Fortified Supply Depot Concept

[HanSime]

Lo peops, usually post in the Development section on psforums, but thought it'd be nice to post at the Idealabs for once. :)



Today's idea is something in between a tower and a base. Basically more a cross between the two.

The Fortified Supply Depot or in short FSD is basically a fortified set of Watch Towers, with some extra features.



Features:

• Two Watch Towers (each with its own Control Console and Spawn Room)
• Selectable Spawnroom
• Walls surrounding a CY with two entrances
• Four standard Wall Turrets (upgradable of course)
• NTU Silo
• Repair Silo

Purpose of the FSD
The FSD has multiple functions, but they tie in with eachother.

The primary function is support for ground vehicles and a stepping stone to regroup and launch assaults from over longer distances between bases.

Examples would be lattice links like Rehua - Tara on Searhus, Itan - Tore and Aja - Chuku on Cyssor, Enkidu - Kusag on Ishundar, Cetan - Qumu etc.

The secondary function is passage control, which is similar to a lot of towers now, though most towers are more suited for nearby base assault or defense. Some of these however, could simply have a fortification function and act like both a gateway on one hand and a stepping stone on the other. Gateways would be more narrow areas in between bases and their function would be obstructing or slowing down an enemy advance, while supporting your own troops and giving others time to move into defensive positions.

Examples of this would be found for example in the valley south of Akua.



Ownership

This depot is somewhat special in the way it works, with regards to other bases and towers. The SOI has three basic modes, friendly, neutral and hostile like all other towers and bases, but also, conflict mode.

The regular ownership modes are trivial and won't be explained, however, conflict mode is different.

Conflict mode occurs when two empires own a tower each. In this situation, the SOI turns yellow. The Wall Turrets act as neutral turrets, or turrets in a hacked base, ie. they cease firing and kick their occupants out and any upgrades are lost. If a CY Entrance Shield, from a linked module, was active, then it will now have been deactivated. The same goes for the Repair Silo, which becomes inactive. Why? Because either the NTU Silo or the Repair Silo is in enemy hands and both are required to have an active Repair Silo.

Note that the standard CE deployment rules apply to the basic SOI modes, but the conflict mode works as a hostile SOI to both parties. Meaning, no CE other than mines and Hostile SOI Spitfires (with the Assault Engineering certification) can be placed.



Conquest

Because these towers are more than just towers, they require actual Lattice links OR have to be neutral in order to be hacked. The thing is however, these fortified towers may be ignored when assaulting other bases. They switch if a continent is captured, but they do not when both connected bases are captured. Both bases can still be hacked by the empire in control of the towers, so eventually they'll have to be taken in order to secure the links.

Capturing these is relatively simple. Both towers are as easy to take as normal towers, with which hack times and instant ownership switch is concerned. The problem however, lies within the double spawn room and the turrets that are more suited to engage any person attacking the doors. However, getting into the Watch Towers should be pretty simple: there are 6 doors on each Watch Tower, at their normal positions. This means that you basically have two Back Doors if you're outside the actual CY and two that lead to the CY. Next to that, anyone dropping on the walls can gain access through the doors on the first level, and then there's the doors at the top of the towers.

The thing is, conflict mode has the potential to become very hectic as you have two solid spawnrooms really close to eachother. Kick them from one tower, they still hold the other, however, now you have one as well. Grunts should have a good fight in here and are less likely to be camped by vehicles if they hold the CY.

Especially, since when you hold BOTH the towers, you can CHOOSE which tower you spawn in. That's right, you can spawn at either tower and both show up on the map, even if you died inside the one tower, you can still spawn at the other tower, reducing (not removing) the chance of spawncamping.



NTU requirements

You will probably have observed there's a NTU Silo inside the CY. Filling it to 100% is actually equal to 100% of a normal base. This means that draining one of these bases is possible, but it'll be much harder than a normal base.

The NTU is required since this is more than a mere tower, yet less than a normal base. You can get links to bases through owning these towers, plus it has a repair silo that always works if you own both towers. (Not if you don't own one). Next to that, the double tower feature would make it more attractive to so called tower whores to hack and hold for no real reason, to me this means that has to be allowed, but discouraged through having to put far more labour into it than in a normal tower if you don't own any of the links (drain + ANT run).



Alternatives and Variants

In some cases (like the Ngaru Gun tower), there may not be enough room. In those cases, you could opt for one tower variants, where you simply have a single Gun or Air Tower, with a connected wall/stair combination, and a passage.

Another possibility, you could make versions with just vehicle pads or air pads near the Sanctuary Warpgates on Homecontinents, to allow for easier vehicle access during assaults. However, I'd suggest that these pads would not be hackable by advanced hackers, only through tower ownage, to stop abuse from players with an AMS that just won't seem to leave after being killed and hacks resecured.

I'll see if I feel like making some pictures of some variant options. :)





Thoughts/critiques?

[HanSime]

Depots Addendum

Here's the second part with some examples and variants.



First off an example of how the Supply Depots could be positioned on Ishundar.



First some worthyness notes.

You'll see the the Supply Depots can be placed in between two bases with just a single link from the first and then straight to the next, as you can see at Irkalla to Kusag. However, you'll immediately notice that there's a third link, that's connected to a secondary Supply Depot, which is linked to Enkidu! This means you can use the Supply depot as a hub to obtain a new link to a base you had formerly no link to! (Enkidu - Irkalla or the other way around).

Another example of this, can be found more south, where the old Zaqar/Kusag link is restored, but only if you capture the consecutive FSDs! This means, that if you're in a stalemate, you could use these links to get behind your opposition! Formerly, this link from Zaqar to Kusag was hardly ever used, since the distance is just too great to overcome in one go. With the FSDs however, not only can you stage an assault, you can sustain fights in the middle of the continent.

One disadvantage of course, is that an assault through a FSD link is easier to spot by your enemies. They have thus a slightly early warning to your assault, unless you as an outfit operate such that you capture the FSDs quickly afteranother and can defend them while someone runs the LLU. Once a base at the end lines is hacked, the link remains solid until the hack is aborted. The FSDs can not be hacked by enemies while there's a hack on, just as any other base that's linked to a hacked base (unless it was already being hacked coincidentally, then it can abort a LLU hack).



The FSD concept would allow more oppertunities to bypass stalemate fights and attack enemies in the rear, overcome large distances more easier and sustain fights in the middle of nowhere. Squads would have more targets etc.



Now for the first variant.

Fortified Air and Vehicle Depots

The Fortified Air Depots (FAD) and Fortified Vehicle Depots (FVD) are basically Sanctuary Warpgate linked staging bases.





Features

• One Air or Gun Tower with one CC and one Spawn Room
• Walls Surrounding a CY with one entrance
• Two CY to Wall stairwell cases
• One open stair from Wall to Tower Top
• Two standard Wall Turrets (upgradable of course)
• NTU Silo
• Air or Vehicle Terminal

Function, availability and inclusion in the Lattice

These costly fortified towers are only present around Sanctuary Warpgates (though you could opt to place some Fortified Vehicle Depots in the middle of nowhere). These small basic bases are linked between Sanctuary Warpgates and their lattice link. Their goal is again two fold.

The first is to support initial assaults from the Sanctuary after an Empire has been kicked to Sanctuary. The reason for this is that it's often very hard for an Empire to regain ground once they've been sanc locked, since they have no access to even light vehicles, while the opposition has, and even has access to resupplies and heavy vehicles. Often a footzerg results in a stale farm for hours.

The second is last stands and regroup options. If the last base fell to the hands of the enemy, until the hack goes through, you still have access to these towers to fall back to, regroup and try to retake the base you just lost. This will make it a fair bit harder to finish up on enemy homecontinents and will keep the assailants busy for quite some time, giving the defending Empire time to regroup and determine their next course of action, or wait the third empire to attack the assailant after which they can launch their attack in full force.

Given that the holder of the homecontinent in enemy hands, will have to secure not just one, but three targets, this will require a lot more manpower.



Conquest

There is only one Gun or Air Tower in each base. In this case a Vehicle base has an Air Tower, as having both an Air Pad and an Air Depot would be rather much. This means that the Defense is lighter than for a Supply Depot. To compensate, it only has one CY access. There is one link from the walls to the top of the towers, by means of a bridge. This allows both the defenders to get to the walls, and attackers to attack the base from the top, without being constrained by having to have Air to get there. In that case they would require the CY and the stairs to the wall though.

The Air and Vehicle Depots are positioned such that their turrets are mainly aimed at the road ahead. They're vulnerable to attacks from behind as well as well placed Routers. The turrets on top of the base, may have a better vantage point for far away targets, but are relatively poor against targets that are close to the walls or already inside the CY if you compare it to the Supply Depot concept.

Note that it's unlikely that the defender has a shield module connected. Therefore there's little chance that these bases would have a shield and thus the small CY is very exposed to assaults from the front. Vehicles will have little shielding, and as such are more vulnerable than they would be in other bases. They only have small walls to the side of the entrances to use as cover.



Obtainable Vehicles

The vehicles available at these pads are limited. It's only a small base. Even if you have a link to a Tech Plant, this doesn't allow anything else, in order to make the bigger bases have a definite advantage. For heavier vehicles, ie. Reavers, Liberators, Vultures, Wasps, ES Tanks and BFRs, you'll need to recall to Sanctuary. In my opinion, only the owner of the tower should have access to the vehicle pads, so advanced hackers can't sneakily use the pads to keep up a stealth assault.

FAD

• Galaxy
• Lodestar
• Mosquito

FVD

• AMS
• ANT
• ATVs
• Switchblade (if module linked)
• Harasser
• ES Buggy
• Flail (if module linked)
• Lightning
• Deliverer
• ES Deliverer Variant
• Router
• Sunderer

Camping?

The first thing you'll think is, "Won't that make Warpgate Camping easier?". Yes and no. Yes you would get vehicles closer than before. However, you wouldn't be able to get Reavers or Liberators there, plus you would probably not be closest to the Air Terminal. Camping is hardly done with light vehicles, which is all you'd get at the other.



NTU Requirement

Yes, obviously NTU is required again. The NTU space is deliberately cramped, because it'll be easy enough for the Sanctuary guys to get NTU, but if this base ever would have to drain, there has to be some trouble into getting NTU inside. Without NTU, the base goes neutral and the spawns, equip terms and pads and turrets stop working. Not much special here.

[Grumberkin]

Nice work...

I would like to see buildable areas all over the maps. Places
where engineers could construct any number of component
pieces depending on the need- supply, a hardpoint that could
be defended, etc.

[Kalu]

Been in game since beta going on 4 years now - and only just decided to get back into it. Anyways back to the point.

THIS IS A GREAT IDEA!

Make this addition to the game like ummmm ASAP !!!

k thanks bye

Kalu - SMF-

[Marinealver]

mmmmhhhmmmmm

Upgradible features. Such as surface vehicle pads upgrading to a Tech center garrrage. Or a surface air terminal upgrading into the doubile terminal in tech plants and even into a dropship terminal in dropship centers.

[Hayoo]

Cool. :) I really like the diagrams, very nice.

One thing about the towers though, you'll have to relocate the spawn rooms because the current towers rest on pre-cut holes in the terrain to allow stairs to descend. Any additional changes to the terrain such as that would require players to redownload all the maps, something the Devs have avoided over the years.

Either the spawn rooms need to be on a higher floor, or you'll need to provide some kind of teleporter (like they have in Sanctuary) to allow players to beam past the terrain level to a basement room, since stairs are not possible.

[Secant]

Any additional changes to the terrain such as that would require players to redownload all the maps, something the Devs have avoided over the years.

I was able to patch the terrain relatively easily :(

[Hayoo]

Originally Posted by Secant

I was able to patch the terrain relatively easily :(

*shrug* that's the reason they gave for not changing bases, and the reason they said they created the smaller battle islands: "easier to change".

[Straws]

I remember, back when I joined the game, that there used to be a hole in Cyssor which players could fall into, and then be stuck underground with an air meter slowly running out.

They fixed it by putting a boulder on top of the hole instead of just closing the hole up with standard terrain. So there's definately something odd about this matter.

Either it's the issues of being too scared to make the players download large patches, or no one there knows how to edit the terrain, or the software used to edit the terrain isn't available to the dev team for some inane reason.

[Kusutto]

^^" hee hee
Had thought of upgrading Towers into something bigger or like a forward camp
nice nice

it's been a while guys :3

[Marinealver]

Well mabey when we get private servers that are nolonger under the coruption of SOE we can add in our own stuff.

Server Idealab, now that would be great.

[Kusutto]

here is something I made
Hope you like it
Sorry for the big sized pic
I will break them down next time
hum I need to find a way to make the in game tower ...
oh and I plant to make the spawn room on the second floor (should have 3 in total)
Where is the CC going to be good question ... either 1st or 3rd floor I guess ^^" trying to keep it simple ...

the pics below are just what I had made for fun.
Without the Wall Turret
all is around 2.5k ploygons






I will make something closer to what HanSime had posted
Couldn't get to a comp with internet so I used my sparetime to play around in Gmax

[Secant]

You beat me to it you bastard lol, I had started tinkering with the top-downs in the backdrop a few days ago :P But I got all caught up w/ work.

http://pot.xero-hosting.com

Go download my dropship & vehicle terminal/pads from there.

[Kusutto]

WOooooot
Secant
Long time, mate! (oh now I sounded like an Aussie)
well I am sure yours are much better than mine ^^ after seeing ur work.
(call me lazy I just couldn't go through with the "getting the texture from the game project" hahaha)
these models are my first attempt.
don't remember how the wall looked (no longer plays PS .. for at least 8 months now or more).

Anyhow, do u have a tower ready? :D
hahaha
We can play them around :3
Ha the mapping things (I am sure we can make no underground buildings ... to prevent what might be problem to them/The Dev.)

and do post urs please Secant
u are like me guru
hee hee
nice idea after all
I 've always wanted an outpost thingy

[Secant]

Yea; i did an air-tower already. I'm going to make another one this weeken...fuck its monday already :( I've been so busy lol. Anyway, I'll be tearin it up again when I get a little time this week. I'll make a nice watch/gun/air-tower for ya :) While I'm modeling my uber high-poly one.

[Hayoo]

ooooooo, nice, Kusutto! :)

[Secant]

I got an hour and some change free :)


http://pot.xero-hosting.com/meshes/ Should have the 3DS and LWO of that tower in it. (The 3DS is all triangle tho)

[Aut]

I modeled the wall turret for the fun

[Secant]

http://pot.xero-hosting.com/meshes/ GunTower.obj is up there :)

Fear tag-team modeling :x

[Secant]

Air tower :o

[Kusutto]

Niiiiiiiiiiice!
hee hee Aut long time
so did u use Lightwave now?
the turret doesn't look like something came from Gmax ^^

what's OBJ stands for? Secant plz tell me~
(btw, after formating my HD I haven't installed my backup LW)

yeah nice Tag team there very cool :P
================================
question
did u have to make the stair or can u use bump mapping ... ?
thought about the polygon counts so didn't bother with making them lol
the ones on the wall

[Pyrotechnic]

Nice work guys, very nice indeed.
I believe OBJ stands for Object, it's just another file format.

[Aut]

Originally Posted by Kusutto

Niiiiiiiiiiice!
hee hee Aut long time
so did u use Lightwave now?
the turret doesn't look like something came from Gmax ^^

I used 3DS max 9, Gmax's big brother.

[Kusutto]

thanks Pyrotech
that's what I thought but wasn't sure, just want to confirm it.
to Aut
Oh yeah dumb me ... can't render in Gmax but sure can with 3DS

dang
I have a new software called Turbo Cad (why did I bother getting it don't know how to use it yet. I couldn't find 3DS at the time and TC said it can open 3DS files so I got it)

Secant, did u also make the interior of the tower?

[Secant]

Yea, but not in Low poly.

[HanSime]

Sweet :) Nice work peops!


Btw, air towers don't have that many stories normally ;)


I'm working on a host of lattice proposals that would include the depots btw. Haven't scouted all the sites and I'm sure it needs adjusting, but I think it will make more better use of the maps we have.


If only they could edit the maps :(

[HanSime]

Here are examples of all the regular maps of what you could do with this system.

AMERISH


CERYSHEN


CYSSOR


ESAMIR


FORSERAL


HOSSIN


ISHUNDAR


SEARHUS


SOLSAR

[HanSime]

/small bump


Just wondering if anyone took their time to make some nicer models of those outposts? :)

[Marinealver]

Originally Posted by Kusutto

here is something I made
Hope you like it
Sorry for the big sized pic
I will break them down next time
hum I need to find a way to make the in game tower ...
oh and I plant to make the spawn room on the second floor (should have 3 in total)
Where is the CC going to be good question ... either 1st or 3rd floor I guess ^^" trying to keep it simple ...

the pics below are just what I had made for fun.
Without the Wall Turret
all is around 2.5k ploygons






I will make something closer to what HanSime had posted
Couldn't get to a comp with internet so I used my sparetime to play around in Gmax

Wow. These are a nice concept for an asteroid base in Starside. (think of like towers with a air/vehicle pad.) Might also work for ofshore bases if they ever make a planetside navy. (thinking of a militarized oil platform.)

[Kusutto]

ah too bad my 3Ds MAX 8 trial time ends (while i was out of the country)
I like to be able to render my stuff
here goes something I made yesterday and today for fun

another pic of the city zone (randomly placed blocks)

here are two pic of the Tank I made (Always want to make this type of tanks)


oh and u can upgrade these :D hee hee
the Missile Tank can upgrade with Cannon or Gattling gun
Regular Tank can upgrade with Dual Artillery Cannon or Missile Pack
as u see in the first pic.

hope u all like it :D hahaha this feels so not Planetside :D
btw, any of you can Render the Tank model for me? :D
it's gmax format ... where is aut ? :D

[Aut]

Present!

[Tiletron|Hyncharas]

you can't upgrade trial versions unless you purchase them as commercial or student editions (which mean more money).

However, if you like, you could send me the scenes and then I'll upload the renders and send you copies?

[Tiletron|Hyncharas]

BTW, the models are awesome. If I have some time I might get finally around to doing those emplacements... :)

[Kusutto]

I see
Cool
oh sorry I am currently in Basic Training LOL
hahaha it might have time in the next few months.

[Marinealver]

Lol my in basic training we never had access to the internet.

Anyway I am in another training school and I hate to say it makes basic training easier. They never had me writting up so many reports I don't sleep on some weekends and 4 hours on the weekdays.