Change the Towers

[Senyu]

As fun as I have having a stalement of tower defence that lasts for an hour until 5 NC MAX's come in and wtfpwn with shotguns, the same tower design gets kinda boring.

Add in the Base Cosmetic Change thread I did to the towers as well, and also add tower variety.

Yes we have a tower and air tower, but more variety could be added. Say a pool of 5 different tower designs. They dont all have to have unqiue options like the air tower, but are just differently built. Would add more variety to the fights and its not to many to never know where things are. One tower type could have more of a bunker feel, this one branches out just a tad, random level and roof on the side of this one. Basically just more tower design options. Also one could be a vehicale repair tower for ground vehicals since theres an air. And a heavily turret fortified tower just for kicks now and then.

Thoughts?

[Raymac]

I'm incredibly excited to see the new base and tower designs. Fighting in the same stairway over and over again is something that I think we tolerate as opposed to really enjoying. The more variety the better, and I really like this idea of breaking it down even more to different varieties of a certain type of building.

[Senyu]

Definitly.

Hmm a list of tower types? Perhaps Normal, Fortified, Air, and Vehicale


And there would be 2-3 normal varities while 1 of each other type. The vehicale one I imagine a over hang on the side of the tower that reaches down. Making it look like an incredibly short tunnel or archway where the vehicales enter, park inside it, are repaired, and drive out. Kinda like a carwash on the side of the tower. With a small platform build in the side to see and a door heading in so you can go from vehicale pad straight into tower. And the fortified would be the one with more advance defences like more turrets

[DviddLeff]

I may have thought a little about this:

https://sites.google.com/site/planetsideupgradeproject/phase-2/terrain-overhaul

Checkpoint "Towers" for bridge ends and choke points in the terrain:
https://sites.google.com/site/planetsideupgradeproject/_/rsrc/1298481124788/phase-2/terrain-overhaul/Checkpoint.jpg?height=279&width=400

Light Bases for connections to warp gates, only have a 5 minute hack timer:
https://sites.google.com/site/planetsideupgradeproject/_/rsrc/1277313383572/phase-2/terrain-overhaul/Light%20Base.jpg?height=278&width=400

Relay towers to connect bases, actually included on the lattice and are used to transmit NTUs and base benefits between bases; if these get taken down then a base is cut off:
https://sites.google.com/site/planetsideupgradeproject/_/rsrc/1277223368759/phase-2/terrain-overhaul/Relay%20tower%20Neutral.jpg?height=400&width=248

Fortified ground towers, halfway between a light base and a standard tower:
https://sites.google.com/site/planetsideupgradeproject/_/rsrc/1298198871956/phase-2/terrain-overhaul/Fortified%20Ground%20Tower.jpg?height=269&width=400

Apologise for the crude models, I need to go back and render them properly at some point.

[Peacemaker]

stuff like this makes for epic wins

[TRex]

Some nice ideas there , I wouldn't worry about the renders , the idea is enough to put a spark in the devs that variety= spice of life .
I hope they incorporate things like this, and give xp and/or cep or whatever they will be using for capturing /defending them as well. Anything to spread combat over the entire map and allow even small outfits a niche to feel like they are doing something useful .

[Senyu]

Those are awesome. Really like the checkpoint one. Really hope the devs are seeing these for inspiration as said above.

[FortunadoAE]

Really like the renders! They're the perfect amount of work, actually-- might even look a little too good.

Checkpoint: This one I like the most. SO many battles in PS naturally formed at one end of a bridge. It'd be great to have a structure there. I'd say skip the NTU thing though and just make it a tower (even if it's not a "tower," that term should be dropped anyway).

Light Base: I like the design as a normal "tower" but I don't like the idea of putting it near a warp gate. I think SOE wanted to keep battles away from warp gates, since you had the protective field right there, and it just becomes a weird dance in and out of the bubble.

Relay towers: Cool design, but the lattice is already one of the most complicated systems in the game. I think it should be kept as simple as possible, and relays make it way more complicated.

Fortified tower: Another awesome design! I think the mini-courtyard would make for some interesting gameplay. A tank could alternate between patrolling and going into the courtyard to repair.

[Senyu]

I would also like to see one with shooting ports in it. Smiler to those at the front of the bases with the shooting slits.


Also another topic. What of upgrade choices. Should towers remain static and non-changing. Or should certain engineer certs be able to apply upgrades other than modified turrets. This could range to many options for upgrade choices and could have any limit such as how many active or the only last a duration.

[Furret]

I'm more concerned about the placement of the towers than whats actually inside them. As far as I'm concerned, the game's strategy should be this:

Pick your continents to gain benefits. (shields, modules, enemy tech)

Pick the bases to capture that give you the best mini benefits (tech/air/interlink)

Fight for the towers that give you the best attack vector into that base.

Platoon down to individual organization that isnt important for this thread.

So if they implement these new types of towers, they need to account for the terrain around the base the tower would be supporting/defending.


If the tower is close to a base, but there's a large mountain range or valley in the way, the tower type would be best suited to spawn small airships.

If the tower was across from a forest or swamp, it would be easily defendable by foot, but very vulnerable with armor.

If its across a small lake, make it good at spawning vehicles

[Senyu]

I like this. The environment should very much define the tower

[Edfishy]

Brilliant ideas.

Keep the renders simple, what you have definitely gets the point across. =D

[Furret]

The only question is whether the towers support attackers or defenders.

It would be difficult to do both.

[Senyu]

The only question is whether the towers support attackers or defenders.

It would be difficult to do both.

Towers should be a defensive point in all aspects, even offense.

Towers are a point in which the owner has the advantage of the building in ether using it as a fortified and stable position in which to commence attacks from or to prevent the enemy from continuing past that point. They would behave pretty much like today's tower with more variety and less static stalemates (or i least hope)

[CutterJohn]

Towers I'd like to see..

Defense Tower. These are placed next to bases. They have a couple turrets on the side for tower defense, and one Big Ass turret up top that frightens children and makes grown men weep. The big turret cannot be killed, but it does have a minimum range, so it does not serve to directly protect the tower. It is a major obstacle attackers must clear before taking a base. After the base is taken, it supports the invasion.

Logistics Tower. This tower has air and vehicle repair pads, and is a non tech vehicle spawn point. These are most commonly located outside of warpgates, and in between bases with long distance lattice links

Watchtower. This tower has a massive radar installation capable of detecting units over a wide area, showing the location of enemy vehicles on the map(not minimap) as indistinct blobs. Cloaked vehicles are not shown. Aircraft are shown as a different color than ground units. Situated in a generally regular pattern providing coverage of most of the continent, though gaps do exist that can be exploited against enemies too reliant on it for intel.

Artillery tower. This tower has a massive artillery cannon attached that can be used to call down strikes by approved personnel. Not as devastating as OS, but still nasty. Generally only 1 or 2 per continent.

All towers are to be constructed with firing ports that will make it difficult for vehicles to camp the doors.

And a tower mechanic.. A sorta gen droppy gizmo. If a fight rages for too long at a tower, a decision can be made to disconnect it from the lattice. This disconnection requires the cooperation of 3 individuals hacking at outside terminals. When the tower is dry, it goes neutral, stopping spawns. An ant must be used to recharge it before it can be hacked. However, all tower functions will be offline for twenty minutes as it reboots itself.

You can end a tower fight quickly, but the sacrifice is you lose the rather large advantage the tower represents for a lengthy period of time.

[Vorgan]

Towers I'd like to see..

Defense Tower. These are placed next to bases. They have a couple turrets on the side for tower defense, and one Big Ass turret up top that frightens children and makes grown men weep. The big turret cannot be killed, but it does have a minimum range, so it does not serve to directly protect the tower. It is a major obstacle attackers must clear before taking a base. After the base is taken, it supports the invasion.

The "bigass turret" on the top of this tower: does it have 360 degree rotation? Is it one shot, then reload? Or maybe one shot, then "cool down" (since it will likely have infinite ammo). Or...if it doesn't have infinite ammo, players would need to run down to the basement, get ammo boxes, run back up and refill it whenever it ran out. Could be a useful balancing tool.


Logistics Tower. This tower has air and vehicle repair pads, and is a non tech vehicle spawn point. These are most commonly located outside of warpgates, and in between bases with long distance lattice links

Nifty.

Watchtower. This tower has a massive radar installation capable of detecting units over a wide area, showing the location of enemy vehicles on the map(not minimap) as indistinct blobs. Cloaked vehicles are not shown. Aircraft are shown as a different color than ground units. Situated in a generally regular pattern providing coverage of most of the continent, though gaps do exist that can be exploited against enemies too reliant on it for intel.

This is really powerful, but a solid idea. Powerful enough that having more than two or three of these per map could be overpowered. Regardless, a cool idea.

Artillery tower. This tower has a massive artillery cannon attached that can be used to call down strikes by approved personnel. Not as devastating as OS, but still nasty. Generally only 1 or 2 per continent.

Does the tower itself have a limit on when it can be fired, or are the timers individual (as with OSes)?

All towers are to be constructed with firing ports that will make it difficult for vehicles to camp the doors.

And a tower mechanic.. A sorta gen droppy gizmo. If a fight rages for too long at a tower, a decision can be made to disconnect it from the lattice. This disconnection requires the cooperation of 3 individuals hacking at outside terminals. When the tower is dry, it goes neutral, stopping spawns. An ant must be used to recharge it before it can be hacked. However, all tower functions will be offline for twenty minutes as it reboots itself.

You can end a tower fight quickly, but the sacrifice is you lose the rather large advantage the tower represents for a lengthy period of time.

Overall really cool ideas. The gen-dropping mechanic is...interesting. Not sure how I feel about it, but then again these are towers, not bases. If people are locked inside the tower and unable to push back to reclaim it, then they've lost it and shouldn't be there anyway. Your mechanic is a nifty way around that.

[duck]

Apologise for the crude models, I need to go back and render them properly at some point.

Great models. I hope SOE is looking at this thread

I agree the towers in original Planetside were all similar, but again the game is about 8 years old. I'm sure the devs have a new vision on how bases and towers are designed. The diversity of the buildings will make the new game much more dynamic

[wildcat140679]

I believe adding different types of towers similar to the renders would be a great addition. Different tower designs and layout would add diversity in battles and make one tower battle feel less like the previous one.

Towers however are a death trap once pinned down by multiple vehicles, tanks or reavers shooting at the doors. I don't believe different designs or addind more hard cover and elemens for infantry to hide behind will chance much.

Towers could use a defensive boost against vehicle superiority, shooting heavy ordinance at the doors, grinding easy kills with their (almost) instant kill weapons against infantry.



What if towers could be fitted with some kind of special defence module. Like a Shield bubble, heavy EMP blast or some sort of shock wave that pushes everything away from the tower just to name something crazy

These special defence modules would require to be charged before they can actually be triggered and it it's effect will either be instant or of very short duration.


Having a long range EMP blast to knock out vehicles their weapons (or more, knock out their engines as well), this might just be enough for those trapped in the tower to step outside, face enemy infantry and push out. I don't expect it to do wonders, but it could balance tower fights a bit more when the enemy is using vehicles to prevent infantry in getting out.

[DviddLeff]

And a tower mechanic.. A sorta gen droppy gizmo. If a fight rages for too long at a tower, a decision can be made to disconnect it from the lattice. This disconnection requires the cooperation of 3 individuals hacking at outside terminals. When the tower is dry, it goes neutral, stopping spawns. An ant must be used to recharge it before it can be hacked. However, all tower functions will be offline for twenty minutes as it reboots itself.

You can end a tower fight quickly, but the sacrifice is you lose the rather large advantage the tower represents for a lengthy period of time.

Giving towers NTU silos does this by using an already present system.

[Baneblade]

I think Towers should be something CR players deploy (advanced AMSes) rather than static objects.

2 points - AMS: As is.
-3 points - Forward Operating Base (CR 2 Required) : AMS Cloak changes to a BFR style shield. AMS deployment and recovery time increases ten fold. AMS shield increases in radius 100%. Segmented wall deploys along the inside edge of shield perimeter (basically the short obstacle walls that are around some bases and towers in current PS). Gaps in wall at each side of FOB.
--2 points - FOB SOI (CR 3 Required) : AMS bubble gains SOI properties, disabling enemy radar, implants, and HART dropping.
---2 points - FOB Adv SOI (CR 4 Required) : AMS SOI expands to double the radius of the Defense Shield. Perimeter walls convert to actual bunkers.
----5 points - Forward Command Base (CR 5 Required) : Actual AMS deployed model changed to sunken Command Bunker with spawn room and terminals. CB has a door that operates off hackable IFF panel. 'Jacking' the CB must be done at the Command Console. Deconstruction is not possible.

Each upgrade cert for the FOB/FCB increases the shield hp and hp regen.

[CutterJohn]

Giving towers NTU silos does this by using an already present system.

A rather poor system, in my opinion. Silo maintenance was nothing more than a chore. I'm fine with having to grab an ant after you use the easy(but detrimental) method to kill a tower camp that has been going on overly long. Adds yet another downside to it. Not so fine with expanding the number of silos that need filled by 2 or 3x.

[Senyu]

Im liking the Gen/ATU combo with the easy win option for tower. It will progress fights and change the battlefield than have forever stalemates. Though it should not be constantly refreshed like a base. And towers shouldn't be deployable. Perhaps something similar, but not towers.



Now as for upgrades. Should towers remain static on what they have with of course turret upgrades from engineers, or should their be more. And how will these upgrades work?

Will they need certain Bases capped for certain upgrades?
Will engineers build these upgrades to the tower itself?
Will high ranking command players decide these upgrades in tactical battles?

From these three options, Bases as requirments should give passive upgrades such as radar, stronger turrets,mayhap some have shields, minute timer before tower hack becomes active giving defenders more time, faster spawn times

For engineer upgrades, variety of turrets, small defence walls, biopain field in some areas, radar, adding vehicale repairs if there are no towers that can repair already, faster spawn times, and other innovative/utility upgrades.

With high ranking players these could be much more powerful such as adding walls, the artillery idea mentioned earlier, making it practically a small base, cloak, teleportation in which similar aspects as a drop for HART but only in a certain distance from tower, vehicle spawn pads. And more things that should be powerful but rare and long cool downs.


As you can see if Tower Upgrades became an option we have a few choices on what type and styles of upgrades to choose from. And of course I'm sure some of you can think of more. Also I understand this level of design and complexity/variety to towers will probably not make it into the game (but i hope it does) but this discussion is of innovated and theoretical ideas of possibilities of expanding the simple Tower. So please no remarks of it not making it into the game or saying devs should not focus so much on towers.

[DviddLeff]

A rather poor system, in my opinion. Silo maintenance was nothing more than a chore. I'm fine with having to grab an ant after you use the easy(but detrimental) method to kill a tower camp that has been going on overly long. Adds yet another downside to it. Not so fine with expanding the number of silos that need filled by 2 or 3x.

That is why in my NTU Overhaul (https://sites.google.com/site/planetsideupgradeproject/phase-2/ntu-overhaul) I have NTUs replenish by themselves as long as the facility/tower is connected via the lattice to a warp gate.

It stops siege fights from going on for too long unless the defenders can get NTUs to their silo by whatever means (ANTs, vehicle NTU siphons or new hand held NTU siphons). Then once the fight is over the owner gets their supply lines secured by using Relay towers between the facility and the warp gate, and the base powers back up. Player NTU transfer can be used to speed up the process however.

[Baneblade]

I think NTU should be less about filling a silo and more about protecting a pipeline. Sure have the silo as a backup, and perhaps make the gen shielded until the pipeline is disrupted. But move the focus from ANT runs to more static logistics.

[CutterJohn]

That is why in my NTU Overhaul (https://sites.google.com/site/planetsideupgradeproject/phase-2/ntu-overhaul) I have NTUs replenish by themselves as long as the facility/tower is connected via the lattice to a warp gate.

Helps if you mention that to start. I'm sure you're quite familiar with your thesis, but many others are not. If you don't offer an alternate suggestion, I'm going to presume you are referring to what planetside currently does.

I'll just stick with I'm not a fan of whats on that page. Some of the concepts are ok, but your numbers are whacked.

[DviddLeff]

Yeah, so much of my project is interlinked its hard to chip in here and there without writing essays each time.

Taking a bases tower quickly can be done with my NTU changes as the NTU silo on the tower would be much smaller than that of a base, only enough for ~50 respawns before it runs out (numbers obviously subject to change). However the NTUs could be drained by vehicles and infantry alike if they are equipped with NTU siphons, reducing the time taken significantly.

[CutterJohn]

The "bigass turret" on the top of this tower: does it have 360 degree rotation? Is it one shot, then reload? Or maybe one shot, then "cool down" (since it will likely have infinite ammo). Or...if it doesn't have infinite ammo, players would need to run down to the basement, get ammo boxes, run back up and refill it whenever it ran out. Could be a useful balancing tool.

I just figured infinite ammo, along with invincible. The purpose of the tower is that gun, as well as spawns, and is why you really want to take it. Not too effective if it just gets destroyed.

Actually, multiple guns is probably better balanced than one. People would be camping to get into that thing. Unless it gave no xp.. Tactical tool only? Worth considering.


This is really powerful, but a solid idea. Powerful enough that having more than two or three of these per map could be overpowered. Regardless, a cool idea.

I like it too. The watch towers always struck me as just plain stupid. Did they expect someone to sit up top with magnifier implant? No point to them.


Does the tower itself have a limit on when it can be fired, or are the timers individual (as with OSes)?

I don't think it would be of much use if people had to wait their turn. I didn't really think it out that hard.. I was just struggling to come up with another type of tower that had an actual purpose and point to it. :)

Heck, it could be called an Uplink tower and enable OSs/supply drops/etc for command abilities.

[DviddLeff]

Gun towers should have formidable weapons on them; 4 turrets would probably do it tbh.

Especially if those turrets could be customised with any large sized weapons in the game...

[Lonehunter]

I just hope towers play a bigger role, make them worth fighting for and relevant to the battle.

Hell, lets have a whole continent of towers

[SilentHunterNC]

Also another topic. What of upgrade choices. Should towers remain static and non-changing. Or should certain engineer certs be able to apply upgrades other than modified turrets. This could range to many options for upgrade choices and could have any limit such as how many active or the only last a duration.

I like the idea of engys being able to upgrade tower/base defenses. But, I really hope the devs stop there w/ engys. Dont get me wrong I loved playing a cloaker of boomering ppl. And even when i was grunting it up the boomer on teh wall was awesome for grps rushing a CC. But, the manned turrets in the field was tooooo much. Boomers/turret upgrades/spit fires/mines/sensors are all a good engys needs.

But, back to the tower front. Tower fights were for me and several friends were where the best fights happened. Tower duels of 5v5 were awesome. Blowing a gen to be ppl to come and holding the tower at some random non-important base were always a good 30-60mins of farming. But, then someone would blow the tubes and end our fun. I wanna see the pain field in towers and bases up so that its practically impossible to do that. No to mention door camping. Id really like to see towers and bases set up so that, vechs cant just spam an entrance and rack up kills. I really wanna see more skill based ways to kill people. Yea, NC, is at the end of my name so towers were way more fun than field battles of me, but hey how long can u kill ppl w/ a suppressor before it gets old.

[DviddLeff]

Farming people in towers is exactly why thy need changing. It highlights the fact that HA is overpowered, third person needs removing and that lag and warping are often the dominant factors in combat. It also encourages the overuse of plasma and MAX units.