Are there too many outposts/targets? - Page 2

MaxDamage · 2013-01-04, 08:44 AM

I play mostly on Esamir, where I would suggest there are not enough, and even so they feel too close together.

Figment · 2013-01-04, 08:48 AM

Originally Posted by MaxDamage

I play mostly on Esamir, where I would suggest there are not enough, and even so they feel too close together.

From my perspective, this is largely down to two things:

1. Length of path and speed of progression. Or to be more precise, the straightforwardness of adjecency routes from one warpgate to another. There's just one big facility in between you and the other warpgate. With the PS1 lattice and lack of links, your path was much longer, more indirect and filled with bottlenecks.

2. Defensibility and subsequent attrition. On Esamir, vehicle attrition is only felt close to the enemy warpgates really. Till then, the defender has too few means to slow/bog down or destroy a larger (armoured) group.

Ghoest9 · 2013-01-04, 09:18 AM

There are not to many out posts - the problem is that there are too many options from any given base/outpost.

Zergs are never forced together instead they just keep wandering in what are essentially circles.

Thunderhawk · 2013-01-04, 09:24 AM

OK, hear me out and let me know what you think, with regards to the lattice system, incorporating it into the structures we have now, and giving smaller outfits something to fight for.

(There was a post by Hamma about why he thinks there's nothing for his smaller outfit to do in PS2, and that got me thinking about giving specialist Outfits a niche, or a purpose in life)

Have modified the original picture I posted to include these smaller structures, you'll recognise some of them are well known locations now, like Crown / Crossroads / Regent rock / Stronghold / Indar Excavation site / Camp Connery / Pallisades / Vanu Archives / etc...

Ok so the way this would work would be 2 fold :-

1. The Main bases work via the lattice system, you can't attack one without having at least one of the links to it connected to a base your faction already owns.

This is the primary target of the zergs, with big battles occuring when columns move from one base to the next, defenders meet them in combat for vehicle warfare, but once you reach a base, it's your typical siege mentality.

This relies on bases also being modified to have each one with walls around it (like AMP stations, see Zurvan as an example) and the main base structures expanded to actually encompass all buildings inside one giant structure (to avoid Tanks spamming spawn rooms, and Air fliers spam rocketting the run from spawn room to main buildings)

Having distinct rooms in this giant base structure laid out exactly as it is now but inside a base (to avoid development work, just have a biodome type shield over bases to simulate the giant structure) - You could even play around with gens that take out that shield eventually done purely by infantry inside the structure. The gens could replace where the shield gens are now in bases.

--------

2. The smaller bases denoted on my diagram as blue circles (of which you could add more in the empty spaces if you want) are more like strategic positions which which to pull vehicles once you are at a base or take out as a Spec Ops group prior to the Zerg arriving to attack a specific base. These will act as Forward Operating bases for attacks to continue on a main base.

You could add all the resources to these smaller outposts, so that the more outposts you own the higher the resource gain you get for vehicles / Infantry / air resources.

What would typically be is that the map will have these as free roam hack anywhere, giving the opportunity for smaller outfits to specialise in this sort of thing. You can also have outfits dedicated to taking and defending these structures, big outfits work together to take Main bases, smaller outfits work on taking these side structures.

Gal drops return (reintroduce Galaxy Spawning for the love of god) or even dont if you dont want to as infils could drop and hack terminals and AMS's can be pulled.

There's a whole varied playstyle that develops and caters for both groups of large number orientated outfits, and small 1-2 squad based outfits who would rather operate as Special ops.

Imagine a smaller VS outfit flying across the map to drop on say Pallisades and holding it, whilst the larger outfits / zerg make there way to take Zurvan, having pallisades would be a startegic advantage ofr any attacking force, with outher outfits doing the same to other structures.

You also have the defending Special ops outfits who jump around the map securing the facilities that their empire currently own.

You get small outfit vs small outfit battles, you get zerg vs zerg battles, you get forward planning by studying the Lattices and knowing what to do next.

With hexes you can't really do all this without having large numbers to cover hexes all over the place.

Anyway, I went on for too long, I just think this would be a good way to see a different PS2 develop then what we have now, and fully expect people to not like it or hate it, but it's just my opinion.

ringring · 2013-01-04, 09:36 AM

Nice TH. I'd like there to be a few more main bases and fewer outposts - and while they're at it the devs could stretch the out of bounds out and why not seeing as they are now able to include water.

We also need to consider what makes a defendable base apart from the structure itself.
It PS1 we had the lattice which enabled you to predict the lines ot attack/defence.
We also had CE (mines and spitfires) so if we anticipated a base attack we would 'prepare defences'.
We could choose to bind at a base we deemed strategically important, even on different continents, to allow us to check out an incursion or reinforce a defence quickly
We had slower hack timers (apart from LLU bases) which gave us reaction times.
We had cr5 chat, we knew where help was needed and where a possible incursion was happening that needed checking

These were important aspects and shouldn't be forgotten and I think we'll need these or some equivalent.

Sunrock · 2013-01-04, 09:36 AM

Only complaint I have is that there are too little space between bases. 600-700 meters is not enough IMO. Makes it feels like all the bases is tacked together.

Thunderhawk · 2013-01-04, 09:42 AM

Originally Posted by Sunrock

Only complaint I have is that there are too little space between bases. 600-700 meters is not enough IMO. Makes it feels like all the bases is tacked together.

Yep thats true, but the maps are much smaller than PS1 and was trying to use existing structures in order to minimize development time, so that "this will take too long to implement" wasn't really as valid an excuse as it can be.