Caduceus wrote: Mon Jan 03, 2022 2:13 pm
Approach 2: Rear areas
Angle: Seeks to disincentivise zerging by introducing an ever-present threat of having one's rear areas infiltrated.
Critical factor: The penalty of having one's rear areas infiltrated, and thus one's frontlines cut off, needs to be significant enough that this threat cannot be ignored.
This is common theme in modern warfare. The way it is most commonly depicted in video games is with supply lines, which, when cut off, will greatly reduce the effectiveness of the cut off forces. Introducing a mechanic like this, which perhaps can be modeled sort of like Diminishing Rations, will encourage things like scouting over a broad front, smart positioning and manoeuvring. A zerg that gets cut off will either have to scramble to their rear areas or fight with reduced effectiveness.
Depending on how such a mechanic is designed and how heavily a side is penalized for getting their rear areas cut off, this can make zerging almost entirely ineffective. This approach can radically change the gameplay dynamic into one that offers lots of tactical problems to solve and gameplay depth.
I really like this proposal. It have a proposal for this to be implemented in LotD (Disclamer: I only participated in the first LotD test in a 6man group. we mostly roamed around and didnt pay much attention to the mechanics).
Imagine the following map:
It will work as follows:
Its a race to capture the BOs one after another. So for Order to capture BO O2 they have to own O1. To capture O5, they have to own O2 and O4, but not O1 and O3...
The green or red lines are the supply lines. They always start at the own warcamp. If the supply lines get interrupted (so enemy realm captures one of the BOs behind the frontline), a map wide increasing debuff will start: At O1-O4/D1-D4 the supply lines are split. So if Order pushed the campaign to D8 and Destro captures O1 then after 2min a -2% debuff to all stats for order kicks in. This debuffs increases by 2% every minute. After 6min of Destro owning O1 it reaches the maximum, all Order in the zone have a -10% on all stats for half breaking the supply line. If destro captures O5 instead of O1, then a -4% debuff starts after 2min and increases by 4% every minute to a maximum of -20% on all stats. If Destro captures O1 and O4 each provide a -10% debuff on all stats.
So the maximum of debuff your side can get is -20% on all stats.
The BO N2 gives a Buff on all stats mapwide for your side of +5%, but only if its connected to your frontline. So if Destro has pushed to O7 and holds O8 and D9/O9 and N1+N2 they get a +5% to all their stats. At the same time if Order interrupted their supply lines (by holding D5 for example) they still get the -20% debuff on stats. If Order also captures N1, N2 or D9/O9, Destro loses the +5% buff.
Points you win the campaign are gained from kills and by pushing the enemy team in their zone (so as Order holding at least O9/D9). The further you are in the enemy zone, the more points the BO gives. But BOs that are hold for interrupting the enemy supply lines give no points. Example: Order holds O9/D9 and are the only one getting points atm, but Destro interrupted their supply lines and took all the BOs from O5 to O8. Destro also holds D8. If Order loses the BO O9/D9, the new frontline will be O5 and only Destro now get (a lot more) points from BO.