Base Construction useless now

With the advent of the new alert system the whole point of using anything other than the hive and silo are out the window. Thats all you hear now, someone drop a hive,silo. Once the alert starts construction of hives is pointless and there is no longer a need to keep and defend them. My outfit, Hive Hackers, took pride in building some of the best hives on Emerald. Our hive survival rate was at least 98% or better even with both TR and NC attacking at the same time! We purchased the construction packs so we would have all the options. We recommended everyone in the outfit to buy the construction packages as well as non members who helped us build. Now, all it takes is one person to come along and drop a hive one hex away or more as the territory capture keeps advancing for an alert. But its not just one person, its random people hearing...drop a hive,silo SOMEWHERE.

Totally agree with this, they need to make PMBs relevant at all times without making them overly central to locking continents again.

My suggestion has been to remove them from their alert generation role, and instead use them for nanite resource generation and population balance. So hives would allow you to get your full nanite resource regeneration, with a lower population faction not even requiring them, to the overpop faction needing several strong ones to avoid resource penalties, thus giving a new target away from the zerg frontlines to weaken them.

If they don't want that big of change, they could at least make refined cortium deplete over time so that hives are not disposable once 25k is reached, thus you could lose an alert from dropping below 25k refined cortium.

One of my suggestions is to have the hives "open up" (think a giant blossom) and reveal their secondary function- as a vehicle transport system. Link 2 hives together on a map and when the alert starts people can move instantly from those two hive locations because the hives have become a mass transit system...

It would make hive placement more tactical, because we could then use it as a way to get around the map more quickly to defend locations.. ...and not lose our tanks/sundies/whatever...

I am unsure about the finer points of winning an alert. Pretty sure you need to refine some Cortium to trigger the alert so building hives is important outside of an alert. Once the alert starts then you need to focus on territory. That's not a bad mechanic IMO. Building a base can be useful as a staging post even if the Cortium is no longer useful.

Cortium is used to supply power to your empire so what if during an alert the amount of Cortium refninig you are doing had an actual impact on the fight. Perhaps the of energy you are generating affected your factions shield recharge time. Marginal differences, perhaps your factions shields regenerated faster dependant upon how much Cortium was being refined. Marginal gains like this could make a real difference on the outcome.

Then the moment a force takes all 7 Cores, they have a snow-balling nanite advantage,
If a side gets any Cores, and loses them; The enemy gains Nanites faster while allies lose their original regeneration rate.

Only if they Actually need them.
In which case, they just need to zerg the hives, place them, and reap the rewards of nanite spam.

If you could deny alerts by just popping hives during the Alert, you'd basically have Builders determine if an alert wins.
As whomever enjoys blowing up & building Hives determines if the Alert can be won.
IE it makes territory pointless to attack if you can just Air zerg the Hives to win:
The Enemy would just Liberator Spam hives winning the Alert just by mowing hives down endlessly.

Why bother with taking 5% or 30% territory, if you can just swarm a Hive & win?
PMBs are brutal to attack in hell Holes, but not against Air Zergs, which with the Alert System's rewards are now motivated to zerg it.

You know, since Hives pop up on the map, this is a creative idea.

Just have to make sure it can't be to the enemy's warpgate however.

As long as it doesn't affect nanites, or things that snowball.
Which since refined cort only goes up, this issue is sorta solved by the nature of it.

Creative.

There is no nanite spam, your best case is just to get nanites as you do now if meeting the requirements of your population, the worse case is a slower nanite regeneration penalty. Values would have to be determined.

That's a really good point, I've been used to alerts where the initiator has massive population advantages and it would seem to level the playing field, but in a more even 33/33/33 alert this would make it too easy to stop them.

All sides have 50 nanites a minute.
Each core is worth 10.
Side A loses 1 Core, now at 40 nanites.
Side B gains 1 Core, now at 60 nanites.
Side C remains the same at 50 nanites.
That's 2 minutes a grenade for "A"
1 grenade and a 1/5th for "B"
1 grenade for "C"
There is 3 cores per side at start.

It snowballs.
Side A can not match Side C in recovery rate.
Side B can match & overtake side C in recovery rate.
Side C targets Side A.
Side B targets Side A.
Side A lost once, and now is being mauled as it can not recover as fast.
Side B & C devour A to see whom gets the most cores.

The moment one side can lose nanites while another gains, it snowballs them.
The moment a side gains faster Nanites from wining, it allows them to recover faster to use more Force Multipliers which make winning easier.

Overpop makes it easier to win, and can counter recovery time with sheer bulk.
If there is 10 tanks, you don't notice how many minutes it takes to replace one, as compared to 2 tanks.

Yeah, as all I would need is to literally take the most agile vehicle (that's aircraft), and find the one that has the most firepower.
Then I can easily just get a squad use those, per hive.
Since nothing the defense can do can effect aircraft to the same level as ground units, it means Aircraft becomes the decider.
Builders & aircraft, once the Alert starts, are the most valuable as it's also the weakest link vs strongest weapon.
(1 hive or 5 bases.. Destruction of seconds {While zerging} vs Capture & hold)

Regarding PMB being used for resources and no longer for alert initiation:

No, you couldn't go above the current nanite regen rate, so gaining that core does nothing for faction B, it only hurts A in that situation where all population is approx 33/33/33.

If Faction B is overpopped, they might already be at 30 or 40 nanite rate, so that only got them closer to 50. So if you got all the cores you would still only have the current normal amount of nanite regeneration, but you have just really pissed off the other factions, also you'd have to actively use those cores or they would go neutral and the other factions would get them back, now you are defending 7 bases from both enemy factions while also trying to take territory.

An underpopped faction wouldn't actually need a core, but they would have full resources to go after the overpopped faction's critical cores. to give themselves an edge to push back the overpopped faction for territory.

If the faction C doesn't do something about the rising threat of faction B, they will pay for it later. That's a good thing in a game where certain factions love to fight one faction.

So it's really just a question of how big of a penalty is incurred from insufficient hive production, that value could be tweaked to find the right amount that inspires players to fight for cores without causing your dreaded snowball effect.

Aircraft are dog crap against player bases btw, without infantry to take out the skywalls and AA.

So Side A takes down Side B's nanites.
Side B has less nanite recovery than A & C.
Side B gets focused Fired upon.
Whomever loses first gets mauled.

Overpop has the people to defend PMBs in Hell holes.
As well, this is the force multipliers being used here.
Side A is overpop.
Side B is average.
Side C is underpop.

With nanite recovery changes, either Side B is unaffected or Side B is screwed.

Side C just mauls Side B as Side B will be attacked by Side A.
Unless both B & A Maul C reducing their nanites to oblivion, and then attack each other.

That's thing: By affecting how often you can use the Force Multipliers, which are basically required to attack bases to destroy vehicles, to engage PMBs, based on population & PMBs, those not at the extreme ends of population are usually shafted.
Without the advantage of number, or the boosts to being the underdog.
They get the worst of both, and the best of neither.
3 Sided war.

All of that is completely dependant on the rate of nanite penalty, it can only be as bad as you say if the value was set too extreme.

Your scenario describes where the penalty is set too high, that's one extreme compared with the other extreme where it's more of a mild insult without much game impact at all. There is a value somewhere in between where it's just enough to inspire players without breaking things.

What's not too extreme, while actually being worth the time to engage?
Very little. As very little does it take, to change it from 1 grenade a minute to 5 minutes a grenade.
This scales up to MBTs & Liberators, where every minute makes a grand deal of difference.

If taking all 3 cores from the enemy, does literally nothing capable of shifting the balance, then it's not worth the time to most for the effort it takes.

I'm not opposed to hives influencing the alert timer - changing it by increments of say 3.75%, which for a 45 minute alert, would translate to an increase or decrease of 101 seconds per hive.

As a counter argument, I'd argue Hives are more critical than ever, as you can't lock a continent without them, unlike before. I wish they were useless, as I had to build one the other day If I wanted m alert to start, so I built one, and it was lame as ever. They need to make them in to something like what Purp mentioned. Get those faggy hives out of crevices and in to fights. Construction is such a cool idea but they need to get those bases in the fight.

I never said they were not critical to an alert. But when 99% of the hives built are just a silo and hive and MAYBE 1 gun the concept of "building" is gone. I built a hive tonight on Emerald, Amerish and it was the only one that survived the whole pre alert build up and alert finish. Why? because it was built right and defended. The other hives fell because they were just a hive/silo. As for getting bases into a fight....uh they cant get up and move and its a mofo to just up and move a good base forward.

Well maybe not build it in a hell hole that none but the defender has any motive to fight?
That's why your bases don't get attacked.
Why bother for less EXP than the defender engage something that is slanted heavily, for more time than it is even worth.

So the 99% are just to get the damn alert started.

Let me clarify this post and if you have never built a base than this post is not for you. This is about the whole construction concept being obsolete since all it takes is a level 1 noob to come along, grab a little cort and drop a hive/silo anywhere....and walk away.
Now let me explain better what is lost since the new alert.

1. MONEY. Many if not all of our outfit members were asked to purchase the construction bundles so that we could utilize ALL of the pieces to make a good base. If not purchased some used certs at high cost to be able to help. Along the way, friends who would join us were also asked to purchase items for hives as well. So we bought all the goodies and now someone with $0 invested can "steal" our core and place it ahead of ours in the hopes of getting a higher %.

2. TIME. The most time consuming aspect of building a hive is cortium collection to build a proper base. Add in any other ants roaming around trying to do the same thing. Why should i spend any time now building a proper hive when all i have to do is drop a silo/hive because someone will drop one in the higher hex that opens up as the front line expands?

3. BUILDING. The most obvious of my statement is you no longer are required to have a good base and once the alert starts there is no point of even haveing a base up since the 25k threshold has been meet.

lol Last night i was in the relative open area. I gave it a 60% chance of survivng a true assualt. It lasted till the end. If you call that a hell hole than thanks! thats how we like to think they call all our hives when they try them. If your a builder or hive destroyer you have a small handful of names of enemies who build good bases. Our outfit has got to the point where we let some random person not in the outfit to place the hive so that we get attacked. Because seeing the same names on a hive that you cant crack gets respect!

so yes all it takes is a monkey with a hive now.

The contrusction system is one of the best things that has been added to the game since launch. It opens up entirely new ways to play the game and can be a lot of fun. The other day I built a base near the coast at Howling Pass Checkpoint. When it was more or less established I put a hive down and was refining at about 75%. Another builder then turned up and we fully enclosed the space.

We had a small band of TR trying to take it down for about 30 minutes with just me, this other guy and the odd random defending. We held it till the alert triggered, I got nearly 40 kills. I killed one guy about 12 times, he must have been fuming before his team gave up. It's definetely worth building a proper base. A silo and a hive will either be destroyed straight away or be too far away from the front to be refining enough Cortium to get your faction to a continent lock opportunity.

So, if you see a friendly base under attack be aware that it is in your own interest to defend it. Plus you can usually gear up there.

What I would like to see though is a self-destruct option for the core once it is clear that all is lost

Friendly Orbital Strike

Then base building is indeed still relevant, and you're only frustrated because of bad builders on your faction.

So why not argue for that change? Let them pick up and move via some new mechanic. Let them be quicker and easier to set up for fights. Bottom line is that 99% of players hate Hives, and most of that is due to their tucked away nature. Until that changes, expect further nerfs to their usefulness. If you're one of the very few who likes locking alerts due to Hives, I couldn't care less about your loss, no one cares actually, we're all rejoicing over not having to deal with that estrogen fuelled gameplay.

And people paid for weapons to be used, that barely is useful in comparison to deciding the entire game-play of the majority of the map.
Hives themselves were never actually a paid-for-item.
Just people didn't usually put them down, as that is how you die if unprepared.

During that entire time harvesting, you are getting EXP for it all.
As well, you have the lovely time for EXP for depositing & for harvesting making it double-dipping.
This is with vehicles capable of ramming a Lightning to death.
Why would people attack a Hive, that would give them barely any EXP, and kill them?

Yeah isn't that great, the new system doesn't mean if you don't build in an actual hell-hole where 1:10 odds is still a victory, you don't nearly decide the map while getting **** loads of EXP for building it, more for someone trying to attack, and EXP to keep it running.


Now that's a PMB I can get behind in terms of use & assaulting.
Not in a hole near the map border, with a perfect Skyshield Seal, and automated defenses to repairs, with a skeleton crew guarding it.
Which was every important Hive on Connery.
The ones that if destroyed returned rapidly, and let the VS zerg a couple bases for a land-grab and lock the entire map.
Since they mined orange rocks.

So , I don't call a base in the middle of the open, a Hellhole.
I call the "proper" bases \ Hives them, as they place them in the worst spots to attack as that is the most logical action to do.

Rather not have the entire game of territory control, swirl around Hives which only control several meters inside their own walls.
Which mined Orange rocks, to have more power than the Majority actually taking & Holding entire hexes not farming inanimate pillars for EXP & dictating how many minutes, to hours, everyone else must fight for as little EXP as possible around their bases while they gain EXP for the attempt.
Not to mention, the futility of it:

• You destroyed a Hive, the enemy lost nothing.
• They have the same progress.
• They get more EXP for rebuilding it.
• They made progress during the entire siege.

Heaven forbid, that an Alert or Important event isn't strictly in the hands of the few who dedicate themselves to mine orange rocks.
In a war game about territory, they build a base with automated systems for EXP, and sit there.
Holding several meters, but the base is valued more than every hex on the entire map.
To hell with Hives.