[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by Bocheezu

And zerglings couldn't drive tanks. Well, they could drive them, but they couldn't shoot them.

There's been a lot of conversation about lack of defense and how people just cap a base and leave. It's because there is literally no way to defend that base. Lay mines? So you blow up 3-4 tanks. There are 12873013710928 zerg tanks right behind it. You would need just about every player in the area to lay mines for it to be effective and I don't think that many people have the cert.

All those people that complained to no avail about driver/gunner were right. In PS1, MBTs were pretty much outfit-only. You could run a single tank with your buddy, but you wouldn't be very effective. In order to get a big convoy of tanks, you needed an outfit. In this game, you don't need that at all. The zerg is way too powerful and just completely dominates the game.

Yeah, there may be something to this...

One man MBTs are a bit too much of a force multiplier all things considered, strong enough to hold there own against Heavy Assaults long enough to get to cover and repair...

...I was won over to this argument by the redundancy of the Lightning though.

Originally Posted by Bocheezu

This is sort of an aside about base defense, but really I feel the lack of base defense is the core of the issue. I feel the addition of the light assault class was stupid. There should not be an infantry class that just completely bypasses defense and jumps over walls. Everyone should have to walk through that outer shield, and that shield should not have a fucking generator 10 meters away from it that will make it go away. In PS1, the generator that made the shield go away was usually buried 2 floors underground. Good luck getting in the courtyard, assholes.

Eh, honestly Light Assault isn't a problem...
I'm a veteran of the Second Life Military scene, so I know that 15-20 seconds of Jet-packing isn't nearly as bad as say, Grav Packs that can easily let you jump 100 meters in the air.

No the problem is most bases, especially Major Facilities, are poorly designed at best when it comes to a defensive standpoint.

Spawn buildings seem to be placed as FAR from the objective as possible or, like Amp Stations you were no doubt referring to, one of the first things presented to attackers as they roll up on a base.

Hell it was even worse in the Beta, where Shield Gens were located at the satellite points!
I'm not saying they shouldn't be the easiest objective to accomplish, but


They don't want people to turtle, but damn it THIS IS WAR!
Sometime you need to entrench and stand your ground, not run all over the place like a chicken with their head cut off...

Originally Posted by Oroshi

To me it seems to be the reward mechanic, all those big XP deposits, outshine the lots of small one. Then on top of that farmable spawn rooms, that keep popping out fresh XP, and you don't need to get out of your vehicle of choice. These form the zerg, add world population bonus, making there no point to playing on a low faction pop continent.

I would add these features in to give bonus to people doing things in smaller numbers.

Population XP bonus should be based on continent, and much more noticeable, encouraging a spread of population across the continents. This would reduce the Zerg size.

Reduce the bases cap XP, during the last double XP weekend when it did not effect base cap XP, I saw more fights, and less Zerging. Also limit the base cap XP verse region population, get too many people, then the amount of XP received drops, have far too many then no XP if given for capping the base.

Say when attack a small outpost, the ideal amount is 50 people, over that the XP per person for capping goes down, if it was to reach 100 people attacking, they don't get XP at all for the cap. Does not force the Zerg to split up, does how ever make them think if I follow all these people I'll get no XP.

Eh, I wouldn't do something like this, just because large battles will have a tendency to inflate as they draw ether factions Zerg's attention.

Originally Posted by Oroshi

Added in additional objectives, I would remove the resource bonus away from the capture nodes, and added in new targets, that need to be defended to keep your resources coming in. These new targets would always be attack-able, no mater how far from the front lines they are. Basically they represent the empire logistics.

Imagine a resource silo, that fills up with resources say air, when its full it starts to give out air resources to your empire members, a hostile force could raid and steal these resources, and added them to their own empire's, and you'ld lose yours till it refills again. You give it a multiple step process so a team has to do it, 3 to 4 steps would do it, while they are emptying the silo they can not fight, so they would need some guards. While under attack it would flash and allow people to respond to it. The Zerg could be capping territory to their hearts content, and suddenly find they can't pull any more vehicles, as all their resources had been stolen.

Just some thoughts, once you start adding objectives and start to encourage zergs to split up, smaller outfits have a places, along side the larger ones too.

Eh, I don't know about making Territory completely worthless when it comes to Resources, but making bases actually play a part in your Faction's infrastructure would definitely be welcome.

Like say there were a few Air towers with "Air Resource Processors", Generators that are what actually give your Faction its Air Resources depending on what Air Resource territories they are connected to.

So say you have five Air Resource territories, if they were connected to one Generator they'd give you fifteen AR, but two would give you 30 and so on.

These bases would be constantly being infiltrated by enemy Spec Ops trying to disable your Infrastructure by destroying those Gens.

Originally Posted by Hourglass

Smaller outfits simply need to do what I've been doing in EVE Online for seven years; make good use of force multipliers.

Pull MAX suits. Use upgraded MAX suits and have a dedicated, fully certed engi keeping them alive. One MAX suit is easily the equal of 4-5 enemy especially one with engi backup who knows when he's taken too much damage.

Speaking of engies. Claymores are one of my favorite tools. When you jump on a base and start taking it as an outfit, have your engies jump into their claymore outfit, and start marking chokepoints and entrances with them. Then they can switch back to whatever class they want. Claymores don't disappear if you swap classes, so use them liberally.

Light Assaults with C4. Place your LA up high near chokepoints if possible. Tell them to hold their fire until the enemy is past them and shooting at your HA, then have them open up on their rear with C4. In the military we use this tactic of drawing the enemy in, then surrounding them.

Grenades. I make the vast majority of my xp every day from grenades. If you find yourself heavily outnumbered, then you're absolutely 100% guaranteed to find your enemy all bunched up in small pockets. Fill those pockets with lethal death pinecones.

There are also a few other ways to multiply the force of a smaller outfit, but I don't want this to turn into a TLR post.

Great advice man, thanks for the Protips!