I've spent time analyzing and experiencing the construction system and here's my analysis on the mechanics: both what I thinks works or needs corrected. Strategic Analysis The base system is excellent in the way it reinforces positions strategically, but fails to be an objective in it's own right. They generate no strategic value and act as a form of ablative plating for a given system. However they are somewhat more relevant strategically when tied to a Construction Outposts or secondary structures (Indar wild vehicle garages come to mind). Given they are relatively weak to convoys, they don't tend to last long enough for the population shifts to defend lattice positions. The strategic level of the game needs additional strategic options for base deployment. Esamir's northeastern part is an interesting example of what the game looks like with constructions zones left to their own mechanics. Phase 1 of the Esamir store line where there were constantly shifting bases in the north being pushing to control an abstract area was especially interesting because the bases became the agents to push forward in the storyline. I think that is the core of where they shine in terms of their gameplay. Suggestions to increase the depth of the gameplay: Instead of construction Outposts being standalone tiles on the lattice, create smaller construction zones around a single point for ABC or ABCD style control points. A construction area around a single point that belongs to a group of pints allows that point to procedurally generate obstacles from the players making it dynamic next to a static battlefield. It also rewards the construction effort by giving a slight, but increasing, advantage over time to the defenders. An example would be moving The Crown's bridge control point down to the ravine on the south side where players can build. For issues where the center of the map turns into a static grinder, try creating a dead zone or a triangle formation of Construction Outposts. It makes it harder to bottleneck 3 faction fights when the structures that would cause the bottleneck are destructible. Place additional secondary objectives on the continents that can give an advantage over map regions. Additional Air Pads, Spawn Points, or even a map wide Orbital structure would create secondary objectives to control and justify building a base. The ability to save outfit resources (or generate them) may be an additional incentive to attract the outfit leaders focus on secondary structures outside the lattice. This is also assuming the orbital was limited in use to the dominant outfit at the time of capture. Tactical Analysis Base engagement consists of three ranges, Short, Medium and Long as I refer to them, and rarely leaves the Long range. The phases themselves are created and implied by the psychology of counter-fire and effective turret distance. The first range (Long) is outside turret range but within range of vehicle weapons. At this range, defenders rely on distant ranged weapons, artillery, or must leave the base to engage enemy forces. Counter play in this phase is lacking and there's not a good way to defend or anticipate this for the defenders. The resulting strategy is to build in locations that don't allow for this type of engagement. On maps like Indar with long stretches of flat land around Construction Outposts, this counter doesn't exist. As a result some Construction Outposts are particularly vulnerable and remain unused or used minimally. The second range (Medium) is inside the turret range but outside the construction walls. Vehicles can still operate in this range but are subject to anti-vehicle weapons from the walls and the turrets can now engage (when unmanned). Hossin is a good example because the rough terrain and plants create close quarters nearly anywhere. The gameplay in this range seems healthy. The way bases are constructed normally allows vehicles to travel around its exterior which gives an advantage to the attackers, but the infantry can now poke out from the base giving both teams a sense of risk. What's lacking would be an incentive to get the engagement from the first range to the second. Something like having the flail fire at vehicles outside 600m when the base is struck would ether force attackers at a distance to keep moving to harass (lowering distant harassment damage to more repairable levels) or force the enemy to move into the mid-range to continue the engagement. The last range (Short) being inside the base walls is also fairly enjoyable but there's some quirks of the system and how it functions that starts to create frustration. The inability to reliably place buildings next to each other (or speedily correct it since it must be fully built before deconstruction) means flow inside the structure can't be controlled without painful precision. Infantry towers are the worst in this regard and the vehicle gates having stairs looks nice but is just awful for placement. Several collision boxes should be tightened or, when placing walls, allow the wall to clip. Snapping the wall to X,Z coordinates and allowing the Y coordinate to slide would be an absolute dream. Alternately automatically filling the void between two points of a corner would work as well. The goal in that circumstance would allow infantry to pass through to engage while preventing vehicles from spamming HESH rounds through the corner gaps (which is just a terrible time and doesn't contribute to any form of gameplay). Suggestions to increase the depth of the gameplay: Tighten the placement box for most of the buildings in the Structure and Defense categories. Especially tighten the Infantry Tower to the bottom parameter. The Infantry Tower is not useful as a core design structure compared to the pillbox because it "leaks". I don't think anyone cares if walls clipped inside it so long as it's functional and useful. Give somewhat of a variation in buildings to change up the strengths and weaknesses of the player base to reward foresight for the defenders and lateral approaches for the attackers. More on that below in the Choice and Variety Analysis Create a long-distance incentive for tighter engagements on player bases. Decreased damage to structures at a distance, automated artillery, etc. Just need to tighten the engagement distance. Infiltrator Analysis Infiltrators are a love hate thing for me. They possess the ability to immediately move into the Short range for bases is cool, but their ability to affect the integrity of the base is not. Cortium Bombs need a rework for a couple of reasons which will also be mentioned shortly, but the Infiltrator's ability to affect structures through an (effectively) unrestricted pool of resources is a bad time. The fact that these can be pulled from hacked terminals and cloaked sunderers means the infiltrator has initiative to close the gap and a means to remove the bases inner functionality. As a role, Infiltrator can and should be causing disarray within the short range, but their ability to also simultaneously gap close, siege, and destroy causes them to fill multiple roles which creates a dominant strategy and ruins game play. Similarly, the Stalker Cloak should NOT allow tools to be equipped like the Flail or orbital as there's no real form of recourse against that individual (especially with deep op) again removing the option of counter-play. Cortium Bomb Analysis Cortium Bombs aren't in a great place as they fill an auxiliary slot in a way that should be giving utility, not offensive value. It is damaging to other items and roles like users of C4. Instead of removing Cortium Bombs from the Infiltrator loadout, I'd argue they need more of a role change to an EMP since their identity as an explosive is already compromised. My best solution would be: Put them on a 10 second timer. Deal no explosive damage. Persist for 20 seconds. Disable vehicles/construction turrets/modules while active. Drain infantry shields in their radius while active. It makes more sense tactically, gives a similar functionality in that they disable structures, makes more sense for them to pass through walls, can be equipped by infiltrators, and gives them a unique function for sieging doorways and choke points. It also gives infiltrators a way to potentially force engineers out of their vehicles on the back line and deals with them in a way that's covert and interesting. Also, CortEM-P pun. Choice and Variety Analysis The construction system has the anti-vehicle turret share a restriction with it's counterpart and make a choice between the two kind of cool. Honestly, bases would be a lot cooler if there were more options AND you couldn't use all of them. Additionally, several strategic and tactical functions would be gained by giving a couple of unique buildings to your players and seeing which they use and in which environments. Below are some auxiliary suggestions for things that can improve the system and how I anticipate they enhance gameplay. I list specific ones as alternates since they should share the same restriction with their counterparts to create a meaningful choice with an opportunity cost. Suggestions to increase the depth of the gameplay: Remove certs from building costs and replace with nanites. Right now the cost is between the temporary/infinite resource and the permanent character progression resource, so there's not really a choice. It's punishing since it removes their character growth. It's better to give a choice between two expendable resources since a loss of nanites also means a loss of vehicle support or C4. Alternatively, make the second cost both Cortium AND Nanites, which results in the building spawning X times faster. That way those in the siege can respond making building more active than passive during those moments. It just depends on if you want choices or new tactics I'd suppose. Skywall Shield Emitter Alternative: Take the Skywall Shield, rotate it 90 degrees on the x axis so it's forward facing, and triple the health. This would allow construction a choice of air or ground and make defending sites like Berjess Overlook tolerable because that site is only ever taken by an armor column. The spam from across the ravine is awful and building a base there seems almost pointless. Skywall Shield Emitter Alternative: Jam any targeting darts from orbital, the flail, or Glaive inside it's radius. This is a defense specifically against other construction individuals that allows more aggressive building against entrenched locations. The downside is you are opened up to conventional arms destruction. Pain Spire Alternative: Emit a decloaking light in twice the radius to reveal cloaked vehicles or infiltrators. This makes the tradeoff ether having a slow dot against all infantry or easier discovery of specifically infiltrators. Structure Shield Alternative: Fill the inside of pillboxes, Infantry Towers, and bunkers with a Pain Field (making bunkers less of a liability). It makes bunkers viable since the terminal can't be hacked till the module is destroyed and also let's your firing positions have tunnel vision in exchange for not having protection in the window slits. The total module count for structure shields may need reduced to 1 or the restricted deployment area for similar modules should be implemented and expanded. Repair Module Alternative: Structure in range get 50% more health. That makes the tradeoff having a large pool of health or self-autonomy. A larger pool of health makes it more responsive for players in the base to do repairs, while the auto repair is good for if you're planning to leave the base mostly absent (or when you know the other players won't repair which is like, 95% of the time) Increase the Ant's Cortium Storage to 1000/2000/3000/4000/5000 instead of 1000/1250/1500/1750/2000. The cost is isn't worth the investment. The main restriction to building is the time sink going from node to node, not the amount carried from the warp gate. The main benefit is it becomes more manageable to get support apparatuses up and functional without other players help or and having to make 3-4 trips instead of 4-5 trips. It doesn't accelerate the accumulation of Cortium unless players are pushed back to a warp gate. Additionally, bases take 10-35 minutes to make operation and can be destroyed in 5. A quality-of-life improvement that doesn't increase the spawn rate of Cortium would make the whole experience less punishing for failure because Jesus does it feel awful to spend 30 minutes working on something to have it lost to a skilled infiltrator in 2-5 minutes. -- The system has a lot of fat that needs trimmed from all the changes and patches over time it seems. Additionally, it needs firmly tied to the strategic meta to be functionally viable. I think until these concepts gets adjusted, the Construction System will be largely appealing only to be shown to be extremely punishing and hard to understand and use appropriately. Parts of the system that are barebones needs expanded to include choices to overcome challenges. I'll be honest, the system can be so frustrating I stopped paying my membership, but I still play with the building system because the parts that work are working well. It's just not a product that has the quality I'd pay for. However, dynamic structures in PvP is always a good concept and there's a ton I like here, so I hope it gets refined and polished in PS2 and, someday if possible, PS3. Let me know if there is anything I can clarify.
