An end to "Covert Ops"

[Doppler]

I thought I'd get everyone opinion on this.

Personally it annoys me more then a little bit when I can have my offensive hamstringed by one guy with hacking and combat engineering who goes to my techplant or interlink or biolab or any linking base between and blows the gen. The only way to prevent this is a constant prescence to guard the generators at these bases, not exactly a fun task. For people that point out that industrial sabotage is present is war and industrial infastructure is a constant target I say "yes however they also detail troops to guard that sort of thing, that is war, this is a game, and in a game gen guard duty is no fun."

Now witht he one min hart its less of a pain to fix a gen outage but by the flip side eisier to carry out one. Plus that lone engineer going into the gen room usualy has a disadvantage against a cloaker or other guardians for the tech plant.

So my question is this whould whould like to see fafcility link benefits only terminated in the case of a hack?

[Jagd]

No way, it's an integral part of the game now. Get a pain module and put it at those key tech plants. I just finished a mission with 3 outfit mates to blow the gens and steal the pain module from Tumas on Amerish and it was tough going, although we did it and got the module safely installed at Azeban. It was way more fun than a typical base invasion, and I don't see why they would take a fun part of gameplay away from us.

[Veteran]

Using health kits and Decimators, one man can endure the pain field long enough to blow the generator and then steal the pain module.

edit: Maybe if you had to hack each module with a REK and it took roughly as long as hacking a tower, things would be better. Just a thought.

[Liquidtide]

That's how the game has changed though. You have to leave a half squad to protect the ILF or TechFacility. Both of these bases have become mucho importanto... First thing I do after dropping in on a new cont is to see what is linked up. If it's a ILF I tell my squad to go hit that first then get to a base. It can change the game having/not having the FLBs.

~Tide

[Doppler]

and I don't see why they would take a fun part of gameplay away from us.

Fun for you maybe, for engineers like me it fragging sucks. Because it generaly takes a 2 to 1 defender to sapper number to go out and get the gens back up and running, not fun and in defiance of the general wisdom that it should be the other way around. I also say the pain module needs a major kick in the pants damage wise.

[Queensidecastle]

It shouldnt be as easy is it is now to blow Gens but I certaintly dont want the blowing of gens on these links as a strategy to be totally nerfed

[Veteran]

Isn't breaking the link by hacking the base strategy enough?

[Queensidecastle]

No because you cant hack w/out a lattice. Going deep into enemy territory to break the link is exactly what base benifits are all about. Remove the ability to break tech links and such and the whole system becomes pointless

[Doppler]

Why? The whole point of latice is to encourage people to form cohesive fronts and protect those tech plant and other benefits however it is mostly to protect them from hacking, it is not intended tob e used as a way to force defenders to spread resources further. This wasnt really as much of an issue when pops were higher but it's becominga pain in the butt now.

[Veteran]

Deep into enemy territory usually means a heavily patrolled area... In PS it means completely unguarded. If it were a challenge, I could understand the nuissance factor, but it's not, it's one hart drop away. The base can't even report on the map that it's had security breaches.

[Ducimus]

Minor flame:

The crux of the complains ilke this thread is this:

"Man this is F'ed up how some twerp can disable the ablitiy to spawn tanks! SOE change this cause it sucks for me and isnt fair in my view, I dont like the game this way! I just want my kill count, not this extra real war strategy BS, change the rules of the game to my liking!"

[Doppler]

Exactly

Errr edit to reflect i agree with veteran.

[TheRagingGerbil]

Pop the power, lose the toys.

[Doppler]

Minor flame:

The crux of the complains ilke this thread is this:

"Man this is F'ed up how some twerp can disable the ablitiy to spawn tanks! SOE change this cause it sucks for me and isnt fair in my view, I dont like the game this way! I just want my kill count, not this extra real war strategy BS, change the rules of the game to my liking!"

Minor retort:

Man this is fucked up how some twerp doesnt want to keep the abiilty of me alone to prevent the entire enemy force from getting tanks. I dont want this real war shit I want it like in the movies where one guy working all by his lonesome blows up the Mcdonald Douglas plant or the Ford plant......oh wait thats never happened, well I want it anyway because hey why should I have to actualy work with multiple people to disable an enemies production facilities I just want to cripple the enemy solo. Then i'm gonna pretend playing conntect the dots is strategy.

[Queensidecastle]

This isnt a zero sum game. Gens need to be harder to blow up, no question about that. However getting the gen down still needs to break links just like it does now. Hopefully, Sony is listening and will tweak accordingly

[FireZ]

Using health kits and Decimators, one man can endure the pain field long enough to blow the generator and then steal the pain module.

edit: Maybe if you had to hack each module with a REK and it took roughly as long as hacking a tower, things would be better. Just a thought.


yah...lets see you live long enough to hack a tower under constant pain.....it would make pain modules impossible.

Its fine the way it is. That is why we have CR5's to direct traffic according to fix this stuff.

Bottom line here is.....how can a facility provide you with its perks when it's not powered to provide itself with the perks??

[TheRagingGerbil]

What if they added a second IFF to the gen room door. Set it up so that they must be hacked simultaniously.

Hacker 1 can start hack on the left panel. A message would pop-up "Waiting for second hack to begin." Hacker 2 starts to hack the right panel. If one is advanced and the other isn't, both will hack at the speed of the slowest hacker.


*Edit: Hmm, maybe this should be done for all external doors and the spawn room doors too. While they're at it, they need to add IFF's to the courtyard staircase doors.

[Veteran]

A dedicated healer could be required... What's wrong with that?

[Doppler]

I was thinking something similar actualy, what if blowing the gens killed spawns everything else as normal, but to stop the link benefits you must hack that terminal in the gen room and keep hacking on it to keep the benifits disabled.

[sutserikeru]

they could extend the pain field into the hallway (for the upstairs gens) and the part right ourside (for the downstairs gens), but i like the dual IFF pads idea

[Doppler]

Firez, how does a facility a hundred miles away provide you with perks depending on just the arbitrary lay out of the latice. I mean think about it, if this is a factory doesnt it assemble and then send off its product even if its just crates of nanites, so "realisticly" speaking, the second you kill a techplants gen it sohuldnt kill the vehicle abilities there should a warning and some grace period where you use established supplies.

In other words we cant really ride the realism bus in planetside. If we do we shouldnt ride it half way i.e. you can disrupt supply lines but theres no one to defend said supply lines.

[Doppler]

I whould like to see pain module changed to "death module" i.e. you walk into the room and promptly die. In essence this whould give you a good way to prvent spawn camping and protect the gens and modules. TO balance it they'd have to change it so it no longer affects the CC.

[FireZ]

1)no....planetside isn't realistic...but it does tend to try to make sense. The lattice links were put there to prevent all the retarted base drops to the enemy all over by "single man army's".

2)The link beni's where put in to place to spread out the zerg and to make it worth defending bases. Trust me. if you stay at your only tech plant when there is opposition on your continent you WILL have plenty of oppositions. Dragon Wolves do it all the time.

3)If you take away the abitily for anyone to singly be able to do anything then you force people to join outfits that just want to play.

It is retarted to take this stuff away. Besides lately it has been hard for spec ops with modules spreading people out anyways.


-EDIT-

I whould like to see pain module changed to "death module" i.e. you walk into the room and promptly die. In essence this whould give you a good way to prvent spawn camping and protect the gens and modules. TO balance it they'd have to change it so it no longer affects the CC

pain modules were put in to cause this. you realize that if you have spawncampers in a base that is hacked but the gens are very well defended(that has pain). If you resecure the base then all the spawn campers are dead. Because if you havent noticed....PAIN HURTS!!

[Jagd]

No no no, the pain module is quite a pain in the ass. I defy any one player to disable a gen and snatch the pain module no matter how many freaking med kits he has it is impossible.

For us to pull it off earlier today, we had an AMS and a harasser pulled into the courtyard. We had 2 medics and 2 combat engineers (one guy was a medic and CE) and it involved running into the gen, laying a boomer, running out with less than 30 health left to be healed and blowing the boomer, repeat. It takes 8 boomers to blow a gen, so it took a while and by the time we finally had it knocked out there were 3-5 enemies entering the courtyard and we had to book it out of there in a hurry.

It only requires one engineer to repair a generator, just as it only requires one engineer to blow it if it is undefended. If you think it is too easy to recall and HART to blow gens, then recall and HART to repair them. Not too mind-boggling of a strategy now is it?

[FireZ]

No no no, the pain module is quite a pain in the ass. I defy any one player to disable a gen and snatch the pain module no matter how many freaking med kits he has it is impossible.

I'm with ya. But I have single handedly taken a pain module out of a base. But if just 1 person shows up then its over.

[Veteran]

A rexo Special Assault/Medic can easily do it... I've gotten the generator one Decimator from death even without Medical, but if I had it...

Fire Decimator rounds while consuming health kits...
Leave, heal with Medical Applicator.
Return, fire last Decimator, run out and heal while gen blows, run back in and grab pain module.

This is making me want Medical.

[FireZ]

A rexo Special Assault/Medic can easily do it... I've gotten the generator one Decimator from death even without Medical, but if I had it...

Fire Decimator rounds while consuming health kits...
Leave, heal with Medical Applicator.
Return, fire last Decimator, run out and heal while gen blows, run back in and grab pain module.

This is making me want Medical.

I have done it several times without medical....it does definitly rule out the boomers methode though...It take 11 decimaters to take out a gen.

A single guy can do it...you just gotta know the means how. Its just very hard ;).

[Jagd]

Ok so maybe it is possible for 1 person to do it, but extremely difficult. And as has been agreed, if even a single defender shows up the plan is off. So what is wrong with this? I mean you need to be a medic with special assault or a pack full of boomers, and you gotta be dedicated to get it done. If you are careless and die (or are attacked and take one stray bullet and die) you are screwed, unless you had the foresight to bring an AMS (like I always do). So anyways, it is by no means a cakewalk as people seem to think so why does it need nerfing?

I think the poll speaks for itself though, I guess it's a moot point.

[Veteran]

Yes, they've certainly spoken on the subject of link benefits, but the question of whether generators are too easy to destroy might inspire a follow-up poll perhaps.

[Hamma]

I don't think it should be changed, it requires empires to take care of their bases and adds to the strategy. Without it, bases would not be as important.

[FireZ]

I don't think it should be changed, it requires empires to take care of their bases and adds to the strategy. Without it, bases would not be as important.
:stupid:

[Ducimus]

I don't think it should be changed, it requires empires to take care of their bases and adds to the strategy. Without it, bases would not be as important.

Exactly.

Trying to do away with "covert ops" as people like to call it, is trying to do away with the need for empires to take care of their bases and the need to add stragegy, and it takes away a layer of depth from the game. Whining about "covert ops" is nothing more than whining to the referee to change the rules of the game so you can "win" easier in my opinion.

You want a virtual online war with depth or a pay to play clone of BF1942 in a futureistic setting?

[Skullhead]

it should be hard blowing up the generators.

And some lameasses decide to Blow the generator and take the modules and blow them up by running into water. I don't know where the dumbasses get the idea to do that. Modules should be placed in the Control room not next to the stupid generator and they should only be removable thru hacking the modules themselves or just hacking the base itself.

[Ducimus]

it should be hard blowing up the generators.

And some lameasses decide to Blow the generator and take the modules and blow them up by running into water.

Theres this little term in real life combat engineering circles called "Base Denial". In essence, if your about to lose a base for whatever reason, you render the base and all of its assets inoperative.

For example removing the same part from every vehicle or weapon and destroy those parts so they can't be reassembled and used by the enemy. Or destroying roads to hamper traffic.

Blowing a generator is denying the enemy the bennfits of that facity. Destroying a module is denying the enemy that resource. Seriously if your objective is to down a generator at a tech plant cause the NC are pumping out vanguard after vanguard, and you accomplish this - and your already there, with a module up for grabs. That is a target of opportunity. If your way behind lines your chances of getting that module to a friendly base are slim to none if a large force is in the area or if your solo- so you should destroy it if possible.

Is that nice? No of course not, but last i checked in PS you have empires at war, and your not going to win wars with one hand tied behind your back because the other guy whos trying to shoot you, thinks what your doing isnt nice or fair.

[Veteran]

Resource denial is fine and dandy, but the generator should require at least two people to destroy. It's supposed to be a team game, so why make it solo heaven in this vital aspect? If anything takes advantage of an enemy's underpopulation, it's forcing them to spread out to stop major threats by single enemies. Just my opinion.

[Doppler]

Theres this little term in real life combat engineering circles called "Base Denial". In essence, if your about to lose a base for whatever reason, you render the base and all of its assets inoperative.

For example removing the same part from every vehicle or weapon and destroy those parts so they can't be reassembled and used by the enemy. Or destroying roads to hamper traffic.

Blowing a generator is denying the enemy the bennfits of that facity. Destroying a module is denying the enemy that resource. Seriously if your objective is to down a generator at a tech plant cause the NC are pumping out vanguard after vanguard, and you accomplish this - and your already there, with a module up for grabs. That is a target of opportunity. If your way behind lines your chances of getting that module to a friendly base are slim to none if a large force is in the area or if your solo- so you should destroy it if possible.

Is that nice? No of course not, but last i checked in PS you have empires at war, and your not going to win wars with one hand tied behind your back because the other guy whos trying to shoot you, thinks what your doing isnt nice or fair.

Stop trying to play "Well in real life" because in real life we have this fascinating this called security guards and mainenance techs. These are people who dedicate themselves to keeping facilities running, the greatest desterrant to industrial espeionage will always be loyal employees. Please dont tell me about base denial because again if we wanted to go by your "Real life model" it whould take either a massive ammount of explosives or a good solid bombing run to do facility denial, both of which take a while to set up, and mutliple people to execute. I'm not saying it shoud be impossible, i'm just saying its too easy for one idiot to drop a gen witha drop pod. Additionaly in "Real life" if a component of our war machine kept getting taken out by some idiot grabbing it and running into the nearest pond we'd seriously look into making it waterproof. It's a matter of addaptive combat engineering and tactical doctrine, again somethign we cant reflect in Planetside. Please dont tell me about denial of assests, I do work for a entity that blows shit up for a living.

[Ducimus]

>>because in real life we have this fascinating this called security guards and mainenance techs. These are people who dedicate themselves to keeping facilities running, the greatest desterrant to industrial espeionage will always be loyal employees.


Well, get then, what are you waiting for, if sappers piss you off so much, login and do something about it! :D


Heh im done arguing, my sub is up tommrrow anyway and i already cancled. This game doesnt have enough depth and has quite a few things wrong with it... unfortunatley theres people who want to make it an even shallower exeprience by removing some layers of depth.. PS won't ever live up to its potential - and thats the truth.

[Veteran]

I don't think anyone is going to be waiting for sappers for what could be hours, much less in groups. If you're going to have that non-stop thrill-ride, you can't be camping for sabateurs for your whole play session.

[Ducimus]

As ive already said in another forum. Instead of whining; adapt, overcome and improvise.

Sappers are going to come after your modules no matter what.

Sappers are going to come after tech and interlink plant gens no matter what.

Both of which at anytime.

Consolidate your assets, makes it easier to protect. Of course nevermind any of that indepth strategy gameplay type stuff, all people seem to do is pay 13 bucks a month for FPS action they could easily aquire from playing BF1942 for free. But like i said, im done.

[Jagd]

If it bugs you so much that you can't get your advanced vehicles, do the smart thing and keep a light vehicle in your cert collection. I refuse to have an advanced vehicle until I have at least some basic means of transportation that is available everywhere. If you want to be a vehicle specialist, you should set yourself up so you can always get a vehicle. Pretty straightforward.

[Hamma]

it should be hard blowing up the generators.


Yea it should probably be a bit harder. But my motto is if it aint broke dont fix it.

[Queensidecastle]

I like Gerbil's idea here (as usual) The dual hacking keeps soloers out of your gen room and I dont really see a good argument as to why a solo troop should be able to singlehandedly take all tech vehicles away from a whole cont (yes, even temporarily). Since planetside is a grouping and socially oriented game this makes sense that you need a squad or at least a buddy if you want to drop a tech link.

Either do that or not allow the gen to be destroyed by any combination of items that can fit in a single troop's inventory (8 boomers). Make the soloer at least be forced to bring his own AMS for several trips or advanced hacking for several trips

[sutserikeru]

I like Gerbil's idea here (as usual) The dual hacking keeps soloers out of your gen room and I dont really see a good argument as to why a solo troop should be able to singlehandedly take all tech vehicles away from a whole cont (yes, even temporarily). Since planetside is a grouping and socially oriented game this makes sense that you need a squad or at least a buddy if you want to drop a tech link.

Either do that or not allow the gen to be destroyed by any combination of items that can fit in a single troop's inventory (8 boomers). Make the soloer at least be forced to bring his own AMS for several trips or advanced hacking for several trips
/agreed

[FraudulentBob]

Gens now play a key role in the defense of an important facility, it adds teamwork in that you must assign gen defense to someone.

[Doppler]

I dont mind defending the gens in a base thats actualy under attack it bothers me in a base thats a million miles from the front.

[Tegadil]

Yeah.

If I'm paying for this game, why should I be forced to hang out far behind the front lines indefinitely for an enemy that may not be coming?

In any case, I'm in favor of the dual IFF idea, and I think that if an abandoned base comes under attack, SOME form of auto-warning should be issued. It gives the people off base a chance to consolidate and defend before a couple of guys can shut down interlink benefits or some such.

Back behind the lattice and away from the action tends to be boring. I like it there, and there are others like me. Therefore, there will always be a need for defenders behind the lines, but there should be some other alternatives to guard duty.

[Veteran]

Bases and towers should report on the global map when anyone but an infiltrator hacks their doors, terminals, etc.

The generator should have roughly 50% more health than it has now.

Towers should have a five minute hack timer, similar to bases.

The HART should only drop you around friendly SOIs.

Problem solved.