Scale of Map compared

[Landtank]

Originally Posted by Red Beard

By the way; this group of galaxies would not be able to fly un-attacked to that first waypoint like they did in the video...When the flies spot them, I have no idea how a group of galaxies would get past a front line unless they were flying at a high flight ceiling with partial invisibility; otherwise they will just get swarmed until they're all dead...I really don't get how Gals will be able to go anywhere unnoticed, with visibility ranges what they are, and the amount of aircraft that will be in the air above the front line...?

Us Gal pilots will have to make use of fighter escorts, just like in WW2.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by WildVS

Did you see the video of the SOE guys stating the largest cont in PS was 8k x 8k? Cyssor I believe would be it.

The scale in the first game was wrong. This is a known problem from the first game.

TRay worked on both games. He says that warpgates are about twice as large as they used to be. My comparison has the warpgates being just about exactly twice as large on the Indar map versus the Cyssor map.

If you want to disagree with TRay, be my guest, but I'm going to believe him over any random person who doesn't have access to an accurate scale comparison, considering how broken the first games scale was.

Obviously there is some room for error with the whole "approximately 2x large" statement, but that could go either way. Either Cyssor is a little bigger than my comparison shows, or perhaps even a little smaller. Either way, it's close, and either way, Indar is still at least 2x larger.

[Landtank]

Originally Posted by WildVS

Well his old boss said Cyssor is 8k X 8k so something isnt adding up. I tell you what. I can get in game and setup a stopwatch while I cruise across Cyssor at a set KPH (or are you saying KPH isnt really KPH).

Hes saying set KPH isn't really KPH :P The people in planetside 1 were 3 meters tall, or master chief sized.

[Krishtov]

Originally Posted by WildVS

Well his old boss said Cyssor is 8k X 8k so something isnt adding up. I tell you what. I can get in game and setup a stopwatch while I cruise across Cyssor at a set KPH (or are you saying KPH isnt really KPH).

I can tell you right now, the KM distance and speed in PS2 is not accurate.

100KMPH is 62 MPH for those who don't have a reference. I can tell you right now that is not 62 miles per hour... PS1 scale is wrong compared to 'real life.'

Ontop of that, the aircraft in PS2 move much faster, at a different scale. The 'best' way to compare would be using structures.

In this case, we know the warpgate is about 2x the old wargate scale. So if we scale a map based on that we get an approximate value that is way more accurate than measuring numbers in a inaccurate game.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Red Beard

Do you agree with Higby's 64 sq km? If so, your estimate for the continent would range between 3200-6400 players per continent if I'm understanding you correctly.

Except the density of 100 people per 1-2 sq. km only holds near the front lines.

Again, falling back to Josh Hackney's demo of the iPad app for Gamespot, looking at the borders there, if we assume that each facility on either side of the border between empires has combat at it... and using my guesstimated breakdowns for facility sizes in that map (guesstimated, in case you missed where I was using it before and explaining, because the divisions between regions don't appear very well for the TR and some of the VS territory), 112 hex's worth of facilities are bordering the front lines.

So if 7 hexes were represented by Higby's 2% remark (which jives with my hex-count and knowing that Zervan Amp Station governs a 7 hex territory -- note that because we're judging it by facilities under conflict, it doesn't matter if the actual play size was limited to that 7 hexes or if it spilled over into neighboring regions; in such case, it would just spill deeper away from the front lines proportionately in our front-lines metric), ~70-80 players on 7 hexes (since there were 12 floor demo stations, a few stations that Higby and cohorts were using back where they were giving press floor interviews, and reportedly ~60 QA testers back at the Sony offices) extrapolates out to 1120-1280 players over my estimation of the front lines represented by the screenshot of Hackney's demo.

So my guess is that the battle they were showing was actually somewhat light, and that it only represents the player density of ~60% of the target continent population being actively engaged on the frontlines! So that could represent either a non-peak time, or a VERY generous allowance for people doing back-hacking conflicts or messing around unproductively.

[Raymac]

For me, the important point is that the "actual used" playable space in PS2 will be much larger than in PS1 because in the original, we just jumped from 1 SOI to another with almost zero fighting happening anywhere else on the map. If you add up the space of the SOI's and compare it to the hexes, even if you want to exclude the hexes near the warpgates, you are left with FAR more terrain.

That's why I find this debate to just be splitting hairs and really losing the sight of the forrest through the trees.

[Krishtov]

Originally Posted by Raymac

That's why I find this debate to just be splitting hairs and really losing the sight of the forrest through the trees.

That has me dismayed too..I started this thread as an "omg yay its big!" and found out it is even BIGGER than I thought... and yet in the end it still became hair splitting.

Then again this is the internet.

[Xyntech]

At this point, if anyone can't understand that Indar is bigger both in scale and especially in playable space, they are deluding themselves and there is no other way to explain it to them other than playing on the continent for themselves.

I'm confident enough in TRay's indication of the relative scale that, extrapolating from his statement about warpgates being about 2x larger in PS2, I now pretty much take it as official word that Indar is twice as large as Cyssor. This scale is not in conflict with what we have seen of the gigantic size of bases in PS2, compared to how relatively small bases were in PS1. Seems clear enough to me.

I'll be taking that as fact at least until beta starts.

But even if you can't be convinced that Indar is twice as large as Cyssor, there is no denying that Indar has over 4x as many capturable terrain locations as Cyssor has.

The real key here is how hard it will be to capture hex areas behind enemy lines. Remember that you could do this in the first Planetside as well. Just drain the base and then hack it.

If you had all 500 (later reduced to 400) players evenly spread out over every base on Cyssor, that would be 29 (later 24) players per base. Right about in the same ballpark as 2000 players spread across 70+ capture points.

But despite the fact that you could drain a base and hack behind the lattice front line, we didn't see this all the time in Planetside (especially when populations were decent). The reason was that it was a lot harder to take and hold that base during the longer and more difficult draining process. The enemy had more time to react. Even when populations were lower, there was never an even spread among all bases. Groups would go from one base to another to drain them. There was never an even spread of players among every base on a continent in the first game, and there will never be an even spread on every hex in Planetside 2.

So as long as it is significantly harder to back hack than it is to take and lose territory on the front line, the system will be pretty balanced, surprisingly close to the way the first game was.

The biggest difference is that it's like 3 or 4 continents all shoved into one. That, along with the towers being like PS1 bases and the PS2 bases being like mega bases, are where the change lies. We just don't yet know what it will be like to be fighting over the equivalent of 3 PS1 continents smashed into a single playing space, because we don't have any game experience to compare it to.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by WildVS

In PS1 the BWG was same size as base SOI. If you look at this picture of Indar the footholds are the same size as a base. I recall T-Ray saying a while ago that a base in PS2 was the size of an SOI in PS1. So T-Ray saying foothold is 2X BWG and base stays to same scale then yes Indar is roughly the same size as Cyssor. And that's fine with me.

http://i.imgur.com/tmJOW.jpg

If a PS2 base is as large as the entire SOI from the first game, then my comparison on the previous page is pretty much accurate. So Indar is roughly 2x the size of Cyssor, not the same size.

Indar is approximately 64 square kilometers on my image, with Cyssor being approximately a little over 25 square kilometers. But even if my scale is slightly off, Cyssor would have to be 32 square kilometers to be even half as large as Indar.

But like Raymac said, it's really splitting hairs anyways. Planetside certainly didn't use as much contestable land as Planetside 2 does.

[Marinealver]

Originally Posted by T-Ray

The new warp gates are about 2x bigger than the old ones

Is that because the warp gate is going to be what replaces the sanc?

If not I really don't see any reason to make a warp gate any bigger than it already is (a full SOI/HEX)

They took forever to run around the circumfrence and also those warpgate in and out fights were too big. Why would we need 2 times the "NO FIRE" zone on a combat contenant?

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Marinealver

Is that because the warp gate is going to be what replaces the sanc?

If not I really don't see any reason to make a warp gate any bigger than it already is (a full SOI/HEX)

They took forever to run around the circumfrence and also those warpgate in and out fights were too big. Why would we need 2 times the "NO FIRE" zone on a combat contenant?

Yes. Warpgates act as the empire footholds on a continent, which replaces the sanctuary.

In practice, it's like a home continent lattice link, except that you don't have an extra loading screen to sit through, and all three empires have a link on the same continent.

Fortunately, the continent is larger than a PS1 continent. But we'll have to see how it actually plays out in beta.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by WildVS

If the SOI and BWG are equal in PS1, in PS2 base = 2 X SOI, in PS2 BWG = 2X PS1 BWG, in PS2 base (SOI) = BWG. Doesn't that not indicate to you linear scaling. Higby said Indar is 64 square km, it is a square map so 8km X 8km. Your only weak argument is that in PS1 a kilometer is some arbitrary value, even though Higby's equivalent at the time said is Cyssor is 8km X 8km. T-Ray is right Foot hold is 2X BWG but so is base SOI from PS1 to PS2. We have Malorn and Bobby putting in time analyzing time vs. movement over PS2 map as well. Not exactly splitting hairs you saying 2X just because T-Ray said Foothold is 2X BWG. Just bad math.

I give up.

Dude, the size of a base SOI in planetside 1 is the size of the ACTUAL BASE in Planetside 2.

That doesn't mean that the size of a PS1 base is the same as a PS2 base.

It also doesn't mean that a PS1 SOI is the same size as the hex area that a base sits in.

It means that the actual SOI of a PS1 base, that huge circle surrounding that actual base, is only as large as the actual base itself in PS2.

Compare it yourself. Make a more accurate representation based on the reliable information we know. Scale it based on the warpgates, or based on the SOI of a base vs the area of a PS2 base footpring

Better yet, let me make another comparison where I compare the SOI to the PS2 AMP station footprint. I'll make sure to get the walls to be within the SOI. That should give us an upper limit of how large Cyssor may possibly be compared to Indar.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by WildVS

Per Tray A base in PS2 = SOI in PS1. There is no SOI in PS2. If there was an SOI in PS2 2X the foothold then bingo you got it. Wrong.

Could you point me to where TRay said this? I'd like to see his exact wording. I skimmed through his PSU posts and twitter, but I couldn't find it. If it's in one of the E3 streams or another video, I'd like a link and timestamp. I think the wording is important here.

Because my understanding of that statement is that the size of a PS1 SOI = the size of a PS2 base. SOI's were a lot bigger than bases in PS1. There are no SOI's in PS2. So the only logical conclusion I can come to is that it's merely a scale comparison, not an indication that PS2 is the same size as PS1. If it's a scale comparison, then Indar is around 2x larger than Cyssor.

The word for word quote I do have handy is from this very thread:

Originally Posted by T-Ray

The new warp gates are about 2x bigger than the old ones

Which both of my comparisons fully take into account.

This second comparison also takes into account the PS2 base = PS1 SOI factor:



Based on this more generous comparison, Cyssor is 36 square kilometers. That's only 4 square kilometers larger than being half the size of Indar. Pretty much half the size.

Either you are wrong, or TRay is wrong. I'm going with TRay on this one.

[PsychoXR-20]

Cyssor is indeed 8km x 8km

Not only was it stated many times in early development, but is also easily provable in game, get in a vehicle, find your current speed, time yourself from point A to point B, extrapolate. The result is damn close to 8km squared.

[Malorn]

Xyn, your incorrect mockup fails to render the indar warpgates to scale. You made them smaller than they actually are to delude yourself.

Simy make the cyssor bwgs twice the diameter and the scale looks about right.

Wild's fly test shows cyssor is 8x8. We know indar is 8x8, and we know the gates on indar are twice the size, which explains why indar appears smaller than cyssor when it is in fact the same size.

It isnt all that difficult to grasp.