Too much time to invest for casuals.

Not to sound ********, but seriously, it takes far too much time to get the warp gates charged. The interm events like capturing tech plans bio labs and amp stations almost always are terrible and end in a draw. Anomolies are somewhat ok, but it really is just luck of the spawns of who wins.
The land grab after the gates charge is really where the rewards are at, but who has that kind of time to wait?
We need smaller logistic styled events for more casual play. Deliver or guard resources. Repair a decaying base. Mine a road. Actual requests for squad transportation. Like bounties but made by the system.

Unless I'm having a great time with my outfit, I usually burn out within 60-90 minutes of playing.

Compressing the continent events/progression a little would be nice. I don't have the stamina for 90 minute alerts after already playing for a while.

Yes, the rewards are good now but I rarely see a continent locking alert now and even more rarely do I have the time to finish it.

This I have to agree with, its taking far too long to lock a continent now.
Not many people have the time to play for 4-5 hours a day just to be able to get an alert.

PlanetSide 1 had the additional feature of regular lattice bases needing to be powered for shields and spawning to function. Implementing this might allow more casual players to take out an Ant, fill it with Cortium, and deliver it to a base on the front lines.

So... causal players, can play delivery truck, a required task, for anything to happen on the map, past Galaxies full of troopers & tank columns traveling from the warpgate, to reach a fight?

How exactly does adding a Constant need for essentially, trucks of cort to every single base that is engaged at all, help casuals?
They're expected to then, drive a vehicle around looking for orange rocks, to then stare at a receiving node -- rather than anything else, as it's implied, a casual player that lacks 4-5 hours for a event, should enjoy driving a vehicle in near circles..

Like..
What exactly is positive about putting that constant delivery-service job back in?

I wonder why the continent lock isnt the main alerts and starts with 41% and ends after 1.5h, meaningless there are other events ongoing like air abnormalities?
It's the same as with base captures, when the Alters ends, you cannot capture this base anymore although it was 1s left. This would make the continent on tines way shorter than the right now 6h.

It adds some action because unless your enemies are total morons they will try to stop that ANT runs to limit your resources. At the same time a good way to weaken zergs would be interrupting their nanites supplies.

But this should be implemented very carefully to work, otherwise it would just make everything more boring. I seriously doubt devs would take this risk.

I for one do not want more pve in this game.

Player made bases are the worst waste of time ive ever witnessed by a game company.

So the 'action' is that possibly, a vehicle, or aircraft will attempt to murder the Casual players, driving ants from point A to point B endlessly, carting orange rocks around..
Which puts the Casual player between the most boring delivery-simulator, and "How will I die today" on a Loop.
After all, are they expected to survive this 'action', or just be fodder, during the most boring operation possible.

very carefully..
Yeah as after all, the most boring possible task, that holds action as "Something that flies or drives, pray it drives, will come to murder you at times", is basically finding whom should be sacked with the delivery-truck driving task for the next 3 hours, so the rest of the player base can actually fight each other.

I like the resource aquisition task and I'm already in the mindest that my efforts should help other players enjoy their own game as much as possible.

As far as I am concerned, your complaints boil down to "I refuse to accept that someone enjoys this."

All I'd like to see some native creatures or fauna that tries to eat you.

A five man team slugging through the swamps of Hossin.

Did you hear that?

I heard something?

*looks back* to the guy bringing up the rear.

Where's the other guy?

I guess he was...Lost to the swamps???

You might enjoy it, as someone can indeed enjoy it.
But most aren't coming to a war game, as a 'casual', to essentially drive in circles, while on occasion being killed by an enemy flier or tank.
It also means, that someone has to do this delivery job, in order for anyone else to actually be able to play the game.
And that an ESF, can basically shutdown an entire lattice base by hunting down Ants, as can enemy (or friendly) ants simply burning off all cort in an area.. screwing an entire lattice base over.

So rather than boil down to "I can't imagine someone liking it", it's "I can't imagine the few people enjoying this, to be enough, let alone the massive hammer it brings down, if someone doesn't drive this truck between points for hours"
IE, if someone isn't driving a vehicle & mindlessly aiming at orange rocks, constantly, everyone else in that entire hex is rendered unable to actually fight.
An ESF is then able to break an entire lattice base, by just hunting around the hex.

And a Zerg is essentially immortal, as they have the numbers to hunt every ant, the numbers to have more ants than their opponent can even kill, and enough people to capture a base' by itself, whom are suffering from a lack of cort.
At present, an Attacker can't literally mulch a base by just farming Cortium; With this, they can.
And of course, if a base lacks a person constantly driving a delivery-truck for the entire fight, that base is dead, as is the fight.

This sticks this task for 'casuals', as a task that is far from the gameplay of everything else, and required to actually do anything else.

At this stage of the game's life cycle there probably isn't enough population available to support this system. Perhaps such an option could be pursued with a bot system, but the ability of the Devs to implement this into the game is unknown. In addition the concerns Krelas has already outlined above would still apply.

A (probably over-ambitious) idea to tackle this would be to somehow integrate Facility power with proximal PMBs, maybe making them act as a sort of wireless router for power to nearby facilities. This would be ideal as it would help integrate PMBs into the main game by tying them to the viability of nearby facilities which may provide incentive for attackers to pursue them. The issue would be that PMBs are not always present / are simply unbuildable in in an area, and attempting to integrate them in this way may lead to unintended consequences.

The current alert system has many flaws that dont work out well.

• The gates give no clue how long they have to charge until a lock alert is possible.
• 1h 30min Alert duration is way to longer and is enought to turn the tables for terretory several times back and forth.
• The Events have no impact on the lock itself, its like they are not there.
• The Air Event is nice, but its easy to dominate it and being able to win is largely based on spawn locations as it makes reinforcements easier or alot harder.
• The Biolab/Tech Plant/ Amp Station alerts are pointless. They force factions to cap deep into enemy terretory to bases they cant realy hold. On some continents (ex Amerish) you have several Event types that cant be won depending on your Warpgate position. They usually end up in draws around ~80% of the time and thus yield no rewards at all.

The problem is that you ofthen dont get anything out of teh Events and can mostly ignore them as tehre is little to no impact. The Alert rewards are nice, but with no Event impact and a 1:30 timer on the duration you hardly have a chance to get a good result.

They originally wanted to do this with ANTs but didnt do it. The reason is most likely the path of the game. PS2 is a ego game. Everyone has to play for himself and there is little where players have a direct benefit in working together. Such a system would be a nice idea, but doesnt fit with what the community is.

^^^^^^^^ this i have to agree with ... as a casual player you don´t want to do what is boring but essential ..
should resource gathering make a difference? yea
way i see it with cortium it should help but it should not be absolutely neccesary ..
forward bases with vehicle- and aircraft-terminals are one way to support a latticefight without needing nainites .. it could be further extended to have infatrygadgets be resupplied through cortium instead through nanites spawning from a PMB or resuplying from a bunkertrminal .. dbg needs just to get PMB´s closer to latticebases .. it might be what could help defenders of a base if one or 2 people are willing to quickly raise a defensive PMB ... but it also matters tha pmb´s are persistent enough ..

I'd be all for return of ANT necessity if a few things are done. You'll need more corfium spawn locations and a longer range radar for Cort. That and the building to dump supply to must be in the open yet not completely defenseless.

Folk complaining about ANT convoys getting popped needs to remember that ANTs can cloak, making it much easier to run.
Folk complaining that casual players won't like it don't realize that casual players are essentially carebears that prefer to do easy options for good payouts. The argument is torn apart by making a delivery give the player a good number of certs and expedience, perhaps even ISO if the load was big.
To say you can't do it without boots is just silly. People spawn gals, valks, and sunderers simply to chauffeur people around. So you might need 20~30 ANT convoys, that's a fraction of the current offense/defense player base.
If you could see other ANTs on the map screen across the continent you also will have fewer and fewer instances where too many convoys go to a crowded location.
Adding convoy ANTs would not only improve the spending on ANTs via DBC and certs, it would give experienced and small group squads a reason to deep-strike into enemy territory.
The benefits greatly outweigh the cons, and make PlanetSide a more strategic game.

Also it makes defending just a wee bit harder, considering it's super easy to defend from a logistic standpoint. Defenders can place sunderers, defenders can just "U" to defend a place immediately, defenders have built in defenses, defenders have a general home field advantage. Doing this simple thing would just even the playing field, preventing endless grindfests where no one wins and folk only farm.

just because some people may have no problem with it doesn´t mean the majority won´t ..
planetside is about big battles .. include resourcegathering as neccessity which may hamper the possibility of big battles happening because of inexperienced players you damage the experience for everyone ...

it is almost impossible as is .. this way you just further strengthen the snowball ..
there is a reason we have now per minute generating nanites instead of seperated vehicle, aircraft and infantry resources that were generated through captured bases ..

20-30 people, just running orange rocks between point A to point B, endlessly.
And if those people aren't running enough rocks, or none; the entire gameplay outside of the warpgate dies rather quickly.
So the entire ability to play this game, to any degree past constantly running from the warpgate, is dozens of people who are expected, forced, required, or similar, to driving an Ant, between two points endlessly.
If say, a fight between two sides is 180 people, on both sides.
20-30 ANTs, sounds like little; Expect that's 20-30 players required for this fight to exist, not doing any anything past right-clicking a silo on a PMB, and driving back to some some orange rocks, for the entire duration of the fight.
Can this be fun? Sure... just not likely to nearly a third of the population in every fight, of an FPS.
Now how about smaller scales? Let's assume the 20-30 people number estimate, is a MASSIVE fight.
So lets cut it in half: 10-20 people, shifting Cort around. 140 total people, 20-40 driving trucks in a loop;
70 each side, 10-20 trucks each side.
Let's scale it down again; 5-10 Trucks, 35 people on each side. So 70 total people, 10-20 trucks.
There's 50-60 people fighting, and 10-20 driving in a loop.
If we scale down again, lets round to 18 people.
It's 5-10 people driving around.
There is 8 more people fighting than driving around in a loop.
It scales horrid.
How about each Ant is worth, at full load, full upgrades: 10 people, for 10 respawns.
A fight of 10 people, is 2 ants, one per side; with 10 extra respawns.
A fight of 20, is 2 ants.
A fight of 40, 4 ants.
If a vehicle like an MBT is spawned, lets say it's worth 4 people; Now it's 2 tanks & 2 people an ANT.
What happens if the ANT is worth 50 people; Now each fight Needs an Ant for anything under 50, and more past that.
A 100v100 fight is 2 ANTs', 1 respawn each. Or 12 Vehicles.
Let's consider if Cort decays in these bases; From use at some point, or from being the front line.
How many ANT's per hour, for a small 12v12 fight or under is it? As that's 1/12 minimum required to drive at all times.
How about larger fights?
Then let's consider population numbers: Side A has 180 people, say they need 3 ANTs for their entire population at one base.
Side B has 60, they need 1 Ant.
Side C has 80, they need 2 Ants.
Side A, has 117 extra people, over Side B, even after 3 ANTs are dedicated drivers.
Side A, has 97 extra people, over Side C, after 3 dedicated ANT drivers.
Combined, Side B & C, are down 20 people, compared to Side A: 17, after Drivers are accounted for.
If Side A, has 5 of those 17 drive ANT's, they have 8 ANT drivers, and can supply their entire frontline, twice over.
While supplying more people fighting than Both sides.. while having more Cortinum to supply their Frontlines.
Side B, and Side C, would need to cut from their fighting force, 8 ANT hunter Pilots, to touch Side A's supply lines
Side A has 12 extra people, which is 10 more than Side B or Side C's min required ANT Drivers, unless one or both of those sides, cuts down their in-action forces by 5-10 people, for ANT's, or Guards for their ANTs.
Side A has every possible advantage, even double-teamed, on the resource front, by population.
Now if you adjust Ant Cort value, or how much it costs to afford a Lattice Base' to function, spawn anything, etc for this:

Their supply line, is either robust enough, that they can field more ANT's anyway, while fielding more actual war-machines on the front lines & enemy's rear lines, that the smaller-fights are while not screwed by halving their fighting force driving, but unable to actually affect the High-Pop's supplies, nor match them in fighting forces.
The side that can field the most ANT's, or just more things to kill ANT's wins, by numeric advantage countering the supply line.

Or the High-Population side, and any large-number of players, essentially is unable to be supplied in a practical sense.
While every small-pop fight needs a dedicated ANT Driver, the larger-fights need half their number in ANT's.
Whomever can field more things to hunt ANT's, wins by sheer demand of the supply-line.
As larger-forces are unable to sustained, and smaller forces are dead if the ANTs are intercepted.

Add in the cloaking systems you mention, this means anyone doing this, and not being mauled by the players endlessly hunting down Ants for certs, or to shut-down the entire lattice connection that can't be avoided past just a swarm of ANTs...
Any new player, or Casual involved in this task, must invert entirely in the ANT, just so everyone else can play anything but trucking simulator.

An Ant pays for itself, in the most boring task possible, and pays out severely, to the highest count, outside of murderously high kill-streaks; Expect it lacks the interactions in the kill-streak, the exchange between players, and the massive time-sink of endlessly hunting orange rocks to deliver.
So if they're buying things for ANT's, to help this.. with it all being Cert-costs, it's cosmetics they could buy.

And then we have the Defense..
Which apparently needs to be completely screwed if constant ANT deliveries aren't met, ensuring that if a Base could actually hold their walls, they'd lose by the enemy just stalking the Hex with Pilots, and tanks, where the ANT has to reach.
And ensuring that if you camp a Spawnroom, or vehicle pad, you can drain an entire base from functioning when you attack.
Which is a feat, you can do with an Alt, by constantly spawning a tank to kill it, or just kill Allied ANTs, to just mining all the cort..
Preventing the Base from being defended from a jack-*** with an Alt, having the ultimate way to kill the defense..
On top of all the choke-points on the defenders, the distances, and the ease of camping spawn-rooms.

Not to mention, it means every single fight needs an entire group of people dedicated to doing nothing but driving ANTs around..
And for all that cort to be for the front-line bases, not random PMB's, which at that point, would be considered Friendly-fire-worthy to prevent an entire allied hex from ******** itself from a lack of Cort.
After all, a good % of our population is here to drive ANTs in circles, so others can do anything the game provides right?

In my mind several things need to be updated. When the spawn wave system is implemented bases should be updated to store a supply of cortium to boost wave spawns, either size of the waves or speed. Just enough cortium should be stored to be able to make it possible to push off a small group while outnumbered.
Cortium should either grow quickly at the warpgate or a refinery should be there to pull from. Backstory for this could be that excess energy bleeding from to warpgate shields accelerates growth. This will ensure that there will always be cortium, it will be less efficient to draw from the gate the further away you are.
If the spawn buff proves to be taken well, other benefits could be had, such as more offerings from holding bio labs, tech plants, and amp stations.
Bio labs could generate a very minor pain field in bases that activates when enemies are present or base window shields when enemies are present at the cost of cortium. Tech plants could power up a flail in the base for defenders or reduce vehicle costs at the cost of cortium. Amp stations could extend capture time or a sky shield of sorts that puts up small hex shields over the base, not complete coverage, but a distraction and makes air drops harder. These buffs are just possible examples and are no way refined ideas.
Yes having these benefits would require cortium runs, but if it's always available at the gate it should be less invasive to PMBs. By no means would it be necessary to have to defend a base, but it delays zergs and will make pushing to the warp gates more difficult. It will also remove some of the hopelessness feeling when your faction is under pop.

TLDR
We need to have a constant supply of cortium at warp gates. There needs to be benefits for defenders delivering it to bases.