Alpha - Bases Weren't Always Poorly Laid Out

That guy really makes me nervous to watch and listen to .. Wouldnt suprise me if his ideas are about as random as the words coming out of his mouth. He needs to slow down and start listening to the players ...

They need to make bases easily taken for higbys f*cking stupid Esport $hit.

The base designs are Fine the way they are. The zerg is the zerg, and they dont know what to do. Usually the zerg repeatedly commits suicide keeping the defenders busy while 3 or 4 dudes run around to the generators and tap them, then defend the area until they are taken out. In an amp station or techplant the zerglings see the shields go down and move to the next slaughter area. The same 3 or 4 dudes spam rockets into the hangar to destroy the AMS inside, then the zerglings keep ramming their corpses inside until the number of living defenders approaches zero, then the point is flipped and it is a waiting game. The strategy is there, you just are too busy complaining to see it. from the looks of the first 20 replies it seems like all of you are zerglings, and you just get mowed down over and over, and that would explain the reason you are all saying the same thing, having had the same experience. Breaking a siege is a lot easier than you think.

it revolves around the idea of sources. The infantry zerging over your walls are sourced from an AMS haphazardly placed somewhere by random zergling #4382. With a flash and 2 anti tank mines (300 certs and 100 res each, 25 for the flash) you can destroy 95% of sunderers. Most zerglings dont realize it is this easy to destroy and dont bother defending it or investing certs into mine guard. The other 5% of sunderers are a different story, but that is off topic.

Once that sunderer is down zergling #2153 will go buy another sunderer somewhere and park it in the same spot. Those 3 or 4 people just run around deploying anti tank mines repeatedly until either the sunderers stop coming and the siege is broken, or a change of gears is necessary. If there is an unending tide of sunderers, you must take out the source of the sunderers, usually a satellite base that is entirely undefended or at least mostly undefended. 2 antipersonnel mines and a flash with scout radar take care of that. Deploy flash near the satellite control point to reveal incoming enemies, deploy mines at common entrances around control point, then sit on control point until it flips. usually only one or two dudes comes to defend the point, at which should be dispatched easily enough by the mines and your ingelligent maneuvering inside the base because you know their position at all times.

In defense it is in reverse, You must provide spawn points, and if they already exist, you must maintain and defend them and maintain and defend the generators that defend them. the thought process the average zergling has when deploying at a sunderer in a hangar in an amp station or tech plant is:

I r spawned! I want to shoot badguy. Enable yellchat mode. I see enemy there, i go shoot. i see shield, i'm going to pop out of shield and shoot missiles then run back inside!.

Those zerglings serve a purpose. they keep the enemy zerglings occupied while those same 3 or 4 people run around and actually defend the shield generators and maintain them.

The trick is using prox chat to direct the zerglings. If they just flipped the hangar point, you can tell them to get up on the walls and go repair the shield gens. usually only 10 or 20% actually listen, but that is all you need. Once the hangar generators are back online, its a mad dash to deplete the troops inside and cutoff any spawn they ahve inside. Hangar shields down means they cannot reinforce the inside of the hangar, and from there its a race of attrition. You ram your corpses into the hangar over and over until they are all dead then quickly resecure scu and setup a new hangar sunderer.

most people dont know these steps. Its not too difficult to see how they interact, and it only takes a few dudes doing the right thing to make a critical difference between victory and defeat. The biggest problem is that defending isnt fun. Noone defends generators because standing around doing nothing isnt getting you certs or kills or any form of enjoyment whatsoever. Babysitting a sunderer is also quite boring as most of the time you just kind of sit there watching for enemies. Also, once you start to fail, everyone leaves because they could be fighting somewhere that is actually fun. This causes a failcascade which results in all the defenders going elsewhere.

The main purpose of playing a game is to have fun. This is why noone defends. It isnt because LOL CODKIDS or anything like that, you play games because you are bored and games are vastly more enjoyable than tv or typing endless pages of crap on a forum somewhere. The way to make defense more appealing is to make it more fun. I have no idea how to do that, but it sounds like a fantastic idea.

anyways, Blaming problems on random stereotype isnt constructive. People who play call of duty arent responsible for anything but playing call of duty. People love having blanket scapegoats, like wow or cod or whatever. They're just games.

I'm going to chalk this up to the lack of tutorial: can't be bothered to get a decent tutorial out? Make the game easier!

This too was alpha screenshot

Because of the zerg and because people are pubbies? That's not a good reason. Also, even pubbies can have fun defending, the problem is that the game's strategy boils down to "ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK" or "CAP THE EMPTY BASE".

Base design should be improved and decent regardless of stupid pubbies.

That's not an alpha screenshot, that's concept art

Also, Smedley hinted that we might see these carriers in the long future of the game

LaRoaz the point of this entire conversation went way over your head but thats ok, we'll handle this

Its ok if you didnt scale my impenetrable wall of text

Assaulting a base isnt 'attack attack attack' There is a logical sequence to it, and the defenders need to do their best to prevent this. In an amp station or techplant you need to destroy the hangar shields, then the sundy in the hangar, then the spawn generator then the scu. Once those have been completed its nigh impossible to retake it until everyone leaves.

Even just an air tower base has a logical sequence, although it isnt as artificial. You need to setup sunderers in places close enough to be viable, but safe enough to not be destroyed too quickly, Then you need to take the ground around the base of the tower (lots of them have other buildings) then the difficult part is the hangar and those staircases. Grenade spam is atrocious here, and this is a likeley spot for the battle to flip in the other direction. Once that is done you need to secure the main floor and elevate up to the top floor to secure that. Once that is achieved you have their entire spawn surrounded and they would need an outside sunderer to be able to retake it before the capture is complete.

People say its impossible to defend, and they are correct if what they are doing is fighting the endless stream of zerglings disgorging over their walls.

If you want to break a siege, you need to stem the tide and cut off the source of infantry.

TL;DR Stop fighting the zerglings and destroy sunderers and ninja satellite towers.

My Three Part Plan To Improve Large Base Gameplay
1. Improve defensibility. Make it harder for infantry to get in. Add shields to block vehicle spam.
2. Add siege mechanisms. Placeable or vehicle based jump platforms would fit the bill perfectly.
3. The most important part, add resource strategy. The simplest level is to cut of resources to cut off bases. The next level is physical, automated resource transport. This could be simple vehicle convoys or, my preference, a use for the large battle cruisers. You would order one and defend it until it reached the area to be reinforced.

Right now the focus of base attack should be less inside the base and more about surrounding it and cutting it off. Right now there is rather little real incentive to surround and cut off bases so zergs go straight for a main base as soon as the have any hex adjacency. Defenders should be able to go for days if the enemy isn't tactical enough to cut them off. But as soon as they are cut off they need to scramble squads to get reconnected or risk a quick loss.

@Higby: about this "esport" business, KEEP IT OUT OF THE MAIN GAME! Make a "skirmish simulator", basically planetsideception. Outfits or teams could arrange a private simulator where they would duke it out on miniature maps or single bases.

There is a logical sequence to this, this I will acknowledge, but the problem with the zerg is that there's little in the vein of countering a larger force, save a vehicle against infantry without the weapons to counter it, but the current design causes vehicles to not really be a fighting force in own right, but rather moving structures of metal that simply herd infantry into spawn points.

The current base design does allow for an "attack, attack, attack" fighting method, and although this is fine, the issue is that it's one of the few and only ways to really guarantee that the enemy base will belong to you, or to secure a base against enemy attackers. Even during beta, there were a few instances of generators being set up as though to make them a frequent hassle for the defenders, rather than being a critical objective to defend, and usually the defenders would require a greater number of players in order to ward attackers, aside from specific hard counter scenarios which only happen if one faction were already in the process of steamrolling.

In short, the question is, "How can you fight the zerg without having to outzerg them?" There's a process in answering this question, but the importance and presence of priority targets, whether they be structures, vehicles or players, are rather diminished, when the zerg is a hive mind that can still function after a few Sunderers are destroyed. The fact that the zerg forces you to fight through them to even destroy priority targets doesn't help much either.

that's concept art and a lot of that dudes concept art was abandoned ..... only air vehicles was accepted from him what im aware

Okay, What should be brought into existence that would counter a larger force without simply being brought everywhere everyone goes?

How cold you make a base more defensible without turning it into an unappealing target for attackers?

How would you allow vehicles to influence the capture without being too dominant a force and just farming everyone inside?

How would you change the locations of generators to make them more prominent and more important to the siege?

I like the ideas they are putting forth in wall jumpads being defender usage only, and i like the underground tunnels that would allow you to get to the walls without much or any contention. I would prefer to wait 2 days and find out how that affects the layout and how interesting the battles are.

Well ...based on their new Road map....and their desire to include players in the game design, to make the game that 'we' want...(not just the game that 'they' want)...effectively means that statements like that are not accetable anymore....they should either explain fully 'why' they want bases the way they are....or...they change them to what the majority (it seems) players want.

A base should be an unappealing target when it comes to actually attacking it, but the act of attacking it must be important, given the rewards for owning it, which are logistical paths, additional resources, and benefits which apply to the empire. On attacking it, the attackers capture it by making it easier and more appealing to the force who wants to take it form the enemy, but initially and for most of the early fight, in a battle between even numbers, skill, and tactical capacity, the defenders should have a clear advantage until the attackers can wear them down and confuse them with vastly superior numbers. However, that is not to say "Just get more guys and you win", but that numbers is a factor that the attackers should consider using as an advantage.

Vehicles wouldn't influence captures in any way other than creating safe paths for infantry through firepower and armor. The game overall should have infantry at its core. While vehicles have armor, firepower, mobility, and speed, they shouldn't be treated as a diamond-hard counter to infantry just because they're vehicles. All those things that vehicles have should be used to either support infantry or remove anything used to support the enemy's infantry.

Generators should be something that although are deeper inside a base, can be cut off from its defenders by the attackers. There's Planetside 1, which had generators and various defensible structures in the center, top, or bottom areas of the facilities. Attackers could perform galaxy drops on top of a base, move to the generator sitting inside an enclosed room on the roof, and take it down. However, the defenders can easily get on the roof themselves from inside, and either use the height advantage to take down enemy ground forces, or to dig in as anti-air teams dedicated to preventing gal drops and air strikes from being successful.

bump to save planetside

You know what would be huge in the defense of bases, for idiots like Laroaz, ******* doors... Why are there no god damned doors in this game? There's a million things that can help beat an overwhelming offense. Tech Plants were fine at launch but bad players don't like meat grinders because they aren't good at situational awareness, shooting, or tactical gameplay... SOE listens and caters to bad players because let's face it, they are the highest demographic. Until that stops happening this game will fade away like so many CoD games.

So, after a long time asking, they are putting in some PS1 base features, but in a mediocre PS2 fashion, adamant that to take from PS1 any more than that is a bad thing. Bloody hell.

Let's skip forward 12 months as players are **** bored with your attempt at eSport creation and just HD the ******* PS1 bases already. ****. You have the layouts there, in front of you. You have the textures from PS2 already. **** this roadmap **** and just make decent bases and add lattice. That is literally all this game needs to not die.

Not saying it's the only thing wrong, because it's not, but it's the one thing that makes it entirely unbearable.

Every time I see pictures like this I just get angrier at what the game has been reduced to. I had such high hopes for PS2 and it looks like they were actually going to fulfill them, at least when it comes to map design, in PS2, but then they abandoned it.

I really wish I was the one leading PS2 development so I could tell them to either play PS1 every day with me to gain some perspective or go find some other team in SOE to work with.

This base reminds me of a interlink facility from planetside 1 due to the bubble shield around the whole base. So i can see why the base is currently not in the game due to them not having a interlink yet, but why remove those walls and normal defensive ability of courtyard to balcony, an then inner facility.

Currently the facility's in release state are all based around being the attacker. From what i see the bases are ok but obviously not completely thought out for defense instead of attack.