Sanc Strikes?

[CookieM]

Did they ever go live? Haven't played in a long time due to lag; just heard rumors before I quit.

[TheN00b]

To the tune of Black Sabbath:

They, did, not go live.
They and balance did not jive.

Yep, it's lame, but sortof accurate.

[FatalLight]

What was sanc strikes? Where you could attack the sanc?

[CookieM]

Supposedly, if you locked all the continents, you could go into the enemy's sanc.

[Mag-Mower]

that would have been awesome!

[EarlyDawn]

I'm sure terran emerald would currently agree =/

And for the record, the concept was that you would be able to attack an enemy sanctuary if you locked all three of their home continents.

The primary reason it was scrapped by the devs was because it was pointless. There was no planned reasoning or mission behind the invasion, it was just that; an invasion. It was said that they might reconsider it when there is a purpose or incentive behind it.

I personally think that they should dovetail Sanctuary Strikes, Orbital Platforms, and the force dome concept. The invasion is initiated when all of an empire's home continents are invaded and held for over 48 hours. At that time, the warpgates unlock and the siege can begin. The sanctuary is layed out much differently. The three villas are capturable, but each is protected by force domes. Not the new capitol style force domes, the old ones. They must be drained with ANTs and Flails.

Once the domes are brought down and the villas captured, defenders must HART in from the orbital platform. Vehicles cannot be brought down excupt in drop pods through the expendature of outfit points. The three villas essentially serve as "sub capitols", as it were, for the fortress. Once they are captured, the dome around the fortress drops.

A truely massive tructure, the fortress would represent each empire's ideal.

The TR fortress would be covered in fast firing weapons, and redundant spawn facilities making it a very difficult place to attack. While it may be possible to attack and disable one spawn facility, there would be several more that would need to be captured to totally disable the base.

The NC fortress would be representative of the Conglomerate's focus of overwhelming firepower. Although not brandishing as many emplaced guns as the TR fortress, the NC fort would have a plentiful amount of heavy weapons, like 150mm tank cannons, 35mm chainguns, and very defendable gates, walls, and spawn rooms.

The VS fortress would emphasize versatility and manuverability by actually being a collection of several buildings, some of which flying. The VS fort would show a mastery of ancient tech by using ziplines between these floating towers, and shield mod-like screens over critical area. The construction of the Vanu Soverignty fortress would make any ONE attack mode ineffective. Attackers would have to use a combination of air and ground, and infantry to sieze it.

Once you fight your way into the well defended citadel, you can sieze the empire's AI core. This would have a 12-hour lifespan, and would follow LLU/Module rules. The main mission after siezing the AI core would be to escort it to your sanctuary. Safely delivering it would copy it's solid-state nanite databases and designs into memory for a week. The empire that stole the core would then have access to anything and everything specific to that empire for a one-week period. HOWEVER, this core can be stolen back by the defending empire, or intercepted by the third empire. Guard it well.

The defenders can raise the shield on their fortress by siezing just one of their villas back. The only way they can invalidate a core in transit by an enemy empire is to actually bring it back to the fortress. They can relock the warpgates and reenable logins at the sanctuary by unlocking (not necessarily recapping) all three (or however many will be reimplemented down the road) home continents.
I know it would be *monumentally* difficult to achieve. That's the idea. It's almost impossible, but it still gives and empire something to strive for.

[KIAsan]

No, that would have sucked. Think what it's like now with last stand warp gates and last continent now.

Yeah, it has potential to be a great thing, but the devs would F* it up as usual and we would end up with a huge mess on our hands.

[EarlyDawn]

That's why I'd say that population needs to be balanced first.

[Baneblade]

I still plan to do Boomer art on the TR HART Building.

[NinjaBob]

Nice idea EarlyDawn but maybe lower the time to 24 hours or less instead of holding it for 48 hours. i thought it was a good idea. that would be really fun.

[EarlyDawn]

Yeah, 48 may be a bit excessive. I can agree with 24.

[Sieldan]

Damn ED, I really like the sound of that. I would love to see one of those battles. Any one else invisioning battles like Minas Tirith and Helms Deep?

[SilverLord]

I hope after this next patch they can start working on alternate base layouts and the contient work.

[Sentrosi]

Sieldan,

I was thinking of D-Day myself, but Minas Tirith would suffice

I love this idea EarlyDawn. Absolutely love it. It would bring a sense of meaning that seems to have been lost amung the Nanites.

I would say a 36 hour timer would be perfect. Serves you right for not defending correctly. Perhaps this would be a really good learning tool if you are the empire that lost it.

And I agree that the pops need to be balanced again, lock the servers and then implement this idea on the test server. Only after extensive testing is done, say perhaps a month long worth of public testing, we implement this.

[EarlyDawn]

36 hours it is.

Also, I meant to mention that there's no way the defenders can "invalidate" a AI core LLU style once it's grabbed. They can still work on resecuring the villas at sanc, or siezing their neighboring home continents to relock their warpgates, but they can't just rehack a panel and delete it. They have to actually go out, grab it and drag it back, or pin it down until it's 12 hour timer runs out.

That would actually work nicely in tandem with Hayoo's Emplacements idea. If you come to the conclusion that you don't have enough people to bring it back to sanc, and you've resecured your fortress / warpgates so you know it won't happen again, you could simply construct an epic-sized firebase around it and try to "hold the line" until it deconstructs.

Edit: Oh yeah, and anyone who spent a sufficient amount of time, be it carrying it to their capitol to copy, or trying to defend it, would get access to a special merit commendation medal to show they did their part in siezing / defending an AI-Core.