I sit on an Amp Station as an engi. After an intense fight over it where my faction almost lost the Amp Station to Pushing them back and out of the Amp Station and recap it for our selfs, we see the icons fly, the music blare, and the voice in our head congratulate us on successfully defending the facility... and that's it. No xp. No certs. No nothing. Which comes down to it... There is no incentive to Defend. No reason to dig in and hold a line. You get more points faster by simply rolling around in a Zerg from undefended station to undefended station following the heels of their zerg which is doing the same thing to Your undefended stations. We need to Reward the Defenders, give players a Reason to stay and hold territories besides to farm points as an engineer repping the broken turrets...
You need to read the forums/guides more because you do get a reward for defense. Defenders get no reward when you defend a facility back to completion - because the idea is, once you've "won" the fight, there is no point in sticking around waiting for the bar to fill up. Just move on to your next defense or your next offense. So instead when you defend a base you get +15% XP whenever you are defending a main facility, +10% XP whenever you are defending towers/bases, and +5% XP whenever you defend anything else. You can actually make more XP on defense than offense depending on how long the battle goes on for, how many people are there, and how intense the fighting is. The problem is they need to make it so this bonus is more obvious. Most people don't know why they get +15% xp or +10%xp when they do things in territories they own, as the game doesn't explicitly tell you that the +15% xp and etc is from base defense. This is why you don't get such bonuses when attacking, only when you are in your own territory.
There's a 15% bonus to all exp gains gotten in defense of a base, but that only happens if they've already started the bars moving and for single point bases that means you've already lost and are getting camped so you won't see that bonus. They can't really do a static bonus on securing the base for defenses like they can for attacks either because you could end up with situations where people let the enemy touch the point to start the defense and immediately resecure it for a defense bonus. There really does need to be a better incentive to defend, but I think that needs to come from making bases more defensible instead of messing with the rewards for doing so, more people would probably be willing to defend bases if there was more chance of successfully holding it as opposed to just delaying the inevitable zerg spawn camping.
Currently right now you get a 15% increase to defending, which is all well in good however it flips in value to easily in terms of how much of a benefit it gives you. For small skirmishes at tiny outposts or what have you it presents little to no incentive in terms of XP making it not that effective, on the other hand in large battles it serves its purpose quite well with lots of targets and lots of support roles to fufill. So the main problem is with the smaller battles for defending , now part of this issue will sort of correct itself when Cont locking will be available as you will need everything on the map it lock it out so everything is important or your not moving on. However it doesnt fix the entire problem(of course nor does this) but it will help. So i suggest two options : Option A- Have the percentage bonus scale depending on the amount of people in the area, so the largest battles it bottoms out at 15% but say smaller ones it could be up to 40%(just an example # ) Option B In small skirmishes have the bonus much like attacking in that you get a chunk of XP if you defend it , however once larger amount of forces are present it switches to the % bonus for everything. from a post i made a few days ago
Make more than a handful of bases actually defendable and you'll see more people defending. 90% of "fortifications" in this game are actually death traps for the defenders.
The problem is you need 67 kills in a large facility fight on defense to break even with the attacker's bonus. Most players don't get anywhere near 67 kills on defense, so there is a huge incentive to attack rather than defend. I suggest the defense bonus be raised to 30% from 15% to compensate, or leave it at 15%, but give a small defense bonus when the bar reaches 100% on defense.
The reason they don't give points for "defending" a base is because if the enemy faction flips the bar EVEN JUST A LITTLE, it is considered "defended" when it goes back to full. If you expect to get 500 xp every time you fight off 5-10 attackers at an amp station, you have unrealistic expectations. The 15 percent bonus is huge, the game is just filled with dummies who don't want to play tactically and would rather play "Certside 2".
You left out the points they get for repairing, hacking, deploying, assisting, and healing. Nice try.
That's also assuming attackers and defenders get equal kills, the attacking bonus at a large facility is only 10 kills worth of exp so if a defender gets ten more kills than an attacker (which seems pretty easy in some places) they'll come out equal, with the 15% bonus to each of those kills a nice little add on for their trouble. The bigger issue I feel though is more bases should be designed in such a way that defenders are likely to get more kills than attackers. If the reward for defending is getting easier and more plentiful kills and having an advantage in the battle then you don't even really need the 15% bonus, but ideally this should be done in a better way then how tech plants do it.
What most people do not realize is the bonus you get for defending kicks in basically when you have already lost. Most of the time you are defending you are not getting a bonus because the enemy has not yet started moving the bar. Once they do start moving the bar its pretty much game over anyway. That is what needs to get fixed imo. The bonus should not kick in based off the bar, it should be based off proximity of enemies soldiers, armor or air i.e if there are enemies in close proximity to the base, the bonus kicks in on any kills.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong, everything you said is wrong, you earn more exp defending than attacking.
This isn't true. The defense bonus happens whenever you are within base-capture territory, regulardless if someone is capping or not. I.E. you have to be in the zone conisdered the base, aka the spot where you can see the capture point icon show up under the name of the territory you are in. For main bases this is anywhere that is nearby the outer walls and near the periphery spawn bases. For outposts it usually is only the area that is inside the courtyard where all the buildings are located.
You have to realize that an offense must capture the base in order to get any bonus XP at all. Because of this, there is effectively -no- bonus on assaults that fail or get cut off before the attackers can flip the points and hold them. During this battle, you may or may not quit, move to another battle, get cut off, etc, all of which are scenarios which deny you the XP bonus for a successful offense. Meanwhile, a defender simply has to do any action that gets him XP to immediately start getting the XP bonus. And if the defense is prolonged, then you -will- earn more than the attackers would have if they simply captured the base outright. Especially if you go from defending one base to retreating to defend another. You constantly always hold a +10-15% XP boost during this time and you are always earning more XP than the attackers while you play like this. Meanwhile attackers must successuflly attack another main base to keep bonus XP coming, which takes a while and is not likely to easily happen over and over again. If anything is a problem with this system, its people who enter a hex right when a base flips and gets the attack reward XP for essentially doing nothing twoards the battle. I would say this should be changed so only those who experienced the full extent of the battle get the full extent of the XP, but with cert rates how they are right now, I'd say more the merrier.
Attacking an Amp Station, Bare minimum. Destroy Generator 1. (100+100) Destroy Generator 2. (100+100) Wait till win (1000) 1400 Defending an Amp Station, Bare minimum. Kill attacker (100)+15% Rep Generator 1. (~100)+15% Rep Generator 2. (~100)+15% Wait till win (0) 345 I know the above example is kind of a stretch, but we should consider that when all is said and done, both sides should come out of a conflict with an equal number of points from fighting each other. As such, the result of 'winning' should carry a significant reward, as it does when you attack. No such reward is provided to defenders as the passive bonus to xp gain is almost insignificant by comparison. I would personally argue that the 10-15% buff is just because you're fighting on 'your land' and don't really consider it as incentive to defend as the amount required to 'break even' against attacking is often exponential by comparison. (You would need to kill some 16 people just to break even with an attacker in a 1 point outpost.) That said, i understand the issues inherent with 'rewarding the defenders' as defending tends to be easier then attacking (although with base design and infantry mechanics seen in the game that is arguable) but SOME sort of lump reward, even if it is just a fraction of what you would get for conquering it, is needed...
In theory this holds true, and i guess if you're a one man Rambo MAX demi-god pro... In practice, for the average player, you earn more exp attacking then defending. A lot more. edit: Actually, Mathematically... No. More points are given to attackers then defenders if anything. when you consider that all attackers receive the victory reward bonus, but the passive 15% 'on you're territory' buff provided is an individual buff, you would only obtain more XP defending if you, and you alone, stopped and turned a platoon of opponents away from capping a position. And if you are that lonely support guy that baby sat the generator to make sure no one tampered with it rather then that Rambo MAX demi-god pro... You would get nothing despite working as a team and ensuring the facility was properly defended.
No the point is that defending gives you the advantage of being is a position of being able to cover the ways in very easily and effectively that lets you shoot anyone that comes racking up far higher kills than if you were attacking. Now Amp stations in their layout can go either way as they are awfully made but Bio labs and Tech plants guarantee a farm for defenders able to aim at doors that the enemy MUST go through creating a bottle neck where multiple defenders can open up on those entrances, a stream of enemy coming in will only be met with a stream of gun fire. The outfit I'm in loves to defend a tech plant as with the ams setup within the main structure and a team of us covering the 2 doors in its farm time, if your a max or something shooting you get far higher kills than if you were attacking meaning far higher exp, for te support there are people to rez, maxes to repair and ammo to be used reloaded and used again. I'd say a good hour defend on one of these tech plants should pick up 20,000+ exp even for support, if one of the maxes hugging a wall to shoot when someone enters it could be double or triple that. Its really not so much that the 15% makes the difference but the position itself in allowing you to be able to farm the enemy.
Something needs to be added onto this mechanic. Hopefully it's reworked to show the work you've done, or maybe a recap bonus.
Maybe a system that rewards people for sticking it out till the end- Bonus XP% formula: 15+(0.2x minutes in base). In addition, you would get flat xp bonuses for destroying certain vehicles in your territory under attack: Sunderer +100xp Liberator: +150xp Galaxy +250xp
Those are great suggestions and interesting that you target the amount of players as the factor instead of simply the size/importance of the base. We have all been in sizable battles over small stations in the middle of nowhere simply because one armor column bumped into another and madness ensued.