Construction in 2023 - Dev Letter

And I forgot to add that the same goes for The Flail.

NOTHING kills base gameplay more than The Flail, I've seen well made bases built and with a little coordination make them immune to armor almost 100% of the time, and with that you get fights like normal bases or even more fun, armor surrounding the base, base immune to armor almost all the time and incredible 20 min fights until Flail arrives....

Do you remember when the bastions came out that their cannons were so powerful that they could kill infantry in the respawn rooms? well with Flail the same thing... even being inside a building (bunker/pillbox/tower...) you die like in the old days with bastions killing you in your respawn room.

Simply absurd.

Speaking on the Construction buildings I think it would be neat if each faction have their own building design.

Hey, I really like this one.

This functionality could be added to the alert module, in addition to emitting the characteristic base under attack sound and message, also changing the respawn circle icon on the map to red, flashing it or some other kind of alert that informs a foot soldier to respawn there because there is action.

You could even change the respawn icons, keep the green circle icon for static bases and make the respawns of built bases a green triangle icon, or square I don't know.

I hope the dev's do take construction integration seriously this time. Its not just about adding/changing buildings.

If you want players to fight around bases they need to be integrated into every other global gameplay system.

• Friendly bases should be highlighted on the map for everyone in the faction to see.
• Friendly bases under attack should have a map alert to draw players to their defence. (As Intro pointed out)
• Vehicles and Aircraft shouldn't cost Corium, but cost a discounted amount of Nanites, Let builders construct staging area's that encourage players to launch attacks into enemy territory.
• Base turrets should have their own AI and not require AI modules, they also shouldn't be locked down by the owner. Anyone should be able to jump in to defend the base.

We need reasons to go to player bases on the map, not just a reason to defend or attack them.

A few things...

Ideas for Spires:

- More spires that allow you to take objects away from the base to place elsewhere. Specifically, some "Terrain Spires" that allow players more vertical control around the world rather than just at the player bases. All of them would be vulnerable to emp or hacking or both.

An "Energy Bridge" that allows ground units for its faction to cross but is hackable on either side and vulnerable to emp/glaive + maybe mag rider and unsure about infantry either all, none, or faction specific.

Also a "medium grade" energy slope object that functions as either a wall or ramp (or both) depending on the orientation of its placement. Intended use would be something that can soak up normal damage but be extremely vulnerable to emp grenades or glaive. If it fails, deployables and objects placed on it are destroyed through an energy feedback.

Finally a "Player Launcher" that works like the ground pads that shoot players into amp stations or around battlements on walls but not for horizontal velocity, rather launches a few meters forward with a pretty quick arc downwards and protection from fall damage to allow safer drops from rootops or trees. Jetpacks could use the propulsion to amplify their own velocity.

- A spire for a Flash XS-1 deployment terminal. Would put down a rectangular pad just large enough to deploy two Flash XS-1's at a time at a cost of 100 Cortium each and their hackable terminals. Would allow much more movement control in places like Indar or Oshur (particularly if two people coordinate to place a router and deployment terminal in a hidden place.) and could add a little extra chaos in those situations where two armor columns are putting each other through the grinder.


Construction for player bases:

- Foundation objects to build other objects on top of, please. Even if players can walk through the foundations, just the fact that players could build without so much consideration for all the steep hills and ridges would be important for larger buildings and constructions. It'd be nice if some of them had either hills or nooks as well to place things in like sunderers or even little areas for some infantry to hide in. If they could get extra crazy with tunnels and such and still allow players to build on top of them, that could be really cool.

- "Emission enhancement" construct would allow players to place a deployable on it to enhance the radius of it. Placing motion sensor or shield regenerator or ammo pack or whatever else would simply provide that benefit over a greater area. The benefit would only last a few minutes before needing another object and these could be hacked though if a mine is placed into one, it will blow up in the face of the infiltrator hacking it.

- "Emission Inversal" construct to replace Pain Spire. This would work like the Emission enhancement but provide a hostile counterpart. Putting ammo in it would cause enemy ammo to drain in a radius, a shield restoration would cause enemy shield to drain, and a motion sensor would interfere with enemy cloaking. These wouldn't be hackable but placing a mine in it would then cause the mine to trigger on the next opponent to activate their active class abilities in its radius (the overshield or cloak or healing aura or jetpack etc.)

- Some additional modules that would be nice to see are a very long duration "anti-hack module" (perhaps giving it some synergy with firewall implant too), and "Nanites resupply" module so that equipment terminals for that building do not cost nanites for deployables/grenades on resupply for maybe 30 seconds or so.

- A "balistraria" either as part of some buildings or a podium like construct that could have mana turret or AV turret placed in it. Could be sort of high up and awkward, placing the turret on it would teleport it to the correct spot and then other players could operate the turret as well.

- Honestly if modules are implants for buildings then i think AI module for the phalanx turrets is fine still. Just the fact it takes interacting and active engagement should be enough. Having another module for turrets to increase damage or increase armor would be nice. Another change to those turrets would be improving their survivability since they are easy to knock out at range and once they are gone, there's no setting them back up because of the slow rebuild time. Better system would be if the top destroys but can be repaired without the whole thing being destroyed first.

- Something like a spitfire turret but players can put their guns in it for the turret to use. Players would lose access to that gun until the turret is destroyed or they resupply (which removes the gun from the turret.) They would be slow to aim and fire like spitfires but it would allow for a lot of creativity with how to setup a base if nerfing pain spire and AI modules. Put shotguns on it just behind corners to hope it hits before someone coming around notices or put launchers on it from the rooftops to create a little baby anti-air system to deter small air vehicles.

- If Victory Points is too much, Perhaps ANVILs for the silo owner. Having a room or building operating as a control center for players to drop anvils certainly has the potential to change battles.

- If AI modules do remain but would be needed to be implanted into each turrent individually, having modules cost some nanites as well as cortium would make sense. AI modules in particular could cost 5-10 nanites for 2 mins or so and would create a system of attrition without a lot of cooperation and support from multiple players.



Tangential Ideas:

-A new engineer repair tool that is much stronger but drains the engineer's shields instead of a conventional cooldown making him more vulnerable and benefit having medics and engineers operate as support roles together.

-An ant top gun that allows hacking terminals and turrets

-Have the size of walls and any reasonable constructs be scalable. Too often do walls or buildings just awkwardly not fit for either being just slightly too large or too small.

-Construct focused Implants. "Maintenance" which allows guns you operate to not overheat as quickly with max level also giving you an overshield for 3 seconds after being hacked out of a gun and "Architect" which allows modules you place to increase their duration with max level also increasing the potency of "firewall" and "maintenance" effects for you and nearby allies.

Instead of "Maintenance" being a clone implant just for construction, have it allow module durations to last longer and faster removing of enemy objects at max level while "Architect" allows for faster building time and its max level doing the same (increase firewall and maintenance)

Where do I even begin with this one? I have a few hundred hours of playing with construction, which has become a favorite pastime of mine (Although I've been taking a break from the game after accumulating an unhealthy 5k+ hrs on steam alone.)

Base automation should not be touched. Turrets should remain optionally autonomous. Nobody will ever allocate an entire squad to manning base-turrets unless the activity promises the entire squad/platoon an exponential return-on-investment. Removing automation to turrets is a creeping nightmare for people who build in active combat zones. The opinions regarding base automation where it should be removed are from people who do not build in active zones. PlanetSide2's construction aspect is a Sandbox-style distraction. It should be revered as such. It conflicts with armor and aircraft squadrons, who would, without the presence of base automation, absolutely decimate these stationary, undefended experience-bombs for profit.

Build times are what should be looked at, rather than overall module replacement.
Current time to build a construction object without the active immunity of a shield module, is ~30sec. Most Turrets have a decently large health pool, reduced to around 1000-1500 health while being built. Walls and other construction objects appear to have 3000 health while being in their vulnerable "constructing" state. Give the empire flag a use here (or some other towering object) —which would have a singular purpose: Buffing the build time by double. The object should be vulnerable at all times or should definitely have a maximum tick duration. To avoid community backlash: make this purchasable for 2000 certs.

Removing the repair module as it is in-game would be a considerable path of the least backlash from the majority of base-builders –however it MUST be replaced with something equally as valuable: A slowly deteriorating repair module, or some kind of "consumable" quick-repair deployable item which would last ~5 mins, and repair construction items in the vicinity of the deploy location @3x the repair rate of the current repair module, while simultaneously consuming 100 of the deployable's health per minute that it is active, and ticking away at the base's cortium reserve at 2x (current drain rate + base size). This would make the time spent actively defending the base, that much more valuable, while retaining the force multiplier aspect of defending a Player-constructed Base.

Allowing enemies to see the borders of pain-spire zones was a double-edged sword that is hurting base-building more than helping those poor players who put hours of thought into their designs. Letting your foes see all the cards in your hand and deck, is a recipe for disaster. Ask any RPG (I had to) or RTS player. Sparsely-ticking particle effects in the area of a pain-spire while only within its area-of-effect would help with performance, and also retain the affect that was originally intended with making those zones visible.

Allow Infils to use cortium bombs again, but only within non-construction zones. Its a great tool for stopping max crashes and buying time for your faction. Its hard to achieve on an infiltrator, its nearly impossible on every other class.

Lastly, please for the love of Cortium, add the AoE Radius and Exclusion Zone metrics to the descriptions of individual construction objects and FIX the infuriating "You do not have line-of-sight with the deploy location" bug. Its a wall. I can see the wall. Let me put it down.


I am that person who put my hours of playing PlanetSide2 on my resume, and got a job off of that. Yes, it works. Gotta explain to them how its relevant though....Good luck. This game means a lot to us bored squad/platoon-leading veterans who enjoy the semi-peaceful salt mining aspect of this game, please don't ruin it further. Its been bad enough the past 3 years, especially with the Turbo nerf and Cloak removal from the ANT. I would like to climb a plateau on Hossin on the first try without landing on the rear bumper of my Ant and exploding with a full tank of cortium due to CG and collision issues. Please? PLEASE.

And add the WASP back.

Well the bastion players win because they zerged more empty bases to spawn the bastion, so they deserve to win.

Feature Request:
Can we please get a "cortium reserve" object? The function would be to store an additional 20k cortium or simply serve to link two silos together, making it possible to make mega-bases. Limited to 1 per player This would be balanced by the increased demand for cortium, and the limited spawns of the stuff in the immediate 500m area. You would have to have a large squad or platoon actively out hunting for cortium, as well as building. It'd become a great group project during the pre-alert period of an open continent.

Since i start to play i've never seen a base repel an enemy attack, you could make ir possible, in current state the structures are easely sniped by 2 or 3 tanks and the only 1 anti tank turrent is the first structure destroyed, we have no defense against a heavy push, why do we have walls if they are easy to be destroyed.

Previously, walls were invulnerable while they were affected by the repair module.

We regularly repel attacks to our bases, as long as it's not a zerg. Zerg trumps all of course.

To Zerg or not to Zerg: Zerg.

Just saw the new post and looks great.

One thing i think would be nice though is if the YellowJacket topgun got some sort of buff. Prevent repairs on target while active, repairing the ant, or increasing its range a bit would all be nice things to consider. Having it target other vehicles to drain their ammo would be pretty nasty.

I saw that to I also think the Ant need more utility. I will also like the wasp make a return as well. Oh it may be awesome if the ant could mine the Cortium automatic and the driver can have control of the gun. I think the ant need more protection especially from the Harassers.

Most of the assumptions are not true.

Building is easy but does take some skill to pull off well.

I'm sorry this looks like more bloated enhancements to appease people who complain and not people who play your game regularly. Sort of like that Max crap that just happened... You don't balance by removing unique pieces of factions or bloat construction aspects of the game... to make it better