Map Control Mechanics

This page describes in-depth the mechanics behind the main feature of the Frontline game mode: Map Control

Areas Value

At the very beginning of this post i talked about "more global objectives" and "status quo removal",and here we are. This idea is without doubt the most experimental of them all but also perhaps the one with the most potential, note that it isn't part of the "core" of the Frontline mode (despite it being what makes the "Frontline" name really relevant) and thus the Frontline mode could operate without it just by changing how much tickets a team loses by controlling less supply bases.

Without further delay, here we go:

Bottom Team

Areas value for the bottom team (zoom to remove weird graphical bug)

Top Team

Areas value for the top team (zoom to remove weird graphical bug)

Impact For Each Areas Value

Value	Tickets lost by enemy team	Interval of tickets loss
Green	5	45 seconds
Yellow	10	30 seconds
Orange	25	15 seconds
Red	100	15 seconds

These values might need to be changed dramatically for it to work as intended

Controlling any area will make the opposite team lose tickets on a regular interval, which means that controlling the majority of the map's areas will make the opposite team lose tickets faster than yours (hence the "more global objectives", the main objective actually being map control).

Note that this is what the server sees, but the player doesn't have access to that information (they don't even have access to the areas grid in the first place), here's how it works:

• To "capture" an area, a team needs to have at least 1 friendly tank continuously for 15 seconds AND there must be no enemy tank in it (seen or not)

• The player doesn't know where an area starts and ends, as pointed out it's only to make calculations easier server-side (though the grid might need to be smaller for more accuracy)

• However they have a rough estimate of the "controlled" parts with the frontline

• If an hostile tank enters an area under friendly control, the area becomes neutral and falls under enemy control if the capture conditions are met

• If the said hostile tank is not marked by a light tank or shot at while in the area (so it hasn't been "seen"), then the friendly frontline does NOT get recalculated and redrawn

• The friendly frontline gets recalculated and redrawn only if an hostile vehicle is "seen" within an area that was supposed to be under friendly control

Extrapolating the areas controlled by the enemy team based on how much tickets your team loses would also be pretty hard considering the irregular intervals, as such it doesn't really give away any more information than GRB

However this mechanic introduces a major issue: How do the players know all of that without reading this awfully long post?

Players shouldn't have to read a manual to know how to win, the game should leave hints if it doesn't state clearly the objectives

Offensive Line Suggestion

To address the issue mentioned above, here comes the offensive line suggestion:

Base Idea

The base idea (where the white line is the offensive line suggestion)

Player View

What the player sees

This image uses a perhaps more intuitive minimap that assumes uncontrolled territory as hostile or neutral instead of neutral or hostile

The offensive line suggestion is, as in the name, a suggestion to the whole team. It calculates what areas have the highest values compared to the other adjacent areas and then draws an offensive line showing to the team the most important adjacents parts to control. It is just for informative purposes and intuitivity, how the team achieve this goal is up to them. The offensive line will adapt as the team progresses.