So I know my previous post didn't make a ton of sense because I was talking about the economy of the game, but I believe that the in game Economy should be connected directly to Spawning - and Spawning is what allows' a zerg to succeed or fail.

As Steve mentioned before, spawning in friendly territory will not cost a spawn ticket, while spawning in contested or enemy territory will.​

• Cutting a base off from it's parent faction's economy will force it to use it's own resources and cause it to be contested.
• Spawns are therefore linked directly to the economy and heavy fighting without relief can drain a base completely of resources; allowing the base to be taken through attrition.
• In addition to cutting a base off from it's supply, enemies eating away at the modular bases will put the base under extreme stress.
• It takes much more resources to retake a base than it does to defend it to the last spawn ticket. It is almost always a better idea to fight to the last man than it is to simply give it up.
• A Zerg on a well supplied base will struggle because it has almost unlimited spawns, whereas the enemy will be draining it's resources until it captures the base and connects it to its supply.

A Zerg is not necessarily always bad thing. Depending on what's being promoted in a certain situation.

Fun combos like Rapid Deployment (For Ork Boyz) Teleport Homers (on Nobs) should be readily available to the Green Tide to make it actually seem like a green tide... imagine 400 players spawning off of two or three Nobs. That would bring serious lore representation to the Orks - Killing their Nobs will seriously hurt their advance. In addition, it's clear that we're all going to die a lot in this game. Can we please make it fun? I'm looking to be somebody strapped to a rocket with a one way ticket into the hearts of my enemies - or drive a trukk laden with explosives, suicidal stormboyz, and stikkbomas and light a base up like the 4th of July. Having these things encouraged in a Zerg rush seems like just another way of breaking it up without breaking immersion or the game.

200 players from one faction running around capping empty or barely defended areas for easy XP gain is not fun. Don't discourage people from grouping up; in an ideal world where the PikkoServer tech provides a playable experience regardless of the number of people present, incentives should be given for encouraging zergs to bash into each other. 300 players in one zone duking it out? Have a little XP bonus. 400 players? Have an even bigger bonus, why not? Get in there, you little scamps. That's what games like this are about - and yet, sadly, this is what many of them simply fail to do well, either because of hardware issues, server constraints or just poor incentive management.

This in combination with the War Council tasks should mean that every time you log in there are suitably varied and hopefully interesting things to do. Join in on the WC-set missions, which might want you to capture or defend bases away from the main front? Head straight for the biggest battles and get stuck into a huge fight? Head out with your own Strike Force and do something completely different?

I know there are always enough tactically minded players in games like this who don't give a fig for personal XP gain; if they have the choice to lose out on a few % of an XP bar in favour of doing something tangibly useful for their faction, they will do that, be it scouting enemy forces alone, causing distractions, upgrading unthreatened bases in preparation for the next threat. These are the people who feel like they have a stake in the game, who want to compete and to win even if it's at some personal cost.

All that's left is to cater for people who don't have the time or inclination to be that sort of player so everyone can get some enjoyment and satisfaction out of the game.

I guess the original post was ended up being misleading. My intent was not to discourage large groups, it was to discourage massively one-sided fights, but only in the large group case (very small engagements don't merit this kind of debuff). No debuff should ever apply when there's a fight of 200 vs 200, it should only kick in once it's 200 vs 100 or 50 or 10 or some other crazy killfarming ratio.

I've made some changes to the OP to improve my poor presentation. Debuffing any time the population gets too high? What was I thinking

I just come to fight, i will not in the least be concerned with strategy or tactics.
just stompin 'umies.

Here's my 2 cents on the subject. As I understand it, you can occasionally get hero and elite units to play that are significantly more powerful. So change the cost/availability of these hero units based on the number of opponents in the area. If you're 200 defending 500, you should have a much bigger percentage of the hero units for some really epic battles.

That way there is still an advantage to numbers, but numbers alone won't necessarily win the fight.

2 things:

1. The action of players capping empty bases you've described is basically 'Ghost Capping', and is an issue of level design, no matter how many players are involved; a single player, or 1,000 could do this.

2. A Zerg: "a force consisted of large group of lower level players (often with only basic equipment) who use numbers rather then strategy to defeat the enemy, therefore requiring [little] skill."

The encouragement to defeat a Zerg is both natural and tactical, it needs no direct player buff / debuff to prevent it.

Either:

Meet a Zerg with equal or greater force.

Meet their numbers with a tactically superior force in a advantaged position: a Strike Force of 50 organized, veteran players is far more organized than 200 PUG players. These are events worthy of recognition and honor to defend or assault against: if anything, if a force inferior number beats a force superior to it, it should be rewarded with something of memory: a banner to put in the Strike Cruiser and a named battlefield on the site of victory.

A lot of the grief players have against Zergs is that they simply do not see their efforts being rewarded when fighting them: even when farming them for XP. In fact, all a bonus does: especially one that is tied to some sort of resource gain is encourages players to pick off the stragglers of a Zerg in order to glean off a reward for as long as possible. Smart players will realize that is an actual economic disadvantage of attempting to break a zerg when they get massive rewards for simply taxing it. The reward of actually being a named part of Arkhonian history would make taking down a Zerg, with the full intent of utterly destroying it, would be far more effective.

Well let's try change that. The Zerg are modelled off of Tyranids, and if we make Startcraft terms the norm for a 40k game, it shows we have failed in promoting our franchise. Just think, "'Nid Rush" could have been the term used by players today, if GW had let Blizzard use the licence. Lets put 40k into the spot light, and change shit up!

(And yes, I know that Starcraft was never originally going to be a 40k game, but if Warcraft had been a Fantasy game, who, knows, maybe Blizzard would have done a 40k rts where they did Starcraft instead. The universe takes many cues from 40k, so I wouldn't be surprised if they did want to make Starcraft a 40k game.)

IMHO that's one of the two best ways to go about it... Either reduce the cost of Elite spawns for outnumbered factions or increase their REQ total so they can spawn more.

That way you are balancing large forces formed mainly of basic troops against small forces made up of Elite troops, which is exactly how asymmetrical balance works in the Tabletop game.

Just to clarify some of your points: there won't be ANY monthly subscription, you buy the game, you play the game (unless you want to try the free to WAAAGH orks); this isn't a normal MMO, there won't be anything like "collect 10000 ork teeves to unlock Ghazghkull's powa claw". The title will be focused on combat, with some social aspect on board of your personal cruiser.
however, i also agree that punishing bunched players is kinda dumb.
There MUST be huge fights eventually, otherwise what's the point of massive scale battles?
Anyway, if a zerg would happen, eventually it will have less resources than its opponents because they focused so much on capturing one territory at the time that other zones will be lost and will fuel the enemy. Once this resource difference will reach its apex, i guess that number advantage won't matter against squads of veteran or elite classes, supported by dozens of vehicles.....

The idea of handicapping a very narrow interpretation of ououtnumbered and zerg is fundamentally flawed. With free to waagh zergs are going to be the average Joe's solo player experience outside of a clan. That's a significant chunk of your population. The plan then is to hamstring orks that waagh? Bad plan. People are going to join pug groups and zerg no matter what is done. That's how most people who aren't in coordinated outfits play games like this.

What's also susuggested was nerfing rewards from outnumbered engagements. This also is a terrible idea. War isn't fair and the devs have said that themselves. By doing that you take the people who flank the main engagement and cut off supply and make their coordinated efforts a sacrifice because they won't be rewarded on the same level. If I strike where my enemy is weak because I put up a distraction elsewhere I'll be damned if I don't get full credit.