Bastions

This isn't even going to be a thread of it's OP, it doesn't belong in the game, etc. There's plenty of threads about this, and I've already shared my thoughts on the useless pieces of fight killers they are.


This thread addresses the role of the bastion and OS as war assets. I met this guy the other day bragging about how he was wrecking a dude in his bastion, and got 600+ kills. That's great for him, but these war assets are supposed to benefit the outfit as a whole that help grind for them no?

The bastions and OS encourage individualism in the outfit. Everyone in the outfit participates towards grinding for them, yet unlike the anvils or citadel shield, only one person genuinely benefits from having pulled a bastion or OS. Sure, the rest of the platoon on at that time might get some free aircraft to help defend the guy's bastion, but they're not being equally rewarded. Unless outfits take turns sharing the war assets with everyone, these two assets stand out as not equally benefiting everyone who participate towards the grind for them.


So I'm not sure why the devs would release something that's not for the whole outfit to enjoy. Currently there just seems to be a few of the same clowns who waste bastions and orbital strikes just trying to get as many kills as possible (friendlies or enemy) with no regard to strategy or the other outfit members that helped generate the resources for them.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Well this is from the same dev team (and playerbase, don't forget that) who think that segregating players through outfits, squads and platoons rather than having them a share a goal and experience to work towards is a good thing for teamplay.

So yeah, teamplay is "helped" by letting players grind for a BFC that prevents anyone from the same faction who is not in the outfit from using it, and the control to both summon it and use it is further segregated from the outfitmembers themselves by only allowing the outfit leaders to summon and control it directly.
You heard it here folks! The more we seperate player's in their goals and capabilities, the more teamplay there is! /s

Honestly, I *love* the idea of the Bastion, but think that the implemention is straight-up ****, straight from the ****-factory and designed by an ****.

In it's current "design" form (said in much the same mocking tones as "intelligent design") it brings no benefit to the actual game other than:

1. The one dude in the outfit that gets to "fly" (aka occasionally set a waypoint, and otherwise just sit there racking in *hundreds* of kills) while all the rest of the outfit members that contributed towards it get forced into air-vehicles they don't know how to use and have not certed out, in order to "protect" the "lucky" Bastion pilot - not to mention providing easy targets for all the enemy air-****** who will descend en masse on the ez-farm.

2. Providing more content and targets for the (relatively) tiny number of air-****** that play this game. Not only do they get something awesome to shoot at, but they also get to farm non-pilots (as mentioned above) to their black, shrivelled little "hearts" content.

Meanwhile, it's ******** on any fight that it hovers over basically making any meaningful attempt to play irrelevant for 90%+ of those on the receiving end's population. It's no surprise that any 96+/96+ fight upon which a Bastion descends rapidly becomes a 96+/1-12 ghost-cap.

If I were designing the Bastion, I can think of multiple ways to make it more engaging and interesting for a larger proportion of the player-base.

1. Possibly require a construction device to call it down. This device can only be placed in a territory with a link to an enemy base, and can only be activated *while* that territory has a link to the enemy base. If the summoning device is destroyed, the Bastion is forced back into orbit. This would provide something for the rest of the outfit to do while the lucky few are charging around whoring kills in their unstoppable death-wagon.

2. Reduce the number of weak-spots on the Bastion, but tie them into the Bastion's effectiveness e.g. breaking this weak point significantly limits it's movement, breaking that one disables half the AA guns etc. Destroying all of them will cripple (but not destroy - see suggestion 1) the Bastion, leaving it with gimped movement, 1/8th of it's turrets, reduced victory points generation (or whatever it's called) etc.

3. Give the Bastion an "internal" section. I know they said they can't do it because of reasons, but from what I understand, they were trying to have the Bastion "internals" *actually inside the Bastion*. Why? Why make things more complicated than they need to be?

Make it a completely seperate game-space, like another continent, or the Sanctuary. Create a module that you can equip to a Galaxy (Utility slot, maybe). When a Galaxy with that module equipped gets within a certain range of a Bastion for 20s, all troops on that Gal are transported, teleporter-style, to the "breach-zone" of the Bastion. That area has a control point and will also serve as an empire spawn.

From there, there's bunches of corridors, hangars, engine rooms etc. with either additional control points (or possibly destructibles) along the way. Perhaps it could be like Battlefield's Rush mode, where the attackers are destroying parts of the Bastion on the way to the bridge. If they reach and capture the bridge, the Bastion is forced back into orbit. If the attackers reach the defender's spawn and capture the control point, the attackers are forced off the Bastion.

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Just those three ideas would already provide meaningful content for a far larger percentage of the playerbase, and that's just what I could come up with off the top of my head now.... it's not like I'm a game designer who's spent weeks working on this!

I really like your idea to get fights "inside" the bastion. It's a clever way to get around the physics engine issue, and would probably work pretty well.



I know I said I wasn't going to discuss the total fight killer the bastion is, with it's shoot through the spawn 1hk canons and all, but yeah, the devs should have seen there is a problem with their design at least during the first week of live, when bases empty as you say just because people don't want to deal with something that was made impossible for them to deal with. Although in all seriousness, I'm not sure what genius thought of "I'm going to create something that flies high enough for AA to barely tickle the free aircraft that come out to defend the bastion against other air, while the 1hk concussion cannons pound the ground infantry and armor which is simply powerless against it". My guess is that the guy who came up with the CIA survived the layoffs.



Really, the bastion shouldn't be able to have such an impact that renders it an invincible killing machine for the player manning it. Instead it should be something that serves as a spawn point for the whole faction, and boosts xp for the whole outfit that pulled it. It should only be able to defend itself against other air and host the opportunity for people to fight "inside" the bastion.


Its funny that this patch for "outfits" should only benefit a handful of players.

Maybe the player that spots the Target-Location... should get the Credit for the Bombardment kills instead of the Captain?

I also tend to think the "Offensive" design of them is also all wrong. I think their primary purpose should be as Medium & Heavy ANVIL dispensers. ...with a bonus calldown (3 minute cooldown on it) "Orbital Dart gun" that literally does the stupid H1Z1 crate calldown gimmick and enemies can literally shoot the Crate to stop an outfit member from opening it and getting possession of another Orbital.

(see, this is the ONE good thing that SOE and later on other BR game creators had learned from that otherwise total failure of a survival game, which is that you want to design "Power Ups" that aren't just fire and forget BFG's; you want powerups that create a whole ecosystem around them, a CHAIN of other Social Incentives that gets everyone in the area involved in the rewards and the risks)

...basically just make it REQUIRE coordination with as many players on the ground as possible... Then we could finally see the regular Outfit-orbital nerfed too and made into a DartGun crate calldown as well (which means the Synthium cost could be removed from it too)

can confirm as a player who never really figured out flying for years on end or even how to get more than a single Air Superiority credit every other life. I didn't actually start hitting a respectable KPH in an ESF until I hollowed out, shed my humanity, and embraced the Entropy of there being anything pure and worth saving in this cursed dumpster fire of a skybox