An Idea.

[Kaikou]

This is just something I came up with while typing in another forum...

Make use of the vast world around the bases. 100% of the battles take place in/around the bases and it wastes all that open space out there. Make territories based on nodes or something that empires can claim on continents. It'd produce a "mini continent lock" where only a portion of the continent gets locked so other empires can't HART into those areas. That way there'd be a lot more areas for fights to take place other than in bases.

Get 100 or so nodes on each continent that you can claim (all in which would have their own lattice structure to them) and once you have a complete lattice (be it from one coast to another coast, a circular shape in the middle of nowhere, anything) then your empire locks that portion of the continent off. Each node could have a 5 minute hack timer, and possibly a small SOI that air and possibly ground vehicles can't enter, making it less easy for the attackers to simply drop a squad directly on top of the node and hack it or swarm 20 vanguards. There could even be a twist where each lattice node is connected to a base, and if your empire gains control of that base, all the nodes connected to it change to your empire. They are still hackable by other empires but it'd give you immediate ownership of them upon the base being taken.

Also, bases within the territory of one empire would not be hackable unless that territory was opened by taking some nodes to break their links. This would require people to move into the forests and such to take nodes before hitting the base itself. If a base is already hacked, and the opposing empire manages to get all of the nodes around the base under their control, putting the base into their territory, the hack would not be stopped, hence the bases would still be major targets.

There would be a ton of combinations to the lattice nodes because they'd all each be connected to say...10 other nodes. Depending on how much territory you'd own, you would get certain bonuses. Health, armor, stamina, maybe a somewhat weak (but still makes a difference) personal shield, similar to the implant, but of course not as effective as the implant.

I think that'd be a really good way to spread battles out over the entire continent and make use of all that space. It would also help with lag because zergs would HAVE to split up. As is there is usually ONE (maybe 2) targets at most at a time for a zerg to work with. With nodes it would increase vital targets to 10 or more, making one big clump of people useless.

What do you think?