More info:
Regions
As stated above, the territory system would not change thus making life easier on the development team. It would be nice to have minor changes to the map design since now outposts are a "link" to open the shield generator rooms, teleporter rooms, etc., but with the lattice, its not required.
Losing minor outposts are not as important as major bases and thus it increases the predictability of the attack. If they focus on a region, you can be rest assured you can regroup at a region's base. Losing an outpost will put a ding, in resources, so its better to spread out, but if you lose an outpost you can regroup easily at the base. Also with the lattice in place, spreading out defends the bases anyway since they cant back cap you.
these are just for illustration purposes. Some territories may need to be split up, etc.
You can now cut off resources by taking a base, and it will make a larger impact on both factions since it will take a while for the losing faction to retake the base. Winning and losing bases now becomes strategic beyond just +1000xp. since it will mean slower development of vehicles and supplies.
Defensibility
This adds another layer to the defensibility of bases, but not so much that it cuts off any chance to take down. To paraphrase how this works from above, you must control the majority of outposts in a region before the doors open to the shield generators or teleporter rooms, etc. to the main bases (amps, bios, techs). Bases like tech plants will have more shields put in place in order to increase the importance of taking outposts before moving to the main bases.
notice the red lines for extra shields. And yes, this has been requested many times before.
Because outposts link to important defensive capabilities, no longer can you simply attack a base while allowing connected outposts to remain defenseless. Smaller outfits can make a large impact on defense by retaking outposts and securing the defensibility of a base by securing teleporters and shield gens. Smaller outfits on offense can also attack and coordinate taking outposts to lower the defensibility of a base. This adds a bit more push and pull to the battles beyond just taking out Sunderers or camping spawn rooms.
The biggest aspect of how this relates to the metagame is that once a base is taken, you dont have to worry about it being retaken within 15-20 mintues (or often even less). It can last longer thus giving a greater sense of accomplishment once taken. Nobody likes taking a base, and then moving on, then after a few minutes looking at the map and thinking "WTF. We lost it already!" With a mission system, people can even warn others of losing bases much easier.
Over Populations
Right now we have two resource management issues to contend with - resources and timers. This doesn't change anything. When I refer to "manufacturing," its just describing what the timers are doing. When you cant spawn a vehicle due to the timer, its due to the manufacturing time to create a new vehicle. The only change to this, is increasing that timer
only when a continent is experiencing a large population imbalance. While to some this may seem like artificially buffing one faction or another, it's just trying to level the playing field with a realistic approach (and I really dont care about "realism" in the game, but unfair fights leads to people not playing, which even if you are the zerg, the lack of a good fight is not fun). Only when your population has an unfair balance will it increase. If you have a 2% advantage, you wont see a difference. If you have a 5% advantage, you probably wont see a difference. If you have a 20% advantage - then you will notice it a bit, but not double the timers - it would be 18-20% higher which is not more than a minute or two. The exact numbers would have to be played with a bit.
The reason behind this isn't to punish a faction for being popular, its to help spread out factions more evenly across continents. So if you see Indar NC has 60% population and you want to use tanks a lot, you might want to consider helping out in Esamir or Amerish where you can spawn a bit faster.
Reward System
I wont get into this too much, since it is fairly self explanatory. In fact, I will say that, with resources meaning so much, you may not even need to give additional bonuses to defending bases; your reward is: you get to use vehicles/supplies.
As far as continent locking goes. Currently, its meaningless. Its more for bragging rights than any reward. So instead of resource bonuses, it should be tied toward extra curricular items like orbital strikes etc, carriers - you know the cool stuff. Even then you still have to generate enough continent resources to use them by holding a continent for long enough. I have never been a fan of locking out a continent for other factions, it just restricts where you get to play. I would rather "locking" be more part of the resource metagame than just bragging rights with a little rub in that the other faction (likely lost due to the fact it was taken during low pop times) cant play on that continent any longer. But maybe thats just me.
At a glance (TL;DR) again:
- Use regions to consolidate resources into major pools (adds strategy to hold key bases since resources are now a controllable commodity) and direct the battle to major bases and using the outposts as access to the bases (increases defensibility).
- Tie "manufacturing" bonus or penalty to the cooldown/timers to keep populations equal.
- Tie alternative resources to continent locks like orbital strikes etc. instead of giving resource bonuses. (ie. if you want to use orbital strikes you need to hold a continent not just cap it and move on).
- + more issues fixed (please read for more info) controls the zerg, gives smaller squads/outfits something a means to affect the scale of the battles,...
One last thing, if you guys care about a resource metagame vote up posts so that they are not buried on the roadmap.
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/i...p.83018/page-9