Is construction now really improved.

Even before this "Fortification" update, base building was more often than not a waste of time. You could get far more kills just running and gunning. But now it's 100% waste of time, a total joke.

See this I agree with greatly. AI and pain field were a crutch. A lot of the 'solo' builders relied on these to get kills or just protect the base in general to buy time. When the entire point of the game isn't to be fighting AI turrets and a "death zone" on the player bases, the goal seems at least to be to encourage people to *defend* the bases and the bases need to last long enough to be defended.

I personally feel on the larger structures the HP pool is too low to meet that need as well. I would like to see Command Center, OS, and Rebirth gain half or 3x their current HP total along with like another 20-30% resistance to tank shell damage. The purpose being to encourage people to need to take out the other defenses and/or silo or capture the point on the field bases. Not simply "sit back with a group of tanks and shell" and rely on module running (which is a finnicky super hands on means of defending...and feels awkward bubbling in all the defenders.

This would also more incentivize cortium bombs too if they were kept at 50% of the structure's base HP as well.

I still feel like adding in things like more walkways *AND A PROPER SNAP TO SYSTEM* would be fantastic and provide more small cover for infantry to work with could make the bases more interesting to. If you could link buildings and such and they added even more HP so it felt like there was some form of actual 'base'. The current system kind of has notions of that but isn't quite there.

Too many of the new Walls are too inflexible about placement. The new Bulwark walls of them need the place-able area doubled.
The new Command Center and Rebirthing center has an invisible collusion cube that makes them very hard too place. Those buildings are far too large for there "no build" collusion zones to be anything more then the buildings Silhouette.
We really really really need an actual pre-build prototyping mode, with the ability to snap building parts together. Making it where the only way to build a base is to have your character run around and hope you can twist turn and get as close as possible to close any gaps, is not only pain staking, but highly inaccurate beyond reason.
There till needs to be a system for donating parts too a base too.
As things stand, despite everything that has been done, there seems to be someone in leadership who doesn't understand or doesn't care about the quality of the game, when they keep making the kind of final design choices they keep making.

It's a better base that integrates with the game, sadly we have to wait for iteration and QoL and this game has a bad track record of that....

bases became strong only when several builders merged. A base built by a solo player could only have one AA, one anti-tank turret and one anti-personnel turret. AI and towers of pain provided protection against lone attackers, but not against squads. The only problem I had was the merging of several bases into one huge outpost. Instead of introducing a ban on close building (I mean an area within which another player cannot place their objects), the decision was made to simply remove the AI turrets. It is not right.
Moreover, I am an old player (since 2012) and I can definitely say that the gameplay in Planetside 2 is more like a game about the first world: no automation, robots, drones. It's all a farce. There is no sense of the future. Now it all resembles the shooting of ordinary foot soldiers from the First World War. The fact that everything glows and looks somehow unusual is just a decoration. I'm disappointed with both the weird update and the gameplay in the future that doesn't feel like the future.

Construction Is now Joke. You have this 3 story command ctr and at the top you can look down and see your base be destroyed and you cant even shoot out of the stupid windows lol