[Suggestion] Main Facility Basement, Indoor Structure incl. concept

This is a re-post of a thread I opened during beta which received more than 150 like upon beta forums were closed. This shows that many other people share my view and as I'm still of the opinion that the current base design does promote vehicles way over infantry, there is still need for major base design improvements.

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One major thing I am missing in PS2 right now is a base design which allows real Infantry vs. Infantry combat. The Bio Labs do that partially but not to an extent I was expecting from the game.
Reading thru the forum many people appear to share this opinion whereas I decided to post this little thread. This may as well include some already posted approaches.

First of all, why do I think improvement is necessary? Well, nearly everywhere Infantry can be hit by tank shells, Liberator bombs and A2G Missles in most parts of the major facilities as well as towers and outposts. Not to mention the one shot snipers all around you. The few spots this cannot happen are designed really open and do not offer many choke points.
Furthermore most base fights end at the time when the massive enemy vehicle zerg enters the court yards because the are able to knock the defenders down at their spawn point and can even enter bases.
Unfortunaltey no battles even close to the original Planetside can happen at this stage and with that, winning a base does not give any success feeling worth mentioning.

A possibility to (re)introduce infantry combat to Planetside could be an additional sub structure / bunker below the already existing main facilities. This is what this post is about.

I did a rough sketch how this could look like (in case ok Dahaka Amp Station here):



Besides corridors and choke points designed for Infantry vs. Infantry combat, this sketch shows several additions marked with numbers:

1) Loading ramp
This can be compared with the vehicle bay from PS' Tech Plants. In the case of PS2 attacking vehicles could be able to drive down the ramp to create a "bridge head" in the basement or bring in an AMS. The ability to bring in vehicles should be linked with the existing shield gen for the base main structure. Nevertheless Infantry (also the attackers) should be able to pass the shield at all times.

2) Staircase
The central way to enter / leave the basemet

3) and 6) Control room / Generator room
Possible spots to place the spawn generator or Control Point.
This rooms could get some gimmicks like a useable proximity radar or accessable surveilance cameras for the Control room. With destryoing the spawn generator the lights inside the basement could switch to a dark emergency lightning making it hard to spot enemies.

4) Outside entrances
This entrances would allow the attackers to reach the basement and the tactical targets down there even the courtyard is still in hands of the defenders. An Infiltrator could be a serious harm for a base that way. Nevertheless this corridors have a few check points for defence positions to make it not too easy for the zerg.
In addition three entrances to the base walls are shown.

5) Spawn room
A spawn room placed in the basement would prevent the constant vehicle spawn camping we so see right now. This would allow the defenders to keep up the fight even the courtyard is lost to the attackers vehicles.

With the above hackable doors could be introduced which can only be opened by Infiltrators with a certain level of hacking skill.

IMO this fixes several of the currently existing problems, improves the gameplay a lot and does not really have a downside (apart from the additional work for the Devs of course).

Opinions?

I think we should see this suggestion from chambermade as example.
The tunnel system is a hint that bases need alternative entrances.

Biggest Problem with PS1 bases were the small dimension.
Corridors were just too small.

Better would be the size of a brigde in PS2 for example.
Actually you could just copy and paste them into the underground.
There are gaps to hide and proceed step by step and it wont be a
big grieffestival.

Rooms needs to be much bigger as well!

This game definitely needs real infantry vs infantry fights, so I'm all for it.
I also wonder how the devs can be satisfied with the current base design, because it seems they are...

Yea, I am all for it too.

We need 'fighting' spaces and specifically spaces that encourage defence and stop this repeatative overrun/move onto the next base thing.

Bases that challenge platoons to utilise tactics for both defence and attack. - Wishes.

Ideas like this just show that the game is broken on a fundamental level. There's a huge amount of varied terrain content for infantry fights already in existance, it's just dominated by vehicles. I don't know what the real solution is (well actually, I do, it's nerf vehicles back to Beta levels, but I don't think that's going to happen), but I know focusing Infantry combat into small tunnels in a chokepoint by chokepoint spamfest isn't a fix, it's an admission the FPS side of the game doesn't work. Great for vehicles. Shallow, repetative, skilless for infantry. Good only for farming kills and certs.

The devs recognised these problems when they created the game. It's why they made it as open as it was and moved away from a focus on chokepoint spam to achieve anything. Unfortunately, improving infantry gameplay in this way also made it easier for vehicles to steamrole infantry, and buffing vehicles has only made this problem more dominating.

My idea of allowing "real" Infantry vs. Infantry combat would be to take an area like the entirety of Zurvan valley and making it so vehicle unfriendly, vehicles can't even get anywhere near the exterior spawns the terrain is so bad. Force vehicles into horrible chokepoint spam for a change. That leaves plenty of space for varied infantry gameplay rather cramming it all into one-dimensional chokepoint spamfests.

Yeah , Chamber is right. Agreed.

I would like to see more defending, too.

I support anything that proposes adding indoor/underground structures. Massive high tech mine shafts anyone?

Vehicle gameplay should stop where base/outposts walls begin. I had made a post about this as well, where i was suggesting that not only bases should have underground areas but that they should also be entirely indoor. Plain and simple.

The god awful design of amp stations, tech plants, and well, basically all outposts is cringe worthy. They aren't proper structures, they're just a bunch of random buildings scattered all over the place with some capture points here and there, and that sucks. Everywhere feels really open, even inside the biggest of buildings or towers (which btw aren't that big if you look at them objectively). Pretty much every outpost or base feels like a cod map, with people shooting at you from every side, with the addition of vehicles camping everywhere. There's no sense of progression and little to no room for vehicle-free gameplay.

I remember devs saying that maps and outposts are designed the way they are, because they wanted vehicles to be part of gameplay at all times.
Well, that concept is an abomination and is killing your game, or, at the very least, making it really frustrating.

Vehicles have ALL the map to "play" , having every single base and outpost being a "safe" area where people actually have to get out of vehicles if they want to participate seems reasonable. Sure, even in ps1 you had a few doors to camp if you wanted to, but here in ps2, you have LOADS of doors to camp and in most cases the rooms you're camping are so small you just waste everyone inside. And also, either spawns, capture point, or the way from spawn to capture point, can always be camped by vehicles, which makes defending stuff pointless.
Bad design choice + Bad design.

its a fantastic idea and will force some into infantry VS infantry combat however the down side is its to narrow i know what you mean but if some how the corridors were bigger then that could balance it out

That sketch reminds me of the Doom automap, so it must be a good idea.

On a more serious note:
Even though i don't really know if underground bases alone are the cure for everything that's currently somewhat out of whack balance and gameplay wise i would probably like something like this...a lot. However, it would have to be really well designed with ways to flank any given position to some extend. If it ends up being a bunch of lackluster corridors which all lead to that one important hallway/room the attackers have to go through, then it might become a worse meat grinder than tech plants were. The defense of Zion from Matrix Revolutions comes to mind...

To help with that you could add hackable (maybe even hackable-only, to give the infiltrator a real meaning) terminals that open up doors to parts of the bunker/cellar, that are, for the attackers, unaccessible by default and thus make the fights more dynamic as the avenues of attack become more numerous or get sealed off. These terminals should be easier to defend than to attack but the paths they open up once they fall should lead to advantageous positions for the attackers.

It doesn't need to be underground, an above ground facility would do just as well. It needs to have 'fallback' points, before the final cap point. As long as it keeps vehicles (atv excluded) out in the courtyards.

I'm also baffled by this.

I'm not really keen on entirely underground combat, but raising the defensibility of bases is sorely needed.

I'd be down for some underground combat, so i dont have to constantly switch back and forth between my shotgun and something else

Looks great and, at least in my head, is a very appealing concept. Some of those tunnels seem to be very long and narrow though.. are there supposed to be doors that prevent snipers just camping from one end to shoot down the whole thing?

I would love to see better Indoor structures, even if they gonna be basements.

I posted a thread about how to make techplants more defendable :

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index…o-defend.66595/

Yeah, can't have big underground places right now due to a texture leak issue in the engine. Keep that in mind when making concepts, guys, I think you need to stick to buildings that look like they're made of buildings we already have.

I would really love some same zones for inf - only the bio lab isn´t enough. We really need a good mixture.
Thumps up for Chambermands ideas!

This does not prevent from air supperiority!
Thats why it has to be underground and huge - gigantic!
Not just a small cellar room we are talking about a complex under the
actual area under the walls of zurvan amp station for example.

I would like to see a first and a second and even a 3rd basement floor.
This district can only be entered by Infantery.
Its a space were you fill safe as infantery, somehow.

It is you base you are defending indoor!

Do we even know if the PS2 engine allows you to cut into underground? A lot of game engines do not allow it as the terrain has to be one continuous face.

If it does allow it though I am all for it.