Addressing Outpost Battles and Design (Art Included)

INTRODUCTION

Zergs, ghost capping, and lack of incentive to defend lead to very wop sided battles/steam rolling at outpost. Outpost in their present state are just there to help link major facilities (amp stations, bio labs, and tech plants) back to warpgate, and provide influence over those major facilities. This provides very little to no incentive to defend these locations. With the proposed Lattice system coming in April, more players should be channeled into defending these locations.

However, outpost design should be looked at and improved than what it currently is. Here are some ideas and suggestions for how Outpost can be made viable defensive locations, as well as provide attackers with objectives to pursue.

NOTE: The base designs I have pictured below, are designs I came up with using Planetside 2 models. The models were obtained using the PS2Is Program.

SOLUTIONS

DEFENSIVE XP BONUS

Experience should be increased across the board by at least 25% for Defenders, especially when they are actively defending around the control point, generator, or any other key pivotal property of an outpost. This would add to the overall incentive of defending outpost.

DEFENSIVE TOOLS

Phalanx Turrets

Phalanx turrets as they are, suck really bad. They overheat to quickly, cool down slowly, and have weak HP/Armor wise. All those aforementioned things need to be tweaked to buff Phalanx turrets: overheat slower, cool down quicker, and have more resistance to incoming ordinance.

The current damage output of the Phalanx turret is fine and doesn't need a buff. However if none of the other turret mechanics are changed then damage needs to buffed.

Sentry Units

Sentry units should be introduced in conjunction with the existing turrets for a few reasons. First, assist defenders in defending an outpost from overwhelming odds. Second, counter ghost cappers. Third, provide an additional objective for Infiltrators to accomplish.

Expounding on the third reason, Infiltrators would have to infiltrate the outpost, then reach the building that houses the mainframe and upload a virus to the mainframe to neutralize the sentries. In order to get the sentries back on line, defending Infiltrators would have to remove the virus, and Engineers reboot the mainframe.

Sentry units could be knocked offline into a cool down state by ordinance placed by infantry. However the sentries would return to full status after the cool down state. This would make it mandatory for Infiltrators to be used in order to knock the sentries offline.

There would be two main types of sentry units: Anti Air and Anti Armor. Anti Infantry sentries could be implemented, but I think this would add an extra burden on infantry not needed. Furthermore, the sentries by themselves would not insta gib any vehicle however it would keep them at bay until an Infiltrator sabotaged the mainframe.

BASE DESIGN

Current outpost design is bland, open, and not very intricate. It does not provide the proper playing field for infantry and vehicles to battle out in a combined arms effort. Most often vehicles dominate the fight. Before any vehicle enthusiast can contest this, it is a known fact that typical strategy involves locking down the spawn room with a hell storm of ordinance, while infantry stand by on the sidelines to pick off whatever unlucky bastard gets through all the explosions.

Outpost battle spaces need to be organized so that infantry have the central base area to slug it out, while vehicles roam the outskirts fighting other vehicles and provide limited fire support for the infantry friendlies.

Furthermore, more objectives need to added to outpost to break the current blandness of battle. As is, a player captures the control point, then goes and camps the enemy players spawn until the outpost is secured. To completely eliminate this staleness, two things should be added to outpost - one I have already mentioned.

First is SCUs, these need to be added back to outpost to once and for all get rid of defenders once and for all and force defenders to fall back to the next base in line. There should be a generator, that shields the SCU, that has to be destroyed. Then the SCU would be available for arming and destroying.

Second, is the aforementioned Sentry Mainframe, that Infiltrators must sabotage to bring down all sentry units at the base. Neutralizing of these units would allow attacking vehicles to come a little closer to the outpost.

In addition to, cover in any shape form or fashion needs to be spammed in and around outpost. This is why vehicles come across as being extremely OP against infantry. There just isn't enough cover for infantry to move amongst.

TIMER (SUDDEN DEATH)

Whenever a generator or SCU is armed a timer will show upon the defenders screen counting down to the destruction of that objective. The countdown should better inform the defender how much time they have, and express the urgency in which they must act.

This mechanic could also be applied to the sabotage of the Sentry Mainframe. When the virus is uploaded an alert will appear on the players HUD signifying a virus is running through the mainframe. In turn a timer will begin counting down until the virus permanently disrupts the entire system.

PROVIDE ROLES FOR ALL THE CLASSES

The aforementioned changes if applied properly would boost the usefulness of all classes currently available in Planetside.

EXAMPLE BASE DESIGN (GALAXY SOLAR PLANT)

This is my concept of Galaxy Solar Plant. It is still a work in progress, but here are some pics of the general idea and concept. I will probably update these pictures cause they are two bright - it appears.

Be sure to leave a comment, suggestion, like, etc.

Any tutorial around about how use in-game models ?


Now on to the point:
As long as the defenders do not have the ability to actually "push back" the enemy by resisting, all of the defense gameplay will revolve about using the cheesiest tactic to blow up the enemy AMS.

I've done it so many times, burned so many ESFs only to drop on top of Sundies, used so many jump pads and abused elevators, instant action and beacons.
I've won fights by myself because everyone else was to busy farming.

Am I proud ? No, it was terrible.


Even in the most "defensible" bases like Biolabs, you can't really defend; as in your best bet is to leave the base and attack it from outside otherwise the flow of attackers will continue to no end (meanwhile, they get caught pants down at their spawn location).

So it's not *just* base design.
Part of why bases are so hard to defend is both the lack of a no-deploy zone for AMS, and a need for the mechanic defined above, like increasing AMS spawn timers.




Last point about turrets: Do it like Tribes.
Put a shield that regens very quickly; while concentrated fire will effectively take down the turret health, isolated shots will barely scratch it. There is nothing more annoying than having to repair after getting hit by a single shot, knowing that you'll lose the next 1v1 encounter if you're not back to full health.

PS2I bro cha cho: http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/tool-release-ps2ls-planetside-tools.54360/

Have fun!

... I... I am wowed by the prettiness of those models.

Okay serious time. <-Serious face

Okay: Your right about phalanx turrets. I would say, as has been suggested by others before, shields or something tied to generators and other such things at the base, that would force the turret to be rendered vulnerable or more vulnerable before they can be destroyed.

Automated sentries I'm not crazy about. I see where you are going, where it forces people to start working around the base defenses prior to taking the base, but Automated systems might discourage defense. I would say if they were added, they should be used sparingly, against Infantry alone, and in buildings.

The SCU, SCU shields, mainframe, etc. in each base: YES. Yes yes yes. Yes. Yes yes.

Sudden death, I disagree. The infantry in the game are living, breathing, people. Giving them some kind of arbitrary death after they have failed to defend a point, is not only senseless (While I do see where you are going with giving a defined end to the battle), but would also shatter the immersion people get, as there is no reason for them to suddenly die with failure.

I conveyed this wrong, and you misunderstood.

The Sudden Death was just a name for the countdown timer when the SCU is armed. Sudden Death is a timer notifying the player that the SCU is armed, gonna explode, and prevent you from spawning at the facility. "So get yourself in gear" kinda thing.

Its not some kind of second chance thing. Sorry about that.

Thanks for the response

I feel there are a few ways that it plays out:

1) Intact turrets automatically acquire and attack all targets within their arc, but at a reduced turning speed and rate of fire. So they would be about 1/4 or 1/5 as useful as a crewed turret. For larger facilities like Amp Stations, this could definitely slow down an attack a bit. Infiltrators would be key, sending them in ahead of time to hack the turrets so they fire on the defenders. Mostly, automated defenses would be harassment fire.

2) Have engineers deploy something at the base of the turret which automates it at nearly full power until the turret is destroyed. This could act as a force multiplier as the engineer could crew one turret while making a 2nd turret automated.

Either way, I feel that turrets need a major HP buff as they are too easy to destroy currently (and are in fixed positions with fixed firing arcs). And if they could draw on a central "turret shield generator" which makes them 5x tougher until that generator goes down, it would add yet another useful objective inside the facility. But hacked turrets should not be able to sync with the shield generator.

1.) That'd be better, maybe something like the TR minichaingun, a wide cone of fire that just opens up on an area when it detects enemies.

2.) That, or there could be a room from which the turrets could be controlled by remote. Engineers go to the room and plug into the console, firing the turrets. Destroy that room or it's power, and your turret problem is taken care of.

3.) Totally agreed. The Turrets now are free xp

What would happen if you added SCUs back to every base like it used to be in Beta is that someone would just drive/fly behind and kill the SCU before the base closer to the front lines is taken. Essentially one or two people could force defense to skip over an entire base. And if someone says "just keep people back to guard the base!" why would you want to garrison every base in the game with living, breathing people? It's not real life, they don't live there. Adding SCUs would change flow, but make it so it requires a certain % of influence (say, 60%) to kill the SCU. If you had 20% influence you could still take the base like you take every base now, but if you flanked it enough then you'd be able to lock it down tightly.

Your suggestion essentially solves that problem. I would make so attackers could not destroy the SCU period until they have captured an adjacent HEX, and captured the control point at that HEX.

But what you have to keep in mind is that we are getting a new lattice system soon. So we really don't know what the cap system requirements are going to be, nor how capping plays out.

Thanks for the critique.

I don't think every base needs SCU's and generators. Maybe on Esamir it would be fine, but Indar and Amerish just have to many bases.

They should change the towers to.
Make half of the towers into Vehicle towers and leave the other to be Air towers.

Make Air towers more closed on the lower part to force infantry combat and remove the Shelling.

Make Vehicle towers more bunkerish and reduce height and add two more Phalanx turrets.

This would increase the need for Logistics ^^'

also what outposts needs to is more signs of being dug in for defence.

Bump.

Might only be a minor change , but Imo ALL cap point's need to be relocated into building's ... Even if they don't do anything else atm to me that is a must

Wow i love this! Realy realy nice done! The best is , that you actually could stand your point, cause you are using the models and place them. ´Realy realy nice!

You're main problem is that the buildings are still too small.

Outposts and Bases need to be entirely indoors for the most part. Not these shipping container buildings or buildings with just a few rooms and levels.

Outposts and Bases need to contain buildings that are much larger, much more rooms, and even many more levels then they currently have. The spawn rooms, generators, SCU's, objectives should all be incorporated into ONE building.

You know like the bases in PS1. Not this collection of tiny buildings and props everywhere.

This ^^^