Deuy, on October 29 2012 - 12:01 PM, said:
As Frenotx mentioned, the energy trees hold a finite amount of energy which they regen at a slow rate. A full tree transfers energy rapidly, but an empty one can only transfer at its regen rate.
The "fullness" of a tree is indicated by the 3 green lights stacked vertically on the "trunk", which deplete as energy is gathered. So when multiple people are gathering around a tree, it runs out quickly and you notice your energy collection slows to a crawl. At this point it's usually better to return to base or find another tree.
Energy Unit collection is designed this way for a couple reasons. It keeps battles dynamic, since teams must stay on the move as the value of each energy spawn point fluctuates. If trees had infinite EU with no downtime, most Siege matches would devolve into Team A camps at Energy Tree #1, Team B camps at Tree #2, race to launch ship with no conflicts. It also encourages escorting teammates (rather than letting a full teammate go back solo while you fill up your own tanks), and encourages killing enemies in order to steal their EU (rather than letting them leave so you can fill up your own tanks).
Another fact about Siege Mode is that a team's battleship gets stronger with each consecutive launch. This prevents matches from continuing indefinitely, and prevents turtling by teams that only defend against ships but do not gather energy to launch their own. Generally the first ship is pretty easy to take out by means of hiding in your base and manually shooting it, but as more ships are launched it becomes nearly impossible to take them down without capturing the AA. You'll also notice that later ships will have upgraded turrets (machine gun > rockets > homing missiles).
The boot sequence was created by Shadi, our UI artist. He is also the sound designer for the game, and created the music in our trailers!
I love the disclaimer at the start of the boot up
I was initially going to write a critique on siege based on my experiences with manually shooting down the battleships, but having read this I can't complain. You folks thought of everything! I initially wondered why each battleship cost more energy to launch, but I'd assumed that the battleships were all the same. The fact the battleship scales alongside the energy costs is absolutely brilliant. I applaud you.
I will say one thing, though. There should be a move towards more symmetrical siege maps, or at least a tightening of terrain. I'm noticing odd lines of sight on the sahara map that allow a sharpshooter to sit at one end of the map and kill people at the door of the spawn. This is extremely irritating because a sniper can sit at E1 and essentially cover the entrance of an enemy base with no immediately threat of retaliation from other classes. I've been killed at the doorway of my spawn trying to deliver energy this way. And to add insult to injury, because the map design is asymmetrical, I can't go sharpshooter and do the same thing to my enemy. They have protection from this sort of sniping, and my team doesn't.
Additionally, more platforms need to be added to titan to block line road of sight from the top floors. As it stands, it's too easy for assault classes to spam rockets down into capture zones, and similar to the sahara problem have little threat of immediate retaliation.
That is not to say I dislike siege. On the contrary, it has easily become my favourite game type. Keep up the good work, devs!
Edited by Conquistador, October 30 2012 - 09:19 AM.
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