Bastion too powerful

I fully support the bastion inclusion as it added an interesting aspect to the game
However it seems way OP and add to this likely bugged as today on miller VS could kill folks in the spawn

current happening on miller VS bastion pretty much killing everyone in spawn room

I'm at 100% certainty that they'll change the Flail guns on it to no longer damage players in spawns ... even if I completely disagree with the necessity to do so (Spawn room warriors shouldn't be shooting directly at a Bastion or its forces with no consequences or risks at all)

even if they fix the spawn killing bug, we're still left with another ridiculous tool for farmers to right click on the map and go on massive killstreaks, ruining lattice fights.

and its current implemation rewards it to the cancerous zergfits who are already a drag to fight.

i've suggested that they rework it from a summonable vehicle, and instead work it into the Air Alert,
having a bastion for each faction automatically circle around the map when the alert starts,
and the objective is to destroy enemy bastions, free air for all, no right clicking flail.

First time I saw a Bastion flying over:
"Hey that's cool"

Every subsequent time I saw a Bastion flying over:
"Well, this fight is over I guess"

In my opinion not a great design from a gameplay perspective.

Thanks
Its reassuring to know others feel same way
I have this sort of feeling i had when BFR were OP in planetside 1 but lack the patience i did all those years ago and simply logged off
sadly this might spell the end of my sub to planetside 2 if they do not fix/adjust the bastion as i log on to have fun not have to look for another spawn base purely because i am spammed killed in the spawn room

I really don't like the bastion. It encourages air which is unbalanced, and people are abusing the fact it shoots through spawns and the destructive force of the cannons. I was at a (medium size) fight at indar coms for instance, which was fairly balanced until a zergfit pulled up with their bastion, helped us push nc back to their spawn room and then proceed to shell the spawn.


They showed up at the last minute of the fight, the person manning the bastion got 50+ kills all by exploit, and the outfit "captured" the base, even though they didn't actually do much for the fight.


The problem is this is just one example of many. Bastions also are used to kill spawns at a fight almost instantly, without encouraging a fun push from either side. Most of the people using a bastion go to fights, farm a ton of people and vehicles, usually killing the fight, and then rinse and repeat. Really not fun at all, and brings nothing to the game.

That's an old bug, basically because the Bastion is so far away that the spawn shields do not render in. The same thing can happen if Armor or Air hit you from far away because of the splash damage.

Air is balanced around harassment, if the ground forces fail to respond (That is AA, lock-ons, ESFs, etc), then yes they'll farm the crap out of you. The Bastion is a late game force multiplier tool with outfits in mind, meant to be used to push fights and continents in a certain direction. Just like Air, if you fail to respond to it, it will farm the crap out of you.

The Bastion brings tons to the game, it gives a reason to work as a team either in it's use or to destroy it. Its air-based objective, something the game has needed for a long time, that has a serious impact on the battlefield if left unchallenged. it encourages teamwork on a large scale and rewards the idea of having an outfit. Yes it can end fights (like single c4 Light Assaults), but you can only have 1 on a map per faction so its like it everywhere.

Planetside 2 is a game about Infantry, Armor, and Air, if you can't handle that fact maybe you should go play a game like CoD instead.

LMAO

I can handle a combined arms game, the problem is it strays away from this with each patch. Currently we have about a fourth of all players that came to check out the game again that have been playing regularly, and this number is likely to drop in the following months, as always. Weird, when population was pretty constant and elevated during the first years.


What really killed it all was the combined arms initiative patch which made every launcher garbage except the decimator (hence why no one unlocks the kraken anymore, and the ones that do suggest "just shoot turrets in an amp station"), made tanks out of paper and effectively drained most of the playerbase. Really dude, if you think a vehicle called a "harasser" should be able to sustain more than 4 AP shots and kill MBTs with relative ease, or that a light assault should scare away those same tanks and wreck every ground vehicle in the game by himself and actually post on forums 'this is balanced, the game has really changed for the better, if you don't like it, go play another game'. Well people have been doing exactly that you delusional being, which is exactly why the game was in desperate need of more players.



As for the point about air being balanced, it's a bit confusing to me, are you a pilot, or simply a stalker infil that hides in corners and doesn't play the game? Seriously, air can wreck anything, and the devs have chosen that AA should "deter" air rather than kill it. Enough of the "well if the guy hovers in one spot 30 meters above the ground for 10 minutes with 50 burster MAXes shooting at him, he's dead, making AA balanced" act. Yeah dude, AA's effective range is minimal compared to the altitude and sheer distances air can travel at incredible speeds. Try using a lock on, if the dude is within the 350m range and doesn't kill you during the eternity it takes to get a lock, he can easily outrun, outmaneuver or take at least 4 hits from the projectile before dying. Needless to say, this will never happen. Skyguard and burster MAX are a bit better, but the flak rounds don't have the range and the vehicles not enough speed to actually chase down aircraft and kill them. As the ribbon's say, it's more of a "deterrent" until something goes and destroys the AA which is completely useless against anything, and then return to their farm. Unless the guy is new, totally distracted or simply doesn't care about dying, pilots don't die to AA.


The only effective counter to air is other air, which brings to the problem of the bastion. The faction using the bastion can spam free esfs for that outfit manning it, putting factions who don't have a bastion at a disadvantage. The sheer health and people around the bastion means players trying to destroy it have no chance of approaching the weak spots before being shredded by the air platoon guarding it. Meanwhile, ground forces can barely shoot at it and the air buzzing around it, much less deal any significant damage, leaving them no choice but to redeploy or stay indoors (not in the spawn since the bastion can shoot through the shield). Just because I don't approve of light assaults killing spawns relatively easily doesn't mean I encourage other vehicles to do so, or favor vehicles designed for spawn camping.



As for the air objective, really, that's what aerial anomalies were meant to do, host A2A combat. Now this new thing encourages A2G dominance. I'm not quite sure why you would defend something that is so flawed and poorly thought out with such aggression. Can you even see past your outfits pew pew while manning a bastion and actually reflect on the long-term effects it has to the game? The bastion encourages zerging, spawn-camping and hardens the fact that ground armor and infantry can simply watch as they are tossed around and blown to bits almost instantaneously even from within their spawn room.


"if the ground forces fail to respond (That is AA, lock-ons, ESFs, etc)"; I guess I can't ask too much reflection from you, since you seem to think ESFs are ground vehicles (maybe that's why air is balanced, you think there's none?). But i'd encourage at least trying out or observing some G2A gameplay, so maybe you could explain to me why the decimator and AP lighting are the most effective AA options for ground troops? Think, as a general rule, it should take the same amount of people to kill the vehicle as the ones inside manning it. Because yes, AA can stack up at close range, but so can air, and G2A will lose in every 1v1 scenario. That's a fact. AA only starts to become slightly effective when 3 ppl are actively using it on one target. All the pilot has to do then is use his afterburner and fly away.



I'm sorry to ruin your trolling, but the bastion needs a fix, that's simply a fact.

The weapons on the Bastion need to have the ability to reach into spawn areas removed. If I can't spawn in and run out one of the doors before splash damage kills me inside the spawn area, then something is wrong. FIX IT

If Air is harassment; Why is lethal, faster than its victims & 'counters', with numerous counter-measures to the Counters?
Harassers (the vehicle), have less mobility & health, than Air does, with noticeably less effectiveness, and dozens more Weapons able to counter - And they're a problem.

Anti-Air Weapons on the Ground, are specialized, to the point that they're dead-weight if Air isn't present:
They're also Designed to Deter: They are reactionary weapons at best, Counter-productive at worst.

A 350 Nanite Lightning dedicated to Anti-Air Duty, costs Manpower & Nanites, which can not by itself kill a 350 Nanite 1-Man ESF that can also kill said Lightning - In full operation, this Lighting Tank when it "succeeds", does not cost the enemy a single nanite, barely any time, and has left the tank without any purpose in the fight - while this ESF can swing around, at any moment, while also having easily succeed in killing multiple targets while under AA fire.
In this Basic Air-vs-Anti-Air, the Aircraft has won, in the best outcome the Anti-Air unit can achieve.
Multiple Skyguards, means 2-3x the resource & manpower investment, to remove for under a minute, a single instance of nanites - with easy loss of Land-Assets killed by the ESF.
With Liberators, Losing an Lighting is very likely, resulting in a constant nanite drain per Liberator "defeat" or "Deterrence".

If an enemy Air unit pops up, It has universal capacity to Kill near any ground target; With twice the weapons-capacity of any land unit, past MBTs which it equals.
It has the speed to out-run any Defensive unit, the Range to avoid numerous sources of AA, and even if you did get it in range:
It has the ability to become Completely immune to lock-ons, Self-heal , Automatic-Repairs & Radar if ESFs, and Boost functions on ESFs & Liberators.

The response speed needed to handle Incoming aircraft is a second or two at best.
Any other Force is able to be slowed, or detected with more time to react; Air, has the speed to be there before you can turn around.

Liberators, have the firepower to decimate armor inside a second, a massive health pool, and boost systems.
If Air wasn't happy to float around, they could quite literally boost to any fight, blast armor targets, and fly off, for another lap.
While any Action the ground takes, would be negated by their speed, HP, Rapid-Self-Repairs or straight Immunities.

The Bastian Brings the ability, to be immune entirely to land-forces, decimate any resistance in LOS to it, spawn new air-assets freely to defend it (including suicide-ramming Armor, or paid-for-aircraft), with the single counter being Aircraft.
Which it itself is.
The Counter to the swarm of Aircraft it spawns, is Aircraft.
Aircraft counter any & all Land Assets. While it itself, can Vaporize forces even inside spawn-rooms.

Air works for once with other Air , with this Bastian: In farming anything to protect their Leader.
Without the Bastian, Air does not typically care about Allies existing.
MBTs actually notice allied Vehicles, and will even mobilize together.
Infantry notice allied infantry & Vehicles - Even talking to each other, or intentionally assisting.
ESFs & Liberators operate Solo in hostile territory, without even speaking to any allied unit.

In typical fashion, Killing an Air-unit, requires some manner of Coordination.
While using an Air-Unit to kill, does not.
So in your example; Pilots are playing COD, while Land is playing Planetside.

I agree, there is no reason it should not be fixed now, especially with a larger team for the first time in a long while.

NOT TROLLING

PS2 is a skill orientated game, and one single Burster MAX can stop most ESFs and somewhat deny Liberators and Galaxies from operating in atleast a 2 hex radius around them depending on their position. The reason the deterrence is balanced, is because ESFs have fixed positions for there guns, they can't swivel around like a tank. If an ESF gets hit by AA they will have to disengage and STOP SHOOTING because of their weapon's fixed position or else run the risk of getting blown out of the sky. I will say however, that I think Fire Suppression is tad OP on ESFs and should nerfed. As for dealing with Liberators, it takes atleast 2 Burster MAXes to really be a threat because the Liberator is intended to use atlleast 2 players to be used effectively.

If an enemy Bastion comes to your base 3-4 skyguards can effectively negate all of the ESFs that they might pull. Also the ESFs pulled from Bastions are not customizable, they come with a dual nosegun, afterburners, and decoy flares with no way to repair outside of a repair galaxy; ESFs pulled from Bastions have virtually no effective A2G weapons.

The Bastion itself is a different story, between it's cost and crafting time ( 4 war asset crafts + 12 hours crafting actual time), you're not likely to see more than maybe 2 Bastions from a single outfit per week because of sheer amount of green blue and purple resources required to craft one of these things. As a result, its firepower is somewhat warranted for how arduous it is to get one in the first place even if it only lasts 1 hour.

ESFs do indeed have a means to attack all Land units, as for the effectiveness, not that powerful. Outside of the Wyrm and Hornet Missiles they have no effective anti-armor options. Hornets require them to guide the shot in making them very susceptible to getting 1-shotted by those tanks you say they counter. The Wyrm requires them to stay on target which means flying in a straight line which is a death sentence if they don't get jump on them.

As for anti-iunfantry, the so-called "lolpods" have been nerfed heavily to the point that they have almost no splash damage and require multiple direct hits to kill infantry which considering the render range of infantry vs. Air there more likely to get blown to bits if they hover in place than actually kill stuff. As for the anti-infantry noseguns, its a mixed bag. IMO the TR Banshee is the most effective anti-infantry gun (OP in my opinion) with its range, ease of use and the fact its decent vs. other Air, the NC Air Hammer is right in the middle with it having rubbish range but great damage and also being the most deadly of the 3 vs. Air, the VS IMO is the weakest with its slow projectile speed, how much it reveals the ESFs position, and how it is trash teir against most Air.

I should point out this thread is about the Bastion not a place for you to complain about Air in general.

The Bastion does help air be more effective, but any aircraft pulled from Bastion uses a preset loadout that cannot be altered. This loadout uses a dual nosegun, afterbirners, racer airframe, composite and decoy flares; no engineer aircraft synergy works on these ESF. Bastion ESF have almost no means to assault ground targets outside of maybe the nosegun.

The Bastion IS powerful, as it should be. Its a late game force multiplier intended to turn the tide in a tough situation. Its a very expensive aircraft, requiring almost a weeks worth of resource farming (playing 4 hours everyday) and the crafting of 4 "War Assets" in addition to the crafting of Bastion itself which takes 12 hours to complete. As such, you're not likely to encounter more than perhaps 2 Bastion from a single outfit. A Bastion's effectiveness can also be significantly impaired if it is being contested by an enemy Bastion.

Yes, the fact its hitting people inside their spawn room needs to be fixed ASAP; its an old bug that can occur with armor or air. It has to do with the render range of the spawn shields

Quick correction, the lolpods have the same tkk on a lightning as an AP lightning against another AP lightning. They are effective against armor.


Sure, the splash may have been reduced a bit, but I'd still love to see a class that can survive a volley of lolpodding. I'll also add that the primary weapons against infantry and just about any other target in the game remain the banshee, mustang and PPA (sure, against a good pilot using an AA weapon, they will likely lose, but the damage output from these AI weapons is actually greater against air, so good pilots can still wreck noob pilots with them, especially with the banshee).


A good pilot can wreck anything, and it's fairly simple for air to hover out of the tank's turret angle, and it always has the ability to quickly escape if it starts taking too much damage, something only they can do.


The best AA option still remains pulling your own air, if you are a good enough pilot for that.

"PS2 is a skill oriented game"; then proceeds to defend 1hk autonomous spawn-camping cannons. I'd also like to know the skill ceiling it takes to use flak, and as you yourself admit, pair up with other AA users and "negate" air (which it doesn't).


Buddy, it takes at least 3 people using AA to chase an esf away. Considering the effective range of the burster MAX, by the time an ESF reaches the second hex, even if the MAX still has a line of sight, the effects of the burster are comparable to tickling someone: they're more likely to die of laughter than the physical effects of your attack. The message doesn't seem clear enough to some people, so I'll just redirect you to a website, simply read the first and last paragraph, the ones that say "effective as an AIR DETERRENT", as in 'IT DOESN'T KILL THINGS', and the thing that says "due to harsh damage drop-off, it's not very effective at range".


https://planetside.fandom.com/wiki/NS-10_Burster

I'll also point out an ESF can nosedive onto a burster MAX and kill it before the MAX can kill it, which means burster MAXes usually just stay in the spawn, which allows for air to easily fly out of their line of sight.


For the skyguard, the second paragraph says it all: it can destroy cocky pilots, but otherwise will just serve as a deterrent unless in groups. Effective range is better than the burster MAX, but the air hovering around the bastion is far out of reach at that height, and while AA stacks up, so can air.

https://planetside.fandom.com/wiki/Skyguard


You really think if you were that much of a bother to aircraft, the bastion wouldn't take 10 seconds to obliterate your skyguards with his cannons and relieve his air platoon of your dangerous threat? The reason they let ppl in skyguards chase them around is because they either don't even notice you're there, or they simply laugh at you while they rack up kills and you waste thousands of rounds shooting at stuff you'll never kill before a la C4s you or you come across an AP lightning.






Also, all the bastion resource costs do is prevent smaller outfits from pulling them, while allowing the 6 largest outfits on each server to pull bastions frequently. One outfit capturing a base even with half a platoon gets 120 auraxium, plus the constant tick every 5 minutes, and a 5x tick of that resource if they hold the base at the start and once more at the end of an alert. Considering zergfits usually have at least one full platoon ghostcapping the map, it's pretty safe to say their resources are always full, allowing them to craft multiple war assets including the bastion frequently with ease. In fact, they craft so many war assets they are forced to throw some away to make room to craft more.


ALSO, your 12-hour crafting time might be a reality for many of the smaller outfits if they can make it that far, but it's possible to speed up the process with resources. If you didn't get it by now, the large outfits who craft bastions on a regular basis are able to speed up the process with resources in order to practically always have a bastion 'on-demand'.


On the other hand, I am quite entertained by the fact you are defending the bastion, which encourages zerging, spawn camping, and an overall lack of skilled play, when you yourself say that the game is skill oriented.

Not saying you are a liar or a troll, but that position's gotta be the godsend incarnate. Maybe a very narrow cave up high in a mountainside direclty above a base. That would, however, only have a limited field of effective operation. And that still requires an Engi.
Best I've ever managed with a single Burster MAX (and Engi in tow) is destroy some ESFs who forgot their survival instinct was a thing, scratch some Libs' paint before they noticed and had the sense to frak off after killing right about everyone around me. Best chance a solo Burster MAX has against a Galaxy is the pilot being either so flabberghasted he crashes the thing or laughs so hard he dies.
And on top of that most pilots who have more than a single braincell will single you out as a primary target. Yes, that makes your job slightly easier, since food will fly to you, but it also means a lot of incoming dakka. So the second you try that out in moderately open terrain against a Lib, god have mercy, because its Tank Buster sure as hell won't.

Burster MAXes are just food for air most of the time. You have better results with an Archer because the ESF can't immediately spot you and pop you.
Don't look at me like i'm a crazy person, it's easier to hit ESFs with an archer shot than you may think! No you're not going to kill it but neither is the Burster MAX so...

I've killed more aircraft with the commissioner that with a lock-on launcher or burster MAX combined.


You're entirely right, the archer is a far better deterrent for non-noob pilots than a burster MAX.