92 replies to this topic

[AsianJoyKiller]

Nitris, on October 31 2012 - 07:16 PM, said:

AsianJoyKiller, on October 31 2012 - 07:07 PM, said:

I think the current respawn timer is great as is.
When you factor in things like the loss of EU (and possible gain for the enemy) and the travel time involved to get back to the action it works out pretty well.
The time it takes to get from the bases to the AA is long enough that being one man down for that short amount of time can be devastating  especially on equally skilled teams.

On more than one occasion, I've seen losing one teammate at the AA end up snowballing into a team wipe, which ends up with them being shut out of the AA. But every now and then, people are able to hold on long enough for their teammates to get back and continue the fight.

Hm, a good point, though that was basically the idea- we need a way to speed the gamemode up. Is making snowballing easier not a good way to do this_
I can understand that it could make fights predictable after the first death, but I mean its not always the end of the world for the team a man down- what if two of the other team, while not dead are so close to it that they have to flee and repair_

Snowballing isn't a good way. It just creates more downtime.
To speed things up, it's best to try and get rid of the activities that create downtime with little action, like destroying battleships from the spawn area, or uncontended EU tree gathering.

[Nitris]

Ah but then if it is full on action all the time then there are no lulls, and/or time for commentators to explain things, or have dialogue. These are the things I find most interesting when I watch matches of games I do not play, let alone understand. Also it becomes really tough to keep track of everything that is happening when there is lots going on. It can be overwhelming and confusing for viewers.


Also on the uncontended EU gathering...

"Ah, looks like Billybob is soaking up that EU from the tree all by himself. Its a risky move becau-- OH LOOKOUT! Beetlejuice has cut off Billybob's escape route, annd oooooh! Silverback came from above and they both ripped poor billybob to bits! There you go folks, thats why you need a teammate- someone to watch your back!"

Ooorr something like that. =D

[NotKjell]

I would like to point out that I only ever had uncontested EU gathering on sahara. On the smaller siege map I could always harrass anyone I see moving to an EU point/would generally have to fight at least once.

On Sahara though, for an entire game I might run trips back and forth off of 1 e-point. While each point was rather open, they were protected and far away from any other point of interest. In one way this simply makes this map different, but it also means a lot less action.

Speaking of map variety, I like the ideas of variable EU amounts of AA and EU points. Having a lot of different maps requiring a different playstyle for each would definitely make playing more interesting, if a bit harder. Should also keep it fresh for spectators, though League of Legends has shown how this might not matter so much. Personally I prefer map variety.

Also, snowballing isn't a good thing I feel. One of the big complaints within SC2 at the moment is how you have so many fights determined in the first 5 seconds. Depending on how spells like Forcefields, fungals, EMP vortex etc. land at the start of a fight, one side can have no hope of not getting crushed. In hawken, the penalty for death is already there - fighting 3 vs 4 instead of 4 v 4 is not good. It should generally force a retreat to lose the first player (staying to fight equal skilled opponents when they have the numbers advantage should be suicide.) The longer things like respawn is, the longer it will take to re-engage your enemies and the more behind you will get for every death.

[noten]

You seem to forget that if one team stays at their base shooting at the enemy battleship, the enemy team can just rush them down, this has happened in CB1 siege games many times. They would not only have to deal with the enemy battleship but the enemy team as well, as such contesting the AA is the only viable strategy once a battleship is out.

Good players also know that it's better to contest the enemy energy tree once their energy tree has run low. You not only prevent the enemy from returning their energy to their base, but you also stand to gain control of the 2nd energy tree. This doesn't happen in pub games because people are content with sitting on empty energy trees to slowly gain energy instead of pvping.

Edited by noten, October 31 2012 - 08:09 PM.

[Nitris]

Again, my reasoning behind this is, well look a LOL.

The higher level your champion gets in that match the longer the respawn timer gets and it can get stupidly long. The reason I feel that it "works" in LOL is because it is a war of attrition for the most part, until one team manages to wear down the defenses enough to break the inhibitor. The game is not simply dead and done there either- it is a disadvantage for the team no doubts, but not a case of it making the game unwinnable. Without the longer respawn timers however, it would be a lot easier to defend against attacks on your towers and inhib, and it would make the games last a lot longer.

So with the same thought, I can see how this would work well in Hawken- Ok so it snowballs and you lose the AA. Yeah they have smacked their battleship into your base, but that isn't game over right there and then. There is nothing stopping you from turning the game around and winning.
Hell I joined a pub game in progress when the team I was on had one HP blip left on the base, the enemy Battleship had just launched and the entire enemy team was on the AA. My team ended up winning that match. It would have made for exciting footage let me tell you.

[Lithium03]

What times has everyone seen_ I've seen matches where a team is the dominate winner be done in 15-20 mins, 30 mins if the other team can fight back, 30+ if both teams are bad (most people have only been playing hawken (let alone this game type) for at most 4 days, of course they're aren't going to be very good).

Immie, on October 31 2012 - 01:35 PM, said:

None of the above. Of all the available game modes, I'd say siege comes closest... but IMO, It doesn't really encourage the strong dueling elements in the game. It's much more about holding hands with as many allies as possible, and while team play is a good thing, I feel like in a competitive environment, it'd boil down to blobs of mechs trading blows for 40 minutes.

IMO, the best bet for a competitive mode would be a round-based mode with a simple objective and no respawning (Like Counterstrike's Disarm the Bomb), or good old fashioned Capture the Flag.

"Holding hands with as many allies as possible" is basically the definition of any team based game, so unless you're looking for hawken to be a mostly Death Match only game that seems like a silly thing to think. "blobs of mechs trading blows for x minutes" is what any and all game types boil down to if you strip out all other factors

The reason those games have multiple rounds is because of no respawns and being really fast to finish, you NEED multiple rounds to be confident of a winner. If the games were longer you wouldn't need as many rounds to determine who's playing better.

Beemann, on October 31 2012 - 01:51 PM, said:

Siege to me has too many steps and variables. I think the game needs something that requires less explanation for comp play, particularly if we want the viewer-ship to be comprised of more than just Hawken fanatics
It's also kinda slow and not very fun to watch. Ring-around-the-rosie with energy beams combined with sitting in spawn shooting a large static target = snoozefest from a spectating standpoint. Even taking out the whole "sit in spawn and shoot to deny point scoring" thing, you've still got a single objective won by the whole team spamming and trading blows
Like Immie said, something round-based or classic CTF would be great

I'd use LoL as a comparison here, huge viewing audience for what I view as the most boring game invented. 40-60 minute games where it's just grinding xp until your team hits 18 then finishing in 1 watchable battle.

Beemann, on October 31 2012 - 03:41 PM, said:

It's less about lulls and more about overall pacing. Even TDM is bound to have lulls at some point
The gamemode has a lot of back and forth, and I don't mean when it comes to teams and scoring. The gamemode is centred around running out, filling up, and running back... before running out again to a DIFFERENT spot to take THAT point, and then running back to the collection points
Furthermore, there isn't currently enough incentive to fight outside of AA pushes
Siege just feels slow, and requires too much explanation on top of whatever explanation is already present in Hawken, and (as pointed out in this thread) there's still many PLAYERS who don't have a good grasp of the mechanics.

The game seems slow with nothing to do because strategies haven't been developed and made known to anyone yet, it's just people going around doing the bare minimum to attempt a win.

IMO it doesn't need to be simplified, if you want simpler gameplay there's always DM and TDM. Those people don't know how to play because they've only been playing hawken/siege for at most 4 days.

AsianJoyKiller, on October 31 2012 - 05:58 PM, said:

The way I see Siege working in comp environment is something like this:
Both pick a tree to go to and travel out as a group, mostly likely with heavies as transport, a dedicated SS playing overwatch and probably something like an INF playing escort or possible harrasment. Now occasionally, there might be skirmishes over tree contention, but they'll most likely go for the path of least resistance, which means avoiding the enemy team as much as possible.

Now once the first battleship is launched (and based on the current mechanics), the smart play is for the other team to retreat back to base and take it down from relative safety rather than possibly losing a fight on the AA.

Repeat those first two phases until it's no longer viable to take down the battleship without AA.

It's only at that point that the game gets interesting and here's why I think that is.
It forces large fights beyond general harassment because you can no longer sit back.
If the defending team wins the AA, then the next fight there is even more intense, as it becomes required to hold the AA for longer as the battleships become stronger.
If they lose it, then during the next round of gathering, it allows the team in the lead to free up a mech or two for more focused raids on the enemy gatherers. This of course means more fights outside AA capture/defense.



Obviously, tactics could differ from what I predicted.
But I don't see people wanting to watch Hawken just to see people gathering resources (it is a FPS after all) and spend the first 20 minutes retreating back to base to blow the enemy battleship up.
And while having 1 AA point is great for action, it's not as interesting tactically as having 2 or more, because it's essentially a TDM focused on a single part of the map, and you just throw everything you've got at it.
I think to make the matches quicker and more intense, a few changes would need to be enacted.
First, more emphasis around EU tree skirmishes. Have the trees run out faster, put them closer together or something. That would also help make raiding more appealing.
Then I'd probably have it so only the first battleship can be downed without AA. I just don't think sitting back in bases should be viable at all.
I'd also like to see at least 2 AA points. Make it so teams have to properly allocate forces, calling for backup and the like.


Also, like Beemann said, it's not an easy mode to watch. Imagine if you've never played Siege mode before.
If you don't know the rules and there's no commentary to explain them, what you end up seeing is people going to the some poles that spit out green energy, retreating to base, then going out to gather again until some undefined event happens and everyone either retreats and starts shooting at the sky or rushes to suddenly fight to the death in the middle of the map.
Then the thing in the sky blows up and everyone is back to sitting around poles and running back and forth to bases.

45 minutes of that doesn't sound fun to me.

That strat of least resistance is one tactic, not my choice, but a viable one, but it ends up making the game take longer. Any team that just sits back and shoots the ship leaves themselves open to just being picked off by the other team, and is how you need to deal with it.

IMO there really only needs to be one mech gathering unless you killed off the other team, then get a second, which leaves 4-5/6 doing something more watchable. In team games there's always something less watchable to someone then the rest of the game, it's a bit subjective.

More emphasis on EU trees can be done with dev intervention, people simply need to go kill the other team. My ideal strat is to have 1 gatherer on your teams ideal node, then a 5v5 somewhere on the map defending/attacking, where the winner could prevent the other team from gathering and you can send a quick second/third gatherer for easy EU and a faster overall game.

I don't think it should be a must to take the AA at all times, but I do think the AA does need to be fired a bit per ship. If you had to take the AA it limits strategy from taking AA or shooting the ship to just taking the AA.

2 AA's wouldn't change much and would only prolong combat, each team would take one and try to take the other, one would get both but couldn't hold it, due to a 6v whatever you had at one AA and then they still outnumber the other AA and vice versa, little chance of being able to hold them, so each ship over all would have an AA firing on it and would be hard to make progress or remove viability of simply shooting it down.

Any game you haven't played before will seem weird and nonsesical. Refer to my opening sentence on the times.

Nitris, on October 31 2012 - 06:41 PM, said:

Gotta say I think Siege is probably the best, and I loath to agree but it does indeed take slightly too long to make it a viable gamemode for competitive play.

Others have come up with great ideas for making it faster, more intense and more exciting to watch. I think I can add to the pile:

1. First and foremost: Longer respawn timers. "Whaaaat_!_" I hear you cry! Hear me out; This forces teams to work together and even put themselves in the line of fire for critically damaged allies. More importantly, this creates more 'momentum' for the winner of a fight. This will lead to the games being faster because there will be more of a chance to capitalise on killing foes- you can safely collect more EU, and safely return without escort to your base.

2. More than just two EU trees. Making it an odd number will force teams to fight over them or risk dropping behind, rather than just "Oh well they have one, and we have one. Looks like both battleships will launch roughly the same time." That would be boring to watch.

3. All EU trees having vastly lower max EU storage, and I think a slower regen of EU would also work. This makes EU far more valuable and therefore teams will make damn sure those teammates with large amounts of EU get back to the base in one piece. It will allow high risk, high reward -- and more importantly exciting -- sneak attacks on EU rich targets, and even sneaky attempts to soak up a bunch of EU on your own from a uncontested EU tree, and scurry back to your base without the enemy team catching on. Would work well with a higher number of EU trees.

4. As we know, when mechs are blown up, they drop all their EU on the ground. Even those without any in their tanks will drop a small amount based on their class. This EU that is dropped will slowly disapate over time. If this EU disapated at a much faster rate, it would be a scramble for both teams to soak it up, and again only make the stuff more valuable.

5. An idea I have been toying with, but I am still unsure about: The AA turret simply will not fire if it is contested at all. As it currently is, if a team has more units than the other in the ring, then the AA begins to launch a missle. Only when there are equal numbers of units from both teams in the ring does the AA stop. This will place much more importance on destroying or forcing off all enemies from the AA, and could lead to more intense fights. It also allows for a strategic kamikaze assault just to stall the missle for even a few seconds.

6. As we know on death, in Siege, mechs drop an EU stack. How about dropping one of those yellow heal orb things like in the other games modes as well as the EU thing_ Noone wants to sit and watch a mech scurry off to a corner and repair for lengthy periods. This allows for mechs to heal up faster (sitting on an orb AND going into repair mode) and therefore allows for more action.

I have more half baked ideas, but I will think more on them and maybe post them later.

1. No, this would only slow down game play and add more sitting on your ass spawn camping. People would simply do their best to avoid fighting.

2. I can agree with more nodes, though you could also increase speeds putting more importance on stopping the other team.

3. That'd again slow down gameplay, as the only way to efficiently get it is the nodes, and if it's too low, it'll turn into a spawn camping TDM to grab small 10EU charges from dead players. It wouldn't be exciting, losing a player would be rage-quit non-games. Where the line of thought is "well we lost 1 tank, either leave now, or completely dominate for another 50 mins to come back from that".

4. It's 10 for any mech, if it drops more they gathered it somewhere else. Every respawn takes that 10 from your ship requiring you team to gather more per death. It's to low for anyone to "scramble" for it. It would need to be much higher to make it worth possibly dieing and dropping your energy.

5. I can see that as being a good change. Although being able to just dodge around and completely stall a team seems a little cheap.

6. It did make me question where the healing core was as they exist in all other game types and wouldn't mind seeing it in Siege too.

Nitris, on October 31 2012 - 07:16 PM, said:

Hm, a good point, though that was basically the idea- we need a way to speed the gamemode up. Is making snowballing easier not a good way to do this_
I can understand that it could make fights predictable after the first death, but I mean its not always the end of the world for the team a man down- what if two of the other team, while not dead are so close to it that they have to flee and repair_

Snowballing isn't really a good idea IMO, as it basically means at some point you'd just have to GG out or be seen as a fuzzy bunny for staying in game. Keeping things even where it's a real game start to finish is the better method IMO.

AsianJoyKiller, on October 31 2012 - 07:26 PM, said:

Snowballing isn't a good way. It just creates more downtime.
To speed things up, it's best to try and get rid of the activities that create downtime with little action, like destroying battleships from the spawn area, or uncontended EU tree gathering.

Things like that are the fault of those who don't attack the other team. I don't think it should be forced, if people make bad decisions then they have to live with a loss.

Nitris, on October 31 2012 - 07:44 PM, said:

Ah but then if it is full on action all the time then there are no lulls, and/or time for commentators to explain things, or have dialogue. These are the things I find most interesting when I watch matches of games I do not play, let alone understand. Also it becomes really tough to keep track of everything that is happening when there is lots going on. It can be overwhelming and confusing for viewers.


Also on the uncontended EU gathering...

"Ah, looks like Billybob is soaking up that EU from the tree all by himself. Its a risky move becau-- OH LOOKOUT! Beetlejuice has cut off Billybob's escape route, annd oooooh! Silverback came from above and they both ripped poor billybob to bits! There you go folks, thats why you need a teammate- someone to watch your back!"

Ooorr something like that. =D

But snowballs don't make for that kind of gameplay, they just make it a "why bother to continue" type.

Nitris, on October 31 2012 - 08:06 PM, said:

Again, my reasoning behind this is, well look a LOL.

The higher level your champion gets in that match the longer the respawn timer gets and it can get stupidly long. The reason I feel that it "works" in LOL is because it is a war of attrition for the most part, until one team manages to wear down the defenses enough to break the inhibitor. The game is not simply dead and done there either- it is a disadvantage for the team no doubts, but not a case of it making the game unwinnable. Without the longer respawn timers however, it would be a lot easier to defend against attacks on your towers and inhib, and it would make the games last a lot longer.

So with the same thought, I can see how this would work well in Hawken- Ok so it snowballs and you lose the AA. Yeah they have smacked their battleship into your base, but that isn't game over right there and then. There is nothing stopping you from turning the game around and winning.
Hell I joined a pub game in progress when the team I was on had one HP blip left on the base, the enemy Battleship had just launched and the entire enemy team was on the AA. My team ended up winning that match. It would have made for exciting footage let me tell you.

The reason it works in LoL is because the nexus is RIGHT ONTOP OF THE SPAWN. In hawken objectives are NOT on your front door(technically the ship is seige, but that's not relaly what I'm talking about) If LoL had no penalties for death you pretty much couldn't take out a nexus due to constant defense and would drag it out longer or maybe be 100% stalemate.

[noten]

I feel the same way with dota 2. The problem is most people lacking understanding of siege play siege mode passively instead of actively seeking pvp, which is the wrong way to go about playing siege and this would make for a boring game. They need to stop energy flow once the energy trees go empty to push people to pvp.

[Lithium03]

noten, on October 31 2012 - 08:16 PM, said:

I feel the same way with dota 2. The problem is most people lacking understanding of siege play siege mode passively instead of actively seeking pvp, which is the wrong way to go about playing siege and this would make for a boring game. They need to stop energy flow once the energy trees go empty to push people to pvp.

Nah, it gives energy when it's "empty" because it's constantly refilling, but refills slower than you can take. If it shut off for a while it would remove the choice of "do i risk gathering more and have a faster game, or fight others making future gathering a bit easier, but a longer game" because you have to remember, killing people does very little toward the end goal.

Edited by Lithium03, October 31 2012 - 08:21 PM.

[noten]

I disagree, choosing pvp over hugging the "empty" energy tree in this case, would be a high risk high reward strategy. It's a choice between do I hug the "empty" energy tree for really slow energy gain_ or do I risk losing my current energy by seeking out enemy players to kill, which if successful will prevent the enemy from sending energy back to their base and collecting energy from the other tree. There is actually more incentive to seek pvp than to just hug the energy trees but currently most players are playing very passively because they're afraid of the high risk or just don't know any better.

[Beemann]

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

"Holding hands with as many allies as possible" is basically the definition of any team based game, so unless you're looking for hawken to be a mostly Death Match only game that seems like a silly thing to think. "blobs of mechs trading blows for x minutes" is what any and all game types boil down to if you strip out all other factors

Except it isn`t. LoL has multiple lanes, CS has multiple bomb sites and approaches, Tribes has a plethora of roles for teams to fill
Blob vs blob is a style of play that absolutely does not compliment objective-based gamemodes. Teamfights are necessary, but shouldn`t comprise the whole match. There needs to be a reason for splitting up the team

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

The reason those games have multiple rounds is because of no respawns and being really fast to finish, you NEED multiple rounds to be confident of a winner. If the games were longer you wouldn't need as many rounds to determine who's playing better.

Except multiple rounds assist in negating map favouritism and the effects of initial pushes. As well, certain portions of CS`design are based around the round system and actually ENHANCE the gameplay of each round (see: eco rounds)

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

I'd use LoL as a comparison here, huge viewing audience for what I view as the most boring game invented. 40-60 minute games where it's just grinding xp until your team hits 18 then finishing in 1 watchable battle.

LoL is watched by LoL players. Unless you can guarantee a large playerbase for Hawken, I wouldn`t put all of my eggs in that basket
However you DO seem to have massively underestimated the amount that goes on in a LoL match (not a fan of it myself, but I know how DotA-likes operate, and find your statement absurdly inaccurate)

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

The game seems slow with nothing to do because strategies haven't been developed and made known to anyone yet, it's just people going around doing the bare minimum to attempt a win.

They`re playing it safe, which is exactly what competitive players do. I was just watching an old recording earlier today of Rapha talking about his ESL win in Quake Live and describing his reasons for avoiding fights until he was sure to win or at least catch his opponent off-guard

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

IMO it doesn't need to be simplified, if you want simpler gameplay there's always DM and TDM. Those people don't know how to play because they've only been playing hawken/siege for at most 4 days.

That`s a lovely false dichotomy there. I`m not asking for a lack of focus in comp play, I`m just asking that it be straightforward. Having reasons to split up the team would be nice (CTF provides this actually) but oversaturating the game mode with rules will just force out newbies and non-players when it comes to spectating

[Lithium03]

noten, on October 31 2012 - 08:28 PM, said:

I disagree, choosing pvp over hugging the "empty" energy tree in this case, would be a high risk high reward strategy. It's a choice between do I hug the "empty" energy tree for really slow energy gain_ or do I risk losing my current energy by seeking out enemy players to kill, which if successful will prevent the enemy from sending energy back to their base and collecting energy from the other tree. There is actually more incentive to seek pvp than to just hug the energy trees but currently most players are playing very passively because they're afraid of the high risk or just don't know any better.

It's too random and situational, what reward is there by taking what we can assume you have, say 100 EU, to go kill someone for what 10 EU_ You can't even guess whether it's an energy carrier, and if it is they're on the other side of the map, being the gatherer and just going into combat even partially full is just silly. Even if you say it's an effective 20 EU gain due to making the other team require more EU to launch in that time you'd get at least 50 EU from that tree and wouldn't be in direct combat (we can assume your team isn't stupid and is doing something to defend you/the area. The game type requires gathering energy, not having someone gathering is just bad gameplay, as well as having more then 1 mech gathering per node as it would just weaken your overall map presence and gain you no more EU per time spent and its a global rate, not a per mech rate.

[Lithium03]

Beemann, on October 31 2012 - 08:34 PM, said:

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

"Holding hands with as many allies as possible" is basically the definition of any team based game, so unless you're looking for hawken to be a mostly Death Match only game that seems like a silly thing to think. "blobs of mechs trading blows for x minutes" is what any and all game types boil down to if you strip out all other factors

Except it isn`t. LoL has multiple lanes, CS has multiple bomb sites and approaches, Tribes has a plethora of roles for teams to fill
Blob vs blob is a style of play that absolutely does not compliment objective-based gamemodes. Teamfights are necessary, but shouldn`t comprise the whole match. There needs to be a reason for splitting up the team

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

The reason those games have multiple rounds is because of no respawns and being really fast to finish, you NEED multiple rounds to be confident of a winner. If the games were longer you wouldn't need as many rounds to determine who's playing better.

Except multiple rounds assist in negating map favouritism and the effects of initial pushes. As well, certain portions of CS`design are based around the round system and actually ENHANCE the gameplay of each round (see: eco rounds)

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

I'd use LoL as a comparison here, huge viewing audience for what I view as the most boring game invented. 40-60 minute games where it's just grinding xp until your team hits 18 then finishing in 1 watchable battle.

LoL is watched by LoL players. Unless you can guarantee a large playerbase for Hawken, I wouldn`t put all of my eggs in that basket
However you DO seem to have massively underestimated the amount that goes on in a LoL match (not a fan of it myself, but I know how DotA-likes operate, and find your statement absurdly inaccurate)

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

The game seems slow with nothing to do because strategies haven't been developed and made known to anyone yet, it's just people going around doing the bare minimum to attempt a win.

They`re playing it safe, which is exactly what competitive players do. I was just watching an old recording earlier today of Rapha talking about his ESL win in Quake Live and describing his reasons for avoiding fights until he was sure to win or at least catch his opponent off-guard

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

IMO it doesn't need to be simplified, if you want simpler gameplay there's always DM and TDM. Those people don't know how to play because they've only been playing hawken/siege for at most 4 days.

That`s a lovely false dichotomy there. I`m not asking for a lack of focus in comp play, I`m just asking that it be straightforward. Having reasons to split up the team would be nice (CTF provides this actually) but oversaturating the game mode with rules will just force out newbies and non-players when it comes to spectating

But there are multiple Nodes/Silos too which is reason enough to split up when necessary.

I can agree with the map favouritism but that's something the devs need to work out, whether they want unique maps that require several matches to stamp that out, or simpler perfectly symmetrical that doesn't favour. And I've 100% hated CS snowballing round system makes losing the first a GG out moment unless the other team completely stops playing.

Go ahead and point it out, I simplify because we're not talking in depth about Lol but the gist of any match high or low is creep farming followed by attacking the base (there can be more to it if you want to nit pick but seriously that's all that happens and is a hold over from the way Warcraft III worked with hero levels and IMO should be removed)

You assume those people are really choosing to play it safe, where I say it's because they just haven't play enough yet. Being defensive is a viable strategy, it's just not one I like.

Which rules are you talking about here_ Like no gathering when a ship is out_ I do think that's a something that needs to be looked at.

[noten]

The reward is multiple, first, if you win the fight, you take out one of the enemy players, this is already huge in a 6 player per team limit game. Any energy he is carrying, is thus a bonus, any amount is a good amount. With less enemy players around, you have a better map presence and it becomes possible to maintain control of both energy trees thereby totally cutting off the enemies chance of collecting energy. Yes the game requires gathering energy, but this is required of both teams, not gathering energy for your team BUT preventing the enemy team from gathering energy is also a benefit for your team.

There are many ways to play siege that not many people realise, this makes it extremely competitive and e-sports worthy. It's just new and people need time to learn.

[Nitris]

*deep breath*

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1. No, this would only slow down game play and add more sitting on your ass spawn camping. People would simply do their best to avoid fighting.

I disagree. I don't think that it will result in people avoiding fights. It will certainly make people more likely to retreat under less severe circumstances than currently, but this results in a lot of cat and mouse gameplay, and luring pilots into traps, both of which I think are exciting to watch.

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2. I can agree with more nodes, though you could also increase speeds putting more importance on stopping the other team.

Hm, a good point. However with the increased speed being on all EU trees, having a low max cap is not an issue any more- it would regen fast enough for you to simply camp one tree and then go back and forth. Having a lower recharge rate means you HAVE to look elsewhere and go hunt the enemies for EU.

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3. That'd again slow down gameplay, as the only way to efficiently get it is the nodes, and if it's too low, it'll turn into a spawn camping TDM to grab small 10EU charges from dead players. It wouldn't be exciting, losing a player would be rage-quit non-games. Where the line of thought is "well we lost 1 tank, either leave now, or completely dominate for another 50 mins to come back from that".

It doesn't mean that at all, if any thing it lowers your "50 min domination" to more like "Ok, we have to disrupt at least one of their EU carriers, that'll get us back on even footing". It doesn't even need to be straight away- one tank even for a C class is only 300 EU. The ships require 700, plus 10 for each respawn. That is still at the very least 3 trips for that one heavy. Also, it is not like your EU at your base is reset if the enemy launches their battleship. You carry on from where you left off (minus respawns).
But all that aside, if you are able to hold the AA, then their great victory at launching their battleship first means nothing... cause it is dead.

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4. It's 10 for any mech, if it drops more they gathered it somewhere else. Every respawn takes that 10 from your ship requiring you team to gather more per death. It's to low for anyone to "scramble" for it. It would need to be much higher to make it worth possibly dieing and dropping your energy.

Ah I have learned something here. I did wonder where that 10 EU came from when you killed someone, even though they had not soaked anything up.
Ok scrambling might not have been the correct word, but it would certainly give more importance to it, regardless.

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5. I can see that as being a good change. Although being able to just dodge around and completely stall a team seems a little cheap.

Well luckily the "capture zone" is fairly small, so there isn't usually many places you can go to keep them stalled without a decently skilled team surrounding you pretty fast.

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6. It did make me question where the healing core was as they exist in all other game types and wouldn't mind seeing it in Siege too.

Yes, in my first few games I kept searching for it breifly before moving on. Heh.

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Snowballing isn't really a good idea IMO, as it basically means at some point you'd just have to GG out or be seen as a fuzzy bunny for staying in game. Keeping things even where it's a real game start to finish is the better method IMO.

I don't know... I think it is better to end the game than drag it on when you know one team has no chance of winning. It is prettly rare for games of almost any kind go right down to the wire. See that battleship coming at your base, with full health and you have half your team on respawn timers_ Yeah, there is no way you are taking the AA in time to kill it now. Better to GG out, than sit there and watch the thing slowly float into your base.

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But snowballs don't make for that kind of gameplay, they just make it a "why bother to continue" type.

The particular post you quoted was to do with downtime/lulls in the match, and on uncontested EU soaking. Also, I do know what snowballing means. =]

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The reason it works in LoL is because the nexus is RIGHT ONTOP OF THE SPAWN. In hawken objectives are NOT on your front door(technically the ship is seige, but that's not relaly what I'm talking about) If LoL had no penalties for death you pretty much couldn't take out a nexus due to constant defense and would drag it out longer or maybe be 100% stalemate.

You have a battleship coming at your base, which is exactly where you spawn. You can shoot it from right there, and there are base turrets which will shoot any enemies that try to get into your spawn area. Even if they do kill you, you just respawn right where you died and carry on firing.
I've seen it happen too- there were 2 hellfire heavies that I kept taking out inside the enemy base, but they just respawned and carried on shooting the battleship. They took it down with ease.
With a longer respawn this will not be as easy, do you not agree_
Think about it, if the entire enemy team swapped to hellfire and just blasted the battleship out of the sky, it would be pretty damn hard to stop them, especially as no sooner had you killed one mech and gotten maybe halfway through the next mech, the first mech has respawned. Talk about stalemating it_

[Squeezy]

To quickly touch on bo3 comment.  Siege mode kind of already has bo6 built in, since you have to get your battleship to opponents base 3 times (per team).  So one game could take care of a best of 6.  For finals, I could see dong two games (kind of a bo12 then).

[Lithium03]

Nitris, on October 31 2012 - 09:06 PM, said:

*deep breath*

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1. No, this would only slow down game play and add more sitting on your ass spawn camping. People would simply do their best to avoid fighting.

I disagree. I don't think that it will result in people avoiding fights. It will certainly make people more likely to retreat under less severe circumstances than currently, but this results in a lot of cat and mouse gameplay, and luring pilots into traps, both of which I think are exciting to watch.

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2. I can agree with more nodes, though you could also increase speeds putting more importance on stopping the other team.

Hm, a good point. However with the increased speed being on all EU trees, having a low max cap is not an issue any more- it would regen fast enough for you to simply camp one tree and then go back and forth. Having a lower recharge rate means you HAVE to look elsewhere and go hunt the enemies for EU.

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3. That'd again slow down gameplay, as the only way to efficiently get it is the nodes, and if it's too low, it'll turn into a spawn camping TDM to grab small 10EU charges from dead players. It wouldn't be exciting, losing a player would be rage-quit non-games. Where the line of thought is "well we lost 1 tank, either leave now, or completely dominate for another 50 mins to come back from that".

It doesn't mean that at all, if any thing it lowers your "50 min domination" to more like "Ok, we have to disrupt at least one of their EU carriers, that'll get us back on even footing". It doesn't even need to be straight away- one tank even for a C class is only 300 EU. The ships require 700, plus 10 for each respawn. That is still at the very least 3 trips for that one heavy. Also, it is not like your EU at your base is reset if the enemy launches their battleship. You carry on from where you left off (minus respawns).
But all that aside, if you are able to hold the AA, then their great victory at launching their battleship first means nothing... cause it is dead.

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4. It's 10 for any mech, if it drops more they gathered it somewhere else. Every respawn takes that 10 from your ship requiring you team to gather more per death. It's to low for anyone to "scramble" for it. It would need to be much higher to make it worth possibly dieing and dropping your energy.

Ah I have learned something here. I did wonder where that 10 EU came from when you killed someone, even though they had not soaked anything up.
Ok scrambling might not have been the correct word, but it would certainly give more importance to it, regardless.

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5. I can see that as being a good change. Although being able to just dodge around and completely stall a team seems a little cheap.

Well luckily the "capture zone" is fairly small, so there isn't usually many places you can go to keep them stalled without a decently skilled team surrounding you pretty fast.

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6. It did make me question where the healing core was as they exist in all other game types and wouldn't mind seeing it in Siege too.

Yes, in my first few games I kept searching for it breifly before moving on. Heh.

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Snowballing isn't really a good idea IMO, as it basically means at some point you'd just have to GG out or be seen as a fuzzy bunny for staying in game. Keeping things even where it's a real game start to finish is the better method IMO.

I don't know... I think it is better to end the game than drag it on when you know one team has no chance of winning. It is prettly rare for games of almost any kind go right down to the wire. See that battleship coming at your base, with full health and you have half your team on respawn timers_ Yeah, there is no way you are taking the AA in time to kill it now. Better to GG out, than sit there and watch the thing slowly float into your base.

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But snowballs don't make for that kind of gameplay, they just make it a "why bother to continue" type.

The particular post you quoted was to do with downtime/lulls in the match, and on uncontested EU soaking. Also, I do know what snowballing means. =]

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The reason it works in LoL is because the nexus is RIGHT ONTOP OF THE SPAWN. In hawken objectives are NOT on your front door(technically the ship is seige, but that's not relaly what I'm talking about) If LoL had no penalties for death you pretty much couldn't take out a nexus due to constant defense and would drag it out longer or maybe be 100% stalemate.

You have a battleship coming at your base, which is exactly where you spawn. You can shoot it from right there, and there are base turrets which will shoot any enemies that try to get into your spawn area. Even if they do kill you, you just respawn right where you died and carry on firing.
I've seen it happen too- there were 2 hellfire heavies that I kept taking out inside the enemy base, but they just respawned and carried on shooting the battleship. They took it down with ease.
With a longer respawn this will not be as easy, do you not agree_
Think about it, if the entire enemy team swapped to hellfire and just blasted the battleship out of the sky, it would be pretty damn hard to stop them, especially as no sooner had you killed one mech and gotten maybe halfway through the next mech, the first mech has respawned. Talk about stalemating it_

If it was faster it would also mean less time spent gathering more time spent fighting in a match people are saying is slow enough as is. But it boils down to whether you put more importance on stopping the opponents from gathering or keeping up your own gathering.

It would as, in that situation the gathering rate is low enough that 10EU per mech is more worth it, so losing 1 is a bit hard to overcome. Maybe not "50 mins uphill climb", but a more annoying match, the point being that EU rates shouldn't be lower, as people want a faster game.

Like I said it would only be dragging it out if it was a known loss like when a team continually gains advantage, whereas it wouldn't be dragging on if it was equal footing most of the time.

I thought the post was saying snowballs made for more exciting gameplay from your PoV

Snowballing is continually gather advantage like a snowball rolling down a hill eventually it becomes a mountain and there's no stopping it so why bother trying.

The turret damage is laughably low, my team several times just ran into the enemy base and camped them because they decided to turtle and shoot at the ship, it's hard to do damage while dead

With longer respawn it would be harder to come back and push with all 6 people, as you now have more time to kill of people who spawn in. You could wait and coordinate a respawn but if you do you give the opponents time to gather, and you can't be attacking the ship. It also comes back to people wanting a faster game.

But you also don't factor in how easy it is to kill a mech who isn't firing at you and if they do they aren't shooting the approaching ship.

The comparison is getting a bit off too, LoL is defending something, Siege is preventing something that moves on its own.

[Beemann]

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:46 PM, said:

But there are multiple Nodes/Silos too which is reason enough to split up when necessary.

Except the multiple nodes don't split up the team. There's enough nodes for both teams and no reason to risk energy loss or fight what are potentially 2 shorthanded fights. There's also no reason to make a push at that part. If you lose that push, you're done

The AA on the other hand, is rather easily accessible, particularly for the 5 players on a given team that aren't topping off the energy bar

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:46 PM, said:

I can agree with the map favouritism but that's something the devs need to work out, whether they want unique maps that require several matches to stamp that out, or simpler perfectly symmetrical that doesn't favour. And I've 100% hated CS snowballing round system makes losing the first a GG out moment unless the other team completely stops playing.

Er... what_
There's plenty of push and pull over the plethora of rounds in a full CS match

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:46 PM, said:

Go ahead and point it out, I simplify because we're not talking in depth about Lol but the gist of any match high or low is creep farming followed by attacking the base (there can be more to it if you want to nit pick but seriously that's all that happens and is a hold over from the way Warcraft III worked with hero levels and IMO should be removed)

Er... no
The gamemode is BASED around vertical progression within a match. The strategy is to dominate and outlevel the other team but that doesn't simply denote farming faster. There's ganks and pushes and the dismantling of enemy defences. Your ultimate goal is to destroy an objective within the enemy base
There's a lot of push and pull that is necessary to the gamemode due to the forced spreading of players and the nature of victory

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:46 PM, said:

You assume those people are really choosing to play it safe, where I say it's because they just haven't play enough yet. Being defensive is a viable strategy, it's just not one I like.

Safe play is how high end competition works. If you watch how Quake and CS players play they don't come barrelling in. They push carefully and try to assert control over the area they're in (in Quake's case, this is the whole map. In CS' case, even in a losing round one can attempt to position oneself in a space or situation where they can quickly and efficiently take out enemy team members, to mitigate the extent by which their team is left behind in terms of resources

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:46 PM, said:

Which rules are you talking about here_ Like no gathering when a ship is out_ I do think that's a something that needs to be looked at.

In CTF the rules are very simple, but allow for many variations of viable and competitive play
You are FORCED to split due to the offensive and defensive needs being equal, and the goal is to take the flag back to your base, and roles involve either going for the flag, or defending your own.
There's not much for a new player to learn in that sense, but mastery is still a pretty big deal, and a rather distant goal, and spectators can easily pick out what's happening. It's also much easier to follow the action (though not as easy as a round-based single objective variant)

In Siege, you're dealing with a multi step process in which defensive play is heavily focused on. There are many variables to consider within each step (like the rate of energy gain, ship health, number of ships sent, energy capacity and AA control)
The more convoluted you make the gamemode, the more difficult it becomes to follow
New players have to learn dozens of new rules in order to play effectively, and spectators have no centralized viewpoint until the AA comes up (which still doesn't guarantee anything given that players can just shoot the ship)

[AsianJoyKiller]

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

That strat of least resistance is one tactic, not my choice, but a viable one, but it ends up making the game take longer. Any team that just sits back and shoots the ship leaves themselves open to just being picked off by the other team, and is how you need to deal with it.

Actually, it's quicker than skirmishing over EU nodes. You gather EU as fast as possible with as little interference.

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IMO there really only needs to be one mech gathering unless you killed off the other team, then get a second, which leaves 4-5/6 doing something more watchable. In team games there's always something less watchable to someone then the rest of the game, it's a bit subjective.

Every mech gathering is fully combat capable, so unless you send a near equal force to raid a team, there's no guarantee will come out on top.
And you'll be at a distinct disadvantage since the "least resistance" team (let's call them Team LR) is waiting for you on their chosen battleground.
And good sharpshooter and infil running interference will put you at a health disadvantage as you come to attack them.
And unless you destroy most of them, especially the ones carrying EU, while retaining a majority of your mechs, you have wasted time.
And when dealing with equally skilled teams, there's no guarantee that you'd come out on top, especially with enough mechs to take advantage of your skirmish.

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More emphasis on EU trees can be done with dev intervention, people simply need to go kill the other team. My ideal strat is to have 1 gatherer on your teams ideal node, then a 5v5 somewhere on the map defending/attacking, where the winner could prevent the other team from gathering and you can send a quick second/third gatherer for easy EU and a faster overall game.

I've explained why this is inefficient above, and you can see how it actually slows down the EU process.

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I don't think it should be a must to take the AA at all times, but I do think the AA does need to be fired a bit per ship. If you had to take the AA it limits strategy from taking AA or shooting the ship to just taking the AA.

The Battleships get progressively tougher as time goes on. Eventually you will need to take the AA.
It is inevitable.
All I'm proposing is to make AA required for all Battleships because the period where you can just shoot them down via mech is a waste of time and strategically boring.
It serves no purpose, as if it's some sort of EU gathering practice round.

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2 AA's wouldn't change much and would only prolong combat, each team would take one and try to take the other, one would get both but couldn't hold it, due to a 6v whatever you had at one AA and then they still outnumber the other AA and vice versa, little chance of being able to hold them, so each ship over all would have an AA firing on it and would be hard to make progress or remove viability of simply shooting it down.

Strategically, it's much more interesting.
You have to consider things like "If I send one mech to help make a push at AA2 so we can cap it, can we hold off long enough at AA1 for backup to arrive so we can push them here and cap both_"
Ideally you would have one mech at each to hold it, and everyone else on the team would float in between bolstering defenses where needed.
If the attackers try to send the entire team to take one AA silo, it means leaving the other open to attack their ship.
It becomes of matter of knowing when and where to strike and interesting tactics become involved.
You could feint a full attack at one silo, meaning they have to gather a near equal force to repel you, but once reinforcements arrive, you send off part of your team to overwhelm the other silo while tying things up at the original attack point.

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Any game you haven't played before will seem weird and nonsesical. Refer to my opening sentence on the times.

Find someone who knows little to nothing about Hawken.
Time how long it takes you to explain how Siege mode works, until they can understand it fully and recite it back to you.
Now how long did it take_ How easy was it_

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AsianJoyKiller, on October 31 2012 - 07:26 PM, said:

Snowballing isn't a good way. It just creates more downtime.
To speed things up, it's best to try and get rid of the activities that create downtime with little action, like destroying battleships from the spawn area, or uncontended EU tree gathering.

Things like that are the fault of those who don't attack the other team. I don't think it should be forced, if people make bad decisions then they have to live with a loss.

You don't want to force people to do things so they should be forced to do other things_
Besides, all I'm advocating is the reduction of pointless activities that needlessly extend how long the match takes and reduce the amount of fighting done.
Being able to shoot down ships using only mechs is pointless because you will eventually have to use AA to destroy them. Why not start that process earlier_

[Lithium03]

AsianJoyKiller, on October 31 2012 - 10:56 PM, said:

Lithium03, on October 31 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

That strat of least resistance is one tactic, not my choice, but a viable one, but it ends up making the game take longer. Any team that just sits back and shoots the ship leaves themselves open to just being picked off by the other team, and is how you need to deal with it.

Actually, it's quicker than skirmishing over EU nodes. You gather EU as fast as possible with as little interference.

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IMO there really only needs to be one mech gathering unless you killed off the other team, then get a second, which leaves 4-5/6 doing something more watchable. In team games there's always something less watchable to someone then the rest of the game, it's a bit subjective.

Every mech gathering is fully combat capable, so unless you send a near equal force to raid a team, there's no guarantee will come out on top.
And you'll be at a distinct disadvantage since the "least resistance" team (let's call them Team LR) is waiting for you on their chosen battleground.
And good sharpshooter and infil running interference will put you at a health disadvantage as you come to attack them.
And unless you destroy most of them, especially the ones carrying EU, while retaining a majority of your mechs, you have wasted time.
And when dealing with equally skilled teams, there's no guarantee that you'd come out on top, especially with enough mechs to take advantage of your skirmish.

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More emphasis on EU trees can be done with dev intervention, people simply need to go kill the other team. My ideal strat is to have 1 gatherer on your teams ideal node, then a 5v5 somewhere on the map defending/attacking, where the winner could prevent the other team from gathering and you can send a quick second/third gatherer for easy EU and a faster overall game.

I've explained why this is inefficient above, and you can see how it actually slows down the EU process.

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I don't think it should be a must to take the AA at all times, but I do think the AA does need to be fired a bit per ship. If you had to take the AA it limits strategy from taking AA or shooting the ship to just taking the AA.

The Battleships get progressively tougher as time goes on. Eventually you will need to take the AA.
It is inevitable.
All I'm proposing is to make AA required for all Battleships because the period where you can just shoot them down via mech is a waste of time and strategically boring.
It serves no purpose, as if it's some sort of EU gathering practice round.

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2 AA's wouldn't change much and would only prolong combat, each team would take one and try to take the other, one would get both but couldn't hold it, due to a 6v whatever you had at one AA and then they still outnumber the other AA and vice versa, little chance of being able to hold them, so each ship over all would have an AA firing on it and would be hard to make progress or remove viability of simply shooting it down.

Strategically, it's much more interesting.
You have to consider things like "If I send one mech to help make a push at AA2 so we can cap it, can we hold off long enough at AA1 for backup to arrive so we can push them here and cap both_"
Ideally you would have one mech at each to hold it, and everyone else on the team would float in between bolstering defenses where needed.
If the attackers try to send the entire team to take one AA silo, it means leaving the other open to attack their ship.
It becomes of matter of knowing when and where to strike and interesting tactics become involved.
You could feint a full attack at one silo, meaning they have to gather a near equal force to repel you, but once reinforcements arrive, you send off part of your team to overwhelm the other silo while tying things up at the original attack point.

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Any game you haven't played before will seem weird and nonsesical. Refer to my opening sentence on the times.

Find someone who knows little to nothing about Hawken.
Time how long it takes you to explain how Siege mode works, until they can understand it fully and recite it back to you.
Now how long did it take_ How easy was it_

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AsianJoyKiller, on October 31 2012 - 07:26 PM, said:

Snowballing isn't a good way. It just creates more downtime.
To speed things up, it's best to try and get rid of the activities that create downtime with little action, like destroying battleships from the spawn area, or uncontended EU tree gathering.

Things like that are the fault of those who don't attack the other team. I don't think it should be forced, if people make bad decisions then they have to live with a loss.

You don't want to force people to do things so they should be forced to do other things_
Besides, all I'm advocating is the reduction of pointless activities that needlessly extend how long the match takes and reduce the amount of fighting done.
Being able to shoot down ships using only mechs is pointless because you will eventually have to use AA to destroy them. Why not start that process earlier_

You still have your mech gathering at the same pace whether there's 5 other mechs watching it do so or not, so no change in speed there, but you can delay your opponents or even stop them, which is great benefit.
That first situation is a 2 on 5, I doubt even-skilled teams could have that much trouble, and once that's dealt with it's now 5 on 3, which still favours you. If they all stayed back trying for 6 v 5 you use the static defending nature of them to pick them off while you can move around or at least make returning the obtained EU as difficult as possible, explosive AoE would be effective here, and if they moved out to engage and not sit around, then it's 5v5 and even.
With anything you do regarding equally skilled teams there's never a guarantee of winning, that's what equally skilled means.

It could slow down your EU gathering process but the game overall ends faster due to the enemy having gathered more, a loss sucks but losses can happen with any strategy.


With that point you're implying the other team would just let their ship be shot down. As is, you can either shoot it down with the AA or with your own mechs, counters to that are to defend the AA or just go kill them. Removing the option of simply attacking the ship doesn't seem right as it removes 1 currently viable(at least for a few ships) strategy. There is a lot of strategically boring stuff (like turtling all 6 mechs on one node) but as you've said, it's viable and safe.
Even if you needed to use the AA what would you call having your ship shot down in that scenario_ Would you still call it a practice round_ If the enemy team can defend, in whatever way they want, it'll suck and can be seen as wasted time.

Here seems to be a bit odd as you're advocating trying to take more than 1 and relying on reading your opponents to keep it, but advocate only holding 1 gathering node at a time. Each case is holding one until either you: shoot down a ship, or gather enough EU.

Umm ok. Gather energy to launch a suicidal ship at the enemy, you have the option of shooting it down via AA or yourselves too. Anything I missed_ Besides I did say any game wouldn't make sense to someone who didn't know anything about it.

That's just twisting words, YES you should go kill the enemy before they kill you(or your ship) it's the name of the game type. You're imply being able to shoot down the ship is needlessly prolonging the game, would you rather make it invincible and have no AA to deal with_ Simply gathering and launching ships (and conversely preventing the enemy from doing the same)_

I'm saying it's not pointless, because you can just go kill them, they can't shoot the ship down if they're fighting you or better yet, dead. I've done this with every team who ignores the AA, and it's worked almost every time.


We really need to boil this down to a few points >.> my scroll bar is starting to hate me
Plus we're basically just discussing strategy here, in a game that's likely to change quite a bit from now to release. Seems a bit silly as we can't even test strategy properly without good premade teams and stable servers.

[AsianJoyKiller]

Lithium03, on November 01 2012 - 12:12 AM, said:

You still have your mech gathering at the same pace whether there's 5 other mechs watching it do so or not, so no change in speed there, but you can delay your opponents or even stop them, which is great benefit.
That first situation is a 2 on 5, I doubt even-skilled teams could have that much trouble, and once that's dealt with it's now 5 on 3, which still favours you. If they all stayed back trying for 6 v 5 you use the static defending nature of them to pick them off while you can move around or at least make returning the obtained EU as difficult as possible, explosive AoE would be effective here, and if they moved out to engage and not sit around, then it's 5v5 and even.
With anything you do regarding equally skilled teams there's never a guarantee of winning, that's what equally skilled means.

Actually, the first situation isn't a 2 on 5. It's 5 people being harassed by 2 people who will be falling back as needed so by the time you reach the mechs doing the gathering, it's now a 6v5 with the 5 at a health disadvantage.
They either have to keep moving in while some of them are missing health, wait for their injured members to repair giving time for the LR Team to leave with what they have or move in with only a partial group while the other members repair to join later, and with the element of surprise gone, that would end up badly.

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It could slow down your EU gathering process but the game overall ends faster due to the enemy having gathered more, a loss sucks but losses can happen with any strategy.

It slows down everyones EU gathering. You may force the LR Team mechs to go away without being filled up, but they all be carrying more overall than your 1 mech. If the LR Team travels as a group, there's no way you can take all 3 or 4 transports down before they make it to base and when they come to take a node, they'll always have a numbers advantage.

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With that point you're implying the other team would just let their ship be shot down. As is, you can either shoot it down with the AA or with your own mechs, counters to that are to defend the AA or just go kill them. Removing the option of simply attacking the ship doesn't seem right as it removes 1 currently viable(at least for a few ships) strategy. There is a lot of strategically boring stuff (like turtling all 6 mechs on one node) but as you've said, it's viable and safe.
Even if you needed to use the AA what would you call having your ship shot down in that scenario_ Would you still call it a practice round_ If the enemy team can defend, in whatever way they want, it'll suck and can be seen as wasted time.

This all allows for battles of attrition that just slow down the game.
With decent teams, it's guaranteed that the first few ships will go down. Heck, that even happens in pub games at the very moment if the teams are relatively on equal terms.
I'm saying, beef up the initial battleships to require AA right away in order to bring them down.
This would vastly cuts down on match time and gets rid of dumb attrition tactics like sitting at base shooting down the battleship.

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Here seems to be a bit odd as you're advocating trying to take more than 1 and relying on reading your opponents to keep it, but advocate only holding 1 gathering node at a time. Each case is holding one until either you: shoot down a ship, or gather enough EU.

This makes no sense. You're going to have to clarify what you're referring to.

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Umm ok. Gather energy to launch a suicidal ship at the enemy, you have the option of shooting it down via AA or yourselves too. Anything I missed_ Besides I did say any game wouldn't make sense to someone who didn't know anything about it.

Did you actually do what I said and try to teach it to another person_
If you were trying to teach me, here's questions I would have:
- How do you gather energy_
- Why are you launching a suicidal ship_
- What does the ship do_
- What's the difference between shooting it down by yourself or with AA_
- Why bother with AA if you can shoot it down yourself_
- How do you win_

And depending on how you answer, more questions could easily come up later.

When you have a gametype like CTF or Control (Missile Assault) they're easy to explain quickly and it's easy for unfamiliar watchers to understand what's going on.
That's part of a good esports gametype. Accessibility for those unfamiliar with the gametype so they understand what's going on.
Even when you have variants of CTF, it's pretty easy to see what's going on.
With Siege there's so many variables that things can quickly become confusing for the uninitiated. And when you don't know what's going on, what's the point of watching_

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That's just twisting words, YES you should go kill the enemy before they kill you(or your ship) it's the name of the game type. You're imply being able to shoot down the ship is needlessly prolonging the game, would you rather make it invincible and have no AA to deal with_ Simply gathering and launching ships (and conversely preventing the enemy from doing the same)_

That's because it is needlessly prolonging the game.
When you have 2 competent, equally skilled teams, the ability to kill battleships solely from mech fire means that at least 2 ships will go down without ever being in any real danger.
Why fight for the AA when you can hunker down near your base and make the enemy come to you and put themselves at a large disadvantage if they want to stop you_
It means that nearly every single competitive game between equally skilled teams would essentially be waiting 10-20 minutes for the battleships that can't be taken down without AA start to spawn.
Why not cut all that wasted time out and start at the point where dumb attrition tactics aren't viable you need to capture/hold the AA to win_ (Which is vastly more interesting to watch.)

And by the way, having invincible ships, no AA and only resource gathering is essentially what Missile Assault is.
I'm not suggesting that at all.

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I'm saying it's not pointless, because you can just go kill them, they can't shoot the ship down if they're fighting you or better yet, dead. I've done this with every team who ignores the AA, and it's worked almost every time.

You want to force fights for EU, but you don't want to force fights for the AA.
Do you see what I'm getting at here_

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We really need to boil this down to a few points >.> my scroll bar is starting to hate me
Plus we're basically just discussing strategy here, in a game that's likely to change quite a bit from now to release. Seems a bit silly as we can't even test strategy properly without good premade teams and stable servers.

Okay, here's a scrollbar friendly summary of what I'm trying to get through.
I want to alter Siege mode mechanics so that it promotes more dynamic action, reward aggressive actions better and that matches last a reasonable amount of time.
I want to get rid of or change mechanics that make turtling, attrition tactics unviable and make it so fighting for the AA isn't a simple matter of TDM focused on one single area.