9 out of 10 player suggestions are terrible, but there are some rare good ones

A few weeks ago a poster here suggested that players don't get XP when filling their personal silo with cortium. This is a great solution to players constantly wasting cortium, and blocking new cortium from spawning with their silo, so they can EZ grind for certs.

1) Only players interested in actually playing the game as it was meant to be played would place silos in areas they intend to place a base. Most of these types of players aren't dumb enough to place it on top of the cortium spawn.

2) The cortium grinders would still grind cortium, but they would actually seek out other player placed silos, in other words they would start filling up cortium silos of REAL bases. And most likely they would do it very quickly. How amazing would that be to put a silo down and have 5 of these grinders immediately top the silo off before you got a chance to put your first wall down.

3) There would be MORE cortium available because the cortium grinders would stop being selfish brats and putting the silos on top of a cortium spawns, preventing cortium from ever respawning again.

How hard would it be to program?

IF silo=ownedbyyou
THEN certs=0

Wow such complicated.

Well yeah, many are bad. But by whose standards?

For example your idea is to punish players for being self sufficient, only to reward filling up someone else’s silo regardless of how ludicrously bad the game signals where silo’s are placed let alone IF someone is going to place one any time soon in your region. The whole point of farming it yourself is that it is easy and not reliant on someone else. By removing that XP for yourself all you’ve done is lose those farmers, they wont suddenly all be filling up silo’s left and right.

A far better idea would be to reward cortium usage. Like at the very least placing items and having them be used (allies nearby) as cortium is drawn. You reduce the initial XP gain to take away some of the incentive to purely fill up a Silo and give the remaining reward as the cortium is used up. Not only would it encourage some cortium farmers to build stuff, they would be encouraged to build stuff where it will be used. Far superior to relying on some “interest in how its supposed to be played”, whatever that means to you in particular as there’s more ways to look at that after the heart of construction was justifiably ripped out leaving it without purpose.

That doesnt take away from how horribly broken and designed the construction system is. It barely even touches the rest of the gameplay loops outside of frustration mechanics (OS for example). You’d gain far more by rebuilding the construction design elements from the ground back up to something that actually enhances the rest of the game rather than this appendix that hangs on and encourages players to make it as unfun as possible to either attack (murder holes) or defend (cheese tactics) these construction bases. At its core construction should encourage players to build as fun a fight as possible for both attackers and defenders simultaneously. The simple failure of even that design idea is unforgivable, and the fact that people defend it even more so.

I prefer the idea that someone else gave (I think in that thread)
To make Silos which aren't powering anything after 5 mins lose health rapidly.

Heck you could even make it instant,
if there is nothing being powered start a 5 Min timer
If nothing has been built, then BOOM!

Construction is unrewarding enough,
if we remove the xp from gathering it would be a big nerf to an already bad system.

Speaking of 9 out of 10 players ideas being terrible.

(walks up to your "frontline" silo and starts randomly placing items, free XP weeee) Awful idea.

Construction is quite unrewarding when you have to drive half a map away because cortium grinders have wasted every bit of cortium.

The time between plopping down a silo and emptying a 35k cortium spawn is greater than 5 minutes, that means players are going to plop down a silo, and then a random wall somewhere so it doesn't despawn. Then afterwards the player will forget about it because the player has the attention span of an ant.

You guys are just like game developers, you have no idea what motivates players to do things.

I'm not sure about that, but let's say it's true, because I haven't played construction in a long time.
Then just make it 10 mins.

Hey less of the insults! The day I suggest converting bases to CTF is the day I'll delete my account.

Randomly placed buildings around a silo dont live long dummie, they also dont see much allied usage. You also run a higher risk compared to current cortium farming since you’ll be on the frontline and using that frontline silo as a cortium farm if you dont build a decent base also means your investment is gone quickly. Hey it seems like there are organic incentives to encourage players to build useful, functional bases if they want to farm cortium! How about that. Seems like a good idea to me, why not you?

As a PS1 player I always wanted a few old features.

Cloaker/Infiltrator vehicle hacking. (not sure how implement effectively in similar manner to PS1 (must remain motionless to maintain the hack)

Engineer deployable mini HUD. To show how many deployables/mines etc are still active plus a health bar for shield walls/turrets

I just had a butthole drain every cortium node near my rapidly draining silo because the little **** was too lazy to drive 5 seconds longer to my silo to unload. None of your ideas addresses this problem of selfish little ***** being selfish lazy little *****.

Solo ant gameplay has always been a struggle. This is nothing new. What is new, is that 2k cortium doesn't exist anymore, nor 4k nodes, & now we have 4k & 8k nodes.

& having cortium for the silo has always been the least of the problems to deal with, even before they buffed harvest amounts.
Just be glad you didn't return to your silo for it to be Infil bombed.
That nodes are worth more.

& flails dmg was slightly nerfed, so they don't maybe entirely destroy all your work.

I don't see any cortium grinders for US west server, not even the chinese cortium grind. Even if two 35k nodes spawn 10 feet north of Hydropon (mid of indar), cortium grind would still be x4 slower than medic certs.

So it's just your server where this is a issue, if so. Also yes for my server lone silo's usually do get shot at, less they are place at a area so undesirable that enemies would rather drive by than waste their time.

If cortium grinding was such good exp, than more people would have help from fellow ant's gathering cortium & they simply aren't half the time. A semi solution would be to make building items be worth the exp & not cortium gathering, yet then people would help gather cortium for teammates even less.

If you're really building solo, then you would have mentioned that harvesting is the least of your concerns & that getting glaive os'ed or 20 enemy tanks pelting your walls is a way bigger issue than needing to drive 60 seconds more for harvest.

These days at least allies are semi more use to defending silos & using their spawn tubes.
So the potential for ally support when surrounded by tanks is more likely to happen, as people got use to that after Oshur.
That spawn tubes don't die so easily. That cortium is more plentiful. That cortium bombs don't 1 hit. That infils don't have bomb use. & flails solo destroy silos less often. So really theirs way less to me salty about.

As for other solutions to silo defense solo, which you didn't ask for, yet someone else may be hoping for. Well build a shield wall & perfect place a protected vehicle term behind your wall gates. That the vehicle terminal item is more important to defend than even the AV turret. As spamming Lightning tanks to defend is more important than trying to keep the AV turret. Build a pyramid shape of walls & not a square. Throw your tower & bunkers outside the triangle wall formation. & then the rest is luck if you have teammates.

As for gathering silo harvest, well maybe join a outfit? try asking your platoon. Know who plays ant. Or you don't always have to pick the location to play silos, yet add to someone elses silo.

Other than that the days of ant solo silo salt is over with, & the devs are either trying to fix Oshur or else moving onto to different projects for 2023 & I don't blame them. I'm returning to the gym myself & then off grid nature land for goals. I bet the devs are figuring out if they want to keep making improvements to ps2 or else some other field, hobby, else lifestyle.

Yet for sure if they keep adding to PS2's run length, it'll be to improve Oshurs infantry play & silos are the last of the list. They may toss silos a few more items someday. Maybe a jumppad & another bunker.

That doesn't mean you can't keep evolving your silo style, with creative methods or else outfits.