Mobile Spawning Redesign.

[Figment]

The problem Rothnang, is that taking out even one Magrider or Liberator takes so much time in comparison to the capture time, that even if you take out three tanks, you have three seconds left to kill everyone at the CC and reset it.

Vehicles are something you can't prioritise to take out till after you control the CC. You simply can't afford not moving on the CC because that takes enough time to clear and hold. But currently you can't get to the CC because you will get instantly killed by HE from an unit that has no business firing at you at that point of the fight. The current flow demands you prioritise fighting the siege units, rather than the insertion units (infantry).

That is what makes it impossible to defend the CC. Currently often times you get only one guy to a CC covered by five or more people by the time 80% of the timer has passed. This guy will die and he won't be able to make another run, because the time is up.

The outposts that disable spawns halfway are even worse for that: some of them have spawns so far away, that by the time you walk from your spawnpoint to the CC from the moment the CC starts turning, you already lost your spawnpoint. Thus any chance of reinforcements or trying to run it again. I feel that as long as a base isn't taken you should have a chance to spawn if the spawns havn't been destroyed. Otherwise there is no fight. But the CC (or SCU and gens) shouldn't be at a distance that makes you cross such large crossfire sensitive areas. In fact, any at all is ridiculous. Even more so if you get one life to try and get there, one life with these TTK lengths, including area of effect instant kill and vastly more players than in PS1 firing at you. It is a ridiculously bad combination of gameplay and game design elements. This game is designed as a small scale map deathmatch. The defense update indicates how big a difference base design makes for hold vs deathmatch design. Their random disconnected building style doesn't do anything for the game. Those are nice for cover buildings but should not contain any worthwhile objectives.

And even when a CC is really close by, the design is horrible. Go to Peris station and cross the bridge, find the little CC and go inside, then look at the bridge. Then imagine HE shells and you having to be in that room for minutes, while one shell will kill you.

The task is impossible and that has everything to do with the type of units you are fighting and the geometry of where you are fighting. Especially if you consider when you use this area: after you been kicked out of the main facility, or while trying to invade.

[Rothnang]

You actually make a really solid argument there, if there is a vehicle that can hit the capture point you can't kill the vehicle and hold the capture point at the same time unless you have a significant numbers advantage, that's true.

That is something that better base design can address to some degree, but I'm not entirely sure how that can be done without making vehicles categorically unable to hit anyone near capture points.

Personally I would have absolutely no problem with excluding vehicles from the fighting inside of a base, as long as there is enough of a logistics game outside of the base for vehicles to matter there. The notion of vehicle free bases just sucks with the current mechanics where that would leave vehicles no way to really affect the fight the second both belligerents have a spawn inside the base.

I mean, base design is also a factor there. With a ton of the bases in this game there are just way too many ways to get a Sunderer into the base pretty easily. You never see a base that is actually constructed like a military fort is, with a defensible glacis around it and standoff barriers that don't allow vehicles to come anywhere close to the structures without taking specific access points...

[Figment]

The vehicle effort being predominantly focused on outdoor strategy is why I really enjoyed the PS1 siege mechanic of energy attrition. A well defended base could hold out extremely well (particular interlink sieges) against infantry, but they would ultimately end if they wern't relieved so they could stop base drain by repairing all systems, or by getting an ANT in on time to refill the base's supply. Yet it didn't have the vehicles take part in indoor combat. In fact, it encouraged drivers and gunners to get out and fight on more even footing (and oh the empty CY vehicle jacking, how I miss that).


I think everyone enjoyed the ANT system, UNLESS someone was draining all the bases in an area to grief another empire. That would make it very tedious to sort and could be very frustrating (need more people repairing and ANTing than you need to drain)

Mind, this got even worse when the base drain viral was introduced and players wern't limited to one active viral per player and bases wern't limited to virals over time).

The devs did say during Alpha they could always introduce an NTU system if there was a need for it.


Speaking of older versions of the NTU system. I believe that during PS1 beta - which I wasn't in btw - they tried to experiment with what caused the drain. At first they tried spawning, equipment pulling and vehicle acquisition, but this drained bases at extremely fast rates and players couldn't really comprehend the impact of a drain and would be too selfish to think in the interest of the empire there (conserving resources) and it could be abused by the attacker who could simply keep pulling units to drain the base's energy reserves.


For PS2 if we build on that drain mechanic though, we might find a way where the tedious repair part is removed. For instance, filling the energy level speeding up base repairs on structures that are not being damaged or recently took damage, so you don't have to find and repair each turret manually (but could for instance not apply to strategic objectives, which would require manual ("advanced") repairs). Or letting the refill shorten repairs, by automatically restoring up to 50% of the turrets.

Another interesting drain mechanic was the BFR's NTU siphon that could drain a base's energy up to 40% quite rapidly (and then use it for EMP blasts). You could see that mechanic as a form of siege unit that shortens the siege to a degree, but is otherwise quite vulnerable to threats.

That sort of smart application.

[Rothnang]

I did post an idea that included a logistics system like the NTU from Planetside 2 a while ago.

I personally don't think pulling units and spawning to use up a bases resources is the wrong way to go, because it is the most accurate representation of attrition.

There could be a lock built in that stops you from pulling vehicles with the last 20% of your resources maybe, so that if you want to run a base completely dry you have to do it on infantry spawns, which would take a long time, and a lot of dead bodies.

As far as griefing is concerned, I don't think it would be that big of an issue if it takes several dozen people to run a base dry. I think the vast majority of players values fair play, and would much rather drain the enemies NTU by killing them a lot than by blowing themselves up a bunch of times.

I mean right now killing well defended Sunderers or taking down a haggle of AA Maxes by switching to their team is a possibility, but despite that being incredibly effective it's rarely done.