Question from Malorn: Continental Lattice Mechanics

GeoGnome · 2014-01-23, 12:13 PM

Quote from Malorn from the main forums, in regards to how you would capture continents in the upcoming continental lattice.

You may notice every warpgate on latticed continents has 3 adjacent outposts. This was done as a possible method of warpgate capture in the future. The central idea being you have to hold all three of the adjacent territories to neutralize the gate (instead of the tower), which allows passage. If you do the same thing on the other side the gates become footholds until another empire neutralizes either end of the gate. The current lattice layout supports this design with no changes if we go that direction, but I can't say for sure at this time how it will turn out.

One of the challenges is the awkwardness of moving through gates to attack objectives on the other side. It has an awkward flow, a lot like a bio lab fight where the enemies are coming from one direction but in order to stop them you have to go to another direction (or in this case, another continent). But then again it's similar to how PS1 did warpgates and it worked out OK.

To help foster the conversation a bit, here's a few things to consider in warpgate conquest mechanics.

Downtime. If an empire abandons a continent what to do with the downtime of gobbling up undefended territories? It was a boring part of PS1.
Warpgate camping. If the opposite happens and two empires fight hard to control a gate, what does that fight look like?
Non-static gate assignments. How would you like to see warpgate positions handled? Do you want to fight for them, or do you want assigned gates that rotate on a schedule?
Empire compression. What happens if an empire gets reduced to 1 or 2 continents? Those players have to go somewhere. Folks on Connery have been seeing the limits reached, and that's with 3 continents!

These are the sort of things we think a lot about when discussing warpgate capture and continental conquest. Loving this discussion, please weigh in on the sort of things you'd like to see.

KarrdeBRBU · 2014-01-23, 12:59 PM

He's right, that's kinda a tough problem to solve without adding something like control stations or having to go back to the other cont and retaking the bases. I think we can conceptualize it like this. For the purpose of warping and warpgate control the 3 bases on either side act as points A, B, C, D, E, and F in a base, contributing to the overall capture. If you get 3 on one side it will eventually neutralize the gate. This will allow bidirectional travel for both empires on the gate. The attacking empire can use their side's terms, and the defenders can use theirs. However the WG just became a weapons/damage allowed zone on both sides.

The goal would then be to push the enemy zerg out of their own gate and into their 3 sub facilities. As you capture them, the gate capture speed increases until it is "locked" to the attacking empire. If at any point the gate is captured before all 3 bases are, the remaining bases flip in the attacking empire's favor in order to give them a fair foothold. Once locked the empire specific shield goes up and the zone returns to weapons safe.

ringring · 2014-01-23, 01:03 PM

Q1. Downtime. If an empire abandons a continent what to do with the downtime of gobbling up undefended territories? It was a boring part of PS1.
Q2. Warpgate camping. If the opposite happens and two empires fight hard to control a gate, what does that fight look like?
Q3. Non-static gate assignments. How would you like to see warpgate positions handled? Do you want to fight for them, or do you want assigned gates that rotate on a schedule?
Q4. Empire compression. What happens if an empire gets reduced to 1 or 2 continents? Those players have to go somewhere. Folks on Connery have been seeing the limits reached, and that's with 3 continents!

A1. There's no answer except perhaps to reduce the cap timers. However, if the enemy leave I suspect there will be no shortage of people willing to go around ghost capping for the xp.

A2. Hmm. Yes, as long as there are always two options it should be fine. This means the lattice proposed will not work as it only has one home warpgate (there is a thread on forumside that proposes a solution but requires more continents and a sanctuary iirc).

A3. Either for me. rotating warpgates aren't as important with an global lattice as they are now because you with the lattice you will see the figth from different persepctives naturally.

A4. You need sanctuaries there's no doubt and at least two options of attack out of it. I'm sure sanctuaries aren't difficult to create, they can be quite plain, but I think the issue lies with Higby he seems dead set against them although we've been asking for them for *years* (seems like).

The pic below is stolen from this thread https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...apture.169521/

GeoGnome · 2014-01-23, 01:41 PM

Why do people persistantly ask for sanctuaries, when we already has something that performs the function that they are trying to cram sanctuaries into? I mean what people keep pitching (This happened on the main forum thread too) was that the sanctuaries would be people storage.

... We already have people storage with the VR Room. So doubling the people storage, solves... pretty much nothing. It just means twice as many people can stand around staring at each other.

bites · 2014-01-23, 04:24 PM

Originally Posted by GeoGnome

Why do people persistantly ask for sanctuaries, when we already has something that performs the function that they are trying to cram sanctuaries into? I mean what people keep pitching (This happened on the main forum thread too) was that the sanctuaries would be people storage.

... We already have people storage with the VR Room. So doubling the people storage, solves... pretty much nothing. It just means twice as many people can stand around staring at each other.

Being dropped into VR however for a noobie isn't very conducive to a good first experience .... if you had not played the game before (also assuming that you probably not payed attention to the VR training thingy like most joe bloggs "Click to Accept" people), the VR would be a terrible place to start.

bpostal · 2014-01-23, 04:56 PM

Originally Posted by GeoGnome

Why do people persistantly ask for sanctuaries, when we already has something that performs the function that they are trying to cram sanctuaries into? I mean what people keep pitching (This happened on the main forum thread too) was that the sanctuaries would be people storage.

... We already have people storage with the VR Room. So doubling the people storage, solves... pretty much nothing. It just means twice as many people can stand around staring at each other.

I can't think of a faster way to get someone to stop playing than housing excess population in the VR. Even if you called the VR a sanctuary and moved on, anyone who has to sit there for any length of time to wait on a queue will flip their shit regardless of what you call it.

Sanctuaries also existed to give people a chance to regroup (As well as providing links to home conts via the broadcast wg's). I should never have to tell a platoon 'Fall back to the VR and pull armor for a counter assault!'

Call 'em what you want but if you're stuck there for more than a few minutes however, it doesn't matter what you call it. It'll boring and everyone will hate it (and continental lattice).

In the end, storage is storage as long as it's temporary and the home continent/sanctuary/VR/Valhalla gives a faction room to regroup and push out then you should see satisfied players.

What if there was 3 of those on each continent, one tied to each faction? "Locking" a continent has always been something that people expect to be a means of population control, which is to say that on smaller servers it would mean pushing the fight over continents, so that you didn't perpetuate indarside. Well, what if you had a base people could go to on the continents, that wasn't attached to the lattice, but could serve as a home base with limited resource spawning capabilities.

So...same thing as what we have now except remove the lattice link to the WG itself? I'm not sure if that's what your talking about. I should mention that, to me, cont locking is more about adding permanence and a sense of satisfaction (that PS2 is currently lacking) than population control. Population control shouldn't be a major issue until we have more continents.

Rahabib · 2014-01-24, 12:22 PM

Originally Posted by bpostal

I can't think of a faster way to get someone to stop playing than housing excess population in the VR. Even if you called the VR a sanctuary and moved on, anyone who has to sit there for any length of time to wait on a queue will flip their shit regardless of what you call it.

Sanctuaries also existed to give people a chance to regroup (As well as providing links to home conts via the broadcast wg's). I should never have to tell a platoon 'Fall back to the VR and pull armor for a counter assault!'

Call 'em what you want but if you're stuck there for more than a few minutes however, it doesn't matter what you call it. It'll boring and everyone will hate it (and continental lattice).

In the end, storage is storage as long as it's temporary and the home continent/sanctuary/VR/Valhalla gives a faction room to regroup and push out then you should see satisfied players.

So...same thing as what we have now except remove the lattice link to the WG itself? I'm not sure if that's what your talking about. I should mention that, to me, cont locking is more about adding permanence and a sense of satisfaction (that PS2 is currently lacking) than population control. Population control shouldn't be a major issue until we have more continents.

I kind of agree with GeoGnome. I think with the VR is just fine. Apart from being able to spend resources on vehicles etc. whether you are dumped in a sactuary with nothing to do or the VR, would be the same experience.

Besides, you select from the terminal the continent you want to go to. You spawn in that warp gate anyway, then pull your vehicles and such.

I guess if you wanted you could copy and paste a warp gate into another continent and call it a sanctuary you could.

I think that the Q1. of ghost capping is the bigger issue. It is boring. Even if its free XP its boring.

Baneblade · 2014-01-25, 01:46 PM

The first thing that needs to be done is to add at least two more continents.

libbmaster · 2014-01-23, 08:27 PM

Originally Posted by GeoGnome

Why do people persistantly ask for sanctuaries, when we already has something that performs the function that they are trying to cram sanctuaries into? I mean what people keep pitching (This happened on the main forum thread too) was that the sanctuaries would be people storage.

... We already have people storage with the VR Room. So doubling the people storage, solves... pretty much nothing. It just means twice as many people can stand around staring at each other.

No, the point is to give outfits a place to regroup and pull vehicles before shipping out to contents.

If MBTs and heavy vehicles were only available at sanctuaries and Tech plants, we would have much less spam and thus grounds to buff said vehicles.

Calista · 2014-01-23, 09:34 PM

Originally Posted by libbmaster

No, the point is to give outfits a place to regroup and pull vehicles before shipping out to contents.

If MBTs and heavy vehicles were only available at sanctuaries and Tech plants, we would have much less spam and thus grounds to buff said vehicles.

Someone asked Matt in the last CC about warpgates actually warping vehicles etc and he said it was not planned anytime soon. It kinda sounded like to me that even after continent linking you would have to use that terminal to spawn over to a new cont.

bpostal · 2014-01-23, 10:09 PM

Originally Posted by Calista

Someone asked Matt in the last CC about warpgates actually warping vehicles etc and he said it was not planned anytime soon. It kinda sounded like to me that even after continent linking you would have to use that terminal to spawn over to a new cont.

That is kinda disappointing. I was hoping for 'sooner' rather than 'later' but so are we all I guess.

If it's years down the road before they start looking at this then I may have to ask about a deconstruction station (dependent on the resource revamp).

ringring · 2014-01-24, 07:14 AM

Originally Posted by Calista

Someone asked Matt in the last CC about warpgates actually warping vehicles etc and he said it was not planned anytime soon. It kinda sounded like to me that even after continent linking you would have to use that terminal to spawn over to a new cont.

Yea, it's on the roadmap ("Vehicle Zoning") but down as unscheduled.

For me the new continents, inter-continental lattice and zoning need to come in together and and as someone has said everything discussed here are 'core mechanics'.

Instead we get more events and WDS which, with respect to Malorn, are to me at best placeholders and possibly also act as distractions.

Calista · 2014-01-24, 08:45 AM

Originally Posted by ringring

Yea, it's on the roadmap ("Vehicle Zoning") but down as unscheduled.

For me the new continents, inter-continental lattice and zoning need to come in together and and as someone has said everything discussed here are 'core mechanics'.

Instead we get more events and WDS which, with respect to Malorn, are to me at best placeholders and possibly also act as distractions.

And how far overdue is Hossin from the original plan? I remember someone asked Maggie about Searhus and she rolled her eyes and said that is WAAAAY down the road. I really hope this game takes off on PS4 because that is about the only thing that is gonna kick this game in the pants and get it moving again.

Timithos · 2014-01-27, 01:41 AM

Originally Posted by Calista

Someone asked Matt in the last CC about warpgates actually warping vehicles etc and he said it was not planned anytime soon. It kinda sounded like to me that even after continent linking you would have to use that terminal to spawn over to a new cont.

Yeah, and that would suck. "Vehicle Zoning" as they call it is set as unscheduled on the roadmap. Vehicle Zoning would throw off the balance of the Resource Revamp since players don't need to use up new resources, but just drive their vehicles through warpgates. So the entire Resource Revamp might need an additional revamp again just to accommodate Vehicle Zoning. It makes sense for them to first introduce Vehicle Zoning before the revamp is finished, and to coincide Vehicle Zoning at the same time as continental lattices.

Chewy · 2014-01-23, 02:29 PM

"A4. You need sanctuaries there's no doubt and at least two options of attack out of it. I'm sure sanctuaries aren't difficult to create, they can be quite plain, but I think the issue lies with Higby he seems dead set against them although we've been asking for them for *years* (seems like)."

I like this for finding a place for players that are being over run and are loosing WGs.

But I think it needs another bit from PS1. The HART and being able to drop on maps that you don't have a WG on. The HART maybe is able to drop you ONLY on maps where you don't have a WG.

Just getting to a map is one thing. You still need a link to cap bases. PS1 did this from finding a power drained base that turned neutral and take it over. It would give reasons to have an ANT and to have chances at smaller teams doing some nasty back stabbing by dropping unknown at an empty base, hacking terminals, and pulling some armor to have a bit of fun.