Remove the bastion's orbital strike Make it so that the skyshield protects you from the bastion - Only allow a ground based glaive to disrupt the skyshield. Make it so that a the flail and orbital strike can damage the bastion. If the bastion pilot goes into a flail/orbital strike area, the bastion should be able to take damage from the flail and the orbital. Remove this 'specific target' thing. Allow the bastion to be hit from anywhere, just give it a bunch of health like other units/vehicles/buildings
Really not sure why the bastion gets to wreck ground forces while they can't do anything to retaliate. If getting 1hk EVEN IN THE SPAWN ROOM by something you can't even damage sounds fun to you, you're clearly absurd. The bastion shouldn't have been added in the first place, and it should simply have an A2A role if ground forces weren't intended to take it down. Does not make any sense.
if they'd simply made the bastion a mobile base that automatically flies from one hex to another after a certain time, gave it only standard base defense weapons (AV/AA) and gave a universal benefit to control it (like reduce costs on all vehicles by like 20%) it would have been fine. as-is the bastion is the single greatest example of the dev's air bias and absence of balance.
They are trying to force you to get into the air to deal with the sky beast. It is the Devs attempt to force air battles. People could ignore air battles in the past but now they cannot. But it isn't working .... but wait they will next try to make air cheap during a bastion spawn thinking that will work. The issue is that Air is too steep of a learning curve for new pilots to take on experienced pilots, not even considering a zerg outfit spawning free ESFs from a Bastion. Just another thing that will have to be nerfed now that we are all complaining about it. Instead of ripping of the band aid and reworking air mechanics and concepts completely, since that would just alienate experienced pilots as it is.
You honestly, the way the air game has been approached is stupefying. Everything has been tweaked to make the few pilots as powerful as possible, giving enemies no chance to kill them. It's not even like they want people in the air game, they would have made the mechanics actually remotely similar to vehicles, right now people need a 1200 page manual to reassign all the keybindings simply to fly around. Try flying around when you've got a tryhard pilot with 4000+ hours of in game flying constantly patrolling the map for anything they can troll. And since air weapons are so versatile, the guys can trolls infantry, ground vehicles and still wreck air all in one! Even more stupid is the in flight engagement radar the devs added to further encourage the pilots to farm less experienced air. The veterans can see the noobs coming in, but the noobs can't usually see veterans since they cert into stealth and then become invisible to the radar. So the thing that was introduced to 'encourage more new players to try air' actually leads them to their demise. Really, there's a reason aerial anomalies worked for about one week. Now the devs bring that back with the added benefit of free air for defenders, none for the attackers (of the bastion). Oh, and they also have 1hk cannons that wreck anything on the ground even in the spawn room, but I guess that's not a big deal right? It's not even like I'm the delusional idiot who hasn't understood anything about the game he's been playing almost religiously for the past 7+ years, others are saying the exact same things!
Bastions are another virus like Planetside 1 had with Battle Frame Robotics, marking the final end to a game. People will soon tire of a lack luster update and a Ghost town will exist once again when the new players get tired of being owned by the Veterans and oversized outfits. A horrible promotion of join this or else. What is this? The Borg in Star Trek?
So basically, remove the biggest content update for years from the game....great idea. I tell you what. I am a veteran who took a break from this game after Higby left the studio. I am back to the game and have even my subscription running again because of the update. I know there are a lot of player who want just to play infantery simulator without airforce. But this was the case even back in 2012-2015. I remember the times where the liberator was nerved into the ground, so nobody used it. An infantery player with 4000+ playtime with super shiney implants will dominate a new player the same way a 4000+ pilot will do. Nerfing the bastion into oblivion will not help the game. There are more than one factor here. I am an NC player on Cobalt, playing mostly as a pilot. The NC on Cobalt just do not have this amout of dedicated pilots like the TR or the Vanu. The NC on cobalt has good tank crews. But when i look at the fact how fast the NC Bastion is getting whiped out by TR all the time, i have sometimes the feeling the Bastion can not even take two hits. But the Bastion is strong enough. It is mostly the TR which has absolutly TONS of fighter pilots who are even organized in outfits. Last time i was attacking the enemy TR bastion with 3 NC fighters while they had more than 50!!! No matter how much you nerf the bastion. It will not change this fact. But i agree with you on one term. The bastion should be damagable by ground forces. But more in the way of special facilities. Like in BF 2142. Special stations which have to be captured by ground forces. It could be laser cannons or missiles facilities. This would be more fun. Killing people with a bastion in a spawn room is a no go of course. This should be fixed. But basically nerfing the bastion until oblivion is not good. I am farming for hours for my outfit for a bastion which is useless? No thank you!
Give the Bastion a Deathstar Achilles heel. Some sort of weakness that can severely hamper it's abilities or even knock it out of the sky. Would be good to see some on-Bastion infantry fighting.
Would be cool, but engine says no. Just try standing on top of a moving tank and you will know all you need to know about that.
This Gentleman speaks knowledge. The reality is, what you think is new content is still old. Let that sink in.
You must be kidding... Libs are a little too strong against air and armor, but aside from the spur it's AI weapons have been nerfed to pointlessness. And compare ESF A2G to a year ago, and then again to a year before that. Compare the Zypher, Dalton, Bulldog, Duster, Shredder, LOLpods, Hornets, Banshee.... to what they used to be. Now, I'm not saying some of those changes weren't warranted, like removing thermal optics from vehicles, but no, there's zero air bias on the dev team. The truth is that we don't have a single dev who can do more than take off and land, and that's why they have zero clue what to do about air/ground balance. They're missing out on half of the perspective of that equation.
I see the problem in a slightly different place. There is no motivation to destroy the Bastion. The Bastion defenders team gets a huge amount of experience bonuses. For the destruction of the Bastion do not give anything. Dangerous prey must involve a reward for its capture, commensurate with the degree of complexity. Instead of trying to destroy the Bastion, it is easier to wait until it dies itself, since its life time is only 1 hour. Destruction takes about the same amount of time. That is, ignoring the Bastion, the enemy gets more advantages than attacking it. And since there is no decent reward for destroying the Bastion, those who just need a farm don't really want to attack it either. Bastion is similar to the battleships of the second world war, which were also difficult to destroy, but were of little use, despite their power. It can't capture the location itself, and its guns, although very annoying, are less dangerous than if the same number of people arrive in tanks. I usually use an enemy Bastion as a place where easy targets for skyguard appear in infinite numbers. Successfully placing the lightning, you can, while remaining completely safe, lazily move the cannon and get certificates. There are so many planes flying around the Bastion that you don't need to aim, you are sure to shoot someone down anyway. But this kind of gameplay quickly becomes boring
yes when i first saw this bastion update first thing that came into my head was bf2142 multiplayer the epic battles inside the huge spaceships good times but well i though it would be like that for a moment but unfortunately for my and the community disappointment it was not the case its a shame really and like someone said here its because the ps2 engine limitations they dont had this in mind when they first created the game unfortunately we need a planet side 3 with new engine for this to be possible and this reality is far a way at night inside the deep forest.
