Alright I did a second round of building, but mostly focused on taking out enemy structures. First some more general bugs I guess: Infantry Awning base rotation should be 180° to face player. After recovering an firewall module from overload it still exploded half a minute later. Had an orbital strike canonn explode after removing firewall and slotting cortium bombs before counter even started. Alright now for the meat, just small observations: Cortium Bombs. The fact that 2 CB can kill a Silo is just painful. Some suggestions, feel free to take or disregard as many as you want: Cortium Bombs should be a module pulled like all other modules and cost 1000-2000 cortium per unit. This would require either having a well protected ANT or nearby Siege Base to provide a supply to attack. Firewall in Command Center could protect Silo from having modules overloaded and or cortium bombs being slotted inside. Replace Cortium Bomb with Cortium Drain. After activation it deals damage over time, with the addage that Silo's first lose their cortium before being damaged. Firewall in an Command Center or vehicle terminal should protect the terminals from being hacked. WLT-Howler Mining Laser. Oh boi. One Ant witht that and yellow jacket can takeout a command center within the sixty seconds it takes for the firewall to be deinstalled. Adding insult to injury since third person can sideways target objects, you can run circles around the helpless base builder if there are not obstructions around. And that is one Ant, I can already see a squad of ants just eating an entire base in a minute or so. Please give different structures different resistances to ant damage. With Command Center and Respawn hub + Silo being significantly more hardy. Flail vs Command Center. Another thing I noticed is how brutal you can supress an area with the Flail. One Squad defening the main base + 1 flier dropping the darts, you can just wreck shop so efficently. While I understand for a desire to be able to siege enemy bases outside of vehicles, I really feel like they will be incredible oppressive given how long it takes for any Sky Shield able building to be constructed and how far visible they are. For now just removing everything but the OS might be the best call TBH. If we expect squads to actually adopt a base building playstyle for frontline engagements. Bridge. Could use some longer support beams. You cannot even bridge some of the small chasms around The Traverse. Add 15-20 meters of so if possible. Some of the construction objects are still very stingy about where they want to be placed. Couldn't place a command center next to a silo because of "existing object" in the way, while also being perfectly fine with having a bunch of other modules setup there. Meanwhile I can place rebirth center right through some trees. Same with walls and whatnot and overall, I feel like builders should be much more free how they place at least structural elements (walls, pill box etc). Sure they might make the module slots inaccessible because sunken into the ground, but really that should be their choice. Only when it comes to sticking other buildings around, should such limitations apply and even then the fundament of a command center should be able to clip into terrain/cover small uneven spaces. What does activating the Recon Array do? Alright now for some extraploation, meta discussion and hopes. Fighting at Bases Fighting inside a base now that pain spirals are no longer turning areas into grilling zones, will be definetly more fun for Infantry. Yet given how structures like tunnels and whatnot cannot be meshed into a cohesive shape, there will always be a lot of open negative space. Now outside of silo bases attacking a base or defending one really doesn't serve a purpose outside of chaning the logistical supply of a battle in the surrounding area / cutoff transport routes. I made a point about it yesterday but want to expand on it some more. There are three areas where bases could be made more attractive: XP for Offense. Exploding Cortium Bombs doesn't yield any XP, even if the building gets destroyed. Same goes for overloading modules. To make sure people just don't farm poor base builder in the back, the XP should only apply for regions under attack. (see cortium deliver mission conditions) XP for Defense. Similiary a base in a contested hex should reward for repairs, stopping overloads and pay extra for delivering cortium. To avoid misuse of overload xp loop, Any one module should only supply XP for the first overload and the first prevented overload. Interaction with Capture Objective. Provide a module that can provide the Assault and Lockdown Command Effect to the Base in the same Hex, with the same limitations and maybe a certain runtime with breaks in between. Allowing for a dedicated base squad to out themselves as a high value target to the rest of the game. It would be in conflict with OS and other Command Modules when it comes to building close to each other and also visible on the entire map, especially once activated. Outfits and Bases. Outfits bring big squad and outside the above suggested connection to Capture Mechanics, some might only care for the sweet sweet outfit ressources, which incentivise hopping around, rather than being nailed down to a lane once its gets clogged up to much for any captures to happen. To keep such outfits invested, they should be able to earn ressources even if they are on the defense or stuck in a long winded assault and what better way than to have them fight for more ressources with other outfits. One solution could be a new variant of the drill event popping up around active frontlines. It would spit out outfit ressources based on fight intensity and base size + type and to claim it would not just be a matter of being near the drill but also providing it with modules only availbe from silos or a special buildings. Making enemy outfit bases a target and put your own base in danger. Verticality at Bases Bases look pretty form a distance thanks to the new command center and whatnot (really great job there), but everything is very flat to the ground. Where are my catwalks? A variant for the rampant with some extra 5-10 meters of suspension on the air and lifts? In short while I understand it makes sense to keep everything flat because of incoming fire from the side, it should still be an option. And espeically with the high curved blast walls, you can create a lot of cover to force infantry fights inside and being stuck at ground level outside of LA, isn't really fun, when you need to push away from spawn.
Great post! I really like the idea of cort bombs requiring cortium to spawn. The fact that it only takes 2 cort bombs to take out a silo is pretty menacing. Sure, with a firewall mod and something else filling the other slot you have some level of protection which im happy to see; but I worry that the barrier to entry + time to kill silo are both too low. I also agree that players should be able to earn xp from defusals/bombing/worming. I'm unsure if this would be possible, but being able to extract the cortium from the public silo to build somewhere further down the road, or even to use it for C-barrier would be really great. A lockdown/assault module would be so sick. I love my OSU, but sometimes I feel like my base can only do so much to help my friends fighting at the dev base in the same hex, so something like this would be really great at that while giving me some targets at my base ( further splitting their advance). I'm really excited to see this update hit live whenever its ready.
I broadly agree with this article. My attention was particularly drawn to this proposal which I would really like to see in play and which would give a highly strategic dimension to a construction. Quote: "Interaction with Capture Objective. Provide a module that can provide the Assault and Lockdown Command Effect to the Base in the same Hex, with the same limitations and maybe a certain runtime with breaks in between. Allowing for a dedicated base squad to out themselves as a high value target to the rest of the game. It would be in conflict with OS and other Command Modules when it comes to building close to each other and also visible on the entire map, especially once activated."
