This post is connected to one I made in the bug forum, but I wanted to have this story separate from the actual bug report. The report is about the actual bug, this story is a deficiency in gameplay and I really hope to get some sort of discussion about being able to restrict silo ownership again or at least have a workable solution. Let me share a bit of a story that happened today. It's just one of many occasions, but this one is fresh in my mind and has left a very bad taste. I got grieved because I wouldn't allow some player to pull endless supplies of ESFs at my base. I'm going to leave the character names out of this, it's just one of the bad apples. This is what happened: I filled up a silo and built myself a base on Indar. Thanks to the endless amount of grinders and their silos blocking cortium spawn nodes this took over an hour. But alas, it happened. A friend joins in on the base. While working at it, some random guy spawns, pulls an air pad and places it. Then he pulls a scythe. A minute later, he spawns again, pulls a scythe etc. I then remove that air pad. He spawns again, pulls another pad. I ask him not to place it, telling I need the cortium to power an orbital strike and these things need a lot of cortium. He ignores me and places it. I try to remove it, he shoots me. Yeah, that's what happens when spoilt brats don't get their free scythes. They shoot allies. I try to reason with him, tell him where to find grinder silos where he can have as much cortium as he'd like. He doesn't care. All he wants is my cortium. Next time he tries to pull an ESF, I kill him. Sure, I shouldn't have killed him but not only did he kill me, I also gave him plenty of other options. From then on, all he does is grieve me. He pulls stuff from the silo until it's down to 20k. That's 30k cortium that was gone in no time. 30k that should have been used to power everything in the base. 30k that I needed to build up the rest of the base. So I blow up his air pad with c4 because I can't remove it (see the bug). I remove spawn points so he can't spawn again. Build my own air pad, just so I can actually set restrictions. He of course won't stop. He calls in TR players he knows and logs in on his own alt (same basename) to continue to destroy the base I built. We put up a fight, but there's more of them than there are of us. The base gets destroyed, or at least the modules and the silo. All this happened because I couldn't set restrictions. I don't mind if someone spawns ESFs at my base. I've allowed it many times in the past. But I, as silo owner, want to decide this. If I put in the - extremely boring - work of getting a silo filled with cortium, then I get to choose what happens with that cortium. If someone else wants a favour, they have to ask. A few years ago I quit playing (and paying for) this game altogether because of the same "allies" spawning at bases (I got to know the characters' names well) after which they'd log in on their alts just to destroy that base. Their reasoning: this game is broken and we hate construction as it is. Those people have now left, but others are still here. Grieving happens. It kills enjoyment players have in the game. And in the case of the story above, it's all preventable. The code is in the game to restrict silos. It used to be there. The code is in there to allow silo owners to remove buildings. It used to work and still works sometimes. There is no point in forcing players to be other player's cortium-gathering slaves. Gathering cortium is not fun. It's something people have to do to build a base (aside from the grinders). I love defending my bases. I love supporting allies with my base. I love the occasional 3 kills with an OS. I love a lot about base building. I do not love gathering cortium. I do not love getting in endless arguments with some player who thinks of himself as elevated above other people. I do not love getting TK'ed.
Auto unlocking Silo at a certain amount of Cortuim is the dumbest and most brain dead thing devs have done to construction. I sometimes lose bases due to allies unintentionally increasing Cortium drain: Instead of support with supplies or by defending, often times allies just start taking out useless turrets from my Silo, some start adding walls in places which are inappropriate, and sometimes when I don't want an OS someone just places it there. I personally don't care....I'm happy to get support which is rare but what this does is force me out of my own base to resupply...making it not possible for me to use my Shield Module ability (which is essential in large fights) or defend with my own weapons. If I could just lock my Silo I may not even need to run out. A very important addition that construction needs (other than the Silo lock) is for the Silo to show the name of the owner to teammates, so they can know who this base belongs to. They can ask for an OS strike, a Router, ask for permission to ..., can ask the player to relocate the Silo, maybe it's blocking a Cortium spawn (which happens often), etc. This will remove a lot of handicaps caused by not knowing the base owner. _____________________________________________________ I'm going to repeat my anti-OS statements again. I'm really against the OS being in the game and finally want its removal. The Orbital Strike doesn't do good to construction because the defenses got over-nerfed and the OS is an anti-construction weapon. Because it's an anti-construction weapon, if you want your base to survive you need to place the OS, or else you some enemy will place an OS sooner and that will be the end of your base which took 40 minutes to design and supply. Ultimately what placing the OS does it increase drain and mark you on the map for enemies....These 2 things don't go well together after the nerfs. Increased drain means you need to keep leaving your base to resupply and an unmanned base will get destroyed by enemy tanks instantly with no way to fight back once they attack first. They expect your base thanks to the OS but you don't expect them. That's why everyone gets 1 or 3 kills from Orbital Striking a lattice base...it wasn't designed for that originally. If you want to support allies in the objective you can be 10x more effective by just using a turbo ANT inside lattice bases and you don't need to waste time on designing and resupplying. _________________________________________________________ Other than that I do like the restriction changes and Pain Spire, Sunderer Garage combo devs did. It makes Player made bases look much simpler. It also solves the problem which construction had where you where forced to place modules in the pathway where vehicles drive, making it hard for them to just pass by. But construction still has huge problems from the users end.
But sometimes it goes the other way. While what happened in this story is undeniably a bad thing, I often enough find myself at a silo where someone is hastily constructing a base on a road with enemies incoming to try and get some turrets going. I want to help and place one or two as well, but can't access the silo. And good luck finding the owner in a fight of 20+ people on your side. Experienced the other side as well, putting up a neatly planned base with 2 friends, random guy spawns and builds his stuff wherever. Some take the request to not interfere with wall structures better than others (even had one person who actually waited until all walls were set and then supported them by placing some of their own in front strategically to create killzones, completely with mines, turrets and everything). Conclusion: There is no right or wrong way here. Locks can be good in some instances (planned bases with a lot of time as a prime example), bad in others (better roadblocks that could need any single constructed item they can get).
