On the odd occasion I've found a biolab fight going on on Woodman it's more the monotony of the same old base and capture tactics usually filtering in with the zerg to overwhelm the defenders or loitering around a farming point on the attack zerg choke points to pick up the defenders as the medic/engineer as that's what I main as.
Personally I think variation can be solved in some instances not only with different capture designs but biolabs that "make sense". Let me explain alittle (and this is going to focus heavily on Esamir as thats where it struck me the most).
Esamir bio lab - why on a sub artic continent is the biolab of all places got 2 huge gaps in it's dome? It kind of reminded me of this in places:
Ok so functionally it feels kind of flawed on the "let's grow and research things, but let the cold air in" level while Nanite Ned is charging for the heating bills.
Possible redesign solution to mix things up:
I've used Andvari bio lab as an example as this was slightly quicker to microsoft paint, however the other bio labs' outposts probably follow a similar theme which I'll try edit with enough thought/time. I apologise for the lack of photo shop skills!
The dome is at ground zero with no way in or out over the surface - lab legs are removed and the dome is effectively encasing the entire lab area (not the courtyard) the surrounding walls are completed however still have the in/out entrances shielded and these are still dropped and raised in the same manner of overload/stable/repair.
As you can see the dome has had it's landing pads removed and migrated to corner post style versions of a tower these just spawn/re-arm the air vehicles as normal.
G1 and G2 represent Garage bays 1 & 2 that are linked via transit corridor to the attacker attacker's teleport link level - you'll do well to keep these as they're linked to generators in the courtyard which use the same rules as the techlab/amp facility generators that bring down the main facility shields.
You still cap your normal 2 outposts that allow the to/from travel for the controlling faction (in this instance at Andarvi) however the new third is locked to only allowing the defending empire to teleport through to/from. This third one allows the defence to take the fight back to the attackers and recap their taken outposts if the attackers just push on through.
The biggest change is gaining access to the biolab:
The biolab is itself multi-tierd in door infantry combat with the top level having the defending faction's spawn room as per you'd find now (which I'll call the SCU level) - however the lower levels that are cut into the continent surface have no spawn locale. They do have a teleport that goes to the SCU level and this link is broken by capping each level (A/B/C). I don't have any design ideas that are fair to both attacking/defending sides of each level as this is just ideas on the back of a cigarette packet; however I've tried to put something together that both gives a chance to the defence and the offence where even if you decide to let either one come right up to you you'll be punished for doing so.
The main thing though is having a new layout that doesn't feel copy and pasted. Hopefully not steered the topic way off too much here..
(Edited: Credit for hi-res maps go to yogiz on reddit)
2013-03-02, 06:32 AM
Linear Mode
