Originally Posted by jepzilla

This is simply wrong. Titan mode is not tactically broken, it is strategically much more complicated. What's broken about it is that it's perhaps too complex, because I'm continuously amazed at the tactical blunders I see people make.

When you are silo hopping, all you're doing is rapidly firing missiles at both Titans at equal rates. Silo hopping is one of the things that makes Titan games suck.



It disappoints me that Titan mode isn't too popular on TG, since it's something that I would have hoped TG would excell at. On the other hand, the lag sucks.

Let me try to explain this again.

Reasons why Titan mode is worse than Conquest, from a tactical point of view:

Fast paced "spawn anywhere" game mode that encourages arcade play:

WARNING: satirical.

No tickets. My game life is worth nothing, so there is no penalty to dying. In fact, why bother even using squad transportation? What's that CO? You want us to to attack that silo on the other side of the map? Sure, everyone suicide and respawn on our Titan. Why not, right? Oh crap, the transport isn't there. Oh hey, no problem, it looks like we got a friendly transport in that area anyway. Everyone just suicide again and respawn on it, since you can do that in Titan mode.

You know what, lets not even bother, lets just wait for our own transport, since in Titan mode there is two that spawn on the titan deck and both of their respawn times are decreased so that there is almost always one available. Hey guys, it looks like the commander moved our titan a bit and we now have access to 3 out of 5 silos using the titan pods which can reach rediculous distances. This means if we get wiped out, not only did we not loose any tickets or hurt our team in any way, but we can literally be attacking that same silo again in 20 seconds, NONSTOP! Oh and hey, did I mention there is never any front or expected direction of attack? Because we can pod ANYWHERE around the silo! P.S. I can also spawn on any friendly APC, anywhere!

Screw that, lets just get in the Titan guns and spam their arty barrage bullets that reload every 6 seconds or so. Don't worry if you hit friendlies though, because there are no tickets! HAHA! Oh crap, someone is manning the AA down there and blew up my titan gun! No worries, 4 seconds of repair will instantly bring it back to full functional status! That person has to stay in the AA indefinitely shooting the SAME TURRET (any way to kill the repairing engineer? Nope!) to have any hope of slowing down the titan gun spam.

Silo missle firing behavior

DUMB. Thats the short version. Here's the longer one. A squad that successfully defends a silo contributes 1 missle toward the enemy titan every 2 minutes. This is fine, EXCEPT... an ATTACKING squad needs only successfully flip a silo to get it to fire! Wait... what? So that means that even though my squad repelled 3 separate 6 man (1 squad) attempts for the silo, that if they capture it on the fourth (remember the attacks come every 20- 30 seconds because you can spawn/pod anywhere) they've completely negated my 3 initial successes and achieved the same result as my awesome defense? Yup! Oh, and lets say the enemy gets it before the 2 minute timer is up, they got the instant fire and your squad accomplished absolutely nothing! But, isn't the kill advantage conferred to a well prepped squad on defense over any incoming attackers going to count for something? Nope, no tickets my friend! It costs the attacking team NOTHING to zerg a silo, sans plan, over and over again until they cap it. No penalty, only the chance for instant missle firing success! In fact, a winning titan strategy is to actually send two squads at one silo so they are able to beat down the defense and cap the silo quicker, gaining you a fast missle fire, then moving on and doubling up on the next silo defense!

There's more! Titan mode is capped at 48 players (supported), this means you probably only have 3 full squads. I'm going to assume here the other 6 guys are eaten up being the CO, gunship, titan guns, etc. Ok, but there are 5 silos on titan maps. On average, you are going to have 2 fully un-defended silos at any given time. A smart CO has a squad in transport simply flying around constantly flipping these undefended silos wherever they be, this squad is averaging MUCH more than 1 missle per 2 minutes, which is the best a successfully defending squad can hope for! End result of pre sheilds down tactics: ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. Don't stop attacking, leverage the fluid spawn capability of Titan mode to your advantage to keep the pressure on. NO REASON TO DEFEND.

Red alert, sheilds down. Titan end game.

I'll make this short and to the point. The design of the titan makes attacking it an extremely dumb move, tactically. One coordinated squad, holed in any corridor they choose, can completely shut down the entire enemy team from getting to the titan core. Unlike silo defense, defenders of the titan have an OVERWHELMING advantage over attackers which even SUPERIOR NUMBERS have almost no chance of overcoming. Awesome. What's this mean for tactics though?

Simple, put one squad on defense of the titan, assuring yourself the enemy has no chance of blowing it from the inside, then, using your remaining squads, refer to the above paragraphs regarding how to win through missle silo domination. God help the other team if more than a few guys are defending their titan, this just gives you a power play in the silo war. This removes the titan from the game completely. Back to same ol conquest capture the flag, except this time with less defense and FULL ON SPAWN ANYWHERE ATTAAAKKKKKK.

Conclusion

Titan mode is fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it the first couple times I played it. The experience of podding up to the titan with the rest of my squad and having a fight inside a big ship was different and engaging. As I learned the rules of the mode, I realized how tactically broken it is, and how futile and silly the game becomes if you have an organized enemy. Since pub server games are unorganized, initially I still had a fun time with the mode. As APM spam began to become a prominent titan defense tactic though, the fun level started to decline and finally I just gave up.

The underlying fun of the mode is inheritantly mindless. Smart defensive tactics don't have as much of a positive effect as they should and your efforts don't seem to have much impact on actually winning the round. As Jep mentioned, holding the majority of the silos for the majority of the time doesn't really mean anything, it's how fast you can make them change hands. I feel this isn't a good fit for me, as a tactical gamer.

That being said, I still wouldn't mind a titan map being rotated in every 5 maps or so, if only for variety.