Outfit Airships or Outfit Ground Bases

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by Graywolves

If you deploy it and it is destroyed doesn't mean it can't still function as a zoned guild hall area. Give it a timer and resource cost until it can redeploy again, maybe even make it look like it needs repairs to people hanging out inside.


As for combat purposes or physical presence with direct benefits on battlefields, I think that as long as they balance it correctly it can work. This game takes place in a universe that is in complete control of the developers, all they need to do is control it. Limit the number of ones that can deploy per continent, per empire. Give them long timers for redeployment whether destroyed or recalled.

Ooh, you have a good idea. When it's deployed, it can't do ANYTHING except serve as a guildhall. It can't be destroyed, but it has no weapons either.

Although, where would you be able to deploy them at? It would still allow spawning, after all. So if you deploy it somewhere and that hex gets taken by the enemy, it's going to be an invincible spawn point?

Unless there's enough room in footholds or other noncombat areas to deploy all the outfit guildhalls. Either that or it has to be a separate instance like EQ guild halls.

[Graywolves]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

Ooh, you have a good idea. When it's deployed, it can't do ANYTHING except serve as a guildhall. It can't be destroyed, but it has no weapons either.

Although, where would you be able to deploy them at? It would still allow spawning, after all. So if you deploy it somewhere and that hex gets taken by the enemy, it's going to be an invincible spawn point?

Unless there's enough room in footholds or other noncombat areas to deploy all the outfit guildhalls. Either that or it has to be a separate instance like EQ guild halls.

Actually I was going towards when it ISN'T deployed it is functioning only as a Guild Hall.

So if you were to deploy it somewhere and a condition for it to withdraw occured, it would be unable to redeploy for some time. Be absent from the world but still function as an instanced guild hall outside of the conventional game world.


I might have meant to use instanced instead of zoned. I'll edit that.

[Metalsheep]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

That's why there would be a combination limit. It costs a lot, and you can't buy more than 1 per week(or 2 weeks if appropriate) even if you have the resources. And the more people that are in an outfit, the more people that are sitting there subject to that one per week limit and the less people there are in other outfits to buy their own.

But then, that gives those outfits time to gather a ton more resources. So that every week on the dot they'll just spawn another one. It'll get focus fired to death or roflstomp everything till everyone quits. And the cycle continues. And thats just for ONE outfit. Again i will use GOTR as an example, GOTR has multiple divisions that they divide their outfit up into. Each division has a pretty large amount of people. In theory, GOTR would be able to spawn 2-3 of these things at once with their seperate divisions. How will you control that? Limit how many ships they have per empire? Then who gets to spawn their ship? How will that be decided?

The idea of some kind of super-vehicle/weapon is inherity flawed for multiplayer balance. Its eaither too weak, or too powerful. And then it is eaither extreamly spammable after someone figures out a trick, or they're hard-limited so that every time one goes down, someone else has another ready and sets it loose.

I'd prefer to see Ground Bases myself, but at some point every important outfit is going to have a base, and where will the space be on the world map for all those different outfit bases? The idea of Planetside and Planetside 2 is that it is persistant and non-instanced. I don't see how Outfit Bases would be possible without instancing them in somewhere.

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by Metalsheep

But then, that gives those outfits time to gather a ton more resources. So that every week on the dot they'll just spawn another one. It'll get focus fired to death or roflstomp everything till everyone quits. And the cycle continues. And thats just for ONE outfit. Again i will use GOTR as an example, GOTR has multiple divisions that they divide their outfit up into. Each division has a pretty large amount of people. In theory, GOTR would be able to spawn 2-3 of these things at once with their seperate divisions. How will you control that? Limit how many ships they have per empire? Then who gets to spawn their ship? How will that be decided?

The idea of some kind of super-vehicle/weapon is inherity flawed for multiplayer balance. Its eaither too weak, or too powerful. And then it is eaither extreamly spammable after someone figures out a trick, or they're hard-limited so that every time one goes down, someone else has another ready and sets it loose.

I'd prefer to see Ground Bases myself, but at some point every important outfit is going to have a base, and where will the space be on the world map for all those different outfit bases? The idea of Planetside and Planetside 2 is that it is persistant and non-instanced. I don't see how Outfit Bases would be possible without instancing them in somewhere.

It's not a problem, so what if they are spawned every week? The key is that there aren't 20 of them flying around all the time, and there won't be.

It might take a squad of fighters, but these things are not superweapons, they can be destroyed. And if they end up NOT destroyed because they run around with a squad of fighters running escort, then SOE has truly scored a victory.

Also, the persistence thing is used to shoot down too many things. If something makes sense to do then we need to stop having tunnel vision saying that we can't do it because it conflicts with persistence. The persistence that matters is that when you capture a base, it stays yours until the enemy takes it back. Other things have to be considered on a case by case basis and if there are going to be guild halls for lounging, then they may as well be instanced.

[Sledgecrushr]

Here is an idea, how about just a handful of these airships. They would be capturable but also indestructable. So if your outfit is in posession of one of these ships then you really are a bunch of bad asses.

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

Here is an idea, how about just a handful of these airships. They would be capturable but also indestructable. So if your outfit is in posession of one of these ships then you really are a bunch of bad asses.

Well, indestructible I don't agree with but capturable I would like to see! But then...regular vehicles aren't going to be hackable, so how would this work? It is just a big vehicle, after all.

[Metalsheep]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

It's not a problem, so what if they are spawned every week? The key is that there aren't 20 of them flying around all the time, and there won't be.

It might take a squad of fighters, but these things are not superweapons, they can be destroyed. And if they end up NOT destroyed because they run around with a squad of fighters running escort, then SOE has truly scored a victory.

Also, the persistence thing is used to shoot down too many things. If something makes sense to do then we need to stop having tunnel vision saying that we can't do it because it conflicts with persistence. The persistence that matters is that when you capture a base, it stays yours until the enemy takes it back. Other things have to be considered on a case by case basis and if there are going to be guild halls for lounging, then they may as well be instanced.

If it only takes a squad of fighters to kill one, then why bother making it such a huge resource cost? Being as large as people state they want it to be, it will instantly be vaporized by combined fire. Have you ever watched a BFR enter the battlefield? As soon as a BFR enters the fray, the entire enemy team forgets about anything that might be guarding the BFR, and they just annihilate it with sheer volume of fire. (A good BFR pilot can use this to assist his team. But i digress.) They next to never get a chance to do anything in a real fight. The same thing will happen to these warships. They'll be spawned, and destroyed in minits or seconds and the points spent were wasted. Then a different outfit spawns one, it gets nuked. Ect. ect. Its a nightmare to balance them out correctly, yet have them cost a preportionate amount to their effectivness, and keep them from being spammed or lame all at the same time.

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by Metalsheep

If it only takes a squad of fighters to kill one, then why bother making it such a huge resource cost? Being as large as people state they want it to be, it will instantly be vaporized by combined fire. Have you ever watched a BFR enter the battlefield? As soon as a BFR enters the fray, the entire enemy team forgets about anything that might be guarding the BFR, and they just annihilate it with sheer volume of fire. (A good BFR pilot can use this to assist his team. But i digress.) They next to never get a chance to do anything in a real fight. The same thing will happen to these warships. They'll be spawned, and destroyed in minits or seconds and the points spent were wasted. Then a different outfit spawns one, it gets nuked. Ect. ect. Its a nightmare to balance them out correctly, yet have them cost a preportionate amount to their effectivness, and keep them from being spammed or lame all at the same time.

Well, you have to remember that I'm expecting it to be too high for infantry or tanks to get a lot of shots in(btw, I don't expect the airship to be able to do any damage to ground units without flying low enough to get raped by tanks, either), so, knowing that it's usually only going to be vulnerable to air units, is 10 fighters really that small of a number? And I didn't mean that it would only take one pass per fighter.

[Graywolves]

I don't expect outfit's to have a Super Weapon of some kind. As we discussed on AGN these could have some weapons maybe. But would likely be used more for more passive benefits of having it in the area.

Anything that makes itself too vulnerable to fire is going to die easily.




If an Outfit Warship were to make it in to the game and ended up flying directly over an enemy base blasting everything away, I'd be disappointed. As pointed out, it would just be destroyed.


It's important to stay aware (in this discussion) that this topic is purely conceptual. Anything said is flexible as we are just bouncing ideas around.

[Baneblade]

Man, if airships were put in my way, they would not be the next BFR or GG.

[Garem]

Originally Posted by Metalsheep

The problem with something like Airships that i see is, that no matter how much you make them cost. Someone will find a way to crank out tons of them. They did that in Eve when they added those SuperCarrier ships. (I dont actually play Eve, so correct me if im wrong.) The designers only expected a few to ever be made because of their astronomical cost. But players figured out a way to churn out tons of them. So you'd have to impose a hard limit on how many can be present.

And even then. As soon as an outfit builds a Warship, every enemy on the continent is going to Focus-Fire it down immediately. The biggest threat will be attacked first, so the outfit loses that thing they worked so hard to build. In order to make them survive that kind of firepower, you have to make them inherently overpowered. Then they become almost impossible to kill, and no fun. Either way, someones not gonna have any fun when one of these things enters the fray.

Kind of bouncing off of Greywolves idea and my resistance to the assumptions Metalsheep made here...

What about if there were only one or two Airships allowed per continent, per week, per faction that Outfits could bid on rights to use?

That being said, Airships should never be unstoppable. I like the "back for repairs" idea that Greywolves had, too. This would very much justify making Airships much weaker than BF 2142 Titans and EVE Mothership and Titans and whatnot while keeping the great Planetside theme of never-ending war.

I am strongly disinclined to promote incentives to split up groups and gain power in the process. Assume all players input equal effort- a group of 100 players should gain no benefit from becoming two coordinated groups of 50 players. That's very counter-intuitive! Organization should be rewarded with increasing returns to offset the challenge of organizing and leading.

Using that logic, I'd prefer a group of 100 players to have a much better ground/air base than two groups of 50 players can do.

Acquiring airships (or hell, even ground bases) should always be a strategic decision of risk/reward. This is a developer issue, not one we can rightly address.

Similarly, if enemies focus fire airships... good! They're thinking strategically. If the owners lose it, either the Devs need to rebalance it or the players should have been more careful with their assets. It doesn't have to be overpowered at all! This isn't an issue we can address right now because it doesn't actually exist, of course. No sense quarreling over balance concerns until there's something to compare!