I'm wondering if the Dev team is as curious as I am to see what happens when you condense a fight into the smallest area possible. I love small maps where the action is never far away and the fight is blisteringly fast. Obviously that's not always the most fun, and it isn't for everyone, but I'm wondering if there are stress tests being performed for how many people can be in a very small area, fighting, and enjoying the game without system or server lag....

As an aside... would you be interested in giving us a taste of the game on one of these maps in a founders pack?

Say..... 1,000 people playing on an EC plot that's the equivalent to largest map in SM? (Maybe 2-3.5 sq miles?)

Yeah, the smallest continent may take 40mins to run across, but what about the smallest base? I'd really love to see a 1000 person battle take place on a mountain peak someplace... the truest "king of the hill" you've ever witnessed with hundreds of fallen foes tumbling down the mountainsides because there's hardly any room for them to rest among the carnage.

I don't think small area's are really going to work given the scope of the game. I would like to move 5 metres without getting sniped for example. Then again, in the alpha build there was a base that seemed quite decently sized (it was in the video with some pvp action, but I think it was before the actual pvp where some guy was just wandering around the place)

I'm still interested in seeing a huge amount of players in a relatively small area duking it out.

I'm expecting some small areas like a cavern or places inbetween mountains that would tense up the fight abit.

A small area packed with players in a massive firefight reminds me too much of Planetside 2 Biolabs, which are not particularly fun to play nor tactically taxing as soon as a certain number of players are involved.
The defending team mostly just holds certain points with turrets and rotating wall of players, while the attackers try to storm with grenades/flagship unit spam. Whoever has more firepower wins. Moving outside a protected area is almost guaranteed to get you killed.

I'm hoping for a bit larger scale warfare. If you have 1000 players spread across a complex facility where flanking, hiding and using things other than infantry makes sense, then I'm really interested. Or basically trench wars on terrain that is broken up and complex enough that rushing forward isn't suicide, and again, flanking makes sense.

All this talk of CQC brings up a good point, actually, relating to how objectives will be balanced. If we are forced to funnel into small areas in order to take a command post, or something similar, then immediately any classes focussed on long-range combat will be eating axes and chainswords before they can properly sight their guns.

Now while that sort of thing is completely normal, if we have factions that have a heavy bias towards CQC, we're going to have a faction that is simply more effective at taking objectives.

It reminds me of playing MAG, where the three factions were SVER, Valor and Raven. They were all just PMCs of guys with guns, so no great variety, but SVER tended to have more powerful, less accurate guns, while Raven had more accurate, less powerful guns, with Valor messing around in the middle.

What this meant, was that in most games, SVER would win, because all they had to do was either throw themselves at an objective until they got lucky, or just camp in corners, because once they had the CQC advantage, they could be a lot more confident. MAG was an objective-based game, balanced around combat between players, and that's a problem that seems to go unnoticed at the moment. Behaviour actually have a unique opportunity to try out new balancing strategies, because they don't want a game where everyone can 1v1 anyone else from any range and have a decent shot.

Then again, maybe this is something for the players to consider with the wider war council objectives. If you're likely to lose a CQC battle for a small room in a cramped factory, form a perimeter around the factory. Still, it's definitely something to remain aware of.

Honestly, this is why I believe Project Reality's capture zone system is vastly superior than Planetside 2's capture point system for a game of this scale.

Rather than your control of the base hinging on your ability to cram as many people as possible into a broom closet, Project Reality had capture zones ranging from a 50m to 300+m radius depending on what you're capturing. Control of a zone hinges on your ability to keep your troops in the capture radius while pushing the enemy out, which at its most basic level is establishing spawn points to bring reinforcements in while hunting down and destroying the enemy's spawn points so they have to walk.

The varying sizes of the capture zones also created variety: 50m and smaller objectives were CQC heaven, while on a 300+m objective even your sniper can contribute to capping.

A big downside of course is that it makes zerging extremely viable, especially on larger objectives, but the knowledge that a vastly outnumbered force was literally incapable of holding created pressure for the losing side to bring in reinforcements. This meant that if you were facing an enemy zerg, chances were a friendly zerg would be on its way to help.

Of course, PR's system also had anti-ghostcapping measures and a built-in defender's advantage in the form of the rule of 3 and the 3:2 rule.

Rule of 3: You need at least 3 people to initiate a cap.

3:2 rule: The progress bar will not move unless one side outnumbers the other by 3:2. The reason this favors defenders is because defenders do not want the progress bar to move.