The Power of Numbers - a proposal

Recently I have been thinking about what makes I-Novae Engine and Battlescape different than all the other Engines out there and how can we capitalize off it. For us it’s pretty obvious but for the casual observer probably not so much given Star Citizen looks good and Elite Dangerous can land on planets. Of course Battlescape will offer both stellar graphics and planet interaction, but what really sets Battlescape apart from the rest are how many players can gather in a single instance. Imagine, 200, 300 or even 500 ships hovering above the surface or converging on a station! Now that would be a sight given Elite’s and Star Citizen’s or any other game’s paltry cap on players.

So I propose, as soon as it is feasible, gather everyone for a single meet up to show how amazing Battlescape is by sheer numbers. Now that would make people sit up and notice. Any thoughts?

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One thing pops into my mind. Is it possible to have throttled interclient communication? meaning if i see another player on the other side of the planetary system wouldn’t it make more sense for the game to update his position only every, say, 20 seconds? That player’s ship position would be smoothed out and not precise and would catch up as i get closer to it (as the update fequency increases). This way i could see hundreds or thousands of players in my view, their positions (and any relevant info) info would be throttled to avoid lag.

This can even be explained in-game by lag in the ship’s sensors based on distance.

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If the login and authentication system allows it, maybe do a one-time event where anyone that pledged from the KS can play for a week-end.

Code security comes first though, so I guess this kind of event, if accepted at all, won’t be seen at the start of the dev access.

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It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out. The engine is just part of the equation of course. The backend infrastucture/code and the networking and flow of data from server(s) to clients will be crucial too. If you played EVE at any point 6+ years ago you will know what I mean. Back then, fleet battles with 200+ ships could happen but the lag was crippling. It’s not just the ships. It’s all the other stuff flying around (ordinance, lasers, debris, etc). That’s a tonne of number crunching going on!

CCP’s solution to mass fleet battles was to implement a kind of time dilation. As the load on the servers increased they effectively slowed time. The difference is apparently barely noticeable but the result is now 1,000+ ship fleet battles can happen and in a very playable fashion.

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Presently playing EVE and tie-dye starts getting noticeable around 500 ships > 1000 ships is playable but barely. But it is way better than it use to be! To be honest, I was surprised when Flavien mentioned 1000 players, as I had also played both Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous. Of course I will not hold Flavien or any of the DEVs to their estimate but if they could get 1000 players with less tie-dye than EVE, it would be truly amazing, especially given planetary landings. In fact it would be revolutionary and it would certainly attract a lot of attention; even 500~600 with little lag would still make people sit up and notice.

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This is the edge, + PBR Rendering Engine, + Seamless Locomotion, + Stability. + Total Immersion, + Newtonian Flight Model (which already kicks ass all over the place).

The invite for this event, should probably be sent out by I-Novae, as they’re able to send it out to all Dev-Access pikots, (unless there’s a way to do it through the forum.) invite @Everyone?

Idea: Survive, end closest to @Lomsor after chasing him down a canyon.

1st Prize: Pascal Titan GPU :wink:

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As far as I’m concerned, everything official about Battlescape should involve teams. It should be drilled into people’s heads that the game is all about working with your team to win.

Towards that end, I would suggest that INS put in the following basics in support of player experimentation. This is assuming that no basic gameplay is coming out anytime soon.

  1. Assign team membership to alternating players as they connect. If somebody doesn’t like their team, they can just reconnect and hope to get the other team. If INS can slap in a team selection toggle in the UI, so much the better.

  2. Color-code ships on teams in some obvious way. Engine color, lights, blasters, everything and anything. Preferably not with icons. People need to know who to shoot and who to save.

  3. As players spawn in, they appear at their team’s spawn location. Team spawn locations are randomly chosen at the beginning of a match and can be anywhere on the moon surfaces or even around the planetary ring.

  4. Place a destructible object at each spawn location. Call it a monolith. When one team’s monolith is destroyed, the match restarts. New spawn points are chosen, monoliths are recreated, and all ships anywhere near the enemy’s monolith are respawned at their own team spawn point.

  5. If possible, enemy monoliths can be spotted on sensors from perhaps 1,000-10,000km while friendly monoliths can be seen at any range.

I would make a monolith as tough as a ship is today, and I’d cut the damage of ships in half from the current level.

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Very epic looking scene transpiring in my mind’s eye. The simplicity of something like an actual black, rectangular object floating over Cinder landscape, with hundreds of contrails and lasers and fighters swirling around the “monolith”. :heart_eyes:

That would be like sticking your tongue out at star citizen, if you can recall their monolith rip-off for the constellation commercial. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Really like that monolith idea. It’s simplistic, demonstrates a lot of gameplay mechanics at once, basically the perfect early test. A few basic strategies could even arise, like rushing, turtling etc.

To be honest, I am not all that big on teams. Hate to see Battlescape turn into another EVE where surviving pretty well means joining a corp…at least in null sec. Nor would I like to see Battlescape fall for the old team play that Star Citizen tried with its capture the ball and fly it through the loop (shooting allowed)…which no one plays, or at least far fewer than straight out PvP. Even racing is more popular! Think what the DEVs really need is to focus on ships…oh and more planets. :rocket:

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As soon as I can upgrade both my pledge and my GPU I’ll be willing to add to the count.
Even getting 100 players together in close proximity will be a huge promotion for Battlescape.

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Well, @JB47394 's idea is just one way to show off IB’s distinct feature set,

It would be a once-off, massive, player convergence, not, per say, intended eventual game-play illustration.

But that is in itself a big feature of IB imo.
(The fact that players can come up with endless variations of in-engine game-play, as per your racing example.)

Anyway, @Zen, I’ll be there to protect your ass from the enemy. (3D modelers stick together. :wink:)

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Appreciate it but that is going to require a lot of protecting.

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Now I’m just picturing a bunch of huge teapots flying around space :stuck_out_tongue:

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and monkey heads, don’t forget dem monkey heads.

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Agree, that’s a point.

As described, I:B gameplay is not EVE but Planetside: no long-term persistence beyond a match (a few hours to a few weeks, depending on the details). You can pretty much play Planetside 2 alone - the gameplay experience isn’t as good, but that has more to do with the details of this game than with the genre itself.
It could take a more tactical turn, like Allegiance or Project Reality, but I doubt it as it requires resources to divert toward a command chain system, interface and balancing, and INS most probably has other priorities. Even if it is included at some point, the game will probably be balanced so you can simply grab a ship, try to follow directions and have fun, even if you don’t know anyone on the server.
As with any large-scale multiplayer game, groups and clans will be advantaged by their coordination, but that can be balanced as well with matchmaking - so clans face each-other and/or are put in specific servers, with other servers reserved for independent players.

So don’t worry, I highly doubt you’ll have to join a corp to be successful in I;B :slightly_smiling:

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Depends on how complicated the chain of command/interface has to be. Actually, this topic is almost deserving it’s own thread, as it’s something that will eventually have to be hammered out. However, I’m going to simply state that simpler is better, but prior to any of that the availability of tactical options and the ability to develop a strategy is a must.

(Skip this section if you’re in a hurry. I have a lot to say on tactics, as you know. )


Looking at PS2, they recently patched in something called “fire teams” in attempt to introduce more “tactics”. This is basically making a small team of players out of a larger team of players, and they have a very specific target/goal in mind. The problem with the entire thing is that everybody in PS2 has one type of gun, one type of vehicle, and one type of base. Furthermore, they have this lattice system, which extremely limits what bases can be attacked at one time. PS2 is a giant numbers game. The attacking or defending with the most numbers wins, 99% of the time. It’s a fun numbers game (for some), but if you’re looking for tactics or strategy, it’s exceedingly hollow.

Map awareness (global map) and near-instant respawning means that if something is under attack, simply press 2 buttons to redeploy to that area. Because numbers trumps all. If a base is really feeling the heat, a squad may pull armour from a nearby base, and that flank the enemy and destroy the ability to spawn there, guess what, the enemy pulls it’s own armour, and it becomes a numbers game again, more numbers win, and the base is back under attack.

So the problem of fire teams is that most of the time, they won’t make one lick of difference when attacking or defending a base, because fire teams are small, and numbers trumps all in the world of PS2.


That’s what I don’t want in IB tactics and strategy, devolving to a simple numbers game, where skill only defines how long you live, not what you are necessary able to accomplish for your team. It deserves better than that.

The main reason why Fire Teams don’t work in PS2 and tactics is a stale circle of pulling armour, pulling anti armour, and swarming the cap points, is that everybody has one type of gun, one type of armour, and one type of strategy. Every single base is the same, and every single soldier is as well.

Look at my Mega Tactics Thread. Imagine the possibilities players have with those tools at their disposal. For this reason, balancing and giving the player a larger number of tools should be a first priority. Because without tools, tactics is nothing.

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Yes, but the tools must be structured to create fairly obvious strengths and weaknesses, producing specialization. That’s what tactics are all about - using your own strengths to exploit the enemy’s weaknesses. Certainly the strengths and weaknesses should be intuitive enough that players can understand their tactical options. Further, players on teams should be considering how to use their ship’s strengths to make up for the weaknesses of their teammates’ ships.

Sadly, tactics stabilize and become dogmatic, which is why games turn stale. While players were figuring out Planetside 2, they were having lots of fun with experimentation. But now people know what to do and it’s just a matter of doing it. That would be true no matter the strengths and weaknesses of the ships. What’s needed for longevity is variations in those strengths and weaknesses. That’s why mods are so effective at breathing new life into a game - they represent a change of rules.

The next step beyond that is procedural rule changes. I’ve talked about this in the past. Alter the balance of ships procedurally before each match. Transports can only carry 40% of their normal payload. Or 140%. Rates of fire go up or down. Movement speeds change. Armor. There are no field repair capabilities.

Changing these things would result in an ever-changing game. If the changes came incrementally, like driving across procedural terrain, then there would be continuity from match to match. People who play a bunch would accumulate skill in the current rule set - but the matches would require changes in tactics over time. It would be noticeable on whatever time scale you choose. An hour, a month, a year, whatever. Sometimes the change of parameters would be sudden (a steep section of terrain) and sometimes it would be very slow (a flat section). Allow each server to run its own ‘parametric terrain’ and every server would be unique.

The procedural changes would be refined over time, of course. There would probably be combinations that are simply not viable and that the procedural algorithm hadn’t anticipated. Making ship jump ranges so short that ships are constantly getting stuck. Or jumping so effortless that the game never ends because ships in trouble instantly jump away.

It would make for an interesting marketing point: procedural gameplay.

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