PS, the Matrix and its future

[BladeRunner]

I appreciate you doing that Vic, because I can at least hope that the devs will read the discussions here at PSU and take them to heart more than at the OF. They seem a lot more civilized.. At least most of them

[EarlyDawn]

I'm fairly sure the stopbitchinaboutit part was a joke.

[SuperGlue]

personally, I like the Lattice idea. It seems to me like it will further differentiate itself from other FPS. In most FPS you do the same thing over and over but just on different maps. The Lattice idea will make defined battle lines and i think make the game more enjoyable and unique. Established battle lines will also make each cert more valuable. Instead of just having a bunch of maxes and assault infantry; you will need medics, engineers, people to keep the supply line flowing, etc. I think it will make the gameplay much more dynamic.

But once again
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V

[Happy lil Elf]

The matrix only affects bases. I haven't seen anywhere where it says you won't be able to capture towers, which is yet another argument to those saying behind the lines capping will be impossible. As for breaking continental locks, yes you will only be able to cap a bas near your matrix (ie right next to the warpgate). HOWEVER you can still cap towers and bases that lose power which again doesn't make it impossible. Personally I love this, continent locks should be hard to break, otherwise whats the point?

[SuperGlue]

I very much agree with Happy lil' Elf. Even though he/she may be blunt at times, I think it is needed Mr. V did u notice the after the part about stopbitchin ??

[MrVicchio]

Sometimes, you gotta step up and clear any misconception ya know

[Zoolooman]

If latticing or matrixing or whatever you want to call if fails horribly, look to the following mistakes in implementation.

A. The bases don't connect to enough nearby bases. There should always be, except in the rarest of circumstances, two or three bases connected to one you own.

B. The population cap on the continent is too high, causing all bases on the continent that can be contested to be so heavily populated as to be near impossible to capture.

C. People forget that you could go and shack up at a base one step behind a base your team has hacked and will control soon. Once controlled, you start a hack at this new base, and you should already have built up a defense of useful levels to protect your fresh hack.

On paper, I think it could go either way. The secret is in the geography of the game as to how it will work out.

And lastly, if it really does turn out to be such a bomb that it must be removed, you can ban me for pushing such a bad idea so heavily in the beta forums. Then you'll feel better. ;]

[LesserShade]

I loved your idea of hard locks zoolooman. At this stage of the game, continent locks are meaningless.

[Happy lil Elf]

The "quitcherbitching" is a joke, originally from Southpark, I forget honestly.

Yes, you voiced your concerns but no where did I see you mention that the devs are working on your concrens, namely both TKing and Capping BEPs. I also haven't ever seen you provide an option as good as this one to stop the, while amusing, rather idiotic way the games plays now. You go to one undefended base to hack it and in most cases your hardest resistance comes from the other faction that's trying to hack the same base.

No one defends the way it is, unless they're trying to defend a hack. That's not what the devs want. This is supposed to be a war. In a real war people hold bases because they need to. In PS, no one does because you get a lot more from capping a base, although if you were defending against a large scale assault you could theoretically get more than 2.5k in 15 minutes. By all means if you have a better idea, post it. I'm more than willing to listen

[Airlift]

Gen destruction doesn't cause bleeding, but in the patch notes it says that the generators auto-repair will drain the NTUs. Hell, SJ even makes it as plain as day, that a new tactic for "punching continent lock" will be destroying terminals and generators, forcing auto-repair and therefore "bleeding."

Seems some haven't actually read the DEV's statement. Remember, this is their first interpretation of the original "matrix" idea, and it's only the first of many parts of the new system they want us to try. I still support the trial 100%. If I was a paying customer, maybe I'd feel different

Yes, I read the statement, more than once. It does not say how effective the scorched base approach will be, or whether you can drain a full silo by one round of auto-repairs (which still takes half an hour to do). And in any case, I am just doing my job as a beta tester by speculating on what I think will be the pitfalls of the system may be. As I've said before, we don't know yet and I'll give my opinion on it after I've seen it in action. I also noted that this was only the first in a series of changes.

I am still skeptical that what comes out of the matrix will really be a big improvement on the game, but I hope that I'm wrong. I feel one hundred percent certain that the problems they are addressing with this cap restriction system could have been just as easily fixed with less drastic changes to the metagame.

[Happy lil Elf]

The "quitcherbitching" is a joke, originally from Southpark, I forget honestly.

Yes, you voiced your concerns but no where did I see you mention that the devs are working on your concrens, namely both TKing and Capping BEPs. I also haven't ever seen you provide an option as good as this one to stop the, while amusing, rather idiotic way the games plays now. You go to one undefended base to hack it and in most cases your hardest resistance comes from the other faction that's trying to hack the same base.

No one defends the way it is, unless they're trying to defend a hack. That's not what the devs want. This is supposed to be a war. In a real war people hold bases because they need to. In PS, no one does because you get a lot more from capping a base, although if you were defending against a large scale assault you could theoretically get more than 2.5k in 15 minutes. By all means if you have a better idea, post it. I'm more than willing to listen

[MorphiasAC]

The only thing I think I would like to change about the lattice idea, is that is runs through the whole world. I would much rather see any empire be able to hack a base connected to any warpgate. This way each continent will have it's own fronts instead of possible 4-5 global fronts, you could have many more continental fronts. However, I am certainly willing to give the global lattice a chance and it may work wonderfully; this is just my own little tweak I might make to the system.

[Tendain]

Tendain all your points are covered in the original patch notes about the "lattice."

Ah, yeesh, thanks. I missed those. :o Silly me, I really should remember to do my research before ranting, ne?

c) To hack into a locked continent, you must own the facilities connected to the warpgate on the OTHER continent first.

Hmm. You see, this is my biggest problem with this system: it removes most of the effectiveness off the surprise attack. When the enemy know where you can and cannot attack, it makes it rather hard to catch them off guard, yes?

Now, there's this 'bleeding' tactic, but from what I'm reading it'll take quite some time before the NTU's run out, even if the silo's like half empty (half an hour for the auto-repair to kick in? Am I reading that right?). When you add the fifteen minutes to take control of a base after hacking it, the attackers are going to be sitting on their hands for a while. And since the enemy empire gets a message when their gens get attacked, there certainly won't any shortage of defenders to stop the attempted sneak attackers.

I suppose, as several people have said, that we'll have to wait and see how it plays out, but when a concept is this flawed on paper, I don't hold much hope for it being very good in practice.

[quiet]

Originally posted by Airlift
One of the potential exploits that could render the latticework useless is a mule account in another empire used to crank things out of the vehicle pad and equipment terminals in order to circumvent the hacking restrictions. You can't stop them without TKing. I hope this is something that has been considered by the dev team, and I'm sure that if it hasn't yet it will be when the game goes live.

You don't need a mule, just an adv hacker .
Of course the NC and TR will probably just prefer to blow stuff up.

[AcidCat]

Originally posted by Tendain
When the enemy know where you can and cannot attack, it makes it rather hard to catch them off guard, yes?
.

Have to keep in mind that you can still ATTACK anywhere. Just because you can't capture a base doesn't mean you can't attack! And attacking in the rear to bleed down a base to neutrality - even if you don't succeed, this is a tactic that will at least draw soldiers from the front back to the base, thereby helping your front line troops.

Anyway, I think the Lattice idea is fantastic, but of course we need to test it out to see what happens once the bullets start flying.