Tug-o-War Territory Capture Model

[termhn]

This also gives a reason for a sniper type player to be included. He'll be able to give the in-the-fight players info about where the opposition is focusing their forces so they can repel the big threat, and he can hold a point from stragglers while the operator goes help repel the big force.

[Bittermen]

Holy Snikeys this is detailed.

[Tasorin]

Your scenario assumes a clinical situation in which all 3 factions are actually fighting each other. In that scenario I think your analysis is spot on and applaud your effort to clarify how capture and control could work on a conceptual level in PS2.

The problem I see is when two factions decide to gang bang the third faction. While it would not change the game mechanic to flip a territory, it would change the dynamic in game reality that faction A is actually fighting a combined faction B + faction C.

In essence for clarification you have Barney and the Red Horde standing in proximity to each other and not engaging each other in combat in order to push or hold a territory against Papa Smurf and his band of giggle berries. Now Papa Smurf gets to face both Chain Gun and Lasher spam, and is a common theme in PS1 right now. I understand that has a lot to do with low population and a certain inbred hatred for CN and KN. I just hope that it doesn't play out that way in some of the more contested servers.

[Malorn]

The reason to have 3 empires is to keep each other in check and not let a single empire get too powerful. So double-teaming is going to happen by design. But there are good forms of double teaming and bad forms. We want to encourage keeping an empire from becoming too powerful but not encourage kicking an empire that's down.

The capture mechanics can assist with the problem by giving additional weight when attacking a faction that has a large amount of territory on a continent. This can be done by giving a large territory holder a handicap in their ticket generation or by giving a much smaller empire a bonus to their ticket generation - or both.

It comes down to incentives. Attacking an empire that doesn't have the manpower to defend itself is one way to win territory. We want to encourage double-teaming against a vastly powerful empire (one that might hold 50% or more of territory), but discourage it when picking on a smaller empire. Capture mechanics can certainly help with this, but there are other factors. I had a post on the "rich get richer" problem a little while ago that detailed some of the other things that need to be considered to truly address this problem.

[Blackwolf]

Very well thought out and put together. I say this as if I had half an idea of what you said, but I understood enough to know I like it.

I just don't like the potential for dragging combat out, and it seems like it still suffers the same flaws that old PS1 had. Namely the primary target of any combat will be the spawn tubes/barracks. I prefer shorter combat situations to longer ones, having to fight tooth and nail for every one of those little hexes seems... tedious. On the other hand, useless waiting around for a hack to go through and make the take over official was another very tedious activity.

Basically, cutting the enemies ability to put up resistance will always be the primary goal for taking a base, and this action is what typically ended the fight long before the CC was ever captured, be it spawn room or generators. The same general problem can occur here as it did in PS1, while at the same time it strongly discourages black ops and other actions that relied heavily on having bases linked together via choke points. However these problems are no more solved by the race system that the DEVs proposed then by the tug-of-war.

All in all I like your idea better.

[Blackwolf]

Originally Posted by WildVS

I skimmed it so forgive me if this was covered but along with Complexity/Cost you included developer cost in coding. What I also see is an added real time computational burden on the server which is already being asked to track 2000 players. I have no idea their hardware architecture but I have heard Higby speak of tuning the mission system as to not overload any one particular area. This would seem to indicate they are concerned with server or client load as it is.

I think this isn't such a big issue. The system is only marginally more complicated then the one the DEVs are already planning to put in, and would replace it rather then adding something new to it.

Of course, I'm not a computer programmer.

[Higby]

We've talked about capture mechanics that are very similar to this, in fact I even have a triangle "vector" control drawing on my whiteboard that looks exactly like your mockup from when I was trying to explain it the other day. Funny. We went away from it primarily because we didn't want capture events to have the possibility of going on for long periods of time. Right now we have a min and max time they can take - this helps a lot with balancing possible rewards.

Our current "race" model has a lot of the same advantages and is a lot easier to understand.

[NCLynx]

I think it looks pretty cool. Instead of Bases being latticed together and two types of them (LLU of Hack-n-hold), we could have different types of hexes. The current model, tug-o-war hexes, maybe one or two more?

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Higby

We've talked about capture mechanics that are very similar to this, in fact I even have a triangle "vector" control drawing on my whiteboard that looks exactly like your mockup from when I was trying to explain it the other day. Funny. We went away from it primarily because we didn't want capture events to have the possibility of going on for long periods of time. Right now we have a min and max time they can take - this helps a lot with balancing possible rewards.

Our current "race" model has a lot of the same advantages and is a lot easier to understand.

Thanks for the response Matt, also good to see you had the same concepts. The race model certainly has the beauty of simplicity and few problems.

A couple points about the long captures and rewards...

Long captures or a stalemate - I think those are good things. If an empire doesn't demonstrate sufficient control one way or the other why not let the capture continue until someone does? The shorter captures won't stop the fight, it'll just have multiple capture attempts strung together until the attacker or defender is driven out completely. The tug-o-war method has the same result, except you only have one capture.

From a resource perspective I can see though if you have significant rewards for the capture/defense then it makes sense to have that at a predictable rate and to dish them out multiple times over a long battle as opposed to at the end and having to work in resource payouts over time.

The only glaring issue I see with the race capture is ghost-capture attempts bogging down the advance, especially right after a significant capture or resecure pushes a force out of the capture area. For example if I had an infiltrator in the base after a resecure I could trigger yet another cap, even without anyone around to back it up and that cap would continue for whatever the minimum capture time is. Unless you have some sort of mechanism to detect that case and cancel the capture attempt, such as if no hostile players are in the capture vicinity? I can get behind the race model if there's some quick resecure methods or a way to prevent that sort of shenanigans. I see that being a highly annoying and frustrating issue, as you just know there's going to be a few infiltrator asshats sitting around after a capture completes to do exactly that.

Also how close was my other thread to being accurate?

[likwidneo]

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally would like to see different types of victory conditions for different bases. The LLU in PS1 wasn't a bad idea but I'd like to see a more classic CTF scenario, whereas a hack on one base opens up both LLU's and you can prevent the one side from capture by keeping their LLU away from their base.

I mean I can imagine that capturing a small outpost can't possibly have as complex of a mechanic as the 2 models being discussed here, but still, even for the big bases, different capture mechanics would spice things up. You can bring back the old hack and hold one central location and as long as you have a few other types equally distributed this one mechanic shouldn't slow gameplay down TOO much.

The one thing I would have liked to have seen is a mechanic whereby every piece of equipment in a base is capturable and instantly provides benefit to the other empire. And I mean everything, even doors. So, say rather than destroying the shield generator or the spawn tubes, you capture them, and they immediately and permanently flip until another empire captures it back. The base is then flipped and resources/XP rewards paid out once one empire possesses all equipment on the base.

So that's like 5 capture mechanics right there:
Race
3 Way Tug of War
CTF/LLU
HnH
and the segmented base capture mechanic I suggested

I'm probably asking for too much, but still, it would be nice.

[likwidneo]

Long captures or a stalemate - I think those are good things. If an empire doesn't demonstrate sufficient control one way or the other why not let the capture continue until someone does? The shorter captures won't stop the fight, it'll just have multiple capture attempts strung together until the attacker or defender is driven out completely. The tug-o-war method has the same result, except you only have one capture.

You know, Malorn has a point. I think many of those "planetside moments" that we all know and love happened in battles where we were stuck in one spot for days. If you're trying to create a game that captures more of those PS moments, I think you have to allow for the players to get themselves stuck at some point or another.

[Bonius]

Originally Posted by likwidneo

You know, Malorn has a point. I think many of those "planetside moments" that we all know and love happened in battles where we were stuck in one spot for days. If you're trying to create a game that captures more of those PS moments, I think you have to allow for the players to get themselves stuck at some point or another.

The problem, as Higby mentioned, is that it creates a balancing nightmare if you don't have set values for how rewards are going to be handed out.

Consider this:

* Players are rewarded resources upon successfully capturing or defending a base.
* Resources are directly tied to the amount of equipment available in the field (all forms of equipment costs resources as I understand it). An elegant way of limiting the possibility of an unending stream of vehicles and heavy equipment.

If you had a tug-of-war model on the facilities themselves, a battle could potentially go on for over a day. During this time, no bonus resources would be rewarded since complete control of the facility has not been established (the reward criteria).

After 24+ hours of constant heavy fighting, I'm pretty sure resources on both sides would be very limited - an ample opportunity for a third faction to jump in and sweep up the leftovers. The potentially astronomical reward that was at stake for the initial fighting factions has now been completely nullified by the third faction. This would in turn lead to further resource exhaustion within the initial two factions, giving the third faction a huge tactical advantage simply because they can afford the luxury equipment required to effectively assault facilities.

The above scenario is still quite possible with min-max values as well, but the effects of them are however much more limited and easier to balance.

EDIT: The epic planetside moments will still be there, we'll just be rewarded along the way.

[SniperSteve]

I wonder if we will see an LLU reappear.. It could make for some interesting outdoor fights

[Malorn]

24 hour+ fight over one territory is quite a bit exaggerated. I never saw any contested base battle in PS1 that lasted more than a few hours. The only thing that came close was the Tore->Leza bridge fights, and that wasn't a contested base, that was geography creating a stalemate out in the field.

They could award resources periodically simply for fighting at a contested territory, giving both sides resources to continue the fight based on how much they have controlled. However much they want to dish out spread it out in smaller chunks on 5 minute intervals or something like that. More heavy fighting = more resources.

The resource rewards for a capture can't be too great or you cause some serious rich-get-richer problems by giving the conquerer even more resources with which to have momentum.

I can see the simplicity in the race model and wanting some tangible results and see territories changing hands and have some defined victory moments. I'd just really like to see that model have some more resistance to shenanigans.

[likwidneo]

@WildVS A casual player who logs in for 30-45 minutes a day 2-3 times a week or on weekends ISN'T a player who needs to feel like he has accomplished something. He is the player who wants to get in get a few frags and doesn't much care where or under what circumstances that occurs. Even in an hour play session in a game where the pace of the battle is sped up like PS2 I doubt you're going to see 2-3 big resources boosting base captures in the span of an hour, 1 is more realistic. What about all those outposts in between? What about when your empire is on the defensive getting pushed back across the map? Even without getting stuck somewhere it's not like he can just log in and consistently expect to be showered with in game resources for such a small investment of time.

@bonius

After 24+ hours of constant heavy fighting, I'm pretty sure resources on both sides would be very limited - an ample opportunity for a third faction to jump in and sweep up the leftovers. The potentially astronomical reward that was at stake for the initial fighting factions has now been completely nullified by the third faction. This would in turn lead to further resource exhaustion within the initial two factions, giving the third faction a huge tactical advantage simply because they can afford the luxury equipment required to effectively assault facilities.

No offense, but I think you just described the WHOLE POINT of the game. Your enemy empires make tactical mistakes and you capitalize on them and gain an advantage, or vice versa. That is what is MEANT to happen, even big advantages that can carry your empire for 2-3 days. If an empire isn't given the room to make mistakes like stretching themselves thin on resources (which will happen anyway under various other scenarios besides the one being described with the tug-of-war model)than that will lead to a serious lack of dynamic and fluidity in the battlefield. Territories will almost never change hands back and forth since all empires are on an equal footing at all times and then the stalemates will occur anyways, but worse.

* Players are rewarded resources upon successfully capturing or defending a base.
* Resources are directly tied to the amount of equipment available in the field (all forms of equipment costs resources as I understand it). An elegant way of limiting the possibility of an unending stream of vehicles and heavy equipment

Yes, and resource dividends should also be paid out over time to the defender even during an extended contest of a base. That would be the home field advantage. So it's not like if you contest a base all of a sudden all resource output is shutdown from that location until the contest is over.

24 hour+ fight over one territory is quite a bit exaggerated. I never saw any contested base battle in PS1 that lasted more than a few hours. The only thing that came close was the Tore->Leza bridge fights, and that wasn't a contested base, that was geography creating a stalemate out in the field.

They could award resources periodically simply for fighting at a contested territory, giving both sides resources to continue the fight based on how much they have controlled. However much they want to dish out spread it out in smaller chunks on 5 minute intervals or something like that. More heavy fighting = more resources.

The resource rewards for a capture can't be too great or you cause some serious rich-get-richer problems by giving the conquerer even more resources with which to have momentum.

I can see the simplicity in the race model and wanting some tangible results and see territories changing hands and have some defined victory moments. I'd just really like to see that model have some more resistance to shenanigans.

Good point about tore-leza. Bottom line I think is one thing that Higby has stated over and over is that the difference between PS and any other shooter out there is the fact that what you do has the potential to feel like it matters. But, if the developers have to set a 15 minute clock on every base cap because they can't figure out a way to distribute resources properly otherwise, then that tends to deprive players of that feeling. Its happening a lot in PS1 right now with the low pops. Bases are rolled over every 15 minutes like clockwork and it feels pointless. Whereas fighting over one place for hours at a time, that is where the meaning is. That is where you feel like you've earned something. That is what opens up the battlefield for deeper strategic game play. The most creative and unique strategies are usually borne out of stalemates. I'm not saying every single fight should be that way, or even the majority. But there has to be room for that possibility. I think there is plenty of room for both the race and tug-of-war models to be implemented at different bases, and more...