So I made a couple outposts...

[Malorn]

Hey folks, I've been at SOE for a few weeks now getting adjusted to the new job and starting off in the world design team fixing a few bugs and getting the hang of level design. Recently you may have noticed a few new outposts and many re-vamps of existing outposts. Among those, I was responsible for two.


Amerish - Cobalt Communications

This outpost was moved and re-built about 500m away from its previous location for improved flow between Heyoka and Kwahtee. It was my first outpost! I was going for some good infantry combat and a cool little mountain outpost with good overwatch over the road out of Heyoka. I also put in several antenna to see how many scythes would get horse-shoed! It is a communications facility afterall!









Esamir - Jaeger's Fist

New outpost on Esamir at the junction between Andvari Bio lab, Jaeger's Crossing, and the Traverse. The position of this is in the rocky foothills and at the crossroads of three outposts where a lot of tanks roll through. Because of this I tried to make this into a tank-breaker outpost where infantry could easily get into those rocky hills and make it rough for tanks coming through and to help blunt a large tank force. Lots of cover for those that spawn there, shelter from aircraft, and easy access to the rocky hills are the key features of Jaeger's Fist.








If any of you have feedback on these outposts I'd gladly take some constructive criticism! I'd like to know if I achieved what I was going for with them and whether they are enjoyable. And of course if there are any really bad aspects I'd like to know that too so I can learn and correct. Anything you really like at them that you'd like to see more of at future outposts?

[Crator]

Sounds very nice Malorn! Thank you for giving some props to defenders! You rock!

[cbarton]

Great job Malorn.. Miss seeing you around on Emerald back in the day. Didn't realize that you joined SOE, grats on that too...

[BigpermCML]

Congrats on the SOE job!

Can't remember spending time at either of them lately, but I'll try to check em out Tuesday

[Hamma]

Awesome! I'll be sure to grab some video of them for our release edition of Instant Action.

[haberman13]

Thanks for sharing Malorn! You joined an amazing dev team, grats on the job.

I have no feedback for you :/ but on Tuesday I'll hit these outposts with a Reaver and check them out

Can't wait for release!

[Grognard]

Hiring this guy is probably the best move SOE has made for PS2 so far...

I cant wait until next year to see the sick demented mind of Malorn strewn across Auraxis...

Keep kicken ass Malorn, I can see you put a lot of thought into the flow/design of the game, and thats my feedback to you.

[EVILPIG]

Awesome Malorn, can't wait to critique.

[Dagron]

I sense some big fights at those locations on day 1, everyone here is gonna head there to see your work. Malorn, you're the spark plug in the PS2 war machine.

[Mechzz]

Heh, good stuff Malorn, glad to see you're making your mark already. Looking forward to trying these out, although to be honest I was hardly on Esamir during beta. Amerish one will be cool to try.

On a related note, will you get a chance to design a "Clegg's Landing" area with lots of derelict planes like you suggested in post ages ago? I thought that was a cool idea at the time.

[Grognard]

Originally Posted by Mechzz

On a related note, will you get a chance to design a "Clegg's Landing" area with lots of derelict planes like you suggested in post ages ago? I thought that was a cool idea at the time.

LOL, he SO needs to do this... This is our communities history! It is his solemn duty to make it happen

[Figment]

Ah so that was your doing. I saw Jeager's Fist Malorn - it's an improvement in defensibility, but since it's also very 2 dimensional in setup it's only an improvement in defensibility if the enemy comes directly from the south. Still, I like the "buffer zone" that's facing towards the south a lot.

However, IMO it at the very least requires walk ways on the west and east walls as well to give those areas minimal defendability (it's also possible to increase the orientation angles for the defenders by 30 degrees on each side to face SW and SE a bit more)).

It's a little bit harder to camp the spawnroom with vehicles due to the elevated location wrt the ground, the couple small walls and the ridge covering. However, since it's still a single room and not very central with no "compound buffer" area to the north, it's very easy to camp still. The three times I've fought there as NC, the brunt of the attack came from the north and the south perimeter was obviously completely ignored (particularly the east and north sides give a height advantage to the attacker). Since the spawn shack is on the northern edge, it was still one of the first things to fall to camping. :/

The hills can be reached relatively easily, but are also quick to be swarmed with attackers, especially if the attack comes from the north as stated before. Hence I would still suggest a defensive (walled) perimeter on top of the ridge facing north in particular. Much like a Motte and Bailey really. You could use a minor maze of walls to act as tank traps as seen below at any wall exits.

____....____
...._____

If the separate spawn building design philosophy (separate from vitals like capture point) has to remain, then I'd place the spawn room inside another building with three exits to different sides and preferably different rooms of said building, which would then require three separate groups of infantry to completely camp the spawns themselves or three to four groups of enemies to camp the outside of the building. If you could have multi-layer AND multi-directional exits (3-6) from that spawn building (not just the spawn room) too, it would provide options for the defenders to find a weakness in the camp and would stimulate fighting much more.

With regards to general building design, internal doors and stairs should never directly face another door either. There should always be tough angles (double 90 degree angles, or (more than) 90 + more than 90 degrees angles, so they face away from one another). That reduces the effectiveness of a door camp by not extrapolating the camp inside too far.

Preferably I'd still go with a design where control points are in the same building complex as the spawns (even if they're equally far away). Just to give defenders a chance to defend while avoiding facing all enemies (particularly the heavily armored once with the instant big splash damage weaponry - aka tanks/Libs) at once. The use of covering catwalks and semi-open superstructure to create that kind of hard to hit corridor/area is an option.



Aside from walkways, could you make ES-shielded gun loop holes in walls without walkways? I'd also look into using parapets as well (one sided walled walk way with gun loop holes and a small roof). This should make it harder to approach a walled side. Currently the walls IMO provide more protection to the attacker than defender.

I'm also pondering on if you could make use of these walls to create trenches (can partially cover the outside of the trenches in snow so other than light assault can jump in) that lead to pillbox bunkers outside of the wall (possibly with some sort of ES shield), which would be vulnerable to someone getting into the trench and firing from behind (and perhaps grenades and flamethrowers?), but could control specific (limited) angles of terrain with MANA turrets, guns and AV.

So you'd have the following crossection of a base defense perimeter:


................||
_______/==||\-------- [===]


Low CY - (stairs) - wall walk - embattlements with merlons and crenels AND/OR parapet wall with gun loops - (stairs (leading to ES shield in wall?)) - trench - 'forward' pillbox

Some pillboxes could be linked like the external bunkers in PS1, so you would only need to breach one trench to fight your way to the other pillbox and take that out too. Pillboxes could have degrees of vision between 80º and 270º.

Of course a IFF locked ES shield could be an interesting alternative to doors (and perhaps could deactivate the shield in the firing opening). Disabling these kind of defenses would give extra minor objectives and roles for infils and other units.

Note that wall walks should have only have the side facing away from the center protected with (good) cover, so you can shoot from a distance anyone coming over the walls. Considering the jetpacks, they'll be coming over everywhere so that'll be hard to hold anyway.

It would be possible to in some (larger) bases replace sections of the wall embattlements with tall shields the defender can pass (or even shoot) through, so jetpacks can't get over the walls everywhere until a generator has been destroyed (by infils?). To make it more difficult for jetpacks to get in somewhere, a wall can also be designed to slant forward at the top:

...../ (hoard?)
..../ (slanted wall facing out)
...| (shield/wall)
...| (shield/wall/battlement)
== (wall walk)
==\ (rampart)

[ringring]

Very cool Malorn.
Is there any chance of getting a couple of bird's eye view screen shots for us to drool over while we wait for the the doors to be opened or is that something that requires about 3 levels of authorisation?

[bpostal]

I've no feedback at this time as I'd not really checked those compounds out yet but hot damn playin horseshoes with Scythes sounds like a blast!

[SGTalon]

I had no idea that SOE followed my advice and hired you! Well I feel like i have made my contribution to PS2 now =)

Honestly though, glad to hear you have one of those "Dream Jobs"! I was wondering where you have been. I keep watching for your posts but they don't seem to be around. Now I know why.

Now get to making Auraxis as awesome as it can be.