8 replies to this topic

[Terrastras Rex]

The way I see it, there are two types of players,

Casual Solos - Guys who just queue solo for an hour or two a day, don't play on TS or Discord, and just want to shoot robots. Mainly F2P players.

Voice Com Vets - Units who have voice comms, work as a coordinated unit, are heavily invested in tournaments, and FactionPlay as a whole. They co-ordinate most of the attacks.


Faction Play Problems
- I don't think 'Call to Arms' as an 'instant' mechanic drop-in is working
- nor are the separate Unit/Solo queues as we're seeing reworks
- Drop Tonnage constantly being tweaked
- 'Solo' players, making 'Units' just to get into the queues.
- Factions going 'on strike' (Only queuing for Scouting once 90% has been reached, not bothering to defend)


Faction Play idea:

1. 'Planning Stage' 24 hours - Units can choose to 'Scout' a border planet for 2mill, or 'Invade' for 10mill. This will open a supply line (queue) for the next days battle stage.

2. 'Battle Stage' 24hours - Units AND Solo players can Attack any planets selected for invasion by Units, or Defend any border planets being invaded by enemies. Units AND Solo players can also Scout any planets with a scouting supply line open.

3. 'Ceasefire' Once a day - The Scout and Invade totals are tallied and Intel % and Planet Ownership are updated.

Both Planning and Battle stages are simultaneous, the planning stage selecting the next days battles.

If a planet is taken, the Unit that paid the 10mil to open the supply line claims ownership. So a well managed Campaign on behalf of the paying Unit to recruit Solo players to queue for them will reward handsomely.
The MC reward from owning a planet should be enough for a well coordinated unit to invest the 10millCB to open a supply line.

Supply Lines

- It would stand to reason that the 'closer' a planet is to the home planet, the better logistic/transport infrastructure the House/Clan would have. 'Home Regions' should be harder to attack. Its frustrating to see your sphere of influence reduced to one planet.

Clans
Home Planet - Drop Limit - 400 Tons for Defenders
Home Planet(+10) - Drop Limit - 380 Tons for Defenders (the ten closest planets)
Home Planet(11-20) - Drop Limit - 360 Tons for Defenders (The next ten)
etc, etc

Houses
Home Planet - Defend Drop Limit 400
Home Planet(+50) - Defend Drop Limit 380 (fifty closest planets)
Home Planet(51-100) - Defend Drop Limit 360 (next fifty closest)

Similarly when attacking, the further you get from your home planet - the lower your available attack tonnage due to dropship constraints.

If the Clans had a successful blitzkrieg (like lore suggests), they'd be able to take a bunch of the rim world border planets quickly at the start of a season, and then their progress would slow.. The match-ups would start out looking like this
Clan 350 vs IS 225 .. till the clans had a foothold.. then they'd look like this
Clan 300 vs IS 250 .. till eventually everyone reached the limits of their 'dropship transport network' and
Clan 250 vs IS 275 would be the 'equal' battle.. at an equitable planet ownership level. (When clans have overextended themselves into enemy territory)

Clan vs Clan would just be bigger matchups, 300 vs 300 likely? If Clans decided not to focus on Houses.

Attack/Defend would be clear, not 'Attacking' then finding out you are 'defending' a forward base. =X
InnerSphere needs some kind 'defend' turret advantage on those border worlds at a lower tonnage. Let them perma defend when 'defending' or let them attack at a weight disadvantage when attacking border worlds.

Anyways. Two things to think about. Planning/Battle stages, and Dynamic Dropdeck Limits.

Sorry if this has all been talked about to death already. I rarely forum.

And I'm the type of player who really enjoys Faction Play, but am more a casual player without a Unit or voice comms. I'd love to be able to support a unit who has already chosen an attack target. ;D

[Terrastras Rex]

Then imagine FP goes like this:

The season starts,
- IS doesn't want to invade border worlds due to low tonnage, so they spend their time scouting, best way to stop guerillas.
- IS gets intel points that will give them longtom to defend those outer worlds.
- Clans have tonnage advantage, and have to use it to fight through longtoms and turrets
- Clans will have to scout to get rid of longtoms, while attacking
- IS will scout and defend as long as they can, until Clans take their foothold. Then the real FP begins. ;D

[Soulos]

I don't understand how this helps anything. Not saying it's a bad idea or anything, but you list several problems you want to fix, call to arms, the split queue in general, changing tonnage, and people giving up defending. How do any of your changes fix that?

[xe N on]

How about split queue.

...

...

...


Oh, almost forgott, we had this already. Now that we have a merged queue again, we have no population problem anymore ...

Edited by xe N on, 28 April 2016 - 08:17 AM.

[BSK]

Anyone coming up with one cease fire per day has no idea what he is talking about and needs to read the forums more.

[EvilCatEars]

Soulos, on 28 April 2016 - 07:59 AM, said:

I don't understand how this helps anything. Not saying it's a bad idea or anything, but you list several problems you want to fix, call to arms, the split queue in general, changing tonnage, and people giving up defending. How do any of your changes fix that?

I agree with this. Opening post has some nice ideas (like logistics), but none of these ideas attempts to fix any of the outlined problems.

[Terrastras Rex]

Soulos, on 28 April 2016 - 07:59 AM, said:

I don't understand how this helps anything. Not saying it's a bad idea or anything, but you list several problems you want to fix, call to arms, the split queue in general, changing tonnage, and people giving up defending. How do any of your changes fix that?

Sry, must have left some key things out..

ONLY Units can open a supply line (queue) ..
Only members of THAT Unit and Solo players can join that queue.
Only 1 supply line can be opened per unit per 24hour period.

- The small and solo units (1 man units) won't be able to afford to open their own supply lines, nor can they queue for other units supply lines. They will disband into solo loyalists.
- The huge units will only be allowed to take 1 planet per 24 hours, so they will splinter into smaller groups so they can accomplish (own) more.

Solo players and unit players can always defend anything. Scouting wouldn't be 'live' anymore, it'd get tallied at the ceasefire and apply to the next days actions..

Whats wrong with a ceasefire every 24 hours? Can't the system take the total number of battles that day, and declare a winner?

Call to arms instant action for solo loyalists would be able to match-make into
- faction defend scout bucket
- faction defend invasion bucket
- faction attack scout bucket
- faction attack invasion bucket

Whereas a call to arms for a Unit player would only match-make into
- faction defend scout bucket
- faction defend invasion bucket
- unit invasion attack supply line
- unit scout attack supply line
(Unit's can only attack wITH their units.)

Basically give solo players less choice. Let the Unit's decide (by paying for supply lines) where to attack, and the pugs will follow.

I have a 'solo unit' purely for vanity purposes. Give the pugs an incentive to group up in faction chat so they can set their own targets, and make their own MC.

[EvilCatEars]

Terrastras Rex, on 29 April 2016 - 06:02 PM, said:

ONLY Units can open a supply line (queue) ..
Only members of THAT Unit and Solo players can join that queue.
Only 1 supply line can be opened per unit per 24hour period.

And what will happen when one of the border planets is major planet (bigger rewards) and all units in the faction choose that one for their supply line?

Terrastras Rex, on 29 April 2016 - 06:02 PM, said:

- The small and solo units (1 man units) won't be able to afford to open their own supply lines, nor can they queue for other units supply lines. They will disband into solo loyalists.
- The huge units will only be allowed to take 1 planet per 24 hours, so they will splinter into smaller groups so they can accomplish (own) more.

So small units are denied invasion mode as attackers. Why? I know they can still drop defenses and scouting but your plan takes away possibility for faster matches when attacking. We already have queue problems because of lack of players. And on side note Units are not established solely for Faction Warfare, yet they can still play it from time to time. I see no reason to deny the entrance.

Terrastras Rex, on 29 April 2016 - 06:02 PM, said:

Solo players and unit players can always defend anything. Scouting wouldn't be 'live' anymore, it'd get tallied at the ceasefire and apply to the next days actions..

Whats wrong with a ceasefire every 24 hours? Can't the system take the total number of battles that day, and declare a winner?

Ceasefires have been astablished as they are now, because game has non linear player activity over a period of 24 hours. If ceasfires were every 24hrs, there would be very little reason to fight in first 14-18 hours. Only last 6 or so hours would be valuable for units attempting captures.

Terrastras Rex, on 29 April 2016 - 06:02 PM, said:

Call to arms instant action for solo loyalists would be able to match-make into
- faction defend scout bucket
- faction defend invasion bucket
- faction attack scout bucket
- faction attack invasion bucket

Whereas a call to arms for a Unit player would only match-make into
- faction defend scout bucket
- faction defend invasion bucket
- unit invasion attack supply line
- unit scout attack supply line
(Unit's can only attack wITH their units.)

So your plan is to make units smaller, and then make every unit make their own personal queue? So if faction has 20 units then twenty queues? What if faction has very little solo players? Those twenty units would never, ever be able to capture anything, because:
- no support available from other units
- enemy they will be facing will not be a single faction but all units and all solos from > The Whole Front<

Terrastras Rex, on 29 April 2016 - 06:02 PM, said:

Basically give solo players less choice. Let the Unit's decide (by paying for supply lines) where to attack, and the pugs will follow.

I have a 'solo unit' purely for vanity purposes. Give the pugs an incentive to group up in faction chat so they can set their own targets, and make their own MC.

Pugs will queue in places where they can get matches fast or they will simply skip the gamemode.

Also you tell pugs to group (create unit?), if so then faction in my prior example (the one with 20 units) going to increase to lets say 30 Units ( and thus 30 queues!!!). Now that faction has lots of Units, no pugs to fill the drops, and is facing whole front of defenders. Good Luck capturing anything even when attackers can drop 48x100 when defenders only 48x20 tons.

[E-Z]

In relation to tonnage there is an issue.
If you follow the lore, typically clan mechs were better and had lances of 5 a star. IS used lances of 6 or 7, cant remember. But anyway, in the lore there was no overwhelming use of force, because clanners would bid away units, against each other, to win the right to attack. So if anything there were always fewer clan units. A realistic version, would have IS controlled planets, and mercs got offered different $ ammounts to defend or attack different positions based upon the difficulty and clan units should be able to bid against one another for the right to attack a position. But the logical progression is correct. They took outer rim planets first, fighting bandits and pirates first before making way to the interior. Casual players should be used to make up the bulk of the outer rim planets denfenders or aggressors, due to the casual, less organized and theroretical disadvantaged nature of lone wolf play. Add on that only the best clan units would be moving towards the interior of the sphere because of bidding, and thier less skilled or smaller clanner units or individuals would be forced to attack or defend these same planets because they would be considered Solahma units. This would provide better unit matching and give units a reason to be good. Matching the best house units and mercs and clan units up with netter rewards, while forcing weaker units to fight pugs.