Indar Overhaul - 2021

Introduction

The 'Indar T' has been a major source of complaint for years, regarding how often fights rage around the central territories in a T shape across the continent. You can almost certainly log in and if Indar is open, be sure to find the fight at TI Alloys or the surrounding territories.

This is not surprising for a number of reasons. First the middle is where the continent unlocks following opening of the continent after another one closes so any fight will begin there of course. Second with three empires per continent, the mid point will naturally be where fights end up as if one empire extends then both others will focus on it to put it back in it's place. Third territories are easier to defend than attack, so if a territory is owned it is likely to stay held by that empire. This is however not only down to the natural advantage defenders have, but in PS2 the fact that defenders have hard spawns, while attacker soft gives defenders a major advantage. Couple this with redeployment to a defensive fight being easier than an attacking one and you have attacks much more difficult to push through than winning a defence (the average experienced player has twice the number of successful defenses to captures).

We have seen a variety of changes made to the central territories in an attempt to encourage flow through them however a big change is needed to make a real difference.

Core Changes

• Hard spawn points removed from select three point and central territories:

  • Quartz Ridge

  • Indar Excavation

  • Ti Alloys

  • Ceres Hydroponics

  • The Crown

  • Crossroads Watchtower

  • Regeant Rock Garrison

  • Howling Pass Checkpoint

Details

To encourage flow through the central territories defence will be made as difficult as attack. This will be done by removing the hard spawn rooms of select hard to take territories. With this change logistical play will be important as those factions which can manage spawn options will have a clear advantage. The Shattered Warpgate update proved that the playerbase is ready for such a change as we supported fights across that region of Esamir during the initial stages of the campaigns.

TI Alloys has had it's hard spawn disabled on the PTS and I hope that this is an experiment that could be rolled out across other sticking points across Indar, and potentially Auraxis.

This change will make vehicle play more important as with both sides of a fight having fragile spawns Sunderers will have to be brought up regularly and vehicles will have to escort them, driving field fights and flow between the bases.