Make BaseBuilding Great Again! This post will be a few of my ideas to make basebuilding great again. In other words, how to directly incorporate base building efforts directly into the game. Here are some ideas: 1. Adjust Flail and Glaive artillery "no deploy" zones to be usefull against static bases. Currently, Flails are only good for cheesing another player base. Maybe utilize the same radius as the sunderer no deploy zones so the spawn areas still have a safe buffer. This makes artillery focused bases an actually threat and a counter to heavily entrenched enemies in bases such as fortresses, Amp Stations, etc. 2. Introduce Empire specific flavor to building objects. Maybe add a 4th turret type in addition to the AV/AA/AI turrets. Something to give basebuilding a factional feel to it. I think of the PS1 Orion turrets that you could deploy and get into. Each had factional specific weapons on it. 3. Integrate building into static base defenses. Currently we have the new outfit modules, this is a step in the right direction, but what I am talking about is allowing DEFENSIVE building on static bases. Have pre-determined locations to build additional walls, turrets, pain spires, etc. This prevents troll building and blocking of certain areas, but allows a coordinated team to improve base defenses by spending time to farm cortium and use it on a base. There will need to be a static base silo for this to work. Basically a "public" silo that would allow any ally to dump cortium into, drain cortium as defenses are built/used or repaired over time. 4. Fix explosion through base shields ie towers/pillboxes/bunkers. Infantry take explosive damage while behind the shields. Tanks already tear bases up way too easily! 5. Improve AI of AV turrets to engage vehicles further and smarter, OR allow us to deploy an advanced module to do this. Basically AV turrets are a joke at defending from vehicles. Tanks can sit way back and totally destroy a base with zero way to defend the base. Give us the ability to fight back! 6. Adjust collision zones on towers/bunkers so we can build structures closer together. Currently it is quite difficult (not impossible) to build objects touching to create chokepoints into the base. Since vehicles can already destroy bases with ease, and cortium bombs are now standard issue on literally every infil, bases are suffering from easy to penetrate walls where modules are vulnerable. Give us the ability to force enemy infantry into chokepoints and utilize pain spires, motion sensors, etc to our advantage. These are just some of my ides, but I hope they make sense and will lead to improved base building!
Allow the bulding of a module that either eliminates or severely reduces incoming damage to turrets. They are alreay pretty weak and having a single MBT shred an entire base in 3 min that was put up by 5 people over 20 minutes isn't all that engaging.
You have to put somehow bases into the game mechanism (e.g. The old Hive concept). Otherwise bases will remain purposeless as they are today.
i keep saying that they should shrink the no construct zones, remove orbital strike and make walls invulnerable while effected by a repair module again. that way construction becomes a part of the game again, making roadblocks and helping to stop enemies pushing your lattice bases.
For strategic integration, I've talked in game about some ideas for constructed assets that impact the nearest static base. Things like a module that delays the capture timer, something that makes generators take longer to burn down, a redundant SCU for the base, those sorts of things. The general idea is that they wouldn't outright prevent capture of the static base, but they would frustrate the process, making the base worth owning and worth attacking. Imagine a player built redundant SCU for Crossroads Watchtower.
All good discussions! Hopefully the devs take note of this. I would like to see a map focused more on player building efforts rather than static bases. The map can be smaller, but require more ANT/Logistic activity to survive. I thought Oshur was hinted to be more base building focused. More modules that improve base survivability would be great! One MBT crew can shred a base. This is an asymmetric threat to the base and therefore not fair. Bases take time to farm cortium, think of a smart design, and deploy only for a tank to destroy it in mere minutes.
Guys you're all asking the wrong things from daybreak at this point, If you've looked at their recent work it's obvious they care little for the common man. Stuff for the average pleb? HA! Now if you were to ask them to make base building exclusive only to the 5 people on a server with a large enough outfit, then they might listen.
I agree. AV turrets are a joke for the most part. They are completely exposed, often sited in stupid locations (e.g. not overlooking approach routes) and in some cases they are even positioned directly behind trees!!!!!! (which would be fine if we had destructable landscapes - but we dont). They are far too easy to take out from a distance by attackers and take too long to get back up and running again. Their performance against infantry is also a joke since they were nerfed. It can often take 2 or 3 hits to take out a single infantryman - this should be reverted. AA turrets need to be beefed up at close quarters, especially since their long range ability was nerfed. AI turrets are pretty much pointless - they do too little damage and their bullet spread is too wide - and again are far too easy to take out. Getting to a base should take some effort on behalf of attackers and the base turrets should be a viable defense tool.
I'm going to have to disagree on this point. I think AI turrets are the BEST overall. My advice, lock the turret to squad or locked only by holding "Q" on the access door. The AI turret will MOW down infantry with an AI module. Player control of some random idiot looking at the sky with it makes it pointless, which I see ALL THE TIME! I like to tuck my AI turret behind a Tower so the turret isn't sniped by vehicles from afar. This allows it to properly protect the base from silly Light Assaults that YOLO over the walls. Now if we can get snap to building to seal gaps better, infils+cortium bombs wouldnt ROFL-LAWLZ-EZ-POINTZ kill smartly built bases with a very cheap bomb!
1: The flail is too powerful and the Glaive too weak. I would rather see a range of fire-support options for PMB's that aren't a tissue-launcher or a miniature nuke-artillery. For example you could use the UT's Ion-painter weapon to target an area. The laser is visible, meaning the user can be tracked down, and needs to be held on a stationary object/ground for a short amount of time giving players a chance to actually stop such an attack. Then the shots of your fire-support weapon will come down, preferably with a tell-tale sound to cue in players. The type of weapons can be numerous. For example you can launch a teleporter. This allows players spawning in the PMB to quickly teleport to wherever you fired it. You could launch a shield, either a wall or a skyshield (configurable with the painter). You could launch a simple miniature-flail attack or an EMP attack. Or fire a range of missiles that can be steered with your painter after launch, exposing the user to return fire but increasing his chances for a devastating hit. 2: Although nice, I think this isn't a priority right now. 3: Rather than push current PMB design into static bases I think we should look for new specific buildings and defenses for within static bases. Consoles that protect nearby turrets from being hacked and also offer some auto-repair or a cooldown reduction. Small portable generators that can be placed in pre-prepared positions to power shields on doors, gravlifts, jumppads, additional spawnrooms, miniature forward bases that provide a small spawn and vehicle pad, turrets etc. You could also allow players to build an extra-large deploy beacon. This allows players to call down larger items like full AV/AI/AA turrets (all manned by players), vehicles, shieldwalls and other defenses. Because it's limited to anywhere without a roof these items are less likely to become OP. Additionally some of these could require a small generator to be powered, creating a weakness for the opposition to exploit if someone goes overboard with 4: I would do either one of the following: A: Remove splash through shields. B: Make buildings much more resiliant/invulnerable from one side and weaker on the "inside". At no point should a base become the death pits that just discouraged anyone from attacking that PMB's were before. 5: Turrets for PMB's should not in any way be self-sufficient. The AI modules should only be there to help a base fend off low-level attacks. These turrets should become lethal and dangerous when a player is using them, not because you build an AI module nearby. For this reason you would need to have incentives for players to be around PMB's they didn't build and for players to actively want to defend them. Something that should have been there from day 1. 6: I would put a projector at the edges of some building blocks. When these projectors are within range of each other (say 2m maximum) they'll project a shield between each other when a shield module is present. This allows for players to destroy the shield between these items and get inside if they have the firepower, which is a weakness that should definitely be available to prevent death-pits becoming dominant again. For this reason I would even disallow these buildings to be placed so close that they can block entry. 7: As mentioned by others the PMB system needs a purpose. Players need to want it, and they need to want PMB's that are behind your own lines as well. At no point should someone who build a PMB think "ah crap the frontline has moved, now my PMB is useless". There's simply too much time investment. For that reason I've always held the opinion that PMB's should be made into logistical support bases. Allow players to teleport between PMB's and reduce the effectiveness of redeploy. For example you get to redeploy 5 times, and you get 1 redeploy back every 10 minutes. This means a regular player can get to a fight when necessary but a zerg using redeployside will run out of redeploys quickly. The teleportation system is then available to teleport infantry and vehicles around. As logistical support PMB's should be able to spawn free vanilla Flashes in order for players to get from the PMB back to other bases. Further these PMB's could fulfill other roles. For example imagine if a PMB can generate an item that allows you to pick up a capture point and take it with you. This makes it harder for the opposition to take it (also if you are the defender). Limitation would ofcourse apply such as not too far from the origin of the point and they'll stop functioning and despawn after 10 seconds in a painfield (even a friendly painfield). Bases could also provide other benefits beyond the area they are build in. For example they could create a vehicle over time. This vehicle can deploy and create a lattice-link to the area it's build in. This encourages players to build a PMB around this vehicle before deploying, and also encourages players to try and create columns to protect such a vehicle and get it into position. Or it could create the Colossus. After all the OS is available to PMB's so why shouldn't they also create Colossi for players? They could also allow a player to use a support power. Let's say a player uses the teleportation grid to get to the PMB, pull a scandevice from a radar tower, then teleports to a PMB near the frontline, there he uses the scandevice and it spots all aircraft or all vehicles or whatever for a short time before going on cooldown. This way a PMB far behind the fronline still offers powerful tools for players, and a reason for enemies to attack them. On that note, PMB's should be defended, and for that reason PMB's behind the frontline become invulnerable. Spawntubes at PMB's on the frontline become as fast as normal spawn, if not faster, to encourage players using them and defending PMB's. PMB's behind (your own) frontlines inside a non-lattice linked area become invulnerable, unless within a certain distance of a border with an enemy base. This way you make sure that a PMB that is attacked is at the frontline and people can actually be aware that it's being attacked. Players can actually spawn there without penalties and because there's more traffic anyway there's more chance players will actually get to defending them.
Replying to your points: 1. I agree the glaive is very weak in comparison to the Flail. Its main focus should be anti shield (EMP, duh) based effects. Maybe even allow this weapon to hit inside static base "no deploy zones" to disrupt spawn shields or vehicle gates, etc..The disruption would only last briefly, requiring coordination and a dart for every volley (like the flail) 2. Exactly, I am more of a faction flavor guy than a NS guy in general...factional specific base items will be awesome! 3. Thats what I was referring to. Pre-determined buildable locations to allow base builders to IMPROVE defense capabilities of static bases...think Fortification Engineering from PS1. You used to be able to improve the turrets, add pain modules, etc etc. 4. I get your point, however infantry taking splash damage from within the shields in wrong in my opinion. The attacking vehicles are already able to disable shields with enough damage. Only when the shield health pool is gone should infantry be vulnerable inside a shielded tower/pillbox/bunker 5. As of right now, they aren't. Only the AI turret is decent in protecting bases. An armored ground assault of 1-3 MBTs can melt a base built by 1-3 people EASILY. The effort required to harvest cortium, place silo, build objects is much higher than pulling a MBT and sniping a base from a distance. There needs to be some tweaks to how AV turrets defend bases. 6. I think shield projectors to seal bases is too much code and processing to handle the issue. Simply adjust the collision zones to allow walls, towers, pillboxes, bunkers to be built into one another to allow totally sealed bases. Entry should be via gate shields/sunderer garages and intentional gaps. 7. Agreed. PMB system in in a weird state since the VP Generators no longer exist. This is why I suggested adding more "Blank bases" to incentivize builders wanting to protect a capture point on the blank area. Also work static base improvements into bases within the zones. What I mean is allow base builders to add module type of improvements to static bases by building in the same regions. You are sort of "supporting" the main base, by building and providing logistics and supplies to that base. Some ideas of how player bases can "buff" static bases: 7a. Overshields, similar to PS1 interlink facility. The player base becomes a battery to power a protective shield on a static base. Just like the horizontal/vetical gens power shields at a tech plant or amp station...Enemies will have to destroy the player base to knock out the shields. There should be indicators to point enemies in the direction of the player made base or some sort of line-of sight system with a buildable generator. 7b. Pain modules: again, PS1 throwback. Allow offensive bases built in enemy static zones to build a pain module...this would apply a pain debuff at the spawn rooms of the enemy static base. This forces enemies to get out of the base, rather than sit in the spawn room. 7c. Radar modules: applies a radar benefit to the static base, powered by the player base. Basically you get a massive radar system on the base, like a giant infiltrator sensor. 7d. Base sky shields: similar to the overshield idea, but the shields are for anti-air protection. The shields would be pre-determined at the static base, but powered by a nearby PLAYER base. ***to simplify my idea of plyaer base building helping bases, there can be pre-determined locations to build that help static bases. These pre-determined areas will allow for fair mechanics for attackers/defenders but allow players to improve defenses. Imagine a tech plant, we can add 3-4 nearby flat areas that provide support to the tech plant. Players will ahve to go farm cortium, build silos, defenses, etc. but some pre-determined benefit will apply to the tech plant. Maybe each site offers a specific benefit or players can choose a benefit to apply to the techplant. These pre-determined areas can be DEFENSIVE or OFFENSIVE if attackers choose to come build. This way the system goes 2 ways. THOUGHTS???
