Uncapturable Foothold / Sactuary Hexes - Pro's and Cons

[EVILPIG]

Originally Posted by WildVS

Didn't Higby use the example of adjacent hexes 3 minutes and standalone one's having 30 minute capture timer? Surely that was an arbitrary number still being defined but it does show how the game overall is promoting zerg mentality.

I don't recall that, but you will be able to capture hexes that you do not have a link to (behind enemy lines). They will just take longer (from what I gather).

[SkRiGeR]

Originally Posted by Sifer2

I still think the best idea is off Planet Sanctuary space ships. Letting you deploy by drop pod like the old HART. The only footholds being the bases you take over.

I would like to elaborate on this idea a bit more.

They could make it in which only certain section along side those foothold bases are capture-able if the Faction does not hold any other territories on that continent. This in turn can make multiple per say beach heads on every continent as you would with a typical assault onto a continent. This will allow the defending factions establish decent defenses to withhold attacks. Having a few surrounding zones capture-able allows the game to not have a huge static foothold battle and the factions to be able use them for flanking measures.
PS1 used The sanctuary bases and then after a lot of tweaking, the global warpagate system to use the same type of feature. Allowing each faction to already have a piece of the continent doesn't allow other nations to perform lockdowns and it also can lead to battles getting spread too thin across all the continents. Originally, PS1 had no lattice connections, Only continent specific warpgates and then the dropships. Problem as it turned out, the battles were all over the place and took people a long time to move their resources from Sanctuary to battlefronts without going through multiple continents or attempting HART drops onto one base and attempt to hold it. The other big issue was the fact that any faction could take any base on that continent which dissolved into a cluster of mini battles all over the place.

I feel that the foothold could cause the same chaotic battles in which it will cause people to not be able to work together without strict command structure in place that players can utilize easily to work out real strategy.

[Kipper]

Although the thread isn't about how long it takes to capture a hex if it is or isn't surrounded by your own hexes, that sounds to me to be perfectly good and plausible - and of course nothing to stop someone putting a hack on the base at 30 minutes (or whatever) and defending the crap out of it while people then go and put pressure on the adjacent hexes AFTERWARDS to bring down the time of the main hack.

Anyway, back on topic - seems to me that uncapturable footholds per continent is what we assume the current plan is, and its fairly unpopular. I'd be interested to get some official feedback - because it is afterall just speculation otherwise.

Even with multiple continents - there shouldn't be perma-strongholds imo, because I want to see each empires territory moving around all the time, it might remain broadly the same size as we are likely to find a minimum/maximum number of hexes that can be held without either having too much force concentration to lose any more, or too little so you end up losing what you can't possibly defend - but you never know which part of the continent your empires territory is going to be. That to me sounds like loads of fun.

Are the continents going to be completely independent, do we know? or are they somehow connected - perhaps by certain hexes which allow the empire to spread over multiple continents in a logical way?

[EVILPIG]

Originally Posted by WildVS

The smaller the gap in capture timers the more spread out and faster paced the map will change, obviously. Something that will need extensive feedback in beta I am sure.

Definitely. I was just clarifying that you will not need a link.

[Malorn]

Something else to keep in mind is that Indar won't be the only continent. There will be at least 2 more at launch. Empires will not be evenly distributed across those continents. Higby mentioned back in July that one thing outfits might have to do is go to a continent where they have a decent resource supply to build up resources so they have the capability to successfully make a push on a different continent. It seems from that statement that they expect empires to be pushed out of a continent. At least temporarily or unlikely to successfully push out.

Think of the footholds like warpgates with vehicle & equipment terminals and a respawn room. They are enough that you can successfully bring in vehicles to attack a continent without having to go to sanctuary and load/wait in queue. Most people didn't get new vehicles so many attacks were stopped cold. With a foothold its easy to get vehicles so the attackers will be much more likely to succeed. And the defenders get a more interesting and longer-lasting battle. Seems win-win to me.

If I have one complaint it would be that Indar seems kinda small, like roughly the size of Solsar. It also has the same number of facilities. Solsar with 4x as many people on it from all 3 empires.

When Higby flew to the outpost to switch out from reaver to tank, you can see the VS foothold to the north, and when he was flying around before they were in the area northeast of the NC warpgate. The Amp station and WG seemed fairly close to each other, so using that as an estimate it seems like the continent is fairly small, at least from a bird's-eye view it seems the size of Solsar.

I'm a bit worried it'll get stale. Even with 3 continents, it could get stale. Rotating footholds would help stave off that staleness, but I hope 2-3 more continents beyond the 3 we know aobut are on the 6 month plan.

If population distribution is an issue across more continents they could use the lock/unlock mechanic that the caves had in PS1 where only a subset are active at a time and then continents freeze and they rotate in new continents to fight over. Sometime later the frozen continent becomes un-frozen and the battle resumes.

I think something like that might have to be done regardless to handle fluxuating populations thorugh the day. Certain times of day have a lot more players and other time sare effectively dead. If we want a battle raging all day long they may have to restrict the continents we can fight on to funnel more players together, then expand the set as more players log on. So expand/contract with number of available continents so population density on a given continent remains similar throughout the day.

I hope Esamir is more true to the Esamir of PS1 and is HUGE. Hossin would be a cool continent to indroduce as well. And the legendary Cyssor of course...

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by roguy

I think what upsets Raymac isn't wether it's a choice or not, it's how being selfish is rewarded by having more fun and more xp to the detriment of everyone else while teamplayers get "punished" by having to wait for caps to go through.

If there ever was a downside to PS1 that was certainly one of them.

I like this guy. He is alot more concise than I am.

Figgy, as to your question "why" I personally did it, it was because it irked me that the enemy could steal a win and drag out the continent lock that much more. Like you, I liked putting the empire first. (which reminds me, sorry for calling you selfish, that was a dick move by me)

In any case, whether I chose to do it, or somebody else did, SOMEBODY had to stay behind and mop up for the continent lock. It doesn't matter who it is, it was still boring as hell to do. That's why I'm glad they are making the change.

I think there is a far more satisfying "win" in taking a base that is hard fought as opposed to mopping up a continent where the enemy essentially pulled out.

[Elthbert]

I too am iffy about this. I like being able to lock a continent in PS1, in fact, my complaint is that they are not hard locked for a few hours after being taken. Perhaps the footholds could lose power if no surrounding hexes are owned for a given period of time and essentially become "neutral" until that is accomplished. 1 base could be powered by "emergency power" no matter what, allowing empires to actually drive other empires off the continent
.

I also don't like the 3 continents thing, I think that is a bad way to end up with balanced empires, and could easily lead to a lock up of combat where no empire can gather up enough force to break into an essentially empire locked continent... 4 would be much better.

[megamold]

Originally Posted by Elthbert

I also don't like the 3 continents thing, I think that is a bad way to end up with balanced empires, and could easily lead to a lock up of combat where no empire can gather up enough force to break into an essentially empire locked continent... 4 would be much better.

but there will be many more then 3, tray and higby have said several times that they want to add all the original continents
they just seem to be focussing on 3 for release.
my geuss is they want to keep some content for after launch (to draw more players, keep the current ones happy)
and at the sime time lighten the workload ( cause making these continent is difficult im sure )

and usually spreading out your dev team over to much "stuff" makes for a mediocre game, i'd rather have them spend more time on the game mechanics now, and add more content later.

[Fenrys]

I don't want every team to have a permanent foothold on every continent.

Each team just needs one unassailable place to respawn if they loose every other base.

It could be a space station (or "sanctuary" if you will) that launches drop pods to any continent that does not have a particular artifact (or module) installed in one of the bases, vehicles can be launched by drop pod, and the only time players could spawn there is when their team has either 1 or 0 bases. There would be fewer drop-blocking artifacts than there are continents.

[Hoodlum]

I agree that having "sanc's" that don't move or change would be bad for long term game play. I liked the idea of the spinning sky bases but think that could also end badly as every 5 mins somewhere new to your rear might be hacked i think maybe with a slower spin this could work say 10-15 mins for ground troop spawn times, or perhaps change it to allow them to spawn at certain outpost as it spins around the map and not "taken" bases ?
Would you always have this sky base as a spawn point, or only when all other are gone ?

[Hoodlum]

Originally Posted by RavenUSC3

I liked having sanctuaries. If you asked me as a PS1 vet hearing the details of PS2 what I would miss most from the original, that would probably be it....and the seven other continents but I know they'll bring those back through expansion. The sanctuaries don't have to be anything intricate, really just a rally point and place to set your stuff up, but there is something to be said for it being a different place away from the continent.

Something else I was just thinking though and I guess similar to what someone said above with some kind of space ship, but what about some kind of large ships out in the ocean that are constantly circling the continent? They could have some kind of protective shield around them and help to promote naval combat. It would certainly promote air combat and the use of galaxies just to get off the thing.

Sounds like a cool idea also instead of flying bases but they would need to make the Sundy float as well to make that really work i think, or maybe add in our deliv/ thundy !!!!!!!!

[Figment]

@Malorn: How many people and how many continents do you see per server? Because what you described sounded like you didn't expect the servers to get full enough for all three continents to actually... be pop-locked.

It would be a major blow to emersion (to me anyway) if we're going to see multiple same-continents per server just to accomodate people being able to play on the same server: that would to me feel like instances.

So either we're going to need a lot of servers at first (and that may lead to mergers?), or they have to find other ways to get around 20.000 to what, 80.000 people on a single server.

Originally Posted by Raymac

I like this guy. He is alot more concise than I am.

Figgy, as to your question "why" I personally did it, it was because it irked me that the enemy could steal a win and drag out the continent lock that much more. Like you, I liked putting the empire first. (which reminds me, sorry for calling you selfish, that was a dick move by me)

In any case, whether I chose to do it, or somebody else did, SOMEBODY had to stay behind and mop up for the continent lock. It doesn't matter who it is, it was still boring as hell to do. That's why I'm glad they are making the change.

I think there is a far more satisfying "win" in taking a base that is hard fought as opposed to mopping up a continent where the enemy essentially pulled out.

Np, I understood why you would have misinterpreted the question a bit as a pseudo-accusation due to the phrasing. That's my fault.

However, in the end, like you I would prefer to fight till the end. But I'd like there to be an end to the fight. Where you can look back with satisfaction and say: "Hah, we got it all. Now come take it all back you *@$(#@$s. ". I'm afraid we'll never have that satisfaction unless pops become very unbalanced.

I would prefer the off cont invasion. It's also this idea of "We're all going to [...] and kick butt!" that we're going to miss.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Figment

However, in the end, like you I would prefer to fight till the end. But I'd like there to be an end to the fight. Where you can look back with satisfaction and say: "Hah, we got it all. Now come take it all back you *@$(#@. ". I'm afraid we'll never have that satisfaction unless pops become very unbalanced.

I would prefer the off cont invasion. It's also this idea of "We're all going to [...] and kick butt!" that we're going to miss.

I think you can still have that satisfaction, it's just slightly different than in PS1. In PS1, sure you might be able to lock out a continent, but the bad guys would just squirt on over to another continent to fight, so it really is not much different. I think of it like this...Hexes are to PS2 as Continents are to PS1. You can lock out that zone, but the enemy will ALWAYS be somewhere else. Even in those extremely rare situations of 1 empire being totally sanc locked, which almost never happened across all the servers forever, the enemy still wasn't finished. They still had the ability to fight somewhere.

There is this false concept of PS1 having an end game or that PS2 needs an end game. It doesn't, and in fact it can't or else you lose the persistance. We will, however, have far MORE victorties thanks to winning territory as opposed to just base hopping.

[EVILPIG]

Just to add to this, it was described that an outfit may go to a different continent where they have access to resources to gather them for use on another continent. This sounds like the fights will be spread out amongst all the continents at all times as outfits will likely take the path of least resistance to gather resources and keep their coffers full. I imagine that there will be a limit on how much you can hold.

[StumpyTheOzzie]

Originally Posted by Kipper

The outfit or squad that re-takes a hex to generate their own 'new' foothold for the empire will be heroes, and since that foothold can be anywhere and the empire can expand out from it, then the map/territory can end up being in ANY configuration.

Then they can have motivational posters on the walls for a few days: "This base brought to you by: [outfit name]"