SWBF3 Announced

[Twilight_Warrior]

Really? So you want giant, half-empty land maps below giant, half-empty space maps with the (probably more than) occasional starfighter/bomber dipping down to atmosphere to strafe otherwise helpless ground units?

It's a cool concept, but I just don't see how this benefits gameplay.

[kinetosimpetus]

Play the Capital Down maps as a bomber. Kill everything. Score a 500:1 kill death ratio. Seems balanced.

[Locutus]

Really? So you want giant, half-empty land maps below giant, half-empty space maps with the (probably more than) occasional starfighter/bomber dipping down to atmosphere to strafe otherwise helpless ground units?

It's a cool concept, but I just don't see how this benefits gameplay.

Play the Capital Down maps as a bomber. Kill everything. Score a 500:1 kill death ratio. Seems balanced.

I think you fail to see that this is about Battlefront III and not a modded map.
Of course putting a super heavy bomber that can kill a thousand units on a map is plain stupid but who says there isn't a possibility to implement ground-to-space battles in an intelligent and balanced way?
While I'm skeptical that Battlefront III will become what I hope you should let people say their wishes without immediately criticizing them.

[THEWULFMAN]

We could always have really over-powered turrets like in the Battlefront 1 Bespin Platforms map. So many of my fighters shot down by the turrets... *shudders*


Or we could do it like Battlefield 3, make the jets/starfighters really hard to use.

[Dreadnot9]

We could always have really over-powered turrets like in the Battlefront 1 Bespin Platforms map. So many of my fighters shot down by the turrets... *shudders*

I absolutely refuse to use flier on that map. For some of the dumbest AI in a game I've seen, they can hit space ships with turrets incredibly often.

[Twilight_Warrior]

but who says there isn't a possibility to implement ground-to-space battles in an intelligent and balanced way?

I do.

Overpowered weaponry aside, let's just look at the scale and functionality of playing ground and space at the same time.

If they're sticking to a Star Wars: Battlefront formula, there's just no conceivable way to have a fully fledged space battle alongside a fully fledged ground battle without having at least 64 individual player units on a map. 16 per team on the ground, 16 per team in space. And even then, SWBF2's space levels were REALLY empty and, let's face it, not as fun as they could have been.

And then there's size. In SWBF2, the space maps are HUGE. Seriously, you really don't understand the scale until you glitch out of the capital ship, but they are massive. Putting a ground battle underneath that would be ridiculous in one of two ways.
1) The ground map is the same size as the space map. If you've played any of the ginormous Conversion Pack maps, you know this is already a bad idea. The action gets too spread out, and the map just feels empty.
2) The ground map is significantly smaller than the space map, bottle-necking the fighters who want to switch modes. Which, admittedly, is much better than option 1. But it's still bad. The Free Radical demo showed one guy leaving the battle on the ground to take to the skies. Now imagine about five people on each team trying to leave and trying to land at the same time. On a map the size of Mos Eisley. Of which, the hangars would take up at least a good portion of.


Back to power.

WULF's Bespin Platforms-type turret idea is one solution, but if I remember correctly, people controlling those, AI and human alike, were just as, if not more abusive to guys on the ground than they were to the ships that were flying around. So we've traded overpowered flying death machines for even more overpowered stationary death machines. An arms race does not equate to game balance.

Another solution is to isolate ground and space battles, so that units in space can't hurt units on the ground and vice versa, but then what's the point? Elite Squadron tried this and it failed. Miserably. "[Critics] criticized the little impact that the space battles had on the overall outcome." Which is a valid point, if there are both capital ships to destroy and command posts to capture, how do you determine what wins? Is it fair to the ground players, who have been fighting tooth and nail to capture the very last command post, only to find out their teammates in the sky suck at space, and the ground players lose the match because their capital ships were destroyed, something completely out of their control? You're better off not splitting the game population in two, wasting processing power and resources on both space and ground at the same time, especially if they're already two separate regions. Instead, focus the processing power on an intense ground battle OR an intense space battle. And if you want to change modes, change maps.



I'll reiterate that I, too, was impressed by the concept of ground-to-space maps. But that's all it is: a cool concept. I don't see how it could benefit gameplay in any way, nor have I heard a compelling argument for it other than "But how cool would it be to just jump into a space ship and fly up into a space battle?"

[Maveritchell]

At-will flier vehicles over an open infantry map is always going to feel a little painful if you're the dude on feet. There's not a way around that (which is essentially, what Twilight_Warrior said above). As a single mode, it's probably not ideal. As a one-off (or occasionally-used) individual map, it can work fine. The way to do it is to take the base of SWBF2's space battles - which is a fine concept, just not very well fleshed-out - and elaborate. Make your ground battle entirely interior - make the infantry map a space station with several hangars. Make it multiple capital ships each with an infantry-focused interior. Those'll work for one-offs, but not a whole mode (because there are only so many ways you can spin "space as an ocean, ships as islands" without getting boring).

Not to pat myself on the back too much, but I think I could have worked out a reasonable prototype if I'd pushed the Space Mon Calamari concept a little farther. That's ultimately what I'm describing (and obviously - huge caveat - my opinion).

And if the next game has space battles, I'd just as soon that the majority kept the infantry out of it. Launch us directly from capital ships/stations and make it vehicles-only. I need my TIE Fighter fix!

[kinetosimpetus]

Out of the few times I played multiplayer, and the many times fewer that the map was actually a space map, people already played them like ground/space, and it was annoying. I want to play space maps to fight in starfighters, but most people just jumped in bombers and gunships (which were impossible to shoot down if they flew straight to the other hangar) and spawn killed me in the hangar, except for the very few pilots who would do the same thing, but steal a fighter from my hangar and spawn kill my fighter with that. I would like to see players spawned directly into fighters, I think actually dogfighting in fighters would be more fun than using fighters as transport or ground attack. Radical concept I know, who actually wants to fight fighters with fighters?

[Cleb]

They could also do these two things to make ground-space maps better:
1. The ground and space maps would be kind of like this: You select a planet, then the era, then you can choose to either have just ground or just space or have a ground space map that uses both maps combined.
2. They could also make ships fly a lot faster than they do in Battlefront (Seriously, you can make those things go like 10 miles an hour) so that people are moving too fast to aim at any ground troops (maybe with the exception of things like gunships and such as they were sort of meant to strafe) and if they do try to aim, then by the time they've pulled the trigger they've already hit a wall or a cliff or something. They could also do more physic-plane-y things if its possible on this engine like your fighter will move faster going down than up and moving slowly can make you stall to prevent people from trying to strafe. That way the fighters would pretty much be forced to fight each other in the skies unless they were landing and still have the cool vantage point of the ground battle while the ground people could have their peace and quiet except for the occasional lucky fighter strike and still be able to see an epic air superiority battle going on high above.

[Twilight_Warrior]

1. The ground and space maps would be kind of like this: You select a planet, then the era, then you can choose to either have just ground or just space or have a ground space map that uses both maps combined.

if there are both capital ships to destroy and command posts to capture, how do you determine what wins? Is it fair to the ground players, who have been fighting tooth and nail to capture the very last command post, only to find out their teammates in the sky suck at space, and the ground players lose the match because their capital ships were destroyed, something completely out of their control? You're better off not splitting the game population in two, wasting processing power and resources on both space and ground at the same time, especially if they're already two separate regions. Instead, focus the processing power on an intense ground battle OR an intense space battle. And if you want to change modes, change maps.

2. They could also make ships fly a lot faster than they do in Battlefront (Seriously, you can make those things go like 10 miles an hour) so that people are moving too fast to aim at any ground troops (maybe with the exception of things like gunships and such as they were sort of meant to strafe) and if they do try to aim, then by the time they've pulled the trigger they've already hit a wall or a cliff or something. They could also do more physic-plane-y things if its possible on this engine like your fighter will move faster going down than up and moving slowly can make you stall to prevent people from trying to strafe. That way the fighters would pretty much be forced to fight each other in the skies unless they were landing and still have the cool vantage point of the ground battle while the ground people could have their peace and quiet except for the occasional lucky fighter strike and still be able to see an epic air superiority battle going on high above.

No matter how fast you're going, unless it's absurdly, completely, impossibly fast, you will always be able to strafe the ground if there's no barrier between the ground and the sky. You just start higher. If there is a barrier, see above. ES already tried that. It doesn't work.

Also, as seen in basically every WWII fighter plane sim that has ground targets, the threat of stalling (which, I might add, doesn't really make sense in the Star Wars universe) doesn't prevent planes from strafing the ground.

[THEWULFMAN]

At this point I will return to Battlefield 3. Jets do not break balance. Strafing ground targets is really hard to do.

As for the problem of determining who wins a battle with ground/space involved, a points system would be enough.

I know I sound like a supporter of Ground/Space and I used to be. I'm not anymore. I'm just trying to show it isn't impossible to balance.

I want to keep them separate, but considering so many fans want it we may end up getting it.

[Cleb]

@Twilight_Warrior: You don't have to agree with me, it was a suggestion for if they did do it that might help. I do agree that stalling wouldn't really fit no that I think about it again but flying straight down should make you speed up.

Anyway, I think that ground space maps are a great idea, the Battlefront ones by Redline being some of my favorite maps alongside the Capital Down ones (Except the one with the Mon Calamari crusiser, that one wasn't fun) so yeah I think they should do it but it's their call, and arguing about it won't really make a difference because they will do what they will do and there's not much we can really do about it (unless they look at star wars fan sites like this one for suggestions which I doubt they do).

[CressAlbane]

*throws opinion*
I don't think ground-to-space battles really work. For the battle to feel as epic as it would in only ground/space, it would be very resource-intensive and difficult to monitor. Everyone above has made some good points about why ground-space wouldn't be fun and balanced.

[kinetosimpetus]

I do think there's one way to do something that could work, but it's not a space/ground map so much as it's a space map, that takes place close to the ground, with AI ground units instead of capital ship turrets or something, but ALL player activity is *spacey* in nature. Like, maybe a few Acclamators parked in the lower atmosphere sending bombers and fighters to assault a separatist fortress, with AI tanks and AAA spread out on a huge area below and offerring the bombers targets to blow up and fighters to strafe, and rockets and cannons to dodge, but it's still an air focussed mission and players wouldn't be strafed to death the instant they leave cover by vulching fighters. That kind of mission I would like to play, but not one where players are both on the ground and in space.

[CressAlbane]

That's a pretty neat concept. I can see it now - riding a LAAT Gunship through the atmosphere, blasting away at droids with a mounted rocket launcher!
Or perhaps a snowspeeder-based level. That would be cool. Not sure how the Imperials would fight back, though.

[kinetosimpetus]

With TIE fighters probably. Or just singleplayer, unless the Rebels also had X-Wings and such. I knda hope the reboot at least gets fighter roles correct... No Alpha-3 Interceptor equipped as a bomber while a perfectly good ARC-170 bomber is only a multi-role fighter, and a Belbullab 22 Interceptor also as a bomber...

[Cleb]

Another thing they could do if they did ground space maps would be to make it so it doesn't count for anything if you kill a ground unit with a ship unless its something like a snow speeder or a gunship so it would discourage people from killing ground units except trolls.

[kinetosimpetus]

Even if the killer doesn't get credit, killing ground troops wouldn't be trolling, it would still be a viable tactic. Enemy ground forces can't win if they are being killed by air, it'd just be called air support.

[CalvaryCptMike]

I know that space-land battles seem really exciting to some people, but I personally think that it would never really work out for all the reasons everyone has already stated. I think that the designers could definitely elaborate on the ship interior battles though, because flying into an enemy ship, blowing up the fuel tanks and shooting their pilots was really fun.

Also, I really hope they keep both 1st and 3rd person views.

I read that some people don't want another Battlefield2 style of gameplay, but personally it's one of my favorites. I love the teamwork element of BF2. COD is way too run-shoot-die-repeat for me, and battlefront MP was just a question of who could throw the most landmines in each others faces. However, it would be really awesome if they could come up with a totally new style of gameplay, considering most FPS games are just so similar right now. Something that really takes advantage of the uniqueness of star wars.

[[TFA]Padawan_Fighter]

Would it really be realistic, anyway?

What kind of self respecting navy is going to have platoons hippity hop from ground to low orbit at will? Talk about disorganized!