Malorn, I'll go through the points you wanted feedback on, but I'll stress that IMO they are all overshadowed by the one deficiency that I feel needs to be improved on first and foremost, that being the defendability of all bases, towers, and outposts.
Originally Posted by Malorn
* Do resources need a bigger role? (in theory, a small outfit can better do resource denial with small territories)
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I'll give this a blanket "yes" answer, if only because right now, resources usually don't matter at all.
I do remember you yourself, back in Beta and before you joined the dev team, posted a very long and thought-out thread about the PS2 resource system and its implications. Especially the expected possibilities of active resource-denial - or rather, lack of possibilities. Turned out that the system does indeed work just as badly as expected with regards to the role of resources as a strategic asset and target. However, that thread went on pretty long and spawned a good few ideas, might not be a bad idea to go back to that.
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* Does territory capture need to be slowed down to allow for response, regrouping, and to wear down a zerg?
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Maybe, but I don't think that's a huge issue. IMO the issue isn't too fast cap times, but the defenders being overwhelmed and pushed out too fast, i.e. the
fight being over too quickly.
As for rapid response, better tools to read the map and assess territory statuses would help a lot tho. Proper hotspots and SCU status readings would be a nice start.
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* Does defense need to be more rewarding XP-wise?
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No. Well I mean, it would be nice, but the main reason people aren't defending is because defending
sucks donkey balls! Not because there's too little XP to be had.
(As an aside tho, I wouldn't mind seeing the "facility defended" XP return, in a different form such as: Don't award it just because one enemy held one cap point for 5 seconds and then the base was resecured. Reward it only when the base was actually in danger of being taken, like when the defenders' cap bar was half or fully taken off, and then the defenders managed to fully secure it again, that would count as a resecure and yield XP. Unfortunately, that rarely happens, because once you've lost control of a base to that extent, you rarely get it back.)
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* Do vehicles need to cost more resources to help reduce spam?
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I don't think that would help a whole lot. Besides, that would hit the already weakened side even harder than the big bad zerg that's rolling over them.
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* Do deployment options need to be reduced to encourage more natural concentration of force?
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Possibly not a bad idea. If anything, it will make the fight in the big picture something it currently also lacks: predictability. Predictability of the zerg is a good thing in that sense.
Thinking back to PS1, you could show me the world map and I could accurately predict the flow of all major fights and frontlines for the next 1-3 hours, provided that all sides where just following the natural pattern of the zerg. The fact that this could be done was one of the foundations on which "tactical, off-zerg play" by smaller outfits were possible - you knew where your zerg was, where the enemy zerg was, who would progress in which direction, and thus when and where was a good opportunity for a small team to strike.
A big factor in this was the clear restrictions of where people could spawn. If you pushed them out of Aja, you KNEW their zerg would now all be spawning south, at Bomazi base and tower, NOT all the way east at Chuku. (God help me if I still got these base names right lol.)
PS2 battle flow, by nature of hexes rather than singular lattice connections, is not going to be able to be predicted in the same manner (even when we've gotten more experienced at PS2 map reading). But I think it wouldn't be bad to bring a little bit of that predictability back - because right now, the battle flow seems rather random, and that's not a good premise for small outfits to stage any operations on.
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HOWEVER, on to the main point.
Originally Posted by Malorn
So when I see "undefendable" I believe it is because:
1) There are objectives in the exterior of the facility which can be influenced by the presence of vehicles.
2) The defender spawn is far from the capture point, meaning the defenders need to cross no man's land to get there while the attackers can park an AMS right on top of the point.
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Well, yeah. That and even inside of buildings, you're rarely safe from being spammed by vehicles/aircraft.
It's kind of obvious, isn't it? (Obvious enough that people have flailed their arms since early beta saying "Whyyy are all the bases and towers sooo open??")
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Regarding PS1 interiors, I think we forget how vehicle zerged the courtyards of bases were. I remember many a time I was camped into the base or tower, unable to get out without tanks and hovering reavers shooting into doorways the moment they were opened.
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Except that in PS1, you then could still
fight for the interior of the building. In fact, losing the courtyard was often only the beginning of the actual fight in PS1. In PS2, you get cleared out of the important building(s) once, and then you can't reinforce.
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Bio labs are actually very close to PS1-style facilities and have the same rocket-spam on the landing pads as you saw in PS1 facility doors after the courtyard got overrun.
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You say that as if it's a bad thing.
It's not too worrisome that the airpad area gets spammed - they can't cap the base from there, and can only help their infantry so much by spamming a little way inside the dome.
Now, I don't think the Biolab as it is now is all that great an example for a defensible base. It
is defensible - much more so than any other base, outpost, or tower - but mainly because the entry points can be camped relatively easily by the defenders. Which again isn't great fun for either side. As soon as the attackers breach through at one point in significant numbers, the defense quickly falters because the rest of the dome is pretty open and suddenly you have attackers shooting you in the back at every turn.
What makes a base defensible?
- choke points (ideally several to be breached separately)
- defenders' ability to switch their attention from one choke point's defense to another as needed (this is basically what makes "small, organized" outfits so good at fighting at such bases)
- defenders' ability to reinforce quickly (i.e. spawn not half a courtyard away)
This goes for
both infantry and vehicle combat.
I don't want to go into too much detail here how the base designs would have to change for them to become more defensible, as that isn't the topic of this thread. I do, however, believe that this is THE most important aspect for much of what doesn't quite feel right in the game as of yet.
Lack of base defensibility from the smallest to the largest bases is
- the prime reason for run-around-the-mill territory capturing as people can't be bothered to defend
- a big reason why small, organized outfits feel like they have no place as their being organized doesn't give them the edge they'd hope when trying to hold off similar or larger numbers
- a big reason why people often say that they have trouble finding "good fights"
- part of the reason why PS2 currently simply does not have a metagame on the "grand strategy" level
It's so important that I feel this is what should be addressed first and foremost. Pretty much everything else, from the resource model to spawn logistics, won't ultimately help if we keep those same "impossible to defend!" bases.
Figgy has been doing insane work on that end, like the case study of an outpost makeover (which I'd link to if I could find it here, duh). What that illustrates is that you don't quite need to rebuild the bases from the ground up, but you do need a serious overhaul of almost any and all bases in the game. That is a serious assload of work, and hence my hopes for some real improvement with the base designs are very slim.
(Besides, looking at what we have today, it really seems like they WANT bases to not be defendible and change hands quickly all the time.)
As an aside tho: Looking purely at the fight for the courtyard, I'd say that Amp Stations right now aren't in too bad shape. You've got vehicle choke points (gates); you've got shields blocking the gates whose generators must be taken out by infantry; you've got high ground for the defenders (which however can be circumvented by Light Assaults - the whole class makes defense harder in PS2); you've got defenders reinforcing the cy with vehicles easily (tho ofc the spawn room is in a stupid position, but defenders mitigate that by putting a Sundy in the central building).
Not all is terribad.
