[Suggestion] Tech Plant changes are too much.

Ok, I get it, Tech Plants were too defensible, but adding a shield generator outside of the main building that controls the bay shields is a HUGE nerf, not small one. Dropping the bay shields will turn the infantry fight into another high-explosive vehicular softie stompfest in short order. Don't we have enough of these already?

IMO, a smaller, and more appropriate nerf, would have been to add a few more "infantry" doorways and maybe an another elevator on the opposite end of the building. Splitting up the attacking/defending forces = win. Less people in one place = less lag, = less grenades from thin air, = better fps, = win. Adding an opposite entrance allows the attacking force to break through due to defensive imbalances, which makes the facility less defensible = win.

Off topic:
We already have a MAJOR problem in that the zergs would rather dance around each other capping undefended or under defended bases than fight head-2-head (Protip: "Epic" wars are rarely 200+ vs 20). Few people seem care about an amp station defense because, well... few infantry enjoy getting vehicle stomped running from the spawn to the main building. With the exception of the bio-lab, previous tech plant designs, and a few select towers (crown...), most other facilities offered blatant vehicle infantry stomping capability, and TBH, were rarely worth defending.

PS2's infantry mechanics are starting to feel good, but that is becoming overshadowed due to poor map/base design. Players from my outfit are dropping out one by one because of the lack of infantry fights. Some of them cite performance as part of the reason, but most think the infantry fights are lacking, and infantry is a big deal to them. Please, please, please create more infantry based fighting area's that are NOT vehicle camp-able. Create some bases where *gasp* the tankers and aircav must dismount and help take the base on foot, ZOMG....what a concept.

Tech plants shouldn't have been touched.

Who cares about Tech Labs? Only Bio Labs matter ('cuz Infantry Resources)

That's crazy talk. People having to get out of their HE equipped tanks and risk a knock to their precious k/d ratio? Are you insane??

Agreed. AT MOST tech plants just needed a second cap point added on the top level.

I dunno, I've felt like those tech plants are way too easy to protect. With 4 entrances that are very small and easily camped, there was just no way to get in against any half-way cooperating group of people. Something had to change.

My thought would have just to been to make it so the defenders couldn't park a sundy inside the shields so at least the attackers could make progress on the defending team, but this will work too. We'll just have to see what happens.

Another possibility would be to put those gens as an attached, wing to the main building accessible from the inside, but far enough away so that the spawning defenders aren't immediately back again.

See, this is where I disagree. The zerg vs zerg two door lagfests with hordes of people appearing out of thin air due to server overloads needed fixed.

Adding another point is a good idea, yet another reason for the zerg to split up a little more which = win. I do worry about that second cap point being v-camped though, maybe need some shielding up there too.

They could add a way to get to the generators from the top, so that galaxy drops are an option.

The Tech Plant changes are epic. Now the outlying buildings actually matter. It's a lot more fun than camping two doors.

Moving the shield gens to undefendable shacks around the general area does not "fix" this problem, it just makes it happen less. Honestly I could think of a truckload of better "fixes" then they came up with but since this is not beta anymore I'll just grumble and keep them to myself.

And tank spam.

What infantry fight? The one where one team run into a narrow door and the other just nade spams them?

Tech plants were not good fights. Just farms.

I enjoy AMP stations way more. But i do agree in principle we need more bases that are defensible. However that's a map design issue. Who puts a spawn point on the perimeter of a base? They should be the last reachable position in any base.

What they should have done, is put 4 capture points in the outlying buildings.

IF attacking team holds all four capture points they can tug a war the control of the base.

So A is held by defending team. IF A is continually held and they hold 1 or more of the outside 4 capture points they do not lose teh base. IF the enemy team holds the 4 outside bases and push for A they will eventually take control of base.

They could also take down the inside generator/SCU and take A from teh enemy.

I liked the old tech plants because they were actually defensible.

Granted, the way in which they were defensible was a granade-spammy mess, but at least you could conceivably hold on to one.

Amp stations are the biggest joke because of all those giant walls and defensive turrets that are completely worthless since you need a larger force to defend a perimeter almost a kilometer long than you need to breach it at a single point.

I strongly disagree. Tech Plant farm fests didn't come down to skill, or tactics, or teamwork. They came down to who had more grenades. It wasn't fun to defend, it wasn't fun to attack. The best part of Tech Plant fights are breaking out of the vehicle bay and fighting the enemy throughout the base, slowly pushing them back to the field tower. Now SOE has promoted this kind of gameplay, and I'm excited to see how it works out.

I agree. In my opinion, the Tech Plant was how the other bases should have been designed. You could defend a tech plant with your platoon and hold it if you were good enough to bottleneck the team. If you wanted to take a tech plant against a competent defense you had to organize a hot drop of the top level or coordinate an invasion with shield diffuser sunderers.

It seems SOE's vision is to make bases easily cappable by random, unaffiliated, unorganized players following each other's tank columns or spawning at random AMS sunderers and looking for red triangles to shoot at. It should involve unique strategies to take bases, not just a tidal wave zerg of randoms.

This happened because the influx of infantry to the tech plant defense would sometimes eclipse the attacking force. If the base is no longer worth defending, it probably won't happen that often anymore.

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Tech plants were bad. Awfully bad. They were just defensible.
Defensible atrocities.

Is it worse now ? Hell yeah.
At least they can focus on the real problems now.

I agree. Tech plants were horrible to attack with everyone being funneled into one area, but this was too dramatic a change. Maybe use the upper levels of the base for something.

I completely disagree. With competent attackers AND defenders, this was a very good fight. Just last night rolling with a 3 squad platoon we held Heyoka(I think) on Amerish against an organized attack. This required vehicles on the ground outside, turrets manned uptop, back door held and troops on the point and generator. The attackers were extremely organized, pushing in with GSD equipped Sunderers, light assault troops coming up over the holes in the side shields to attack the generator and cap point, and loaded gal drops on the top of the plant to work their way down the elevator. It was a chaotic fight(several times the LA overwhelmed us and took down our generator, which was not a small thing as we had at least half a squad protecting each hole in the shield it seemed), but when it was finished, we had held off a very competent attack and felt a thrill that we had done that.

I haven't played the new changes yet though, so maybe it will be an even better fight. The outlying buildings do create kill zones for most vehicles so I would be surprised if vehicles move with impugnity there like at most other bases. I do wish the spawn building maybe wasn't so open to vehicles though. If they put it exitting out onto some attached buildings I think it would be better. You could spawn camp still, but must be on the ground with everyone else coming out of the spawn.

The tech plant changes are only epic if you're referring to the amount of HE firepower that tanks will be directing at the doors to the generator buildings, completely preventing defenders from actually, you know, defending them.

A more accurate statement would be that the tech plant changes were a poorly thought-through decision, that given the rest of the tech plant base design results in the tech plant being indefensible.