Gameplay: Periodic Randomization of the Uncaps

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by EASyEightyEight

Cool plan, one hitch: territory control.

It'd kind of suck if the TR hold the south east quadrant of a continent, and then the next morning their home base on the continent gets sent to the far end of that continent.

Its not really a problem for two reasons.

1) If they have any significant amount of territory they will have a facility, meaning they don't require the uncap to base out of. If they don't have a facility then it is unlikely they have much to lose, which would take us to the second reason...

2) It helps as much as it hurts. The most it would do is expose a few more hexes to invasion while simultaneously giving each empire that same amount of hexes exposure to new territory on the continent. In either case it brings new opportunity to the continent to mix it up.

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by Malorn

This idea is simple - mix it up periodically, such as once every couple weeks or once a month! Just go through each continent and randomly swap two of the empire uncaps, or rotate all 3 empires (should do both since rotating can also ret repetitive. This gives us different perspectives on invading the continent and exposes us to new tactics and gamplay which we would not have seen had we not been attacking from that new different direction.

In one of the video interviews linked elsewhere from this site, Higby mentions that resources might migrate, spawn/despawn, specifically to Keep Things Fresh.

[Malorn]

Resource randomization is good, but incomplete. Without the uncap randomization also you'll have the same enemy in the same hex fighting in the same direction. The only difference is the value of the hex will change. To keep the fights interesting the location and direction from which each empire pushes out from must change on the continent or we still arrive at stale situations. But if its mixed up periodically then we get to see new sides of old continents and see what it's like to be defending that nasty ridge instead of attacking it, etc.

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Resource randomization is good, but incomplete. Without the uncap randomization also you'll have the same enemy in the same hex fighting in the same direction. The only difference is the value of the hex will change.

Not necessarily. If the TOWER moves (remember "landing struts"), it could really change the experience. A tower that was in the middle of a field 100 yards from a cliff is now at the bottom of that cliff in a canyon. Very Different Experience (jet packs!)... defending something from waves of air drops from on high would pretty much suck pustulent goat cock (accept no substitutes), but it would certainly be different.

Bases might not be mobile, but going by the way Smed pointed out the LANDING STRUTS on a tower, I'm going to imagine that they won't have a problem with moving them. Dunno about bunkers and bases, but towers look to be Fair Game for repositioning.

And if a tower was always attacked from the west through a thick strip of forest, and are now just the other side of that strip, folks that continue to approach from the west might be crossing a Wide Open Field (and open to all kinds of mayhem on the way in), where as sneakier folks will have to come along that forest strip for a good hundred+ yards in either direction. A Different Battle.


I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that resource "motion" isn't in the initial release, and is done By Hand when it does happen, specifically to tailor things like this.

[Malorn]

A tower moving doesn't change the direction an empire is fighting, nor the likely direction his opponents will be coming from. It changes the terrain a bit, but that's rather small.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, consider the early days of PS with "home continents" - to give an example, Solsar. NC always had a link to the south of Solsar, and the way the lattice worked out the TR almost always had a link to Seth in the north, with the VS at Bastet. So invasions of Solsar almost always went like this - TR in the North, NC in the South, sometimes VS would backhack TR.

With uncaps on every continent, it is the same as having those static links. Solsar on PS 2 might have NC in the south, TR in the northwest, and VS in the northeast. The battles will pretty much play out the same way, with TR and VS fighting over Seth and the surrounding terrain. NC and TR fighting over Mont and the surrounding terrain.

The purpose of the thread is to mix up those locations from time to time (not every day, not even every week) to keep things fresh so we don't have to roll TR to see what its like to fight on Solsar from the northwest or to assault Mont from the North.

Moving towers and random resources help mix things up, but it doesn't change the underlying problem of the static invasion points.

[Malorn]

Re-bumping this since the video revealed the continent of Indar. Each empire looks to have different geographical areas closest to them. This is good for diversity, but having the same empire fighting in the same geographical area against the same enemies is going to get dull.

Randomization of the uncaps doesn't have to happen very often, but something like once a month or once every three months it needs to be mixed up or it'll just get dull. I'll get tired of fighting the VS over that same facility every night, or over that same canyon where they're always up on those same rocks. I'd like to fight on the other side for once or fight a different opponent in that area. Likewise I'd like to also experience what it's like to see the other areas I might not see very often because it's primarily deep in one of the other faction territories, or something the other two empires typically fight over.

[Phantomdestiny]

when the seamless world and water between continents is added into the game then the rotation would not be useful anymore because we can just do amphibious assaults to a continent or using aircraft carriers