[Video] Construction System Thoughts - New Meta?

I think this will be amazing and will only add more depth.

To give you an idea of how powerful they are, during the testing we set up four of them and our volunteer pilot (a TR in a mosquito) flew over, and landed next to them to chat while their AI was active.

He then repaired his mosquito, and we spent about ten minutes doing science on their tracking system. He never lost the mosquito. At least until the end, where he forgot to repair and tried to fly off with about 30% health. Whoops.

They don't have flak, so they're kind of like basilisks that can't aim down. The AI has decent aim, but seems to have a hard time leading if the target isn't traveling in a straight line.

The pilot did report that the sudden barrage of plinking noises caused by their synchronized fire was quite frightening, and could perhaps cause inexperienced pilots to crash.

I think the only pilots who will suffer with this are the ones who approach directly towards the enemy and proceed to hover while attacking. The ones that explode pretty quickly anyway, basically.

As a pilot I would look at using the turrets myself to fortify landing pads or create safe zones near the front to fly to. Too often you flee from multiple esfs to find absolute no AA cover at all. This might make some guaranteed cover which would make it significantly more complex for incoming esf's to chase you.

Also the turrets themselves are unlikely to be a big threat if you use your head a bit. They're static and cannot hide in shields like bursters or move about a lot like skyguards. If they're defended by aerial shields then that just makes them 10X easier to spot too.

To tell the truth, for me it comes to late. Planetside havent the good amount of players like 2013/2014. Maybe I am wrong but the first view looks more interesting for organized platoons. That sounds not good for random combats somewhere in the yard of captured areas.

No no, it's "2-3 people can literally counter 2 dozen pilots simultaneously with harvest, drive to a good spot where the turrets won't be bulldozed by a passing Harasser/stealth Flash/tank but close enough to something important to be useful and then take the time to build the turrets, AI modules and shields before anyone (including air) shows up and blasts you to pieces anyway and forget, since we've just established that some aircraft will be passing the area otherwise you wouldn't be placing your turrets there anyway.

So I would say RIP lack of area control value, go go valuable base control!

Also as mentioned you can apparently easily circumvent them by dropping in vertically, bombing the hell out of them as you go.

Now I am in total agreement that these AA turrets shouldn't prevent aircraft from flying there or attacking targets. As I've mentioned they should be forced into a new type of MO to operate there, mainly by doing dodging and making use of more than just the VTOL parts of their aircraft when in combat. This would improve the game as a whole: Players can set up a turret or two at small battles without having to sacrifice their entire combat capability to just scare off aircraft, but aircraft aren't prevented from operating in the area.
We still have a problem with aircraft not being very capable of operating in area's with enough player-wielded AA, which needs to be adressed as well.

Yeah! Like the discussions surrounding Indar Excavation and Quartz Ridge!

Oh wait, those are complaints, because the battle goes on perpetually between the two. Yeah there is a problem with poor Sunderer protection around Indar Excavation, but the distance between the bases as well as their layout ensures players can buy enough vehicles to prevent vehicle superiority by the attackers, making for long, extended matches.

Now I'm not against this, but considering the amount of discussion it already generates you should keep small bases in. Not to mention that removing most small bases altogether would simply move us from one extreme to the other: Now we have mostly infantry combat, that keeps going on perpetually, with the removal of most small bases you would have an almost perpetual vehicle battle raging everywhere until one team finally is able to put up a Sunderer near the enemy base.
A mixture between the two is what we should be shooting for. I would say that we remove 50% of the small bases, but for 25% of the removed small bases we leave the point(s) standing and allow players to build their own base around it. This allows infantry and vehicles to be powerful when engaging the base, and with a lack of spawnbunkers on the base it would be one massive battle for control of the point, Spawn points (Sunderers) and the destruction/defense of the base defenses. All in all, a much better variety and usefulness for all unit types.

Oh, well that's not too bad. It'll maybe screw Libs and semi screw Gals, but ESFs and Valks will be relatively ok when used by good pilots. Gals can still Drop from flight ceiling which is good. I guess just lib pilots are SoL. Not ideal to marginalize a part of the playerbase -- but not a terribly large part and not all over the map so -- probably workable. Thanks for the info!

Don't forget there are Auto AV turrets and walls as well. The problem is each person having access to "place and forget" mechanics. Bases need a few people to set up, but not actually need more than a few people to defend unless overwhelming force is brought to bare. (lol word pun!) So, no, you won't see tanks and harassers drive over and insta pop these bases (which is good -- it would be ridiculously unfair if harassers could do that.)

On second thought -- in relation to these bases, GK is about to be even more OP...

And of course the will fix the turret tracking so that they track vertical movement (rightly so.) However, I do think we will see a surge of ESFs who can dodge through the fire and operate in the area and a reduction in Libs/Gals. None of this still changes the fact that shields should not be 1 way. That is absolutely stupid.

I'll say it again -- lets put 1 way bullet shields on ALL bases for infantry and armor to deal with -- see how all the ground people feel about that one. (there is a reason that ONLY spawn room shields are 1 way bullet penetrable.)

Outside of the auto turrets I do have a few other thoughts about how construction will affect population imbalance. I'll leave that for another time though.

I'm excited about the construction system. However, the "place and do nothing no skill yet having actual real DPS unlike spitfire" turret thing and 1 way placeable anywhere roof shield seems like a huge mistake.

Considering the info WTSherman put up -- as an ESF pilot you probably won't have much of an issue because agility. I'm thinking of the Gals and Libs because no agility. I'm all about building resupply zones and whatnot. However, Gals and Libs are designed to hover and attack. It's fine if you build AA. I'm GLAD we get to build AA. I'm not glad that the gunships of the game can't even fight back...

Well, AV turrets will be included in the limit right? So at most you'll be able to place 2 AA turrets, 2 AV turrets or 1 AV+1 AA turret. From what we've heard so far it works more like a Spitfire than a full-on AV/AA turret. Add the range limitations that the computer controlled turrets have and these turrets won't get much done unless in highly specific situations. The AI is only so that the turrets won't be mauled to death without opposition from what I've seen.

Needs some damage modifiers so that GK's aren't as powerful I guess.

Well... From what I've seen you can update the buildable walls to have a 1-way infantry shield. So it's already there in a buildable form (rather than adding a permament 1-way infantry shield around all bases). I can see the advantage of this, as it encourages attacking the walls and getting behind it rather than sniping any player that shows his head behind this wall.
Of course the benefit from those shields are more evident compared to 1-way AA shields. The 1-way AA shields do not modify the behaviour of aircraft (that I can see) but discourage attacking anyway. So the shields need to offer some way around it, such as allowing enough room beneath the shield for aircraft to conveniently attack, otherwise they should simply be no-way shields.

As for Libs and Gals, this helps protect against the dreaded "drop some LA on VP generator and watch fireworks" tactic that would screw over the entire build system. Also, Liberators are the least hovering aircraft from my experience, they come in, do a strafing run to completely annihilate a vehicle or a group of infantry and move away. Libs have the least to gain from hovering around, unless it's really completely safe in the area they are hovering and in that case they are just farming.

I can say that the introduction of the construction system will likely amount to huge, indirect buffs to the Phoenix and Lancer. Phoenix squads firing out of cover will likely make excellent turret removal systems, while Lancers can bombard base structures (which are huge, easy to hit targets) from outside infantry render range. Though of course if the structures are being supported by a repair module and repair sundy/gal (as, unless they've changed this recently, the module seems to stack with sundy/gal prox repair) you're probably going to need quite a lot of rocket launchers to actually bring them down.

Of course, in theory a Phoenix might be able to bypass the base defenses entirely and navigate directly to the VP generator... but given its ~285m range you'd have to be dangerously close to the base to pull it off.

Average PS2 intelligence prevents such tactics. Those 2 weapons can already turn the tides but no one does it.

Many people seem pessimistic about this new addition to the game for reasons that are not justified. Having dicked around with the construction system several hours today with the purpose if finding out as much info as I could about it, allow me to shed some light on the matter;

PLACEMENT;
- All existing bases on the map have a large no-construct zone around them, larger than a standard no-deploy zone, in which neither friendly or enemy buildings can be constructed. These no-construction zones seem to have been made purposefully to cover many of the most common nesting positions we all know and love.

- All powered constructions, so the modules for turret AI, the auto-repair modules, the shield generators and VP gens must be placed within 100m of a Silo which contains Cortium, the new resource for this system. If the Silo runs out of cortium, or if the modules are placed outside of the 100m radius, they will cease to function. In addition, Silos cannot be placed within 200m of each other, so not only is about half of the entire continent covered in no-construction zones, half of what remains will be covered in silo no-construction zones, leaving the actual area that can be filled with automatic defenses and shielded bases to be quite small.

ITEM LIMITS;
Each player can only build;
One of each kind of turret ( AA, AV, AI )
Three walls
One ( or two ) Bunkers, I'm not sure.
One Silo
One VP Gen
Two AI modules
Three Repair modules
Two Structure Shield Generators
One "sky shield" generator

Now you're telling yourself that that's a lot of turrets and walls for a whole squad, but you have to fit all of it within that 100m Silo radius which will lead to saturation and, frankly, not much room left.

MAINTENANCE;
All constructed structures decay over time ( their health drops ) and all automated functions and modules constantly consume Cortium from your Silo.
In the best case scenario, where all your structures fit within the 100m radius and you have repair modules covering everything, you still need to do constant supply runs to keep the silo full. The more modules you build, the faster it drains.
If you decide to build structures outside of a Silo's radius, it will require constant repair.

WEAKNESS A SINGLE PLAYER CAN EXPLOIT;
These constructed defenses will be far from some cheap turret you can deploy and forget about and let it deny air and vehicle passage in the area. If the Silo goes down, all AI, shields and repairs go down, the whole base shuts down. Without players actively defending it, it's easy to take it out.




Additional clarifications;

Turrets will not automatically shoot at players unless they are built close to a Turret AI module, which in turn will only function if it is within 100m of a Silo. Each player can only build a single silo, a max of two Turret AI modules, and at most one of each turret type. The turrets and modules also decay over time unless supplemented by a repair module ( which also decays and cannot repair itself ) which must also be in range of a Silo.
In short, there is no scenario in which a guy jumps in his ANT and builds automated turrets everywhere.


Also, as it is now, only three VP generators can be active at once on a continent, for all three factions, and those closest to enemy warpgates take priority. This means that it's very unlikely you'll see players fight less and instead build fortresses with VP gens far behind their own lines, but rather players will be more aggressive, trying to build their bases and VP gens on the front line, if not even behind enemy lines, while enemies will also be more tempted to attack and destroy these bases to give their own VP generators priority.

Joke's on you, the automated anti-infantry turrets are far deadlier to infantry than the automated anti-air turrets are to air.
Tanks are definitely the way to go to take out hard bases. Tanks and lots of rockets, and then hard air strikes once the air shield is down.

Also they have to have an entrance to the base, as ANTs will continuously need to go out and gather more Cortium to feed the Silo, lest it run out of resources and all systems go offline.

The only real issue i see is that all the modules seems to have the exact same model and you can't exactly tell which do what because they have no identifying markers on the model and UI. IMHO the white stripe on them currently should be teamcolored and there should be a symbol over part of the line showing what kind of module it is.

Repair could be a wrench.
A.I module could just be a circular symbol with A.I in it,
Air shield could be a reworked shield gen icon with wings.
The anti infantry laser grid module could be a grid of lasers with a skull in the middle.
The structure shield gen could be a shield icon without vertical or horizontal lines but a solid colored shield.

I mean, they kind of all have a huge glowing icon directly above them clearly showing what kind of module they are?

i've been messing around with the system not understanding it completely just to see the buildables and placement, can enemies see the icons too?

structures without a silo to fuel them don't show icons.

Hm, I actually don't know if enemies can see the icons, though it would make sense that they would.
Also, yes, unpowered structures do not have an icon, I guess you do have a point there. Although unpowered structures don't really matter with the whole 'being unpowered' thing...

if they can see the icons it would make some sense to be able to identify unpowered structures, sure you can charge in and destory their silo and it makes the modules no-threat, but you might want to destory them so if the enemy does push you back they can't just put down a new silo and repower all those structures.

this is before you consider timing, the enemy could counterattack quickly being able to tell what modules are around means you can prioritize the destruction most expensive ones first or the ones that make the most sense to destroy tactically at that moment.

That actually calms a lot of my fears; with the silo system you at least need to maintain the bases. The ability to have random turret nests around the map would be diminished.

Still, the sky shield should block both ways. Imagine if the walls worked the same way, with infantry and turrets able to shoot out but not take damage in return. Sounds like the turrets in general need to be toned down.

I hope they change this, adding defenses to bases to prepare for attacks would be one of the better idea's for PS2. With restrictions such as Silo's it would be an art to power and defend an entire AMP station for instance anyway.

I understand every limitation except two: Walls and bunkers.
I think that to properly create a defense a single player should be able to build at least half a dozen walls and a few bunkers. I wouldn't want base building to be a solid team-experience. With just walls and bunkers that do not return fire you can still prepare a (forwards) base beforehand on your own, then have your allies make use of it once the fight moves there.

I really like this idea. All anyone thinks of is how the turrets will be everywhere. But everyone forgets that people will actually have to spend time to build them. This takes bodies away from the frontlines. This could be a lot of fun.

Also, people keep forgetting the strategy aspect of this game. Way too many see it as just a shooter, but its made to be so much more. This is why there are platoons, multiple forms of combat.

Also, this could be fun. I can certainly imagine some fun times in store with my outfit building some great constructions. We will create Helm's Deep far within the Esamir mountains.