Hello, As a returning player with 700 hours on the game I was really excited to see this game feature base building, but after spending months and thousands upon thousands certs on it I have come to see disappointment after another. Here's my list of complaints: 1. You can spend hour+ collecting cortium and building your base and all it takes to destroy is 1 and just 1 infiltrator in 30 seconds. Hear the alarm sound that someone is in your base hit redeploy and the spawn tube is gone and so is your base. No turret can shoot infiltrator and pain spires does no damage either. Cortium bomb to finish rest of the buildings. So unless you are going to babysit your base 24/7 you can pretty much say byebye to it every single time. 2. Router is very powerful , but has been made way too easy for the enemies to find as they can just see it on the map. So often the enemies just run in and destroy it before the team can even react. Especially if you are again infiltrator and have deep operative. My suggestion to this is the spotting system. Once the enemy finds it they can either spot it or shoot and it appear on the map just like spawn sundy, but maybe with a bit more flashing or permanent marker. The routers are pretty much always in the known spots for the veterans players anyways so I don't think it would be too hard to find them. 3. The flail and glaive are completely useless. In 4 months I have never seen anyone use the glaive. That speaks a lot. Often bases are connected to each other by this oversize no deploy zones and there is completely nothing to shoot out of that. If you shoot at vehicles they just move away from the fire. If they are just intended to take down enemy bases the range sucks in flail and again it's just so much easier just to take infiltrator. My suggestion is to allow base shooting just like orbitals, but add much longer cool down so it isn't overwhelming. Sometimes the enemy has so many vehicles and soldiers on your base that it really doesn't have game killing impact and it would help to breach that overwhelming opposition. At this point I am pretty much done with base building as it is a lot of work with little to no reward.
Couldn't agree more, though unfortunately base building is dead and the only way to fix it is to remove bastions and pocket orbitals, which will never happen with this idiot running the show. As long as people can right click their map to destroy all of your work there is no point to construction.
buildings useless only vs bastions now. but i think skyshield will rework again soon and will fully protect from bastion bombing. build and protect it with friends. of course 1 man builder is useless versus prowler squadron. who not? if inflator bombers annoy you just use detect explosive implant for counter ninja bombermen
This is how I generally see Construction: Why do people play the Construction role? They either want to support in a unique way and defend, or their FPS is too low. Currently the only useful commitment you can make to the objective with Construction is to bring the Router to a fight. But this doesn't satisfy neither of the reasons why Construction players main this role. Players with low end PC's are forced to go to the areas they purposefully avoid and a Router base requires minimal amounts of structures all hidden away from the fight. Design, creativity doesn't matter. The regular construction is too average in everything. Its Towers are weak, defenses are weak, there is nothing it excels in, no specific role other than the Router support, therefor it has too many counters. In a recent Twitch interview with Wrel, he said he barely touches Construction because it's not his thing (which was obvious from the start), so this means Construction will never receive an upgrade and neither the game will adjust for Construction to fit in there.
Yup, I used the glaive exactly once. Just for kicks, I had it going against an enemy base, thinking maybe my team would start attacking....they didn't, so shields went down, shields went back up, zero else happened. I have another thread a couple down saying the flail and glaive need rework. I get the idea we don't want the flail actually shooting on a point, but I think that should mean no shooting inside no SUNDERER deploy zones, rather than no shooting in no CONSTRUCTION deploy zones. However, given how very useless the glaive is, I say let it shoot wherever it wants. All it does is damage shields, which quickly come back.
How to rework it: 1: make it quick and easy. It takes too long to build a base, the reward for it has to be too high to make it worth it. By making construction quick and easy but limiting that speed during combat you wont be as disappointed when your base ineviteably falls or the frontline moves. You could use the old Drone concept to have a birds-eye view of the area and what you are placing, and a Drone would have access to all blueprints simultaneously rather than the player having to constantly ferry back and forth between the silo and whatever he's placing. Add in quick build times and its much better. 2: make construction useful when its not close to the front. They could function as teleporters for troops, provide costless but weaponless transport vehicles and aircraft and create items that can be brought into bases to attack or protect it. 3: make attacking a base require a staging area. For example all bases will get defenses that requires facilities from a PMB to take down. For example a permanent citadel shield, shields on doors, heavy defenses etc that need deactivating, circumventing or destroying through things the PMB provides. 4: as an alternative or addition, make small construction pieces. This could fit nicely with having to build a staging area. Imagine if players can spend nanites or Cortium at a miniature Silo/Sunderer/spawnbunker and buy small things to fortify the area around the spawn area and also inside the base. In defense of the Sunderer it could provide things like a shield that pushes enemies back a few times while making an audible alarm sound, buying time and alerting the owners. Or a ceiling-Spitfire for inside a Sunderer Garage. A minelayer that deploys highly visible mines in an area around it that deal low damage (say 200 AOE) but can be shot. This slows down enemies and only people running straight through risk death. A module that sells a recall device. If you use it you teleport back to the module, allowing a quick reactiontime to an attacked Sunderer. For inside the base you could get access to faction-wide spawnbeacons, things that provide local buffs, generators that can power nearby objects like gravlifts, lightbridges, shields on doorways, miniature spawnbunkers, secondary vehicle pads etc. This would alleviate many of the concerns around Sunderer's having little personal protection and also give players the option to modify the battlefield in their favor or destroy secondary objectives the enemy places.
I would say make cortium bombs require cortium. Either with a spire like the routing spire, or if you wanted to make it quicker, have them be drawn from a construction console for...oh I don't know...500 cortium?
A research building that has a list of projects that can be researched. Projects that can upgrade PMB parts a couple of times as well as unique enhancements to Players and Vehicles exclusive to PMB that have researched those specials. A building for mining outfit resources. A design mode, while inside the Silo that lets you spawn the Drone and place the parts without building them, until you are ready. An Alignment grid during design mode, so we can actually set the parts with good angles and reasonably square things up. Redesigns for some base parts so it is actually "REASONABLY" possible to use them as part of a wall, i.e. Bunker, PillBox, Tower, so they don't have INSANE gaping holes to exploit. Give main base building parts 2 open slots for upgrades from the research facility. Give Modules and Pain Field Spires 1 upgrade slot Damage Resistance Upgrades, PMB Shield Upgrades, Turret Targeting Range Extension Upgrades, Turret Additional Targeting Type Upgrades, Pain Field Distance Upgrades, Pain Field Damage Upgrades, Skywall Shield Defense vs OS upgrades, so it can still take a hit and not die the first time, Silo Storage Upgrades, Silo Area coverage Upgrades, Silo Network to up to 5 Silo's Upgrade, Light Vehicle Terminal Upgrade that allows the ability to equip a unique researched special ability from that PMB, Bunker Internal Pain Field Upgrade (so the room inside the Bunker can actually fend off an enemy), Bunker Spawn Tube Upgrade, Top Mounted Manually Operated Turret for the Bunker Upgrade, Friendly Shield Dome for the Top of the Bunker Upgrade (similare to the Colossus Shield, you and your fruiends can fire out but the enemies hit the shield first before they can hit you. Have it require the same cortium resource consumed on hit, just like the Collosusse tank, making it where you have to supply cortium to the bunker itself, in order to power the shield), Sundy Garage Internal Pain field Upgrade, Ceiling Spitfires in Sundy Garage Upgrade (as suggested by another user above), Anti-Personal Mines Upgrades for the Garage, Anti-Vehicle Mines for the Vehicle Gate Shield Upgrade, Ant-Personal Mines For the Gate Shield Upgrades, Anti-Personal Mines on the catwalk for the Rampart Wall Upgrade, Spitfire turret on the Catwalk Upgrade for the Rampart wall, Shielded Door Upgrade for the Pill Box, Spawn Tube Upgrade for the Pill Box, Top mounted, Manual Operated Turret for the Pill Box, Internal Pain Field for the Tower upgrade, Front Mounted Manually Operated Turret for the Tower upgrade, Top Mounted Manually Operated Turret for the Tower Upgrade, Cortium Powered Vehicle Special ability Upgrades (only aquired from the PMB with proper research projects completed). Cortium Powered Fast Repair to Repair Module Upgrade (Repair Module would have to have a supply of Cortium fed into from an ANT to power this special ability), Cortium powered PMB shields for the Structural Shield Module Upgrade (Structural Shield Module would have to be directly fed Cortium from an ANT to power this special feature), Cortium Powered Anti-Cloak EMP for the Alarm Module Upgrade (works at half the range the alarm module can detect), 50m Shield recharge rate buff from the Reinforcements Module Upgrade, 50m Damage output buff from the Factional Flag Decoration Upgrade, Anti-Vehicle Mines for the Ramp Upgrade, Allied Only Ramp extension energy Road for the Ramp Upgrade (a Road made up of factional benefiting shield energy, that extends past the Ramp for half the length of the ramp and only same faction vehicles can ride on it. Opposing factions just fall threw, kind of like the shield gate, except it is a road extension from the edge of the ramp.).
If Pain Field Spiders actually can't hurt Infiltrators, cloaked or not, that needs to be nerfed hard!
Spire, not spiders... caught that spelling error too late... I had to mow the yard right after I pressed enter. ANYWAYS! There are a number of unreasonable problems with how construction currently is, ad perhaps we should go over the problems of some of the current base parts. The Bunker As it stands right now, most people with any experience for base building have come to realize how useless the bunker has proven too be, in its current state. It was suppose to be a place where your Allies could go, have a reasonable safe room to be in, all-be-it imperfect in the safety it provides, where infantry can run in, change class or re-equip and run back out to the battle field. SADLY! Instead of being a 'reasonably" safe place for allies to use, it is used most often by the enemy as a safe place to attack from instead. This has resulted on wide spread mistrust of people who make PMB's, leading to most Construction Vets to simply not place a Bunker unless they absolutely have to and can get a pain field spire camping the door, in the hopes no one can reasonably survive getting in, an idea that has not been working well lately, even with mines and turrets on the inside. Additionally, the extended side branches of the building need to be changed, in such a way, where you can "RELIABLY" place another building, like the Rampart Wall or the solid wall, next to it, to make a "RELIABLE" closure, that can't be just jumped over or easily walked around. As the current Bunker design is now, you can't even "REASONABLY" use it as part of the base wall. Its current shape will too easily allow an enemy infantry of any kind threw, if you attempt to do so. The only Viable locations require you to exploit the terrain, to have any reasonable chance at using it as a defensive wall. Which wont matter anyways until other changes are made to the bunker, so that it isn't an easy enemy nest instead. - The Bunker absolutely needs upgrade options, to extend its viability and usability. Upgrade options such as: Internal Pain Field (THAT ACTUALLY WORKS ON INFILTRATORS, EVEN WHILE CLOAKED) - Internal Spawn Tube Option, since it is an Infantry bunker, it simply makes since. - The ability to add a Manually operated Top mounted Turret and able to choose between the 3 classic options of Anti-Personal, Anti-Armor, Anti-Air. -An option to have a Cortium Powered Dome Shield on the top of the bunker, that acts like the Colossus Tank shield, allies can be under it, shooting out, enemies outside, hit the shield to drain its cortium reserves, before getting to shoot the personal on the roof. And that is the start, in a nicer format then the wall of texted I can no longer edit. Please for give me for the wall of text on the other post. Also, COOKIES AND MILK!!!
The Tower The Tower could have been a good idea. A lookout point, to do a few things from. Spot Enemies, Snipe them, attack armor, all from the safety of a structure shield enhanced guard tower! Unfortunately, much like the bunker, this tower also suffers too much from being an all too easy nesting place for your enemies. You might be able to make it safer with a Pain Field Spire, but it just doesn't seem enough. Add to the fact that its shape has the same problem as the Bunker, to reasonable way to connect walls or other buildings against it, without a huge gaping hole for any infantry to walk around. No reasonable chance of using the tower as part of a PMB wall. The Tower could be a lot better, made into something that can become a lot more viable. It's shape needs to be editted so that it can actually be used as part of a CLOSED PMB wall, WITHOUT gaping holes to walk around. It can be given upgrade options just the same, most of them similar to the Bunker, where reasonable, such as: - An Internal Pain Field - A Forward Ground Mounted Manual Operated Turret option with the 3 classical PMB turret Options - A Top Mounted Manually Operated Turret option, again with the 3 classical PMB Turret Options. That's already 7 Tower options to choose from among 2 upgrade slots! So making it where it could be a lot better and more viable, WITHOUT making it OVERPOWERED!
The Pill Box A short, cute building, that could have been quite useful as a sniper nest and does get some pretty interesting improvised usage. It still suffers too much from all the same problems as the Bunker and the Tower. So AGAIN! Shape needs to be redone so it doesn't so easily allow enemies to just run threw gaping holes and needs upgrade options: - The Internal Pain Field - Top Mounted Manually Operated Turret with the 3 Classical PMB Turret Options - A Spawn Tube. A lot of us already try to do exactly that with it already, to try and make a safe place to spawn. Might as well add that as an option for the building itself.
The Research Building Yeah, it doesn't actually exist, yet, if ever. It should. If done right, it could make PMBs far more viable and desired. It could be the source of how you unlock PMB upgrades, where you have to spend Cortium and Time to activate upgrade options that can be slotted into the upgrade slots of your base. A way to help you keep improving you and your groups base, large or small, what ever the purpose of the base build it might have. A research building can provide the means to many additional options for both your personal base and potential game play additions beyond the spot a PMB is inhabiting. If the concept is added to the game and most the options above actually implemented, it would be reasonable for the research building to allow 4 projects at one time. Additionally, if more then 1 project is running at a time, it would place a load on the research buildings servers that causes it to loose research speed efficiency. - 1 project is 100% efficient - 2 projects 85% efficient for both - 3 projects 70% efficient for all 3 - 4 projects 65% efficient for all 4 You still technically gain the projects faster as a collective, then you would doing 1 project at a time, but it seems to be within reasonable MMO game balancing practice to have such a loading game balancing change to it. The Player Made Outfit Mine Doesn't currently exist either. With the changes that have been made, this building should exist as well. Sometimes, your outfit just simply isn't going to be the one capturing the hex-a-lands, ESPECIALLY if you are a small outfit with few in numbers, forcing you to either stay up at odd times, unreasonable for people who have jobs and aren't using some form of NSFW substances. SO the only reasonable alternative ends up either being, (currently available) switch to an outfit that can get credit for capturing bases, OR add a Player Made Outfit Mine to construction, so you can actually have a reasonable chance at actually using outfit special abilities. The Sundy Garage This can be a pretty useful thing. It's intended purpose is in its name, but since it is open on both side, it was practically the very first vehicle gate, before the vehicle gate got added to the game, just without the ability to actually stop any vehicles, unless you where a main battle tank. Sometimes it can be used as a shield for your ANT, when you are loading the Silo and haven't yet dropped the skyshield and want to hold off on it. Sometimes used as a shielding shed for other equipment, to make it harder too kill spawn tubes and modules, especially if you work it just right to fit a pain field spire inside it. That all being said, perhaps there are some additional upgrades this building should have. - Internal Pain Field - Anti- Infantry Mines - Ceiling Spite Fires - Manually Operated Turrets on the top to the side edges perpendicular to the garage doors, but each turret slot has to be slotted independently, meaning, if you want both, you have to use both upgrade slots. As usual, that come in the 3 PMB turret options. The Gate Shield Very helpful building, when you want to allow your allies vehicles threw, but prevent your enemies vehicles from rushing in. Works well, could be better. Recommended Gate Shield specific Upgrade options: - Anti-Personal Mines - Anti-Vehicle Mines ALL PMB parts, both Buildings, Modules, Turrets, Logistical Spires, EVERYTHING!!! Upgrades for all: - Damage Resistance +15% to all sources - Standard Shield worth 25% of the base parts actual health. If the base part is immune to a certain damage time, then so too is the shield. If the shield goes down, it waits 10 seconds before going back up at 1/4th of its normal capacity and starts recharging to full shield health, taking 10 more seconds to do so.
I love your propositions. But I think the developers don't care about this gameplay, we've been asking for a buff or rework for years, and the bases are still so useless for years ... At present it is preferable to build only a silo and an OS, it is faster and more profitable
Oh I know, I know all too well. The latest changes to the game convinced me that the Current Devs are actually trying to kill construction threw the slow 1000 cuts method and are waiting for enough players to be so POed at it that the devs use it as an excuse to say "Construction is broken and so we are going to delete it!" They know that deleting it out right, right now will have a huge back lash, so they are slowly cutting away at it, while pretending that it is just bugs they can't get around too. This kind of malicious manipulation has become common practice in the gaming industry. If Daybreak had any actual intention on saving Construction, they would do all these things, simply because all these idea's are gaming industry standard and common place, a tried and true tested method of game play mechanics that work, so everyone does them.
The only way to save Construction gameplay in PlantSide 2 is to follow the gaming Industry well established standards of game play features. Daybreak simply isn't doing that. That shows their intent too kill it.
