Confirmed: 9 Sanctuaries at launch.

[acosmo]

With Amerish, Ceryshen and Indar planned to have three empire footholds each, there will be a total of nine sanctuaries.

The answer here though is that less is more. Right now there is no sense of a home continent. There is no way to even win 1/3rd of the game. Sure your empire may be able to take X number of hexes, but in the end what does it amount to? Leaderboard scores and resource farming? New weapon and vehicle unlocks? That's not why we want to play this game. We want to play this game because of the massive scale of it. We want to play this game because of its persistence.

9 sanctuaries will prevent us from having the game we want. With each empire having a foot hold on each continent, the soil near the warpsanc shields edges will hardly ever be contested by another empire. The battle will shift on a much smaller scale. There will be no home continents. What kind of home is a home you share with an enemy? Even if you wipe them off of every hex, two enemies will always have a techplant behind a star wars force field on your continent. In this kind of world, why bother fighting if not for unlocks and resources? There is no strategic progression.

This problem has a simple fix. Only one empire foothold per continent with the other empires only having transit gates.

This way, more of the map is fought over and there is greater room for strategic progression. In a one empire foothold per continent setup an empire's effectiveness can be judged by whether or not their home continent is secure and not just by the number of hexes they have. What hollow satisfaction is gained from a larger number of controlled hexes or a larger number of acquired resources is dwarfed by the pride gained by keeping one's home continent secure.

This setup also elegantly solves the twofold problem of continent locking. No empire will ever be locked out of the fight, but at the same time, every empire has an opportunity to have an inch of security to hold on to. The battle is given weight and value with all of the good aspects and none of the bad. If your empire is doing well and has bases on each continent, your empire is rewarded by ease of deployment. If you empire is doing poorly then your are punished by only being able to deploy to your home cont. These punishments, however, do not affect the 30 minute player negatively. They actually put the casual player in the most intense (last stand/alamo-esque) battles while forcing more experienced players to help their empire out fight alongside their colors where it matters most.

tl;dr 9 sancs vs 3 sancs.

[EVILPIG]

There you go. Now let's see it in Beta.

[Knocky]

Assuming 3 Conts at launch, then leave in 3 footholds.

That way WE can choose which one will be our "Home" cont by taking it over and defending it.

[Jimmuc]

the footholds in my opinion would only work with the 3 conts for an while so they can get in the balancing and shit like that. when they start adding in the rest of the conts, they outta get rid of the footholds and return to home conts so we could take whole conts and move to the next. endless battles sound nice..but boring in the long run with no sense of achievement.

[acosmo]

Originally Posted by Knocky

Assuming 3 Conts at launch, then leave in 3 footholds.

That way WE can choose which one will be our "Home" cont by taking it over and defending it.

Originally Posted by acosmo

What kind of home is a home you share with an enemy? Even if you wipe them off of every hex, two enemies will always have a techplant behind a star wars force field on your continent.

really?

[Lonehunter]

Originally Posted by acosmo

Only one empire foothold per continent with the other empires only having transit gates.

So much logic and problem solving in those 14 words, beautiful

[Sirisian]

You mean Esamir right?

[acosmo]

Originally Posted by Lonehunter

So much logic and problem solving in those 14 words, beautiful

Thanks. I knew I couldn't be the only one who thinks it would be so much more fun than the proposed design.

From what I know of PS2 and what the dev's are doing, it seems as if their approach to beta is one of slowing down. What I mean is that they're going to release beta and it's going to be faster than it should be, even by their opinion. The faster speed and gameplay will bring out balance issues and gameplay flaws much faster than a slower game. Slowly, as the game becomes more polished, the devs will transition from a mindlessly contested and unmanageably volatile battle to something a little less twitch paced.

So this design, hopefully, is only for testing purposes.

[TheDrone]

Originally Posted by acosmo

This problem has a simple fix. Only one empire foothold per continent with the other empires only having transit gates.

A transit gate to where? To something that IS EXACTLY the same as a foothold, except for the fact that it requires a loading screen to get to it?

Or am I misunderstanding?

[Knocky]

Originally Posted by acosmo

really?

What is the difference between a warpgate with equipment terminals and a warpgate without them?

Obviously a spawn point.

That is it.

And you want to start an argument over such a tiny thing?

[Vancha]

Originally Posted by acosmo

Thanks. I knew I couldn't be the only one who thinks it would be so much more fun than the proposed design.

From what I know of PS2 and what the dev's are doing, it seems as if their approach to beta is one of slowing down. What I mean is that they're going to release beta and it's going to be faster than it should be, even by their opinion. The faster speed and gameplay will bring out balance issues and gameplay flaws much faster than a slower game. Slowly, as the game becomes more polished, the devs will transition from a mindlessly contested and unmanageably volatile battle to something a little less twitch paced.

So this design, hopefully, is only for testing purposes.

Pretty sure he was being sarcastic.

There are alternatives to their current system, but giving each empire one foothold on one continent when there's three continents in total is a horrible idea.

[acosmo]

Originally Posted by TheDrone

A transit gate to where? To something that IS EXACTLY the same as a foothold, except for the fact that it requires a loading screen to get to it?

Or am I misunderstanding?

Something you can't spawn an army from. Something you can push through and secure by taking the hexes surrounding it from the other side.

What is important is to be able to put the ball in the other team's field for long enough that the goalie can rest his knees for a minute or two.

[Mightymouser]

Under your implementation; what happens to an empire that doesn't have a foothold on any continent? Where do they rally? How do they pull vehicles? They're already at a big disadvantage in that they own little to no resources, how can they ever recover without a safe zone?

I'd prefer there to be a dedicated sanctuary for each empire, but short of that; there needs to be a safe zone for each empire so they can be assured a chance to recover, should the worst happen...

Edit: Ah, I misunderstood, I thought you meant there would be a capturable 'safe zone' on each cont, (akin to PS1's capitols). I see you actually mean, each empire would have their own dedicated "Sanctuary" but only on one cont. With only three count's though, I'd think it's likely that we are going to see constant fighting on all three conts, which somewhat defeats the purpose of this. After all if you can warp from one sanc to any other cont; what's the point of not having a second sanc there... If you cannot warp directly from the sanc, that not rather defeats the dev's goal of "quick action" as it also creates a problem where people cannot rally and get to their target without first flying across a massive cont...

[Arius]

I'm all for this. It sounds awesome! The sanc would function as an empire capital. I do see some problem with warpgates however. For instance Empire 1 players are going to be pretty pissed off if all the warpgates to other continents are taken by Empire 2 and 3, forcing them to fight on one continent.

I say wait and see how the current method works out. If it demotivates players from trying to take everything other then Empire sancs, change it and change is fast. As you saw with PS1, players didnt come back when BFR's were nerfed.

[acosmo]

Originally Posted by Vancha

Pretty sure he was being sarcastic.

There are alternatives to their current system, but giving each empire one foothold on one continent when there's three continents in total is a horrible idea.

Actually, I think it is the best idea. One warpsanc per cont in a game with three empires, however, doesn't scale intuitively on a battlefield with more than 3 continents. You then run into the PS1 problem of too much unused space and off limits playfields.