Balance Issues

[MrVulcan]

I dont think that you should have the forced front line thing at all, why? Simple: Fronts evolve naturally, and will occur just because of the proximiaty to your warpgate, and other bases you have. If you capture the base behind their lines, it will most likely be reacaptured quickly, but also it creates some dynamic situations where you are forced to guard all aspects of your empire or else you will be outflanked. It also makes it so that you dont have just 3-4 bases that can be taken, and thus everyone wont horde at those bases and make it impossable to take. When you know where the enemy has to come at all, you will be able to mass troops there, and just hold out, so nothing will ever change. You have got to be able to be able to issolate and flank bases, it is one of the best things to do in a war (and is done all the time in RL) so you find a strong spot, and just go around, getting everything else around it, so that you can move in from all directions and stop their suply lines.

Sure, with only a couple of 1000 people online it would be better to have fronts, but assuming that there will be 10,000+ per side, I do not think that there will be any problem keeping the world populated enough to react to bases being taken.

When things are let to boild down to trench wars, where it takes hours to take inches, it is not fun.... it gets old fast....

Just my ideas

[Sarah Jinstar]

Definately agree with Vulcan on this one. With more people in the game every day, it opens up way more options for how battles will progress, flanks, sneak attacks, mass rushes etc.

If everything was just a dig in and fight for inches on every battle it would get old extremely fast.

[Matuse]

but also it creates some dynamic situations where you are forced to guard all aspects of your empire or else you will be outflanked.

No it won't, because guarding a base that isn't under attack would be BORING. Who would pay to be bored? A force that hacks a base behind the lines would have to be small to avoid detection, so when the hack message comes through it would be fairly easy to gather up enough people to stomp on the invaders.

That's a shitty way to run a railroad, constantly having to respond to small-team (or solo stealth) quick-hacks.

The problem with the idea of fronts developing by themselves, is that there are too many ways to bypass such fronts when they aren't required. HART, Warpgate, Skeeter, Wraith, AMS, these all allow people to laugh at the concept of a "front" if it isn't compelled by some aspect of the game.

As for trench warfare, lacking the ability to create trenches, and with the weaponry available to root people out (something which was noteably lacking in WW1), it isn't very likely.