Well I can bet that this will be the case. Then again, I'm personally gonna decide just how much money I'll give on this program depending on its rewards...sad but true...
Sounds amazing. I assume since they take longer and are more important that there will be less of them? In PS2 it's just a zerg rush from one base to the next. If there were less "facilities", yet tougher, more people would congregate to those. Of course having more easily captured bases lets players feel like they accomplished something instead of failing on a hard capture over and over. But capturing empty bases is no fun. It's a delicate balance. Good luck.
I'm taking notes here for my eventual "World Structure Newsletter", so your questions here are very helpful for me, guys! 1 - How many battles per continent at the same time? A: Hard to say, specifically. I've planned to allow for 6-12 active battles per region, and a continent is composed of multiple regions. Those are multiple sizes, from the massive 500v500's to small 10v10 skirmishes. I've planned on a bell curve, with the peak of the curve at 125v125, which is probably close to the "optimal" battle size for the average location. (Notably, "regions" is a strange definition- internally we're quickly realizing it may not actually MEAN anything! Hopefully we'll define this and clearer by Jan/Feb.) 2 - Lattice link? A: At the moment, no. We're much more focused on the idea of front lines. You won't be able to capture a territory unless you have a chain of controlled territories back to a capital city- we think this creates a natural "front" of paired territories. You can assault anywhere that's adjacent to your contiguous territory and so can your enemy. We need to see this in action to really understand it thoroughly, but we're doing a lot of paper prototypes on it. 3 - Objectives more interesting than Alerts? A: A campaign is composed of potentially dozens of objectives. A single objective may be "like" an alert, but should probably take longer to achieve. For example: "Hold this Research Facility for 48h in order to complete our studies into xenoarchaeology." Many objectives will be story and lore related as well, and there may even be objectives specifically for sub-factions (chapters, craftworlds, etc). "But I think I meant more permanent as in changes that are permanent beyond the duration of a campaign. I.e. having a base annihilated, resulting in the victim faction having to dedicate resources and time to have to bring that structure back into play." A: We aren't planning to have bases be annihilated, but we think we can get the same thing with upgrades! You spend a lot of time and resources upgrading a base, and then when it's "razed" it's back down to level 0 and you have to spend time and resources building it up again. We'll see how far we can push this- it's not the focus of the game, so we need to make sure it doesn't detract from the core battle gameplay. "What will keep the players at those locations once they are held by whichever army grabs it so they can actually hold it? And will there be anything in place to stop an army from over extending their supply lines, besides the opposing forces?" A: We have some ideas about this! Rather than just Attack-attack-attack, we'd like aggressors to be motivated to Attack-Defend, Attack-Defend. We have some preliminary thoughts on how to motivate this, but I'll wait to talk about it until it's more set in stone. Similarly, we've discussed ways a faction can expend resources to make a big and extended push- but if you over-extend, you risk losing your big investment. It's on our minds! "Do you have any ideas on zerging and if you are concerned about it?" A: Yeah, we've looked at zergs and the way they behave, and strategies to counter them. Thing is, we want clusters of players up to a certain size, so we can't make any hard blockers to players grouping near each other. This might have to come more at the strategic level: Once you have ~125 players in a given fight, if you have 20-30 more, it should make more sense for them to go fight over another objective (except in rare circumstances). I think we're gonna try some pretty varied solutions to disperse zergs. "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" A: SOON(TM) edit: booo, formatting so weird! no idea why those two quotes are bolded.
Haha, good man! I know this isn't the "correct" thread for it, but if you happen to know the details of the potential founders program could you lay out the low to the high-end for it?
I don't know them. Never fear, we're working hard to get you a game worth buying, and a program worth buying into!
Do you want to encourage fights involving 3 or even the 4 factions? Can 2 factions (or more) share campaign objectives? Can you tell us about base upgrades? i think is the first time you say anything about it Will we be able to create our own strike force base?
Long range artillery, intel, and reconnaissance support? I know it's a big strange for a Night Lord to be asking to MAN the artillery, as opposed to be up close and personal...but that comes later, AFTER I grind majority of the opposition into fine particles. Otherwise it would be a fair fight, no - and we can't have the Eighth fighting on such even terms There are many games in which artillery is supported, as a 'call in' - but it's never supported by characters - that is the players. I know it was planned to have artillery/barrage support from the void/ship level - and for that to cost a lot of resources, but why not a more smaller variant at bases / in the front of bases to encourage defending/ unclumping of the zerg. I'm not sure how it would operate, but design in such a way that loading a big gun, firing the big fun, targeting the big gun - is all fun If gun emplacements are mostly at the foot hill of a base - this would prevent them from firing at would be attackers in an indirect fashion - no more artillery barrages. At close range they could angle down to fire at vehicles, perhaps at the cost of a slower firing speed due to armor penetration shells being larger (just a mechanic idea). You could remove the artillery functions entirely when being attacked and have the defenders want to be up on the battlements as opposed to outside the front base / the last trench. Perhaps they're not technically in the location/cap zone - and as such it's a risk/reward? You can fire the big guns if you want, but you're unsupported - and not a potential body in the capzone when being over run. A lot of the ideas I'm thinking of are partially inspired by Red Orchestra 2. I know it's a different game, but a game that simulates massive combat pretty well. For those unfamiliar with it, it's a ww2 "realism" shooter (more so than battlefield, less so than arma) with 32 v 32 action on dedicated servers. Teams have vital roles in limited supply. Each team has one commander, four squad leaders, 1 marksman, 2 machine gunners, 3 assault - and the rest are rank-and-file troops with rifles. Reinforcements are simulated via tickets. At the start of a match you start off with x or y amount of tickets, each ticket being drained by a death. All deaths are equal, so no - the commander isn't worth 10 tickets Back to breaking up the zergs within the world of EC. I mentioned logistics/recon at the very top of my post. Players could do that - but it might be a bit weird for a space marine to be the one 'sitting' at a console and doing long range auspex scans. Something that players might have to excuse for game-play. Perhaps to encourage someone to do this role, reward them over a time period - and have it stack, as opposed to each individual 'scan'. Maybe do the same with a support role - one that can drop off ammunition/etc. And the longer the player plays this role, the more they are rewarded. Perhaps certain classes will get more of a bonus to this later in the game's life. IE a Techmarine. Or a Warpsmith.
Thanks a ton for the triple response to my questions sir! I especially love your response to the question of the lattice link, given that SOE actually never tried that. Very interesting stuff, and a great idea. My current question is, in relation to one you answered above: Q: Will we still be able to create our own smaller fortifications and/or bases, or walls, etc., to provide cover and conflict in places beyond the larger, more permanent structures?
Truthfully, I like the idea of bases being completely destroyed. Orbital bombardments leaving only smoldering ruins, artillery barrages and absolute tank shocks. As it stands, I don't think any warrior of the Imperium or Eldar factions would stand to leave a base standing. It would probably be completely demolished and rebuilt. Orks would just fix everything up "good 'n' propa", while Chaos would inevitably warp everything to suit it's needs.
