PLEASE! Rotate Connery's maps! It's Esamir/Oshur every night!

Haha!
I'll play TR more often.

And how much effort does it take to get the nanites? A drinking bird toy, pecking at your keyboard, while you're AFK. Nanites are the true "free" resource, as no effort is needed in getting it.

Yes, on average, you can collect 1500 Cortium per minute, which is enough for 5 Lightnings. Except you have to spend such minutes driving an ANT, potentially through hostile territory, dodging opportunistic hunters. And you won't even spend all of it on Lightnings, because at least half of it will go to building and maintaining your base. Unless you build it so far back that no one wants to spawn on it.

And all of that is based on the assumption, that in the time you're away scrounging for Cortium, someone's defending your base well enough for it not to get shelled into dust by the time you return.

Meanwhile, you're driving the MBT you got from charity, complaining about the Lightning I put in the effort to get, because I have it too easy. You didn't even go through the effort to set up an alms bowl.

You get 50 nanites per minute and even at base price of 300 per Lightning, that means 1 every 6 minutes.
If you get the Combat Armor Discount ASP, it's 1 every 4 minutes 48 seconds
If you combine it with an outfit discount, it's 1 every 3 minutes.
If you're a member on top of that, then it can go as quick as 1 every 2 minutes.

With both discounts and a full nanite pool, you can pull 5 Lightnings one after the other without any wait in-between, before you run out of nanites. Then if you're a member, you can do that again 10 minutes later. If someone needs to chain-pull more Lightnings than that, then they're probably bad enough to simply be free Certs for you – nothing to complain about.

But the developers, in their infinite wisdom, have thought of even that scenario! They sell 7-day 50% resource boosters for 3 bucks a piece. Just in case someone wanted to P2W a Lightning into existence every 72 seconds.

Of course you first wall-up your vehicle terminal, otherwise I place tank mines down your vehicle ramp, or destroy your spawn tube. Once your base is air-tight, that's when you spam-pull.

The more successful bases are erected while supported (directly or indirectly) by the Zerg. Otherwise, like you said, you either build too far away or the enemy Zerg eats up your base. When the Zerg provides security, the player bases grow like a tumor (get the reference to Starcraft 2?).

I will concede that Cortium is not "free" in the effort sense.
However, it is definitely "free" from consequence.

When someone relies on nanites for their vehicular pulls, they bear the risk of losing the vehicles too quickly.
Say you lose an MBT to tank mines that my d0u(l-lbag (yes, I do this for Lightning crowd control purposes) left down your vehicle ramp. To make things more evil, say you are a BR 1 who hasn't spent the time for ASP or the money for discounts. Bam! (750 - 450 = 300 = *you gotta wait 3 minutes* to pull another MBT. Say you re-pull the MBT after the 3 minutes, well, if you want to pull again, you must survive for 9 straight minutes. The TTKs for MBTs can be as low as ~10 seconds or *instant* (C4, tank mines, Physics engine).

Even if guys like me are not around to ruin your vehicle gameplay, nowadays every planetman has AV capability (Engi Tank Mines, Engi AMR, Engi AV Mana turret, HA dumb-fires, HA lock-ons, HA AV grenades, LA Rocklet rifle, Under-Barrel GLs, AV crossbows, AV MAXes, and of course C4, oh! and C4-flashes). So, surviving long-enough to be able to re-pull upon death can be difficult on nanites.

If I'm counting on nanites, it's on me to make sure that:

• I'm not pulling too close to an enemy Zerg.
• I'm not pulling near enemy players geared to counter my vehicle.
• I have checked for tank mines down the ramp I plan to pull.
• I have some AA to fend off aircraft if currently present, or likely be present once I mop the floor with the enemy armor/infantry.
• Basically, I must aim to last as long as the vehicle's worth in wait time.

If a player attains all possible discounts, they can't abuse nanites the same way Construction players currently abuse Cortium. Why? Nanites are capped at 750, the Cortium cap per-silo is like 10,000? (Correct me here please).

Construction players who spam vehicular pulls, do not bear this risk.
This is why the recurrent load outs by spam-pull griefers are, for ESF [(Hornet) + (AI nose gun)] and for Lightning [C75 Viper]. Why? Because these are suitable "kamikaze" or "hail-Mary" type load outs (high burst damage, CQC, high risk). These are often used to suicide-rush opponents (mostly MBTs), typically leaving them no better than half health. True bomb-rushers drive/fly as HA or LA to subsequently Deci/Rocklet or AV grenade/C4 the wounded MBT, finishing it off. Before construction, this was reasonable because the Nanite costs incurred by the suicide rusher were roughly equal to the nanite cost of the MBT. This is no longer the case because of Construction.

Cortium pulls get abusive.
If I have a base, I don't need a semblance of caution. I just spam pull, bomb-rush some enemy, die, repeat.
I've been on the receiving end of that, and boy, it is becomes a game of endurance.
Spoiler alert, the player-base wins in the long run, so my advice is to retreat after surviving no more than the 2nd wave.
Why? The griefers can pull a new Lightning/ESF faster than you can heal the damage they inflicted on your MBT in their past life.
I've got footage of that, gotta edit so that you guys don't have to watch ~3+ hours.

Then Aris and his Vanguard runs into a TR guy on foot, who has no regard for KDR, wielding a rawket lawnchair, V5, and is juggling 4 anti-vehicle grenades whilst spam jumping with cat-like implant like some hopped-up-on-Mountain-Dew-13-year-old COD Player.

Sadly, I stopped playing.

So V5 buddy. V5. You got the best of those engagements and it was a blast.

Get it? Get IT? A BLAST? Your tank, my nades? A...BLAST? Oh my Gawd! AHAHAH I am so funny.

Dude, that loadout is/was OP .
Your HA behaves a bit like an Icarus LA (very difficult to lead).
Sometimes, I would distance myself from you just so I wouldn't take ~4000 damage for an infantry kill.
You would have likely stopped my rampages single-handedly if you also brought a Viper Lightning.

If you shielded at the right time, you behaved a bit like a MAX.
I'm pretty sure I have a clip of you surviving a JGX-12 to the head because of that.

If you decide to come back, say holler.
I would like to drive you around in the Vanguard (or Prowler if you want to keep it TR).
I'll share all the hate mail I get for some good laughs.
We'll V6 the WTAC guys.

lmao, rofl, xd, lol *laughs so hard that is about to suffocate*... V2, V2 (in Arnold Schwarzenegger voice of course), *ded*.

Will do Aris, you and TotallyNotDelta are damn fine Vanguard users.

Totally would sometimes get me to gnaw on ammo packs he dropped outside his tank in exchange for not pestering with him with Jumpy-Heavy-Assault loadout.

Great game, but they let Connery decay.

It takes 30 minutes to build a decent base, but there's no such thing as an airtight base. Even in the days where I would build a Garage with a Pain Spire, Spawn Tube and all the modules – it wasn't airtight. A single guy with some tank mines could blow the entire thing to hell, in a mere moment of inattention.

If a zerg is helping the base, then you'll have to take into account that each member of the zerg has their own nanites. 48 players with 750 nanites and both discounts means 240 Lightnings every 15 minutes without paying real money and without relying on the base. A base doesn't scale up as well with more players involved.

It's 50000 per Silo, but it takes 30 minutes to build the base and 30 minutes more to fill it up to capacity. Even then, it cannot be compared to nanites like you're doing, because nanites are an individual resource everyone has, while Cortium is collective. This is like comparing the income of a company vs the income of an individual.

If we really look into it, Cortium cost of a Lightning is 300. This means you can pull a total of 166 Lightnings from a full Silo. If you spend 60 minutes on your base, that's 2.7 Lightnings per minute. Better than the free limit of 0.33 Lightnings per minute, except that's when you only think about a single individual. If you have more, then they all have to share the Cortium, but they each have their own nanites. With 3 players, that's 0.9 Lightnings for the Cortium and 1.0 Lightnings for the nanites. It gets even more unfavorable for bases the more users you add to it.

And of course, to make it fair, a BR1 will not have any tank mines, C4 or any anti-tank weapon, other than the default launcher. So you don't have to worry about them blowing up your tank.

If you compare at the ASP level, then for every one of those ways to die, you'll have the experience to survive it and the ASP/outfit for discounts. An MBT costs 225 nanites, which means you'd have to lose 3 MBTs in an instant to run low. If you wait 14 minutes, you'll be back to full nanites.

Yet you can only pull MBTs from special terminals, found in the Warpgates, Tech Plants and some exceptions, which means you'll have to drive a few minutes to get back in the action, which in turn means your nanites will regenerate somewhat by the time you're there, reducing the amount of time you need to keep it alive. If you drive 3 MBTs for 3 minutes each to get to the action, all you need for the next set of three is to survive a total of 5 minutes, which is under 2 minutes per tank.

Don't worry about that, just put a Ranger on your MBT. Unless you're driving a Mag, you can get away with it with little-to-no consequence. Mag is the only MBT that needs the alpha strike of an added AV gunner to survive. A Prowler will just 2-click Lightnings, while a Vanguard has more armor and a shield.