devs won't give the basic Sanctuary because they don't want "downtime" for the player. Well guess what, 24h action makes the game dull as well.

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE DOWNTIME! GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULLS SOE!

There is no work-a-round on this matter. Not when we are talking in gutting core mechanics that would make the game more meaningful. People don't mind 1~2 minutes downtime, they mind 10 minutes downtimes (which there isn't unless we are talking an alert, where people want to get in that continent because there's great fighting.

Giving sanctuaries solves half the problems continent locking brings. Just do it. Stop fighting it.

No, because Sactuaries don't solve a thing.

[NewSith]

@Dkamanus

No, because Sanctuaries don't solve a thing.

They do, but sadly there are already 100500 design faults which won't allow for them to work as intended.

Starting with absent vehicle zoning, ending with ability to pull MBTs from warpgates, no day one tutorials and VR, etc., something PS1 sanctuaries were the place for.

Developers' aim with this game is to create a shortcut on your desktop that works like "play now" button from commonly known FPS games, without making this button obvious. They won't even deny the fact that PS2's main selling point is "complexity is overrated", rather than "size always matters". So bearing that in mind we gotta try and use hard solutions for simple problems, just for the sake of "not making the game too hard to figure out". Hence all these unreliable intercontinental lattice concepts.