Global Strategy & PS2's Territory System

[Malorn]

Bringing this discussion back up again. When I was watching the PS2 Public Panel I saw this problem was specifically brought up and it was one of the few things they didn't have a good answer to and recognized it as a difficult problem.

Josh said that the Mission System can help here (as I surmised earlier in this thread), and Smed mentioned that resources can spawn and despawn dynamic as an elegant solution.

Basically if they detect that an empire is overwhelming an underdog and the underdog is having a hard time competing they can spawn resources in territory the underdog already owns as one way to give 'em a leg up out of the bad situation.

I think that combined with the global handicap system I mentioned earlier would be really good for solving this problem. The global handicap suggestion was one where they take the Adjacency system where territories are easy/difficult to capture based on how many nearby territories you own. The handicap suggestion was to augment those rates based on the global territory owned by an empire. So if you're the juggernaut empire who owns tons of territory and resources then you'll have a little harder time gaining more territory and the underdog you're beating down on will have an easier time taking your turf. The more territory an empire owns, the bigger the handicap.

This is also intended to encourage the 3rd empire from not attackign the underdog and instead attacking the juggernaut since it will be easier for them to take back that territory as well. Two birds with one stone you could say.

[brinkdadrink]

I just wanted to throw my two cents in here.

1st is that there are no more sancuarys so were not sure if the last stand will be in a corner or surrounded by the sea of red somewhere.

The main point I have is that as an empire if you dont attack the Big empire and instead go for the smaller one you allow the bigger empire to get more resources and to further increase his arsenal (If that is how resources work). Eventually you will have to attack them so the best thing to do is to do it earlier than later before they become to strong.

I see your side that some will want to attack the loser for easier land and i hope the missions help stop this from happening

When I played planetside several years ago there was plenty of people to keep tragedy's such as the "double-team on the small empire" from happening and i think with the F2P which i feel will be like the reserves (BR6 only) will help keep the numbers high enough to stop this situation from happening for many years.

[Malorn]

The path of least resistance is to attack the weaker empire. While in theory one should attack the stronger empire it rarely plays out that way (as described earlier in this topic). It happened daily on Emerald in 03-05 and still occurred daily every time I resubbed since then. It doesn't even need to be a coordinated effort, it's just human nature.

Two good ways to counteract that nature is to provide incentives to attack elsewhere and to put a little handicap on the big dog that makes it more lucrative to attack them.

The first way I just described is missions. If they are worthwhile and auto-generated by the empire then the empire can detect the situation and put most if not all of its missions on the big empire. Depending on how rewarding missions are that may be sufficient to ward off the behavior.

Additionally having bonuses to attacking that empire (i.e. capturing their territory takes less time) I think would be strong enough motivation to counteract that natural desire to go for the weaker animal. When you have the prospect of getting more territory and also getting some good mission rewards then when you evaluate "what is the best place to attack?" the weaker empire will look less attractive.

I truly believe that's all we really need. It's a simple question - what target is more lucrative? Naturally its the weaker target, but if the stronger one is more vulnerable and you have incentives to attack them specifically then it shifts in the other direction.

[Kurtz]

I agree.

Automated Missions based on Territory held. Benefits for attacking the Empire with the most resources.