Did anyone notice that they put walls at outposts? Personally I think that they installed them in to prevent vehicular intervention at capture points and separate the infantry battle from the vehicle battle outside. Of course, this still means that aircraft can just go above and spam explosions. It also means that people are going to have a difficult time finding a way in to get to the capture point at first (Ceres Hydroponics being the big surprise when I can't get to my tank). What do think about this addition?
Personally, these walls are huge step in the right direction. Personally it is my opinion that the bases should be the infantry play space only. The area surrounding the base be the vehicular play space, and the transitioning from one outpost/hex to the next be the combined arms aspect of Planetside. I did not have a problem finding my way in and out of bases with the new walls. Did anyone notice some of the terrain changes they made - for example the rock/boulder setup on the backside of TI Alloys heading to or coming from Ceres Hydroponics? That is also a good change. I think more terrain design like that would be great.
A step in the right direction. People will be forced from vehicles, and bombarding a location into submission wont be as viable of a tactic now. Aircraft can be dealt with, with bursters and whatnot, the tank zergs swamping a base was downright horrible. But yeah, they totally changed the SW side of Indar. I liked it. Also, they added in like plants and fields and crap, so that facilities actually seemed to have something there to justify their names.
I do like pretty much every new layout change to the bases (more walls are definitely better), however I think they just need to go one step further and have those walls able to be manned by defenders. I love the layout of the new Saurva South Outpost. A small square outpost, but completely surrounded by the huge facility walls, where defenders can mount and defend against attacks from any direction. Not every outposts needs those huge walls in particular (the smaller walls are fine for most), but they do need a Stronghold style walkway running along the inside so that defenders are able to defend from more directions. This is especially crucial for outposts in the middle of huge open plains with no natural cover, like most bases on Esamir and northern Indar.
I never understood having outpost's spawn points being completely in the open. It just invited vehicle camping which then would lead people to believe there was a vehicle spamming problem. I also noticed they introduced some more vehicle gates on smaller outposts. My guess this is to help with flow so you cannot just charge through bases.
Yep. I only did a quick fly around on the test server, but the new walls on a lot of bases were one thing that jumped out at me. They weren't big walls, but they were enough to stop ground vehicles just rolling in wherever they wanted. Definitely an improvement and I thank the devs for it. May have been listening to some of the threads on the forums asking for things like that.
Tank anti-infantry weapons are fine, the problem is that everybody on foot has enough explosives to create a crater the size of J908.
Now, if only they would make it possible for infantry fights to not be decided by aircrafts spawn camping. An improvement for sure, but will it be enough? Time and testing will tell.
I beg to differ. It's a lot harder to eliminate threats if your TTK is much higher. Infantry are only a threat in groups, not solo randos.
Please if you do take a picture and post it in this thread I am looking for flaws in the walls to report. http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/testing-holes-thread.114241/#post-1541698
I like the changes. We need to keep moving in this direction of making bases more defensible. These walls however are an obstruction for both sides. The defending side needs catwalks, stacked crates, and such to "man" the walls. Defending forces should be able to have a "push out" advantage. A smaller force should be able to defend against a larger force at a base. If not, it means the base design is wrong.
I've just been to that new base south of Saurva and... In short: we need more of this! Details: while bearing obvious signs of work-in-progress (grass growing inside buildings on the ground floor, teleporter tube seemingly doing nothing, vehicle shield visual placed off-center, etc), it looks all kinds of awesome. A). No turrets on the very top of the towers. Very good, those places are suicide spots in any kind of a big fight that just sap friendly engineers out of your force. B). AA turrets moved to the center of the base. They even have some kind of cover against tank fire now! This change alone makes them much more valuable. C). There is only one way to push ground vehicles inside the courtyard and it is shielded. The shield generator is situated inside the perimeter in a building that can't be flushed out by rocketpods easily. None of that "what's the reason for that gate if I can just drive around it?" BS. D). More cover added for towers and walls. E). Inner layout looks interesting to fight in. F). Vehicle Spawn postion is good. It allows to spawn and deploy vehicles quickly but becomes useless under fire. Especially from Saurva itself. A good balance for a large facility outpost. Now, I can't say anything for sure before I get to actually playtest it in a big battle from both sides, but it looks good. Some more cover from the tank fire from the southern ridge will likely be needed, IMHO, but time will tell. Spawnshack exits are bit too exposed though. I'd suggest making a -1 floor that would have exists directly into the ground level. Preferably, in one of the outbuildings or some such. Walls have some space inside them for a functional ground level; towers have a bulk of unused space right below the roof with what look like sealed fireports. Could be used to extend the infantry fight inside. AI turrets facing inwards, preferably situated in the towers to hide them from outside completely, could be placed to enhance the fun.
Yeah the walls are great - I'd actually like to see loads more walls with maybe some engineer-repairable force-field style destroyable walls blocking up some of the gaps, so that the attacker would need to bring vehicles in to break down the forcefields (or HAs could do it with launchers, or any kit with lots of gunfire) to allow their infantry to enter - but so that if they didn't hold that access point then defending engineers could come and repair the destroyed force barrier to block enemy access from outside again. And yes I loved the AA turret on the top of the building at Saurva Southern Fortress - I wish more bases had AA turrets moved from the walls/towers to the tops of buildings like this, so that they were safe from tanks but still attackable by air.
