I just had a thinking - This game will emulate massive battles and wars between the factions of the game, but will it also represent other, crucial parts of the grim darkness of war in the 41th millenium? I mean, if I log into the game, it will most likely be to fight and have fun on some battlefield somewhere, but I believe the game could be lifted into something akin to a management minigame to the leaders of each faction.

Allow me to go through the parts of the Infastructure of War!

1. Communication.

When I go into an ongoing battle alone, will I then be able to communicate with anyone with a comment feed? I mean, that is the sensible way to go of course, but on the other hand, wouldn't there be a certain enjoyment in having your friend's squad recieve orders from a leader higher up the ladder, who then again has orders from someone even more important than him?

"We need those three squads to get into that building and provide support for the rest of us!"
"Okay, I'll give them the order."

"Guys, we need to take that building! Squad Three and Eight will help us!"
"Affirmative!"

It is possible that this option only should be used during large encounters, planned like raids in other MMOs. Doing this during a small encounter would be tedious.

2. Resources.

We know that bases around the continent will be able to be captured and then fortified and/or upgraded - The "fortified" part makes good sense (Better cover, trenches, more health to the building, more weapon emplacements), but what if you could upgrade bases to produce stuff? They would produce resources and vehicles to be used at the front lines.

The problem will of course be to get all that stuff to the front lines - If you want stuff like Land Raiders and War Walkers, the leaders of the faction will need to make supply lines to the areas you want to support. These must be able to be broken up again, possibly by taking the producing bases for themselves, breaking up the network. The transport itself should be automatic I imagine - no one wants to use time to drive a Trukk back and forth in the wasteland.

(One possible exception could be the Orks - Though they would still need the same resources as the others, they could be able to get resources by looting - That way their staying power could be truly massive, as long as the enemy expends resources to fight them.)



What do you think? I am not completely convinced myself, but I believe the idea is worth discussing at least.

I believe you raise some good points. I'm pretty sure that the leaders of the faction will have to make managerial decisions about some sort of resources, and have to give commands, but how they do so depends on a number of factors.

With your point in communication, two perspectives need to be addressed. The first being the "chain of command". I understand the feeling of having your toes stepped-on by higher-ups, and having separate, private communication groups would fix all of that. For Instance, a squad leader is in a chat group with his/her squad while simultaneously being in a chat group with his/her fellow squad leaders and the commander [I don't mean voice chat -- as that should be only with your immediate squad]. If a squad leader is given orders by the commander in the respective chat, he/she can relay those orders back to their own squad. The second perspective is of a problematic squad leader / commander / squad members. What should be done with them, who should make this decision, and who can actually do something about it? There could be a vote/kick system, but other than that I'm not quite sure what could be done -- as logically the commander should have the right to relieve someone of command...

...But for small encounters it should be assumed that the squad leaders can function independently just fine.

Now to the second point of resources -- I agree with just about all of your points. There should be more depth in the "base" system than just "you get X resources per Hour". Implementing a system like you describe would not only add depth to the game, but it would make hit-and-run guerrilla tactics detrimental if not dealt with promptly (a feature that only very few games have).

For massive battles, resources should be stockpiled and then spent all at once, like manufacturing tanks and walkers so that they can be deployed quickly (or all at once!). This, however, leads to a problem: Steamrolling. So far, I haven't seen anything to prevent the "Pain Train" from stopping after one battle is won. Perhaps the 'fortifications' of each objective location would be so tanky that it would take a while to siege the location. Other than that, I would be downright scared if, oh let's say Orks, won over a location and didn't stop to take a break... Only if I knew that the "walls" of each location took a while to beat down, to give everyone some times to come and defend it.

Definitely worthy of further discussion.

Thanks for you reply! You thoughts are very well described here and makes good sense.

Looking at what I wrote again, I realized that there is one thing that I personally will end up doing in any game where rank is included - I respect and take people above me serious and may heed their word, while people below me (who obviously isn't more skilled than me, as they are below me) won't get me performing his orders.

Point is: if I see a Hero-classed Space Marine with great cape running around and leading the charge, I will follow him, just because he seems like he has his stuff together and know what to do.

International Rankings can do massive things when on the battlefield - If you were playing LoL with some famous prof, wouldn't you simply follow his lead?



I don't think steamrolling should be prevented as such. It is by no means fun to be on the recieving end of one, but to the people who have managed to get a big ol' bar brawl gathered, it is a blast. I don't see EC to be a hugely static game, and a steamroll could no doubt destroy all opposition and create new dominance within a day.

If your faction is about to be hit by the Pain Train, you actually have a whole lot of options - Your leaders can try and ally with someone else to take the brunt of it with you or you could reinforce bases further into you territory, so when the Train finally hits you, you are prepared, though that also means you are losing some ground. You could also simply be brutally cunnin' and take the enemy bases from another flank while they tear away at your territory and that way hit them while they aren't looking. I have seen that happen naturally in Planetside 2 time and time again - Attacks are hard to stall in that game, so people usually just fight to keep the enemy at bay while your friends are making their bases belong to you.

Regarding guerilla - That will happen automatically. What do a squad do if they don't want to fight in some big fight on the map and just want some easy fun? Well, they go for vulnerable areas of the enemy's, taking base upon base until meeting true resistance. Then one of two things happen - Either the enemy show up to stop you, draining them from other battles around the map, or other players join you, ending up with starting a proppa fight that may even develop into a Pain Train, as we discussed earlier.

Thank you for replying - I think this discussion is really worth having, so you support is well recieved!