my work on The Matrix for Planetside

[mr_luc]

For those of you without access to the Beta forums (well . . . I can't access them either just now, hopefully that's temporary), players have been suggesting an interesting method to both balance out the insanely crowded battles we are seeing in just a few places, as well as the very dead and barren majority of the continents, with a firefight here or there but mostly just random sprees of base-taking.

The solution a lot of Beta testers are espousing, including Afex and several others, is what they're calling a 'matrix' -- link the bases together figuratively speaking, and any bases not linked to any enemy base or a warp gate can't be taken. This way, 'front' lines emerge, certain bases will stay 'safe' for a while and can be used to gear up without needing to go back to the Sanctuary all the time, etc. This is how we all WANT it to work now, but right now bases are taken and retaken so fast that it really doesn't matter much where a base is, only if an enemy force focuses on it. The matrix method seeks to address this.

Anyways, I realized that not a lot had been done other than what you might call 'concept art' for this idea -- pictures of overhead maps, with linkages connecting the bases, as well as a nice player-created page that is collecting all of the matrix proposals into one place. However, while people have gone into great detail as to why such a matrix (I'm going to start saying 'network' instead of matrix from now on -- 'matrix' just doesn't fit this idea) is necessary to keep the base-taking aspect of the game from being trivial and too concentrated without spreading the love around, no one has been talking about how such a network would be created. Bases are nodes in this network. How do you create the network that this 'matrix' approach is based off of?

That's what I've been working on. I posted a lot more detail in the main forum, but here are the pictures using a 'nearest-neighbor approach. This approach is extensible to an arbitrarily large number of warpgates and bases, in most cases without bogging down. In fact it works very well with larger numbers of bases, because you can actually SEE the front lines.

Here are the pictures. I'll let them do the talking and I'll shut up now. Like it? Don't like it?

[Silo5]

Its a good concept but we would have to see how it played out

[Hamma]

I'd like to wait and see how the phantom hacker fix works out before we start implementing such huge changes

[�io]

So kind of a BF1942 thing, well at least from what i remember in demo there was a map that worked like that, you had a 1st line of defense, a 2nd then your main base or something like that.

Anyway i think it's a good idea, would add a lot more strategery to the game.

[Tricky]

Very good idea, only problem I see with it is the battles will be consistenly at the front line and then some continents will see no action.

[Harps]

battlefield 1942 isnt really like that .. it could be but really they just go anywhere specially if its the map your talking about. I thinkk the matrix system would make the game better( at least what i hear from everyone) I really dont want to cap a base then a hour later have it fall.

[Duffman]

http://users2.ev1.net/~jasonsharp/index.html

good site that promotes matrices in Ps and Hard Lock down. I support both of these ideas adn i believe that they should be added to the gameplay

[Hellsfire123]

It would make locking continents alot easier to defend. Is that good or bad?

Ants would be interesting. It would either be almost abolished do to bases not being used, or it would be so simple to do because there is not danger of running into a random enemy.

How would towers work in such a system?

What happens if a generator is destroyed? Power runs out? But not at a base thats "hackable" by your empire?

Would this fix the spawning issue? You know, die in the field and the closest base isnt a possible spawn point, but that one 70 odd miles away is. How about all facilities are available as respawn points, but only towers and AMS close by your corpse?


The are my problems, but if everything still works out id love that change.

[�io]

Just in from beta chat

Originally posted by Hellsfire123
The matrix idea is interesting, that's all i'll say for now.

More or less word for word, stupid launchpad crashed.

[Limi]

I'd wait for the targetted amount of players at least. Nice idea, but takes out some fun strategies. If it's not repetitive now, that sure could make it so.

[Ginzue]

Um...
I think that would take away from alot of battle but the idea of definate 'front' is intresting.

What I think would be cool is if Commanders could have 'trenches'. Wouldent that be intresting for some bigger battles? Just an idea.

[MilitantB0B]

Originally posted by Ginzue
Um...
I think that would take away from alot of battle but the idea of definate 'front' is intresting.

What I think would be cool is if Commanders could have 'trenches'. Wouldent that be intresting for some bigger battles? Just an idea.

Cool idea, I could see trenches making the game to much of a stalemate *cough*World War I*Cough* But other than that trench warfare would be pretty cool.

[Hellsfire123]

Read through the website, and ive been in beta for 2 weeks. This is a great idea. This would fix the phantom hacker, the cont lock problem, promote defense, and increase scale of the action. The only problems are the proposed "cap" on players per continent, and the "victory" aspect. The devs dont want a victory just yet, and if each empire owns one continent, that takes out a third of all playing space (about 1200 people if the server cap is 5000)

[Venoxile]

I haven't played ps yet, but personally I believe a matrix system and zoolooman's idea of continent lock would make planetside 10 x better and more meaningful, not just random battles all over the continents.

[SealDude]

I also think that this is a great idea. What I would like tho is a commado raid so small groups could drop behind enemy lines but make their hack timer like 20 min or sometin.