As to the first part, the game would never work like that. The reason they allowed the missles to damage the hull was to avoid titan stalemates. They reasoned, and rightfully so, that if the teams placed a heavy amount of their assets on the titan in defense, that it would be virtually impossible to break through it. A smart commander would realize this and send some of his troops to cap a majority of the silos and win the game that way. The idea works and allows for deeper gameplay.

The problem, as I see it, is that with the points system as it is, titan defenders seem to get a ridiculous amount of points defending vs attacking. On most servers it seems the majority of the team just goes heavy defense, not really caring if they loose all the silos below.

On a TG server we still fight over the silos - but a slightly coordinated team will split its squads between defending the titan and attacking the silos.

In fact, the best strategy seems to be to just have one squad foxhole themselves in one corridor, virtually making it impregnable, and sending ALL remaining forces to cap and hold silos. If the enemy bothers to even send one squad to attack the titan (they will if they don't have a commander) you have an automatic power play in the silo war.

The only benefit to attacking the titan seems to be in hail mary comeback situations or you are winning by so much you might as well just try and get it over with.

Titan mode is all about player resource management.

Originally Posted by Shiner

This is one reason many of us argued heavily for a change to the missle silos from a damage based weapon to an EMP that only affected the shields. Thus a direct assualt on the titan would be required for destruction, and you don't have these nearly pointless silo hoping when 1/2 to 2/3 of the team is up in a titan.

[SOAP BOX]

I personally advocated a further modification simulating a shield generator whereby the shields slowly regenerate over time. The trick being that once they go down to 0% generator hardpoints are considered destroyed and must be repaired before they start charging again. In my mind this would require an engineer repairing control panels inside (perhaps placed at four corners of the titan) and a generator component on the outside (top). Once repaired a warning is issued that the generator is restarting and a 60 second count-down begins before the shields turn back on at ~40%. Any attackers still inside when the shields return are cut-off without reinforcements and must complete the destruction of the core, by spawning on the SL (hope he didn't place the SL beacon on the titan roof).

The way I would see this playing out... you control the silos EMP missles which destroy the shield generator. Your team must now board the titan to assualt the core. The defending team must both control access to the consoles and core, but can also divert a squad to repair the inside and outside generator components to thwart the attack. The attackers will obviously want to prevent the titans shields from being repaired so must decide whether to rush the core or assign a squad to defend the destroyed shield consoles on the enemy titan. As long as they defend the shield consoles the silos are irrelevant to the attack. Of course, they must still provide for defence on their own titan and a method to board the enemy titan.

Could this turn into a struggle where the game shifts from the titans to the ground and back and forth a few times? I sure hope it would.