Originally Posted by Malorn
1) Esamir is a continent that seems to have rapid conquest. What do you believe contributes to this?
|
Rapid conquest occurs from my perspective on three occassions. All have to do with lack of opposition and lack of stall time.
The three occassions where empires expand rapidly are:
South warpgate expansion: Typically a fight at Mani, which takes rather long and is the main objective for the north warpgate empires to ensure a basic frontier to keep the enemy away from the north west or north east warpgate. Control of Mani is essential in holding any ground in the north.
A fight at Mani results in 75% of the rest of the continent being completely outnumbered and ignored by both the NW and NE empires, which in turn allows the south to move unhindered up the middle and both sides. Once they got the central Tech, their march goes on.
NW/NE expansion:
After a Mani fight ends, the southern empire faces an overstretched frontline. They will not be able to hold the east especially, nor the west. Especially if they try to cling on to the tech in the middle. Both empires will quickly retake their near warpgate territories and any nearby territories. Typically they will lose one or two territories in the far north as a consequence of the Mani fight loss, however, they will need far fewer troops to retake those territories - even including Mani - because all the troops have already dispersed from it over a large amount of other territories.
The NW and NE armies after all, have after Mani no direct interest in cutting of the other warpgate completely: the concentration of enemies in those territories is simply too high and the chances of those empire retreating too great. Psychologically, the overstretched frontline is a much easier and more appealing initial prize to regain some resource breathing space for the next Mani fight.
NE expansion:
As described above, after the NW takes Mani, they will start to disperse over the territories towards the south, while NE regroups. Eventually the NW will face a heavier fight with the southern empire than the NE. This forces again a concentration of forces by the southern and NW empires - particularly due to their relative proximity in relation to south-NE distance and leaves the NE free to expand in the north, take Mani without much resistance, take the tech plant in the center and even cut off the NW empire from the warpgate.
|
2) Esamir typically has some large tank battles, many more than what I observe on Indar. Why do you suppose that is?
|
There's no choice. Infantry can hold a number of ridges, but can't effectively footzerg or use small vehicles to attack because of four reasons:
1. Distance: It's simply too far (time consuming), unrewarding and unappealing to walk between outposts. You can't even see the other outposts most the time and if you do they're on the far horizon and don't invite to go there.
2. Largely open field: They get picked off too easily if they try to cross it. Fast armoured units are far more suitable for this warfare. It is also much easier to flank a position on Esamir, because you can just drive around something on pretty flat terrain and often that allows you to ignore the main defense orientations (like Jaeger's Fist whose defense is pure south oriented - it will fall immediately to any attack from the north, even if that's a flank/pincer assault from the south). On Indar, chokepoints can be used to slow an enemy down. On Amerish, high ground enhances the defensibility of a position to slow the enemy down.
3. Enemy composition: The other empire brings armour in numbers too, there are no other counters than bringing a high number of your own armour to even get close to the enemy point you want to take. When you do, you will typically swarm and swamp the entire enemy outpost in vehicles and then the defenders can do very little about it due to getting vehicle spawncamped.
4. Warpgate proximity (MBT acquisition options): Especially if a fight happens in the proximity of an enemy warpgate, the invader from the warpgate has access to heavy tanks and the other empire does not. This means that they can quickly overwhelm the highly dispersed enemies in close proximity to their own warpgate at the loss of very few vehicles and press on against an enemy that probably has more problems with heavy tank acquisition (unless they control the Tech Plant). This makes it easier to sustain a tank group and push through. Especially with the higher density of friendly and better armoured numbers near a warpgate.
|
3) Esamir is sparsely populated with outposts. How does this affect the continental flow and is it good? Is it too sparse?
|
With less outposts, the total capture time required to go from one side of the continent to the other - especially when not facing or facing only little opposition - is severely reduced.
It also forces empires to focus on the shortest routes to the enemy warpgate a lot more, because these create the risk of getting your entire side cut off from the warpgate. You can see the difference between Amerish and Esamir in capture speed in the north and on Indar in the south even though the warpgates are in roughly the same position to one another.
Regardless, more territories means more time for an empire to regroup and reposition when players on said empire see an attack coming next to a natural stalling because of increased amount of cap timers. In contrast, it only takes three to four steps to reach each other's warpgate on Esamir.
This effect is even greater due to lack of natural borders like you have on Indar.
|
4) What are the most fun places to fight on Esamir and more importantly why are they fun?
|
Tough question to answer. There's very little effort involved in actually taking an outposts and therefore very little satisfaction to be gained out of offense or defense. That's made worse because any fun of conquest or pride of achievement is undone by the pointlessness of the capture.
If you try to defend a position you've just taken, you will be overrun by an enemy tank group. If you try to press on, your previous position will be overrun by an enemy tank group and fall even faster and cut your link to your own territory.
This is because you have to make a choice between two or three, if not four next attack vectors (four adjecent enemy territories) and one or two territories behind you that are being or have been recaptured by the enemy in the time it took for you to head over here. This is made worse because due to these territories also probably belonging to two enemy empires. Since the enemy you just defeated has the same choice as you, it is rather unlikely you will meet them half way and there's a good chance they just bypassed you to get to that other base behind or to the side of you. Strategically, it feels a bit pointless to press on and pointless to stay put.
Whatever you do, there's very little chance you can prevent an enemy from attacking your territory somewhere until you have so few territories left that your empire concentrates its forces again.
The hardest to take are the bases, because the third empire simply does not provide you with time to take them if you lost any. Particularly the middle one is often impossible to reach for the NW empire because they get flanked either in the north or west and will often be cut off.
|
5) What would you change to improve the consistency and flow of battles on Esamir? Why?
|
Good question.
Assuming there won't be a fourth warpgate in the south east for the eventual intercontinental stuff?
1. Changing terrain features:
Make the southern territory feel less distant to the NE warpgate by connecting the south and east rivers in the east, possibly while connecting the north east to the south east terrain directly. Currently the map shows a clear three staged obstruction from the NE to the SE. This mentally creates a big physical barrier that's unappealing to fight along.
2. Relocate the warpgates:
Possibly move the NE warpgate a little bit further south.
3. Create defensive bottlenecks to stall in between short distance warpgates:
I'm primarily thinking bunker lines and trenches to fall back to as infantry in passes, with largely impassable ridges in between. These more mountainous areas might be made more suited to ATVs and buggies than light and main battle tanks. These would control little buffer zones between the closest warpgates but would not be necessary at longer distances.
4. The implementation of a lattice to reduce options and force confrontations in the field between two enemies along a path:
This would allow for more accurate predictions, effective denial of ADJECENT territory to an enemy (which can currently be ignored).
5. Improve base defenses to ward off pure vehicle assaults:
Do not allow them to dominate the outcome of the outpost control battle, just the domination of the outpost's surrounding terrain. This would force an infantry invasion to take the outpost. It is imperative there is no vehicle spawn camping to accomplish this. Not from tanks nor aircraft.
6. More strategic high ground placed within the open fields for infantry to establish forward bases of operations:
These may consist of simple enclosures and a keep without spawns, per chance some tank traps, either way sufficient room for a Sunderer to quickly drive into and park (perhaps in a garage or an adaption of the typical base wall tower into a more fortified keep?). These could provide for more interesting field battles on foot as they would basically act much like the towers in PlanetSide 1.
7. Adjust amount of territories between warpgates:
Typically I'd increase the amount of territories if warpgates are closer to one another and have larger swaths of land be controlled if they are further away from one another. To ensure that these territories are fought over and enticing to fight over, the "long warpgate distance" bases should be relatively close to one another in the middle and control territory that leads to the proximity of the enemy warpgate: once they're taken over, they pose a bigger psychological threat.
I mean, if there's a large amount of buffer zones left, this provides the sense of "we got time" and "that takes too long/is logistically too hard". By placing the middle bases close together, one encourages the "nearest base principle" and then the longer warpgate distance also gets its zerg clash routes.
8. Stop using very square maps when using three warpgates:
Triangulation shows there's always one side that has the most easy to take homeland because it cannot be isolated into a corner as easily while the other two have a bit more playing room. A triangle would be most obvious, but you can also use bottlenecked areas, donut and "peace sign" shapes etc. Ever so slightly rectangular maps might create more proximity territory. It would also help to control corners of maps of an empire that controls a "central edge" warpgate by creating relatively sheltered and choke pointed corner areas there.
8. Lengthen the practical distance between two nearest warpgates:
By creating gaps and whirling paths in the hex grid along the nearest warpgate routes. Alternatively, islands (or territory surrounded by steep cliffs) only reachable by bridges can be used here to create a sense of ownership, easier defense and "too hard to go for every time".
9. Position the Tech Plant a bit further to the NW:
The NW empire will get flanked constantly. They will need shorter frontlines if they want to have a chance of taking the tech plant.
Main problem with doing that is this would probably increase the standard controlled area for the NE and south even more. Having a pivotal base in the center is not really fair if it's not an even shape map, like if it would be a donut shape for instance. Effectively, the double teamed empire (the double shortest warpgate distance empire) will have most issues here