The daily silo experience thread. Post your screenshots / results

Just a regular thread, to show off how your daily silo experience went. Simple as that. List a few screenshots & tell a short story / fate of your silo.

Your 30 min - 2 hour silo. Was it destroyed? Did you build it solo or with friends? Be honest. How quickly was it destroyed, did that seem fair? In retrospect to how long it took you to build it? Or did your silo have some other fate / result? Did it defend a region real well? Tell the story either way. If you had friends help, list how you recruited those friends to stick around like a guard dog to defend, in the 1st place.

I originally wanted to name this thread, " Thread for every time your silo, got its *** kicked. " because most of my silo's, share that story line. Yet that title sounded rude. So this is just a general thread, maybe your silo location fared better.





My 1st entry is a ocean side base. With a out of zone mine field, that cost me 6 ant deaths, trying to find the quickest way out of it.The results? Typical ghost town experience. Prior: VS owned the mountain base for over a hour. So I built nearby. Then they let TR take the whole left side of map. For 2 hours TR had it & VS fought NC more so, till the end. When VS had the mountain I already started building. So I solo built this & harvested this ocean side base. Even tho it didn't pan out for action. These are still my daily results.

Ghost-town mega bases happen. Besides that building with more than 1 alt will never be ultimately rewarding. It just takes too much time, to harvest & build solo. So the sweet spot is 0 to 1 alt at most. Anymore than that, its just a boring grind. Redeploying takes time too & making sure you have 30 - 40k cortium, takes time. So ye only worth it for 1 alt at most, time wise. Even tho 1 alt, only gives you 1 extra AV turret, that's never enough, nor is any amount of extra. If the enemy is sniping turrets, & they are.

Anyhow, I asked VS to head to TR left side for 2 hours, no luck. I blame this side base getting no action, on the fact that silo av turrets are too weak to build on the roads, or on the front line. So your forced to hide your silo or build in the middle of nowhere. I'd like 2 av turrets per 1 char, that are un-snipable, so I can build on roads or the front line. Till then its not worth it. I only built the OS near this silo, so that the TR would bait & attack my base. As I don't like OS's, the drain is too much work & I don't need the OS overall for fun. I just like base design. Bait, didn't work tho, still ignored. I was gonna build more mountain bases this new year, but now I'm back to building front line road bases for the attention.

I built the ocean base to prove how silos are weak while defending. However I'll have to wait to prove that theory. If they attacked this base with the usual squad of tanks, it would have met the same bad underbalanced fate of many silo's I've built of this size, over 2 years = fully dead items in 2 minutes if so. My next entry someday, will be a front line base, proving just that. Most of them will be smaller than this 1st entry. Too lazy to solo harvest for bigger bases anymore. Some screenshots, show me asking chat to fight tr over the hour. Some leaders knew I had a mega silo there, yet they still fought nc mainly. I spent 40 minutes building & 30 mins harvesting for this silo. Then another 1 hour waiting to defend nothing & solo capping stuff nearby. The alert timer goes by too fast. Ideally 2 hour+ alerts pls.

P.s. For perspective, I've built 100 bases this size & they all died in less than 1 minute by diff means. Or in 2 mins.

I have tested such a base. It takes about 15 minutes to build it. And its fate depends on whether your faction will appear when you lose a hex to resist the zerg. Or just go to another battle. Often no one tries to resist. Stupid because of the current spawn system. And to protect it, in principle, it is possible from a small number of enemies. I am using max with shotguns, berserkers and sweeper HUD for cortium Bomb display. The base is built in solo.

Shame I didn't take any screenshots but I just got done building and defending a base.
It did not take long to build as I've basically perfected my favorite design. The base is small, three walls, enclosed in a triangle, leaving only a single entrance through which vehicles cannot pass.

Once I was done building it, the base came under attack as VS moved into the region. This was on the off-continent so no major VS force came.
At first, it was just a couple vehicles hitting the base from a distance. They took out the turrets. No big deal, the turrets are just the primary line of defense and they are disposable and easily replaceable.
Once the turrets are down, they get tired of firing at my walls to no effect and try to move into the base as infantry.

The base held for what felt like an hour. The infantry never stopped coming, a couple very determined players at a time, but they never could do much real damage.

3 to 4 groups of vehicles passed by, shelled the base repeatedly, got bored of not being able to do any damage, and left.

The base finally fell when the main continent was locked and the population suddenly increased, at which point I found myself defending the base at 10-to-1 odds. The Elysium spawn tube and Router were eventually destroyed and at that point, I did not bother returning to try and defend the base, it was done.

I have a few complaints about the exposed modules in your base but I have to say I love how clean it looks, the way you've lined up the vehicle pad with the sunderer garage, the sealed square formation.

Love it.

You and I should build some bases together, perhaps we can improve both our designs if we put our heads together.

I felt bad I had no screenshots so I went and built another base ( different location, same base )
The only way in ( discounting air drops and light assaults ) is to run out this side of the Sundy Garage, and all the way around the pillbox while taking fire from the supposed defenders and AI Turret......to finally squeeze past the infantry turret, entering the pain field and having to take the LONG way through the pain field to squeeze through that tiny opening between the Garage and the Pillbox before finally making your way into the core of the base, where you're STILL taking damage from the pain field while also having to deal with the defenders.Everything is protected inside the pillbox. As long as you control the pillbox, the base can withstand basically anything.


A sundy in the garage, a router on top of the tower, and the elysium tube in the Pillbox is my go-to for spawns as well.

And this is why people either avoid bases or drop 2 nukes on them and leave

Humans avoid bases due to the current respawn system.

Yeah it must be that.

Absolutely nothing to do with the fact these things are automated anti-infantry death traps with phenomenal health; and have rarely ever offered fun fights.

You apparently did not build, all the towers, when attacking the base, destroy in a couple of minutes with the enemy's technique. And the Pain Spire is quickly demolished by the infantry, often without killing anyone. The point of bases is to support your faction. And due to the current spawn system, no one really uses the services of these bases.

Yeah I already stated I built 100 silo's, that took 1 hour, & all 100 silo's of 1 hour of work, all died in under 2 mins. 1 hour of work, dead in 1 min. Per 100 silos. How does someone skip over that mention? Stated it in 4 threads. That's as bad as doing a WoW hour long raid 100 times & no boss drops boss loot ever. People would complain if 1 hour of a dungeon instance, gave nobody in the raid a single item, construction defense is no different. It's pointless.

AI? What AI turrets shooting a wall? Or a cloaked crouching infil, the AI turret does nothing. Pain spires a BR 20 can avoid or shoot down. Tons of walls, mean nothing, after the AV turrets get shot down. The walls become free lunch, for the enemy. Easy pickings. 2 AV turrets are average, so what, 40 minutes of work, shot down per 20 seconds of a AV turret = 40 seconds to take down a 40 minutes base. Once the turrets fall, what are you gonna do? Pull a lightning & watch it instantly die from 3 enemy vehicles. Then continue to watch your walls, be destroyed, then modules.

If a enemy Infil hasn't been bombing your modules the whole time, repeatedly, even after killing him 4 times, he still returns. Then after 1 hour of work, a small flail outpost nukes your base. My vehicle gameplay earns 40 kills per hour or so? My infantry gameplay earns 40 kills per hour or so. With zero harvest or build grind, zero. So how many kills does a fully decked out castle silo, get you? (with grind time prior) Like 1 kill. Even if you build with 1 - 3 alts = 2 kills per hour. (Without OS. I don't want to protect OS's. That shouldn't be the main purpose of silos)

They don't go around ever, because enemies know how easily it is to knock out those AV turrets, LA know they can hide behind walls to avoid the AI turrets. They know most vs don't defend silos too. So theirs nothing to do, but wait for every front line silo to die on the map in under 2 mins, no matter what. Till updates.

The extra AV turret, they should be giving construction silio's, should be one that pops up from the ground, is already automated & doesn't need a AI module, already auto AV. So 2 AV turrets per char. 1 that automates & pops up from under the ground & the useless 1 they give you that is easily vehicle sniped. = 2 AV turrets per 1 person.

Lastly I can solo destroy every pro enemy silo on the map. So I'm not just speaking as a defender. If I were to attack, it'd be a lame experience, because I'd feel bad for the enemy ant player. His hard work would die way too fast. From 1 vehicle, I can repeatedly pull, or 10 other ways to easily destroy a enemy silo. Silos are too vulnerable against attackers & too hard to defend properly. I won't attack enemy silos, it's too easy. I won't defend / build on the front line, it's a waste of time.

P.s. Tho anyways, nice pictures guys, looks good, honestly. Super neat.

This is what happens when non builders comment on building. If it takes attackers 2 full minutes to kill the turrets then it was a weak attack.

I'll start grabbing screen shots of my bases for this thread. I also intended to make some guide videos on building, but put that on hold until they release the new material.

Actually, on the note of guide videos, I can link the draft I got up before they announced changes. Full disclosure, I am not an experienced video maker, this thing is water marked because I used a trial version of the video editing software, and the picture quality is sh** because I guess this is bad video editing software. I assure you my raw footage looks crisp and clean. Also, again this is a draft, but here's one of my common bases:

6 AV turrets you & your friends built unmanned, with 12 repair mods, & 6 auto mods VERSES 8 enemy vehicles? Who will win?

Imagine if you built this, & it was destroyed in 90 seconds, by 6 pub bandits outside, soon after building & mining for it.



" Its extremely hard to conquer by attack and the losses would be substantial so siege seems like the most viable options if there is enough time but than the forces would just sit there waiting. Allegedly no conqueror succeeded to pass the fourth gate. "

( If only an enemy squad has ever said this, when attacking my silios. Instead they said, " hey! free exp. " Only 6 or 8 out 100 silo's I've built or helped build, ever had 20 defenders. Yet the silo / skyshield / walls still fell at the 3 min rate. Solo defense = 1 min base loss. With friends = 2 min base loss. With 20 defenders= 3 min to 8 min base loss.

From the start of the attack, if you survived longer / maybe the enemy squad ignored you partially. While solo ant's, are the majority. These times aren't neccesarily front of the line silo times, just any area time, if talking front of the line silos, the time of silo death may be faster. Maybe you got os / flailed, then your death time for your silo would be like 10 seconds. If 2 enemy squads of vehicles storm you, that's like silo death time of 30 seconds, no matter how big you built it. If a Bastion kills it, 20 seconds)





" Hochosterwitz Castle, a point in Austria fortified since the bronze age. The present owners, the Khevenhüller family, acquired it in 1541. It's rebuilding in a remarkable renaissance style dates to it's ownership by George Khevenhüller, a nobleman who held high offices in the courts of the Hapsburg emperor Ferdinand I and his successor Maximilian II. The unusual and extensive fortification of the approach path, featuring 14 fortified gates, dates to the period 1570-1586. This was basically an architectural extravagance; fortification of this sort was at the time obsolescent. Compare to the star fort at Karlovac, also built by George Khevenhüller "

(lore)

This is my magrider, near a enemy silo's wall. I wasn't shooting his stuff.

His AV turret got knocked out from vs tanks already. VS had 3 tanks shooting his base. Then the vs tanks left, prior to the screenshot. Luckily for him he had some nc defenders later, after I left. I would have, solo'd the nearby nc lightning too. If I was attacking.

Ok dude, while it's true that construction has problems, you are getting annoying. Why do I care? Because I don't want the rest of the community to think builders are a bunch of whiners. If that happens then it becomes impossible to talk about actual problems construction has if I'm going to be immediately dismissed as a whiny builder even though I actually had a good point. The same thing already happened with regard to faction balance, as since some people popularized the term "TR victim complex" it is impossible to anyone who plays TR to talk about balance since they will be immediately dismissed.

The thing you need to acknowledge is that of all the factors influencing the outcome of your game, the one you can do the most about is your own game play, and there's a lot to work on there. As long as you are committed to the belief that your own game play is not the reason you are losing you are denying yourself the opportunity to improve. I'll take the base you opened with and list off the problems I can see with what you've shown me:
1. Did not coordinate with enough other players. While you seem to be "leading" a 1 man squad, I count 4 sky shields, so at some point you had at least 3 other players helping you. You said you were trying to convince Vanu to move over with no results. I can only assume this means you were either using command VOIP, which most people mute because it's often a garbage fire, or you were typing in leader text chat, which nobody notices while being shot at. If you want any hope of players defending your work then you need to be IN a platoon. This game is about team work. If any aspect of the game allowed 6 players to completely wreck what 48 other players are trying to do THAT would be IMBA.
2. Silo access: It's utterly terrible, hence why you lost 6 ants to it. If I put a fuel filter on an engine that is so difficult for fluids to pass through that the engine loses fuel pressure and sputters out, that would be a flaw not a feature.
3. Building placement: Nothing is tight to anything else, there are gaps everywhere, there seems to be no plan to the layout whatsoever, and all the extraneous buildings create a plethora of nooks and crannies for enemies to hide in. Just because you have access to buildings does not mean you need to place them. Every building should have a planned purpose or it should not be there. Clutter is cover, and if you provide the enemy with cover by building a labyrinth they will use it to make you chase your tail in your own base.
4. Over building: I'm hitting you for a second time on this one because most buildings have upkeep. If you haphazardly throw buildings down everywhere you get an upkeep monster which runs through its fuel and burns down.
5. Location: Once it was that far behind enemy lines it had outlived it's usefulness and you should have abandoned it.
6. Location: From such a distance and with no firing lines to Genudine Physics Lab it does not project power over the base, therefore does not influence the outcome of the battle there.
7. Location: Genudine Physics Lab is not a hill to die on.

So, how should you improve from here?
1. Get some experience leading platoons. Get a handle on what a PL cares about and when so that you can build bases which leaders will care about.
2. Play with friends. When you are building instead of leading you should still be in a platoon so that you have a not muted comm channel to talk to people on when you need defending players. If you have a group of builders you play with ask to be put into a fire team with them.
3. Scout. Groups of tanks take time to form and time to move. If they surprise you that says more about your situational awareness than the balance of the game.
4. Think more about the details of your layouts, and be willing to delete and rebuild structures to get a tighter layout if there are gaps in places where there shouldn't be.
5. Discuss layouts with fellow builders to get the exchange of ideas going.
6. Build PMBs in locations which project power over a base so that your base helps your team control territory. An example would be line of sight to the usual sunderer spot on a base.

Now, I know I'm coming off harsh on you, but you are the one telling me that you can't make a base last 10 minutes even with 20 players defending it. I'm telling you that I've had PMBs last over an hour under fire from determined attackers and I've killed many tanks with PMB weapons. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's possible. If you want to learn more from me in game I play Connery TR on Tuesday and Friday evenings, as well as I occasionally drop in on other nights. Look for the HMRD tag on the squad list, if I'm logged in I'm not hard to find.

1) I already have 4 years worth of a friends list, most of them are 2nd gunners for harasser. Friends just play their main class. Enough said. Silo defense, should be viewed like a class. Do you want to play, said class? Or not. Many for most of my empire, want to be medic farmers. Should I sell milk at my silo? For the medic farmers? Would that bring them there? PL or OL, it's not going alter the fact that most of the week VS is infantry farmers or zerg oufit ghostcap sitters. " friends " Let me just yell that word over the mountain, enough times, maybe some random pub squad will suddenly be interested in defending, for VS, against a fleet of prowlers or vanguards. I already talked about how long front line silo, last, even with 12 - 20 defenders, news flash, not long enough, at all.

Once attacked by a full committed enemy squad. Or 2 squads, since the front lines, kinda has up to 12 enemy squads hanging around your fort, man. 3 way fight, front line, the only way I want to play 24/7. " Friends " only goes as far, as saying you have " guards dogs " loyal obedient guard dogs. Out of all the Ant's who build, How many are going to have a squad of loyal obedient guard dogs, who don't want to leave to go infantry farm elsewhere? How many Ant's have that? I'd say most Ant's don't have that & most platoons don't run it either. Not pub, nor outfit. I'd say top zerg outfits build, 5% of the time, & the other 95% is solo ant's.

Plus making a style of game play reaching for all audiences, to attract new players as well. This games philosophy is a new player can kill a top ranked player, well silo game play should have some accessibility. Saying, " Oh you have to be the top general of the top zerg outfit, with a full platoon, while yelling at your squad mates to defend a silo / that they'd rather just keep infantry farming at whatever base their are at right now. " That's a huge limit on who's going to be playing ant's & who's not. Just because getting your silo items, all steamrolled, happens, if you don't have some super platoon of obedient guard dogs, waiting for a prowler invasion to happen, per minute. Ye right, gl getting any pub squad to do that. If your on TR, don't even reply, idk who's on TR, tho TR has all these tanks defending your stuff, so idk if it's even fair for TR to reply with these " friends " theory. Try NC or VS silo making 1st, then build on the enemy-TR front line, & tell me how effective your bloody friends are, let me guess, not effective enough. How bout I join the TR, so 2 prowlers, 1 tr sunder, 1 lightning, 2 tr LA, 1 tr infil, & my VS magrider Verses, " Anyone's perfect NC silo " ;p

2) The rest I ran out of edit time. tho I do value anyones ant suggestions & from your screenshots, going to start building on flatter terrain to use the sunder garage as a wall, like your pictures suggest. Is good. Or any defense suggestions. I've lately been using a tank to defend more vigorously, I suppose. So I will be only using 1 alt at most, since harvesting is a bore. 1 alt is only 28k cort needed. 2 alts is 36k & 3 is my most at 42k needed. & usually I'm mostly solo harvesting. So as you can see, if you take redeploying times into account, plus extra build time. Plus the small alert timer of only 90 minutes. Anything more than 1 alt is a boring grind or alert timer short time fuse not worth it. However as for your 1 char bases. Those were better than I expected. I also noticed most my silos were on terrain that the sunder garage didn't like, so hills I guess. Anyways, screenshots, the square indar flat turtle silo pictures were dope. The triangle fort was awesome too. Later.

I already know what went wrong with my Ocean Side silo. It's happened before, a number of times. Ghost town mapping. Ye it seemed most of the pubb'ers at that time, were in the other vs squads. I want to build on the road. On the super front line. Tho I know 8 enemy vehicles will hit me hard, plus a few infantry. So less you have answers for that. Then okay.

Ye the silo access mine field was terrible, till I learned the best route out of it. Then the enemy would have been blown up figuring out how to get in too. So its a double edged sword, that only I mastered. I should probably vehicle defend my silos a bit better or esf. & read other people's building knowledge.

I suppose you may have a road silo that may easily attract fellow squad mates. Maybe by luck some pub platoon aids you, tho it's highly unlikely pub platoons redeploy, just for silo defense. They usually stick around to infantry farm, they follow infantry farming platoon waypoints to other regular bases to win. But they don't really seem to redeploy from a main infantry farm, while your silo is getting wrecked? So that kinda rules out pub platoons. So that just leaves outfits, making me need to recruit my own? because the main zerg outfit never defends any allies silos ever. It's not impossible to get a pub platoon to defend your silo, it's just highly unlikely. & more unlikely depending on which faction you play & which vehicles or lack of vehicles your faction, may or may not use. Verses how many, the other faction(s) use. Overall, per planet.

I mean, look at this way. I've been yelling at people for YEARS to run to nasons C point. The tunnels. Okay. The entrance to the tunnels. I've had meltdowns lol. Trying to hand hold these novices, to these damn tunnels man. I'm not mad these days, over it. Tho it still happens all the time. They'd all rather farm, the tunnel, than cap C point & VS always lose Nasons. Okay so in comparison. TR usually defend their C point better. That's 1 of the few things TR does better on the server, because VS usually win many alerts. Anyhow, So getting VS to C point, to defend, IS SOOO UNLIKELY. It unbelievably rarely ever happens. It's only a 10 feet walk, from the vs garage of Nasons, to C point. Yet never happens.

So take this example & use it for redeploying to silo defense. What if I built around Nasons, trying to get tunnel farmers, to redeploy to my silo? While allies are obviously losing C point for the 1,000th time? Ye right. They aren't budging, not even 98 of them. Not 1 of them is budging lol. Not to defend my silo. The other planet examples, may not be as 1 way street like that. Tho Infantry Farmers, no matter the region, still have that play style of not budging. When random enemy pubs show to destroy your items. Allied pubs, won't randomly show?

Nobody has to lead the enemy pub squad to shoot many walls or turrets down. Maybe even people who aren't in a squad at all, are shooting your items down? If on the front line. > Yet allies have to lead pub squads to defend, then pub platoons are ineffective, so you have to lead a outfit - just to defend? That's not fair.

Maybe I'll start a outfit to help defend allied silos & help my valkyrie friends find AA. Till then, theirs like 3 ways to deal with infantry, AI turret / Pain Spire / & Walls somewhat. Theirs only 1 way to deal with vehicles. I guess speaking of, silos that aren't manned. Also how about the topic of ant's who don't want to stay defending at their silo the whole time? I drive harassers.

Lastly; 2 silo themes. 1 for OS's & 1 for Turrets & Walls. The wall & turret mode, being a mode that buffs aspects of the base. & The Wall mode, to require less of a harvest grind. While OS mode requires more harvest grind. Ultimately I don't give a hoot about the OS. I like the flail tho. The glaive is somewhat annoying, not a huge fan of silo on silo crime. So ye 2 modes. + hp

Other than that, I viewed Rabid's build video, like a student.

I assume by "Main zergfit" you are referring to The Wild Cards? I ran with those guys for a year, depending on who was leading at the time they would be willing to drop what they were doing to defend a PMB for me. You just gotta get friendly with them and give them warning. Even if they notice the text in leader chat they're not going to drop what they're doing for someone they don't know, nobody would.

Anyways, since the theme of this thread is supposed to be "post today's building experience", here's today's:

I was farting around off hours, making outfit resource and getting missions done. One of today's missions was cortium run. I actually wouldn't have built this base if not for the cortium run mission. Hayd Skydock was a front line enemy base, so I dropped a silo there to throw 10k in, claim the mission, and delete. I was lucky, there was a 35k in hex. Well, might as well score that. Once I had over 40k in the silo I decided to see if I could make anything of it. If not, no harm done. The theme I went with was a forward supply depot to maintain attack pressure on Hayd Skydock.

I should have used a waypoint, but it's just north of my position on the map. There's a big rock there that I built it behind to shelter it from tank fire. This way tanks at the vehicle gate at Hayd can't hit it, and have to out of shelter to kill me.

There's a base behind this rock, and only the pieces I have intentionally poking over are visible. It's true that enemy infantry could scramble over the rock, but they'd be getting dumped on from the tower.

It's not a complicated base, just a pen with some guts. I had to delete and replace one of the vehicle gates to make it all seal, as I missed the placement the first time. Here are some exterior shots:





And an interior shot, notice how the pain spire is wedged between the infantry tower and pillbox so it covers both:

Here's the inside of my standard pillbox spawn room:

Some sight lines from my infantry tower and AV turret to control the ground north of Hayd:


On to the battle report, what actually happened? After finishing a capture of Chac Tech Plant, TR started spawning at my base. A few of them grabbed Sunderers, such as the one visible in the map screen shot, and commenced an attack on Hayd Skydock. Throughout the battle of Hayd, any time a sunderer fell people spawned back at my base to grab another. Here's an example:

When the NC started trying to get some vehicle momentum some TR reacted by drawing Lightning tanks from my base. Now, this whole time the NC could have attacked my base if they wanted, but doing so would have meant pulling population out of the fight. Given how close that battle was, killing my PMB would have cost them Hayd Skydock. They made the right call and fought where it mattered more. Another builder even started adding things to my base. For example, I hadn't added an air pad. He also contributed some turrets:

Once I was confident of the base I started running routers and sunderers into Hayd, but at the end of the day the NC did hold Hayd Skydock to the end of the alert due to some excellent play by a few of their members. I don't however fault the base building system, or my use of it, for the fact that this battle ultimately ended in an L instead of a W.