During WWII there was the U-boat. Then during the Auraxian war there was the FU-boat, officially known as the Bastion Fleet Carrier (BFC). While officially designed to be a boost to the faction and outfit that pulled it and create a type of end-game content, the reality is that actual faction- or outfit-battles are few and far between when one of these show up. The Mauler canons destroy soft spawns like Sunderers with ease and can kill off hard spawns in the ultimate spawncamping ritual ever seen. On top of that the aircraft it can spew out for free are both a weird blessing and curse for the users who could end up stuck inside the Bastion waiting for it to recharge or swarming ground and air targets with impunity. All in all the concept has fallen flat on its face. But its not unsalvageable. BFC's can still be adapted into the ultimate faction-wide support vehicle and end-game target for the opposition. Changes below: - removal of Mauler canons - costless ESF removed - the BFC can now deploy if there is enough flat ground below it, including no construction zones and no deploy zones. When deployed a cortium Tap appears below the BFC. This allows players to fill the BFC with cortium. - a faction-wide spawn appears below the BFC, like the Warpgate this spawn is accessible from anywhere on the map as quickly as the warpgate. - around the Cortium Tap consoles can be found to spawn all vehicles, aircraft and change classes. Instead of nanites cortium is burned. They are dropped by ANVIL from a bay on the BFC (including the aircraft). - the BFC can now create area-affecting objects by using cortium. Citadel shields for example. The goal is to allow the BFC to modify the battlefield in favor of the BFC owners, without instantly finishing a fight just because it arrived. - if the bottom soft spots of the BFC are damaged the BFC is forced to deploy and cannot move until the spots are repaired. - since the BFC will be taking more risks and can be disabled, it can now use cortium to repair itself. It'll also auto-repair a small amount when it stops reveiving damage so it'll not be stuck somewhere forever if no Cortium Tap can be created below it. This would already push the BFC from an outfit-oriented murderer of enjoyment to a faction-oriented super-support vehicle in the hands of the outfit, but its spawn options available to the faction. Optional changes: - The BFC receives an interior. There are a maximum of 3 BFC's active at any time anyway with one for each faction. You are basically teleported to this interior which would be located statically somewhere below the map so there is no need to make the interior move with all the consequences to the engine that has. This would allow players to fight inside the BFC, or use terminals inside the BFC and ANVIL drop out of it even if its on the move (which would be accessible only to the outfit if it isnt deployed). It would also allow interior access to defensive turrets on the outside of the BFC. - a BFC could be boarded through a Gravlift when deployed or by flying nearby the hangar and using a hotkey that appears then (the X key isnt in use by aircraft yet), which will teleport you into the BFC hangar. The boarders would be able to force the BFC into deployed mode and keep it deployed if they gain control over certain sections of the ship (maybe destroy the soft spots from the inside), allowing them to keep reinforcements coming to board the ship and take it over/destroy it. - BFC-specific alerts. For example any territory that has a BFC present during its capture will score points for your faction. Destruction of weakspots on the BFC will also score points. To ensure players will not just park their BFC above the warpgate and target weakspots of the opposing BFC's for points, BFC's need to be within 1500m of each other and not in a painfield to gain points (lets say its a research action where facility captures and BFC destruction gets you valuable data). All factions will get a BFC spawned for them.
I don't even understand what was the idea behind making bastions farming machines for one outfit (or more precisely, one guy in that outfit) instead of some faction wide asset. Instead of enhancing gameplay, it kills it. Everyone at fights says it, and does it. See a bastion: redeploy, or log off. I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but it's a solid indication along with the fact that players who pull them frequently get 600+ killstreaks that something is off.
+1 i'll give a thumb up to any suggestion on how to change these fight ruining abominations! i still maintain that they should never have been added as a summonable vehicle and instead been the objective of the air alert, 3 bastions circling the map automatically, one per faction, aircrafts are free for everyone (like the old air alert) destroy the enemy bastions before they destroy yours! anyone can spawn at the bastion of their faction to use a gun turret (unless all turrets are in use) leaving a turret could spawn you in a low class ESF like current bastions. massive aerial battles! because air is free for everyone, you don't need to worry about dying assaulting the enemy bastions. and to stop the alert lasting too long, after a set amount of time (maybe 30 mins) all 3 bastions stop circling around the map and instead converge on the middle of the map for one last EPIC big 3 way aerial fight! THAT would have been multitudes better than the current implementation. but that can't happen now, because they were made into summonable fight ruiners instead.
I don't think I'd mind bastions so much if you could always destroy them from the ground. Then, they'd have to be used carefully, never stand still, etc. But given that there are only 2 vulnerable spots from the ground, and once they're gone you have to pay for aircraft (which get destroyed instantly), I hate 'em. Either make it so ground troops can still damage them, OR make ALL factions get free aircraft when they're out.
Keep mauler cannons and ESFs, but make them be fueled by Cortium. The wasp could also make it into the game and would add logistics, as you now could “starve” the baston of Cortium.
How exactly would ground starve them out, to make it noticeably different than now? A flying unit that Ground has to manage to kill, while the Bastian has free ESFs, and can nuke the ground around it. So these Flying Air-Units, which can out-range basically any G2A, would have to be glass, and even then, the Bastian has free ESFs & anti-ground measures. Making the practicality of starving it out pretty slim. Let alone with any extra Air-cover, since you'd be trying to kill Aircraft that can go above practical G2A ranges, and unlike ESFs have no reason to stay still - So only Pilots could benefit, from the train of Wasp Kills. Assuming of course, they survive long enough to actually kill enough wasps to matter. In short: How exactly does adding "Logistics" that only Air can reliably interact with, while the worst aspects of the Bastian are still there; It still ends fights, It still has Free Air Swarms, and Pilots still are the only ones to actually impact the survival of the Bastian. What is the benefit? Besides that Pilots have something else to do, on top of every advantage the Bastian Provides? Busy-work? The Ground is still absolutely shagged.
If you want to see how letting ground kill the bastion from below is, just pull a few gorgon maxes and watch the bastion go down. It's pretty ****** and makes the bastion useless.
I can't really tell if you're being serious. Even if that works, could you explain how the gorgon MAXes are able to reach the 6 hard-points that aren't even visible from the ground?
It was buged for gogrons for a while. Bastions are really not hard to be dealt with. 1) 10 guys or so (they dont have to know how to dogfight just how not to crash esf) 2) 1 silo + 1 tube +1 air terminal 3) 1 guy with A2A lock ons. 4) 4-12 fly bys (depedns on bastion escort, most dont have any) Now figure this points out by yourselfe
Yes purely having air-oriented deterrents and nothing else is a wonderful way to make a game fun! Especially if said practically invulnerable super-carrier can murder anything on the ground! And 10 guys or so without dogfighting capabilities will definitely not run out of nanites long before the Carrier is heavily damaged! Or the A2A lock-on guy will never be shot down by the hostile ESF! Look the problem isn't that there aren't counters (well, there aren't counters for the ground but there are some counters), the problem is that the Bastion isn't making the game more fun. With the exception of a few edge-cases and the people who are actually enjoying a tool that can farm 400+kills by simply clicking the map there's barely anyone that enjoys it. So instead we need a BFC that enhances the game for as many people as possible. It shouldn't be a farming tool just for the outfit that spawned it, it should be a tactical tool that enhances the entire faction but also offers a fun gameplay mechanic for the faction that gets attacked by it.
1 silo + 1 tube +1 air terminal 15min Just saying people who dont want to put any effort are making it biger probelm then it is.
1: you are downplaying the problem, acting like any resistance will make a Bastion explode (example: 1 A2A ESF can down one). 2: this thread isnt about how effective air is against Bastions, this is about how the Bastion could be improved. Unless you can give me a reason why the current version is better than what I proposed, stop trolling.
Honestly, I think that the Bastion shouldn't be an offensive vehicle at all. I think it should be more like today's aircraft carriers. Fairly serious defences, but few major offenses - however it provides some major support advantages to the team that possesses it. A 600+ killstreak solo-farm-machine is ******** and anybody with half-a-brain could tell you that. Clearly the RPG devs are somewhat lacking in this department. Or they fail in the most epic possible sense at foresight. A powerful support tool, on the other hand, still requires the team to utilise it effectively (in whatever support capacity it has). I cannot definitively say what support capacity it *should* have, but I can easily think of multiple ways that it would be a bonus for the empire/outfit owning it, without ******** all over any fight it arrives over. Let it act as a spawn-point for the outfit to pull proper air-vehicles (not just the lame-SF's) nanite-free, at the cost of some Bastion-fuel or whatever - i.e. the more air vehicles you pull, the less time the Bastion will be able to hang around. Basically, make it into an actual aircraft carrier. Let it act as a mobile spawn for the whole empire that doesn't have to stick to the redeploy rules - but instead of spawning into the Bastion they spawn into a drop-pod around the Bastion's current position. That way, if there's a fight you absolutely have to win, you can park the Bastion over it and all the random's can now get there without having to brain their way to it. Let it act as a nullifier for OS's. Because this whole "abundance of OS's" thing is becoming a massive cancer. It was bad enough when you had to build a base to have them. Now outfits are spamming multiple OS's just to push through a cap! The number of times I've seen a Citadel shield (or whatever it's called) making a point hold nearly inaccessible, followed by 2-3 "defensive" OS's during the last 30s-45s of a cap is just ludicrous. And there's no way to even stop it! It's not like there's a conveniently marked base that you could go destroy to prevent it or anything. The whole "epic last second save" is becoming a thing of the past! Perhaps the Bastion could provide a bonus to nanite regen / reduction in costs for all friendlies within it's AoI because reasons. More seriously, perhaps it brings down additional supplies from orbit, making all nanite purchases cheaper for a while or something. The Bastion could provide biolab+a bit regen to all friendlies in it's AoI regardless of whether they have a linked biolab. Alternatively, it could provide a large (but slower pulsing) radar effect similar to motion sensors or the old Interlink facility. Perhaps the Bastion could provide an XP-boost in it's AoI, something about "the sight of their glorious Bastion overhead, the Empire rallied and with glory in their hearts, surged forward on the offensive" or whatever. Hell... extend the XP boost to the enemy faction as well, and let's get some seriously epic fights going! Alternatively, the Bastion could bring "toys" to the fight, allowing friendlies to spawn from it in Javelins or something (maybe make it a weekly, rotating thing). It wouldn't be particularly effective, but could make for some fun and lulzy moments. Since RPG has completely abandoned the idea of empire flavour, perhaps having a Bastion deployed in the area could allow friendlies to pull enemy weapons from the equipment terminals? I wonder how long most of those "<insert weapon> is OP" discussions would last once the other side actually got their hands on them.... alternatively, it might prove those statements *right* once the faction that owns a thing is suddenly on the receiving end of it! I wonder how the TR would feel about suddenly having Vulcan Harassers on the other side! And if you're worried about limits on this, maybe it could be restricted to only pulling enemy weapons where you already own your Empire's equivalent. Maybe when a Bastion gets returned to orbit it could act as a 5x-10x sized OS, what with the backwash from it's engine thrust for the orbital kick 'n all. It would make a nice punctuation to the end of the Bastion, and let the pilot still get a few kills in!
It more likely takes you 15 minutes just to build the base. So you're using construction to get "free" air. Ok. Not very fun and engaging. First you need to find the resources. Once you've socked up on your silo, you can pull air, assuming no one finds your base and blows it up while you're chasing the bastion. You're assuming the bastion is unguarded and the pilot doesn't bother using one of the guns to shoot you down. It takes over 855 shots from a vortex rotary (the "best" A2A gun) less than 100m to kill one weak-point. It has 8. Add the reload, the time it takes to resupply, there's no way you've killed a full health bastion in 15 minutes with that. So we turn to the new M202 wyrm "only" 183 per weak point BEFORE 50m! Consider the fire rate and the same ammo issues, there's no way it takes 15 minutes to kill a bastion that way either. So even if you don't encounter a pilot or the guy doesn't gun you down with one of the cannons, you're still spending a significant amount of time just building the thing to get "free" air, and even more to kill the bastion. And then there's the thing: it's not fun. It's a grind that's super risky because usually there is at least one pro pilot defending the bastion. People don't want to "put in the effort" as you say because there's only one way to kill it, and it's not fun, and killing the bastion very small reward for something that's such a pain to do. Meanwhile, the guy is racking up tons of kills doing literally nothing, much less anything that creates fun fights for anyone. The bastion should have had a support role in the first place, not one of an "ez" farm machine. Right now, it's killing fights, it's usually invincible unless you have another bastion, and it doesn't generate fun play for anyone except maybe the pilot and the 10 guys in the seats.
I am just telling you it took 20 min to down 2 bastions having 10 guys in squad starting fresh login on west indar wg. (most cortium spawns so bit easier ) And most of this time was taken by geting every one in mosqito. It takes abour 30 a2a lock on per point and so 10 guys will 90% times take one point in one fly by. On enemy bastions they were fully crewd guns and some spare esf most you will ever get asaid from zergfits.
I always felt it strange that the outfit leader, a man who probably doesn't need the certs, is the one gaining all the farm certs from the bastion. At the very least the exp gained from the bastion should be distributed among the outfit and not all funneled to to leader.
The gorgon damage type is bugged right now and deals direct damage to hull, without needing to hit weakspot at all.
oh ok, I wasn't aware of that. Anyways it seems pretty unlikely a gorgon max will manage to take down a bastion, unless the dude is completely distracted. Even if it could, it doesn't seem like a very "fun" thing to do. Also it's not a long term solution
A squad of them is enough, and due to bastions speed it's pretty easy to ambush them with like a sunderer or whatever.
