Seige or Conquest?

[Mazelmavin]

When I first started researching this game I got the impression that it would revolve around capturing bases. That your outfit or independent group would have one goal, to capture a single base.

This brought upon some questions. What will the pilots do while a base is being invaded? What will you do after a successful mission? Will you just move on or defend? Won't defending be boring? Won't leaving your base be stupid?

As you can see I'm quite crazy and refer to myself as "you". But about a week ago I had a revelation while looking at some screenshots. I notice some chat boxes talked about other bases under attack or the next to be attacked. It is then that it dawned on me.

Planetside won't be about capping bases, it will be about capping turf. Bases will only be a small goal compared to taking a continent or sizable section of it. And there are ten continents, easily enough to go around. With the new info on towers, it just fortifies my opinion.

Now, instead of one single attack, I imagine a main force slowing sweeping across a continent until it meets another large force. When somebody wins, they move up and take more land (bases and towers) and then eventually meet the other, regrouped force to begin again.

Along with this will be commando raiders striking behind enemy lines to cap bases or towers. This will spawn roving defenders who patrol the conquered lands for any would-be raiders. Of course, if your going to have a large force you need a screen or picket of recon and snipers.

All in all it seems more exciting to be part of something bigger then just capping bases. More like a BF1942 conquest game then a Tribes siege game.

What do you think? Siege or Conquest?

[Tobias]

I, personaly, am just going to sniper people.

[Warborn]

Originally posted by Tobias
I, personaly, am just going to sniper people.

Which is of course exactly what he was asking.

/me blinks


Anyway, moving on, initially attacks will be fairly unorganized, but very quickly (or instantly in some cases) leadership will emerge and things will begin to take shape. And, yes, I imagine objectives won't be centered around specific installations, unless it's low-activity-hours. During peak times, objectives will likely be continents, and several attacks will be executed at once. So, yes, definitely Conquest. People will Siege for fun during the periods between Conquests, but when the Faction gets active as a unit, it'll be Conquest.

As for defense being boring, I doubt it. I'd actually find it pretty fun, especially if they get inside. Some intense interior combat would be really, really cool.

[Airlift]

I suspect that your latter prediction is the more accurate one.

[terragen]

I agree it will be a large force offensive, but in order for this to work well it would require a great deal of communication and cooperation between the different outfits as well as the lone soldiers, if we have one unit running stright into enmey territory with no back up they will most likely becom a group of bullet spunges...or half the force fighting and the other half sitting back it would make for an inefficent offensive, so I guess what im trying to say is in order for one empire to pull out in front of the others it will take everyone working together and being on the same page

just my thoughts

[Sputty]

About the base and territory thing, the bases will most likely be postitioned reasonably equally around meaning they'll be in the centre of a territory. so taking territory will be important the end goal of taking that territory is getting to the base. Although I'm sure that later in the game outfits will form battle lines and begin "duking it out" over a piece of territory to start up the offensive again.

[Airlift]

Regarding wide-scale communication and coordination needed to engineer big assaults... It will definately happen because one side on each server is going to get their act together first and bring the pain on the other empires until they adopt similar or competing cooperative standard. The players will either get along or get crushed. I suspect that the game will start out with a ton of small groups doing their own things. Everyone wants to be autonomous or lead the masses, but ther won't be any masses until the small groups start to take a pounding. So the metagame in all this is a race to see which empire can get organized the fastest and then stay ahead of the curve.

The real questions are how will that communication be structured? What will happen to it over time as different people log in and out? How much similarity will there be between the communication nets in competing empires, or even in empires on different servers?

[Sputty]

I think the biggest battles will be on the servers with a good amount of large outifts. Not only can they communicate alot better but also they can learn it's members capabilities and just know eachother well so competition for vehicles and such won't be apparent. They'll be the ones that set the tone and force the others to compete as you said Airlift.

[Ludio]

I dont think we will ever really have large scale battle lines. The game is designed to be for skirmishes. That doesnt mean that we wont have organized skirmishes, and I too think that the first empire to get organized will have an advantage in base capturing, but they can do it without huge fronts moving towards each other. That style of gameplay would really make some things such as drop pods useless and it would be too hard to organize.

Even if an empire did organize it, it would be useless in the end becuase the bases are the only permanent turf you can take (and gun towers). If the defenders are holed up in three bases and an attacker makes a big front of vehicles/people and moves forward then when they meet the bases they will be too spread out. If they instead form up into four groups (one for each base and one as roving defense) then they will be able to focus their power much more effeciently. In fact it may make more sense to make two groups innitially (one for defense and one for offense) when they take a base, leave behind a mini group to defend it. Or they could just extend the defensive patrol to the newly captued base.

In the end though it wont matter who has how many bases, an Empire could control the whole world and it wouldnt matter. That is because each empire has a sanctuary that cant be taken, and just because you dont own any/many of the bases doesnt detract from your fun. In fact it may add to it becuase there would be more objectives. If an Empire ever controlled all the bases they would only have defense left, and that would get boring after a while. Also I dont that is possible, because it doesnt matter how organized you are, numbers win out in the end, and if you are overstreched then the other two Empires will be able to take bases from you more easily.

It will be interesting to see how organization structures form, but it will only be for prestige of the total % of bases that your Empire controls. In all practical terms, or in terms of enjoyment it wont really matter. (well ok its more fun when you can say that you 0wnz0r3d everyone else, but besides that)

[Lexington_Steele]

Succesful faction wide strategies may depend on how bonuses for bases work and how the continents are linked.

It may be that the faction that holds a certain base on a particular continent will find itself dominating that continent (maybe a base that allows galaxy spawning or AMS spawning.).

If this is the case, properly being able to take a continent from an enemy faction will require you to bring enough troops to that continent to make up for that disadvantage. You will have to be able to make it onto the continent, be able to take bases as you go, move on and be able to take that most important base on the continent (almost in one fell swoop). This type of invasion will require the attacking faction to have a relatively large and singular attacking force. Once you cap that more important base, then dominace of the continent will have shifted. You should be able to steal the remaining bases on the continent with ease and plan an invasion of the next one.

You could also try to cut off enemy support to that base, but that would require an even larger aforce as you have to be able to hold all of the surrouning bases as well as launch a successful assault on the most important base.

If you only come to the continent with a small force, the faction in power on that continent will swallow up your foothold as soon as your forces move forward.

So depending on the advantages we get from holding different bases, the faction that groups together the largest singular force might find the most success.

[Airlift]

And that's where you get into drop pods and galaxies taking troops to rear areas. The higher the tempo of your small raiding forces, the more you dissipate the defenders, hopefully leaving a weak enough force defending your primary objective to make it easy to sieze and hold it.

[Mazelmavin]

So if there is a massive battle plan in action, where do you see yourself?
Main Assualt?
Commando Raider?
Roving Defender?
Recon Screen?
Maybe something I have not thought of?

Personally I would like to be part of the Main Assualt group for the sheer scope (100 vs 100). Being part of the defense could get interesting as well.

Why would anyone want to defend? Well, that question answers itself. People tend to like attacking, which means that the brave few who choose to defend are going to have their work cut out for them. And its not like you will be holed up in a base. You should be actively patrolling, looking for any interlopers.

In fact, defense will probably require a fair amount of offense. As you patrol your territory a enemy Galaxy is spotted a fair distance away. It lands and takes a base. Now, as the defenders, it is your job to take it back. After you oust the invaders, another Galaxy is spotted...

[Valius]

Howdy folks, I'm new to the forum and totally psyched about PlanetSide! Anyway enough with the introduction.

I personaly would be a defender, although I can be an attacker I really show my teeth as a defender/sniper, leading me to classify myself a "Standing Fire Specialist".

My big reason for posting to this thread was because I don't agree with the mindset that the empire with the most troops present is going to win, or have the overwhelming advantage. I've played quite a lot of Unreal Tournament and I've found that working with my bro and a friend we can handle an overwhelming enemy force. I'd like to note we always set the bots to the "inhuman" level meaning they virtually never miss .

But I digress, the point I want to make is that a group of very skilled troops could easily turn the tide even if the enemy has far more units in the field. This would obviously lead to some Outfits gaining a fierce reputation within the game .

[GhostSniper]

Defending would be fun I think (pictures Helms Deep scene) yeaaaaaaa

[Warborn]

Valius? Not the same Valius who used to frequent the Dragonspire forums and the old IGN Horizons forums, are you?