Footholds Archetypes: "Food for Thought"

[NewSith]

ATTENTION: The following pictures are the archetypes of the possible foothold layouts. The lattice and the Warpgate Owners may vary.

Instead of sharing a full report on what I think about the said lattice layouts, guys, I'll just give them louder names. Feel free to discuss/commend/rebuke/vote for any of the following layouts:



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1. Foothold Setup Unmodified aka "All Hail the Stalemate":



2. Single Lattice Homeconts aka "Lock the Attack Angles":



3. Single Lattice Shared Homeconts aka "Prescribed 2-way Path":



4. Multiple Lattice Homeconts aka "PlanetSide Original Mini" aka "How can we fit here?":



5. Single Lattice Double Homeconts aka "Always On the Run":



More Notes:

• Esamir and Amerish BWGs are of random placement.
• These examples explain quite clearly why the devs went with the #1 archetype. Compared to all others (with absence of sanctuaries taken into consideration) #1 option gives the highest amount of people per server.
  (666+666+666) + (666+666+666) + (666+666+666)
• Please have a crystal clear mind about the neutral warpgates handling method. We can have several choices for the way they operate: Non-contestable, always open; Non-contestable, accessibility is based on adjacency; Contestable, effectless hex; Contestable, adjacency-effecting hex.

[Dart]

I don't think the foothold locations look quite right on the two 'blacked-out' Continents but I suspect your first attempt is the closest to the mark.

[Ghryphen]

Originally Posted by Dart

I suspect your first attempt is the closest to the mark.

Of course it is, that is the point, it appears the rest are alternate suggestions rather than using #1 to help alleviate the possible stalemate of having all three empires having a foothold on every continent.

[NewSith]

Originally Posted by Gryphon

Of course it is, that is the point, the rest are alternate suggestions rather than using #1

I think he means the warpgate positioning.

[Dart]

Originally Posted by Gryphon

Of course it is, that is the point, it appears the rest are alternate suggestions rather than using #1 to help alleviate the possible stalemate of having all three empires having a foothold on every continent.

Sorry I guess I wasn't very clear. When all is said and done, I suspect #1 is what we will end up with because solutions 2, 4-5 would simply result in a lot of WG camping and each Empire holding/maintaining their 'own' Continent and 3 would effectively limit each Empire to (mostly) fighting on only two of the Continents. It is also not scalable if the Devs wish to add more Continents, one at a time, in the future. Does that make more sense?

[NewSith]

Added a note:

These examples explain quite clearly why the devs went with the #1 archetype. Compared to all others (with absence of sanctuaries taken into consideration) #1 option gives the highest amount of people per server.
(666+666+666) + (666+666+666) + (666+666+666)

[Dart]

Originally Posted by NewSith

Added a note:

These examples explain quite clearly why the devs went with the #1 archetype. Compared to all others (with absence of sanctuaries taken into consideration) #1 option gives the highest amount of people per server.
(666+666+666) + (666+666+666) + (666+666+666)

It is also more easily scalable than certain others.

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by Dart

I suspect #1 is what we will end up with because solutions 2, 4-5 would simply result in a lot of WG camping and each Empire holding/maintaining their 'own' Continent and 3 would effectively limit each Empire to (mostly) fighting on only two of the Continents.

I think you're right there, with only 3 conts you can't have warpgates in the same way as we had before, we'd be warpgate camping only. With 10 conts there was always another place to attack if you got camped in.

The only thing i worry about with this set up is you've essentially got 3 stalemates that may as well be on different servers, since the choice of where to go doesn't really matter

[DarkChiron]

I think something that can try to help alleviate the deadlocking of the 3 forces along essentially non-variant battlelines is the removal of the need to follow a set lattice in your captures. On PS1 you had difficulty breaking into enemy territory because they knew you had to try to cap 1-2 bases, and you couldn't go anywhere else. In PS2 they have introduced the ability to capture ANY hex, no matter where it is, so I think any group willing to shake things up can back-cap a base a few hexes into enemy territory and really shake things up. We'll have to see how that will work in practice. They made it sound like it would be more difficult to do back-capping, but I hope it's not SO difficult as to be impractical, because I think it will go a long way in making the battlefronts less static.

[Hmr85]

Personally, I am a fan of #4

[NewSith]

Originally Posted by Hmr85

Personally, I am a fan of #4

And What if I rename it?

[Hmr85]

Originally Posted by NewSith

And What if I rename it?

I would still like it. It gives each faction their own continent/home territory. It also allows for multiple fronts on a continent to be contested at any given time. Compared to the way they have it now where you are always fighting in one preassigned area.

[dsi]

Originally Posted by Hmr85

I would still like it. It gives each faction their own continent/home territory. It also allows for multiple fronts on a continent to be contested at any given time. Compared to the way they have it now where you are always fighting in one preassigned area.

This. Planetside Mini is an apt term, but if it's as close as we're going to get to a good system (based on gameplay not F2P) then I'll take it.

[Meriv]

If you follow the concept of Indaar where TR terrain is canyons with just one way trought then the foothold of TR will be probably in the 2 islands(since the only way trought will be the bridges), more than that i cant try to guess.

[kaffis]

Wow, okay. Now that I read the comments at the bottom of the pictures, I realize you weren't seriously proposing 2-4 as legitimate options. Whew!

Yes, I think you've done a good job of setting people up to illustrate why footholds work best for what we've got and the target to get as big a fight as many places as possible.

Let me just point out that I would NEVER be in favor of any warpgate links that allowed one warpgate to link to multiple destination warpgates. That just removes any strategic significance to them at all. "Own this one on your 'home continent' so you can attack from ANYWHERE!!!!" Blech.

Similarly, I would hate any system that had any fewer than two factions' permanent footholds on any continent with a permanent foothold. Otherwise, you're just inviting a continent lock, which means that continent's capacity goes unused by the server, resulting in a WAY smaller practical server cap. And that goes against the point of MASSIVE.

Finally, 1-linkable warpgate per continent is boring, if you abide by my 1:1 warpgate links rule above. Thus, the only way to make warpgate links work interestingly at all without crippling server capacity would be to offer two warpgates and two faction footholds per continent, perhaps mixing up the warpgate links later on as you add continents to allow for adding foothold-less continents in the future. That *could* work, but I don't see it as any more compelling than having 3-foothold continents, and perhaps adding neutral, captureable, warpgates on top of that to link between continents and have a method to break up the T-stalemates from time to time.