[Discussion] The Zerg

TothAval · 2013-06-11, 10:08 AM

To give the devs some proper feedback about one of the most discussed "issues" in this game,
i start this thread to discuss pros and cons of the zerg and ways to improve its occurence and
to develop ideas and suggestions to counter it.

Please feel free to discuss any aspect of the zerg and feed in your ideas about it.

My opinion regarding the zerg:
For me, the zerg is an elemental part of the game, since it's a mmofps about a massive scale war.
I like big armored columns and fighting in or against them is really funny and entertaining, all the explosions
and weapon sounds and the feeling of combined arms warfare is what makes this game so epic.

But alongside with these positive aspects comes the downside of ww1-like stalemate and the
feeling of no progress at all and therefor after some time boredom and redeploy to a place more quiet.
Also a zergclash is killer for lowlevel players, cause you lack all the useful little certifications.

Modern warfare should be fast paced, shock and awe like ambushes and not a neverending stalemate at
the same place. The reason why this is the case is because of infinte supplies on both sides, if the
supplies were finite, zergclashs probably won't last that long.

You can jump to the end of the text if you won't read the following wall of text, i marked the begin
and the end with [this color].

[Begin of Wall]
In my opinion the only way to adress the duration of a giant battle is adding some sort of
attrition to gameplay.
This could easily done by adding one new ressource to the game - energy.
You need energy to run your vehicles and to power the nanites, once you drain enemy supply of
energy, he will loose the ability to fight on in a certain area.

Energy should be needed for spawning, support tools, fueling vehicles and autorepair systems
and should be brought to the frontlines by latticelinks or special certed galaxys and sunderers.
Galaxys for air supply while in the air or for ground while landed, sunderers in a deployradius
for landed aircraft or ground units. Latticelinks behind the frontlines should be open for sabotage
to reduce energy delivery by 50%.

Every Vehicle and Class will get an additional energy bar.
Infantry:
Every action beside shooting, throwing, running, crouching, spotting, deploying mines
or using medkits should drain the energy bar. So your shield reloading or selfhealing or ammopacks
or ... will cost energy and you need to refresh your bar at a supply vehicle to keep things running.

Vehicles:
Driving and shooting will cost some energy so your bar slowly drains. Autorepair, Smoke, Radar, AMS
and any sort of additional usability besides driving and shooting should drain energy a bit faster
then only shooting and driving. So for example a vehicle with no extras can drive for 10 mins
without resupply of energy, a vehicle constantly in need to use autorepair need resupply after 7 mins.
Numbers as always to be chosen by the devs, simple examples here.

Air:
Same as ground, afterburners, flare and that stuff drain your energy faster then only flying and shooting.

Spawning:
Spawnrooms and Sunderers need energy to deploy troops and constant resupply to keep the deploying
running. Under a certain energy level, spawnroomshields could weaken. Latticelinks could provide a slow
energy resupply to a certain cap, giving an outpost for example 200 spawns per hour when only depending
on lattice connection. Resupplying the outpost with energy sunderers or galaxys could double that amount.

Sunderer spawns will also be limited to the amount of energy available. Maybe sunderers could also benefit
from their lattice connection. Due to the fact that sunderers are mobile and not bound to a location like a
spawnroom, they should have fewer energybased spawncapability, so for example 36 spawns per hour,
48-60 when a lattice link to their factions warpgate or an ampstation exists.

Where to get energy:
Warpgate and ampstations. Every ampstation an empire owns will add 33% additional energy production per hour
to lattice connections. Outposts, Biolabs, Techplants will improve total energy storage amount in the warpgate,
so owning territory with connection to warpgate will increase the ability to storage energy which can be used to
resupply forces. Warpgates should constantly loose energy for the giant shield. When locked to the warpgate for more then for example 2hours, energy drains slowly, this could be combined with continent locks, if warpgate energy level drops under a certain amount, the continent is locked for the faction for a while.

This hole mechanic should also be balanced in a way that empires with large territories suffer energy issues
because of overexpansion.

[End of Wall]

This is what i believe could all sides give the ability to strategicaly and tacticaly control massive fights and
enemy forces to counter zergs better and shorten the stalemates. This would also provide small outfits
with a variety of options to impact the battlefields more then now.

Share your opinions, thoughts, issues and solutions regarding the zerg to give the devs some input and
feedback and to give us as a communtiy a possibility to work out a common understanding of what should
be done to positively effect the majority of the playerbase.

greetz

Taramafor · 2013-06-11, 10:21 AM

Zergers will continue to zerg. Energy will be used because of that. People wanting to use squad tactics will be less likely to use them due to energy used on zerging.

Resupplying at a vehicle wouldn't change anything either. They'd just bring those to the front line just like the sun's.

TothAval · 2013-06-11, 10:46 AM

Yes, of course they will. Zerg is part of the game and fun, problem is they last too long
due to infinite ressources and supplies. Cutting supplies off will definetly reduce the time
a zerg can be sustained.

Well, i may have not pointed out clear enough that an energy supply vehicle needs to
refilled at the warpgate or ampstation once its empty.

Wahooo · 2013-06-11, 11:04 AM

Few things here.

1) A type of energy resource. In PS1 this was the NTUs. I think with the lattice in place and a bit refined the NTUs could make a comeback. There are a lot of good ideas on this floating around PSU like having pipelines from the territories to the WG and back or some kind of resource flow.

2) Maybe it is "kids these days" but other than some biolab fights (that frankly didn't get groups who were all that interested in actually taking the base) I have yet to see what I would call a stalemate. I've seen some prolonged fights. But really they didn't last that long, not like some of the OLD time fights in PS1 where you would log off after several hours at a single base and come back hours later to that same base.

3) TEH ZERG! It is what it is. It exists because a grand majority of players want to just stay with the herd and shoot stuff. I would actually argue that zerg clashes are BEST for low level /F2P because they can do SOMETHING. Unless it is ghost capping, squad based smaller fights the individuals do better with more utility and certs go a long ways toward that. The zerg is the reason the lattice is needed and is a good thing. It gives the zerg simple direction on where to go next, and it gives the opposing zerg a clear idea of where to defend. All this without them needing to be given orders, that they would ignore.

As far as the pace of the battle? I think it is fairly fast and dynamic since everything dies so fast. The only thing I could see that would help is having MBT drivers and gunners separate so that tank battles were more mobile.

KesTro · 2013-06-11, 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by Wahooo

2) Maybe it is "kids these days" but other than some biolab fights (that frankly didn't get groups who were all that interested in actually taking the base) I have yet to see what I would call a stalemate. I've seen some prolonged fights. But really they didn't last that long, not like some of the OLD time fights in PS1 where you would log off after several hours at a single base and come back hours later to that same base.

Didn't PS1 also only have like 12 bases on each continent/planet? A lot of the things that worked in PS1 won't work in PS2 because there's 70 tedious little zergposts to go through.

Wahooo · 2013-06-11, 11:40 AM

Originally Posted by KesTro

Didn't PS1 also only have like 12 bases on each continent/planet? A lot of the things that worked in PS1 won't work in PS2 because there's 70 tedious little zergposts to go through.

I would agree, save for a couple points. Every zergpost doesn't take a huge prolonged fight even in giant zerg clashes. Major bases and a select few outposts.
This is actually something BETTER about PS2 than PS1. The fights range, the back and forth is not one base but across a major base, 2 or 3 small outposts and a large outpost. Like MaoTech to the SE outpost, to abandoned NS offices to Howling pass. I've heard that described as a stalemate. In that "stalemate" 3 checkpoints changed hands like 5 times. From my perspective it was a great fight back and forth with all combined arms one side dominating air then the other and both sides having armor clashes.

Why is it tedious?

KesTro · 2013-06-11, 11:11 AM

I like the idea of limited spawns on sunderers, not so sure about the rest. I've always been of the mind that the more people spawning on something that isn't a spawnroom, the longer it should take between each spawn.

ringring · 2013-06-11, 11:07 AM

That doesn't sound particularly simple to me.

Funnily enough I've been playing most of the day on Miller and it's been a bit uninspiring and I've been wondering why.

Of course the populations have dropped and that's obvious, but things weren't like this in ps1 when the pops dropped.

I think the difference is that in PS2 you had the cr5's who called targets and directed strategy to some extent. It's all rather anonymous in ps2. There are never any globals or cont alls, well globals don't exist so it's all a bit, meh.

If you want the zerg to meet zerg in massive battles I think the cr5's should make a return.

Eggy · 2013-06-11, 12:48 PM

Originally Posted by ringring

That doesn't sound particularly simple to me.

Funnily enough I've been playing most of the day on Miller and it's been a bit uninspiring and I've been wondering why.

Of course the populations have dropped and that's obvious, but things weren't like this in ps1 when the pops dropped.

I think the difference is that in PS2 you had the cr5's who called targets and directed strategy to some extent. It's all rather anonymous in ps2. There are never any globals or cont alls, well globals don't exist so it's all a bit, meh.

If you want the zerg to meet zerg in massive battles I think the cr5's should make a return.

We have leader chat typed and vocal, region chat, orders chat, offensive markers, defensive markers and 5? different colours of smoke.
All the tools are there, the problem is on Miller they get used to troll/abuse, very few people choose to use them sensibly/seriously,AND most of the time when people try they get ignored, quite often told to shutup and ocasionaly to f-off.

ringring · 2013-06-11, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Eggy

We have leader chat typed and vocal, region chat, orders chat, offensive markers, defensive markers and 5? different colours of smoke.
All the tools are there, the problem is on Miller they get used to troll/abuse, very few people choose to use them sensibly/seriously,AND most of the time when people try they get ignored, quite often told to shutup and ocasionaly to f-off.

True. And as you say they don't work and don't get used. Where as cr5 chat and abilities did work.

bpostal · 2013-06-11, 02:29 PM

Originally Posted by ringring

True. And as you say they don't work and don't get used. Where as cr5 chat and abilities did work.

The main issue,I think, with the current orders/leader chat is there's no real vetting process. There also is no real way, other than a lengthy and drawn out process, to identify the assets that other SL and PLs have access to. I've seen /leader chat used to some good effect (during an Amp station alert a few days ago is a particularly good example where it was called out that a certain Amp station on Amerish was going down and by the time we showed up it seemed like almost all the other TR had as well. After which we had good communication so as to split our forces effectively) but for the most part, by the time such things are identified the 'need' has changed. My hope is that when the mission system is implemented, a lot of those concerns will be addressed even if only slightly.
That's all personal speculation however.

As to the topic itself, I'm not sure one single energy type would be what is needed. Turning the resources into three distinct types of energy (and added in a sort of NTU for overall base purposes) might be more beneficial. The exact details of which aren't apparent to me without some more thought.

Sledgecrushr · 2013-06-11, 11:17 AM

I really like the big fights that last longer than an hour. The attack and counter gameplay is engaging. And then when you finally break the enemy or bravely make a last stand its all good fun.

Shogun · 2013-06-11, 12:11 PM

soe aimed for the casual players with gamedesign, and casuals will almost always join the zerg.

so no matter what you change, the zerg will stay.
and fighting in the zerg can be a lot of fun. the whole marketing strategy is about the zerg (size.matters.always.) so why would you want to get rid of the zerg?

the problem is, that the size of your zerg is the only thing that matters. you have more players, you win.
but there are enough other threads about how to fix it (base redesign,reintroducing more ps1 mechanics,etc.)

Crator · 2013-06-11, 12:19 PM

Originally Posted by Shogun

soe aimed for the casual players with gamedesign, and casuals will almost always join the zerg.

I think they intended to aim for casual players but fell short of that mark. They seemed to have listened to the big outfit's input during testing the most and ignored the rest of the players. But yes, the zerg is a must in this game. Trying to force players to not form a zerg is silly and doesn't produce the dynamic game-play scenarios that we all love, and have loved since PS1.

Qwan · 2013-06-11, 01:14 PM

To add on to what Wahoo has already said the nanit system was the power source in PS1. If there was a large clash between bases, players would spawn at the base get a vehicle and drain the nanit silo everytime they spawned there and spawned a vehicle, if the silo went dry, the base would go nuetral and thats not good, nanit trucks were dropped in or driven in to resupply it, unless it was intersepted and destroyed

.

Another part of attrition that was used was the Gal drop, these operations were done by outfits behind enemy lines. A way to break battle stalmates was to take away vehicles, per say by taking out the gen at the enemy tech plant that connected to the base, they could no longer spawn tanks, so losing there MBT ability hurt, as well as air. These types of missions were called gen bust, we would blow the gen at the tech, and hold out as long as we could keeping the enemy from reparing the gen. They would send one or two squads but an outfit with skilled players can keep a gen down for a good amount of time to turn a the tide in a battle.

A lot of these so called back hack missions or black ops missions, that made being in an outfit fun and meaningful are no longer in the game, currently being in an outfit you dont have a lot of purpose, I mean you can move ahead of the zerg, and blow shields and take out turrets, but that can get lame quick. I guess to me content like this is what made me love PS so much, I actually joined M.A.P. because they were very active in base drains, gen bust, gal drops, hack and holds. Currently in PS2 we have yet to do any of these activities. I can remember logging in PS1 during large battles on certain continents reading the command chat naming off outfits with certain missions, blow this, or hack this, M.A.P. was among those names mentioned. Now when we log in, we just roll with the zerg, or log in for some type of event, like lightning night, or a harrasor race. Granted the lattice system has gotten control of yo yo effect, and thats good. But currently joining an outfit has become pointless, most newer outfits think there doing a lot, but if they look around there just a organized part of the zerg. Take a second and ask some of the older outfit leaders what real missions were like. The game is so focused on certs, and xp and K/D, you dont need an outfit for that, just flow with the zerg make that xp, and certs and try to keep your kills high and your deaths to a minimum. I mean it would be nice to tell new recruits "hey meet at sanc, were gonna do a gal drop on such and such a base for a gen bust. When players complain about content, and meta and all that crap, I think what they want is to know that there actions for how ever long they were logged into PS2 made a difference for there factions. The ability to say hey we did this, took this, and that helped my faction turn auraxis ( ) <---- fill in color.