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SOE shows off PlanetSide 2's Galaxy transport
Another day, another PlanetSide 2 vehicle reveal. The latest update from Sony Online Entertainment features the venerable Galaxy, and if that doesn't quicken your pulse a little bit, you must've missed the original PlanetSide. The Galaxy is a heavily armored troop transport designed to "hot drop" 12 soldiers into the heart of enemy territory. What's a hot drop? It's basically the game's sci-fi twist on the traditional parachute, and SOE says that it "automatically encapsulates any soldier or MAX unit that bails out with a protective barrier that slows their fall." Galaxies are also sturdy enough to serve as mobile infantry bases after landing, and the ships feature respawn tubes, equipment terminals, and four weapon systems that may be operated on the ground.
EVE Evolved: Force projection and jump bridges
When EVE Online's Dominion expansion launched, we expected to see large empires contract into smaller areas of space and smaller entities move in to fill in the gaps. High sovereignty maintenance fees were meant to keep alliances from claiming systems they didn't intend to fully use, and smaller territories were meant to localise wars to only an alliance's immediate neighbours. Unfortunately, almost the exact opposite happened. Large alliances continued to group together into massive mega-coalitions, collectively owning huge regions of space and preventing smaller organisations from staking a claim on their own. Dominion failed to achieve its stated goals, and in the years since its release CCP has been reluctant or unable to revisit the sovereignty mechanics Dominion overhauled. In that time, the face of EVE's nullsec warfare has changed drastically, with most large alliances now flaunting dozens of once-rare supercarriers and titans. Starbase jump bridge networks, titan jump portals and jump-drive enabled ships allow alliances to project force over immense distances, letting them support a war on the other side of the map. With the recent announcement of changes coming to jump bridges, the force projection debate has once again taken center stage in forums and blogs. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the problems associated with force projection, examine the jump bridge changes and weigh in on the debate.
