I just spent 1hr & 30 minutes, building a silo. With other people & with alts. It had 20 walls, 10 turrets, 6 sky shields, 12 repair mods, bunkers, towers everything. Guess what? 8 TR tanks destroyed it in less than 1 minute, 1 minute isn't even an exaggeration. Heck it coulda been less tanks & still same result. Why? Because tower turrets are useless. Well AV at least. AI turret is useless if they are infil, if not, it's ok, usually shoots the wall the enemy leans on, about it. These turrets are designed to kill noobs & noobs only. Even if you man them, the repair module is so weak, it might as well not exist. Even with a repair mod + some1 actively repairing the tower = still the AV turret barely survives against 1 MBT. That's if the tank is noob enough to go to medium or near range of your base. 99% of the time ALL tanks snipe your towers, within 3 seconds. So after 3 - 20 seconds, your base is defenseless & rebuilding the tower won't work. If more tanks, faster results. Tho overall facing 1 sniper-tank is enough to take down all the base turrets. It's like they want silo building to be a side hobby, well I main it, or use to till today. It's no a side hobby, it's the main thing to do when you want to do something else other than shoot or drive. So please fix your silo items. I already wrote about how OP the cortium bomb / flail infil is, against silo owners. This post is more about going against " Vehicles " as a silo owner. Results of both?! Vehicle-tanks or Infil-flails? WASTING MY TIME IS WHAT. I adore making bases, then it was becoming a chore after infils kept bombing it, & now knowing I can't stop a handful of tanks - with the biggest silo ever built? That makes me not want to build ever again, which sucks! It's like the base itself is just a useless prop & the way you have to defend bases has nothing to do with the base helping you do that. The walls, do what? Once the AV turrets go, the entire base is DEAD, like a sinking ship. Doesn't matter if you have 10 walls or 100 walls. I understand why the AV turrets suck, because they don't want them being OP against noobs who take their tanks super close to the walls. But overall, that barely happens. 9/10 times, it's a above average tank, that knows to snipe your stuff & he usually has 1 buddy or 6+ with him. You need to make this game have a good REASON to build big bases. 90 minutes of labor, cortium running, & guarding an inactive base for the most part, only for it to destroyed in 30 seconds without even taking 1 tank down with 6 AV turrets self-active with modules. Is rediculous. Now I have to build bases in a ditch, or on some mountaintop that no vehicles can reach. Because their's no way to defend all the hard work you put into silo's. Be it Infils bombing ALL your modules, with just 1 click of a button. Or 1 to 8 tanks sniping out all the towers. I want to build EPIC fortifications mainly alone, tho if other ants help - super, not just have a tiny lil silo outpost. Tho no matter the size, even if you imagined the biggest silo ever, a handful of tanks would destroy it, WAY, too easily. Pretty much I just wasted 200 hours trying to make silo's work for fun defense & they don't, because SILOS CANT DEFEND ANYTHING. Even if you're there trying to kill infils / difuse bombs still the silo dies easily. Even if you're there with 6 AV turrets (with modules & repairs) plus you pulled a magrider, still you can't even manage to kill 1 tank small squad. The base defends against nothing so far, I've had sooooooooo many silo's die soooooooo easily, for diff reasons, but non the less. Like the best case scenerio, is you're base being destroyed, but you have 24 troops helping you in the base, so it gets destroyed in 3 minutes time, instead of 30 seconds time. After 1hr of work building it, finding location, running cort, & other stuff. I hope they fix this right now. It's simple, give us the chance to build 1 more AV turret, reduce the dmg of the turret by 15% (since we have 2 AV turrets per 1 character now) That way someone who took 30+ mins to build a base, can atleast defend it against 2 tanks. From players who only took 10 seconds to pull those tanks. 10 seconds < 30+ mins (That's who you should favor, the player who spent more time). Right now you don't favor the player who spent more time, you're favoring players who just went to a Vehicle terminal real quick, or infils who just parked a sunder bus near your base real quick, or someone who built a remote flail base hidden nearby real quick. But the player who spends 30 - 1 hr building?? Oh that player gets destroyed in mere seconds every time, no exception, unless you have a whole platoon defending. Even then, your base still gets destroyed, because running around trying to fix everything, rebuild, & defend, is impossible, it's 1 or the other, not both. Vehicle sniping someones silo they worked hard on & barely earned any experience, plus sacrificed their time from farming infantry zones, to just sit in a empty bases waiting to defend. Since the defenses suck to bad, you have to sit in your base. Alarm module, meh, doesn't defend the base, just warns you to defend. So if I have to build in ditches or mountaintops only. That means 90% of the building areas are useless. Because defending AV turrets, walls, & modules is USELESS. THE REAL FIX IS THIS: Make a silo item, that significantly reduces vehicle damage against turrets, walls, modules, everything - from a range. Meaning 80% damage reduction from ranges outside 100m, or outside whatever range the AV turret is too stupid to hit. That's the only way. Now even if they are within range for that implementation. The devs still need to buff the turrets, because 1 MBT hitting the turret, with a repair module, & me repairing it + a repair nade = still the tank kills the turret. So turrets at close range also need a buff too, their hp is super weak. Than from my other post, we need more ways to protect modules and the garage. Ways to kill people who crash their planes on purpose to jump into your walled garage area. Too many walls or things to hide behind to avoid AI turret. Pain spire is just something people walk around, a " no go " area, but doesn't stop a cort bomb from being planted, so wuts the point of that too? Pain spire is ok, against noobs & meaningless against pros. Overall log: Upgrade the AV turrets - vehicle-far-range-proof-turrets. Give us more AV turrets. Give us ways to seal the usually large gap in between skywall & walls. Give us ways to kill infils in our base, without having to waste time searching for them. Give us a item to stop pilots from crashing to jump into a sealed solid wall sunder garage to bomb all modules easily (no turret will kill them faster than they fall to safety in the garage - usually pain spire only covers half the garage, so they hide on the other half. Heck I can't even use shield module on my garage anymore, since then the AI turret can't shoot who's inside the garage loading a cort bomb or mines. Right now it's not worth my time to build on the front line or anywhere where tanks can snipe my towers, which is 96% of areas or regions. Even if I'm there defending with a squad friend, it's still not enough. These silo's shouldn't be just for niche things like " Oh when my platoon or outfits, eventually cares about ant silo's " Because many or most won't. They got other things to do. Thus make silo's more solo player friendly, but never limit the players ability to add more & more to their silo, on their own. Already I just proved, no matter how much you add even if the whole yellow circle ratio of your silo is FULL of silo buildings / items. The silo defense design, no matter where you place the walls. Is massively underpowered. I have NEVER seen a overpowered silo base, like never. I constantly see them destroyed, the ones I don't own, from any player. Every alert. So stop treating silo's like they were ever OP, they never were, beef them. I understand you don't want a invincible base, tho right now, it's the opposite, paper thin bases, paper thin turret defenses, paper thin module safety. Paper thin reasons to Ant build at all. If you devs play this game, dieing as ant is one of the most annoying deaths in the whole game, & they die alot. That's bad enough as it is, then losing your base over & over. Why would I want to spend 30 - 90 minutes on anything, that only survives 1 min to tanks or 10 mins to Infil-flails?? Not much exp in it either, it's just a slow downfall. Silo bases shouldn't be this thing that just a tiny outpost that supports the main thing, a Orbital Strike. SIlo's shouldn't just be about defending OS's. Their main fuction even without a OS to not draw attention. Should be to block roads & fortify areas. Right now they can't even fortify their own walls or items, non the less, " fortify the area " P.s. It's like you build them to help your faction feel your protected & all that happens, is me calling SoS on leadership / region chat / squad chat, because my base is being destroyed every alert. Then they become a crutch, instead of support. " Hey everyone my base is being destroyed like knife cutting butter, SoS, help help". Really it should be this " Wow your base is so defensively solid, it makes us more protected in the region, good job " pshhh ye right. P.s.s. Also as for " interest " people who aren't ant players, are automantically way more interested in destroying other people's silo, than defending their own factions silo. Which is another reason to buff them. For every 4 people interested in attacking a silo on the server, only 0 or 1 person is interested in helping you defend a silo. So without even going into unbalances of bombs or turrets, just the fact that more people are interested in destroying than protecting server-wide, is enough reason on its own to buff defenses of silos. Thank you.
Was there so much profanity in there the CM had to edit or was it to put in a bunch of paragraphs to improve reading flow? I am really curious. But to the OP, I agree. Used to build bases for fun with friends long ago, and it just stopped being fun when tanks showed up, unless you had a magical spot where they couldn't just shoot the base to smithereens in the time it tankes you to look away and cough.
Turrets were never designed to kill. The AI modules were (initially at least) designed to defend the base until players showed up to take control of the turrets or fight off the enemies some other way. The problem is not the turrets, its the role PMB's play in the game and the time it takes to set them up. You want to reward players for their time investment, but rewarding someone for 15 minutes of just driving around and building things in relative safety is pretty hard. It takes about 15 minutes to truly destroy every piece of the base, but you only need to gut the base's vitals and it is effectively destroyed. However if you make those pieces so powerful it takes 15 minutes to take them down then the base becomes effectively invulnerable. The solution is to speed up the building process. For example take the prototype Drone they designed and allow players to control that within a limited range of the Silo. It would allow players to deploy multiple buildings without the need to continuously return to the Silo and it would give a far greater control over how and where you can place buildings. PMB's also need to get roles that serve the main MMOFPS part of the game, rather than be a side-show. For example if you can generate items like a Citadel Shield over time inside a PMB and then pick that up for deployment it would let players use PMB's as force-multipliers. Add things like logistical networks to teleport players and vehicles across the map, generating weaponless and costless transports to get to and from the PMB, teleportation hubs that allow you to place a Sunderer-like module so you can simultaneously spawn there and teleport there from a PMB, generation of ANVIL modules to deploy, generation of items that have a stragetic effect like an anti-AMS module that prevents enemy Sunderers from deploying, support powers like radar pulses to detect all aircraft or vehicles and deploying low-yield minefields etc etc. The design of PMB's also needs to change. Currently players only have tools to build a sealed fortress, or at least as sealed as possible. There is no encouragement to build a base your allies and enemies can actually fight in. The aforementioned support buildings that generate items and such could prove useful here: if these are semi-randomized building templates like the ones in regular bases they can be made so ungainly that it becomes nigh impossible to close off the entire base. But such buildings might be almost invulnerable to damage from outside and require being attacked from the inside, or even be destroyable only when the Silo is destroyed. That way you can simultaneously use these invulnerable buildings as protective screens for the more vulnerable parts of your base while simultaneously creating places that infantry and vehicles can fight around and in.
Ngl, I went tldr at about half way through your post, but I generally agree with you. I encourage you to a little more time into your editing so that people actually read what you write. Cortium bombs are toxic and need to be gotten rid of. They have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I think the current devs would never have added PMBs to the game, and cortium bombs were an attempt to get builders to stop building without the refund mess of actually removing these items from the game. Auto turrets and pain spires were never meant to inflict actual damage on the attackers, only to stall them until defenders arrive. They serve this function quite well actually, but part 2 does need to happen or else your base is dead. My recommendation as one builder to another is to find an open platoon to drop into, explain that you are a builder looking for a platoon who would actually be interested in a PMB fight. Also explain that PMBs need much more propt defense than other bases due to destructible buildings, some PLs need that spelled out to them. Many players feel that the current bases are tired, and welcome the chance to fight at a new base. That said, there isn't always a PL online willing to do this. One good hook can be to build on one of the 1 minute bases which produces blue outfit resource, and get a platoon from that outfit invested in protecting you.
As for saying what silo's were originally intended for, I'm not interested in hearing that, sorry. I believe game play value wise now adays, turrets should be able to hold their own verse another tank or two. No matter the distance. On their own, without being manned, a module only. - 1 AV turret should be able to fight off 1 MBT / all distances. - Since the base took way longer to build then the vehicle term took to pull, 1 AV turret with repair mod, should be able to fight off 2 tanks. - They should add an entire different turret that shoots only cloakers or airborne la / crashing esf-falling infantry to protect garage modules. - A module that reduces range damage on walls / turrets outside 100m (more or less) by up to 80%. Passive module / don't make us push a button - got enough to do as it is. To stop the op vehicle sniping. Even mid range is too far. - Plus even if they fix the issue of turrets being easily sniped, even for close range, turrets hp is still too low. Even with repair mod, repair tool, repair grenade, they still die too fast to enemy vehicles up close too. At this point even if they gave us 2 AV turrets, they would still be useless, because of the vehicle-sniping + low hp. Thus I cannot defend a base. I just spent another 75$ on this game, but I request buffing silo defenses overall / unplayable rightnow. Thanks. Replies to above posts: Silos aren't anywhere near " invincible " even if they buffed silo's afew times or more. Right now I'm dieing from mid-range tanks, even if I have 6 AV turrets. They do nothing. Don't even score 1 tank kill. Useless. Even at mid range. So technically, they don't need to even " snipe " these turrets. These turrets can only hit 10 feet in front of them, on their own. To expect base builders to push module buttons, man turrets, try to pull a tank to defend, is all lame. Base builders should have less to do, more free time to find alternative ways to defend, other than having to man their own turrets. Also manning your own turret only works for like a 1vs1 on some region no one cares about. Everywhere else, front of the line, it's meh. Silo's should require, outsmarting, to beat. Not what they are right now, a waiting room to be steamrolled. As for the person comparing pulling tanks to ant safety; well that depends where your silo is. It's possible that your ant dies many times, trying to fill a silo. Which lowers your alert time by over 20 mins, at times. Meaning less time to enjoy a base. Another reason I don't ever start building when an alert is active. Ant's being destroyed is a topic onto itself. It's probably the most rage death there is, because of how feeble the ant dodges enemy fire. Another reason to buff silo's. The possible many Ant deaths. Or flipping, Ant's flip more often then most. Ultimately making squad suggestions, doesn't help balance silos. I do believe silos would be more balanced, if they are balanced for the solo player. Yes I can help some other person build, tho even 2 people isn't enough to defend or 3. Need 6+ defenders. Yet no one has mentioned the likelyhood of finding silo aggressors, verses to likelyhood of finding silo contributers. Just like examining population %'s & why that's important. Silo Attackers far outnumber silo Defenders, per server. Another reason to buff the solo silo defense. Tho pretty much you have to run solo anyways, if you want to build " anywhere you want ". Every silo I build, no matter how big I build it, doesn't seem like it's making a region more " defensive ". I'm " vulnerable " to attack & die in mere seconds to anyone who's mildly above average of a player. 1 cortium flail Infil counters AI turret 1 range Tank counters AV turret *Watches rest of base be destroyed* *forced to build so far away from anything important or in a ditch only* *or not play ant's ever again* Rinse repeat per hour(s) of labor 6 AV turrets should kill 6 mid range tanks; better. AI turret should flashlight infils, w/ a new module.
I agree with a lot here but tbh I think the only things needed to change are fairly minor ones to make bases "defendable". 1. Give pain spires a "No deploy" function for enemies, no more suicide running cortium bombs into the garage full of important stuff over and over until everything dies, at least not if there is a pain spire there(Or just get rid of bombs tbfh). 2. Sky shields have a little edge around them that dips down, just a little. Why not extend this down more? This would let you shield your turrets/buildings from long range fire because they cant lob shots under the Sky shield anymore, if you want to snipe the base, either drill through the wall first or go home. 2a. This would massively improve the turrets survivability AND force enemies to get closer if they want to hit the towers, giving the stupid AI turrets a fair shot at doing something in return as well as let you, the defender of the base actually defend the base without having to go across half the map to chase down a single Lightning tank, leaving your base open to who knows what for the duration. Aside from these I 100% agree with Demigans point that PMBs really need to fit into the rest of the game better but those are far larger additions to the game than the small tweaks I think would make them at workable as is.
Just remember that PMBs are not the core of this game. They are a force multiplier, not a force in their own right.
