The people who originally designed Construction in Planetside 2, made it so everything was there. The players could build anything they had in mind, any design on flat ground, on mountains, in ditches, and thanks to the HIVE the devs could therefore observe the interaction it had in game. It was apparent that the players did not enjoy sieging the construction base. But what I don't understand is why the devs had trouble fixing/changing this, when literally they have been served everything. The devs have missed an important attribute the Rampart Wall has. You can place this structure very low, even at chest height of infantry. This means that it does not have to be a shielded firing position for infantry but it can also be used as a defensive position for vehicles and turrets. When I used to play TR I sometimes set up walls at the appropriate height were the Prowler's hull would be fully covered, only turret exposed and because the turret was so small and the Prowler could deploy to overpower the shots this was a perfect combination....easy faction uniqueness lol. You could do the same for the Sunderer, AT turret, ANT, turreted tanks... So what could have happened was, instead of the player having to fully design a base, plan it out, fill in each gap, place dozens of modules, creating this damage soaker.... What simply could have happened was the construction player just place structures to support allies, give firing positions for tanks, add in manually controlled turrets for allies to use. As you can see above they already had a beautiful design of some Glaive IPC looking weapon with a platform at the bottom, which would mean this structure can be only placed on flat ground if it were part of construction. Which is good, bases should be built on flat ground. The Bunker could have been reworked into a command post where you would select an ability (could only have one), so lets say one of them would be the glaive IPC cannon which the user from command post controls and fires to support allies by putting in coordinates on map but has a long CD per shot. Maybe another ability could have been to spawn a drone that would have controls similar to the bastion, and can fly at a limited radius from the command center structure, lets say 1km....Perfect for commanders, command squad from above, give out enemy positions, maybe it can be equipped with 4 EMP type of misses just for mini support... And there it is....Perfect way to change Construction, no more wasting 30 minutes designing a base fully with 20 structures ... just a simple design with a Command Post, turrets and small cover .... No longer an annoying damage soaker for the enemy but has tactical use now in general. And because there are less structures they can be very expensive to keep it a singular role, lets say 5k-9k certs per structure, maybe you have to purchase the Silo (3K certs) first, so there won't any more noobs who just decide to claim a land and keep their solo there forcing you to move to a different spot. I do not understand why the devs never thought of something this simple.
Ah, so it's not just me? Performance did go down drastically after NSO, Oshur? Cause most noticeably after those updates my FPS dropped a lot.
I fully agree with you, there is massive untapped potential in the construction system. It has had mistakes in its past, things people hated for good reason, but with some love it could have added something for everyone, not just the people doing the building. Sadly it's not valued by the people calling the shots. I'm sure that there are monthly or ever quarterly meetings where discussion points come up including "It's been X amount of time since component Y of the game received any development", and they added a "construction overhaul" where they scrambled the console and changed one module. In doing so they resent the clock on how long it's been since construction "was worked on" so now they have the notes to justify ignoring it. So yeah, they're not just ignoring construction, they're actively ignoring it, they're putting mild bits of effort into ignoring it. That's my take, sorry it's negative, it's an assessment based on what's observable, if I observe changes I'll change my assessment. At this point however asking for anything for construction is effectively yelling into the void.
I also believe the game needs to slow down as well, if a role like construction is to be implemented into the core game in an intelligent way. Gameplay is too fast, that is why we see people ignore 95% of the structures when building a base and only place situational items, like Router, Air Terminal, Orbital Strike, Flail....Which are all terrible designs and toxic. Isn't this all a complete joke....Some players did not like sieging a player made base because it is obviously a damage soaker, but in their words they called it a meat grinder....So, what was done to improve this situation was that construction was kept a damage soaker just weaker than before, the damage from defensive turrets was nerfed, and the Router was added. Think this through... These aspects were disliked: Damage soaker, meat grinder. So after changes, construction was kept a damage soaker (cause of all the structures), and exacerbated the meat grinding to the maximum level possible with the Router. Ironic, so people disliked sieging a player made base who's structures can be destroyed but are ok with sieging a lattice base structure that is impenetrable and has a spawn point inside. This meat grinder is ok. Construction was a meatgrinder for infantry....Oh you know what would be perfect to add, Pain Spire, and lets nerf the turrets so the player cannot defend from armor and assaults. Lets not give construction players more manually controlled guns, lets nerf the only available to shít because they have potential of being controlled by the AI module and lets add in a Pain Spire. ...Oh we just figured out that it is still a damage soaker when we saw 3 people building on the same spot, lets add in a Cortium Bomb for every infantry class, so it will be impossible for construction players to counter it and make base design have no value, making it now only possible to spam structure. Construction's only purpose is to be a useless damage soaker now. A ******* joke! _______________________________________________ Orbital strike is a terrible design, should be removed from the role. Same with Flail, range is too small and is overpowered, 2 terrible aspects for both user and for receiving end. The dart aiming mechanism should be scratched out. It was a nice start but for the user it's very frustrating because you don't have control over the situation... when you are required to suicide into the enemy for your artillery to fire. At least make it so instead of the dart gun you have this small drone with a limit range that you will control and drop the dart on the position were you want artillery fire to make it less suicidal. Air terminal should be removed for good. Any mechanism which allows you to spam something is a terrible design. That is what the air terminal does...Yesterday I had a situation were an enemy destroyed my base by spamming aircraft from their air terminal, to kamikaze into mine and destroy it with a Light Assault in a matter of seconds. That basically shows you how it is really used. My sophisticated design which took 20 minutes to build and pre-supply for preparation for an armored assault was destroyed by somebody in the corner of the map with just an air terminal, spamming aircraft non stop, to quickly disable base with Cortium bomb and other weaponry. _________________________________________________ I mentioned artillery. Artillery is a must have for Construction, but it should not be spammable. The flail is a hideous design once the targets get in range, all you do is shoot it non stop, it's annoying for the user and receiver cause the entire time they have to move back and forth whenever they see the green smoke mark. The artillery should be similar to the Orbital Strike, a longer cooldown after each time the ability is used, lets say 5 minutes but instead of a nuke it would be an area shell bombardment ..Oh I have an idea. What if that Glaive IPC looking cannon with that platform, in the screenshot above came in 3 when you place it with a terminal in the middle for putting in the coordinates or picking up that dart drone, or whatever. That would look very cool, having that many cannons in your base coupled with the AT Turrets. That would be admirable.
So to be able to place those 3 cannons, you would need flat ground for sure, it would be impossible to place it anywhere else. And it should not be labelled on the map for enemies. Let the players use their senses and figure out where it is....If it can only be build on flat ground. What I mentioned before about the walls used as a defensive position for vehicles. There could be 2-3 types of walls. The most basic one could be similar to Concertainers used in Iraq, Afghanistan, which would be at the height of a Sunderer/ANT, so they can fire their turrets while behind over and have stairs for infantry to climb onto the fist box and use the second layer of 2 boxes as cover. The second cover could be the asset called tank trap I believe and it looks like this. These can be used to provide cover for the defensive AT turrets, they should be able to fire behind cover cause the gun elevates once entered. Construction should have no more tower turrets, and only manually controlled ground turrets, no more AI module...IMO 3 ground turrets in total and the player chooses whether to place the AA auto cannon or AT cannon (Anti infantry can get removed) The third wall should have been cover for tanks so they could be in a hull down defensive position but actually the tank traps can accomplish this, even with the Lightening tank. It would just need to fire between the opening which is not bad. So the tank traps can even be used for supporting turreted tanks but they are fairly narrow so the builder would need to come up with a design to provide adequate protection and the player needs a number of tank traps available for all this.
