New lattice and gray lands

[capiqu]

Trying out the new lattice system on the test server. It brings much needed clarity and I believe it is the way to go. I just have an issue with all the gray on the map we now have. so much of the land will not be fought over now.
What if all those gray areas are divided into hexes with facilities that can be instantly hacked without the need of any link or adjacency. Those captured lands can then give your empire resources.
The enemy on the other hand will be able to hack those facilities, also with no link or adjacency, and thus capture those lands depriving your empire of resources or in order to disturb your empires reinforcements and or resupply lines.
These facilities would function like Planetside1 towers. They can be instantly hacked and captured but they can not be used to capture a lattice link facility or base other then providing a near by spawn point.
These captured none lattice hexes can be lighter colors of the empires colors or could have highlighted borders so that the direction of the lattice will remain clear.
Thoughts?

[Whiteagle]

Eh, I saw an idea on the SOE forums that I liked better, where to collect the Resources of a Neutral Zone you had to hold all the Hexes on its boarders.

I would however like Enemy and Allied Activity Monitoring to be broken down for each Micro Hex instead of just Lattice Territories, sort of like the Heat Map of old...

...I find it rather bothersome an entire Platoon can drop off the face of the map just by scooting 5 meters outside of a thin strip of land.

[AThreatToYou]

Eh, I saw an idea on the SOE forums that I liked better, where to collect the Resources of a Neutral Zone you had to hold all the Hexes on its boarders.

ZING

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by AThreatToYou

ZING

...How is that a zing?

I mean there is nothing preventing you from entering the Neutral Zones and I'm not opposed to something being located in them that would be worth fighting over, but link-less bases that give you Resources are just asking for abuse...

[Phantomdestiny]

what about AI trucks that drive from neutral territory then to your "captured" link then convoy to your warpgate and that give you resources. Therefore it makes an event and allows for a new way to deny resources by ambushing those trucks and destroying them. Heck those could just be sundies with a NS color scheme (already in the game files) on them with maybe some sort of logo describing which faction they are delivering to .

You could even add a mechanic to "steal" the resource sundies like a train robbery and make them go to your warpgate by hacking them with an infiltrator.

We need more ANT like mechanics but while making them more interesting and more new player friendly while adding strategic depth

[Climhazzard]

Originally Posted by Whiteagle

[...] there is nothing preventing you from entering the Neutral Zones [...]

Except our treaty with the Romulans.

[AThreatToYou]

Originally Posted by Climhazzard

Except our treaty with the Romulans.

Aaahh, funny.

[capiqu]

I would love to read it if someone has a direct link. If not I'll search it when i get time to.

[camycamera]

there is nothing stopping you from fighting over those neutral zones.

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by Phantomdestiny

what about AI trucks that drive from neutral territory then to your "captured" link then convoy to your warpgate and that give you resources. Therefore it makes an event and allows for a new way to deny resources by ambushing those trucks and destroying them. Heck those could just be sundies with a NS color scheme (already in the game files) on them with maybe some sort of logo describing which faction they are delivering to .

You could even add a mechanic to "steal" the resource sundies like a train robbery and make them go to your warpgate by hacking them with an infiltrator.

We need more ANT like mechanics but while making them more interesting and more new player friendly while adding strategic depth

Eh, I'm rather weary of AI Convoys...

Back in my old Second Life Military days, our genius Merczateers R&D department came up with a capturable, self-driving Convoy that would tour around the map every so often...

Don't get me wrong, it was fun as hell to fight over, buuuu~uuut...

Second Life is a persistent world MMO, and when left running constantly all those in-game moving components would cause the control system to eventually glitch, forcing an Admin to shut it down until someone could go in and de-bug it.

To make the analogy, it's sort of like an Amusement Park Ride...
Eventually, with all those moving parts something is going to break down, so you either require constant monitoring and preventive maintenance or some kind of contingency for when you inevitably need to temporarily disable that feature.

As we don't have enough admins to regularly monitor the activity of randomly generated, AI controlled Vehicles, I would rather a crucial automated mechanic such as Resource Collection not depend on such a system.

...Though Resource Logistics and the new Lattice does bring to mind my old "Resource Pipeline" ideas.

Originally Posted by capiqu

I would love to read it if someone has a direct link. If not I'll search it when i get time to.

Here it is!

Weaving in my own Resource Pipelines, each Neutral Zone could have its own "Nanite Resource Generator/Mine/Nodes" that pipes into all the surrounding Bases.
Spec Ops teams could then go in to either shut down these Nodes to deny the enemy extra Resources or simply divert all the flow to any connecting Base they own.

There could even be "maximum flow capacity" that limits how much (or rather mechanically the rate of Resource tics) can be diverted through a single pipe, encouraging the capture of all of the surrounding Bases for peak efficiency!

[Mastachief]

Grey areas are good these are the areas to sneak through for spec ops once they get around to allowing such things.

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by Mastachief

Grey areas are good these are the areas to sneak through for spec ops once they get around to allowing such things.

Eh, that's the part I don't like about them...

Don't get me wrong, I understand the concept of allowing a group to "operate under the radar" as it were, but as I've said before the current set up allows for entire platoons to just "vanish" because they're not all standing on a particular strip of land.

Of course this presents another thing we can put in the Neutral Zones to fight over, Radar Stations!

These would play into my idea of breaking down Enemy Activity Level Detection down to individual Micro Hexes, with each Station providing an area of such precision, narrowed-down coverage.

Then we could have a small Stealth transport aircraft that ingnores Detection on the Continental Level so that Spec Ops could move in and take down these sites, reverting Enemy Detection back to simply telling one how many are in those strips of Territory a Faction owns.

How's that for a Special Operations mission?

[Figment]

I think it'd be nice if the neutral areas would turn into a muted, dominant empire colour by owning the lanes on both sides of it, like such:



If you wanted to have it worth fighting over, in theory, you could have the resources in the areas between the lanes. Not sure if that's worth it though.

[capiqu]

OK, or a darker shade of the empires colors. Looks nice Figment.

[Kail]

Originally Posted by Figment

I think it'd be nice if the neutral areas would turn into a muted, dominant empire colour by owning the lanes on both sides of it, like such:

Something like that would be really nice, if only to reinforce that you're turning the whole continent to your faction.