What I imagined with regards to tunnels and spawnrooms and generators...

[Figment]

Something like this perhaps?



Notes:

• SCUs in my mind are strategic objectives next to the spawnroom which control the local spawn shields. They should be possible to disable with sufficient explosives (IMO only infils should be able to hack them as this would be the stealthier way of taking them out).
  
  The SCU of the Forward Barracks is purposefully easier to take out than the main spawn room's SCU.
• Killing a SCU would drop the shields, but not the painfield.
• Generators too should require explosives to kill (again, only infils should be able to hack them).
• To take the vpad shield out, you either need a vehicle with shield breaking capacity, or go through another path (like the top floor or back area).
• The shields are primarily there to keep AMSes out of the courtyard in the first stage of the attack, until a shield gen is busted.
• I still would like to see a Sphere of Influence over a base, so the Galaxy would get a much greater role once more in strikes.
• Pondering adding a Main Generator somewhere in the tunnel system, which would control spawns, turrets, vehicle and equipment terminals, but would take a 5 man squad worth of firepower to take out.
• Corridors would be five men wide and littered with objects and possibly manholes (opposed to two men wide in PS1 and just manholes on the side).
• There are many ways to get in, many ways to get out. Camping all exits of the entire complex would take a huge amount of troops. Holding all exits would also require quite a few players, but most of the interiors can be held with less troops at choke points.
• Due to the depth of the tunnel systems, medics become more important, so would ammo packs and engineer's turrets (ideally, they would still get some sort of numerical limitation!).

Disclaimer:
Done in a couple hours and only shows general connectivity, not extremely specific corridors or stairs as putting that kind of complex 3D into basic 2D is pretty hard to do. Hence it also misses blast walls, etc. It's basic, but should give you a pretty decent idea.

[GeoGnome]

The vehicle shield gens should still go in the courtyard (Those are actually rather well placed IMO).

In regards to the SCUs and everything else though, I tend to agree. This is a good idea.

One thing I kind of hope comes out of the whole bubble shield stuff, is some kind of tiered bases, where you get the top story is what you see on the surface with layers of things below it that are used for practical purposes.

[ringring]

It looks good and I'd prefer it I think.

But can it be done?

One of my gripes with the current Amp Station is that the walls are just too big and as a result defending the base is never done (edit) from the walls, certainly not in strength, so it's difficult to tell but I hope this base is smaller horizontally if not vertically.

[Whiteagle]

I keep throwing my money at the Screen, but nothing is happening!

...Seriously, why don't they hire you man?

Now, where do we put the Shield of Interference generator?

Originally Posted by ringring

One of my gripes with the current Amp Station is that the walls are just too big and as a result defending the base is never done (edit) from the walls, certainly not in strength, so it's difficult to tell but I hope this base is smaller horizontally if not vertically.

Well the Bridges would help with that... one of the most annoying things about the walls right now is how you need to go to a tower to get up to them.

Originally Posted by Crator

^ It also drains the base's NTUs.

Working on that, need to do my write up on making Resources an Individual BASE asset instead of a Player one.

Originally Posted by Shogun

for the unsuspecting: ntu was the energylevel of the base. every base had a battery which had to be manually loaded by someone with a special vehicle, who had to fill the vehicles battery at a warpgate and return it to the base silo, to transfer the energy (ntu). draining all ntu from a base would also shut down the whole base including spawns and terminals, and switch the base to neutral immediately, rendering it vulnerable to a hack (capture) no matter if it had a lattice link.
this was another way of breaking a stalemate. the defenders would have to do a massive organised move to refill the silo during a battle, facing camping enemies in vehicles and minefields around the silo.

this was taken out in ps2 because the devs thought having to fill up empty bases where no battle is going on would be too boring. but considering that people seem to enjoy doing boring backyard destroying of gens and turrets all the time, thislegit way to earn xp would be welcome.

Yeah, my thinking right now is that Resources are three different flavors of NTU, they are normally distributed by a Pipeline (IE the Lattice) to each Bases' Silos, and ANTs now have the ability to drain NTU as well as collect "residual" Resources at various shutoff valves during the Resource ticks.

Bases then use all three Resource NTUs to slowly repair themselves over time.

Originally Posted by bpostal

This layout also effectively eliminates spawn camping by the use of nearby SCUs. In the event the spawns are camped the SCUs can be blown and end the majority of the fight while still allowing for a short term defense of the relatively remote CC.

Indeed, this is how I would have done SCUs; a Gen right next to the Spawns to shut them down.

Originally Posted by bpostal

As far as downsides go, I'm not seeing much that looks like it would be conducive to CY fights, which is a shame. Of course, that could just be a lack of cover that I see on the design. It appears that the assaulting force would be going right into the tunnels once they've taken the walls. Again, that may be due to the design's scale.

Well with entryways that are much better sealed against Vehicles and Generators located in choke points, we'd see more Infantry Combat leading up to a shield drop, possibly even making outright Foot Zerging the Control Console a viable alternate stratagem.

Originally Posted by Figment

@Bpostal: I have been pondering on creating ES shields to block some entrances on ground level which infils could hack open from the inside or perhaps by hacking the CC. That would force the enemy to not immediately enter the tunnels.

Originally Posted by Shogun

i would go with hackable shields that almost work like the doors in ps1.

Damn it guys, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
Alright, instead of making Infiltrators go inside, each of these ES shield doors would have a Star Wars style control panel next to it.
You could either outright destroy it (I'm thinking three pistol clips?) or have a friendly Infiltrator hack it to flip control.

Now you can go IN, but the Defenders can't get OUT.

[bpostal]

Hackable. Mother. F'ing. Shields.
Fuck yes! Now it's like (but still dissimilar) to sitting in an Amp station you're trying to take when one of the shields come back up. You're stuck inside! Now imagine this with no AMS. Muhahahahahahahahahaha!

[Crator]

That looks great Figment! Especially like the different levels and control console in relation to tubes.

Question, would we still have multiple capture points, along with the CC?

My thoughts on this if so: The other capture points might exist outside the indoor area and allow the enemy to capture them and progress the capture timer on the base to a certain point. Let's say 2 minutes on capture clock, maybe 1 minute. The enemy must have control over the CC capture point to progress the capture past the 2 or 1 minutes to complete the cap.

[Calista]

I heard some rumblings about proper base generators being on a list somewhere Anyone seen that officially?

[GeoGnome]

Originally Posted by Calista

I heard some rumblings about proper base generators being on a list somewhere Anyone seen that officially?

Might maybe you expound on what you mean by "proper base generators"?

(Not being sarcastic, I didn't play PS1, and I know many other people did not, so it would be good to qualify your statement for those of us who are not in the know)

[Calista]

Originally Posted by GeoGnome

Might maybe you expound on what you mean by "proper base generators"?

(Not being sarcastic, I didn't play PS1, and I know many other people did not, so it would be good to qualify your statement for those of us who are not in the know)

Oh OK. One centralized in lower internal levels of base (well forget about PS1 bio location for a minute) that controls all base functionality.

[GeoGnome]

Originally Posted by Calista

Oh OK. One centralized in lower internal levels of base (well forget about PS1 bio location for a minute) that controls all base functionality.

So pretty much what the SCU does, except it includes terminals and turrets?

[Figment]

Originally Posted by GeoGnome

So pretty much what the SCU does, except it includes terminals and turrets?

The PS1 Generator powers all pieces of equipment in the base, that even includes the spawn's painfields. It also was required to pass on benefits to other bases.

Hacking the PS1 CC locked access to equipment, certification, implant, medical and vehicle terminals, as well as lockers and disabled any painfield upgrades (unless you hacked those open, of course, you need power for that).

Either hacking or blowing a gen allowed you to pick up (and steal) installed core combat modules from their sockets.

So either you killed gen or the three spawntubes to stop people spawning in (which in the case of a hard to camp spawn is a big thing to accomplish to capture the base).

Since you can't repair an enemy gen, killing an enemy gen would render you yourself virtually indefensible as well so most players saw it as either a last resort or temporary distraction. Gens were also killed to deny other bases access to benefits like enhanced radar, cave modules, etc. These would typically be hold by small special ops teams who'd face small resecure teams.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Crator

Question, would we still have multiple capture points, along with the CC?

Personally I think multi-capture points unnecessarily complicates matters for all parties involved. And with this layered system, it'd be pretty hard to incorporate sufficient space for it, as I'd want buffer zones of at least one room between each area of interest and the outside.

The whole concept is built around multi-(semi)linear paths from outside to objectives AND from spawns to objectives.

It's already a bit of a maze.


The target groups of course are:

- Small groups (infils / prep teams / holders / defenders / resecure teams / strike teams)
- Medium groups (attackers / holders / defenders / resecure teams / strike teams)
- Large groups (attackers / holders / defenders / resecure teams / strike teams)

So keep in mind that these paths have to allow for all those groups to have strengths and weaknesses.

Next to that, there are special groups:

- New players (logical pathfinding / memorizing 3D layout)
- Veteran players (replayability, diversity)

Adding more capture points is only going to convolute both the capture mechanics (What's going to happen to the timer? Is it worthwhile taking one back if you can't get the others?), reduce the controllability for small teams (big teams won't care, small teams can't even try to hold them all), reduce communication (Defend the CC! Which one!? Where is it!? How do we go there?!), requires more indoor map (more to render) and IMO it makes everything messier.

[Crator]

^Ok, I was thinking the capture points would be nice to help speed up captures and move the battle to a new location. It's something different from PS1. IMO PS1 captures took way too long in many cases.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Crator

^Ok, I was thinking the capture points would be nice to help speed up captures and move the battle to a new location. It's something different from PS1. IMO PS1 captures took way too long in many cases.

Well, considering the complexity of responding to a hack, it seemed long to the attackers, but it was a very short time for the defenders and resecure teams.

If you're not there yet:

• You first have to notice it.
• You have to get people to become aware.
• Decide to go there or not.
• Scout what type of response is needed and possible.
• Convince people to drop what they're doing and come with you.
• Regroup.
• Get transport.
• Get everyone in the transport
• Make and communicate the plan to the team.
• Relocate.
• Fight your way to the base
• Fight your way into the base.
• Possibly get the spawns or gens back up
• Fight your way to the CC.
• Have sufficient time to remove the hack.

Experienced groups of loyal, disciplined, flexible elite team players may be able to do this within minutes, but the majority of players does not fall into that category and this game isn't just for the elite (atm, quite the contrary...).

Or if you moved on, you need time to regroup and prepare for the oncoming assault. The time to capture is NOT there to be pleasant for attackers. It's there due to being required by the defenders to even think of attempting to fight back before the capture has gone through.

Especially with medics that never run out of med juice and spawn beacons that can be super annoying - not to mention how PS2 does it with HE camping and longer distance from spawns to CC for defenders - which my layout should solve.

[CraazyCanuck]

I think outlying areas are a good thing, but they need more importance in the overall impact on the main facility.

For instance, whomever controls that outlying area has control over a launchpad that expedites transport to and from the tower/wall, usuable only by the faction that controls that point. We already have launchpads at some facilities, the problem being that everyone can use them i.e bio labs, vanu archives.

At the same time, create a fast transport tunnel for each of these out lying areas in the defenders control that are accessed from the forward barracks, at least up until the the attackers destroys/hacks a generator within the first layer of the main facilities defenses to disable them.