I could write entire essays on this topic, but I know how much love I get when I post a "wall of text", so I'm going to keep it to 3 points for now, all relevant to recent changes. Not long ago, the most effective weapons against construction were constructed. I know that a full platoon of armour does it the fastest, but if 40 players are needed to counter 6, that's not actually effective is it? The flail works fast if not properly countered, and to set up an OS uplink in range of an enemy base was to challenge a fellow builder on an opposing faction to an almost gentlemanly duel. I could almost imagine my toon saying "I do challenge thee, good sir!" as I placed the uplink. No longer. -Cortium bombs: -What's wrong: These are the most toxic thing for builders right now. Any CoD kid with a few hours in his outfit and no understanding of construction whatsoever can now cheese out a builder by spamming these things, which are for all intents and purposes free. Costing merit = free. I happens a lot that I will hear someone comment "Oh, I have 20,000 merit again, I guess I should spend some". A frag grenade is more of a commitment than a cortium bomb, as the grenade slows down my nanite recharge before I can pull another tank or a max. Merrit costs slow down absolutely nothing. Yes, there are some specific things you can do to counter this, but a new builder trying it out isn't going to know them ahead of time, will get bombed, will get frustrated and stop building. If your goal is to stop anyone who isn't already a builder from trying construction, then cortium bombs are right on the money. In short, cortium bombs are what happens when a counter play to construction is made my someone who doesn't play construction. -How to fix it: 1. Make them actually cost cortium (it's even in their name). I can think of two ways to achieve this. Either make a new spire to draw them out of, much like a router. This would make them something that builders use against each other, and bring back the feel of the duel. Given how much slower they would be to use, the damage could even be juiced honestly. Second option, have them drawn from a construction console, either on a silo or an ant. This way the bomber needs an ant and some cortium, but doesn't need to run them in like a router if that's not something you want in the game. 2. Make them show up on the minimap right away. If unscouted spots of my routers are fair, balanced and fun, then so are unscouted spots of cortium bombs in my base. War asset orbital strikes: -What's wrong: These definitely felt like a slap in the face for builders. Our greatest commitment, the thing we pay 3000 cortium to set up and 240 cortium per minute to charge, reveal ourselves to the world, weather the counter attacks made to stop us, wait up to 15 minutes hoping that we will still be relevant once we have waited long enough, deliver a dart in person to a location full of folks who know we are coming, and then often die in our own strikes for...can now be delivered by right clicking the map...while dead...after the fight is over because the PL is salty. And that's not even the worst of it. Prior to these, if your base got hit by an OS, you deserved it. You were warned and didn't counter it. If you got OSed, you got out played, and that's all there was to it. OS was an earned win against a base. Now it just means somebody didn't feel like dealing with you and right clicked the map to undo 2 hours of work. -How to fix it: Give us a new structure. Call it "Orbital disruptor" or something like that. Make it show up on the map like the uplink so people know we have it, and make it block war asset orbital strikes within a 100 meter-ish radius, but not uplinked orbitals. This would force PLs to actually deal with player made bases instead of right clicking to make them go poof, and still allow the duel of the builders who place uplinks in range of each other's bases. This way you can still have the war asset orbital spam at TI Alloys that you seem to want for whatever reason, but would let us builders actually have our game back. Bastions: -What's wrong: Ok, first off, I'm glad these are in the game, they added something fresh to a game that was getting stale. That said, they hard counter construction, and there's nothing builders can really do about them. We might be more than an hour into making a base and then "PLAYER X FROM OUTFIT Y BROUGHT THEIR BASTION PLANETSIDE" "Oh [EXPLETIVE!] [EXPLETIVE!] [EXPLETIVE!]well, there goes our base" we get flattened in a minute, and there was nothing we could have done about it. I don't mind losing a contest, I do mind losing when there wasn't a contest. -How to fix it: Give us a new defensive tower, behind a larger than normal pay wall (I'd say at least 2000 certs for this one) with a large cortium upkeep cost so players won't proactively build it, but will place it once a bastion is deployed, no automation potential, and make it show up on the map so enemies are fairly warned...and challenged. Call it the "Colossal tower", you can guess what weapon I want on it. Also give it the same spacing requirement as orbital strikes, no two colossal towers within 500 meters of each other. This way I can't make a colossal forest like I do with Xiphos towers. If it were as big as the name implies, it wouldn't be hard to shoot, so it's not like this would be unfair, as long as the bastion has friends. So there you have it, my efforts to rebalance a part of the game in desperate need of it. I really am trying to be balanced, and not just demanding that my play style be outright buffed or the play styles I don't play be nerfed. I don't have to personally play a play style to respect it. I'm trying to be respectful, but the salt is real here right now, and I know I'm not alone.
I think the Orbital Strike building should be able to be upgraded to have an Orbital Disruptor feature that can be slotted into an OSB upgrade slot.
I'll try to keep my suggestions short for a change: 1: make it quick. Taking an hour for a base requires a reward of an hour investment. That reward would need to be so big that entire squads could be held back solo, thats out of proportions. PMB's need to be quick to build. 2: make it easy. Having to walk back and forth between a Silo for blueprints while you cant always even see the entire blueprint does not make it easy to properly set up a base. We need new tools, such as a Drone accessible from the ANT or Silo that can place all blueprints with a birds-eye view to make it easy to plan and place everything. 3: relying on allies. PMB builders currently rely on automated defenses and want these defenses to be incredibly powerful. PMB's should fit in with the rest of Planetside and be build to rely on allies to man and protect it, automated defenses should only buy time for players to spawn and defend it. 4: add incentives for players rely on and be near PMB's from others. PMB's should be important hubs, from places to teleport troops and vehicles across the continent to staging area's for attacks and fortifications to thward enemy attacks, a place where players can gear up special items, vehicles and get access to support weapons like dialed down versions of the Flail or allowing the Glaive to nerf enemy vehicles in the AOE etc. 5: PMB's need to remain useful when the frontline moves. Gathering cortium and building a PMB only to find the frontline moved and its useless now is a terrible feeling of wasted time and effort. Ties in with number 4, where a PMB will keep generating items, vehicles and gear that players want to pick up and then use the teleporters or the vehicles to get back to the front. For example imagine an item that lets you pick up a capture point and (with limitations) bring it with you to prevent enemies from capturing it for some nice VIP protection gameplay. 6: rebalance some existing stuff. As said the new Outfit OS and Bastion are just bad designs. Bastions should have been the pinnacle of a team vehicle that benefits the entire faction, instead its a vehicle that scores hundreds of kills by clicking. The. Damn. Map. How this ever made it passed any concept stage is beyond me. The OS is the same. The outfit works and gathers stuff so a few in the top can fire it semi-randomly for kills rather than how useful it is for the team and facrion. How come these idea's are added in the supposed "teamwork" update?
