13 replies to this topic

[plaguebreath]

I choose the +1 shift coz it's the solution will make everyone annoyed just for one month at least.

Edited by plaguebreath, 11 March 2015 - 07:52 PM.

[Kjudoon]

Boxing Round Scoring Proposal

- One Ceasefire at noon PGI time. (Or when they would really want it to minimize damage to other timezones)

- In a 23 hour period (one taken away for cease fire), the faction that controls the most sectors for the most hours controls the planet.

- Sectors start in controlling faction's favor, changing at the end of the hour to the faction with the most victories.

- Ghost Drops count as 0.25 of a victory.

- Battle Tally resets to zero - zero at beginning of hour and winner of last hour controllling and restarts

- The faction with the most sectors held gets 1 victory point that hour.

- This repeats every hour till ceasefire determines who Holds or Controls planet.

- A planet is Held with 12 victory points.

- A Held planet means that the front does not move, but control flips.

- A held planet starts after the ceasefire with the sectors as they were at the beginning of the ceasefire.

- A planet is Controlled if a faction has 17 victory points.

- A Controlled planet changes faction control and moves the attack algorithm to a new planet.

- A Controlled planet cannot be targeted for attack for 48 hours

- Controlled planets when attacked start at 100% of the sectors in the controlling faction's favor.

Benefits:

1. A single battle cannot take a planet except in rare, very equal circumstances.
2. Gives all timezones worldwide a near equal say in control of the planet for victory points are based on effort over time.
3. Larger populations are balanced more against smaller ones because they cannot flood last minute and win.
4. A more globally diverse faction will fair better because they can protect or change sectors at any time.
5. Ghost drops are minimized but still could take a sector.
6. The pace of the game is slowed, but does not have to be less intense. (no more "prime time" crunch).
7. Pace of the game fits better into daily and weekly schedules of players.
8. Allows for integration of more logistics into the game by providing special benefits for sectors held.
9. Allows for multiple planets on a front
10. Allows for variations in the number of sectors without dramatically altering the functionality of the battles.
11. Gives everyone a chance to contribute to the overall battle, and increase the sense of scale to taking planets.
12. Prevents advances too quick for the community to adjust to and protects weaker factions by slowing pace.
13. Requires minimal changes to the current set up of CW lessening engineering costs.
14. Offers a new level of battle strategy for victories must be decisive, not marginal before the front moves on.

Edited by Kjudoon, 11 March 2015 - 10:03 PM.

[Kinski Orlawisch]

Remove it. When a planet is full 100% from one side. Change directly.

[dervishx5]

Marc von der Heide, on 11 March 2015 - 10:18 PM, said:

Remove it. When a planet is full 100% from one side. Change directly.

This.

[Kjudoon]

I keep hemming and hawing about that at 100%.

I'd say no, because the chance for counterattack from orbital assets or in system assets still exist, so to speak.

Otherwise, yeah....

[Marodeur]

Marc von der Heide, on 11 March 2015 - 10:18 PM, said:

Remove it. When a planet is full 100% from one side. Change directly.

In principle I agree with you. BUT the problem that would arise is, that because of an overpopulation of the clans, that would cause a speed run for terra I think. Because then it is possible to take a lot of planets in a very short time only because of the pure mass of players on one side. And there would be very little time to organize, or react on this for the other side. Also for players in different time zones it should be possible to react on this, because it is stupid if all this will happen while you are sleeping. Also that would cause a higher frequency to reset the servers to start conditions, what is technically no problem. But for me the "magical" feeling of a galctical war would be away, if there is every week a reset.
So at least I would say NO to this suggestion.

Edited by Marodeur, 12 March 2015 - 01:07 AM.

[sycocys]

Let the unit that controls the planet choose when the cease fire times are from a 4-8 hour window, make it the equivalent time for all cease fires, but in a time frame they control so they can actually set up defenses rather than losing a planet to ghost drops.

And/or make it so that groups that make huge advances across the map can be cut off from their reinforcements by teams pushing through planets behind them and isolating them in space. When this happens because they couldn't muster the manpower to defend their flanks they should suffer some penalties - no strike/uav replenishing, no defending places they are cut off from, 25% slower dropships. Until such a time they can either fight their way back to their home world to open up a reinforcement path or are wiped out and need to start their control from the beginning again.

Make map control a challenge with huge drawbacks for getting too greedy and taking more than you can actively control. And at the same time maybe make controlling certain planets for x amount of days/cease fires give the holding faction some bonuses - making keeping your planets something more important than just a platform to advance to the next from.

I think it might also be more fun to see mercs as their own faction capable of using either tech with a 230 drop deck, but with a central world to base out of that starts on the borders of several opposing factions/clan factions (or attack-able by any/mixed squads and able to join the attack of any as long as a certain number of that faction is already on the attack) so they are more of a meta game alliance wise but still afforded the opportunity to do their own thing. I think it would provide a much more interesting diversity and dynamic with clan vs is vs merc all in a three way competition.

[X T R E M E]

I choose the +1 !

[pilot36]

I voted.
I choose the +1

[Vincent V. Kerensky]

Marodeur, on 12 March 2015 - 01:04 AM, said:

In principle I agree with you. BUT the problem that would arise is, that because of an overpopulation of the clans, that would cause a speed run for terra I think.

We currently are not that populated actually... Sure, at times there are mercenaries who take up contract with the Clans but at the same time, the Inner Sphere horde we face when we try to attack a planet during the North American window is interesting to say the least. The other night we had a planet up at about 80% just a few minutes before ceasefire and suddently five IS 12-man teams dropped on the planet. I am certain quite a few of them got in ghost drops and with that, the planet was saved.

Marodeur, on 12 March 2015 - 01:04 AM, said:

Because then it is possible to take a lot of planets in a very short time only because of the pure mass of players on one side. And there would be very little time to organize, or react on this for the other side. Also for players in different time zones it should be possible to react on this, because it is stupid if all this will happen while you are sleeping. Also that would cause a higher frequency to reset the servers to start conditions, what is technically no problem. But for me the "magical" feeling of a galctical war would be away, if there is every week a reset.

Due to low Clan population, it is very difficult to mobilise against sudden right-before-ceasefire rushes by the Inner Sphere.

I voted to keep the current solution. Why? Because sad as it seems, it is the most fair without being bias against anyone. Sure, some of us have to stay up late but at the same time, I do not think PGI can cater to every single person on the globe.

Kudoes for posting this thread though. Valid poll!

[UberStuka]

I voted other... let me explain

reduce time during cease fires to 1-5 mins..... if there are ongoing fights that could sway the opinion of a planet extend that particular planets time. what kills CW is the 40 min wait to join back in. the length of cease fires should be reduced drastically

or....

remove cease fire times all together. say if you don't cap a planet by the ceasefire time than the on going battles mean nothing. all they have to do is alot 1 min to see what % a planet is at and change the tags/faction.

Edited by UberStuka, 12 March 2015 - 10:43 AM.

[Davegt27]

I voted other

I feel that some Ceasefire times are at peak playing hours and should be extended

[Vincent Lynch]

My recommendation:
Drop fixed ceasefires entirely.
A planet should change owners exactly then when the attackers at some point conquered 100% of the zones. Not one minute sooner or later. Because that's realistic - and it also means that 1. people from any time zone can fight decisive battles, and 2. every battle will be kind of decisive.

I would do the details the following way (time periods in brackets [] just as examples, devs can decide on exact numbers on implementation, like they do it in Command Chair posts.)

1. Not more than one planet on each side of each faction frontier to be contested at a given time, as it was originally. (I don't know what the eff is going on just today now.)
2. If at any time the attackers control 100% of the planet, both attack and defend queues get shut down immediately after the end of the match winning the last sector for the attackers, players can't join queues anymore, players already in queues can stay in there but will not drop. Any further already running battles on the same planet still get played out until the finish. If the defenders win one of the still running battles, queues get reopened (because planet ownership is back to, like, 93%). If the attackers win all the battles of this "final round", the planet changes owners immediately. Also immediately, a [1 hour] ceasefire for this side of these two factions' frontier goes into effect. Within this time, the border is redrawn and the next planet to be attacked selected. Within this time, players of both planets can continue to fight about the other planet contested between these two factions (if not accidentally also under ceasefire at the same time), or fight on planets contested with other factions.
---> has additional positive effect of letting players fight in CW any time they want, as long they don't care about on which frontier to fight.
3. A planetary attack is considered failed, if at any time after an "initial invasion period" of [8 hours] the portion of the planet controlled by the attacker drops back to 0% due to defender wins, or is still at 0% after this initial period due to no attacker wins.
Regarding battles already running at the moment when a defender win reclaims the last sector the attackers had held, do exactly the same thing as in 2. Also starts a [1 hour] ceasefire during which another planet that gets attacked is selected. (PGI, it could be the same planet again technically, but seriously, let another planet get attacked every time if the defender kicks the attackers offworld, that's less boring.)
If a planet is still in "initial invasion period", a countdown to that period should be prominently displayed to players in planet selection screen.
4. ONLY in case that NEITHER faction bothers to drop on the contested planet for a period of [24 hours], planet ownership should be decided on which side currently owns more than 50% of the sectors. (as it is now.) Even then, the planet should (if applicable) switch ownership after that period immediately, with the very same ceasefire time as mentioned above (to select new target planet) going in effect immediately.
Time since last drop of either faction should also be displayed to players prominently in planet selection screen.
(Yes that means that in this case a specific time zone - not always the same time zone though - will decide on the planet's fate, but only because in this case both factions' players in other time zones didn't give a "thought" about dropping here so it's their own fault if they are not involved in the decision. That's why I would really recommend exactly 24 hours for this "no drop" period.)

I know that this could mean that the fighting for a specific planet could rage on for days or weeks. But hey, that's realistic.
I also know that this could mean that some planets could get overrun within a few hours. But this also means the same planet who just got overrun might get reclaimed just, like, two hours later by the same mechanism (not, depending on how you do the maths, 8 or 15 hours later at the earliest.)

PGI is maybe not willing to pay some interns for 24h shifts checking the IS map all the time, but hey, they obviously pay a few (very probably not the same person 7 days a week) to look into it every 8 hours so the step to 24/7 is not huge.
Alternatively, if the actual selection mechanism is THAT buggy, it can't be that difficult to implement some mechanism like
IF BattleForPlanetA.Winner == Attacker THEN
NextTarget = PlanetB
ELSE
NextTarget = PlanetC
and fill in the values for PlanetB and PlanetC a few hours in advance?

[plaguebreath]

Thank you all for the useful ideas written here, I sincerely hope this poll being watch by PGI guys and being considered as it must be. We all appreciate the work on new mechs but we will enjoy more a functional cw coz we all get bored of pugs match.