Lattice System

[Vllad]

I would recommend that with a map this size (which is good strategically) that the front lines be defined by a lattice system.

 

I would do this by making it so you can only buy flags to very specific towns from every location. I would put a limit of two flags per location (or better said, you can only attack in two directions) that they connect to except Capitols that can connect to 3. A flag can only be bought every 72 hours. (See Below)

 

(Please pull up map now)

 

i.e., If you control Cayo Vacas you can pull a flag to take Islamorada or Las Tortugas, those are the only two locations you can pull a flag for from this location. Once you control Islamorada, Las Tortugas and Cayo Vacas pulling a flag from Cayo Vacas is no longer doable. To advance any further you must then pull a flag from say Islamorada to get to Cayo Largo.  Since La Habana is a Capitol you can pull a flag there to take Mariel, Matanzas or La Tortugas (3 fronts)  

 

 

I would create a lattice system then post a fancy map with lines on it so players know exactly what their front lines are. Then I would take your new fleet spawning system and make the spawn dynamic work most efficiently at the lattice border locations.

 

You need a method to drive players to their front lines but without a lattice system a front line is completely random. This leaves players randomly stuck in dead area's of the map waiting around for an attack that may never occur.

 

With a lattice system you will now know exactly where you have to be attacked. This should generate more open sea's pvp and help do away with the millions of port battles a day. You can only advance one port per front per day.

 

With a lattice system you can do away with the Port Timers as well.

 

 

How does this eliminate Port Timers?

 

Since we only attack very limited fronts you want that fight to last a long period of time.

 

As soon as a flag is pulled and dropped on a town it remains contested for a fixed amount of time (say 24 hours). The controller of the port at the end of that 24 hours (from the time the flag was planted) at time of maintenance keeps control of it. After an attack that nation can't pull another flag on it for 48 hours.

 

Key elements.

 

• The port battle stay's open for 24 hours and anyone can enter or exit up to the 25 man limit
• Spawn locations are segregated so no spawn camping
• Towers are not blown up but must be boarded and captured, when captured men from the ship are now transferred over to the boarding nation. (we need incentives for people to leave the fight once their manpower is used up) It is important to rotate people.  
• Once you leave the port battle you can't return for 1 hour.
• Whoever has the most towers controlled at the end of 24 hours is declared the winner.
• I would make it so crafters can bring in large trade ships and can build gun barges and other related defenses so Crafters have a place in port battles as well. This also uses up resources which this game needs more of.
• Have a maximum BR size to the ships that can enter certain port battles. 99 is max ship size for Shallow Water ports, 200 max ship size for Deep Water Ports, Unlimited size for Deep Water Regional Capitols.
• When killed you are kicked out of the Port Battle.

 

This game needs front lines and for those front lines to mean something for open sea's pvp.

 

This game needs port battles to last for long periods of time so a fight isn't decided over a small period of time to make up for the large world you have developed.

 

Long port battles means epic fights during certain periods of the day

 

Crafting needs to play a role on the battles themselves otherwise crafting becomes more and more meaningless as we all get rich. We only eat up so much Durability with the current mechanics.

 

When you log in you want to know their is a fight somewhere and not just an evening of sailing a head of you

 

Most importantly and I mean most importantly, everyone has something you can do at a port battle no matter what ship you drive or what level you are. You can be in a cutter trying to blockade or kill people going in and out at the very minimum. Port Battles need to be a buzz of activity for long periods of time.

 

 

 

Finally this also makes playing a smaller team more viable. You can set up the lattice in such a way that completely surrounding a smaller nation is much harder. Instead of one nation over running a small nation it now gets stopped at the Capitol since it can't be taken and then must find way around its Lattice. It at least takes multiple national efforts to crush a small team.

 

i.e., If I am Spain getting over run by the US the US just can't jump into Cuba since the La Habana lattice can't be taken. The US must go around the gulf or through the Bahama's to work its way through Cuba.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Vllad

[Robbert Dole]

I like the lattice idea although your examples are way too restrictive, the day long battles not so much would just hurt smaller nations even more

[maturin]

It would probably be good for balance.

 

But it also totally misses the point of naval warfare. More like Armored Trains fighting each other on rails.

[Sam32120]

While I agree that a lattice system is good I feel that 2 connections is not enough. Therefore the average distance between each city's nearest neighbor is a radio us around each town all cities within this circle are conected to the target city. Islands that don't conect in this manner are conected together by the nearest city to the island.

Edited April 19, 2016 by Sam32120

[Diggled]

Sorry to say but PotBS unrest and port flip mechanic worked pretty damn well for making hotspots & fronts.  Since travel is so slow in this game, there has to be advance notice for fights so people can get ready and get stuff to the fight, noone wants ghost caps.  A combination of pulling a flag and having to plant it, and then 1-2 days of some sort of mini battles before the actual big battle would be nice.

 

I do like the idea of longer more contested battles, harkening back to the early days of Alterac Valley in WoW, back and forth mini-missions and fun times.

[Sir Robert Calder]

Instead of a lattice, perhaps flag timers could be reduced or even halved to stop the "port hopping" that lets enemy nations wreak havoc deep within your lines unless you completely wipe them out.

[Vllad]

I like the lattice idea although your examples are way too restrictive, the day long battles not so much would just hurt smaller nations even more

 

It is restrictive. However it is the very best way to create very important strategic area's. Planetside 1 did this very thing. If you wanted to take X city to get its resources you need to take Y and Z in order to do so. This is how you create a front and running battles between locations. The game being spread out so much means as it currently is you could just miss out totally on any action if you don't have a portal up. Right now people are starving for fights.  

 

Smaller nations are already tough but this should limit it.

 

Just because the battle is open for long periods doesn't mean a small nation needs to be there the entire time. Most population for a small nations are pretty compact for its play time. With longer port battle mechanics a small nation can show up in force on its own time frame. Large nations will also not be able to camp a port battle 24/7, they will have to rely on others on their team to follow it up.

 

With a lattice a small team can flip a port back from being taken and then just camp on the outside tackling. The pressure is on the attackers.

 

With a Lattice and long port fights this puts way more pressure on those large nations as ultimately they have to dedicate long term resources to guard their long borders. The bigger you get the harder it is to do so. Right now Large Nations can just go on the attack only since they can strike in any random location. Defense means nothing with the mechanics we have now.

 

Finally with a lattice small nations can't be completely taken off the map by a single zerg. As long a Capitols remain un-attackable their is only so much damage a zerg can do against it without taking out the entire map.

 

Most importantly we need more PVP and this will create it.

[Slamz]

I think we could get away without a lattice if port attacks were more involved. Like to flip a port, you need a lot of activity over the course of 2-3 days.

 

Not sure what "a lot of activity" should consist of. I would hate to make it consist of a lot of PvE, but maybe that's what it takes. We need to be able to look at a map and say "They're trying to flip this port" and then go there and have some chance of finding actual enemy activity in the area.

 

The POTBS concepts of killing NPCs and just sitting on the open sea ("blockade") worked pretty well.

 

Although we also need some concept of making people spread out. I can imagine some boring port flips consisting of groups of 25 sitting on the OS generating "blockade points" and you can't really fight them without 25 similar sized ships of your own.

 

 

It's a tough problem.

 

Lattice is one solution, but it's not the only solution.

 

But I hope we can all agree that the current implementation is pretty lame and doesn't do enough to promote PvP fights. Wandering around hoping to run into someone to fight really does not cut it.