Originally Posted by Stardouser
What kind of map scaling are we expecting for distance between things? For example, in the drawing above, you've got a WG and 2 "facilities" nearby. What kind of distance would there be between those 2 facilities? 500m? more? less? Can answer based on PS1 if PS2 not known.
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I guess I should've pointed out that those drawings aren't to scale. Based on past answers from Higby and team, distances between facilities on Indar is similar to that in PS1, it's just that each facility is quite a bit larger now. None the less, it's at least 2 km between facilities, with minor capture points (like outpost and bunkers) every km or so.
Originally Posted by Raymac
It's likely I'm not understanding this, but how do you get around the problem of getting pushed off of one continent while your "home" continent is pop-locked? You would literally have nowhere to go if you don't have at least 1 spawn point which means you'd get booted out of the game.
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If you notice, I mentioned that the shield doesn't totally block enemy travel - it just requires a squadmate with the special skills of an infiltrator that can temporarily incapacitate the shield. So a even a whole outfit could still cross over into a continent to wreak havok behind enemy lines if they wanted to, even hack the WG outpost on the other side if they wanted to (thereby opening the gate for travel to the general public).
Originally Posted by Skitrel
Orbital stations as a spawn point and staging post for organising massive counter offences on any continent. Allow people to drop pod anywhere on continents that they have no territory controlled.
What you'll see from this is massive counter offences dropping from space onto continents that are controlled by an entire faction or just 2 factions, and it would be a glorious sight to behold.
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I like that idea, too.
My idea with the gate locking is that it's something I actually woldn't expect to happen very often. In my entire career playing PS, I've seen the NC sanc lock other empires only twice for any meaningful period of time (more than two days). The reality is that actually owning a disproportionate amount of terrain doesn't happen very often, but it's the possibility of that happening is what makes the game fun for us. So having these kinds of mechanics that allow dedicated outfits to have this sense of territory securely owned by their empire is what makes it fun, even if in reality the conditions to make that actually come true may never happen.
I wouldn't expect warpgates to be locked in this fashion very frequently, but I would expect outfit commanders to consider it as a tactical opportunity - to lock the gate for 15 minutes to allow some foreces to securely pass over to another continent to fight there or to deny that opportunity to the enemy commanders. Having a foothold on only one continent makes it all that much more momentous when you go fight on a continent that isn't your "home".
I mean... imagine the tactical prowess required from an outfit that has just decided to sneak two platoons of troops for a base assault from the NC home cont of (just an example) Indar to Esamir... but it involves sneaking the 6 galaxies around a massive TR-VS clusterfuck near the northern Indar warpgate that is the actual link to Esamir. That outfit is going to NEED some reaver escort... and that also creates a need for empire patrols of territory away from front lines.
I feel like the way we've been describing it here is like a sandbox element that does have some minor negative things, but also brings a lot of additional depth and immersion and scale to the game with a very marginal amount of extra design/development cost.