Today CCP released the anticipated dev blog regarding the Planetary Conquest (PC) 2.0 revamp to arrive with the Warlords 1.2 patch. It lays out key design principles for PC and explains how it will meet those design goals with the upcoming patch. CCP’s biggest hope is to reinvigorate participation in DUST 514 Planetary Conquest without running into to the rampant exploits present in previous iterations of PC.
The biggest changes are the addition of Command Points, District Kredits, and ISK generation. Command Points will be generated by corporation members completing daily missions which can then be spent to accomplish actions such as selling and moving clones, changing surface infrastructure, changing reinforcement times, and attacking districts. The selling of district clones via Command Points will return ISK generation to PC along with a new currency called District Kredits. This new currency will be able to be used to purchase special gear exclusive to the new District Market that will be created. District Kredits can also be earning in PC battles and will be used a tool to curtail ringers in PC battles by only giving DKs to members of the attacking and defending corporations. One of the biggest advantages to the introduction of Command Points will be their use to lower the barrier to entry into PC via Clone Starter Packs. The price of these packs has already been reduced to 10 million ISK, but this may be reduced even further to even no ISK cost with the cost replaced by a relatively high CP cost. There is also hope that these CP purchased clone packs will foster a raiding culture that uses clone starter packs in order to make a profit using the current keep-what-you-kill ISK rewards present in PC. Specific numbers regarding Command Point generation and the CP cost for various PC actions was noticeably missing from the blog.
Lastly CCP announced that the often requested feature of team deploy will finally be implemented. When creating a squad in squad finder you will now have the option of a Fireteam (four players), Squad (eight players), or Platoon (sixteen players). What game modes these new squads can deploy to will be restricted in that Platoons will only be allowed in PC battles, Squads will be only allowed in Faction Warfare and PC battles, and Fireteams will be allowed in all game modes. In effect this will reduce squad size in public matches from six down to four. The hope is that this will give the public match maker some much needed wiggle room to create more evenly matched battles.
