Mock up of the hex territory map

[Trolltaxi]

Originally Posted by SuperMorto

An image I edited a while ago, it can be seen in my albums:

This is a real PS2 map (with a small amount of editing):

I give you Indar!

It looks to me as if we have 3 warp gates per cont (1 per empire), and clusters of 3 other bases around them gates. This map is much more populated that it seems. There are many structure on this map. Loads of hexes to capture

I do believe the bottom right is concealing a warp gate as we can only see 2.

You will see in the next image an idea of where I think the 3rd warp gate is:

Did you stich it together from Higby's tweeted phone-pics? Awesome! (I mean, the pics, but didn't quoted them again.)

[Miir]

Originally Posted by Higby

Hey, I like that video!

Thanks. Any chance for some new details?

Originally Posted by Nobel

Really like the video... whats the song?

Found it on Youtube Audio Swap
Title: Vistas Unknown
Artist Simon Lambros
Album: ANW1569 - Orchestral Subterfuge

Originally Posted by SuperMorto

An image I edited a while ago, it can be seen in my albums:

This is a real PS2 map (with a small amount of editing):

I give you Indar!

Nice work on cleaning up the pic! This may come in handy.

[SuperMorto]

Yea guys it was on one of the screenies Higby or T-Ray posted.

Best I could do with it. But it might help a little.

[Straws]

It's nice to see some mock ups, it really helps with critique, otherwise people, whether they're being for or against a particular idea are making baseless judgement. Even though this is not necessarily representative of what the development team has in mind, let alone the final product, I do want to address the ideas that have come up so far.

The examples presented so far are a little bit too repetative and uniform for my personal tastes. The territory concept is one which I feel is very important to Planetside 2 due to how little we used the terrain in the original product, but if we focus on polygons, regardless of the size, then it risks causing monotonous gameplay and deminishes the importance of the terrain and the various playstyles I believe the developers wish for the maps to "guide" the players through.

However, that said, it's not a wholly flawed designs you guys have going so far. In fact, for facilities and the immediate area around them (around the same size as PS1's SOIs), I think the hexagon idea is solid.

For the remainder of a continent, I think the territory system needs to take on a more geometric feel, with some of the inbetween-facility areas being quite large, and encompassing landmarks. I wouldn't like a river, for example, to take up a dozen segments for example, I'd rather it took up one or two, using the river itself to seperate two particular territories.

However, considering the work you guys have put into these, I feel I missed something from a previous interview, and that Territory has already been confirmed as being systematically segmented. Don't get me wrong, it makes sense from the standpoint of how the product is being marketed, it's very militaristic, but it's one of those things which may result in restrict effects on gameplay.

However, to counter my own argument a little, a geometric set-up does risk simulating similar issues to the Lattice system. Bottlenecks are fun, for a time. Ultimately, if a more Geometric approach is taken, I would suggest that it is designed in such a way that it can be easily tweeked, or even overhauled, manually or automatically, on a regular (4-6 months) basis.

Originally Posted by ThGlump

Lets the turn-based game begin

Btw as i understand that hexagrid is only underlying structure, and final territories will be made from several of them (not only around bases and towers).

It's posts like this that makes me realise that I have become an exceptionally lazy poster over the past few years. Ah well, I'll leave my somewhat uninformed concerns, and misunderstandings on how the hexagonal system is intended to work as it is. It's just a little bit irrelevant now, but some of it is constructive, just not that much.

[Ailos]

Originally Posted by SuperMorto

And another image showing the clusters of the 3 empires (in theory)

The smaller green dots look to me like buildings:

I think your count of buildings there is waaay too low. I only counted around 50 points to capture.

I think the real count is a lot higher. Outlined all the ones that appear as buildings or capture points, and there's 100+ of them.



And was this more along the lines of what you all were thinking with the territory not being necessarily so geometrical?

[Figment]

Seeing this image especially, I'm really not sold on the idea of empire sanctuaries per continent. It makes the world feel cramped and forced as it forces very specific approaches to conquering a continent: always the same starting point and typically ending in a stalemate threeway (with an approximate long and stretched frontline as above) with little hope of progressing further: as you progress in one direction, the other empire will start pushing your side and since you have to defend the entire frontline, this will make it pretty hard to hold on to territory that stretches your frontline further. Even if you manage to push one empire and its, say, 500 troops back to a sanc, you simply can't lock the third empire out of a fight for long. :/

Trying to encircle an enemy in there seems a pretty hopeless thing to attempt considering the ease of respawning elsewhere. In PlanetSide 1 winning Hossin from a non-Mulac entry point can only be done if you trap people in for instance Ixtab (although more likely in Voltan due to the post-capital cap requirements crap that reduced your movement options even further). But that only works when they can't and won't easily spawn to the east of the continent. We all know most players are too lazy to recall to sanc en mass as it is seen as time wasted where you could be fighting, but if you can create a mission where you "spawn" near the mission, that'd make it almost impossible to flank, because after your resec you just make another mission and spawn right back to the main fight. Or, if you almost get circled, you just spawn straight to your cont's sanctuary and avoid getting circled. Meaning you got to farm without risk of entrapment.

Spawning options in combination with missions and continent sanctuaries are going to have a massive impact on the flow of battle and I personally fear the result will be endless stalemates.

[ArmaGetItOn]

Wasn't it said somewhere that hexes can be captured even if they aren't adjacent to ones you own? You made the pictures under the assumption that only adjacent hexes can be captured.

I'd prefer it if only adjacent hexes were capturable so we don't have back and forth back-capping, but I'm just sayin'.

[DOUBLEXBAUGH]

Originally Posted by Figment

Seeing this image especially, I'm really not sold on the idea of empire sanctuaries per continent. It makes the world feel cramped and forced as it forces very specific approaches to conquering a continent: always the same starting point and typically ending in a stalemate threeway (with an approximate long and stretched frontline as above) with little hope of progressing further: as you progress in one direction, the other empire will start pushing your side and since you have to defend the entire frontline, this will make it pretty hard to hold on to territory that stretches your frontline further. Even if you manage to push one empire and its, say, 500 troops back to a sanc, you simply can't lock the third empire out of a fight for long. :/

Trying to encircle an enemy in there seems a pretty hopeless thing to attempt considering the ease of respawning elsewhere. In PlanetSide 1 winning Hossin from a non-Mulac entry point can only be done if you trap people in for instance Ixtab (although more likely in Voltan due to the post-capital cap requirements crap that reduced your movement options even further). But that only works when they can't and won't easily spawn to the east of the continent. We all know most players are too lazy to recall to sanc en mass as it is seen as time wasted where you could be fighting, but if you can create a mission where you "spawn" near the mission, that'd make it almost impossible to flank, because after your resec you just make another mission and spawn right back to the main fight. Or, if you almost get circled, you just spawn straight to your cont's sanctuary and avoid getting circled. Meaning you got to farm without risk of entrapment.

Spawning options in combination with missions and continent sanctuaries are going to have a massive impact on the flow of battle and I personally fear the result will be endless stalemates.

This^^^

[Figment]

Here is how I see the future of Indar using a sample stalemate situation. Note, I don't think that with a few hundred people per empire you'll be capping an awful lot far behind the lines without backup. I predict effective strategies to be about taking flanks to keep your back as secure as possible and a unified frontline. Splitting an enemy up into pockets using some sort of Ardenne Offensive encirclement strategy may work, but only if the continent is big enough and probably only if it's a two-way.

Anyway, I present: the future of Indar?

















Don't have time for description writings, but I take it is clear enough.

[Miir]

Nice job on the graphics... actually what you show there looks awesome! Very fluid and dynamic. Global commanders are going to have their work cut out for themselves this time.

Regarding stalemates:

People will only fight on the front lines for so long before trying something new. I don't think stalemates will be that much of an issue. You also have to factor in terrain, bases, skill and organization. One side may be able to hold back the zerg with less people because of skill level or base design or a terrain choke point. That would free up more people to attack on other fronts.

I know they mentioned that some areas on the map will only be accessible via air or land(caves?) so that will add addition challenges.

Can't wait to see!

[Ailos]

Well if the game is to become tailored to the Zerg, this is like heaven for those guys.

We'll have to see in beta how this pans out, but yeah, you raise a valid concern with that. The fact that in such a situation, we'd almost never be able to actually capture anything is somewhat worrying.

Perhaps the sanc-like warpgates could become dynamic? Somewhat similar to the lattice structure, but limited to gates only. I.E. Let's imagine Indar is linked to Esamir, Solsar and Forseral. Each of those continents is completely controlled by VS, NC, and TR, respectfully. Then on Indar, the three warpgates leading to each continent are VS, NC, and TR sanctuaries, while the pairing warpgates on Esamir, Solsar, and Forseral are somehow dynamically allocated to be sanctuaries for either all empires, or in rotating fashion are the strongholds for the other empires. If NC want to eliminate TR access to Indar, they would have to capture Forseral. Once that happens, the linked pair of warpgates between Indar and Forseral become NC sanctuary gates until one of the continents is captured by another empire (at which point, the warpgates get reassigned).

Eh, maybe that's just mad musings though, I could imagine so many faults in what I just typed.

[Shogun]

really looks like the frontlines could get stuck a lot if the footholds are totally static. hope beta proofs us wrong.
if every squareinch of terrain is handcrafted, it would be such a waste to be only fighting in the middle of the cont for most of the time.

[BorisBlade]

Hopefully they were smart enough to make teh goofy footholds dynamic and have ownership rotate. I still laugh at how they said "no sanctuaries cause they slow stuff down!" but then they went and put in a zillion of em on every continent. They should have just used the warpgate system, its much better. Lame safe zones on conts are stupid and redundant. You cant capture a cont anymore with those there and they just cause all kinds of other problems. Better to just just have one safe zone per empire and use a rotating gate system. Keeps it more interesting and allows for actual cont capture.

Plus any 3way will just go on forever if you cant actually boot people off a cont because of lame safe zones where they can mass up and regroup in safety on cont. Getting kicked to sanc makes people give up and change plans, just gettin pushed to the base behind what you were fighting for, aka the safe zone, means nothign but a safe and easy rearm and regroup as if it were just another base.

Seems that we are losing the only real "win" condition you had in ps1 which was a cont cap. Seems kind of like the opposite of what people wanted (i liked how it was personally).

[DOUBLEXBAUGH]

The Zerged out 3-way stalemates were the WORST fights in PS1. This new system seems to Force those fights

[SuperMorto]

Originally Posted by DOUBLEXBAUGH

The Zerged out 3-way stalemates were the WORST fights in PS1. This new system seems to Force those fights

Act like one get treat like one

Thing is I was playing PS other night, and it seemed folks didn't want to do tactics, 95% of PS players are zerg, but the other 5% are tactical masterminds. And the maps above give so much more than PS1, it uncountable. Tactical movement will win on these maps or overall might.