A Proposal On The Future State Of PlanetSide

[MSIOD]

Afternoon. Since PlanetSide 2 now has boats, I propose this. The true PlanetSide.

Gone would the days of Alerts and waiting for Continents to open up. Instead the Space Fleet would thrive!

The Space Fleet

Each Faction has a space station that orbits the planet. This station has a space fleet of bastions and other craft that are always orbiting the planet at a fixed distance, slowly circumventing the planet. These stations act as the origin point for every faction. As these fleets slowly orbit Auraxis, they will end up changing the logistical lines of the battlefield. This means that the Warpgates no longer serve as Headquarters any longer, but as Forward Operating Bases. This means that they can taken over.

Warpgates Under Siege

If a faction takes control of a surrounding area around the Warpgate, they could set up a Warpgate Maintenance Device (WMD. Essentially a delicate space laser designed by the NSO) to overload the safety devices of the Warpgate. This would take some time, and the more that are added, the faster the countdown is, and eventually the Warpgate which would go into siege mode. If all three are set up in time, it would go into maintenance mode instead.

Siege Mode

The shield that covers the Warpgate instead acts at a Citadel Shield, meaning that spawn immunity only applies to the main spawn room of the Warpgate. Capture Points (preferably five) would emerge out of hidden areas from the ground and a timer would appear (20 minutes times the number of WMDs firing at the Warpgate, caps at 60 minutes). Whenever a opposing faction controls a point, the point is removed from play and a Auraxium generator would become exposed. This generator can be damaged and repaired as well as overloaded. When that SCU explodes, it is removed from play.

A Warpgate under siege acts as a cuttoff territory. Additionally, a large alert sounds is played and a alert box pops up that a Warpgate is under siege.

Maintenance Mode

Instead of the Citadel shield, it simply goes offline. All SCUs are instead exposed automatically and this status lasts for one hour. If all SCUs are destroyed, a Warpgate Core will be exposed, which behaves like the SCU and has five times the amount of health as the SCUs. On it's destruction, the Warpgate will immediately begin a countdown to it's destruction.

Once all SCUs are destroyed, the siege timer halts and the assaulting faction has to make their way into the enemy spawn room. In there, the Commander's Console exists. It's purpose is to handle the day to day functions of the Warpgate, but it can be used to by other factions to claim it for themselves. It requires at least twenty seconds to claim and any faction, except the defending faction, is able to do this! Be careful of Infiltrators and enemy forces!

If Total Control is not achieved under the time limit, the Warpgates shields pulsate, reinstate the spawn protection, and kick all enemies out of the Warpgate like an OS. However, the damage to the SCUs is lasting. They heal slowly, the damage to the SCUs heal from null to full over the course of four hours. This means Warpgates can be sieged multiple times!

Locking Continents

If a faction controls all three Warpgates, then they lock a Continent. Locked Continents will have a painshield over non Warpgate areas and the skies around it will resemble that Faction's color. They can be locked indefinitely as long as it is not cutoff from the Faction's fleet.

Continental Assaults

There are times when you have no access to the continent by land, but a supply line may be connected through another continent, fleet, port, or relay uplink. At times like these are times, you can take a Supply Bastion or a Supply Capital Ship with a WMD and stage a siege. These can also supplement an ongoing siege, and unlike it's land counterparts, these WMDs can be fired on the move. Sieging is the same, however.

Destroying Warpgates

The vote to self-destruct a Warpgate can be called on by any Outfit Leaders, Outfit members with said permissions, or Platoon Leaders. Simply walk up to the Commander's Console and select that option. An Alert Box will appear in the center of the screen and a destruction vote tally will occur in the Socials Tab. At the end of the vote, the Warpgate will either explode in a shower of sparks, or not. Destroyed Warpgates function to destroy the Supply Matrix between continents and cannot be assaulted! For the purposes of deciding Locked Continents, it is not counted. Destroyed Warpgates take eight hours to repair, so choose wisely! If you somehow destroy all three Warpgates to a continent, that continent is considered to be cutoff from the rest of the planet until a relay uplink is established.

The Space Between Continents

Procedural generation would serve it's purpose here greatly. No need to waste any precious storage on mapping out the planet, just have an algorithm cache terrain to the client memory. Player Made Bases would act as normal, just store the data of the objects as normal. Combat could happen here was well.

On The Question Of Spawning

Simply disabling spawning in spawn rooms and Sunderers in Combat Zones would cause kill the Zerg Rush. People would have to be careful when advancing, they'd have to use medics to revive people, and be more careful about advancing and not taking huge losses. Overpoping and zerging only works when there are ready spawns able to slamfire people into the meatgrinder. Limiting the zerg to places like the Amp Stations, Tech Plants, Bio Labs, and Warpgates would prevent this, and allow a more tactical and methodical experience.

Final Thoughts

Simply put, there is definitely a lot more to write here, and I probably will be proposing many more things. Being a game developer myself, it's not hard to do this, but generally a lot more labor and time consuming to do so. While I can't comment on the way PlanetSide is built, I can say that these things are possible to do well.