Base captures

What a base capture is

Without base captures, the faction climbs the tier ladder the moment its balance reaches the next rung. A base capture zone puts a fight in the way of one of those rungs: an enemy base on your map that has to be taken before the faction may rise into the tier it names.

When the balance reaches that tier, the rise is held. The faction stays on the tier below, everyone on the server is told, and the director stops placing new objectives. The ones already live run out normally and still pay. Once none are left, a single objective goes down at the base: Capture enemy base, a Clear Area fought over the base’s ground.

• Capturing it raises the tier, pays the capture reward on top, and builds the forward operating base (FOB) recorded with the zone.
• Failing it, or letting it run out of time, costs the faction a share of the held tier’s requirement. The balance ends below the held rung, so the faction has to earn that rung again before the capture comes back.

Each zone unlocks one tier, from 2 to 8, and a tier has at most one zone. A tier with no zone rises as it always does. A map with no base capture zones behaves exactly as it would without this feature.

How the hold works

While a rise is held, the balance keeps moving but cannot reach the rung after the held one. Winning the capture can never take the faction up two tiers at once. If the balance has drained below the held rung while the capture was running, winning it lifts the balance back onto that rung, so the tier and the balance agree.

The capture has 24 hours on the map. The clock runs only while the capture is actually on the map. A narrative op takes it off and stops the clock, and so does a restart. When it comes back it has the time it had left. With m_bPersistScore on, the hold and the time left survive a restart along with the balance.

A failed capture never costs the tier the faction already holds. The charge stops at the current tier’s own rung.

A rise is only held where the faction may rise at all. In combat ops that means the tier band allows it — /atg combat rise — and a locked band holds nothing because it lets nothing rise. During a narrative op the band is lifted, and a payout from the Game Masters running it crosses a rung as it would without base captures. See Narrative ops.

Two things let a hold go:

• A Game Master sets the tier from the faction’s Scenario Tier control. The hold is lifted, whichever way the tier moves. See Tiers and gear.
• The faction falls a tier below the one it was holding at. The hold is dropped.

/atg status reports a held rise and the time left on its clock.

How hard the capture is

The capture is defended by several ordinary garrisons spread across the base’s ground, drawn from your garrison profiles like any objective’s. By default it takes as many garrisons as the server keeps objectives live, and never fewer than two, so it is harder than an ordinary objective even on a server running one objective at a time. A zone can name its own number instead.

Ordinary objectives are never placed inside a base capture zone’s ground.

Standing garrisons

A base capture zone is kept manned by default. While the faction is below the zone’s tier, the base holds one ordinary garrison, so the ground is defended before the capture is ever placed. Players who go and look at it early find somebody home.

• The garrison is only on the ground while somebody is near. It is placed when a player comes within the civilian spawn distance of the base’s ground, and taken away once every player is past the civilian despawn distance. Those are m_fCivilianSpawnDistanceM and m_fCivilianDespawnDistanceM on Civilians.
• It calls for reinforcements like an objective’s garrison, but without the growing gap between waves.
• It pays nothing and completes nothing. It takes no objective slot, and the wind-down before a capture does not wait for it.
• When the capture is placed, the standing garrison becomes one of its garrisons. Nothing on the ground changes as the capture appears.
• It stands down with everything else when a narrative op begins, and comes back once objectives are being placed again.

Untick Keep manned on a zone to leave its base empty until the capture is placed.

The forward operating base

The FOB is whatever you author inside the zone’s FOB ring: walls, an arsenal, a spawn point, vehicle pads. It is recorded as prefabs and positions rather than kept in the world, so it is absent until the faction holds the zone’s tier and is put down again on its own after a restart. If the tier falls below the zone’s again, the FOB is taken down, and a vehicle standing on one of its pads goes with it.

When the FOB is due, players standing inside its ring are told to clear the area, and it goes up once nobody is left inside. Everyone is told when it is up. A spawn point in the FOB is named after its base.

Nothing a FOB entity was doing is kept between builds. An arsenal comes back with its prefab’s own stock.

A vehicle pad in a FOB keeps its labels, so it stocks the same role every time. See Vehicle pads.

Setting up a base capture in game

You need a Game Master role, and ATG Commands loaded ahead of ATG Scenario for the save command, exactly as for objective zones.

1. Open the Game Master content browser and place Base capture zone (under Systems) at the enemy base. Two rings appear: grey for the base’s ground, yellow for the FOB.

2. Select it and open Edit Attributes. Under Base capture zone:

   Attribute	Control	Meaning
   Unlocks tier	Picker, tiers 2–8	The tier this capture unlocks. One zone per tier.
   Keep manned	Checkbox, on by default	Keep a standing garrison on the base while the faction is below its tier.
   Battle radius	Slider, 50–500m in 10m steps	How far the base’s ground reaches. Its garrisons and their vehicles are spread across it. The grey ring.
   FOB radius	Slider, 20–300m in 5m steps	How far the FOB reaches. The yellow ring.

3. Right-click it and choose Set name. The name is what the capture task reads: “Capture enemy base Dola”. A zone you do not name takes the name of the objective zone it stands in.

4. Build the FOB inside the yellow ring from the content browser, as you would build anything else.

5. /atg zone save.

The save records the FOB and takes it off the map. Everything you placed inside the yellow ring is recorded into that base and removed, ready to be put down when the tier is reached. Only what a Game Master placed is taken. Characters, groups, vehicles, waypoints and tasks are left where they are.

The zones and their FOBs are written to <profile>/ATG/atg-scenario-base-captures.json, beside the zones file, and the previous file is kept as atg-scenario-base-captures.bak.json. The save refuses the base captures while two zones unlock the same tier, and says so. Like every save, it needs a full administrator.

As the world starts, a zone standing within a few metres of a saved one takes its settings and its FOB, and a saved zone with nothing standing on it is placed again. A zone your map ships that was never saved is kept as it is.

Shipping base captures with your map

A map mod can carry its base captures, in either of two ways.

Author the zones into the world. In World Editor, place Base capture zone in a layer and make the FOB’s entities its children. They are recorded into the base as the world starts and removed until the tier is reached. Only children that replicate are taken; one that does not is drawn from the world file on every machine, and could never be taken away.

Ship a base capture config, and point m_sBaseCaptureConfig at it on Configuration. A server’s own atg-scenario-base-captures.json is used instead whenever it holds any zones, so a server owner’s edits always win over the map’s.

The config is easiest to edit by eye. In World Editor, under the ATG plugin menu:

• Load base capture config into active layer lays every base in the config out in the active layer, one marker per base with its FOB as children. It takes the config selected in the Resource Browser, or offers a list. The list also offers a base captures file copied into the Workbench profile’s ATG folder, which is how a server’s saved file is brought into a config.
• Save active layer to base capture config writes the markers in the active layer back, replacing the config’s list, or into a new config in an addon you choose. It refuses while two markers unlock the same tier.

A marker draws the base’s ground in blue and the FOB in cyan. Untick Show FOB on a marker to see the base as it stands before it is captured; hidden children are still saved. The marker carries the same settings as the zone, plus Garrison count, how many garrisons defend the capture, where 0 uses the server’s usual number.

The mod ships a folder of ready prefabs for building bases, PrefabLibrary/ATGLibrary: fortifications, structures and systems for the US, USSR and FIA, and its own zones, pads and areas.

Settings

These sit with the tier settings on Configuration.

{
  "m_fBaseCaptureReward": 600,
  "m_fGateFailFraction": 0.1,
  "m_sBaseCaptureConfig": ""
}