Last night I calmly took a knee at an outpost and killed about twenty Vanu with my underbarrel grenade launcher from the perfect safety of the spawn shield. There were half a dozen Scythes circling overhead and anyone that made a break for it got incinerated. We were fubar. We knew it and so did they. But there was nothing else to do while the timer ticked down. So they kept appearing in one of two doorways and bounced plasma off the shield in front of my face, making me a dare I never accepted. The whole thing was pointless. And it wasn't any fun. Now is there an exception to what I'm describing? Yes there is, and it's the biolab. Biolabs prove beyond an empirical shadow of a doubt that if you put one or more cap points (a) under a covered way so that vehicles cannot interfere with the defenders, and (b) much much closer to the spawn so the defenders can rally and get there more swiftly, you can have one hell of a raging back-and-forth exciting battle where the defenders can make a break for it and win the day -- at least for a few minutes. And yet even in a biolab, once every entrance to the spawn-outhouse is covered with interlocking fields of fire by squads that sit just outside of the defenders' POV, you still have that pointless boring five-minute denouement. Specific suggestions for anyone who's read this far: 1) Bring back the whole panoply of CE toys. Motion sensors and Spitfires (up to four each should be plenty), weak-but-plentiful mines (call it the General Purpose Mine, and let us cert the ability to plant a dozen of the buggers) that work against anything, non-collidable-to-friendly-armor barricades (four again) -- all of this would make our gigantic sprawling bases much more defensible, even if you could only plant them outside. It would enable a dozen POed engies to turn an outpost into a fortress, and a chokepoint between bases into an outpost. It would let us create our own terrain, and use it as an area-denial weapon to slow and attrit -- not stop -- the enemy armored hordes. This in itself, like the lattice, would remedy a good many ills and provide us with a lot of fun. 2) Make the existing spawns destructible. Give each one their own small, easy-to-defend shield generator nearby, perhaps in an alcove at the end of a short hallway accessible to both attacker and defender. Towers can have theirs on the upper level in a small covered alcove, immune to aerial fire but still a tempting target for light assault and Gal droppers. Give the attackers the berserk joy of gunning the defenders in their tubes once more, and give the defenders the adrenaline-laden urgency of rushing to defend that critical point, stepping over piles of bodies to do it. That will turn the last few minutes of a base or tower cap into an entertaining exercise in heroism, rather than the pointless two-way game of chicken we're currently stuck with. It may not give the defenders a better chance of resecuring, but it'll give them something to DO. (And what happens if the attackers bumrush the spawn gen and kill it at the *beginning* of the cap...? Why, they're free to move on to the next objective... and a wily defender might sneak in and fix everything up and resecure the joint, so you better be careful... ) 3) Larger bases ought to get two or more spawn rooms, rather than just the one. One might have the spawn gen in a small building nearby, rather than protected by the arrangement I described above, and thus be harder to defend. (Variety is the spice of battle. Natasha Kerensky said that.) 4) Put at least one of the spawns close to a cap point, and make sure the defenders can reach it without ever going outdoors. No, I don't mean a tunnel or a teleporter or some other fanciful compromise -- I mean putting them in the same building. 5) Many smaller outposts still have their one cap point out in the open. This is absurd. If you're going to make the defenders run a death-gauntlet of vehicular weapons fire to reach it, at least make sure they don't automatically die to tank/ESF/Lib spam when they get there. Put it in a small building. Better yet, put it underground -- if you can. 6) Give us a goddam cooldown timer on same-server empire swaps, goddammit. Because the 4th Empire is a game-deforming monstrosity and there's no reason to roll out the red carpet for the buggers. 7) Design and market a fully-functioning lightsaber. I've wanted one since I was eight. That's honestly about all I can think of.
I would say in addition to making the spawns destructible, drop the timer down as well if that occurs. With lattice there's not much point going to the next base if you have to wait another 5 minutes for it to be capable. The biolabs also show how enclosed cap points too close to the spawn don't work. At all the biofarms lately its just a mess because the defenders can just keep pouring out of their spawn to secure strategic points very quickly, while the attackers have to spawn in. It basically turns it on its head, with the defenders just camping out the avenues of attack.
Well if the battle is over... shouldn't it stay over? At the point the attackers go to move on to the next base, the current one should be secured, having to wait an arbitrary amount of time for that to happen is why so much spawn camping occurs. I'm assuming spawn destruction still has a gen overload timer, so there is time for defenders to call for reinforcements to spawn in as that is happening. Then once spawn is destroyed, if the cap timer drops down to say 2 minutes, it allows most of the attackers to move on, knowing that a token defense force will ensure the the base they are leaving stays secured, and the one they are moving to will be capture-able soon after they get there. And less time at bases doing the spawn camp thing, might be more time in battles between the bases, on open terrain, which I quite enjoy.
To be honest most bases like stronghold and towers should have underground points to cap that can't be camped by vehicles so that the defenders can still defend something while not being blasted to bits rather than placing a silly dome shield. And with the Skydocks messa that place needs more places to cap and defend since that place is a nightmare even with even numbers or attackers outnumbering the defenders... Yeah a 12ish size group held out against a full platoon and then a defending platoon came and beat us back since our assault was utterly crushed by the small group...
Yeh some should require infantry to get the job done, but not all, and be a fairer fight in such cases. By this I mean have the spawn room far enough away than attackers spawning from close in sunderers can get to it quicker with risky sunderer placement, or similar with a sunderer placed to allow its defense with air/armor units, or get to the point slower if the sunderer is placed in a much safer position. Places like skydock are cool bases, but they have the defenders spawn in too close to the point which gives them an advantage.
That's not even the problem skydock has one entry point for those spawning via sunderer the jump pad which becomes a litter pile of bodies after a while and then the defenders can easily rally at the next base and push the utterly demoralized attackers with little to no resistance... it's too defensible and don't say gal drop because the only time that works is with a ghost cap which is the only successful means to take that hell hole >_>
Its still the spawn that is the issue, if spawners couldn't fire through their shields, then they would also only have one point of ingress. In which case a gal drop to displace them, and a sunderer near the jump pads to keep bringing attackers in should make it a much more even fight.
In theory that works but in practice not always especially with a defender max crash you're just screwed >_>
Not if you've hidden C4 around the point... Defender max crash is a valid tactic, it should work, same as a gal drop max crash. No need to counter it with base design imo.
Except I've never seen one. On my side or anybody else's. Even in the old days, MAX crashes are for attacking -- not resecuring. It's some kind of institutional brainfart.
