14 replies to this topic

[fat4eyes]

First of all, this game mode looks very very promising, and might be the one other game mode where splitting the team is a winning strategy (light base rush seems very possible).

I can see a potentially bad scenario though, if both teams decide to camp their base. The base defenses seem formidable, and it could be a winning strategy to just hang out at your base, kill the enemy when they attack, then go blow up their base. The bonuses you get from the batteries are purely defensive, which encourages camping even more. This would make for very boring standoff matches where you'll be relying on people getting bored to break the stalemate (not a good thing).

A mechanic to force people out of their bases needs to be put in. Something as simple as the team that gets a certain number of batteries first wins would force players out of their bases and contest the charging stations.

Edit: A much cooler idea is for the air control tower to send your dropship over the ENEMY base, forcing them out of their base to deal with your lights. It can also be used to aid assaults on the enemy base, adding a new tool in your tactics toolbox. It should also be really simple to implement (just change the ai on the current dropships from friendly to hostile).

Edited by fat4eyes, 24 March 2017 - 10:23 PM.

[Cy Mitchell]

The base objectives can be hit a fairly long range. LRMs, LL and erPPCs seem effective. If the other team attacks and all of them die but the damage to your base is more than what was done to their base then I believe you will lose if I am readying the win conditions correctly in the notes. If that is the case then base camping could be a losing strategy unless one of the enemy is left alive.

Maybe that is why they are set up like that.

[fat4eyes]

If either team decides to go on the attack then yes the difference in base health would be enough to force the losing team out to go out of their base. The problem is when both teams decide to go fully defensive, which I can totally see happening in tier 4/5. There has to be something that's relatively 'safe' to do to disrupt the initial balance so one team is forced to do something to get back on top.

I'm not so sure about being able to hit the base objectives at long range either. In the few games I've played, most of the initial base damage came from fast moving srm mechs rushing the base, not long range snipers.

[Cato Zilks]

No, the light base rush is what makes base camping favorable. Given how easily lights can wreck the base, I don't see why I would want to leave. Something has to stop those mechs. I think we need formidable base defenses that rely heavily on power. Thus creating a real fight to control the power node areas. If I can rest assured that by base is reasonably well defended (i.e. I could get back to it before enemy alpha lance is dead) then I would be way more adventurous.

[fat4eyes]

I just thought of something. What if the air control tower sent the dropship over the ENEMY base instead of the friendly base? First of all, that would be awesome, and secondly it would force people out to deal with your lights so they don't get blown up inside their base. They may have to make the dropship destructible though (or at least its turrets) so people don't feel completely helpless against it.

Edit: Having the dropship attack the enemy base is also useful in aiding an assault on the base. Imagine calling in the dropship to strafe their base while your team pushes into their lines. That's f**king awesome!

Edited by fat4eyes, 24 March 2017 - 10:10 PM.

[fat4eyes]

Cato Zilks, on 24 March 2017 - 09:22 PM, said:

No, the light base rush is what makes base camping favorable. Given how easily lights can wreck the base, I don't see why I would want to leave. Something has to stop those mechs. I think we need formidable base defenses that rely heavily on power. Thus creating a real fight to control the power node areas. If I can rest assured that by base is reasonably well defended (i.e. I could get back to it before enemy alpha lance is dead) then I would be way more adventurous.

But the light mech rush has to be a credible threat otherwise you wouldn't bother defending against it (this was the problem with the old assault with turrets mode, lights couldn't ninja basecap due to the turrets).

[Cato Zilks]

fat4eyes, on 24 March 2017 - 09:55 PM, said:

But the light mech rush has to be a credible threat otherwise you wouldn't bother defending against it (this was the problem with the old assault with turrets mode, lights couldn't ninja basecap due to the turrets).

First, you want people to have to defend against the light rush (aka play defensive), BUT you don't want people to basecamp (aka play defensive). This seems contradictory.
Second, you are ignoring why people basecamp. When assault comes up on Polar Highlands, assault pilots argue that the team should base camp because the cap timer is too short for the march times required to go back and defend the base. It really is not any fun for three lights to sneak in a steal a victory before the main forces get to do much of anything.

Thus, I am trying to pull the fight into a control of the battery zones. This means the fatties need to move up to cover the lights, who are grabbing batteries that provide defenses for the base.

Hypothetically, lets say one team begins to win that battery control battle and 5-2 kill advantage. The losing team would fall back to base to gain the extra firepower and cover. As winning team begins to press on the base, they can no longer hold the battery points allowing skilled light pilots to re-power their base that is now under attack. This game mode has the chance to be excellent, but it requires that we have bases that don't fall to 2 jenners.

[fat4eyes]

Cato Zilks, on 24 March 2017 - 10:17 PM, said:

First, you want people to have to defend against the light rush (aka play defensive), BUT you don't want people to basecamp (aka play defensive). This seems contradictory.
Second, you are ignoring why people basecamp. When assault comes up on Polar Highlands, assault pilots argue that the team should base camp because the cap timer is too short for the march times required to go back and defend the base. It really is not any fun for three lights to sneak in a steal a victory before the main forces get to do much of anything.

Thus, I am trying to pull the fight into a control of the battery zones. This means the fatties need to move up to cover the lights, who are grabbing batteries that provide defenses for the base.

Hypothetically, lets say one team begins to win that battery control battle and 5-2 kill advantage. The losing team would fall back to base to gain the extra firepower and cover. As winning team begins to press on the base, they can no longer hold the battery points allowing skilled light pilots to re-power their base that is now under attack. This game mode has the chance to be excellent, but it requires that we have bases that don't fall to 2 jenners.

I don't want people to be FULLY defensive, because that makes for boring stalemates. There has to be a credible chance of light base rush succeeding in order for there to be a reason to defend against it.

I'm all for more reasons to contest the zones, that would make the fight more dynamic. It does however carry the risk of turning the mode into another form of skirmish, where a team dominates the fight in the center, and the losing team has to watch them SLOWLY move into the enemy base to take out the turrets and bases one at a time when the outcome of the battle is already all but determined.

Also, once you are losing it becomes harder for you to power your base because you have to go behind enemy lines to get the batteries. That could lead to a rich get richer poor get poorer scenario as the winning team is able to make their base stronger while the losing team's base gets weaker. You'd have to keep the light base rush viable so the losing team can come up from behind if the winning team becomes too careless.

[pyrocomp]

What if the win conditions are so that the OpFor base must be torn down and own base should be kept above 50% (2 out of 4 MFBs survive) to trigger the win condition? If this condition is not then it is a tie. E.g. you need to defend a base and you need to get that OpFor base. Plus something like LongTom mechanic can be proposed if the 3 (or so) battaries are fed to the specific structure (or just 1 but to every MFB available).

E.g. provide base-related offensive means.

[Nesutizale]

I could think of several things to punish camping.

1) With every energie canister you collect, the enemy base is damaged.
2) Have an artillerie pice on the side of the map, the one capping it will call in a small artillerie strike at where most of the enemys are. I say small as we don't want a new LongTom stike like in FW. Just a small strike...like a slap on the back to remind them to go and play outside...and if they don't it will slowly eat away till they die.
3) Turn the AirControl into something that supports your own attack with the dropship doing one sweap over the map. When youi attack at the same time you can flush out the campers.
4) Who ever collects more energie wins
5) Respawns and no "Kill all" win condition
6) Repair bays and no "kill all" win condition
7) No kill all win condition (frankly that is the reason why every mode turns into skirmish, its the most easy to do)

[Cato Zilks]

fat4eyes, on 24 March 2017 - 10:37 PM, said:

I don't want people to be FULLY defensive, because that makes for boring stalemates. There has to be a credible chance of light base rush succeeding in order for there to be a reason to defend against it.

I'm all for more reasons to contest the zones, that would make the fight more dynamic. It does however carry the risk of turning the mode into another form of skirmish, where a team dominates the fight in the center, and the losing team has to watch them SLOWLY move into the enemy base to take out the turrets and bases one at a time when the outcome of the battle is already all but determined.

Also, once you are losing it becomes harder for you to power your base because you have to go behind enemy lines to get the batteries. That could lead to a rich get richer poor get poorer scenario as the winning team is able to make their base stronger while the losing team's base gets weaker. You'd have to keep the light base rush viable so the losing team can come up from behind if the winning team becomes too careless.

There is not a way around this, if lights can take out the base with ease, then people need to stay back. People needing to stay back is what you explicitly wanted to avoid. Honestly, you sound like someone who just wants to gank the enemy base in a light but don't want to face the enemy team. Every single solution you (and others) propose is to make it easier for the attackers to take the base (air raids, other people say artillery). This just increases the need to stay near the base. If the assault mode cap point fell quickly, more people would camp in that mode. This already happens in assault on larger maps.

This can be solved by having capable defenses that need power. If two lights running batteries can keep the base well defended, then it frees up 10 mechs to leave the base and fight over the rest of the map. Attacking a fully powered base should be a formidable task that requires more than a lance. The base should also be easier to take if left un-powered. It should be difficult but not impossible for a crippled remnant to take out the base after killing the enemy. This helps promote aggressively attacking the enemy over defending your own base.

pyrocomp, on 25 March 2017 - 02:23 AM, said:

What if the win conditions are so that the OpFor base must be torn down and own base should be kept above 50% (2 out of 4 MFBs survive) to trigger the win condition?

Nesutizale, on 25 March 2017 - 05:13 AM, said:

I could think of several things to punish camping.

1) With every energie canister you collect, the enemy base is damaged.
2) Have an artillerie pice on the side of the map, the one capping it will call in a small artillerie strike at where most of the enemys are. I say small as we don't want a new LongTom stike like in FW. Just a small strike...like a slap on the back to remind them to go and play outside...and if they don't it will slowly eat away till they die.
3) Turn the AirControl into something that supports your own attack with the dropship doing one sweap over the map. When youi attack at the same time you can flush out the campers.
4) Who ever collects more energie wins
5) Respawns and no "Kill all" win condition
6) Repair bays and no "kill all" win condition
7) No kill all win condition (frankly that is the reason why every mode turns into skirmish, its the most easy to do)

This game mode does not have a kill all condition. Like Conquest it is Kill All + have a lead on objective. You have to have more damage on the enemy base than has been done to yours. The objectives are written to force people to go on the offensive. The problem is that it is too easy to lose your base.

Edited by Cato Zilks, 25 March 2017 - 01:05 PM.

[fat4eyes]

Cato Zilks, on 25 March 2017 - 01:01 PM, said:

There is not a way around this, if lights can take out the base with ease, then people need to stay back. People needing to stay back is what you explicitly wanted to avoid. Honestly, you sound like someone who just wants to gank the enemy base in a light but don't want to face the enemy team. Every single solution you (and others) propose is to make it easier for the attackers to take the base (air raids, other people say artillery). This just increases the need to stay near the base. If the assault mode cap point fell quickly, more people would camp in that mode. This already happens in assault on larger maps.

This can be solved by having capable defenses that need power. If two lights running batteries can keep the base well defended, then it frees up 10 mechs to leave the base and fight over the rest of the map. Attacking a fully powered base should be a formidable task that requires more than a lance. The base should also be easier to take if left un-powered. It should be difficult but not impossible for a crippled remnant to take out the base after killing the enemy. This helps promote aggressively attacking the enemy over defending your own base.

The thing is, if you disallow light raids from being viable, combat will be purely attritional, and attritional combat favors the defense. And when the defense is the 'best' strategy, people will camp, and that is boring. There has to be viable strategies other than camping your base, and light raiding should be one of those. An alternative that I also proposed is for the air control tower send the dropship over the enemy base, which aids the offense and balances the inherent advantage defense has over offense in attrition combat.

I also do not believe that just because a light raid is viable means that people will stay behind in the base. Light basecaps are viable now in assault yet people overwhelmingly choose to attack instead of hanging around the base. This is because even though a light basecap is viable, it is still possible to react fast enough to counter it. This is already true in the new incursion mode because of the position of the bases (they're pretty far back giving enough time for friendlies to spot and react to an enemy base rush, and the base has turrets to help defend). The trick is to balance the advantages of defending vs attacking so that defense is not the overwhelmingly better option.

On a side note, let's try not to make this personal. You don't know me, I don't know you but we both know and care about the game. Let's keep it about the game, not about you or me.

Edited by fat4eyes, 26 March 2017 - 05:11 PM.

[Cato Zilks]

Fat4eyes, so this is funny. We are in the same match, on the same team in this video:



Now the other team attacked our base with two jenners and then had a shadow cat and arctic cheetah reinforce followed by the bigger mechs. I was back at base at this time because I was delivering a battery in my locust. They were tearing through our base like a tornado. The thing is yall werent even that far away from base. Most of our guys were less than 1000m from our gate (two grid squares), and they still wrecked our base. If I was not back there delivering a battery, we would have lost 5 minutes into the game. The bases are crap. Two cappers could never have been nearly so effective in assault because we only need to shoot them once every 10 seconds to stop a cap.

I count this match as an example of how the game mode already favors aggressive action and actually needs to strengthen the defenders position. They should have needed to hit us with more to have a real chance of killing our base. Especially as we had two batteries. (Admittedly, I did not know which dropoff was which. Jammer was my fault. Either of the others would have been better.)

For those of you not in this match, we lose, because the thunderbolt and I are both cored and the really accurate turrets wreck us. We could not damage their base as much as ours was damaged, so we lose.

[Cyrilis]

What about the following anti camping mechanic:

make the towers active by default with a x minute countdown. If the timer runs out, the tower is deactivated an cannot be reactivated.

Thus, if people want the base defense to be active, they must leave the base in order to get powercells.

on the other side... this could turn into another skirmish situation.

[Cato Zilks]

fat4eyes, on 26 March 2017 - 04:56 PM, said:

The thing is, if you disallow light raids from being viable, combat will be purely attritional, and attritional combat favors the defense. And when the defense is the 'best' strategy, people will camp, and that is boring. There has to be viable strategies other than camping your base, and light raiding should be one of those.

Cyrilis, on 26 March 2017 - 10:50 PM, said:

What about the following anti camping mechanic:

make the towers active by default with a x minute countdown. If the timer runs out, the tower is deactivated an cannot be reactivated.

Thus, if people want the base defense to be active, they must leave the base in order to get powercells.

on the other side... this could turn into another skirmish situation.

On objective based combat. It is ok to have a war of attrition in a gamemode. Conquest is an excellent mode for objective based fighting. But even there, killing half of the enemy makes it much harder for them to win. It means surviving is a virtue and yolo'ing is vice. Again, that is good. On many of the maps where conquest becomes deathball skirmish, the reason is not because the gamemode is broken. It is because the total cap number is designed to work on mining collective on polar highlands. Importantly, deathballing works much better on the small map and much worse on the large ones.

We want a gamemode to normally:
1) forces map control.
2) have an objective that requires implementing a strategy that makes the first priority something other than kill mechs.
3) have the goals of the mission aided by killing mechs.
Obviously, the team with more players should outdo the other. This is normally the case in conquest. But there are checks to this. I think we can have some good ones in this new mode.

On incursion. As I see it, I think PGI wanted a struggle over the battery points between the lights, then a battle over the control of the battery points by the heavies, followed by a base attack. Unfortunately, this was not well implemented as 2/3 of the base towers are only useful if you are camping. I have argued in other threads that we need stronger bases that are powered by the batteries. The jammer should activate LRM turrets that can use radar data. The ACT should also power up say, large laser turrets. The point is powering the base should make, the base very strong. This means that we have to fight it out to control the battery point. Read: people need to get out of the base to control those points. @Cyrilis This is where I agree with you 100%. Now I also think that there needs to be more of a strategic cost balance. This is why I am pushing for assym maps ( https://mwomercs.com...ric-map-layout/ ). By splitting the objectives to the side it creates a balancing question. Committing too many forces to control the batteries leaves too few to defend the most direct attack lane at the base and vice versa.

Ideally, gaining a fully powered base allows team with more mechs to attack, or it could allow a weaker team to hold off the attack of a larger group. It incentivizes leaving the base and controlling the map.

Edited by Cato Zilks, 27 March 2017 - 12:14 PM.