Intro:
We all like huge battles with many players. Unfortunately the PS3 and network limitations limit the maximum amount of players in a single match.


[SUGGESTION:]
For grandest planetary objective, have multiple matches opening at same timer. The exact match starting time can be very same, or stepped a bit.
The different maps have interaction on very limited way, defined by objective statuses.

The interaction can be soft to give advantage to either side, or hard making it mandatory to succeed on one map to let friends proceed on other map at the same time.
At simplest, it could be that attackers have to win two of three matches to win the planetary command center - very easy to program.


This would make it feel that there's something happening beyond this battlefield, multiple battles on multiple fronts. Remember Return of the Jedi's epic final battle?
More interestingly, this would make it possible to have truly epic offensive while going around the technological limitations.
Having 24, 48 or even 96 (hardly never get there) on one side is not going to be enough as we're gonna have corps or alliances with thousands of players with hundreds online at a given time.
This gives possibility to many corp members to get onto important fight, not just the cadre.



Examples of soft objectives:
"hold that XL AA battery and opposing MCC takes more damage""
"Capture that shield generator and remove WP requirement penalty of +300% generated by it"
"Hold that objective and friends on main map gonna have to hold one less objective"
"Hold that airfield/artillery installation and your side is gonna have off-map support (lol)"
"Hack that link station and district satellite becomes connectable"


Examples of hard objectives:
"Hack that console and draw bridge lowers on other map"
"Hack consoles and per hacked console a target on other map becomes destructible (or just loses it's resists)"
"Hack stuff and command bunker becomes accesible"
"Destroy power plant to disable energy gates"
"hold that XL web battery and opposing MCC cannot go any further to dock"
"Destroy or capture orbital artillery to give Eve fleet ability to stay in orbit" =)


Note: If someone points that small organisations would be discriminated, remember that Dust corps are mercs who are fighting for money. Just hire someone for that side objective!

If you have not seen it I highly suggest taking a look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=pNmCRti9dFM#t=1316s

The whole thing is really awesome, but I linked directly to the section maybe most interesting to this discussion.

Having the battles going on simultaneously might be a bit much, but then again maybe not for super critical SI. We do want to move towards this kind of thing though where multiple fights are required to take a district, each fight is on a different level, and winning or losing one battle has an effect on the next.

That is what we are working towards, and plans change, but for now we are focusing on the basics.

Mostly I just wanted to share that video because I think it gives a good idea of where we are trying to go.

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However, at this stage, with Planetary Conquest to be open to even small corps, requiring multiple full teams to take an objective would be severely unfair to the 'little' guys.

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