Yep just like that. Don't even need an organized squad really even just a couple of guys annoying people spawning at B is enough.

Aye, it actually tilts the game hard in the attackers favor if you've set up right. That said even for the most organized pugs it's not very intuitive, Agnaitho B could stand a few extra entry points.

Then again, with VOIP back, we might start seeing it more often.

I think its important to understand two things. 1, Bias is not "insured victory" it just means an advantage. 2, The point of the thread and the entire discussion is not "can fortress attackers win" its more so "do the defenders have an unfair advantage".

I think its really easy to show just how much of a defensive bias/advantage defenders have on fortress maps with some hyperbole... because its truthful hyperbole.

The defenders of a fortress can spawn at A, all run to B and setup defenses completely sacrificing the gates, A, and anything else of remote "value". This entire tactic of just giving the entire first half of the map to the enemy for ZERO gain WILL NOT dramatically impact the outcome of the game. Either the attackers are organized and can actively get in and disrupt the defenders camp or they can't and the defenders still get all their forward position respawns even if the attackers destroy the gates and such meaning they have no real loss/penalty for losing half the map infact they are rewarded with an easier to defend location with even more tickets than normal for doing so.

No other game mode has such biased and overtly uneven map balance. Fortresses literally reward the defenders failing to protect objectives which is bullshit, pure and simple.

What if only HALF the remaining tickets on a gate/capture point get returned to the defending team at the B point? This forces the defenders to actually defend and rewards the attackers MORE for seizing the initiative and taking the fight to them. It also shouldn't be hard to change hopefully in the game code.

The poblem with the poll is that it gives 3 general answers which are all not valid.

1.) Not all fortressmaps share the same issues
2.) All fortressmaps are supposed to be biased towards the defender, afterall they have the ticket disadvantage
3.) Balance is a very fragile misstress. Reducing lives or adding entrances / cover can drastically change the pace of a map.

In my personal opinion the early loss of the gates and A point should be penalized and not benefit the defender. By logic you are supposed to play the whole map and it is very boring for all sides to play 20 minutes with 210 tickets on B. Especially since you can really predict the endresult after maybe 5 minutes into that slaughter. If the defender has its act together he will pull ahead quickly and usually you will not be able to push the defender of B with plenty of tickets remaining.

@LordSloth The poll was never intended to supplant a real discussion about this. It's simply a rough indication of whether the community thinks there's a problem at all.

@Brosephelon appropriately re-rails the thread. Many people are confusing an adjustment of balance to making the defenders easy targets. The defenders should have a strong position and get more kills. The point is to make the ultimate match result closer to a 1:1 win ratio.

Furthermore some people are preoccupied with what they have done or what could be done to the neglect of the typical scenario, which is the impenetrable B slog that you describe.

Fine then you gits, you wanna know if fortresses are defender biased?

OF COURSE DEY ARE!

They should be too why would anyone set up shop in a fortress that doesn't give them an advantage?

Now, @Brosephelon brings up an excellent point though in that a defending team could just hunker down in B point, letting the walls/A point fall, with little punishment other than being cornered.

Personally, I find the first half of all three fortresses fairly well designed with big advantages for the defenders but plenty of attack vectors for the assault team to get in and take those advantages for themselves.

Losing your doors lets transports inside, losing the walls give the attack team the high ground to shoot into A point, and losing A point gives the attacking team the use of the turrets/tank spawn points.

Problem all comes down to B point where none of those advantages carry over to assaulting the final point.

Transports can't get near it, the walls don't matter anymore, and turrets are useless. Not to mention all the remaining lives from A point go to B point.

One possible solution is to make A point and B point both have different life counts that don't share with each other. So, the walls/A point have one joined pool to draw from that disappear when A point is taken then B point has it's own pool.

That will give a reason for defenders to worry about A point getting infiltrated and taken under their noses while also making B point a little easier to assault.

Even with this change B point still needs something else to help push in for the attackers. Some kind of advantage has to be able to be acquired. Not sure what that could be yet. Right now, you can get some high ground to help shoot into the balconies if you can push in enough. Problem is with Agnthio and Ronan that is a hard task.

Harkus isn't too bad there's three door ways to enter in from which are spread apart a good distance making the defending team have to thin their line. Not true for the other maps where they can all blob up and defend easily.

Devs need to look into making Agnathio/Ronan a bit more like Harkus in that department.

Oh that is filthy.
I love it.

I don't know how hard it'd be to implement but I'd like to see when A gets capped for multiple new spawns to be available for attackers inside the walls, each corresponding to a major intended attack route inside the citadel.
Not only would it cut down on the runtime for flanking attacks it'd probably persuade the more brainless cretins to spread out the attack instead of running into the same choke and the same wall of guns for the umpteenth time, baffled at their lack of progress.

A more stopgap solution for Agnathio would be to allow APCs to drive up the bridge again.
Not all the way mind you, there'd be roadblocks at the very end of the bridge so you don't get unreachable APC spawns like the older versions of the map.
This way the APC is a lot further up allowing more pressure to be applied to the defenders but with the APC itself still very much out in the open on the bridge for defenders to attack if they so chose.

As for Ronan B needs almost a complete redesign for something like that to work.
The fact that defender Tank spawns are still active after A is capped and dump them directly onto the optimal APC parking spot for B citadel is a problem unto itself.