Footholds Archetypes: "Food for Thought"

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Yes that's option #3 in the OP. It isn't particularly bad, but still less space utilization than #1, which I think has to be the priority. #3 would be an interesting option to consider with more continents. For launch they need to maximize player density, because that density will drop the moment a single continent is added and with each additional continent. As density drops the need for a different continental layout goes up, both to keep density high in a local area and to add more strategic depth to the game.

I completely agree. I meant it as a suggestion for down the road; clearly tri-footholds everywhere are ideal for launch.

My beef with #3 in the OP is I tend to dislike warp gate links that aren't 1:1 connections.

[Malorn]

A natural evolution of #1 is #3, with new continents splitting off. That could get very interesting if there's 5-6 continents, but I think they need at least 5 before considering it, preferably 6-7.

[NEWSKIS]

I think no matter what setup they use, there will always be a stalemate at some point, be it between 2 or 3 empires. The system they are using currently is designed so that the fights keep going on every continent and not just rotate between them. The hex system also gives a lot more ways to attack and makes defense more difficult. This might limit the stalemates. Personally I'd say wait till beta starts and see how good/bad the current system they have works. That's the only way to find out. Hopefully if some aspect of it doesnt work, they'll modify it to make it better.

[erunion]

Originally Posted by NEWSKIS

The system they are using currently is designed so that the fights keep going on every continent and not just rotate between them.

Yes, but what kind of combat will it be?

Likely each faction would spend its time defending/retaking a very small portion at the center of the map.

[NEWSKIS]

Originally Posted by erunion

Yes, but what kind of combat will it be?

Likely each faction would spend its time defending/retaking a very small portion at the center of the map.

There really isnt anyway to know to what extent that will happen until beta gets going for a while.

[lolroflroflcake]

Number 4 gives the best options, It allows empires to attack where ever the want so long as they have one warp gate while still letting them conquer their home continent.

It prevents warp gate camping because instead of just sitting outside the gate trying to hold an empire inside, like you would do with a foot hold, you've to carry the fight through the gate and engage the enemy on their own territory compromising the hold on your own continent.

This accomplishes the original goal of allowing anyone to fight where ever they want unless the other two empires are insanely under populated and it eliminates gate camping. Everyone gets what they want so everyone is happy

[Haro]

I agree with 1, at least for the beginning. Even with less meta, I think the new and improved shooting gameplay (at least according to many accounts I have read from E3) will keep people invested until new content comes, at the very least.

Of course, where we go from there is totally up in the air. I personally believe the game can be balanced completely around a foothold system without necessarily leading into a stalemate. I'm not making any predictions, but depending on how territory capture, mission systems, and population density works out, it's entirely possible that the hex system offers a measure of structure without creating impermeable frontlines that lead to the largely anticipated stalemates.

The beauty of the current system of content distribution is that it can be tailored to how the game grows. Maybe the foothold method catches on and becomes standard: given how the devs seem to really emphasize accessibility, I could see them trying to further implement it, if possible. If it is too stagnant, we have several methods they could take as they expand.

I'm interested to see how they handle server populations. Will they try to maintain the 2000 per cont model they're pushing for now? Will they let the original 6000 play on more continents? Try to find a balance in between? We haven't seen large enough gameplay to truly evaluate how conts handle their population, but I have to imagine they have included some flexibility to their population design.

[IMMentat]

#1

Else I envision 2 conts being perma locked while the third gets shafted. guard the warpgates = dumb way to do open world conquest. Forcing an army to not only travel through a "region/server" zoneline but also provide vehicles from across one is just asking for players to leave the game.

[NewSith]

Added an extra-note:

Please have a crystal clear mind about the neutral warpgate handling method. We can have several choices for the way they operate: Non-contestable, always open; Non-contestable, accessibility is based on adjacency; Contestable, effectless hex; Contestable, adjacency-effecting hex.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by NewSith

Added an extra-note:

Please have a crystal clear mind about the neutral warpgate handling method. We can have several choices for the way they operate: Non-contestable, always open; Non-contestable, accessibility is based on adjacency; Contestable, effectless hex; Contestable, adjacency-effecting hex.

Gates are tricky, but I have a few ideas...

In order for a neutral gate to become a foothold it has to have some amount of ownership, not because of the gate itself but because the territory next to the gate. The gate needs to give the empire attacking out of it some amount of influence so they can reasonably capture territory adjacent to the gate and start pushing out.


You could have the gate behavior change depending on territory adjacency, moving from effectively "neutral" to a full on exclusive foothold.

Here's some ideas

- you can enter/ use the gate if you have non-zero influence over the gate, so only one hex is required to broadcast to either side of the gate

- if you own 51% of the influence over the gate it becomes a broadcast source and you can broadcast from that gate to other broadcast destinations you have

- if you own 100% of the gate *on both sides* it becomes a foothold *for both sides*, and you have exclusive control over the gate (nobody else can use it).

- strength of influence generated by the gate scales with amount of territory adjacent to it *on the other side* (so if you have all of the territory on the other side it gives you a strong influence bonus, making it easy to capture the territory on the other side).


The way I see this working is that as you approach a gate you want to own all adjacent territory, as that gives you the strongest influence on the other side of the gate. Once you go through it, you start capturing territory immediately around the gate, which captures faster thanks to the influence bonus from the other side. Once you secure all the territory on both sides the gate becomes a foothold on both sides and only your empire can use it.

It is then possible for enemies to uproot that foothold by attacking territory around the gate on either side to break the foothold. It only takes 1 adjacent hex for an empire to start using that gate and break the foothold, but since influence on the other side is proportional to adjacent territory on this side it will be difficult for them to simply capture 1 hex on one side, hop through and start taking territory on the other side. It'll be a gradual process to weaken the grip on the gate.


One thing I like about this is that the gates themselves and the areas around them become conflict points and they become relevant.



Also, instead of having permanent "sanctuary" footholds they could make it more dynamic where every foothold can be uprooted, BUT - each empire must have at least 2 footholds at all times (on different continents). So if they are down to their last 2 footholds they cannot be broken. Since every WG has a companion on the other side it means the most you could back up an empire to is 2 different continents (with back-to-back warpgates that are footholds).

It would allow empires to actually relocate and choose their own homes, and always guarantee two continents are available for play for any given empire.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Malorn

You could have the gate behavior change depending on territory adjacency, moving from effectively "neutral" to a full on exclusive foothold.

Here's some ideas

- you can enter/ use the gate if you have non-zero influence over the gate, so only one hex is required to broadcast to either side of the gate

- if you own 51% of the influence over the gate it becomes a broadcast source and you can broadcast from that gate to other broadcast destinations you have

- if you own 100% of the gate *on both sides* it becomes a foothold *for both sides*, and you have exclusive control over the gate (nobody else can use it).

- strength of influence generated by the gate scales with amount of territory adjacent to it *on the other side* (so if you have all of the territory on the other side it gives you a strong influence bonus, making it easy to capture the territory on the other side).


The way I see this working is that as you approach a gate you want to own all adjacent territory, as that gives you the strongest influence on the other side of the gate. Once you go through it, you start capturing territory immediately around the gate, which captures faster thanks to the influence bonus from the other side. Once you secure all the territory on both sides the gate becomes a foothold on both sides and only your empire can use it.

This is all pretty much exactly how I'd implement warpgates. I don't remember whether I went into this kind of detail when I first suggested using warpgate links as stalemate spoiler factors on the tri-hold continent layout; but if I did, this is what it looked like in a little less detail.

[Malorn]

I'm trying to create a road map for a good inter-continental design given the current continents and likely plan to continue releasing continents with only 3 warpgates. One thing I'm searching for is the inflection point where they could make the switch from the current model to an inter-connected dynamic model.

I was working through some different continent configurations and had some observations.

1) If continents continue the pattern of only having 3 warpgates then it will severely limit inter-continental link options.

2) With 3 links per continent and a fully capturable warpgate model (dynamic footholds) I described above, there is no valid configuration for an odd number of continents. 3, 5, and 7 do not work at all. 4, 6, and 8 work, and I have to say 6 and 8 look quite interesting with a fully dynamic foothold system. 4 is OK but is a slight loss in space utilization over the current 3-continent design.

3) Without the dynamic foothold model the continental configurations are all terrible and uninteresting. I didn't like any of them.

4) The dynamic foothold model is not only a cool sandbox concept, but it is also necessary in order to allow the game to free-flow and allow empires to reasonably see all the continents. It is also needed to create interesting inter-continental configurations because with only 3 links continents configurations lead to becoming triangular and effectively walls off multiple continents for each faction. The dynamic model allows what would have otherwise been end-points in the continental config to loop back and open up the configuration for a lot more open and flowing options. The end points are problematic in general and create some undesired characteristics. I think the dynamic foothold model fixes that.

5) It is possible to make an odd number of continents work, but only if there is one continent that is like the current model - all three empires have a link to it and it isn't connected to any other continents. It's just a one-off continent. The rest of the continents are configured as N-1. I'm not sure I like that as a solution because I think that one-off continent will draw people away from the other continents. Perhaps there are other incentives to help diversify, but the one-off continent also has some merits.




I don't have time now, but I will illustrate the above with a 4 and 6 continent configuration to demonstrate what I mean.

When I get some time I'll map this out in more detail, probably make a new thread about it. The goal is a road-map and some of the things that would need to happen if they wanted to eventually do that.

[kaffis]

Malorn, I think it wouldn't be preposterous to update Indar to have 2 footholds and 2 warpgates in the future. Take a look at some of the maps we've been shown; there's room in the North-East corner for another 9-hex diamond. Convert one of the footholds to a warpgate, and you have a two-foothold, two-warpgate continent.

Looking at the data-mined 2nd continent map, it's harder to say, since we don't have a hex grid on that one yet, but there might be a few spots to squeeze one in (or put one on/under the mountain!) if they had to. *shrug*

[Malorn]

Yes, they could modify the continents, but I think that's a lot more dangerous than it might seem and could completely screw up the balance and flow of the continent. As it is, each warpgate is designed to be roughly balanced in terms of nearby facilities and resources. The facilities might not be as big of a deal as they were in PS1 but we don't yet know what sort of value facilities provide other than resources.

If they were going to release 4-warpgate continents I think those would have to be new continents designed for that, not retro-fitting existing continents. So any mockups I do will likely have at least 4 continents with 3-warpgates. 4's configuration works with 3 gates per continent. 5 would be the first continent that might require 4. But as I said earlier, 6 and 8 work and look quite interesting. So perhaps we simply rough it out with the current design until they have 6 continents, then switch. I think 6 is the inflection point.

There's also the possibility that they release two continents at once instead of one at a time. So they could go 3, 4, 5, 6 (switch to inter-connected continents), 8 - something like that.

[Dagron]

Originally Posted by Malorn

The dynamic foothold model is not only a cool sandbox concept, but it is also necessary in order to allow the game to free-flow and allow empires to reasonably see all the continents. It is also needed to create interesting inter-continental configurations because with only 3 links continents configurations lead to becoming triangular and effectively walls off multiple continents for each faction. The dynamic model allows what would have otherwise been end-points in the continental config to loop back and open up the configuration for a lot more open and flowing options. The end points are problematic in general and create some undesired characteristics. I think the dynamic foothold model fixes that.

I won't pretend to understand most of your concepts (i'm not stupid, just not particularly brilliant either), but the ones i do get the jist of seem really insightful. This dynamic foothold model is one of them.

After skimming your stories about how home continents were (your PS1 "ASS" post and part of the manifesto), that got me thinking and i came up with a dynamic foothold model of my own.
It's definitely not as well thought out as yours (so i don't think it belongs in the idea vault just yet), but maybe it can contain some hidden knowledge that might inspire you (or someone else) to either improve upon your own or to create a whole new one.

I talked about it earlier in this thread just as it popped into my brain, but i made it confusing and just weird. So i'd like a do over.

I'll try to explain it better as soon as i work on it, but for now it's in no way a serious suggestion. It's just one of those half-baked ideas that you get when brainstorming late at night.
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The basic is:
- Each continent has a certain number of neutral warpgates, some linked to only one other warpgate, others linked to more than one (depending on the number of continents and gates per continent). Continents can have different numbers of warpgates.

- Each faction has a small number of "gate dominator" Mobile Footholds, maybe 2 or 3 Capital Ships for just a few continents (more should be added depending on the number of new continents). There should be enough to keep every empire's population somewhat disperse throughout the world (few neutral links, no empty continents).

- Every once in a while (every other week or every month) each foothold jumps to another warpgate, either in the same continent or through the gate it currently owns.

- The direction of these movements could be a fixed route preset by the devs (to prevent the scenario where one faction would never see a specific continent) or just random. Alternatively it could be influenced by the territorial dispute over the week previous to the jump (who pushed who in the hex grid), but that would probably lead to factions getting stuck on the same place for a long while sometimes.

- If during a certain period of time a faction had no access to a continent (no direct or neutral links there), that continent's population cap should be divided among the two factions with access to it (that should help alleviate a possible low population season in that continent).

edit: you can watch it without the annotations and pause at each picture to get a better view of what happened.

The images don't really say it all, and obviously the number of footholds/warpgates/gate-links/continents and the time frame are all just randomly thrown in (nothing is set in stone).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The point is:
This model is supposed to make each faction eventually see each continent in a different perspective - their home today, a three-way battle next week, a two-way skirmish field no one really owns a few months later and a year from now, a long lost home they long to return to.
And they'll almost never see them in the exact same way as before - one time they'll be invading it from the north, another time they'll own the southwestern base, etc... they'll have to fight a different faction coming from a different direction every time they own or invade it.



But before i work more on the idea, i'd like to know what are some obvious pitfalls i might be missing here, so i ask anyone interested: please watch it (it's not very long) and tell me if it's worth investing more thought into.

Thank you.