Planetside 2

[Mrbloodworth]

Because they are stupid, if they care about capping the cont.

Some of the comments around "there is no strategy" just make me have to ask. Are you working with others that are strategy minded? You can go all day with out contributing to the "war" effort if that's what you want to do. You can use strategy to contribute to the war effort if that's what you want to do.

But don't run around solo or in a group of 3-4 and think you can do anything on that level, then complain there is no strategic element. There is, your just not in it.

[Malakili]

The crown is not for users who play on the strategic level. Its for the Weekender Session based shooter players.

But it can be a great place to go for some XP.

What *is* for players who play on the strategic level?  Seriously, because I haven't yet found something useful for a small group of organized players to do other than organize as part of the zerg.  Sure, you can take smaller undefended stuff, but eventually you are just going to run into the zerg and be shut down.  It is a little bit more possible to set up a strong defense as a small group, but eventually you will be overwhelmed.

[Viin]

I'm hoping the cert chasers burn out and leave in the next 30 days. Then we might have some more interesting strategies employed!

It would help if they added incentive to be more strategic in general, but can you really have strategy with 2000 players all wanting to get as many kills as possible with 3 guys yelling 'no no go over here! Yes I know its less points but its *important*!'.

[01101010]

The Crown is one of those places where you keep practicing Gal drops in a hot zone. Otherwise, it is pretty pointless to even go outta your way to take back.

I'm hoping the cert chasers burn out and leave in the next 30 days. Then we might have some more interesting strategies employed!

It would help if they added incentive to be more strategic in general, but can you really have strategy with 2000 players all wanting to get as many kills as possible with 3 guys yelling 'no no go over here! Yes I know its less points but its *important*!'.

This is a catch 22 though. What makes Planetside is huge battles (at least in Higby's PS) and if you start having the battle dry up into skirmishes, the theme is lost. PS lost its luster when pops dropped (whether it was from this issue, the lolCaves, BFRside, whatever...) and only got a jump when Fodderside was put in.

[Malakili]

I'm hoping the cert chasers burn out and leave in the next 30 days. Then we might have some more interesting strategies employed!

It would help if they added incentive to be more strategic in general, but can you really have strategy with 2000 players all wanting to get as many kills as possible with 3 guys yelling 'no no go over here! Yes I know its less points but its *important*!'.

Well, off hand, World War 2 Online handles it (now) by having a player run high command which dictates which cities/towns can be captured by issuing attack orders on them.  Hell, you could even do it democratically (just have a vote every X minutes about what is up for attack).  But if everything is up for grabs all the time, and there is a heavy emphasis on personal progression (rather than map progression or faction progression), you're just going to get everyone farming the most efficient thing for exp/progression as possible.  See also: Every PvP MMORPG recently.

[Mrbloodworth]

The crown is not for users who play on the strategic level. Its for the Weekender Session based shooter players.

But it can be a great place to go for some XP.

What *is* for players who play on the strategic level?  Seriously, because I haven't yet found something useful for a small group of organized players to do other than organize as part of the zerg.  Sure, you can take smaller undefended stuff, but eventually you are just going to run into the zerg and be shut down.  It is a little bit more possible to set up a strong defense as a small group, but eventually you will be overwhelmed.

Typically when I run a squad, We re-secure, or attempt to hold territory the "zerg" ( On matherson, there is a zerg, there are also outfit rolling armor columns and working with others ) as you say has already taken. Right now our outfit at prime time has a full squad if not the foundations of a platoon. Some nights it less. So, working with the knowledge that right now we are a squad deep, i pick targets that I believe we can be effective at. Anything that's yellow level or lower of "Enemies detected" ( As that has a high chance of being just another squad )we will hot drop on and recap. I look for the ones in process of being taken, or just after being taken. I LOOK for appropriate to our numbers fights. I have been attempting to drill, though persuasion, hot drops and re-secures, as well as quick redeployment armor columns. Complete with working out support vehicles and AA support in the groups.

I'm not even going to lie, We fail, a lot. People miss buildings, I forget to toss out a squad spawn beacon or we didn't bring that infiltrator I thought we had to hack out an AMS to secure a foothold. But many times, we are successful, we re-cap and hold that outpost. We made sure the front stayed red, if only for a little while. That's resources for all, that's XP for my squad/outfit, that's good times. That's contributing, that's winning, that's playing on the strategy level for a small outfit.

It's been three weeks, people are green, including myself and my outfit. We will continue to perfect our game, and grow the outfit and in turn perfect our game.


If you think "strategy" is flipping a contested biolab with just a single squad VS. a platoon, you need to realign your expectations with the manpower you possess, or follow the zerg or sit at the crown.


Malakili , Squad leaders, if they cert into it, can already set faction wide attack and defend icons on the map. While its true the system mhigby said was coming ( The twitter like commander selection system ) and the mission system are non-existent, that's does not mean, if you are concerned about the empire taking conts, there is no strategy. You are right in the many people are playing this to win, for themselves. That will likely never change, and for those people, they build sites like the crown.

[Trippy]

I'm hoping the cert chasers burn out and leave in the next 30 days. Then we might have some more interesting strategies employed!

Not going to happen. PS1 had the same problem. Most people want to fight where the action is.

[01101010]

I'm not even going to lie, We fail, a lot. People miss buildings, I forget to toss out a squad spawn beacon or we didn't bring that infiltrator I thought we had to hack out an AMS to secure a foothold. But many times, we are successful, we re-cap and hold that outpost. We made sure the front stayed red, if only for a little while. That's resources for all, that's XP for my squad/outfit, that's good times. That's contributing, that's winning, that's playing on the strategy level for a small outfit.

It's been three weeks, people are green, including myself and my outfit. We will continue to perfect our game, and grow the outfit and in turn perfect our game.


If you think "strategy" is flipping a contested biolab with just a single squad VS. a platoon, you need to realign your expectations with the manpower you possess, or follow the zerg or sit at the crown.

We really do. But those times we don't is what keeps it going.

[Mrbloodworth]

BTW, if any of that is appealing to you, feel free to sign up: http://bastardbattalion.enjin.com/home


 

[Nija]

So far I think my favorite thing to do is:

Hole up at the B point / Generator at a biodome. Take the hard spawn that is usually to the south or southwest of the biolab. That's the teleporter that puts you next to the gen. Hold that hard spawn for a bit until they are fighting for it, then give it up completely. Move back into the room and hold B/Gen for about 20-30 minutes until it's a steady stream of people coming out of the teleporter. Then go take the hard spawn from them again.

Repeat as necessary. I was pulling in 75k/hr last night doing that as a repairing/resupplying engineer. I had barely any kills. We had between 3 and 4 MAXes rotating on the doors keeping the red tide out.

Lots of fun and we're getting it down to a science now. That and tech plant defenses. In fact, my stats (http://www.planetside-universe.com/character.php?stats=Nija) are greatly skewed towards defense despite most people bitching about how "nobody defends!" in this game. I've had people in command chat actually say that isn't how the game is meant to be played.

[Mrbloodworth]

Good god, you have put some time in. Good show. Too bad you are a honor less NC rebel!

[Malakili]

If you think "strategy" is flipping a contested biolab with just a single squad VS. a platoon, you need to realign your expectations with the manpower you possess, or follow the zerg or sit at the crown.


Malakili , Squad leaders, if they cert into it, can already set faction wide attack and defend icons on the map. While its true the system mhigby said was coming ( The twitter like commander selection system ) and the mission system are non-existent, that's does not mean, if you are concerned about the empire taking conts, there is no strategy. You are right in the many people are playing this to win, for themselves. That will likely never change, and for those people, they build sites like the crown.

I think "strategy" is planning more than 10 minutes into the future, which seems kind of impossible right now.  You can make a strategic choice about going after a particular thing as a small squad, fine.  But there is no "Ok, we'll do this, this, this and this, with the goal of helping take the western half of the continent this evening."  The pace is too fast, and the zerg too unpredictable.  When I say strategy I don't mean tactics for the sake of cost efficiency (which would also be nice, but is a different topic).  There is very little you can reasonably do that you can be sure (or mostly sure) will have a useful long term outcome.  Truthfully, I feel that my outfit has contributed much more to our faction's success when we just join with the zerg and try to organize it a little bit just to make it go more quickly than we have tried to back cap things.

[Mrbloodworth]

Planning that far into the future requires cross outfit coordination. Our outfit is already working with others in this regard. You can not treat outfit as isolated Wow guilds. It does not work. We already have contacts in the BWC, TR and a few others we would work with in PS1. But again, its three weeks in. Communities and alliances are still reforming.

In PS1 we had to make alliances and cross outfit cooperation links by ourselves, it was part of the emergent game-play. In this version, i really hope they integrate this stuff, like real, GUI enabled alliances and communication channels. I also really look forward to the empire commander system Higby talked about a while back,  I'm interested to see what that may have morphed into, if at all. You really, REALLY have to look at PS2 as more like Eve then like Battlefield. There is more to it then just in-game activities.

Example: http://www.ps2ultra.com/

It would help if they added incentive to be more strategic in general, but can you really have strategy with 2000 players all wanting to get as many kills as possible with 3 guys yelling 'no no go over here! Yes I know its less points but its *important*!'.

Many of us Vets in beta brought this up a great deal. The lattice was much more suited to herding cats then the Hex system. This is likely a huge point of contention for many Vets, SOE placed emphasis on Session based shooter values ( IE: The individual ), rather than the more team-play values of the original. We have a generation of FPS players that do nothing but focus on the individual. Its a duel edge case, you have to allow for the expectations of the session based players. I think they have accomplished this with this foundation, now its time for the next layer. Hopefully soon.

[Slayerik]

Maybe there needs to be faction-wide incentives for taking a continent. Let's say there are 12 hr blocks...4pm - 4am , 4:01am - 3:59pm . First side to completely capture ANY continent gets double XP until that block runs out. Once a cont. is taken, that's it until the next block is up. Might be a decent incentive to actually hold, or to make a strategic move to try and sneak off and plow the low pop continent while the other two sides duke it out. More of a chess match...

[Sky]

I dunno, the PS I remember was awfully similar in the 'let's go do whatever farms the most xp and fuck strategy'. I think you guys are coloring your experience a bit, though I will allow that f2p exacerbates the issue quite a bit.

I forgot to play this weekend, too busy not starving.

[Mrbloodworth]

Maybe there needs to be faction-wide incentives for taking a continent.

There already are. If that's enough is a personal point I guess. I think its like 10% air, 10% off Ground and something else. Shows how much I pay attention to them :)

I dunno, the PS I remember was awfully similar in the 'let's go do whatever farms the most xp and fuck strategy'.

No, I just don't think you were apart of it. YOU were farming.


And for the record, everyone likes a good farm.

[Trippy]

I dunno, the PS I remember was awfully similar in the 'let's go do whatever farms the most xp and fuck strategy'. I think you guys are coloring your experience a bit, though I will allow that f2p exacerbates the issue quite a bit.

Yes I started playing PS1 about a month after Core Combat came out and it was all about farming BR and especially CR when I played. To maximize CR the strategy was to siege a well defended facility for as long as possible before it was captured. This meant that blowing up the generator and other tactics to speed up the facility capture were actively discouraged. The strategic value of the facility didn't matter as much as the number of people fighting in and around it since strategic value had no affect on the potential CR gain.

PS2 is going to be even worse than PS1 was when I played cause of all the things you can buy with cert points. Maximizing cert points gained per time played is all that's going to matter for most people. At least with PS1 you would eventually max out BR and CR and then you might actually care about the strategic parts of the game, though I actually never maxed out my BR before I stopped playing cause I spent most of my time doing the support stuff like refilling base nanite supplies cause my Athlon X2 had issues with the game. E.g. sniping never worked right for me (mouse wouldn't work properly zoomed in) and that was back in the days that running PS1 with both cores on an AMD processor would effectively give you a speed hack.

[HaemishM]

There comes a point where if you are pinned in the spawn it's more productive from a tactical perspective to respawn outside the circle of death and attack from behind.  Especially if you can't pull heavy armor from the base you are defending.

This may be what actually kills the game for me. Something is just OFF about the base capture mechanic. Once the attacker captures a certain point, you can still spawn in a safe area, but you end up being spawn camped until the timer ticks over that closes off your ability to spawn there. With the clusterfuck of way-too-tiny icons on the board, you can die three or four times before you ever realize you are just getting spawn camped and can't do shit to take the base back. At that point, why defend? It's just a frustrating cycle of die to grenade/rocket spam or running out of the door only to get immediately lit the fuck up. You get no XP points from doing so unless you luck out and kill somebody. You can't mount any sort of credible counter-attack from that spawn room. Once you get in that spiral you either have to go somewhere else (which will likely mean you'll go somewhere that isn't near the place you just lost just to get some combat that isn't baserape) or you go play something fun.

A game mechanic that requires spawn camping is going to drive people away.

[Viin]

I'm hoping the cert chasers burn out and leave in the next 30 days. Then we might have some more interesting strategies employed!

It would help if they added incentive to be more strategic in general, but can you really have strategy with 2000 players all wanting to get as many kills as possible with 3 guys yelling 'no no go over here! Yes I know its less points but its *important*!'.

This is a catch 22 though. What makes Planetside is huge battles (at least in Higby's PS) and if you start having the battle dry up into skirmishes, the theme is lost. PS lost its luster when pops dropped (whether it was from this issue, the lolCaves, BFRside, whatever...) and only got a jump when Fodderside was put in.

Not sure how many people are playing, but there are plenty of servers that can be consolidated. I imagine they have already planned for this, especially with the "unique character name across all servers" requirement. The question they are asking is a) how do we maximize virtual item sales, and b) reduce the number of servers we have to support.

Well, off hand, World War 2 Online handles it (now) by having a player run high command which dictates which cities/towns can be captured by issuing attack orders on them. 

That sounds interesting! I've always liked having commander-specific roles for games like this. (See: Natural Selection)

[Mrbloodworth]

A command system like in Natural Selection would be awesome, maybe at the platoon level?. Also, a great thing about the command mode in Natural Selection, you can vote them out.

[Trippy]

This may be what actually kills the game for me. Something is just OFF about the base capture mechanic. Once the attacker captures a certain point, you can still spawn in a safe area, but you end up being spawn camped until the timer ticks over that closes off your ability to spawn there. With the clusterfuck of way-too-tiny icons on the board, you can die three or four times before you ever realize you are just getting spawn camped and can't do shit to take the base back. At that point, why defend? It's just a frustrating cycle of die to grenade/rocket spam or running out of the door only to get immediately lit the fuck up. You get no XP points from doing so unless you luck out and kill somebody. You can't mount any sort of credible counter-attack from that spawn room. Once you get in that spiral you either have to go somewhere else (which will likely mean you'll go somewhere that isn't near the place you just lost just to get some combat that isn't baserape) or you go play something fun.

A game mechanic that requires spawn camping is going to drive people away.

The "tug-of-war" point capture mechanic is just stupid. There were literally like 50 of us standing around in an Amp base vehicle bay yesterday waiting for the stupid bar to slowly fill up even though there were no enemies around. I understand they wanted to slow down captures but maxing out the number of bodies that count towards the cap to 6 is just silly.

[Mrbloodworth]

This may be what actually kills the game for me. Something is just OFF about the base capture mechanic. Once the attacker captures a certain point, you can still spawn in a safe area, but you end up being spawn camped until the timer ticks over that closes off your ability to spawn there. With the clusterfuck of way-too-tiny icons on the board, you can die three or four times before you ever realize you are just getting spawn camped and can't do shit to take the base back. At that point, why defend? It's just a frustrating cycle of die to grenade/rocket spam or running out of the door only to get immediately lit the fuck up. You get no XP points from doing so unless you luck out and kill somebody. You can't mount any sort of credible counter-attack from that spawn room. Once you get in that spiral you either have to go somewhere else (which will likely mean you'll go somewhere that isn't near the place you just lost just to get some combat that isn't baserape) or you go play something fun.

A game mechanic that requires spawn camping is going to drive people away.

This was brought up so many times in alpha and beta. Soooo many times. For many outposts, the spawn room is the first order of business, not the cap point, And its sad.

The "tug-of-war" point capture mechanic is just stupid. There were literally like 50 of us standing around in an Amp base vehicle bay yesterday waiting for the stupid bar to slowly fill up even though there were no enemies around. I understand they wanted to slow down captures but maxing out the number of bodies that count towards the cap to 6 is just silly.

Mass on point is an even worse idea. There MUST be a window of opportunity for an empire to respond to a hack. I'm just not entirely sure what was wrong with the original hack and hold, that they had to do a mass on point hybrid. The real issue, is the base layouts, especialy outposts.

Consider this: Defenders have to cross an entire courtyard and face air, tanks and whatnot to even BEGIN to defend. Most routes are completely open, the spawn point is already camped and there are no safe routs out. So defenders not only have to face an overwhelming force, but a better equipped one, as the vech terminals are never near points, and most are are in the completely wrong direction from the cap point. This is completely opposite of the original game.

This is all mostly CoD/deathmatch style map design. IMO, the spawn should be the last reachable point of any base with multiple exit points, not just open doors on a building, but exit points to different areas of the base. It worked in PS1 well.

[Megrim]

This may be what actually kills the game for me. Something is just OFF about the base capture mechanic. Once the attacker captures a certain point, you can still spawn in a safe area, but you end up being spawn camped until the timer ticks over that closes off your ability to spawn there. With the clusterfuck of way-too-tiny icons on the board, you can die three or four times before you ever realize you are just getting spawn camped and can't do shit to take the base back. At that point, why defend? It's just a frustrating cycle of die to grenade/rocket spam or running out of the door only to get immediately lit the fuck up. You get no XP points from doing so unless you luck out and kill somebody. You can't mount any sort of credible counter-attack from that spawn room. Once you get in that spiral you either have to go somewhere else (which will likely mean you'll go somewhere that isn't near the place you just lost just to get some combat that isn't baserape) or you go play something fun.

A game mechanic that requires spawn camping is going to drive people away.

This was brought up so many times in alpha and beta. Soooo many times. For many outposts, the spawn room is the first order of business, not the cap point, And its sad.

Pre-deployed Sunderers and Beacons. Don't keep spawning in the obvious killzone like a chump.

[Mrbloodworth]

Pre-deployed Sunderers and Beacons. Don't keep spawning in the obvious killzone like a chump.

In a defense? They are already gone. There is no other action than to go to another place, or attack the base you just left from the outside.

[Trippy]

The "tug-of-war" point capture mechanic is just stupid. There were literally like 50 of us standing around in an Amp base vehicle bay yesterday waiting for the stupid bar to slowly fill up even though there were no enemies around. I understand they wanted to slow down captures but maxing out the number of bodies that count towards the cap to 6 is just silly.

Mass on point is an even worse idea. There MUST be a window of opportunity for an empire to respond to a hack. I'm just not entirely sure what was wrong with the original hack and hold, that they had to do a mass on point hybrid.

No question defenders should be able to respond to losing control of a control point given the way points are setup and are usually difficult to defend but the game needs a way to figure out when things are a hopeless cause. With PS1 in most bases the control room area was the easiest place to defend so if you lost control of that room you as the defender knew it was over and it didn't matter that a hack didn't take that long since it was highly unlikely you could get that room back.

In PS2 they need to adjust the time it takes to capture a point to take into account more than just territory influence (assuming max bodies on point). I understand they wanted to cut down on the PS2-equivalent of "back hacks" but the current system has issues too.

[HaemishM]

Any system they come up with will have issues. What has to be considered is what will encourage defending. This system actively DISCOURAGES defending a lot, no matter what the XP bonuses are. It makes defending frustrating. And Bloodworth is spot on about base design. The outposts are just open air courtyards surrounded by fucking cliffs that can be climbed on. Attackers are literally shooting fish in a barrel. The bigger bases are slightly better. Turrets get no protection, which seems odd. There should be a blast shield or something that the goddamn engies can hide behind that cuts down on AOE damage so that a turret might actually be healable in combat.

And the ICONS. They drive me batty. Trying to figure out where the vehicle spawn point in a base you haven't been in is maddening. The icons are so small, and the minimap is worse. The UI guys need a lesson in readability.

[Trippy]

Any system they come up with will have issues. What has to be considered is what will encourage defending. This system actively DISCOURAGES defending a lot, no matter what the XP bonuses are. It makes defending frustrating. And Bloodworth is spot on about base design. The outposts are just open air courtyards surrounded by fucking cliffs that can be climbed on. Attackers are literally shooting fish in a barrel. The bigger bases are slightly better. Turrets get no protection, which seems odd. There should be a blast shield or something that the goddamn engies can hide behind that cuts down on AOE damage so that a turret might actually be healable in combat.

No point capture system will encourage defending given the way bases are designed unless they give exp for dying around control points

[Mrbloodworth]

The "tug-of-war" point capture mechanic is just stupid. There were literally like 50 of us standing around in an Amp base vehicle bay yesterday waiting for the stupid bar to slowly fill up even though there were no enemies around. I understand they wanted to slow down captures but maxing out the number of bodies that count towards the cap to 6 is just silly.

Mass on point is an even worse idea. There MUST be a window of opportunity for an empire to respond to a hack. I'm just not entirely sure what was wrong with the original hack and hold, that they had to do a mass on point hybrid.

No question defenders should be able to respond to losing control of a control point given the way points are setup and are usually difficult to defend but the game needs a way to figure out when things are a hopeless cause. With PS1 in most bases the control room area was the easiest place to defend so if you lost control of that room you as the defender knew it was over and it didn't matter that a hack didn't take that long since it was highly unlikely you could get that room back.

In PS2 they need to adjust the time it takes to capture a point to take into account more than just territory influence (assuming max bodies on point). I understand they wanted to cut down on the PS2-equivalent of "back hacks" but the current system has issues too.

We do not disagree. But here, I think is a point that needs to be recalled. In PS1. If you got a team into the CC, or even just one hacker. The hack was instantly removed. It was Assaults that took 15 min to switch, not defense or re-secures. You did not need numbers, technically. Nor did you need to hold out for another 5-10 minutes.

That's a really LARGE difference between PS1 and the PS2 system. That "Ticket" system they are using.... It takes forever in both cases. But its doubly worse for defenders, they are the underdog in every scenario.

I would contend that the last cause scenario in PS 1 was one of two things. The gen was dropped, or the attackers reached the spawn room and have dropped the tubes. I'n PS2, its sometimes the moment they surround the spawn room, that also happens to be part of the perimeter of the base.

In what army, of any time frame, puts your medical and barracks on the perimeter of a base, ever?

I think the thing that gets me the most about map design. They think the crown is a feature, and not a flaw.

[shiznitz]

Any system they come up with will have issues. What has to be considered is what will encourage defending. This system actively DISCOURAGES defending a lot, no matter what the XP bonuses are. It makes defending frustrating. And Bloodworth is spot on about base design. The outposts are just open air courtyards surrounded by fucking cliffs that can be climbed on. Attackers are literally shooting fish in a barrel. The bigger bases are slightly better. Turrets get no protection, which seems odd. There should be a blast shield or something that the goddamn engies can hide behind that cuts down on AOE damage so that a turret might actually be healable in combat.

This issue is quite surprising given that the PS2 team specifically AND explicitly tried to make defending easier through base design versus PS1.  

[Mrbloodworth]

This issue is quite surprising given that the PS2 team specifically AND explicitly tried to make defending easier through base design versus PS1.  

This never happened. The direct opposite did. You can find a billion instances of them directly stating they did not want the hours long base assaults of PS1 to ever happen in PS2. This tune only changes at the end of beta, when the timers for captures were added, because of user feedback. They fought this tooth and nail. Its the EXACT same Design Philosophy that lead to the Galixey being a Mobile spawn.

[Trippy]

In what army, of any time frame, puts your medical and barracks on the perimeter of a base, ever?

I wanna know what army puts its generators on the perimeters in rooms that have entrances on at least 3 sides

At least in PS2 people do blow up generators, unlike PS1.

[Thrawn]

Another small thing they seem to have missed, buying 500 whatever points is $5.00.  Buying 10,000 points is $100.00.  If I wanted to actually spend some money on the game I'd be much more tempted to buy $20 or maybe higher if I got a bonus of additional points for buying in bulk.

Just started playing last weekend, enjoying it, but not at all glued to it yet.  Too many little issues to iron out and my PC struggles a bit with it, guess I'm overdue for an upgrade.

[Mrbloodworth]

In what army, of any time frame, puts your medical and barracks on the perimeter of a base, ever?

I wanna know what army puts its generators on the perimeters in rooms that have entrances on at least 3 sides

At least in PS2 people do blow up generators, unlike PS1.

Potential broken record here. But in PS1 prime, Not dropping the gen was not an option. This only happened due to the culture that arose after the population dropped. Right after core combat.

As for the PS2 gen-locations. I personally think the phase system and the gen control system is one of the best advancements of the title. Amp stations are really fun to attack and defend, lots of sub-objectives to take, blow up, annoy. Tech-plants, after they removed the shield phase system, is what we have now. They are my least favorite base to take.

I think the diffrence in how gens are treated is excusable in this system. Because one gen does not control one item. In the case of shield gens. This should be expanded to all items. 2-3 gens for spawn ability ( maybe lower increase respawn time if you loose 1/3 ). ETC..

[Megrim]

Pre-deployed Sunderers and Beacons. Don't keep spawning in the obvious killzone like a chump.

In a defense? They are already gone. There is no other action than to go to another place, or attack the base you just left from the outside.

I have no idea what you are on about. Is this going to be one of those "This is so because I said this is so, and it is therefore so because I said it" things?

[HaemishM]

Any system they come up with will have issues. What has to be considered is what will encourage defending. This system actively DISCOURAGES defending a lot, no matter what the XP bonuses are. It makes defending frustrating. And Bloodworth is spot on about base design. The outposts are just open air courtyards surrounded by fucking cliffs that can be climbed on. Attackers are literally shooting fish in a barrel. The bigger bases are slightly better. Turrets get no protection, which seems odd. There should be a blast shield or something that the goddamn engies can hide behind that cuts down on AOE damage so that a turret might actually be healable in combat.

No point capture system will encourage defending given the way bases are designed unless they give exp for dying around control points

That's probably the easiest way to do it with this particular game/base design.