As the C.O. of PHX, I have been playing and leading in PS2 for a long time. The best thing about PS2 is construction and destructible player-built bases. The current battlefield is much too static and boring. Mixing indestructible with destructible bases makes no sense. The current lattice funnels everyone into defensive fights over indestructible bases that go on forever. This is just boring. PS2 needs a dynamic battlefield. Here is the plan: 1. All continents open up with evenly balanced destructible bases. 2. 3 sanctuary warpgates on each continent. 3. Fight for supremacy, lock continents, do alerts, victory points etc. Thats about it. PS2 already supports player created bases. Implement them game wide with some tweaking.
Destroying the control point, and every route of access to the said control point location, sounds like the good way to cause a fight to dissolve.
Assumptions. That may or may not be the way a CP would be implemented. The way things are now is not really working. Change is needed. Construction is the way to go.
Then how else would you do it. If every wall, every piece of the bases would able to be destroyed, in a matter of hours, every single building would be leveled by vehicles & aircraft. Rendering all infantry exposed, all terminals exposed, and if even the spawn rooms were destructible, they would be destroyed by the enemy or by allies, to rob them of spawning methods, all the way to the warp gates. The tactic is called "Scorched Earth", and it would be used a lot. As well, if the very walls designed to shield spawn rooms from vehicle AOA spam could be destroyed; Vehicles would just blow the walls up, and defeat the entire point of the walls. Towers would be reduced to rubble by tanks at a distance... as would nearly every base. If there were any means to hold ground, it would be turned to rubble, to the last bit that could be destroyed. If a room or several parts were invulnerable, they'd be the islands in an ocean of rubble within minutes... And easily abused to hell.
It always baffles me that people think this will improve matters. Current indestructible bases are designed to offer different combat scenario's and battlefields. Let's imagine you don't swap them out for construction items but "just" make the buildings have hitpoints (ignoring the massive overhaul of the landscape necessary to make sure destruction of these constructions doesn't offer exploits/bugs and the fact that these buildings are something else entirely and would need to be replaced on the map with a destructible version everywhere), so after the first battle a ton of these buildings will be destroyed. And then what? No one is going to build a 2-story building there! It would serve no purpose but to give a fighting ground for both you and your enemy. Why would you do that if you have perfect one-sided buildings like rampart walls instead that protect you and stop your enemy? You complain about current bases being defensive crapholes. Wel guess what, every single PMB currently requires at least twice as many players to take out than to defend, they are worse than Biolabs! And less fun to attack as well! (and yes, Biolabs are fun to attack, that's why there's so many people who go there). You are basically forcing a zergfest or go home mentality. Additionally since terrain is going to be a relative minor factor in most of these PMB's due to where most of the bases are you'll quickly be fighting the same base over, and over, and over, and over again... You'll be stuck into stalemate hell for the rest of eternity, and in this case it actually would be hell. Contrary to the current status-quo, where the stalemates show something: There is a relative balance to the game. If you had your "dynamic" battles, it would just mean that the attackers are always winning and defending is practically impossible. After all, if there is no stalemate and you want the borders to continuously change then the attackers must be constantly taking territory, and when they stop taking territory they turn defenders and start losing territory. But in essence you've just invalidated 50% of the game (defending) by saying "well **** you I don't want an even fight". And yes you might have said "evenly balanced destructible bases", but considering your "dynamic" battle idea that would just mean "lay down the welcome mat for attackers". Then there's the issue of rebuilding: There are relatively few people who actually build PMB's, which shows that players do not want to play it that much. So imagine if you take 4 bases, there's only going to be 1 base that is going to be rebuild to effectiveness. So the moment the other side is going to push again they'll encounter 3 bases that are complete wrecks. I bet you'll say "so people are encouraged to build more PMB's", but that's a terrible sentiment. A large portion of the players obviously doesn't want to build PMB's, and you are forcing them to do it anyway? What do you think that'll do with the playerbase? TL DR: Destructible bases is counter-productive and creates more stalemates and less variation in fights. Destructible bases would take immense amounts of work to replace all current bases. "dynamic" battles is just another word for saying "I want defenders to be completely curbstomped every base until they organise enough to become the attackers".-->better idea is to offer more stages to an attack/defense, so that there's more sense of accomplishment throughout an attack. Even if you fail the attack or got stuck in the same base for an hour it would mean that you had the feeling of accomplishment&loss as you win and lose stages of the base's attack/defense cycle. There's too little enjoyment to be had out of rebuilding won bases, too few people would join in and too few bases would be rebuild. Forcing players who don't want to into the system is bad for the game.
Many players would disagree with you. Construction system itself gives static and boring gameplay, defenders that sit on a base for a long time doing nothing, construction objects have alot of HP which makes killing them very boring. Implementing your idea would also completely kill the performance
People on forums always want feedback but never enjoy negative feedback. Your idea just won't work. The way the lattice system works won't allow it, the way players find fights won't allow it, the amount of effort and people required to build a full base won't allow it, the way the current PMB's aren't designed to be enjoyable to attack won't allow it, the extreme repetitiveness that this will cause won't allow it (and be the exact opposite of what you ask for), the amount of effort required to create this won't allow it. Each individual system I named above will cause your entire idea to fail. So each and every single one would need to be taken care off before this can become a reality.
100% destructible is a terrible idea, a team of lockdown AP prowlers will just destroy everything from 900m away in mere minutes; we'd be fighting on a flat featureless plain. And balancing the destructible's for that, would leave the other factions without any way to ever get a wall down. My suggestion, would be to incorporate destructible elements into existing bases (with some modification of course). Something like this: Some (not all) bases get a Cortium Silo, it starts empty, and fills up slowly if the base is connected to the warpgate, more lattice link connections away, means slower filling up. Players in ANT's can top it up manually in the usual way. Add a bunch of consoles that spawn a destructible element (wall, turret, shield, AI module, and so on) when a player interacts with it (E). The element can be repaired and destroyed normally, and only replaced after a short delay if destroyed (a few seconds, enough for the enemy to breach and overrun the terminal). Each element adds a drain to the Cortium, so putting up enough will cause the silo to drain out and all elements will then cease to operate. A 'cut off base', will also require players to use up Cortium when spawning themselves, and when spawning vehicles; and of course this removes the regeneration provided by the WG, so the Silo will drain faster. Some could be hackable too, say you're in a building with shields in the windows, you can shoot out, enemy can't shoot in - infil hacks the terminal, now you suddenly cannot shoot out, and the enemy can shoot in! Needs a bit of tinkering to make it work, but more interactive components in a base, I feel, would make for more interesting engagements. That's how I would have done it, and honestly quite close to what I was expecting when construction was announced - additions and alterations to existing bases.
