A thought on the "uncapturable staging points"

[Malorn]

I didn't like these at first, but having given it some thought I think they'll be really good for gameplay.


1) They are a natural counter to a large dominant empire.

In PS1 as you locked more continents you consolidated lattice links. While you opened up a few new ones, you invariably sealed a few on other continents as well. This even made some continents completely locked and unassaultable beyond a random cave link. The result was that as the big empire gained more territory their vulnerability decreased or at least stayed the same. This allowed them to maintain the dominance since there was no significant increase in vulnerability for all that territory.

With an uncap base on every continent as an empire expands and owns more territory they will progressively become more vulnerable globally, as each continent gained creates two new attack vulnerabilities. This will naturally make it much harder for a single empire to dominate most of the world.

Conceptually this is similar to having a lattice link and a broadcast gate to every continent in the game. They dont' need uncap bases to do this, but with them they don't really need sanctuary either if you're just hopping from one uncap to another. But there are other benefits beyond this one...


2) They make breaking into a continent easier by providing direct vehicle resources on-site as opposed to having to bring them in.

Invasions in PS1 were hard because the defender had tremendous advantage. They had all the facility benefits, they had all of the production on the continent, and the attacker could be removed of all spawn points which forcibly removes a chunk of them. In PS2 they'll also have a huge resource advantage. In both games they are confined to attacking a single vulnerable point. The worst part is that the attacker will generally not replace vehicles because that involves going back to sanctuary, pulling a vehicle, and going back through the gate (which may not even be possible if the continent was pop-locked!). So once the original vehicles were destroyed the invasion was basically over. Meanwhile the defender just keeps pulling more and more and it gets very lopsided quickly. If the vehicle pads were actually right there on-site then they'd be encouraged to pull vehicles just like the defender is doing and the fight would be meaningful.

Defenders usually have natural advantage because the attacker must come to them and they can set up static defenses, position each other, etc. When you add all of these together it usually took a huge raid to break into even a moderately defended continent.

What these uncaps do for that situation is give the attacker a lot more opportunity to be successful and keep the game from getting to stagnant positions. A locked continent, while it is a sense of satisfaction, is not good for the game because it creates a stagnant situation where the defender has all the advantage. To keep a tangible benefit for domination of a continent worthwhile I have proposed another thread to address that issue:
http://www.planetside-universe.com/f...ad.php?t=36627

That said, with the ability to pull vehicles immediately and have a hard spawn point attackers can wage meaningful war on a continent as long as they are determined to do so. It forces the defenders (who still have a huge resource advantage) to work a bit harder to maintain that complete dominance.


3) They give players viable alternatives at all times.

One thing that sort of sucked in PS1 was being forced to fight on a single continent at any given moment in time. Or worse, being forced to fight on the same continent each and every day. This is related to the problem identified in 1) above. As empires solidified lattice links, even for non-dominant empires the attack options were relatively limited to a handful of continents at any given moment. That lead to gameplay stagnation over time as you didn't really see anything new, just the same fight different day.

The uncap bases allow players the freedom to choose and effectively wage war on any continent they want. They can go after whichever one has close resources they need, or whichever one is more tactically viable given their situation. Once they get there they will have some core resources available to them like a spawn point and vehicle pads so that they at least stand a fighting chance at making a dent.

And from a gameplay variety standpoint it allows all empires to see all the continents whenever they want, instead of having a few "home continents" that empires see all the f'ing time, and a few opposing home continents that they rarely got to see and even more rarely got a meaningful battle on.

This also helps address the problem where you can't kick an enemy out of a continent. Sometimes an empire refused to leave. Why? Because they didn't have any other choice, or the alternative was some boring stagnant fight they didn't want to do. This helps fix that by giving them many more viable alternatives if a fight just isn't going anywhere.

It doesn't prevent locks, nor does it prevent an empire from completely dominating. In fact if an empire does dominate and they're getting an invasion from an uncap then they're all earning a lot of resources while fighting and holding that territory. But it does make them work for it, and it makes it progressively harder to hold more and more territory globally.


The only thing I really hope happens with the uncaps is that they mix up the which locations each empire has every so often (like once a month or something). That way we avoid getting the same battles against the same opponents from the same direction on each continent. If they mix them up we'll get variety in gameplay. It's simple to do and goes a lot way to keeping the game fresh.