INTRO
I feel as if I'm letting an elephant out of the room here. Caves receive a very mixed response amongst the PlanetSide community for a number of (good) reasons. Their association with BFRs, the lame tactics that occurred there that led to shit fights, etc.
However, I believe that with PlanetSide 2 we should drop our bias towards caves, and start fresh, with new ideas regarding their implementation.
The primary reason I think they should be implemented is because the style of combat was a nice breather from the top-side monotony at times. I remember I took part in several pop-lock/near pop-lock cave battles and they were just awesome. Seeing people zip-lining everywhere while guns were blazing from multiple elevations was a sight to behold... and participate in.
The main problem arose when populations in cave fights were so small that vehicles imbalanced the fights a lot (such as mosquitos, etc), or when the group with the slight upper hand would camp the hell out of the spawns. I think these problems can be fixed though, to provide a good experience for PlanetSide 2's spelunkers. With that said let us address how caves in PlanetSide 2 might be able to work out.
STORYLINE
I say keep it similar to PlanetSide 1's storyline minus BFRs and what not. The humans who colonized Auraxis discovered extensive cave networks built by a now-departed, advanced alien civilization. Through research of these caves it became known that their purpose was to more efficiently gather resources across Auraxis' surface as well as the extraction of very rare crystals with extremely unique properties.
The structures within these cavern systems are very alien in nature and cannot be used by humans, as of their current understanding of ancient Vanu systems. As such, colonists brought down their own equipment and devices for use within the caves, to once again help with resource gathering and also to study the strange crystals and Vanu structures. The caves are very unique because they preserved Vanu buildings, the likes of which are not seen on the surface.
IMPLEMENTATION
Its in fact the storyline behind the caves that will allow for flexibility in their implementation. SOE could either decide to make the rare crystals in the caves usable as a resource/item or they could simply say that humans don't understand them enough yet to be able to make use of them. This could come as a later add-on during their three year plan or whatever.
However in my possible storyline for caves, it was noted that human colonists brought their own equipment and machinery into the caves. This would fix problems such as the spawncamping seen in PlanetSide. The main reason this was so prominent is there were no tubes to destroy because the Vanu structure was built that way. Make it so that the PlanetSide colonists built respawn structures INSIDE the Vanu buildings found in the caves. Hell, throw into the lore that the colonists made them aesthetically similar to Vanu architecture and you still have wonderfully different looking buildings, just with some human equipment inside that also looks like those buildings!
This would allow players to destroy tubes for the structures inside the caves, and discourage just camping the spawn doors until the hack goes through. Should 100% of the caves be contestable? I am unsure. Perhaps make the caves more similar to the classic PS1 model of just capturing all the bases in a cave to lock it. Since the caves were used by the Vanu to extract those mysterious crystals AND to better gain resources, have the benefits of hacking a cave be related to that.
1) Taking a cave gives you more options for assaulting top-side continents. Various geowarps/cave entrances could be located on top-side continents that active when a cave becomes available and deactivate when the cave cycles out, similar to how it is in PlanetSide 1.
2) Taking a cave that is "linked" (or whatever the PS2 equivalent is) to a predominantly friendly controlled continent allows for a % boost to resource gains on that continent (as the empire would have personnel working in the cave in conjunction with top-siders to harvest resources, from a storyline perspective, obviously I do not want AI workers in the game). Perhaps a 10%-40% boost? I don't know the numbers exactly. Balance would have to be figured out.
VEHICLES
Here's the huge predicament for me. In PlanetSide, low-pop cave fights meant vehicles were no fun to go against. Hopefully in PlanetSide 2 low pop fights won't be an issue, but there are two problems with this:
1) Low pops might indeed be an issue one day
2) Caves might be more of a "side" thing and the pops there might always be low.
There are a few solutions (plus others I probably have not thought of) to this.
SOE can institute a separate poplock for caves to stop the main fight from ever being there. Maybe 200 people per empire or something like that.
Another thing is to balance how vehicles are used in caves, or whether not vehicles would even be allowed. Personally, caves provided an immense infantry experience unlike any other. Zip-lining to structures at different elevations, encountering random enemies in those bad ass looking structures with one-sided windows, all of that was an amazing experience when it worked out properly. With that being said, I would not mind if vehicles were not allowed at all in the caves (except for maybe AMS equivalent), and it was focused purely on infantry combat.
SOE could also limit the amount of vehicles allowed in a cave fight, but I feel this would be useless in low pop situations anyways.
SIZE
How big the caves are would also play a role in determining the use of vehicles as well. I like the size of caves in PlanetSide, I think they should stay the same. Perhaps different caves could be smaller/larger than others, with % gains to resources being tied to that. I also liked how caves went up and down instead of just across. Zip-lines are a definite must-keep as well as multiple structures at different elevations.
Please discuss what you think about caves and how they could be put into PlanetSide 2!
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