I am interested in getting a fair bit more construction buildings, but there seem to be no bundles or sales out (at the moment?) with which to purchase them. Do they ever go on sale, or are there any special bundles that have come out in previous years for them?
For me personally it was worth buying the construction so that I had it across all my characters. I did buy a bundle I think. Don't recall if it was on sale or not.
Shucks, they DO have bundles for them? Do you happen to remember when? Was it like, Valentine's day or only two years ago, etc.? Do...you mean to say they never go on sale? Come again?
I really do have my finger on the trigger for putting down a bit too much cash on them atm - should I not? Does history show that a sale for them could be right around the corner?
Well, the construction schematics are really of questionable usefulness. There are large no-deploy areas where you cannot build, or even have the smallest corner of a building touching it, and each player can deploy only so many walls and turrets. So, if you have friends and they have schematics as well, you'll be able to build more together. Secondly, there are many restrictions placed upon certain structures. Orbital Strike Uplinks are, by far, the most popular, but have a maximum range of 800m and their position shows to all on the minimap, friendly or enemy. You can't always count on friendlies to come and save your base, but enemies in force are likely to have the destruction of your hopes and dreams on their to-do list, since you can see which faction owns the uplink as well. Strikes, properly positioned, are very powerful, and can annihilate an entire strike force as well, so you have a gun to their head. It's a matter of who blinks first. I should also mention that orbital strikes have a charge time of 15 minutes before reaching their maximum range, and have a 200m minimum range, so you can't just fire it point blank and go out in a blaze of glory. The Flail is another artillery option with a range of 600m. This'll whack a deployed sunderer nicely but strikes can't be called down in no-deploy areas. So there's lots of places you can't use it. You can't do something like continuously bombard TI Alloys or the Crown, but the wilderness around them. You can also set up light air and vehicle terminals and those cost cortium instead of nanites. So if you're having a rough night and lacking resources, you can set up a cheap base and spin off some vehicles for yourself. However, the vehicle terminal only generates light and medium vehicles. No MBTs for you. The air terminal only generates ESFs and Valkyries as well. So, again, limitations, but if you feel confident in your lightning build, have at it. The turrets as well will not be winning any battles for you. Each player can only have one of each type, AI, AV, and AA, and there is a large exclusion area around each one. So you can't do something like get 40 friends together and make AV turrets side by side to sha-lack an enemy tank column instantly. There's a module where they can be controlled by an AI without player involvement, but their aim is pretty terrible. The AA turret is of the Walker variety, meaning it's a machine gun and NOT a flak cannon. If you're being pestered from the air while building, it'd be a better option to grab a lightning skyguard or slap a flak cannon on your ANT and use that. When Mosis come after me while I'm minding my own business in Vanu territory, they never expect me to pull over and bloody their noses. It's hilarious 100% of the time. I can even make the occasional Liberator feel like it's not worth the effort to try and kill off this cloaking, speedy self-repairing flak jeep and back off.
I never thought an ANT could be such a pain to deal with rofl, nice! I totally hear you and your sentiments echo the internet's, but since I've had the chance to try it out for myself, I really have been very impressed with the buildings and love how they add such a layer to the game. For the fun factor alone I think it's worth it. And I'm going to have fun seeing how I can best max out their usefulness But the question is, when to buy? Easy question - is there a sale every 3 months on these, or less? Or is it less frequent? If it's less frequent, I'll probably just go for them now.
I should note - Daybreak was unable to give me any information about this, even about past sales, in a ticket I sent
I mean i've seen some on sale lately! I also did see bundles a while ago, they might just be available once in a while.
I think there was a construction bundle last christmas. As Pondera mentioned, the effectiveness of construction is questionable. Compared to the unlock cost, it's outright inefficient to conventional playstyles. However it's completely different from anything else in the game. Since it wasn't mentioned before, there also are Routers, which can be deployed on almost any flat surface anywhere on the map and they can provide an additional spawn option behind enemy lines - even inside buildings and close to control points. A base can also slow down or stop an enemy approach, depending on location and geography, number of enemies and allies, presence of other bases and so on. You can build bases on hexes with no spawn room to provide defense and a spawn option for those hexes. Downsides are: A base needs maintenance in the form of Cortium. If it's under attack, it will need as many defenders as if it were a real base under attack. If it's in a good (aka annoying for the enemy) location, solo players or small squads will usually attack it frequently. It will be completely overrun if the enemy brings enough tanks.
One thing about construction: There are not too many better ways to make certs, particularly for newer players who lack the skill to properly gorge during a farm. Fill ANT, Fill Silo. Repeat. Heck sometimes, I'll just redeploy to a new ant at the warpgate instead of driving back. If you come across a 36k node of cortium, just plop down a silo right next to it (deleting your previous if needed). Re: the bundles. I don't think I've seen them since I purchased way back when. They had like "offensive construction" bundle and similar. Don't see those now.
Putting a silo on top of a cortium spawn location will block that location from spawning again tho. It's super annoying to get cortium from a spawn 2 kilometers away because every spawn location is either blocked by a silo or getting farmed by someone who's filling his own useless silo.
Don't bother wasting real world cash on them. I recently started tinkering with the construction system and find overall its a waste. I just sat cloaked and watch 2 engi's on foot rip my fully build base apart. Mining cortium seems good to get some certs starting out a new character but overall... waste of effort. IMO just farm cortium and deposit into others silo's. Once you have the extra certs laying around after maxing out your player classes and other vehicles start playing with the builds.
If you buy everything with cash, it would cost you around $120 to get everything without any deals. In my experience, if you play pretty often and can participate in most 2x EXP weekend and events, just get the annual membership with around $110. You can farm out most of construction set in about 2 months. On top of that, you get monthly 500 DBC so if you really want something across the account, you can pick them up after few months.
Why buy in these times? We have double XP weekends this month and certs will be gushing in. And the more modules and structures and towers your base has, the higher the amount of cortium used per second. In time, your base will eat cortium at a tremendous level and you can fill up sooner. Also, keep in mind that an ANT can also utilize that cortium for a cloaking device, so you could just dump the collected cortium into another silo of someone else or flush it into your cloaking device to make more room for further cortium. This can make you hundreds of certs without the stress of battle.
