I think it would be good thing to have ability to have some templates in Construction system. Let me start with "why" first. Having a possibility of making construction base "templates" would make building a quick front-line base a lot more viable than it currently is, because in Planetside 2 things tend to move at pretty decent speed, however, when placing modules one-by one this process takes, in my experience, approx 3-5 minutes for a "quick" mini base as you are running around, fighting with uneven terrain, module exclusions, running back and forth between the ant and build location and so on at minimum. This is not fast enough to, for example, build a quick fortified location to slow down the zerg some when its clear the base they are at is going to fall (1-2 minutes). On top of placement of the modules and structures spend another minute constructing. So - to work around this issue in particular but also as general quality of life improvement for everyone involved in construction - the templates. How I think it should (could) work. Template is prepared as .xml file by hand and placed somewhere within the path of PS2 folder. The .xml contains just the names of the modules with their coordinates relative to the silo (which is the "zero" of the coordinate system) in meters and the rotation angle of the modules relative to the "zero" angle on the template coordinate system (which could be, for example, pointing North initially). You can rotate the whole template like normal currently but not the individual modules. When loading the template game performs a "sanity check" every time to make sure all modules respect their exclusion radius, etc etc. The modules would basically „drop from the sky“ height wise until they hit the ground and build in the middle between green and blue dots if capable. The template would be limited to a maximum of 10 000 Cortium. Any surplus Cortium left in the ANT could be dumped right into the Silo (without the unload exp bonus ofc) optionally - this one is not critical as ANT is free to unload in traditional manner even if Silo is still constructing. [optional but desirable] Template is far less sensitive towards uneven terrain (for example, add additional 5m "foundation" block under each module in the template which would, in essence, push the blue dots 5m lower) - however - the items in template would drop to their lowest possible configuration - in essence - dropping until first green dot hits the ground and then back up again by some small but reasonable amount. Some careful handling of walls, if present might be required. The basic idea is that even with single module it is already nightmare to fight with the uneven terrain, it might be almost impossible to construct anything with template if the requirement would be perfectly flat ground. If foundation blocks would be implemented as separate entities (for example different size cubes with green dots at the upper corners and blue dots in lower corners it would be also nice to get them into the regular construction menu as well for some reasonably low Cortium cost. After the template is used further constructions can proceed as it is currently. The idea of a template would be, in essence, to lay down the core of the base, to get it past the most vulnerable part of its existence a bit faster, so that once you plonk it down (assuming you have enough Cortium) the initial stuff will be functional 60 seconds afterwords. That would allow more reactionary construction in response of battlefield changes. Some modules can be excluded ofc if for some reason necessary although I personally would not see it as a significant problem if people have a prepared one man HIVE base layout. I personally would limit the number of templates to something like 3 slots and throw in another 3 slots for people with running membership. In my opinion 3 slots would be enough to cover typical usage scenarios where time is of essence. I.e., roadblock, hive, flanking fire-base or logistics base however, 6 would be ideal. Placement mechanics. It would be probably relatively unviewly to try to plonk down the template in conventional way. It is already frustrating enough with the larger structures with „you are in no deploy zone“ and „you have no line of sight“ etc etc. So my proposal would make the template usable from a driver seat of a deployed ANT with enough cortium in its tank, just throw in there a key (rebindable) which you can press in there, the view moves high enough to show, say, 100m radius around the ANT from the top down perspective, you move it where you want and press the interact button and down it goes. If possible it should ignore the ANT during the initial placement, however, if ANT is in the way of something the construction should not start until the ANT is moved out of the way. Or it can be as it is currently where deployed ANT/Sunderer prevents construction that would intersect it.
I really like this idea. One of the main reasons I don't bother with base building is because it is far too finicky to setup and therefore takes far too long. I would also like to see something like the Loadouts system for bases so that you could have a couple of different ones saved. In addition, I don't like the 10k cortium limit. You should only be limited by the available cortium in the silo (capped at 50k obviously). It won't really take any longer to build the silo then spawn the base than it would to build the silo and the base together. That way, you have the option of building a sneaky silo, filling it up, then spawning a large base around it, if you want to, or just spawning a silo with 10k cortium and a small base around it. Finally, given the limitations on object numbers, I'd like to see some system whereby several people can cooperate to put together a large base, maybe something like having three+ people, each with the relevant unlocks standing with 5m of the terminal when you try to spawn a large base with "all the things". Not sure quite how the coding would work on that one though, so not sure if it's feasible.
The 10k limit was suggested for the sake of relative simplicity compared to implementing something more serious and in my opinion this kind of limitation would make sense as the template system is not intended as a replacement to to the conventional way of building construction bases. The point is that with a template the Silo would be the center of the template sitting at "zero" coordinate and around which your template can rotate like it is already in the current system. Implementing something without "center module" ofc would not be technically much more complex, however, the additional complexity would come from potential interactions between the modules if they would be going into an already existing base. If this template is for starting the core of a new base you can be fairly certain there is no interfering (powered) modules. So with this approach you can first just chek if the location is ok for silo before you have to cheek rest of the conditions for individual modules. Then there is a question of performance impact. With 10k you can sort of do up to a max 9 items (Silo + 8x other things) - if the number of things in the template is very high it could have very significant performance impact as when you are deploying the template you practically have to check the deploy conditions for all of these in more or less real time involving the terrain smoothness and if it is possible to make the module to spawn there or not, general elevation, exclusion zones from no-deploy and if there is any existing constructions within close proximity (even if unpowered) how they would interact with the template and then relay that information somehow back to the user. Filling the silo and THEN using the template would beat one of the main purposes of this proposal - namely erecting a quick reactionary construction base ( which more often than not is probably an solo undertaking ) to take advantage of some condition on the battlefield. If one has enough time to fill the silo then the time is not of utmost importance. It should also be much simpler to implement if it's reserved to one user at the time - you can get away then with just a client - server interaction and can store the template in the user machine. If you start involving more people then all the sudden the task becomes much harder and as PS2 dev team has a lot on their plate I was thinking that if the task gets too big they might not have enough time available to do that on a large scale. While this "limited" proposal should be relatively easy to implement. Because the components are in there in essence already: (1) There is system already in place allowing you to rotate the construction template, assuming that it is done at reasonable abstraction level it should be possible to add an template in this system. (2) There is already observer camera present in the engine, so the top down view centered around the ANT in template mode could use the existing observer camera system without giving the user control over the camera location. (3) As this is a shooting game there already exists system to tracking bullets and their interaction with the terain, so devs could use the same system, in essence, shooting the required amount of high speed bullets from, say, 100m higher than the deplyed ANT, for example four times a second (because of performance), track the locations where they hit an obstacle and then show if this is a viable location for that module in the template or not. (4) What would be a system that would be totally new would be the template system itself ofc. We already have loadouts screen so some additional tab could be just added there. As there is no graphical editor intended in this proposal it should be still reasonably modest undertaking as writing a snippet that takes already existing .xml or .txt file from known location in the path and imports it. That is why I believe this proposal should be doable, considering the relatively limited dev resources at the current dev teams disposal than some more elaborate and complex implementation which might go beyond the scope that is "easily" doable.
Umm .. you can not edit posts in this forum? Or am I just somehow overlooking this option? Anyway ... about "foundation" blocks mentioned in the first post and also about potentially larger templates. For a start, I am not convinced that giving "foundation" blocks outside of the template system would be good idea, 5m (or whatever is the final number decided to be sufficient) additional elevation might allow some abusing of stuff, like double height walls or bunkers acting more like infantry tower than a bunker and so on. However, if foundation blocks are only in the template system then as the elevation of the "stuff" gets determined algorithmically (for example, sinking it until first green dot hits the ground and then bouncing about 0.2 or 0.5m upwards [or module specific amount] again or until the first main module blue dot touches the ground and then go additional 0.5 m lower) then the room for potential abuse is smaller. If the foundation blocks are added to the regular construction system as well I would just throw in there an tickbox to add an foundation if pulling an item for some extra cortium cost, like, for example, +100 to +300 cortium. The foundation block should be indestructible under repair module influence and destroying the foundation should also deconstruct the item placed on it. Foundation blocks would be ofc item specific matching the size of the item under which they are placed. I do believe it would be good idea if they would be climbable by infantry, so the best shape would be probably pretty steep pyramid like shape with steps that are high enough to be scaled by infantry by jumping - i.e., approx wais high. The steps can be pretty narrow as the engine allows people to cling to the smallest of ridges. So that the foundation does not affect significantly the size of the stuff placed but is also not impossible to cross obstacle for infantry in the presence of steep elevation gradients. Now about potentially larger templates. Obviously if this is technically feasible engine performance and capabilities wise - ideal scenario would be being able to basically plan out the whole base in the template and then get it to build as you progress. I see two sort of obvious possibilities for it. (1) Template generates sort of "ghost" module outlines for the base into which things snap as people come and build the required modules. The "ghost" modules would act like already existing modules exclusions wise, so if the original builder has determined that THIS is the location of Xiphos turret then no one can come and plonk down AV turret in a location that would prevent construction of Xiphos in that specific location later on. Pulling the required modules would happen like normal from Silo and if the module one wants to deploy gets close enough to the "ghost" module outline it just snaps in there. This allows multiple people to construct a base according to a plan. The first core of stuff would ofc construct like outlined in the first post. (2) "Pay as you go" way for a solo base. Basically like the first version in the sense of ghost modules reserving certain spots, however, only items in quantities buildable by the constructor of the silo would be possible and as the silo fills additional modules are constructed as the cortium becomes available. So you can plonk down your initial approx 10 000 cortium base core, some other ANT takes note, drives to your silo and dumps 10k more into it and additional modules in the "waiting list" would construct as a result of additional cortium becoming available to construct them automatically.
I would rather just introduce drones. You go to the Silo, pull a drone. The drone has access to all the constructions and allows you to fly around (in a limited area) and place constructions with high precision and quickly. Since you don't have to go back and forth all the time to buy a new construction it speeds up the placement and you can adapt the way it's build on the terrain each time.
I think the drone idea might not be as easy to implement as static top down placement mode or even a template. Mainly because drone implies movement controls which would be, in essence, adding another vehicle into the game into which you would have to spawn somehow without losing ownership of your ANT in the process. Theoretically doable ofc as we have those camera guided rockets for the NC in game - but probably just changing viewpoint to another static location using the observer camera system should be a bit easier by my relatively limited understanding of this game engine. If drone would be implemented, however, I think there would be far more interesting uses for it from the infantry and vehicle combat perspective. For example, in Unreal Tournament 3 there was this artillery vechile thingy which allowed you to launch a drone which deployed at some sufficiently high spot and then you used this drone to do an artillery bombardment of some location that was not directly visible from where the artillery cannon itself was sitting. Or infiltrator deployable where he spawns a drone and can use it to observe the battlefield from a different perspective. Would be ideal probably for platoon and squad commanders leaving aside the question of how balanced such a thing would be.
They were quite a ways with creating them. There were some kinks, but that doesn't mean it's not possible, especially not with the current dev-team. Which is possible to achieve in-game. We know that you can drive vehicles that aren't owned by anyone anymore because they left. All that needs to be done is that you don't "own" the drone, and then something so that your actor remains on the ground while you control it. Which as you mention is partially already there in the camera-guided Phoenix missiles, which actually already functions partially as a vehicle and can be shot as well. The observer camera system doesn't just function as a top-down view... In fact it functions kind of like a vehicle, or maybe you could compare it to a drone-view but without an actual drone being present... Why would you even want to lock the observer-camera in one static position, which would also cost a lot of additional work similar to all the rest you have to do with the drone, and then risk having the static view not being able to deal with extreme heights for instance? I would also think that it's not so easy to suddenly allow a mouse-over view to place buildings on the actual 3-D environment in PS2's primarily FPS view. There are a ton of interesting things you could do with these drones. UT3's drone is a nice one which you could deploy at any height you liked to control the angle of the view better. I would imagine drones as support tools. From helping with quickly building a base without having to go back and forth between the silo to scouting out an area to doing dangerous work (reviving/healing players while the Medic stays in the background, repairing etc) or functioning as tools to call down support. From requesting ammo drops and temporary repair stations to being able to call in light artillery or area-denial mines (light explosions that don't kill immediately but heavily discourage players or vehicles from entering until they are cleared, which can be done with any weapon).
