Pop-A-Lock, Planetstyle - Page 2

Lexington_Steele · 2003-02-01, 11:40 PM

You have to have serious Faction wide commander cooperation.

You have one platoon bum rush a base. Since the continent is already locked, enemy forces should be lower than normal. Once you take one base you need to have other platoons drop in there and bind to that base. Taking a single base on the continent shouldn't be too tough, keeping that base and moving onward will be.

Being able to get reinforcements there and binded quickly will be of paramount importance. This will require commanders being ready to drop their squads in, once a SOI has been gained on the continent.

You can be sure that the faction, that owns the continent, will focus on relocking their continent. So, if no reinforcements come, the captured base will get gobbled up quickly.

The key is going to be having the highest level commanders, of your faction, communicating with each other, being coordinated, and having concrete immediate goals in mind.

If possible, the bumrush assault should be timed so that it begins around the time when other forces will be close to finishing a battle.

Ludio · 2003-02-01, 11:53 PM

Toimu, actually the continents have 7-12 bases.

glsauron · 2003-02-01, 11:58 PM

Taking dif ideas from here:

With 1 Platoon (3 Squads of 10) you'd need to hit multiple sites at the same time yet also be prepared to drop on only 1 for the main attack.

Send 10 seperate stealthers to dif spots. If they get in and hack, great, if not, they respawn and try THE SAME BASE again. Since each continent has 10 bases, all are being constantly attempted to be hacked.

When you have 3-4 successfully hacked, have the squad leader (of the stealthers) report which base is least defended. Thats the one you send 14 MAXes, 4 Meds, and 3 Lts against. Since you cant use vehicles no need to worry about Lights to pilot. 10 AI, 4 AA.

The AIs spread out and try to take out the defnders. THe Meds provide support, repair, etc. Hopefully you have a tower with a view of the base gate, both your Lts are in the tower with Snipes and Darklight Implant. (I dont know if you can snipe with the DL active but if you can...) and snipe. Should only take 2 shots from each to take down a Med and that should be about 4-8 seconds. (EDIT: The Meds are also responsable for setting up terrets the moment the base switches over.)

Meanwhile the stealth guys have all been killed, and respawned at the sanctuary. Resuit as MAXs and are dropping in as additional support (6). 3 (+1 the one who successfully hacked this base) have remained as Stealth and are carrying pistols and walking around the corridors, hacking doors, panels, and taking out the in-base respawn tubes.

I doubt if the defenders will be able to stand that for long. Once the single base switches over you have another platoon set up to move over (through the closest gate to the base already hacked) in Galaxies and vehicles. Set up a couple AMS to provide spawn points and keep getting people over.

You should hack at least 3 more bases to consider the continent secure and unlikely to be locked out again.

Duritz · 2003-02-02, 08:05 PM

glsauron......thats seems like it would take waaaaay too long.

If you take too long reinforcements WILL arrive. Like dave said: "communication is easy." People will show up and thwart you, first by taking your unguarded tower and all of your spawn ability. Plus you need some way to transport your mediums. It would take even longer for them to walk.

NapalmEnima · 2003-02-02, 09:09 PM

From a high-level point of view, I'd want to saturate the area with some pretty heavy-duty squads... leaning more towards MAX. The enemy will have vehicles, you won't.

Unless you can get a vehicle pad hacked, then I'd start spawning the heavy stuff as fast as I could (reavers and heavy tanks). Maybe a couple AMSes if possible. You may not be able to spawn "advanced vehicles" at this point.

Ideally, the first base you took would be close to a warp gate... and on the other side of that gate would be a pretty hefty force of vehicles, ready to pour in and support you. If that first base isn't near a gate, then the initial vehicles better be air... Reavers, with the occasional Skeeter for radar support. Get that support to your first base in a hurry. The downside of this: The enemy could have a scout hanging out inside the warp bubble, invulnerable, able to see the force you're puting together and radio headquarters about it.

Diversionary tactics might help here too. Drop a significant force (a platoon or two) on one end of the continent, give the enemy a couple minutes to react to it, then drop the real force at the other end.

For your first base, I'd think you would want either an AMP station, for the auto-turrets, or a tech plant, for the advanced vehicles.

This would probably take a couple hundred people to pull off successfully, at peak hours. A rank 4 or 5 commander with a couple large outfits could pull this sort of thing off... plus all the usual riff-raff that would drift in when they heard about the mayhem.

If continents end up with an enforced maximum population, that could give the attackers a real advantage, providing they can scrape up enough people to hit the cap. Suddenly defenders can only ship in when an attacker dies and is forced to respawn off the continent. So the defenders would have to control their towers AND protect their bases with a relatively small force... they could end up outnumbered 3 to 1. So much for their lock.

PrivateMonkey · 2003-02-02, 11:02 PM

Regardless of how you cap a base, what will really be key is having as many troops as possible waiting at a warp-gate, ready to use it immediately. More importantly, have vehicles at the gate.

If you do manage to cap a base using only drop-poded troops, chances are it will be taken back very quickly. You will have everyone on the continent attacking the one base, so it won't hold for long. Once it is re-hacked by the occupying empire, you will essentially have 15 minutes before the gate closes again. Hopefully, if there is some cooperation and planning invovled, those 15 minutes will be enough time for the troops coming in to take another base. That base will likely be near the warp-gate, and will thus hold out longer. Also, remember that when the gates open you will have two empires coming in, not just one.

On the other hand, anyone who can't take back a base from a few drop-poded troops in 15 minutes has to pay the price. In my opinion, taking back locked-down continents will be a worthy challenge.

Also, lets not forget that most folks will most likely drop-pod next to a tower. This will give them a spawn-point to work from.

glsauron · 2003-02-02, 11:28 PM

Ape- Wrong. Its from when all the bases are captured to when one base is capped by opposing team. So holding it for 15 min is whats important. I figure it's gonna be hard to stop from getting hacked, but rehacking it back within 15 will be almost easy.

Napalm- I'm thinking vehicles will be powerful, but not too big of a deal. Thats what the AV MAXs are for, same with Phoenixes...

Good catch with the scout inside the warp bubble. Id forgotten about that. Keeping a couple of empty galaxies around each of the gates heading to that continent would help offset that. Or at least a force. (Or you can brute force and keep all those guys in one one ready to defend the nearest base). Whered you get info on the bases specialties? Never seen auto-turrets and adv vehicle pad info before.

Duritz- As for my plan taking too long...it's designed to take a while, but it will also work. As for taking Meds too long, how big is a SoI? Small enough to walk through pretty easily Id guess. Shouldn't take too long, and your dropping 20 ppl all at once within about 3 screens hopefully.

All- Gonna take at least 30 HARTs though, for any of these to work, which means lots of bases. Do all bases have hart stations? Some? Only sanctuary(that be bad). Or how many people can a HART hold? I've always imagined one but maybe Im wrong.

Duritz · 2003-02-03, 12:11 AM

Well, SOIs are pretty large from what I understand. Looking at this map, and assuming that cyssor is 8km x 8km like the average continent is, the smallest SOIs are 3/4-1 km in diameter, but if they control all of the bases, then they will all be large, 3/2-2 km in diameter. Therefore you are looking at a 3/4-1 km walk from any direction into a base. That's 5-6 minutes of fast running in real life.

I just thought of this, the warp gates are quite large, they are the size of a SMALL SOI. And the large ones are twice THAT. So, personally, I think that it'll take quite a while to walk.

But, what I'm saying is that time is of the essence. If you are taking too long, any commander on the continent can make sure that a higher-up understands what is going on and sends reinforcements. Plus any continent likely to be taken will easily be in range of Galaxies from the enemy sanctuary in several minutes.

Our flight time from the sanctuary to the first base was around 2-4 minutes.

Source(about inthe middle of the page)
So showing up to thwart your plan, even before you can get a foothold would be a problem if you take too long.

(I think I read your plan wrong. I thought that waiting for the MAXes was critical, and that's why I wondered about time.)

Anyway, how do you plan on capping these bases? You are going to need to hold out for 15 mins. to keep it. I don't care how many people are defending a base, but 1 MAX could walk into a control room and OWN a stealth.

Also, HARTs only leave from the sanctuary and I believe we've been told that they can hold something like 10 people. I doubt that that number has been confirmed, but I distinctly remember dave saying something about it in december. It may have changed.

Zatrais · 2003-02-03, 05:58 AM

HART leaves from all dropship bases...

theres one on Cyssor ( http://www.planetside-universe.com/m...id=28&img_id=8 )

Annyways, If i where to assault a base i'd try to go for one thats near a friendly warpgate and simply get as manny MAX's and people whit med and repair certs and swarm the base (element of surprise and all)... then once it's disabeled i'd call in more reinforcements if available into or close to the base once the SOI is down..

theres safety in numbers.

Ludio · 2003-02-03, 06:30 AM

Actually I think that HART's only leave from the sanctuaries, dropship bases are the only places you can get galaxies (except for santuaries of course).

I dont think they have told us a limit on the carrying capacity of the HART. I could be wrong though.

If there is I think that it could be a pain unless there are a constant stream of them coming and going (and the screenshots only show 2). My reasoning for this is becuase there are going to be 1-2 thousand (rough guess) people in each empire. If there is even a small proportion of them wanting to get somewhere in drop pods then it would lead to long wait times. Although this may be prevent mass drops as well.

Does anyone have a link to a dev stating HART capacity?

Zatrais · 2003-02-03, 06:33 AM

Bleh, got confirmed by Hamma that there is no HARTs at the non sanctuary dropship facilities... well altleast no on Cyssor. I stand corrected.

learn something every day hehe

glsauron · 2003-02-03, 11:51 AM

Well then, all our plans are F00ked

The ability to gather 2+ platoons, co-ordinate their deployment, and set goals for single units, While having a seperate 2+ platoons ready to grab a SECOND base is going to be the limiting factor. If you want to be really good grab a third group of 2+ platoons to really imopress opon others that "We want this continent"

Then move out and cap all the bases to lock THEM out

Your going to need 1-3 Lv 5 commanders doing nothing but co-ordination among the forces if you really want to succeed.

Lexington_Steele · 2003-02-03, 03:58 PM

Not that tough, once you grab one base your, factions warpgate will open up. You just need players who are ready to rush in as soon as the first base is captured.

NewmanOnIsland · 2003-02-03, 04:15 PM

That idea of mobilizing a large group waiting at the gate is a great idea.
This tread is making me drool.
NewmanOnIsland

Lexington_Steele · 2003-02-03, 05:05 PM

Originally posted by NewmanOnIsland
That idea of mobilizing a large group waiting at the gate is a great idea.
This tread is making me drool.
NewmanOnIsland

I can see it now, like 100 people waiting to warp, all getting fired up and putting their game faces on, getting their last second equipment/implant tweaks ready, feeling the excitement of adrenaline leaking into their systems, knowing that they are about to rush into a humongous battle with the fate of an entire continent at stake.