11-10-2009, 02:45 PM
If you really want battle lines, I would try to do it via mobile spawns, ranged attack, implementation of bonuses for being in cover and keeping movement speeds low.
Planetside almost had this with the implementation of the BFR. It was a great idea which they ruined with the flying BFR, so let's pretend flying BFRs didn't exist.
The BFR was super hard to kill, very slow and required infantry support because it was much better at killing enemy vehicles than enemy infantry. If 5 BFRs encountered 5 enemy BFRs, you couldn't just "go around them" or charge into them. BFRs got a big defensive bonus by crouching so they'd crouch and trade fire across the field.
This created battle lines. Infantry would bring up mobile spawns to support the BFRs and since mobile spawns had to be spread out to function, this tended to spread out the infantry. Maybe you spawn at mobile spawn #1 but in the course of combat you wandered closer to mobile spawn #2, so when you die you resurrect over there. People get spread out across the line due to the multiple mobile spawns.
I would think you could do this in an RPG simply with the mobile spawn idea. Behind each of your rectangles in the picture would be another mobile spawn, slowly advancing towards the enemy fort, or towards the enemy's own mobile spawn line. (The role of the BFR was basically to prevent "enemy cavalry", aka vehicles, from swooping in to destroy the mobile spawn. If your game has cavalry, you'll need some equivalent to the BFR to allow these mobile spawns to work correctly without simply forcing defenders to clump around them.)
Planetside almost had this with the implementation of the BFR. It was a great idea which they ruined with the flying BFR, so let's pretend flying BFRs didn't exist.
The BFR was super hard to kill, very slow and required infantry support because it was much better at killing enemy vehicles than enemy infantry. If 5 BFRs encountered 5 enemy BFRs, you couldn't just "go around them" or charge into them. BFRs got a big defensive bonus by crouching so they'd crouch and trade fire across the field.
This created battle lines. Infantry would bring up mobile spawns to support the BFRs and since mobile spawns had to be spread out to function, this tended to spread out the infantry. Maybe you spawn at mobile spawn #1 but in the course of combat you wandered closer to mobile spawn #2, so when you die you resurrect over there. People get spread out across the line due to the multiple mobile spawns.
I would think you could do this in an RPG simply with the mobile spawn idea. Behind each of your rectangles in the picture would be another mobile spawn, slowly advancing towards the enemy fort, or towards the enemy's own mobile spawn line. (The role of the BFR was basically to prevent "enemy cavalry", aka vehicles, from swooping in to destroy the mobile spawn. If your game has cavalry, you'll need some equivalent to the BFR to allow these mobile spawns to work correctly without simply forcing defenders to clump around them.)