Node Sidegrade - Monster Nodes

This seems a bit too big of an undertaking for the game's release, but I'd definitely like to see smth like this down the line. And the "buffer nodes" Steven mentioned in one of the dev streams could serve as the grounds for mobs to take over.

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Mmm, how I understood Steven's description is that the buffer nodes are the 1s and 2s that are not connected to any vassal system that's present when the server has all 5 metros built up. These buffer 1s and 2s will be located in-between those vassal systems.

When a metro falls, one of the fives will level up to take its place. But instead of just taking over the exact same set of nodes from that metro's vassal system, the new metro will pull up nodes from new places. And those new places are provided by the buffer 1s and 2s.

And in that context the suggestion for mob nodes could apply to a few of the buffer nodes which could level up to a stage 3 and block a player node from joining the newly established vassal system. At which point people would have to siege this node to let others grow and become vassals.

Or at least that's how I see it going down in my head.

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The 20 buffer nodes will be at lvl 1-2. They'll be outside of the vassal systems. That's what I was getting at.

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I'm mainly basing it on the node growth demo they showed some months ago. It showed that any fringe node that received the least XP would pretty much always stay at low lvls (lvl2 in the demo) because it would get constantly blocked out by all the surrounding nodes that did get enough XP to grow.

So when I try to imagine how nodes would start growing in lvls I see these potential buffer nodes as just the ones w/o XP. Everything around them would be leveling up and when the buffers ones do get some XP - they'll be blocked by their surroundings.

Now I could be wrong in that assumption or there might just be some edge cases where the buffer nodes manage to get bunched up all together in one spot instead being spread out across the world, at which point they'd be able to grow past lvl2 w/o being blocked. But I'd need to see Intrepid's new tech demo on how this new system works to really understand if that's even a possibility.