Please hire a game designer, or contract one for a period of time, and have them look at in-game construction and how a single infiltrator can ruin it. Have them look at time to build, process to build, reason to build and then compare with the counters to it. Don't accept in-house input. Get an outside view.
That'd be nice, yes. I remember when construction was new, still had HIVEs and it was fun finding spots that gave lots of points but were also defensible. And it was guaranteed you'd be attacked sooner or later and there'd be a nice fight over the generator, because back then that actually mattered. Good times, fun was had.
And while they are at it - let them also take a look at the overall balance, something went quite wrong in that department as well
Dont really need one: - add incentives to build fun places to fight at for both sides!!. I cant believe it has to be said that any design needs to be fun for both the attacker and the defender or else players will try to avoid it when they can. Currently the encouragement is "make an impenetrable murder pit" so anyone on the opposing side will either cheese it or leave it. - reduce the time it takes to set up a base outside of combat. That way the reward doesnt need to be as big to feel good about what it accomplishes. - COMMUNICATE!!! Its hard to know where friendly PMB's are, what they contain, how healthy the base is, if you get farmed immediately if you get out etc. Similarly when friendlies spot an enemy PMB there is literally no system in place to communicate this to anyone outside of voice-chatting with squads and platoons, which isnt accurate and takes time. - give it more functions that directly support the main game, rather than being a niche use for some scenario's. - make it useful when the frontline moves away so a PMB isnt wasted just because the fight moves. - add incentives for non-builders to spawn and defend a PMB. Like faster respawns and making PMB's valuable as FOB's to start attacks or defenses from. - give PMB's higher resistances when the PMB is outside of enemy territory and doesnt have weapons capable of striking in enemy territory. That way you can leave it behind for a while without it being annihilated behind your back. The current construction (and the past construction as well) is a horror show that doesnt fit with the rest of the game and is badly designed and badly executed. Although "badly designed" is a stretch as there was little thought going into the design of the entire thing.
Very true, but everything other than the "impeentrable murder pit" will be destroyed by a single tank or sometimes clever guy with bombs, completely negating all the time and resources it took the builder(s) at a bargain price. It is a really fine balance to strike here, but I remember when there were incentives to fight over bases that wasn't really a problem: It may be hard to get in (as opposed to regular bases, but that is what attacking should sometimes entail), but there was a tangible reward for tearing it down, so noone wanted to back out and that made the big fights fun. I remember I built a PMB with 2 friends near the TR warpgate on Hossin. We asked for faction support and then put up a HIVE after a Galaxy full of people came in to help, and they also shored up the defenses a bit wherever they saw opportunities to do so. Soon after, a squad of TR appeared, we beat them back, they probably reported in, and then it started to escalate. The fight lasted for around 45 minutes and at the height of it (the later half) it was probably about 50 players on each side. It was fun and awesome, and both sides filled up the chat with "gg, cool fight" once it was all over and we were beaten. Nowadays there are few incentives to build a base, and therefore most attempts at doing it are half-hearted. Add to that that the few points it makes sense in a vacuum (the open-air points) are so easily flipped that a counter-push will come almost immedaitely and the base will be nowhere near ready, so no fun is had on either side.
This is all basically why I suggested a quicker way to put a base together for both solo/squad users and outfit/platoon users, the OFOB thread. The biggest hurdle when putting a base together is the terrain, and often, the location you need has terrible terrain. So you build that base in that terrible spot because building it 400 meters away in that nice little cul de sac makes it too far to be useful. But with my foundation based construction, you'd have Silos replaced by a foundation that everything else can be built on, and for the most part is simply snapped into place. So you trade expediency for creativity. But creativity isn't often rewarded in construction right now anyway.
I think lot of the problem can be solved by them removing that p2w knife that lets inf damage buildings. Lot of times, I hear a subtle sound and not know what it is or where it's coming from because of all the other noise around me and cause I have hearing loss so small sounds are hard to notice and then see buildings blow up randomly, and all they have to do is destroy the spawns or take over the terminals to make their job much easier. If the base terminals couldn't be hacked, that would also help a ton.
Anyone else think that infiltrators shouldn't have any anti-armor capabilities AT ALL? At the least, make some building that uncloaks enemy infils in your base or something. It's stupid.
