Is PS2 going to be intercontinental enough?

[texico]

Originally Posted by Ailos

I approve of this idea.

However, I propose a simplification to this system:

If you own the warpgate outpost on both sides of the warpgate, the gate is shielded and only your empire may pass through it unless the enemy hacks it to temporarily disable the shield. If you lose control of the warpgate outpost on one side, the gate becomes neutral and anyone may pass through it. I just want to stick away from the idea that the outposts will only be hackable if you've lost all other facilities on continents - I am unsure if any single empire will truly ever own a whole continent for long, and though it makes defense slightly harder, it's still just easy to protect your empire's flanks.

Furthermore, this idea of a shield that is only operable when both outposts are protected is easier to integrate into the lore - the shields would be human-built, and not part of the actual warpgate. They would be addons that humans built when they start splitting up into empires to try and have a sense of factional territory.

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Also, I support the idea that warpgates serve as links between hexes.

I think this works fine too. The reason I said the whole continent needs to be capped first is just because I didn't know if there'd be tactical/balance problems of letting an empire go straight to hacking a warp gate without having tried to take the whole map first, and yeah, I originally imagined the WG would only be usable by that particular empire when they own both WG-stations like you said, and it's fine for it to become "open" when contested (for no reason in particular I originally said that only the empires owning one of the two/both the WG-stations could use the WG-link).

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.

Only solution I can think of is not letting the home-continents become pop-locked, or at least, letting them somehow spawn at the uncapturable-foothold but not be able to exit its shields into the continent if it's pop-locked, which is basically what the Sanctuaries would do anyway.

This is one of the finer more situation-specific problems of having only 3 continents. If there were more continents, your scenario is much less likely, and would only occur if a team has lost all the common-continents and is fighting on their home-continent (which would have to be their last continent). If there are any other continents even remotely in their control, they can spawn at the WG-stations (the semi-uncapturable footholds) on those continents they're fighting on instead if their home-continent is pop-locked.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by texico

Only solution I can think of is not letting the home-continents become pop-locked, or at least, letting them somehow spawn at the uncapturable-foothold but not be able to exit its shields into the continent if it's pop-locked, which is basically what the Sanctuaries would do anyway.

This is one of the finer more situation-specific problems of having only 3 continents. If there were more continents, your scenario is much less likely, and would only occur if a team has lost all the common-continents and is fighting on their home-continent (which would have to be their last continent). If there are any other continents even remotely in their control, they can spawn at the WG-stations (the semi-uncapturable footholds) on those continents they're fighting on instead if their home-continent is pop-locked.

I don't know how technically possible that would be. Granted I don't know the ins and outs of how the servers manage the players but having an continent allow double the normal player count sounds extremely problematic to me. I'd think that the devs will have the maximum player count per continent already, so any increase to that would be a problem.

Plus back in golden days, it was common to have multiple continents pop-locked. So considering how we are starting with 3, I don't know how easy it would be to just go somewhere else.

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.

So basically bring the Sanctuaries back? I don't know. Or doesn't being able to drop anywhere kind of defeat the whole purpose of locking a continent?

Plus, while I agree that IF it was coordinated right, a massive HART drop would be cool. I just don't know how effective it would be. Considering the other empires would have more assests at their disposal, a pure infantry drop might not stand much of a chance at surviving.

[Skitrel]

Originally Posted by Raymac

Considering the other empires would have more assests at their disposal, a pure infantry drop might not stand much of a chance at surviving.

Looking at some of the facilities, there's going to be pure infantry combat without tanks or air support at all, so I do think mass infantry drops could quite easily counter.

As for the problem of it defeating the point of cont locking, you perhaps have a point, though people would cont lock anyway for the respect and to say that they did.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Skitrel

As for the problem of it defeating the point of cont locking, you perhaps have a point, though people would cont lock anyway for the respect and to say that they did.

This is very true, that is a great point. But it's also why I think that they will try to capture all the hexes, just to do it. Forcing somebody back to their foothold while you color the entire contient in your empire's color would give (imho) the same feeling of victory as any continent lock.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Raymac

Why can't people understand the concept that if you don't have a spawn point on a continent, and the other ones are pop-locked, then you get booted out of the game?

I might be misreading your point, here, but that's why EZ stated that one foothold per continent remains, in addition to the "backdoor" warpgates. You always have a spawn on each continent, so you never get booted off the continent (and out of the game if the others are pop-locked).

All this is is taking the current 9-foothold system and tossing warpgates into the mix to make the fights both seem more connected and have a little more tactical variety by using them as "backdoors" to access hexes deep within enemy territory if you catch the leadership on one continent napping and not considering the status of the fights on other continents.

Originally Posted by Skitrel

As for the problem of it defeating the point of cont locking, you perhaps have a point, though people would cont lock anyway for the respect and to say that they did.

This is exactly why I think people complaining that we can't cont lock are jumping at shadows or clinging to old systems for the sake of clinging to old systems. We don't need to lock empires out of continents to have accomplishments to be proud of. Beating people back to their foothold (on all 3 continents, if you prefer) is no different than a sanc lock except that the losing faction doesn't have a loading screen every time they die.

We'll find new difficult goals and be proud of them. What will they be? I couldn't tell you yet -- perhaps there will be missions that are tough as nails to complete, or maybe "foothold lock" will become a term in the common parlance and an objective that carries the same "we did it because we can, and I was a part of it that one time" cachet. Until we start playing, we won't know what's hard.

Hell, perhaps some facilities will just be such tough nuts to crack that a simple territory capture will have that sense of accomplishment. Let me tell you, my favorite memory of Planetside was from beta, when we were fighting over a *bridge*. Why? Because it was an epic stalemate; a siege of mixed arms that was so solid and so furious that it lasted for hours and was (and remains) unlike anything else I've ever done in a computer game.

Originally Posted by Raymac

This is very true, that is a great point. But it's also why I think that they will try to capture all the hexes, just to do it. Forcing somebody back to their foothold while you color the entire contient in your empire's color would give (imho) the same feeling of victory as any continent lock.

I completely agree.