DrJOnes666

I'm not sure about this one.
I've played a few games where we would defend silos and it worked pretty well. Suer, it's more chaotic than Conquest, but the feeling is quite good when you are able to push back invasions.

I like a Ttian game from time to time. It breaks the repetition of always playing Conquest mode...

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RedForman

I agree there. The Titan nights I've attended were a blast too. Actually had some very hectic and exciting silo defenses I've never had on pubbies. Usually there you end up going back and forth to different silos and there no fighting to even cap them.

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Revark

Not true to my knowledge. I play on a server that is conquest/titan mix. It doesnt boot everyone when it switches. Must be some script they use.

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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.

Relmar

Yeah that's a big one for me. Until I upgrade to a new core2duo system, I have to pretty much set it to blocks and circles for it to not lag when fighting on a titan. Still running on an old Athlon XP 2800+ system. Geforce 6800 GT with 2gigs ram, tho it's mostly a processor issue on Titan mode. Runs just fine in conquest and titan ground fighting.

Revark

Your machine is about the same as mine. I might have you beat by a bit. I also have the graphics turned down to "blocks and circles". I try to keep my titan play time to the ground attack as well.

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Zoopy_T

Most lag comes from when the titans are parked within podding distance of eachother (or at least for me, I have all my settings on high). All we need is some competant commanders, or possibly a rule not to move the titans at all.

Zoraster

One of the great things about TG's servers is that it gets progressively "more" TG as the day goes on. After the server gets seeded with regulars, pubbies come in and there's a slow trickle of TGers that come in. But as the day goes on, the TGers become a bigger and bigger percent of the 48.

I think you run a danger if you make it mixed of having the conquest TGers leaving once it gets to a Titan map. I realize the 4:1 ratio was my idea, and I think it's intriguing, but I don't want to jeopardize what is, frankly, an awesome thing. Making the other server a mixed server would be good, but except designated nights, I think you're going to find few TGers playing on there because TG sponsors like to play with other TGers, and the conquest server will be more populated with TGers than the mixed one.

In reality, I think the best solution is just to continue having Titan nights, or possibly even better, have the 4:1 ratio on one day a week. I think that'd be a reasonable compromise, and it'd let everyone have a great look at it.

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Titan mode lends itself less to squad based teamwork and more to teamwide teamwork. Squads of 3 and 4 are far more effective in Titan than having 6 person squads because you need to spread yourself pretty thin in Titan mode... people can get to any silo without much trouble due to all the spawn points and podding options, so holding choke points and so on becomes less strategically viable, and being able to cover the most ground becomes absolutely essential.

Then when the shields are down, the troops have to be spread even thinner. 3-6 defending (1 or 2 squads), 3 attacking (a squad) and the rest on silos works pretty effectively because no matter how many troops a team throws at a titan, 6 people can hold them off if they're effective, 3 people attacking will almost certainly cause the other team to overcompensate on defense leaving the majority of your team to capture silos and ultimately win.

But that's not really the point of this post... the point is to decide whether this type of playstyle really makes it more fun? I say no. The squad based teamwork that makes TG so fun is lessened considerably by Titan mode. I think Titan mode makes a nice change once in a while, but I think the bread and butter for TG will remain conquest mode -- certainly until EA fixes the lag issues, but even beyond that.
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Sorry for the lengthy post, but I'd say either keep the conquest server completely conquest, or make it mixed one day of the week (maybe Friday, Saturday or Sunday).

BHack

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.

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Revark

This is why I made this thread. If nothing else just for a bit of variety.

Thought I do want to play with/against other TGers so anything that may hamper this would be negative IMO.

*shrug*

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Zoraster

This sums it up pretty well.

Zoopy_T

I dislike Conquest more because winning is based on deaths. Your team can be doing better then the enemy, i.e: holding more flags, but if your team suffers more deaths you lose. It's not really a good reflection of the overall battle.

For example: Your team has all but on flag, after a huge fight for it the last flag is neutral. The enemy team is completely neutralized (i.e: all dead, can't respawn do to the flag being neutral). Your team has one ticket left, you walk into a stray APM mine and die. The result? Your team loses. Even though you were going to have all the flags and there was absolutely no enemies on the map, your team still loses.

But in titan you win or lose as a result of a ship blowing up. It's a realistic reflection on the battle as a whole.

I really hate the whole ticket system (probably the reason I stoped playing Company of Heroes). I would rather have it so that if your tickets reach 0, no one who is dead can spawn in (no reinforcments, you have to clear out the rest of the army that is alive after the zero tickets is reached).

::EDIT::
I don't hate Conquest, this is just my reason for liking titan over conquest. Probably due to the lack of ticket bleed in most conquest maps.

Arf

Titan is not Conquest mode. Conquest mode is won by dealing more damage to the enemy army then they do to you while Titan is won by conquering and holding the most territory. Just because strategies that worked in Conquest don't work in Titan doesn't mean it's tacticaly flawed.

For example if you're under the Titan getting pummeled by it's guns and having the enemy dropping on you you aren't helping your team. They're going to retake that flag and negate all your effort.

I'd post more but there's a blizzard hitting so I've got to go.

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Gillespie

Seriously, the first part of the Titan match plays exactly like a Conquest server. It's when the shields come down that the match gets interesting. The silos work the same as flags, and the Titan works as a movable spawn with direct artillery fire in the form of Titan guns.

- Stay on the ground and capture silos?
- Defend your Titan from enemy incursions?
- Go hell-bent and try to destroy the enemy's reactor core?

Conquest is crap compared to the experience you get from a fluid attack upon an enemy Titan. Or the "last stand" defense you successfully pull off in your breached reactor room. Or simply having other squads defend while ground squads continue the silo effort, destroying the Titan without ever stepping foot on it.

Now compare experiences like that to the stupidity of a map like Camp Gibraltar, where you can successfully defend the map at the chokepoint Toll Station and hold the PAC forces at bay from capturing either the Toll Station or any of the rear flags... but still be grinded down into losing the match because of your team getting hammered into crap. I think to myself, "What the hell did I just spend 30 - 45 minutes doing?"

I prefer the central objective of "destroy enemy Titan".

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