Continent shape, geography, barriers and (mental) influence on territory held.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by WildVS

Better yet Figgy. Show your battle simulation series of pics.

You mean this?

Of course the details differ now we got the actual grid layout, the principle remains the same, just with even shorter frontlines due to the out of bounds territory.

[VelRa]

This thread feels like an English topics course in an esteemed vs university. In general i feel as if conquest will proceed hex-wise as rmpires try to consolidate a front regardless of terrain comsiderations, but this thread is a good way to figure out ways to mix it up.

One thing that will change the shape of comquest in the future is weather. I cant see the zerg moving into a base covered in thick fog or during a blizzard. Weather is like terrain, only terrain is a static obstacle and weather is a dynamic one. Dynamic geographical elements are the key to dynamic empire divisions. A few other dynamic features could be erupting vOlcanoes, floods, iceflows, and player-generated terraforming

Also when we talk about bridges, there are a few other considerations. Is it over Water which would let vs advance their tank columns freely? Is it over a chasm which would deny access to mags but allow air vehixles to fight below? Or over lava which could damage hovercrafts and deny amphibious? (lava continent confirmed by higby during ign interview).

When we take into account all the possibiliyies of terrain and weather pattering, i think we could easily see continents divided in very dynamic ways.

[Landtank]

That's such an unrealistic scenario because the NC can't lose because they are the bestest.



I can see the front lines changing very rapidly, almost like high and low tides. This would be due to the push and counter push that will undoubtedly occur. Example: VS invades TR and takes a base. At the same time, the TR push and take a different base, etc. Then the NC swoop in and annihilate all the heretics and communists and freedom is the victor!

[ringring]

Nice illustration Figgy, I hadn't seen it before. I do think you overestimate the strategic nous of the TR though.

Is there one about that shows Indar as a topological map rather than tactical?

[Malorn]

The Bad
That simulation which was re-posted above is roughly what I expect as well. Most fighting occurs in the center, and the people taking the sides (and defending them) are the organized outfits and smaller outfits working together.

The territory control system will always want you to consolidate territory to the edges to protect the territory from capture and avoid being around the other empires' footholds simply because you can't consolidate the foothold edges and you'll always get a small trickle of forces attacking from it (unless the entire empire gets relocated there and you get completely screwed because now you are directly in between the other two empires and get sandwiched and lose everything.

Even the geography if Indar itself facilitates this setup. It's shaped like a T, with the top edge being a cliff into all of the VS area, and the bottom edge being another set of cliffs between the NC and TR. Geographically it is designed to be fought along these edges. These edges and the facilities/outposts along them will be where the vast majority of fighting occurs.


The Ugly
I really dislike the tactical layout of Indar. For each empire there are basically 3 options - center, left, and right. The mindless masses (zerg) will throw themselves against one of these three paths, and travel along expected roads.

Indar to me feels roughly the size of Forseral in overall layout, but imagine a 3 way in Forseral with one empire in the north, one in the east, and one in the southwest. Not much will ever happen due to lattice, but with lattice gone it is possible for a slow creep to one of the rear territories, but you're going to see that coming.

As a strategist for my empire, There's really very few things for me to think about.
- Where is the zerg and how is it progressing?
- How are the other flanks?
- How are rear territories - any shenanigans?

When thinking about the other enemy I basically go through the same thought process, using that to estimate where the other empires might make a move.

Then it's a matter of trying ot attack one of the non-zerg flanks since the zerg will inevitably be a meatgrinding stalemate. There's only two options for attack so even a complete moron can figure out where the attack will come from, and a decent commander will be able to determine (exactly as I did above) which location that will be.

Since territory control pushes us to consolidate, the best place to attack are the two edges, and the center is a terrible place to attack. It exposes us to both empires and creates a stretched territory line that is weak. So there's really only 1-2 viable places to attack, depending on where the zerg is. If the zerg is on a flank, the opposite flank is the place to attack. If the zerg is in the center then we have a whopping two options.

And even if we succeed in attacking, the territory we have will be fleeting, as we've exposed the flank where we didn't attack and have to make a lot of inroads to consolidate the territory.

So strategically, Indar is a steaming pile of poop. There's no real tactical options. It's just going to be a big massive clusterfuck battle. To be fair, Higby did say that's exactly what they wanted. But it's disappointing because PlanetSide had a lot more depth to it. This makes it seem really dumbed down to a forced 3-way with few options. On the surface you can look at it and "but look at all that territory to capture!" - realistically most of it is off-limits for capture because its on the other side of the continent and you won't ever see much fighting there (unless they rotate the footholds and change things up).

If you look at the simulation - look at where most of the fighting occurs and how much of the continent each empire sees. In that example each empire sees about 50% of the continent with most fighting occuring in the center. It's a good simulation to illustrate that while Indar may be big, the perception to the individual soldiers is going to be that it is a lot smaller because we only see half of it. And quite a bit of the half we do see is coastline and probably not areas where a heavy amount of fighting will occur.


The (Possible) Good
Fixing this mess isn't easy. I honestly don't see it being easily fixable without having the old Planetside Continent system back and having at least 6-7 continents. They can still keep the footholds but make them dynamic like the old warp gates. The problem is that they simply don't have enough continents for that to be realistically workable at launch.

If their plan is to continually add continents, I can see that at some point in the future they make a switch and move it to more of a classic PlanetSide model once enough continents exist. Then there could be some dynamic foothold control mechanisms, servers can be merged to get more people together, and the PlanetSide 2 world simply gets bigger and more diverse.

I think the reality of PS2 is that we're going to have some piss poor strategic gameplay for at least the first year of PS2. Maybe they'll get a lot better at cranking out continents and by Year 2 we have 6-7 and they can start switching things up.

As far as continent design goes, I'd hope they design continents with the idea that they might eventually be inter-linked. The design of Indar isn't all that bad if it was in the traditional PS1 continent system because you wouldn't always be in a 3-way battle and every foothold would have a good starting position.

While the continent design wasn't all that different from how Searhus was in PS1 it was the combination of continental and inter-continental connections that led to meaningful strategic action in PS1.


Continental Improvements

1) Bigger continents. The land needs to be bigger and Indar is cramped. The bigger continent doesn't need to be filled to the brim with land. It can have a lot of open space/ocean, etc. That's good to give us a place for aircraft to fight (or bring in boats for coastal assault). Think PS1 continents. Warpgates on edges, well away from the fighting.

2) Put the warpgates further away from the main fighting. Areas around warpgates are strategically worthless to other empires. You don't want to have interesting things right next to a warpgate other than a few outposts that you don't expect to be conquered anytime soon.

3) Create continents that don't always force us to fight for the center. Indar is a lot like Searhus where there's basically 3 directions to go - left, right, center. It would be interesting if the there was more edge-content. That would spread out the fighting but give more meaningful options.

4) Shifting warpgate locations. Instead of having 3 warpgates, put in 6 with 3 inactive that randomly shift around on the continent. Call it a special kind of continent that is unstable and ever-shifting. You might end up with two empires directly next to each other or you could have a perfect 3-way split. Doesn't matter. The point is it's different and it changes, which forces us to adapt and conjure up new strategies. It also allows us to see more of the continent.

5) FACILITY BENEFITS. Make each facility offer something tactical, so it isn't simply a matter of "which direction can we attack?" and we can actually work to either gain or deny the enemy a benefit. This, combined with more peripheral objectives would spread out the fighting and give us more tactical options.

6) Asymmetric continents. Cyssor-like continents. There was a reason people liked Cyssor. It was huge, it had sub-regions, there was a lot of tactical options on the continent, and the geography was not a big triangle or circle. It had interesting geography with rivers and such creating natural barriers to ground forces. And Cyssor wasn't nicely split between the 3 empires. There weren't clear geographical boundaries that said "this region is for NC/VS/TR". Ceryshen was the same way, very much not a symmetrical continent and that was on reason I liked it a lot and it was interesting to fight on. Don't carve up territory geographically for the empires.

7) Plan for a possible inter-connected continent system. Just keep it in mind. Maybe you don't plan on doing it now, but you might later, so make sure the continent will play well if/when that occurs. The end-game for PS2 as we understand it is to have large universe with many planets and many continents on each planet. At some point they will be inter-connected and I can't imagine them all being staged 3-way clusterfucks. That would be boring as hell and repetitive. At some point there will be inter-continent and inter-planet links and continents should be able to handle without needing fundamental changes to them.

[Xyntech]

Indar = 2x as large as Cyssor and 4x as many capture points. So I'd call Indar the equivalent of at least 3 PS1 style continents.

So considering that battles won't always flow in the exact same pattern, I'd say that Figment's scenario is not only pretty accurate, but also very encouraging. Imagine 3 of PS1's continents linked by lattice, and the way the battles would flow on them (pretending for a second that each one was a home continent for one of the factions as well). It wouldn't be uncommon to get pushed off one of those continents, but pushing both enemies off of all 3 continents would be a much harder proposition.

Remember that not every continent in Planetside 2 will always be poplocked either. Some empires may vastly outnumber the other two empires on one continent, while the populations are more even on one or two of the other ones.

If we are to compare Planetside 2 to Planetside 1 under conditions where all 3 PS2 continents are poplocked with roughly equal global populations, then we must also compare it to a Planetside 1 where all 10 continents are actively poplocked with roughly even global populations.

In such a scenario, how likely was it in PS1 for an empire to get pushed off of their home continent and stay pushed off? It certainly didn't happen very often and it didn't last very long either.

So there will be variance in PS2. Population differences and varying strategies will cause a fluctuating landscape. Certainly pushing empires off of continents will happen, perhaps even a single empire will occasionally control an entire continent. But just like the first game in its prime, these victories will be temporary and difficult, as they should be.

The biggest difference will be that continent locks are gone, which has been discussed in other threads. I've come to agree with the people who believe that continent locks are a bad and mediocre solution.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

Indar = 2x as large as Cyssor and 4x as many capture points. So I'd call Indar the equivalent of at least 3 PS1 style continents.

Per the other thread we established that it is actually the same size as Ishundar/Esamir/Cyssor/Searhus. That sort of derails the rest of your post.

[MasterChief096]

Originally Posted by Malorn

The Bad
That simulation which was re-posted above is roughly what I expect as well. Most fighting occurs in the center, and the people taking the sides (and defending them) are the organized outfits and smaller outfits working together.

The territory control system will always want you to consolidate territory to the edges to protect the territory from capture and avoid being around the other empires' footholds simply because you can't consolidate the foothold edges and you'll always get a small trickle of forces attacking from it (unless the entire empire gets relocated there and you get completely screwed because now you are directly in between the other two empires and get sandwiched and lose everything.

Even the geography if Indar itself facilitates this setup. It's shaped like a T, with the top edge being a cliff into all of the VS area, and the bottom edge being another set of cliffs between the NC and TR. Geographically it is designed to be fought along these edges. These edges and the facilities/outposts along them will be where the vast majority of fighting occurs.


The Ugly
I really dislike the tactical layout of Indar. For each empire there are basically 3 options - center, left, and right. The mindless masses (zerg) will throw themselves against one of these three paths, and travel along expected roads.

Indar to me feels roughly the size of Forseral in overall layout, but imagine a 3 way in Forseral with one empire in the north, one in the east, and one in the southwest. Not much will ever happen due to lattice, but with lattice gone it is possible for a slow creep to one of the rear territories, but you're going to see that coming.

As a strategist for my empire, There's really very few things for me to think about.
- Where is the zerg and how is it progressing?
- How are the other flanks?
- How are rear territories - any shenanigans?

When thinking about the other enemy I basically go through the same thought process, using that to estimate where the other empires might make a move.

Then it's a matter of trying ot attack one of the non-zerg flanks since the zerg will inevitably be a meatgrinding stalemate. There's only two options for attack so even a complete moron can figure out where the attack will come from, and a decent commander will be able to determine (exactly as I did above) which location that will be.

Since territory control pushes us to consolidate, the best place to attack are the two edges, and the center is a terrible place to attack. It exposes us to both empires and creates a stretched territory line that is weak. So there's really only 1-2 viable places to attack, depending on where the zerg is. If the zerg is on a flank, the opposite flank is the place to attack. If the zerg is in the center then we have a whopping two options.

And even if we succeed in attacking, the territory we have will be fleeting, as we've exposed the flank where we didn't attack and have to make a lot of inroads to consolidate the territory.

So strategically, Indar is a steaming pile of poop. There's no real tactical options. It's just going to be a big massive clusterfuck battle. To be fair, Higby did say that's exactly what they wanted. But it's disappointing because PlanetSide had a lot more depth to it. This makes it seem really dumbed down to a forced 3-way with few options. On the surface you can look at it and "but look at all that territory to capture!" - realistically most of it is off-limits for capture because its on the other side of the continent and you won't ever see much fighting there (unless they rotate the footholds and change things up).

If you look at the simulation - look at where most of the fighting occurs and how much of the continent each empire sees. In that example each empire sees about 50% of the continent with most fighting occuring in the center. It's a good simulation to illustrate that while Indar may be big, the perception to the individual soldiers is going to be that it is a lot smaller because we only see half of it. And quite a bit of the half we do see is coastline and probably not areas where a heavy amount of fighting will occur.


The (Possible) Good
Fixing this mess isn't easy. I honestly don't see it being easily fixable without having the old Planetside Continent system back and having at least 6-7 continents. They can still keep the footholds but make them dynamic like the old warp gates. The problem is that they simply don't have enough continents for that to be realistically workable at launch.

If their plan is to continually add continents, I can see that at some point in the future they make a switch and move it to more of a classic PlanetSide model once enough continents exist. Then there could be some dynamic foothold control mechanisms, servers can be merged to get more people together, and the PlanetSide 2 world simply gets bigger and more diverse.

I think the reality of PS2 is that we're going to have some piss poor strategic gameplay for at least the first year of PS2. Maybe they'll get a lot better at cranking out continents and by Year 2 we have 6-7 and they can start switching things up.

As far as continent design goes, I'd hope they design continents with the idea that they might eventually be inter-linked. The design of Indar isn't all that bad if it was in the traditional PS1 continent system because you wouldn't always be in a 3-way battle and every foothold would have a good starting position.

While the continent design wasn't all that different from how Searhus was in PS1 it was the combination of continental and inter-continental connections that led to meaningful strategic action in PS1.


Continental Improvements

1) Bigger continents. The land needs to be bigger and Indar is cramped. The bigger continent doesn't need to be filled to the brim with land. It can have a lot of open space/ocean, etc. That's good to give us a place for aircraft to fight (or bring in boats for coastal assault). Think PS1 continents. Warpgates on edges, well away from the fighting.

2) Put the warpgates further away from the main fighting. Areas around warpgates are strategically worthless to other empires. You don't want to have interesting things right next to a warpgate other than a few outposts that you don't expect to be conquered anytime soon.

3) Create continents that don't always force us to fight for the center. Indar is a lot like Searhus where there's basically 3 directions to go - left, right, center. It would be interesting if the there was more edge-content. That would spread out the fighting but give more meaningful options.

4) Shifting warpgate locations. Instead of having 3 warpgates, put in 6 with 3 inactive that randomly shift around on the continent. Call it a special kind of continent that is unstable and ever-shifting. You might end up with two empires directly next to each other or you could have a perfect 3-way split. Doesn't matter. The point is it's different and it changes, which forces us to adapt and conjure up new strategies. It also allows us to see more of the continent.

5) FACILITY BENEFITS. Make each facility offer something tactical, so it isn't simply a matter of "which direction can we attack?" and we can actually work to either gain or deny the enemy a benefit. This, combined with more peripheral objectives would spread out the fighting and give us more tactical options.

6) Asymmetric continents. Cyssor-like continents. There was a reason people liked Cyssor. It was huge, it had sub-regions, there was a lot of tactical options on the continent, and the geography was not a big triangle or circle. It had interesting geography with rivers and such creating natural barriers to ground forces. And Cyssor wasn't nicely split between the 3 empires. There weren't clear geographical boundaries that said "this region is for NC/VS/TR". Ceryshen was the same way, very much not a symmetrical continent and that was on reason I liked it a lot and it was interesting to fight on. Don't carve up territory geographically for the empires.

7) Plan for a possible inter-connected continent system. Just keep it in mind. Maybe you don't plan on doing it now, but you might later, so make sure the continent will play well if/when that occurs. The end-game for PS2 as we understand it is to have large universe with many planets and many continents on each planet. At some point they will be inter-connected and I can't imagine them all being staged 3-way clusterfucks. That would be boring as hell and repetitive. At some point there will be inter-continent and inter-planet links and continents should be able to handle without needing fundamental changes to them.

Your suggestions are all very good. I know I may be releasing another bull in a China cabinet here by bringing this up, but another possible solution is to insert a classic PS1 sanctuary type system in the future. Or perhaps, if there are 6-7, or even 10 continents like PS1 had, then each empire can have its home continents that have unconquerable footholds on them while empires can then use their home continents to influence the control of other footholds.

This could lead to a pretty interesting system of interconnected continents. Say for example you are tired of fighting VS on Indar, but they have a foothold. Perhaps taking another continent (or portion of another continent) could shut off or make neutral the foothold that the VS have on Indar and force them to a staging point on another continent. Perhaps the new continents that they add can have specific facilities that control foothold access to the three continents PS2 will be launching with. This could essentially lead to these three starter continents becoming hugely important if you can capture them and deny other enemies access until they capture a way onto the continent by attacking a portion of another continent. It would allow a very well played empire to farm the resources there until another empire gained access by taking one of these "foothold control stations."

Once again, the idea of sanctuaries and being able to "lock" continents always gets flamed because the goal in PS2 is to not have a lot of downtime between fights, but I think that such a system of sanctuaries and influenced footholds would be the only way to give empires different avenues of attack besides the ideas Malorn already mentioned.

[Landtank]

Originally Posted by Malorn

The Bad
That simulation which was re-posted above is roughly what I expect as well. Most fighting occurs in the center, and the people taking the sides (and defending them) are the organized outfits and smaller outfits working together.

The territory control system will always want you to consolidate territory to the edges to protect the territory from capture and avoid being around the other empires' footholds simply because you can't consolidate the foothold edges and you'll always get a small trickle of forces attacking from it (unless the entire empire gets relocated there and you get completely screwed because now you are directly in between the other two empires and get sandwiched and lose everything.

Even the geography if Indar itself facilitates this setup. It's shaped like a T, with the top edge being a cliff into all of the VS area, and the bottom edge being another set of cliffs between the NC and TR. Geographically it is designed to be fought along these edges. These edges and the facilities/outposts along them will be where the vast majority of fighting occurs.


The Ugly
I really dislike the tactical layout of Indar. For each empire there are basically 3 options - center, left, and right. The mindless masses (zerg) will throw themselves against one of these three paths, and travel along expected roads.

Indar to me feels roughly the size of Forseral in overall layout, but imagine a 3 way in Forseral with one empire in the north, one in the east, and one in the southwest. Not much will ever happen due to lattice, but with lattice gone it is possible for a slow creep to one of the rear territories, but you're going to see that coming.

As a strategist for my empire, There's really very few things for me to think about.
- Where is the zerg and how is it progressing?
- How are the other flanks?
- How are rear territories - any shenanigans?

When thinking about the other enemy I basically go through the same thought process, using that to estimate where the other empires might make a move.

Then it's a matter of trying ot attack one of the non-zerg flanks since the zerg will inevitably be a meatgrinding stalemate. There's only two options for attack so even a complete moron can figure out where the attack will come from, and a decent commander will be able to determine (exactly as I did above) which location that will be.

Since territory control pushes us to consolidate, the best place to attack are the two edges, and the center is a terrible place to attack. It exposes us to both empires and creates a stretched territory line that is weak. So there's really only 1-2 viable places to attack, depending on where the zerg is. If the zerg is on a flank, the opposite flank is the place to attack. If the zerg is in the center then we have a whopping two options.

And even if we succeed in attacking, the territory we have will be fleeting, as we've exposed the flank where we didn't attack and have to make a lot of inroads to consolidate the territory.

So strategically, Indar is a steaming pile of poop. There's no real tactical options. It's just going to be a big massive clusterfuck battle. To be fair, Higby did say that's exactly what they wanted. But it's disappointing because PlanetSide had a lot more depth to it. This makes it seem really dumbed down to a forced 3-way with few options. On the surface you can look at it and "but look at all that territory to capture!" - realistically most of it is off-limits for capture because its on the other side of the continent and you won't ever see much fighting there (unless they rotate the footholds and change things up).

If you look at the simulation - look at where most of the fighting occurs and how much of the continent each empire sees. In that example each empire sees about 50% of the continent with most fighting occuring in the center. It's a good simulation to illustrate that while Indar may be big, the perception to the individual soldiers is going to be that it is a lot smaller because we only see half of it. And quite a bit of the half we do see is coastline and probably not areas where a heavy amount of fighting will occur.


The (Possible) Good
Fixing this mess isn't easy. I honestly don't see it being easily fixable without having the old Planetside Continent system back and having at least 6-7 continents. They can still keep the footholds but make them dynamic like the old warp gates. The problem is that they simply don't have enough continents for that to be realistically workable at launch.

If their plan is to continually add continents, I can see that at some point in the future they make a switch and move it to more of a classic PlanetSide model once enough continents exist. Then there could be some dynamic foothold control mechanisms, servers can be merged to get more people together, and the PlanetSide 2 world simply gets bigger and more diverse.

I think the reality of PS2 is that we're going to have some piss poor strategic gameplay for at least the first year of PS2. Maybe they'll get a lot better at cranking out continents and by Year 2 we have 6-7 and they can start switching things up.

As far as continent design goes, I'd hope they design continents with the idea that they might eventually be inter-linked. The design of Indar isn't all that bad if it was in the traditional PS1 continent system because you wouldn't always be in a 3-way battle and every foothold would have a good starting position.

While the continent design wasn't all that different from how Searhus was in PS1 it was the combination of continental and inter-continental connections that led to meaningful strategic action in PS1.


Continental Improvements

1) Bigger continents. The land needs to be bigger and Indar is cramped. The bigger continent doesn't need to be filled to the brim with land. It can have a lot of open space/ocean, etc. That's good to give us a place for aircraft to fight (or bring in boats for coastal assault). Think PS1 continents. Warpgates on edges, well away from the fighting.

2) Put the warpgates further away from the main fighting. Areas around warpgates are strategically worthless to other empires. You don't want to have interesting things right next to a warpgate other than a few outposts that you don't expect to be conquered anytime soon.

3) Create continents that don't always force us to fight for the center. Indar is a lot like Searhus where there's basically 3 directions to go - left, right, center. It would be interesting if the there was more edge-content. That would spread out the fighting but give more meaningful options.

4) Shifting warpgate locations. Instead of having 3 warpgates, put in 6 with 3 inactive that randomly shift around on the continent. Call it a special kind of continent that is unstable and ever-shifting. You might end up with two empires directly next to each other or you could have a perfect 3-way split. Doesn't matter. The point is it's different and it changes, which forces us to adapt and conjure up new strategies. It also allows us to see more of the continent.

5) FACILITY BENEFITS. Make each facility offer something tactical, so it isn't simply a matter of "which direction can we attack?" and we can actually work to either gain or deny the enemy a benefit. This, combined with more peripheral objectives would spread out the fighting and give us more tactical options.

6) Asymmetric continents. Cyssor-like continents. There was a reason people liked Cyssor. It was huge, it had sub-regions, there was a lot of tactical options on the continent, and the geography was not a big triangle or circle. It had interesting geography with rivers and such creating natural barriers to ground forces. And Cyssor wasn't nicely split between the 3 empires. There weren't clear geographical boundaries that said "this region is for NC/VS/TR". Ceryshen was the same way, very much not a symmetrical continent and that was on reason I liked it a lot and it was interesting to fight on. Don't carve up territory geographically for the empires.

7) Plan for a possible inter-connected continent system. Just keep it in mind. Maybe you don't plan on doing it now, but you might later, so make sure the continent will play well if/when that occurs. The end-game for PS2 as we understand it is to have large universe with many planets and many continents on each planet. At some point they will be inter-connected and I can't imagine them all being staged 3-way clusterfucks. That would be boring as hell and repetitive. At some point there will be inter-continent and inter-planet links and continents should be able to handle without needing fundamental changes to them.

But I did read, I just love the Vader .gif

I see Indar as an extremely challenging continent in terms of tactics. Because there are so few options, as there are in real life wars, a commander actually has to THINK about where he is going to attack based on the current situation, instead of using some overly complicated predetermined plan. It's fine to have a general layout, but huge war plans almost never, ever work.

You say that attacking the middle is a terribad idea, I disagree, attacking the middle with a well organized outfit could easily break the back of the enemy, and its not like you need all 700 of your soldiers in the same spot. You could have a 3 pronged assault, taking two empires by surprise etc. After all, its a game, so you can experiment with countless ideas with no repercussions.

That's why I'm so excited for this game, there's a million different ways to win and attack your enemy. All you need is one open route to attack, one way to get behind enemy lines, and the front line crumbles just like in real war.

[ringring]

In my imagination I often assume that the continental battle will have equal populations for all three empires and the same on the other two continents.

If the total world population is not maxed out then that leaves room for global strategy ands by that I mean Empires deciding to attack on one continent, to defend another and perhaps to let the other go.

As long as or whenever we don't have 6000 people online at one time the meta game will become much more interesting.

Higby has said they are going to add new continents and I saw bring it on.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by ringring

In my imagination I often assume that the continental battle will have equal populations for all three empires and the same on the other two continents.

If the total world population is not maxed out then that leaves room for global strategy ands by that I mean Empires deciding to attack on one continent, to defend another and perhaps to let the other go.

As long as or whenever we don't have 6000 people online at one time the meta game will become much more interesting.

Higby has said they are going to add new continents and I saw bring it on.

Just like in the first game. Global pop lock hours saw change happen on the world map, but generally small change. Lower population hours saw increased territory fluctuation and a greater importance put on global strategy.

PS2 will play somewhat differently, but at the core it's going to be the exact same thing.

We better not have global population locks 24/7, because that will mean that there aren't enough servers and a huge portion of players won't be able to play during peak hours.

I hope we get universally unique character names that are unique across all servers, and that they just bite the bullet and get rid of some servers if they need to when they add more continents. Maybe the game will keep growing enough that new or returning players will fill the 4th+ continents, but if they gotta get rid of some continents, so be it. Just so long as there are so many servers that a handful of closures doesn't affect things.

Something like a transparent tracker showing how many players are playing across all servers would go a long way towards squashing fears that server closures equaled a diminishing playerbase, although it would also hurt the game if player numbers actually did drop.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Landtank

You say that attacking the middle is a terribad idea, I disagree, attacking the middle with a well organized outfit could easily break the back of the enemy, and its not like you need all 700 of your soldiers in the same spot. You could have a 3 pronged assault, taking two empires by surprise etc. After all, its a game, so you can experiment with countless ideas with no repercussions.

The vader .gif is funny, lol.

The reason the middle is bad is because it invites a double-team. A lot of PS1 strategy revolved around either creating or avoiding a double-team situation. Why? Because the best way to take territory is when the other two empires are occupied with each other. One of them can't defend against both of you, so you attack the guy who is stretched too thin to adequately defend, allowing you to gobble up the turf.

When you attack the center you put yourself in between the other two empires. You stick your neck out for it to get cut off. The other two empires now have fewer choices on who to attack as you are now 60+% of their front line. So who are they going to both attack? Most likely you.

The best approach if you want to take territory is to attack the flanks and not interrupt any big battle between the other two empires. That's what Figment's simulation shows. The NC/TR were engaged, VS flanked NC. People are loathe to pull out of the 'good fight' so the NC didn't respond with enough force to stop the VS until they had nearly lost everything. Good NC commanders would have seen that result ahead of time and tried to pull people out of the TR battle to consolidate and give opportunity for the VS and TR to fight each other.

So the middle = bad. But guess where the zerg is most likely to go? That's right, the middle. And anyone who tells them otherwise will get flamed that they don't know what they're talking about and they're interrupting their mindless "good fight". Meanwhile your empire loses most of its territory, which costs them resources, and then that makes them even less likely to succeed in their "good fight" in the center.

Center is also bad because it's likely to be a conflict involving all 3 empires, which means your chances of success in capturing anything are very low. On the flanks you are fighting only one other empire, so chances of success will depend on how quickly they respond and reinforce that flank. And if you succeed you will have moved the territory a little bit without adding too much exposure along your other flank. Only as you progress deeper do you open yourself up more.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Per the other thread we established that it is actually the same size as Ishundar/Esamir/Cyssor/Searhus. That sort of derails the rest of your post.

Except that it's clearly 2x the size, based on the more reliable information we've been offered.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

Except that it's clearly 2x the size, based on the more reliable information we've been offered.

Edit: We don't need to have the same conversation in two threads. If you want to talk about how big the continent is, do it in the other thread for that purpose and dont' derail this one. This one is about the continent design, layout, and is quite a different subject.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Malorn

T-Ray said the warpgates were 2x the size, which is one reason it creates the perception that indar is smaller, but that doesn't change the fact that both the large PS1 continents and indar are both 8km x 8km.

The first Planetside 1 had an inaccurate scale. 8k x 8k in Planetside measurements is almost meaningless.

The warpgates are twice the size as before. This comes from a man who worked on both games. He knows more than any of us.

Here is a scale comparison where the PS2 warpgate is twice as large as the PS1 warpgate. Make your own scale comparison where the new warpgates are twice as large as the old warpgates if you don't believe me. Use one of the more recent Indar maps if you want. It will probably be different, but not much.



Two times as large, at least.

Edit: I think this is entirely relevant to this thread as well. Considering continent layouts, it's important to know whether we will have 2000 players cramped together, or spread out.

But I think I've established a roughly accurate scale, so I won't debate it any more in this thread. I will be using 2x Cyssor as my baseline though.