Construction in 2023 - Dev Letter

You guys should investigate adding construction elements within bases. If people can add cover (for example on open bases like Indar Ex, Mirror Bay, Howling pass), this could infinitely improve the gameplay experience. However, elements like the flail should not be operational within these areas.

Reading through this, I don't think I see anything unreasonable. Taking the equipment terminal OUT of the bunker and turning it into a placeable module so the player can choose which building it goes in seems wise.

If you're going to make shields two way (Seems like that's the case for buildings like the infantry tower for example), those constructions are going to need to be redesigned so there's balconies or stairways that allow elevated exit/entry for defenders to continue to use those for defence (And for attacking light assaults to exploit).

Also please consider putting 'attach points' at the ends of walls/gates and corners of buildings. When two of these attach points are close to eachother (Or perhaps through a little shield pillar construction placed between them) they automatically create a doorway two-way shield, so the gap between those two buildings can't be unreasonably exploited by a passing vehicle. Currently, trying to smartly arrange walls and defender occupied buildings like bunkers/towers is a bit of a pain in terms of lining things up so there's no gaps, I'd love to see that mitigated a bit.

I am definitely in favour of the addition of these slow auto recharging silos at certain vehicle bases. There's been a few times where my faction has captured Berjess Overlook and moved on to Scarred Mesa Skydock and I think to myself "Aha! Let's get a bulkhead base established at Berjess ready for when the enemy counterpush back through here" but the attackers at Scarred Mesa would generally get thrown back out by an overpop and be driving a few tanks at me before I had my defences properly established (And this assumes people are bothering to spawn in to help defend which is sadly a bit rare) - The new auto recharge silo should make this idea more viable.

All these changes look good. However, I'm in a slight niche about cortium bombs and am slightly worried about them. Personally I don't use the cortium bomb for damage often, but instead, the massive impulse effect. If they were prevented from being placed anywhere, I won't be able to use them to get unstuck. I would like to request an item with the timer, and either the same, or more, impulse effect ad an alternative to the cortium bomb.

I am very much on board with the direction you talk of taking with the construction system. It has always felt like a slog to me, since most player bases require a zerg to move past, and even then it's mostly just sitting in a vehicle and shooting at a wall for 10 minutes.

I'm also hopeful for the more general quality of life improvements mentioned. There are a lot of small bugs that pile up frustration over a play session until I quit from it, so for me fewer issues would mean longer sessions.

At first I was disappointed with the fact that base defence is again made more difficult, but near the end I got an idea. But anyway, to get on with my point...

• Skyshield: Keep the EMP damage, the Anti-Aircraft turrets won't do much and with interior defences gone, a single Galaxy Squad can drop in and wreak havoc of biblical proportions with no effective counter-play.
• Pain Spire: We've had this before, please don't remove it again. It's one of the only available tools for base defence. I think we can all accept a more robust alternative, but currently it's the only way to prevent a solo infiltrator with an AV-Knife from destroying the base.

THE CONCERN

People won't fall back to a construction base to defend it, in Platoons even. The only times I ever had a good fight at my base is when I was on the frontline of the offense / defense, and those moments are rare - it takes time to deploy a base and construction hunters buzz in fast.
Having some level of automatic defence systems is vital. Demolition Crews, often only one guy or a small team can wreak havoc of biblical proportions in a very short amount of time, before a construction player can even respond. We can't rely on the general population to arrive once a base has gone inactive, or is built on a less contested lane.
Seriously, the pain spire was one of the only counters to infiltrators hacking away at construction modules with Anti-Vehicle knives. They were efficient too.
Another concern with OP is that it isn't clear, to me at least, how those fun fights are supposed to happen. As of now, there's no real strategic value to construction, besides being a roadblock, router base or garage to pull vehicles from.
Right now, I don't see any way to make those fights happen or fun. It's not even a coin toss, it depends on who spawns first: if the attackers spawn first, base is gone. If the Defenders spawn first, a fight might happen.
Finally, address armour zergs. At the moment, a relatively small column can destroy a base in seconds. It's fair for the current system, but if you want to make construction fights fun, this has to be addressed.
Here's my idea to actually create those fights: Make construction strategically relevant, but not annoying.
HIVEs were an excellent idea, executed in a bad way: by allowing people to create them in unreachable corners of the map, they were impossible to neutralize, causing Ninja Victories. However, they added a huge incentive to people to actually fight in and fight for construction bases, instead of just ignoring them.

THE HIVE

But I have an idea: The HIVE should still generate temporary Empire Points, with a hard cap to how many can actually be given out. These points immediately go away if the HIVE is destroyed. HIVEs can be used to break stalemates or ties this way. HIVEs should either only be able to be place down in specific facilities, or must be in close proximity to the frontline to stay active. The HIVE itself should only be destroyable with Armor.
The new HIVE would also indicate the base status:

• Default HIVE: Everything OK.
• Flashing HIVE: Construction is under attack! (Will also mark the base as NEED REINFORCEMENTS).
• Grey HIVE, Grey Circle around it: The HIVE is inactive and contains no Empire Points.
• Grey HIVE, Blue Circle: The HIVE is inactive, but still contains Empire Points.

Other alternatives to this HIVE could be...

• ... Any other strategic benefits, such as facility wide (similar to Bastion, being able to lockdown a base or speed up the timer),
• ... HIVEs are actually Rebirth Nodes that allows for rapid respawns for all facilities and sunderers in a large radius from the HIVE, even across the continent! They should even affect enemy respawns in that radius, delaying them or such.

THIS is what would create fun fights, by making construction a legitimate objectiveto neutralize. Right now, the only time a base is used is when the faction is falling back and even then, it's usually crushed by an armour zerg.


Other changes: Potentially reducing no-deployment-zones and making Silos only destructible by Armor, C4, and Cortium Bombs. No more AV-Knives and such. Also, perhaps add a reward for staying around a silo, some XP like in the case for bases: for holding a silo, i.e. staying nearby it you get some experience similar to holding down a point.
TL;DR: Re-think nerfing automatic base defences, add a new HIVE in.

It's hard to visualize so effective feedback can't really happen until people are actually testing it on both PTS first and Live.

Some people might misread what was intended or what is going to happen making it more of a waste of time to read the feedback now.

Most of us posting probably have a good general understanding of how construction works on the current live server version so any changes, we would know as something became too weak or became OP.

I'm not saying the update is a waste of time to read but certain things to consider when reading certain feedbacks now in the planning phase that could ruin the initial vision like updating Oshur when it was good on the first update though the feedback happened after release which ruined Oshur as there are too many bases or at least connected to each other.

The idea is to roll out an update for PTS as soon as possible to get better development feedback then have the modular development ready for changes on the Live server feedback.

If most don't complain and like it, then it works. If lots are complaining then it's bad. The longer it takes for changes to occur the more people may feel the game lacks support. Having game dev updates in the in-game chat often for updates can show support usually happens and can make people feel feel like subscribing (membership). A bunch of people talk in chat how the devs don't really do anything and don't care but that would be fixed if things get addressed more often.

The new construction update looks to be promising.

It has potential, but the devil will be in the details - and in delivery. This is a package that must be delivered whole and not in parts, or it won't work and feedback of the system will point towards that.

However...

My biggest concerns here, as regular builder-Bob-person, that the new system is heavily designed with squads/outfits in mind, forgetting that for the past 7 years building has been mostly a solo affair in which randoms very occasionally jump in to help with pretty much zero coordination.

This means that systems as time-limited module slots will actually just become an incredibly tedious burden that falls purely on the shoulders of the typical solo builder. It also brings with it many other tedious aspects like what do you do when you do not know when modules are about to expire, do you refresh them when you want or will you be forced to wait for them to expire before you can replace them?

In general the time-limited modules seem like they are designed for an organised squad or outfit that can voice call "Hey can someone check on the mods?". In reality however, 7 years of largely solo building will mean solo building is an established part of the game, and you pretty much need these players to NOT burn out faster with tedious systems, otherwise participation in the content drops off the charts.

I suggest simply making slotted modules last until destroyed or deconstructed, and instead add 'overcharge' modes to slotted modules similar to how the current Structure Shield Module works. This way you retain the ability for an active gameplay element, but without frustrating and tedious elements.

Additionally, taking the above notes on solo building into consideration, you will see that defending is also largely an uncoordinated affair. Outfit or squad bases getting defended properly are just as rare as them actually existing. To that end, some element of automated protection simply has to exist to prevent the largely solo building and defending experience from being an incredibly frustrating experience for the builder.

As far as I care, AI Turrets can go away. These seem to be the #1 issue for attackers, and it is reasonable to cut the frustrations of fighting AI. However, I'd stop there, and:

• Skyshields should still damage players going though, as without the damage a Galaxy Drop straight onto the heart of a base would negate ALL building efforts. The Skyshield 'damage zone height' does need a revision though, currently it extends far below the visible mesh.
• Pain Spires should remain. They are very visible and vulnerable to all damage types, and without AI Turrets these would be the only automated defense that can help defenders/builders create "rooms of defender advantage".

With the changes to modules being permanent with an on-use ability, and some 'automated' forms of damage remaining, I believe the best possible balance is achieved when looking at base building, defending, and attacking for both solo builders and the less common squad builders.

Bonus Edition: Construction participation could do with more reward systems such as having more sources of experience tied to building and maintaining a base, as well as defending a base. I suspect a lot of logic here could be copied from the Engineer hardlight barrier logic. There are also other lower hanging fruits such as giving builders experience for when a Supply Tower refills ally ammunition.

Lastly please consider additional quality of life features such as building placement snapping or a limited form of edge clipping, as well as redesigning 'bad' structures like the Bunker so that they can logically fit within the architecture of a base - and speaking of fitting in bases, shrinking no-construction zones is overdue.

TLDR:
- Make modules last until destroyed/deconstructed to avoid tedium.
- Make bases retain Pain Spires and Skyshield EMP as some element of defenders advantage.
- Add more experience rewards to building, maintaining, and defending related tasks.



Late edit: Consider making AV knives unable to damage big structures. It is a really big chore right now to deal with Stalkers, and with no AI Turrets, they'll have the time of their lives. I say this as somewhat of a building stabber myself - Sneak into an enemy base, stab the Skyshield to death, OS, bye bye base.

These are exciting changes and I'm gonna hold my judgement until I try it out. @Wrel will there be a tilt feature for construction? Nothing too extreme just something to help with shore lines.

To start, the first issue with construction was that it didnt have the same modules/generators as permanent bases. They should look the same, and appear on the map. Perhaps permanent bases would have fixed locations, and the construction placeable version would be easier to overload than destroy...with a decay timer once overloaded. Additionally the construction version should be placeable on/in structures or on the ground. Had construction been built like this, it would have been easier to understand for both builders and attackers...and resulted in considerably less frustration/difficulty.

The cost of getting into construction is a GOOD thing because it should be more of an end game thing. You should understand the game and have some basic familiarity with constructed bases before you start building...we already have PLENTY of noob builds without making it more accessible. HOWEVER, if you cert into construction and don't like it, it should be fully refundable if purchased with certs. Construction is a heavy investment of certs, and time, its rewards should be big with wise choices, luck, and support.

The Hive should be brought back as a way to open, close lattice lines...perhaps completely new lattice lines to really mix things up. Or possibly with the same mechanics of efficiency but the reward would be to cost of vehicles, capture times, or something like that...in keeping with construction serving a supporting roll that can also create fights without forcing them or rewarding cheap spam garbage. For all the poor implementation of Hives, and its unpopularity, the absolute best battles that Planetside ever saw with fresh content, and appreciation by both sides, were at some of those Hive builds. I personally have seen 100+ on both sides sustained for 5.5hrs with both sides talking in chat about how much fun it was. Construction has the best potential of anything in this game...except when its nerfed into near obscurity, and troll trash territory.

Everyone has complained about walls not connecting...or at least being able to overlap the ends...fix that. People want a way to get on top of towers and bunkers without jets....how about jump pads that construction can place? Perhaps real jump pads that can even reach long distances? How about overload feature for all structures not powered by a silo? How about an overload with nuke destruction on a silo without a repair or shield module/generator? Bring back the invis ant, just make take away the bulldog not equipable with invis...that really made people mad, and turned the ant into something it shouldn't be. Ants are really weak, and generally only with one player in them...invis should be an option. Infantry terminals should be in towers/pill boxes. Bunkers are massive difficult pains in the butt to use effectively in a base design, they should be the strongest structure, and have some other benefit...what if they had linkable jump pads, or maybe a ground vehicle jump pad? Air pads need ammo resupply and jump pad/lift so you can land go down and get back up. If rapid vehicle deploy is returned to permanent bases, add it to constructed bases with spawn tube. Turrets are fixed objects...they should be able to outpower multiple vehicles, even when they were at their greatest strength they went down easy enough...however, perhaps give them a weak point, like the back side or base of a turret, or make them hackable when there's no active shield module/generator.

The idea of replacing 5-15 modules in most construction bases with 50-200 batteries that you have to constantly replace and fiddle with, sounds boring and labor intensive...and I will tell you its already hard enough to get people to repair modules let alone replace missing modules. Ants carrying pieces of cordium or changing how its gathers is completely unnecessary, but changing cordium size based on how much is left makes sense...and perhaps have it constantly growing back and growing in size. Silo owner should be able to control cordium lock levels for vehicle pulls, and artillery usage. No build zones should be cut in half. Sky shield should fully protect from OS and Flail...and maybe if you had three sky shields they could link into bubble shield. There should be little or no experience gained from gathering cordium or filling your own silo. Loads of things that can be done, but the most important thing is that construction needs to be more intuitive with other game experiences, and be designed towards rewarding teamwork/empowerment.

I'll share an observation from Oshur and other continents.

One of the most "unfun" things that can occur is when the lattice system frequently forces a transition between gameplay types or even completely suppresses the one you are looking for. For examples, an infantry focused outfit often becomes essentially jobless on Oshur, because the frontlines are often construction/armor focused. Construction gameplay is limited on other continents, because the moment you conquer/lose a construction base, you have to transition to something else.

So I'd think about the lattice system and how to make some longer construction/armor lanes happen but not at the expense of infantry lanes. I'd also think about the interaction between the two, like making a construction-based spawn a viable option for a static base assault by providing jump-pads or teleporter from the construction area.

As an alternative: Convert "H.I.V.E.s" into "Hives" - as in "Nanite Hives".

I've always seen Hives a critical part of the Phase Two of the Nanite Economy overhaul. This second phase is what I've codenamed "Wellspring".

I know this would take a lot of work, so leave hives out of this construction update, and push them back for a dedicated economy update. Here's what it would look like:

Default Nanite Distribution Maps:





These maps show the default distribution of nanites for each warpgate. As you can see, each empire gets more nanites close to their own warpgate, and those nanite tick rates fall as they move further away from their warpgate. In the middle of the map, nanite tick rates are balanced, and close to what they are right now. Past the middle of the map, nanites begin to dwindle, until falling to 0 at the territories around the enemy warpgates.

The design goal here is to push all three empires into equilibrium at the center of the map. Pushing past the middle of the map would then require construction and teamwork. Here I see two ways the mechanics could be applied - Hive Clustering and Hive Chaining:



Hive Clustering provides more spontaneous construction: "We're running low on nanites, quick get some bases up."

Hive Chaining provides more methodical, team-oriented construction: Outfits planning a lane push.

Each has their own merits, but I would prefer Hive Chaining, as it creates real Supple-Line mechanics. Supply Lines are made to be broken, and that is where counter-play comes in. With either system, targeting hives becomes a way to choke enemy resources, and building your own hives provides a way to extend your empires attack into enemy territory.

I was very excited to see the 2023 update plan, because a lot of the content is a shadow of something I wrote myself six months ago!
So I'm sharing some of it to give the development team some crazy ideas


New constructionCortiumTransfer Tower: Has a terminal that can sendCortium from this base to other bases in the designated company, and set a storage limit. The transmission rate is equal to 50% of the worker ant recharge rate.
Battlefield Teleport Room: Has a teleport terminal, teleport user, see Colossus Teleport Terminal entry.
Battlefield command room: It has four command terminals, which can be accessed by the team leader, company leader and team leader. After entering, click the area you want to command on the map.
Warehouse expansion: Provide 20000 additional Cortium warehouse expansion for the base.
An extension survey beacon: extend a building area with a radius of 30 meters and provide a building terminal. A silo may link only two survey markers
Krypton Router: A place where worker ants can unload Cortium
Square foundation: Can be installed on a slope as a topographic reference for other buildings. The foundation can be captured with other foundations
Equilateral triangle foundation: ditto


Isosceles right triangle foundation: As above, each person can place two of the above three types of foundation, and the three types of foundation share a maximum number.
Higher vehicle slopes: Steeper (30 degrees) and shorter than vehicle slopes, with straight slopes
Heavy platform: A tall rectangular platform that can fit a bunker underneath.
Building related mechanism:
1: Reset the interactive points of the building, and repair shall be directed at the building management terminal (blue holographic computer) on the building. The building with the terminal is the interaction point.
2: The terminal on the building can interact with each other, and can view the placer of the building, the module bonus received, the current ore reserves of the building, the related links of the functional building, etc. For infantry guard towers and bunkers, modules, resurrection compartments, aircraft platforms, etc. can also be acquired within the terminal and installed directly into the preset position.

3. Bunkers (2) and bunkers (1) and infantry guard towers (2) and walls (2) may be equipped with light vehicle terminals, light aircraft terminals, phalanx remote control terminals and equipment terminals.

4: Cancel all long press Q to modify the permission menu and set it in the terminal instead.

: When holding the wall (wall, solid wall, explosion wall, door), press x button (change shooting mode) to start shooting. At this point, the edge of the component on the left side of the player's view automatically looks for the corner of the other component and changes its length within the adjustable range.

Vehicle mechanism:


1: The vehicle can be driven back to the vehicle platform, and no one on the vehicle can automatically

Recover and convert to storage or Krypton that should be returned to the owner. The same is true of airplanes.


2: Vehicles can be hacked and driven by enemy infiltrators. During this time, the hacked vehicle will be forced to add the hacked vehicle's team glow, and the original owner can track the vehicle in real time.

3: Open seat members can repair their own vehicles, but only one member at a time.

I think the proposed changes are very much in the right direction. PLEASE do not listen to a loud minority of players which want to prevent nerfs to AI turrets, pain fields, etc. The vast majority of the playerbase have not gotten a single kill with turret AI or pain fields, and 0% of the playerbase enjoys fighting against them. Buff other aspects of construction as required to compensate.

Here is my constructive criticism:
- Consider keeping the current cortium bomb alongside the new one, maybe under a different name, but gutting it's damage against structures. Taking away the time bomb as an option against vehicles or infantry makes the game less diverse and interesting. ADD XP REWARD FOR DEFUSING CORTIUM BOMBS (both modules and placables). It's frustrating that risking your life to save your teammates from blowing up is completely unrewarded, and in a construction context it will add a motivation for defenders who don't own the base to help (also consider adding an objective marker, flashing lights, etc. to planted cortium modules)

- I'm not convinced these changes adequately address the problem of a tank ball rolling up and melting a player base that took 30+ minutes to built. It's often not even possible to get a trickle of reinforcements into a base before they are overrun as the game presently is. Structures need to be MUCH more durable than they are now for it to be preferable for attackers to fight over a base rather than site 500m away and melt it with tank cannons. I don't think a heavy repair module will cut it by itself, although it is a good idea.

wonderful news to hear the stuff you have planned for the update

i dont use the system much currently buutttt.....
here is my suggestion
can you make it so that the new constructions can be like attached? so they can be like building blocks? so we dont leave accidental gaps and we can use the big buildings a bit easier (like that prototype bridge player suggestion)

my points of concern
the Ant holding the cortium bit in small chunks, yes it sounds cool but a bit to ambitious for my taste. and maybe unncesary right now.


other then that, hyped to see what the changes will bring to the game

also shout out to those player models they look wonderful

Yes! Finally some changes to the Construction!

I'm a main builder in planet side 2 and enjoy building for our factions.
So seeing this just give me joy also one of the main issue I have with the construction we have now is how some of the lack of the defense the builders get from trying to build a base to gaining materials with the ants.

My idea was to have the Ants be able to obtain cortium by just being near it and let the driver seat be able to main the gun if another enemy foe try to get a jump on you because ever since the stealth cloak the ant use to have is gone. We get destroy pretty easy. It would also be a good idea to bring back the Wasp Prototype as another option to gather cortiums same function as before to automatic gather cortium and let the pilot drive and main the gun. Those two vehicles as some of you know rarely have two players, it always one player and it hard to defend it self if we have to switch seat to main the gun.

As for the anti personnel turrets I think there should be a smaller version of it and keep the AI as I said before small group of enemies can easily get in and kill the builders. Just make the Anti Personnel Turrets have no tower and if the enemy want to remove the Ai they can do that in person. I lost count on how many time these tower get destroy so easy by a army of 3 or 4 tanks especially lightning tanks.

Now for the The Flail, that thing is fun to use but it is limited way to hard. The no deploy zone around official bases are way to big for it size and it make it almost pointless to use which is why players use the Orbital Strike more often. I can understand they be annoyed but if you want to stop the flail from falling on you then deal with the problem first. It should give the players the reason to go up to the base and destroy it so it will stop using the flail. I believe the Flail should be able to strike any place near it range like the orbital strike but give either less damage or give it a cool down when use just like the Orbital strike but less time on it. Now for the Glaive that I never touch I didn't see the reason of using it. The only thing I'm aware of that it can do is destroy the enemy base shield and that it. If it can disable enemy vehicles for a short period of time then it would be a different story.

Now the bloody bastion.. what can I say about that flying behemoth... it a base destroyer plain and simple we the builders don't have a weapon to defend ourselves from it. There no such turret to deal with it or to keep it away from the base, it can easily chew though the sky shield like paper and wreck a the buildings. If that can be look at as well then that would be great and as for Oshur I think it would be cool if we could build a underwater base from my knowledge there not much defense down there.

Could we change how things like walls are built? Instead of having a set amount of pre-built walls that takes a lot of time and finesse to place, could this system be replaced by a pathing system?

In a pathing system, the builder only needs to define the path of the wall, and the longer the path, the more resource/ cortium/ or whatever, is used up. Let's just call them Building Units (BUs'). This will allow players to build perimeters much faster with less risk of dying or trying to find that perfect green spot.

From the user's perspective, they pull a "Wall Path" where they place "posts" AKA points that the game will connect with the wall type. Much faster and intuitive.

I like that you're taking a shot at revamping construction, I like that you're making it so Flail infils can't hide with a Flail dart anymore, I like that you're thinking of adding more objects, I like that you're reducing the cost of entry.

I'm not sure about basically getting rid of modules as they currently are. Having to "change the batteries", so to speak, of a structure every 20 minutes sounds tedious. Plus it sounds like having redundancy modules would no longer be an option (e.g. having a bunker in 2 different repair module radius in case one goes down). I'm not sure about your idea about chipping away at cortium either. Having to chase down fragments sounds tedious.

As probably one of the only people that has the cortium bomb auraxed, I REALLY don't like that you're basically removing it as a weapon. It is honestly one of my favorite tools to use in a fight, outside of construction. It takes some good, learned timing to use one to stop an enemy push. Another thing I don't like is that there's no mention of adding foundations or giving objects some more clipping forgiveness to make it easier to place objects. You pretty much can't build a decent construction base on anything besides a flat tract of land. Most of the map isn't flat. As for removing pain spires and automated turrets, my point is still the same as when you were gathering opinions on Twitter - they cannot be removed until it is impossible for a single person to destroy a construction base all by themselves. My idea for that is that base structures have a collective (not individual) damage threshold that must be passed before actually taking damage, and the threshold would be high enough that it cannot be met by a single person. The threshold would reset after a certain time of no object in the base taking damage. Basically think of the entire base having a shield bar like infantry, and that shield bar can only be broken by say, 3000 damage all being applied to any combination of structures in the base within a short time frame. After that, the shield breaks, and will not recharge until a certain amount of time without being damaged.

Glad to see you are taking another shot at construction though. I know some of the things in this letter are ideas pulled from Reddit, which I am happy to see. I will admit I am disappointed I don't see MORE ideas that were pulled from /r/planetside, but hey, it's a start. Hopefully after the revamp, you can still incrementally adjust construction here and there without making it a big deal you have to wait another year for.

These sounds like interesting changes and with the change that CS Bases that are not under attack are not draining cortium it seems mostly reasonable.

I would like to point out though that not all bases serve as defensive positions. They have often logistical value.
Because of this some of them are WAAAY behind the frontline.

The reason why many Construction players were so vehemently crying out against changes in terms of turrets and the pain spire is because some players are just ********.

While it is not technically against ToS or against the games rules (and therefore can not successfully and shouldn't be reported), going behind enemy lines (especially prevalent in the south western green zone of indar) to specifically destroy construction bases that are mostly undefended and only build by one player is something I call griefing.

The reason for that is because CS Bases cannot move and take a significant time investment. If someone blows up your tank several times you can always just move it. Go somewhere else where they "griefer" won't find you or you are protected by friendly players. Meaning that effectively with enough persistence the attacker will ALWAYS win because they can respawn infinity.

CS Bases always needed to imbalanced! Because it takes easily 15minutes to build a base compared to 2 Minutes to set up a cloak sundi around it they always needed to be hard to take in a 1v1 fight.

So I would like the devs to consider some soft counters against single cloak infiltrators trying to destroy Reaver spawnpoints or vanity bases if they really need to remove Pain Spires and Turrets.


Additional important Note: The CS System needs better integration with the main gameplay loop. The no Construction Zones need to go! The Base objects already stop players from building into them.
It would give attackers of a regular base the possibility to set up a more hard spawn point to attack for example a facility!

Remove the no construction zones!

sure I'll share some questions and concerns. I haven't played with construction in a while, so please forgive my ignorance.

1) do silos still lock if they don't have enough cortium? I can picture a platoon of 30 tanks capturing a construction base but since they are in tanks, they are NOT in ANTs, which means they wont have any cortium to unlock the silo.

2) reducing and eliminating cert costs usually means refunds, will we see cert/dbc refunds? Do f2p players still have a 10k cert cap? It's very easy to spend 20k+ certs on construction, I hope they don't lose a bunch of certs because the refund goes over their cap.

3) many construction bases have 1 minute capture timers, will that be changed? if turrets and pain spires are removed, I assume anyone can simply walk into a base and start capturing it? 1 minute isn't much time for defenders to react imo.

4) are there or will there be any map indicators the a base is being destroyed?

5) pain spires are going away, but would there be pain fields around permanent spawns? any planned changes for cold heart?

6) if auto-turrets get converted by capturing the base, who gets credit for things those turrets kill? If I make an auto-AI turret and it gets converted and it kills me, do i get credit for killing myself? does no one get credit? if no one gets credit people will probably destroy and rebuild turrets, which could get annoying.

7) is there still a deconstruct tool? will that work on converted objects? will everyone be able to deconstruct any converted object?

8) any planned updates to the ui/menu to make schematics more visible? Players often have trouble finding them tucked away in the marketplace. A tutorial would help of course, but if you're adding a bunch of stuff it might warrant its own menu or loadout tab, especially if there are going to be a bunch of constructable buildings, idk if a thumbnail would convey a whole building.

9) idk what a "laze" system is for the weapon targeting, you mean a laser? because im picturing the ion painter/tag rifle from unreal. I loved that gun I wouldn't mind seeing it here but with a longer 'confirmation' time.

10) I have a bunch of very opinionated concerns about the perception and direction of the construction system, ie. I don't think we are starting at A and i don't think we'll end up at B, but it would take a whole essay to convey and I'm tired so i might write that later.