reintroduce the ANT

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by Kalee J

Some of the best PS1 memories I have revolve around last minute base resupplies. It was a crazy challenge getting that thing through enemy lines to the silo in a big fight. It was very satisfying to pull off.

Indeed, this is exactly why we want to bring the ANT back.

Originally Posted by Figment

If you relate it to vehicle supply resources, which is what they tried in PS1, bases will drain too fast. People would have to constantly run ANTs and it'd be a too demanding, distracting chore. That's why they changed that in PS1 beta.

Oooh, really?
Ugh, that really puts a kibosh on what I was planning on doing with Resources.
Right now there is this general vibe that Resources don't matter, probably because their decentralized Storage makes a shortage an issue of personal finance rather than Imperial Logistics.
Territory doesn’t actually matter when managing the Resources generated by them are an individual’s personal responsibility, because then one can just pass the problem of coming up with more Vehicles and Consumables to a nebulous ‘other’.
This is probably also why I want to make Resources into the new NTU as well; It just reinforces how INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT they are to both you and your Empire.

Originally Posted by Figment

What we could have, is a basic pipeline network, which, IF THERE IS A BROKEN LATTICE LINK FROM THE WARPGATE OR BASES ARE OTHERWISE ISOLATED, requires manual input from ANTs to restore NTU to the bases. Restoring the lattice link would slowly resupply a base's energy as well (say 10% per 20 minutes, where an ANT could do it in a single recharge). Note that if you have a slow resupply effect, you could have a net-drain still by relating the draining to how damaged the complex is.

Such a damaged compound would not directly effect the supplies to other bases - until it turns neutral (at which point it "locks" the flow automatically. From a lore perspective this could be a safeguard installed to prevent tapping of NTU by third parties).

Originally Posted by moosepoop

my idea is this

keep current slow passive resource gain
allow ANT to give resource bonus, actively speed up resource gain

Well my idea is a combination of these two.
We still have the current passive gain, but the Resources now go to every properly connected Base and Warpgate your Faction controls on the Continent Lattice Pipeline instead of each players’ pocket.
The Nanite Transports can basically farm bonus Resources by ‘dredging them out’ of specific points on the Pipeline during ticks, but can also transport stockpiled Resources from underutilized Base Silos in the Rear to the Front where they are needed more.

Originally Posted by Figment

As for drain time, relate it to base damage as per PS1. And let it take quite some time, the fight should first try to end naturally, which can take hours. I'd say a base that is never repaired should drain in half an hour, a base that gets frequent repairs (control is high) should last for an hour or two. Tweak drain by damage on that and also base the amount of stuff that can be damaged on that time.


The draining should thus be coupled to auto-repair of the base. Auto-repair should be very slow in comparison to engineers. So slow it's barely noticable during a fight. Why? For starters, to actually get a long term drain effect and effect on defensiveness when you destroy something, to make sure engineers have a job to do and lastly to prevent turret kill whoring for free experience points (which shouldn't exist in the first place...).

Resources also become the new NTU in addition to the currency with which Player Consumables are purchased; All three Silos are evenly drained to slowly repair any damage to a Bases’ faculties.
If all three Silos go Empty, the Base flips Neutral and can be flipped by anyone regardless of Lattice connection as long as the Silos are refilled.
I’m not sure how well the actual math for this would work out, but that’s something that need to be extrapolated from player data anyways.

Originally Posted by Figment

Small, medium and large outposts and bases could each have different standard NTU reserves and different amounts of defenses, thus different drain speeds. If there are few defenses, the reserve must be relatively high, to not have one broken turret completely screw over the entire base fight.

Again, I’m not sure about the actual math involved, but I do agree that each Base size would have appropriately-scaled Resource Silos.
This would encourage players to be conscious of where they decide to spawn, since Small Outpost would have far fewer Resources to draw upon as opposed to the massive stockpile at a Warpgate, while a AMSunderer might not allow one to purchase Infantry Consumables period.

Originally Posted by moosepoop

-crystals around center of map with spawn timer
-ANT come harvest

Eh, I'm still not too keen on the Crystals being a regular part of the system Moose...
It would make an AWESOME Event-type though, where a gigantic Meteorite made of a particular Resource spawns in specific grid squares on a Continent.
They'd only have a set amount of Nanite Transport Units to harvest, so you'd have huge swarms of ANTs and NATs trying to mine the thing while their respective armies battle it out to both deny it from each other while keeping their own safe.

[Shogun]

i am all for a ressource model that uses faction or base ressources instead of personal ressources.

but i just thought of a new problem :-(
if a base has ressources and pulling vehicles drains them, i predict all vanu doing the 4th faction log to drain enemies bases just before an attack by pulling all vehicle types with a lot of asshats, then log back to vs and take over the now drained enemy base.

so a faction lock has to come with it, or the ressource drain has to be unalterable by the own faction, like the ressource is more of a timer, and you can pull vehicles as long as the timer is going, no matter how many vehicles you pull.
we already know that ps2 is full of asshats, so we have to keep all systems ashole proof.

[MrMak]

PS1's faction lock system would work just fine. to prevent meased "sabotage". As for idividual asshats trying to "grief", cooldowns would prevent 1 person from puting any sort of dent.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by MrMak

PS1's faction lock system would work just fine. to prevent meased "sabotage". As for idividual asshats trying to "grief", cooldowns would prevent 1 person from puting any sort of dent.

Unfortunately it wouldn't since PS1 had subscriptions and PS2 free accounts.


I personally don't believe in "local resources" with regards to vehicle pulling.

I'm more in favour of a Command & Conquer RTS system where you have a tech tree based on the (in this case LINKED) building (facility!) types you own.



It's pretty easy to understand for all players: "take (out) facility Y, gain/take out vehicle type X"

Just need to have a fair connection between unit types and building types.

ie. focus on linking and disrupting different types of base benefits.

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by Figment

Unfortunately it wouldn't since PS1 had subscriptions and PS2 free accounts.


I personally don't believe in "local resources" with regards to vehicle pulling.

I'm more in favour of a Command & Conquer RTS system where you have a tech tree based on the (in this case LINKED) building (facility!) types you own.

Yeah, that's also how it worked in the Original Planetside, but that's where our problem lies...

PS1 was a subscription game, so all of it's revenue was generated by subscription fees.
Planetside 2 however is Free-to-Play, where subscriptions just provide consistent "convenience bonuses" that can also otherwise be purchased separately as Micro-transactions...

Resource Boosters are one of those conveniences, and while a "Local Resource System" would require an adjustment to this plan they still could be implemented as discounts on Resource Purchases.

Basically, it comes down to figuring out how they can actually make money by changing the Resource System.

[MrMak]

Here is an idea.

Have both the local resources and personal passive gain but slowed down/costs further incresed.

Basicaly the personal stockpile would be trated as emergancy supplies that ou can use if the base is dried out. Then the resource boosts can still be used and sold but the local resources would be the primary way of pulling vehicles.


This could later be expanded and give outfits thier own extra emergancy stockpile.

[Figment]

Well, I'm just saying separate bases energy from resources.

Resources might be doable through the same supply lines actually. Let's speculate.


For instance:


Imagine an ANT bringing both NTU and resources (stockpiled at a warpgate) to the vehicle silo of an isolated area (cut-off from sanc by lattice).

First of all to replenish the NTU supply of the base and keeping it from draining. One ANT would carry say a third of the maximum energy supply of the base with it (meaning to fully energise it, you need to get three ANTs in). Of course it would have to slowly deplete itself at the silo and destruction of the ANT would stop the replenishment of base energy.

Alternatively, it could be deployed at the silo to provide an instant resource replenishment and a temporary increase (say for 15 minutes) to the vehicle and infantry resource gain over time of players in that area. For instance, one ANT would restore a percentage of the regular warpgate linked resource gain for half an hour. Or one ANT could provide a set amount, for instance 20 extra resources per tick (deploying multiple would increase this up to the maximum gain on that continent (equal to the warpgate resource gain at that time)). Once destroyed or emptied, the resource gain effect would stop as well. So keeping it alive would be quite important under such circumstances and an interesting objective as well.

The amount of resources a player would instantly gain from an ANT could be related to the amount of players in the region (it would not be the main source of supplies). If an ANT carries 6000 resources for instant distribution, then a platoon of people (40) would instantly get 125 resources, a zerg of 200 would get 30, etc. Zergs would thus need a far bigger convoy to prevent bleeding dry, though a base would only need to get a few in.

If needed, the maximum amount one could get instantly could be set to for example 300 resources. In that case, any player in a region with less than 20 friendlies would get at most 300 per ANT, but that would immediately upgrade their combat capacity. Thus, bringing two or three ANTs would fully replenish their resources temporarily. Supply convoys would therefore be very important targets.

You could imagine that players could set a percentage of how they want to receive their resources based on their playstyle (ANT resupply resources would start at 33% for each type of resource, but could be customized to fit the playstyle).

Basically, an ANT would be a manual bypassing of the resource effects of the lattice. There would not be a benefit to those who have a functioning lattice line.



That should make these units quite interesting to take out or pull off.

[Rivenshield]

Originally Posted by Whiteagle

Well my idea is a combination of these two.
We still have the current passive gain, but the Resources now go to every properly connected Base and Warpgate your Faction controls on the Continent Lattice Pipeline instead of each players’ pocket.
The Nanite Transports can basically farm bonus Resources by ‘dredging them out’ of specific points on the Pipeline during ticks, but can also transport stockpiled Resources from underutilized Base Silos in the Rear to the Front where they are needed more.

I like this idea a lot. I hope the devs are reading and mulling this over.

[moosepoop]

this might sound like a strange concept, but command and conquer had a super heavy tank that also functioned as a harvester.

[MrMak]

Lets also not forget that in PS2 vehicles are customisable so ANTs would need a few cert lines.

Performance is pretty straightforward, same as the sunderer.

Defence:

Composite Armor

Auto Repair

Mieguard

No Stealth. (we want them to be targets and they dont have weapons to make full use of thics cert anyway)

Utility:

If we went with the separate power and resources ideae wed have 3 types of transport modules here.

Resource Transport

Enrgy/Nanite Transport

Mixed (able to transport both but at reduced quantities.)

If we went with resources also serving as power (Nanits use em in repairs and such)

Light Nanite Storage Unit (NSU). Default. Smallest capaity, fastest load and unload, no performance impact.

Medium NSU. larger capacity at the cost of slightly slower loading/unloading and a small reduction in acceleration.

Heavy NSU. Much larger storage. Loads and unloads at the same rate as the Mdium NSU (though stil ltakesl onger due to the much higher capcity). Has a negative impact on handling, acceleration and top speed.

Nanite Recovery Unit (NRU). Same capacity as light NSU but can unly unload nanites. When deployed it gathers residual nanites from debris recently deconstructed in the area and onverts it into resources. The driver would see these residual nanites on his HUD as glowing green clouds/puddles.

Nanite Extration Unit (NEU). Same capacity as the light NSU. Can steal resourcesfrom enemy bases but takes long to load up.

[Palerion]

Not that I know much about this subject, but hell, if we could have convoys of resource transports, or something along those lines, that would be sick!

I could just imagine having C4 placed in a road and waiting behind a hill for a convoy to pass by, then raiding the junk out of it.

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by MrMak

Here is an idea.

Have both the local resources and personal passive gain but slowed down/costs further incresed.

Basicaly the personal stockpile would be trated as emergancy supplies that ou can use if the base is dried out. Then the resource boosts can still be used and sold but the local resources would be the primary way of pulling vehicles.

Sounds like a good idea, every Soldier has their own little Nest Egg they can use in Emergencies, but it's only enough to say pull a single Tank or a couple of Grenades.

Originally Posted by Figment

Well, I'm just saying separate bases energy from resources.

Yeah, but we don't have a Base Energy system...

I do have to question putting in Nantie Technology Units alongside Resources, if simply due to complexity.
I mean, it does beg the question what each is actually doing; If Resources are the Raw Material the Nanites make things out of, what exactly does the NTU do?
If NTU is the source of power, what are all those Solar Panels and such for?
Wouldn't it be easier if the Nanites were already transporting the Resources in question?

I do think that Bases should have Main Generator that "powers" them, but adding NTU ontop of Base Resources is a bit too much if you ask me.

[Shogun]

a power system is needed to reintroduce the possibility to break the lattice.

the ps1 lattice didn´t feel as restrictive as the current one, because you could always choose a low power base in the backlands for a nice surprise mass galdrop and drain it to get a new latticelink.

just being able to deny vehicles is not the same.

[Jonny]

AHHHH some really interesting ideas here. I've been mulling over a new resource system using ANTs and such. Will be making a thread about it probably this weekend.

Exciting stuff and sharing ideas to come up with a better resource system and meta game!