Poll: Rotation of empire footholds?

[Ghryphen]

How would it work? You are in your foothold and all of the sudden it becomes an opposing empires foothold they all start spawning there and your platoon that was getting ready to deploy a joint strike gets wiped out by the new owners of the foothold.

[DesertFox]

Could someone clarify how this rotation would work in practice? I don't quite follow. Wouldn't it be messed up if foothold ownership suddenly rotate and x empire's foothold ends up being behind y's frontline? Or would all bases suddenly become uncap'ed at the same time that the rotation occur?

[Ghryphen]

Originally Posted by DesertFox

Could someone clarify how this rotation would work in practice? I don't quite follow. Wouldn't it be messed up if foothold ownership suddenly rotate and x empire's foothold ends up being behind y's frontline? Or would all bases suddenly become uncap'ed at the same time that the rotation occur?

Agreed, and if they were uncapped, how would new players coming into the game be able to spawn if their empire had no other bases?

[Immigrant]

Stupid idea, that would mean every time rotation occurs your foothold ends up deep in enemy territory.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Gryphon

How would it work? You are in your foothold and all of the sudden it becomes an opposing empires foothold they all start spawning there and your platoon that was getting ready to deploy a joint strike gets wiped out by the new owners of the foothold.

If it was dynamic, it would happen either with total domination of every territory on the continent (would require more than 3 continents), or domination of a specific region, a cluster of hexes, presumably surrounding the target warpgate. Any enemies in the warpgate would presumably die instantly if it switched.

So you would see it coming, and it's your own fault if your platoon is sitting inside the warpgate when the enemy is about to capture the foothold.

But if it was just a random rotation, it would have to have some sort of warning so that players would know it was coming. In that case, players would probably be teleported to their new foothold I would think.

[DayOne]

I'm not a fan of this idea. I get the need for diversity but I think with the territory control system and all the other outposts between bases we are going to see enough of this without some arbitrary base-rotation system.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Gryphon

How would it work? You are in your foothold and all of the sudden it becomes an opposing empires foothold they all start spawning there and your platoon that was getting ready to deploy a joint strike gets wiped out by the new owners of the foothold.

The obvious way to do it is during regular maintenance and to move people who may have been logged out there to their new foothold. Certainly not something that happens automatically in the middle of prime time abruptly disrupting the current battle.

I would expect rotation to work like this.

1) once per month (or every other month), during regular maintenance, the foothold configuration changes to one of the six possible configurations.

2) the rotation should be known ahead of time and announced so we all know what the new configuration will be.

3) It occurs during maintenance, and at that time anyone logged out in one of the footholds that is changing (not every foothold will change necessarily) get relocated to their new foothold automatically so they don't log in and immediately die or some other strange behavior.

4) Territory owned at the time would not change other than the foothold. So while the foothold might provide a new avenue for attack, they would still have to capture the territory adjacent to the new foothold. Alternately to avoid disruption they could simply neutralize all the continents with a giant reset button. Probably not a bad idea to do that from time to time anyway.

With 6 permutations, once a month or once every other month would see a full rotation either once a year or twice a year.

That's how I see it working smoothly with minimal disruption to the game.

[IMMentat]

I am all for Bi-monthly (once per 2 months) continental shake-ups. swap what base is in what location and mix up the resource and special function facility locations.
Possibly mix up the timings, change the foothold every month, swap the bases every 3 months swap the resources every 3-6 months.

[Malorn]

I would also agree that resources (if they are static) also need to be changed, and much more frequently than the footholds (I think weekly is a good rate for that).

I'd prefer the resources were dynamic though and had quasi-random spawning and despawning. That changes the value of territory on a regular basis which means tactics and strategy will change, as will the focus of the battles.

Assuming of course that resources actually matter and that capturing territory for specific resources is meaningful. I'd like to assume that it is, but I'm not all that convinced from what we've seen/been told.

[tdopz]

I don't see it being as big of an issue in PS2. You HAD to take a certain base in the original, but there's no lattice in PS2, the only thing keeping you attacking the same areas will be yourselves. There will be reasons to own areas of the map that AREN'T bases, you know.

[Fafnir]

As someone else said, it will damage persistence. What's the point of capturing a base, if tomorrow it will automatically switch to another empire?

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Fafnir

As someone else said, it will damage persistence. What's the point of capturing a base, if tomorrow it will automatically switch to another empire?

The thread is about the non-capturable footholds, not capturable territory. So no, it won't damage those things.

[Arokel]

My main issue with a rotation system would be that in order to make it really work they would have to reset the territories owned by each faction to 0 or have some sort of predetermined division (or divisions to shake things up) of the map that they will reset to.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by tdopz

I don't see it being as big of an issue in PS2. You HAD to take a certain base in the original, but there's no lattice in PS2, the only thing keeping you attacking the same areas will be yourselves. There will be reasons to own areas of the map that AREN'T bases, you know.

Well in PS1 you weren't strictly forced to obey the lattice - you could always drain a base of NTUs and turn it neutral.

PS2 also has the lattice replaced by a territory adjacency system. While there is no strict lattice chain requiring you to have taken a nearby territory, if you don't have nearby territory your capture time will be ridiculously handicapped, and it will be very easy for defenders to stop the capture, or to re-capture if you do succeed.

So no lattice does not mean that you will see battles all over the place. There will be battle lines and you will see a very similar result of the PS1 lattice from the Adjacency system. The adjacency system gives you more freedom and also puts value on non-facility territories so it's more about capturing all territory, not just the large facilities.

[Fafnir]

Originally Posted by Malorn

The thread is about the non-capturable footholds, not capturable territory. So no, it won't damage those things.

So what, you switch them and now your foothold is in the middle of hostile territory and you have to recapture everything around you? Or everything becomes neutral every switch? I don't see how it can be done differently.