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.
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