Spawn generator for ALL bases?

I don't know if OP is aware (or if it has been mentioned in the thread already) but all bases did use to have an SCU. It got removed at some point though. I think the though process was that it was far too easy to go ninja on a base - take out the SCU fast before anyone could really react to defend, and then nobody could spawn in to the base to recap it even if it was just a single attacker there. As far as I can remember the SCUs were just basically generator that were immediately open to attack. You either hacked them, or maybe at that time in the game's history you could just shoot them/C4 them. I can't exactly recall. In either case - they were very easy targets and basically the first thing you would go for if you were actually making a serious attempt at taking the base.

I don't entirely disagree with the idea though. Cutting down on spawncamping/being spawncamped would improve the game. The SCU just needs a degree of protection. Perhaps if you had to flip the base to 50% before the SCU became vunerable (like you have on techplants) then it would leave a fair window for securing bases while cutting away 50% of that mindless spawncamping that nobody likes.

I still think that spawnrooms need much better protection and multiple viable exit-routes, some of which have to be protected from vehicle-fire. Most bases still have the "phonebooth in the middle of open terrain" terribad design to them which is basically just begging to be spawncamped. Techplants are a good example of where they got it mostly right. To resecure you have 2 main ways in - through the front door, or through the tunnels. vehicles can shut down one of those, but not both, but infantry on the inside have a much easier time holding the point if they only have to watch one direction instead of two.Basically when a base's control point is much more of a hassle to try to secure than it is to just camp the spawn then that indicates flawed base design. You should be incentivised to capture and hold the point, and directly attacking a spawnbuilding should be ineffective/suicidal.

Some soft mechanics to help break up the zerging into more balanced fights would also go a long way. Currently there is nearly always one "primary zerg" for each faction pr. continent that just go around capping unopposed with 10-to-1 numbers advantage to the defenders. All the time meanwhile they yell "this is boring, come out and fight!" like idiots. Perhaps they are just too stupid to realize that nobody cares to fight against beyond impossible odds, or they just don't realize that if they actually bothered to deploy to anywhere else aside from where their megazerg is they would have plenty of enemies to fight. Meanwhile your own empire's equally daft zerg is rolling over bases in the next lane over - effectively canceling out any impact that both of them might have had. The mission system might actually fit the ticket here. If you just get good enough incentives going then the mission system could try to split up the megazergs by asking them to attack to different bases once it detects that there is no worthy opposition. If at least some of the randoms follow those sorts of directions you might actually end up with several somewhat balanced midsizes battles rather than snoozefest zergs that avoid the enemy and cap empty bases in a great big **********.

You should never be forced to go somewhere obviously, but a LOT of people are essentialyl just "trying to find a good fight" and if a mission system could sneakily try to sort of "matchmake" good battles by trying to balance out the attackers and defenders (as well as the total size of the battle) then I think the game would be all the better for it - especially for the casual crowd who usually don't bother going into the deep strategy stuff anyway.

-Stigma

not when you can stat pad from a bunker that can never die lol. people care about certs and sitting in that spawn room is an easy way to do it. Been saying it since beta 0 points for killing in a spawn room and 0 points from the guys leaving the spawn room for 30 secs no I can't be killed bs no just no points for anyone PROBLEM ******* SOLVED.

double post sorry but for the record i thought that up in 15 mins WTF is the dev team doing?

Disagree.

Destroy-able SCU's only favour the attacker ( zerg ) and they have enough advantages as it is in a fight .. We need to helping and promoting defense , not making it harder.

Only like 20% of players defend, you want to knock it down to 5%?

we don't really need a 'solution' to spawn camping; it isn't really a problem

nobody (attacker or defender) is being 'forced' to spawn camp; if you don't like it you can respawn at a different base any time you like, or wait out the cap timer somewhere outside of LoS of the spawn room.

if a few people want to farm a handful of kills playing shield door peekaboo, so ******* what

Which don't mean anything when grossly outnumbered.

Or worse, trying to design bases around grossly outnumbered battles. BAD IDEA!

This is what happens when you're outnumbered with an SCU: You're SCU gets blown up and enemy starts camping next base in lattice before the previous one even gets capped.

This Is what happens when you're outnumbered and the middle base in the lattice can't be spawned in (the middle base idea): You lose middle base without a fight.

I agree in principle, but its still not good design. Yes, you can leave the boring zerg, or if being camped you can redeploy elsewhere, but people are often a little simpleminded about these sorts of things and keep hitting their heads against a wall rather than exploring their options. You see this so clearly by listening to "yell" where both the camped and campers complain that "this sucks, this is so boring". Ultimately this no doubt leads to people getting bored with the game or frustrated - and leaving to play other games. As tempting as it is to say "good - I don't want those players here anyway" that is a very shortsighted thing to do, because those players help keep this game alive and well funded for further development, and none of us are served by having PS2 go into decline (or at least not be as popular and well funded as it could have been).

That's why the game should utilize better design to disincentivise that sort of gameplay and nudge people into scenarios that are fun for both sides. That's the sort of design that keeps people happy and makes the game fun, rather than alternating between mindnumbing and frustrating.

As I said before, it's not an impossible thing to do - if you just start by making spawns that have many viable exits with lots of defenders advantage so that holding the point is the natural thing to do in a base rather than attacking the spawn then that would go a very long way - among other things.

-Stigma

Larger facilities have them, do people still pile up in the spawn rooms? I do think more use the tunnels than the doors. For all the stats SOE is watching, how often would seem a significant one for base design.

Well, yes and no. Techplans as mentioned before have the start of a half-decent design. They basically have 2 routes: via courtyard to front door, or via tunnels. I'd like to see more than just this, and some tunnels to the other courtyard buildings and such, but anyway... I think the answer is that some people still get stuck in the spawnroom mentality and stand there like lemmings shooting out, but I DO see a lot more real attempts at re-securing the base in techplants compared to other bases. Just the fact that you have a route that is safe from vehicles and air makes a MASSIVE difference in making it reasonable to re-secure against a zerg. Once dozens of tanks surround a spawn you simply won't be able to burn down the massive amounts of HP to ever exit.

Vehicles should have their roles in base captures (otherwise they are essentially not good for anything objective-related) but in this case of the techlplants they take on a supportive role. Dominating the courtyard makes it so that the enemy can only come from one direction (at least without fighting their way through the vehicles) and that makes the job twice as easy for the attacker infantry than if they had to cover both directions. That's a fine way for them to contribute, and if there are just too many vehicles and too few infantry then you may have to ditch the vehicle and get on the ground. Infantry should always be the most essential piece to capturing or defending bases, and you should never win a base by spamming it with vehicles just so one guy can hop out of his tank and casually go cap the point because the enemies can't get out of the spawn...

A fair amount of players do use the tunnels, and you have to assume that at least a few of the players who don't simply don't know about them. They are not very obvious at all. heck, when i started out it took me a while to even realize that there is a rear-exit to those buildings. Some actual direction arrows "painted" on the floor might help. They might even say "defense tunnels". Having this sort of techplant design philosophy carry over to other bases I think would help a lot.

-Stigma

No.

Anything but what we have now. I cringe when I see people defend what we have now, or claim that no matter what is changed, that nothing will change. Really? Some people are seriously short on creative thinking.

* The whole idea of spawning in one spot is ridiculous on its' face. Who came up with that idea? There should be numerous spawn locations, ground level, below ground, elevated, drop pods, etc. Jump pads should be right next to the spawn so a player can safely spawn and fly across the base in various directions.

* Using SCU's at every base is a solid idea. Just place them in defensible locations with a spawn point, and make the attackers work for it. SCU's would be a great way for defenders to determine how badly they want to keep the base. If they can't, or won't defend the SCU, then they lose the spawn, and at this point the CP timer should end and base should instantly flip.

It not only gives some added grit to the fight, but it solves the CP timer issue as well, so if defenders aren't present, the base can flip rapidly. Also, the SCU's should be destroyed by weapon fire, not overloading.

The SCU could be actively repaired by friendlies as it is taking fire, so you have this huge battle over the SCU, taking fire and being repaired, like a tug of war, but once it's down, the base flips, and the show is over.

* One-way shield farming, either way, has to end. Redesign the bases and spawns so players are either encouraged or forced to go outside and fight. For those that fuss about this, here's a tip: When you've been backed into a corner and you're outnumbered, that means you LOST. Stop make believing you haven't lost when you have. Get over it.

* Enough with these wide open CP's in the field. Wall them off so you can't snipe or spam it from 200m. They can still be outside, just protect them.

* Base design, while initially cool looking, is just hideous. It may look good, but it plays awful.

* Enormous sized bases with no fast way of getting around. Total nightmare. I hate it. The token few jumpads they have are no where near enough for the size of these bases. I'm sick of spawning at a base and seeing the battle 300m on the other side. I just redeploy now, I don't even bother with it. There aren't enough players to fill even 10% of these bases anyway.

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The spawn room farming and the ridiculous capture timer mechanic are the two most boring aspects of this game. I've never experienced anything like it. It's as if someone asked the question: "How can we make base capture as dumb and boring as possible?", and then came up with this.

If the SCU is out in the open where it can be spammed and sniped to death in 2 seconds, I would agree.

That is why you nest it inside of a building, multi levels, teles, with lots of 'stuff' inside to make tactical attack/defense possible and fun, and you make the attackers come inside and work for it. For some darn reason, PS2 is obsessed with having everything exposed and vulnerable from all angles and all fire.

Just stick the darn thing deep inside a building, redesign the spawn system, and your problem is solved. If the defenders decide that it is too hard to get the SCU, then they can just fall back to camping the CP and wait it out like they do now.

Here's one way to stop getting spawn camped (works best as squad/platoon):
"Re-deploy to warpgate, load up in the galaxy, we're dropping on A point"
The defenders become the attackers.

I will agree any change such as this would require a few changes to go along side it ..

One being Imo the no deploy zones would need to be adjusted , so that it's not possible for the attackers to deploy a sundy closer to the cap point than the distance from spawn to cap point (s) .. So the distance that needs to be traveled is equal.
Another as you say is to move more things inside buildings ..

But I guess once again it comes back to the old age problem of base design .. They made great strides with Amerish but still not perfect.
At some point though we will have to accept that they maybe haven't the time to keep adjusting base's ( not if we want quicker new content ) and that changes like this would maybe not be possible without it.

I'll be for this change the day they make every single base a veritable fortress that would put the old crown to shame.

Unfortunately, the Tech Plant design is such that the tunnel exits are death traps, especially in the case of the one that goes closest to point A that doesn't expose one to an open air route - the attacker can set up an ambush on anyone exiting it with the multiple advantages of high ground, cover, and it being a choke point ... and they can even park a vehicle over it for instant kills and with the right auto-repair setup it won't be destroyed. Thus forcing infantry to go the routes covered by vehicles that have a incredible advantage over infantry, especially when HE weaponry is deployed.

I think the tunnel system could be improved rather quickly, its exits shouldn't be elevators, they should be stairs or ramps that let the player exit with fewer disadvantages.