Mobile Spawning Redesign. - Page 2

Figment · 2013-02-23, 09:10 PM

The attacker's spawns aren't the issue. At all.

The issue is with how hard it is to get to the CC to defend it.

The list of problems as is:

- CC cannot be reached via an infantry only fight.
- The CC is easily cut off from the spawns by getting some tanks and Liberators in the area, let alone 15-40, which regularly happens.
- The attackers outnumber the defenders not just in manpower, but in strong equipment by far. The power distance is huge.
- The CC is usualy located on the other side of a courtyard, as if the outpost is designed for one dimensional combat.
- Frequently base layouts favour defense in a particular direction, while enemies ignore all these attack vectors and make use of their 360 degrees approach options. Ignoring all defender positions. In part due to the open design. In part because mines are not usable for minefields.
- You don't have, nor can create enough time to kill or dismiss all these heavy units to reach your objective, let alone hold it.
- Most bases aren't on natural high ground.
- CC is 50% or more of the time located in the open, or, in a room that is so small and open to outside fire, it might as well be outside. These areas are super-sensitive to HE fire. And who is the only party in a base fight with no shortage of one hit kill HE? The attackers.
- Zergfits have adapted to the new spawn building design by randomly spamming the roof area from a safe distance (rocking the tank back and forth avoids most missile fire). This has the highest chance of HE kills, but more importantly, it prevents good aim from the defenders, who get constant screen shake and next to no chance to make use of reload time (defender reload is fastly longer than the tank's refire rate).
- Defenders only have acces to infantry and MAXes during any defense. Their opponents therefore have more firepower, need less diverse weaponry and have more endurance.
- Walls at outposts are designed to favour attackers: they have lots of holes in them, often right next to the capture point, they can't be manned as they have no walkways. Often enough funnel defenders while providing cover for attackers and their AMSes.
- Small spawnbuildings remain utter deathtraps.
- The map is zoomed out too much for CQC.
- When a spawnbuilding of the outpost at a base is captured, it is so far away and takes so little time, reinforcements of the defending party can't arrive in time. The same often goes for defense in high influence areas. Clearing a path and the actual walking to the CC takes too long, is too ardeous a journey, only provides you time for one spawn and requires a straight path to it to have a chance of stopping it before it is taken.
- There is no SOI to stop hot droppers: in fact, deploy puts you in a position you should need a Galaxy for: on top of the central keep, behind the enemy defenses.

There are a lot of known and obvious solutions here. But the AMS spawn locations have next to nothing to do with it. The CC must be harder to reach. But that includes harder to reach by vehicles of all kinds. And that is easier to do with pure infantry zones: no tanks, no air.

Rothnang · 2013-02-24, 04:04 AM

I would argue that a lot of the points you make serve directly to deter Sunderers from entering a base, and as a result make it far more defensible. For example, the crown which is considered to be one of the most defensible locations in the whole game is primarily considered to be that defensible because the closest you can get a Sunderer to it is still easily 150 meters down the mountain.

Figment · 2013-02-24, 06:01 AM

No that isn't why it is so defensible compared to others.

Extreme high ground to overcome, chokepoints that block all traffic, tight corners along two viable approaches, too steep inclines and no cover on the third approach, while two zergs fighting over a base held by a third zerg and stopping one another from approaching. Air is too busy dodging the AA from two zergs to make a fist as well.

That results in nothing getting close, not infantry, not tanks, not Sunderers. And since you need to capture and hold three points and there is no SCU to destroy, Galaxy air attacks are pointless too. Meanwhile, defenders have the most compact base type around, often times with tanks at their disposal.

These are also the same reasons why you cannot expand from the Crown, because the two zergs trap you.

You need to do more and broader analysis. It isn't a single factor you can magically change to get the Crown. All other bases can be completely surrounded and invaded by tanks within mere seconds, they don't fight off two zergs at once and they don't face natural and man made defenses on any level and defenders can't get out of the spawns the moment this happens. That is the issue.

Rothnang · 2013-02-24, 05:27 PM

I never said it was the only factor that made the crown highly defensible, but it is a factor.

The spawn system right now obliterates any notion of front lines in bases that aren't like the crown, which renders walls etc. purely decorative. It makes dying as infantry pretty much have no consequences at all which leads to a game where it's impossible to beat a larger force even if you're supposed to have a terrain advantage. It turns the entire game into a constant round of "hunt the spawn option" where the only thing you can really do to affect an infantry battle is take out their spawns...

The giant issue with this is that it's never popular to take away something convenient, but if something is too convenient it dumbs down the game by a massive amount, which is exactly what's happening here. Infantry transport, medics, airdrops, working with vehicles as close in support... None of that matters because dying doesn't matter.

I would much rather see badass commandos who are tough to take down despite the fact that they are infantry, but if you do kill them it actually sets them back than this constant stream of cannon fodder that gets killed over and over and over without showing any fatigue. At the same time, are infantry players really happy with the situation we have? Obviously they aren't. They keep complaining about getting killed too easily by vehicles, but how can anything else be justified if there is no consequence to dying?

Figment · 2013-02-24, 06:18 PM

The walls are decorative because they don't have wallwalks nor gated areas.

They might as well not be there, if they are there at all. The ams is easy to get in, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't get in, it should be harder to approach and get in.

Different area of solutions.

Rothnang · 2013-02-24, 07:30 PM

Well, I never suggested that an AMS can't get in, just that a Sunderer with unlimited spawns/resupplies can't get in.

My suggestion very clearly states that front line spawning is still a thing, it's just more contingent on highly mobile vehicles that actually fight alongside you and that aren't such a huge binary liability, where their presence either completely rapes a base or a single engineer gets lucky and blows it up.

Figment · 2013-02-24, 07:47 PM

But even then you wouldn't address the main issue: tanks, ESF and Libs camping the cc en massa and often with minimal crew needs. The sheer overkill of firepower and endurance is the problem. Blowing up a single ams in the area is not. That is piss easy if you would get a chance to move out of the spawns.

What annoyed me greatly is you have this decent roofing and merlons and then you meet GOON and BRTD, who took it on themselves to use the lamest strategies ever in vehicle camping: mass barrage from great distance. Aiming for targets isn't even part of it anymore, they just line up 30 tanks and spam the building. There is no way you can cross even 5m in the open, yet you are tasked with getting through 100-200m of spam at times.

Ever fought at Splitpeak? You don't honestly think the problem is the defenders have to cross over two bridges and a lot of open terrain to hold four points on the far side of a ravine and two gates perpendicular to that and the airspace and the terrain behind them?

I don't fricking care what you do to the ams, it isn't going to change a damn thing aside from making their defensive use worse. Because I havn't even started on what it means for non-attacking party! :/

Rothnang · 2013-02-24, 09:14 PM

AMSes everywhere are not the answer to infantries woes, they are a large part of the cause.

You will never get to a point where infantry can be expected not to get killed by vehicles easily as long as they can come back to the fight with little to no effort.

Personally I have no interest in cannon fodder infantry being a huge force in this game. I want to see more durable infantry as much as the next guy, I just don't think it would be fair at this stage to give any more buffs to infantry without addressing the elephant in the room which is unlimited availability.

There are three different systems restricting vehicle deployment. There are spawn timers, there are resources and there is the limited availability of consoles you can pull them from. There is nothing you can do to circumvent that. Infantry isn't subject to resource cost and it isn't subject to serious spawn timers. The only thing infantry is subject to is availability of spawn points, and currently there are a dozen ways in the game to completely circumvent that too by just making your own.

The reality simply is, AMS and spawn beacons are still way too convenient for infantries own good. It's widely accepted in the meanwhile that Galaxy AMS was a bad system in beta, and that the game got better after it was removed, but during beta the debate we're having was much the same. Most people were pissed at the idea of removing their Galaxy AMS. Once it was gone and they had adapted to the new reality of the game just about everyone agreed it was better.

It's the same with Sunderer AMS and spawn beacons now. For a lot of people it's inconceivable to fight without the huge convenience constant respawning right in the contested area provides. If it was toned down a bit though and wasn't such an overwhelming alpha strategy we would start seeing people try different stuff, adapt to the new situation.

Maybe you'd stop seeing facilities being camped by simply sitting inside with 200 people murdering everything that comes through the doors if those 200 people couldn't expect to just shrug and laugh when 10 of them get fragged by a grenade every 30 seconds. Maybe a squad of really good players could actually make a dent in a defense like that if killing someone bought you a little more than only around 30 seconds before the same person is shooting you again.

Don't just think purely of the vehicles that kill infantry, also keep in mind that your own actions as infantry become irrelevant if killing people makes very little difference. You may not suffer much if you die, but that also means you don't achieve much when you kill. More consequences means fewer stalemates, and meaningful rewards for brilliant strategies, instead of waging a futile war on an undying opponent.

Most people don't realize this, but when you play infantry you are farming infantry just as much as some HE lightning. The only difference is that the guys you farm are also farming you at the same time.

BlaxicanX · 2013-02-24, 09:46 PM

I'm still not seeing how unlimited is an actual problem. It takes 10 seconds to blow up an AMS, and because of the AMS distance restrictions, blowing up just one will fuck an entire organized push into a base due to the severely lengthened supply lines.

In the 3 days of play I've accumulated, I've never, as a defender, been overwhelmed by infantry except for in Biolabs. It's always been the massive zerg of a dozen+ tanks and fighters that ave fucked us while defending.

I'd really like to see the hard evidence that points to "infantry spam" being an actual problem in the game, rather than a personal grievance.

Rothnang · 2013-02-24, 10:10 PM

Again, don't misunderstand my idea, none of it is aimed at taking away the ability infantry has to respawn much more rapidly than vehicles, it just aims at two things: creating a clearer front line so that strategy can overcome raw numbers more readily, and laying the groundwork for new relationships between vehicles and infantry where people don't look at them as two separate entities that must do battle for all eternity, but as piece of the same military machine.

If you find yourself overwhelmed by a zerg army don't mistake the fact that they have a lot of vehicles for meaning vehicles are what makes zerging so effective. The reason why you don't get steamrolled by a superior infantry force anywhere but in Biolabs isn't because vehicles do it better, but because people like using vehicles and vehicles tend to accumulate once you get a big zerg rolling that doesn't take a lot of losses.

Also the defenders rarely ever have good vehicle support currently, because even if your base can spawn vehicles, if your attackers have a aircraft etc. already in the area the chance of even getting your vehicle somewhere where its useful before it gets destroyed is very low. Also a lot of people try to defend will instant action into a place, so they arrive as infantry and don't bring any heavy armor to the table. Once again, not really a consequence of vehicles, but just of the way that base defenses work in this game. You just can't mobilize a large tank column in time to save a base, you'll see your faction with the vehicle advantage when they retake the base 30 minutes later while the enemy sit inside as infantry and curse at the sky.

psijaka · 2013-02-25, 09:08 AM

Originally Posted by Rothnang

If there is such a thing as a spawn jammer, why wouldn't it be installed in bases instead of only on certain vehicles? Now THAT is arbitrary.

By what logic can a killed soldier be brough back to life? It serves as a useful gameplay mechanic, that's the logic. The best way to make an infantry support vehicle that actually forms a symbiotic relationship with infantry is to give it some feature that lets it survive otherwise lethal damage as long as it has infantry near it. An LAC shouldn't be able to tank a significant amount of damage by itself, it shouldn't just be another Sunderer that inexplicably has way heavier armor than a tank. Giving it the 10 seconds repair window fills all the criteria, it doesn't make the vehicle absurdly well armored for what it is, and it creates a symbiotic relationship between vehicle and infantry that fights alongside it.

Also, spawn beacons aren't fine. Drop pods shouldn't be raining on your base nonstop during an assault, it completely breaks the point of defensive structures if enemies don't have to come into your base through the doors and over the walls but simply appear on the roof. It's a no risk all reward mechanic.

I'm not the one making the case for a spawn jammer in the first place. Pretty happy with AMSs as they are, TBH. Placing one inside a base is a high risk strategy; easier for the defenders to get at than one 100+m away.

Not a good comparison. Respawning is an essential mechanic used consistently within the game, used by every shooter with a very few exceptions (COD search and destroy). Introducing a vehicle that can magically be reconstructed from a burning wreck when others can't is totally arbitrary. Just give the vehicle more HP instead.

I'm sure that the majority of drop pods "raining in nonstop" are deployed through instant action, largely by randoms, not because of a spawn beacon. Spawn beacons are fine, and are integral to squad play.

Figment · 2013-02-25, 09:10 AM

Regarding spawn beacons and drop pods. We need SOIs. But we don't need to stop AMSes since they don't ignore terrain.

Rothnang · 2013-02-25, 06:07 PM

Right, we don't need to get rid of AMS vehicles, but giving them more variety will help.

The problem with the Sunderer is that it does what it does to such an extreme degree that it has become an absolute alpha strategy. It's the first thing everyone goes to. Even Galaxy attacks usually start with "Hack vehicle terminal, make Sunderer" No other unit in the game can make a claim of being anywhere near as essential.

What about medics, what about transport vehicles, what about the new LACs? What is their point when respawning right into the action is always the quicker, easier option?

Figment · 2013-02-25, 08:18 PM

Rothnang, if we didn't all have access to it, that would be far more effective.

PS1 had maybe 30% of the players with an AMS available. The number was further reduced due to their being 133-150 total, so on the entire continent, there would be what, 3-7 at max in most scenario's?

How many do we have in PS2, with its 666 players per side? 1-12 per region? Limit the availability to specialist group members, who give up some other ability like tanks (and the other way around), and you start creating more numerical balanced variety and dependency.

Rothnang · 2013-02-26, 04:06 AM

The argument "X would be balanced if not everyone had it" really doesn't work IMO. How would you restrict it? Make it one of multiple mutually exclusive options? What would the other ones be to be as powerful and desirable as a Sunderer?