Three long overlooked problems with this game.

[wasdie]

Originally Posted by AuntLou

Light assaults can't get to the walls if the sunderers can't.

Oh a galaxy can get behind enemy lines????? Better nerf it!!!!


You get out from behind you mana turret and shoot them.

You make it sound so easy when in practice it's not.

You can see and hear a galaxy coming and you have active base defenses that fight against that. The only thing preventing a squad beacon from raining down 11 over soldiers behind your defense requiring you to abandon your defenses making them completely irrelevant is if somebody can see the squad spawn beacon, which can pop up at any time anywhere throughout the base completely unannounced and silently, and destroy it before all 11 other squadmates fall within the base. As others have pointed out, this isn't an easy task. You don't even know which players have the capability of spawning troops so there is no possible way for you to know where the droppods will start raining down from. The entire strategy is reactive to the droppods which gives the droppods a major advantage that is easily exploitable.

You're supporting a mechanic that makes bases pretty much irrelevant and makes it impossible to sustain any real attack as zones of control are completely useless. Walls, buildings, turrets, shields, gens, engineer turrets, and mines are all almost irrelevant with the ability to easily drop within the confines of a base or on top of an enemy sunderer without any real counters or warning for the defenders. It's simply not a good mechanic and it's working against the flow of each battle.

During a large fight the interior of a base is pretty much chaos with droppods falling on top of the base constantly from many different squad deploy and squad beacons. The outside of the base similarly chaotic thanks to defensive squad deploys falling behind the attackers point of attack. This is a far cry from the nice flow each base had back in Planetside 1 and it's a key reason why people call base design terrible. There is no real way to defend against the constant stream of drop pods falling behind you. There is no reason to cover your flanks since the enemy never has to physically travel to reach them, they just have to fall out of the sky with no counters.

There is no real concept of controlling sections of a base with mechanics like the jump pads, teleports, and drop pods. Both attackers and defenders can utilize these various mechanics to get behind the enemy constantly. This ruins any sort of flow we would generally see in Planetside 1 and it's something this game would really benefit from.

If you want to drop a squad behind a line you should have to use a galaxy. There the defenders at least know where you are coming from and that you're coming at all. You can't just teleport behind them with virtually no warning. You have to work a bit if you want the element of surprise.

I'm not one for static defense myself, thus I rarely man turrets or lay mines, but the ability for an attacker to spawn closer to an objective via a sundy, squad deploy, or squad beacon, ruins base defenses in this game. Even an active defense is difficult if you constantly have to resweep over every objective just to clear out the enemies who have appeared out of nowhere. Small outposts can be overrun a matter of seconds with absolutely no warning from the squad beacon or spawn deploy and objectives at large bases can be overrun with no real defense from the dop pods falling from the sky.

In no way is it good design. I know people think it's all "good tactics" to get behind the line, but the methods used to get behind the line are not the same as actual flanking and cause more issues with the overall flow of battle than they benefit the game. Galaxies are severely underutilized and every base fight has become a TDM until the attackers can camp the terribly located spawn rooms all aided by the ability to continually drop right within the confines of an enemy base ignoring logistics and defenses.

[Frugal]

Kill the beacon. Even in a odd place LA will always be able to reach them and if your defense doesn't cover air then rethink your defense. Drop pods can be killed with flak and aircraft. It is very easy for me to hang out on the sky ceiling and shoot down the drop pods. I do it all the time.

[Frugal]

You also can not exclude static defense. You can place tank mines or proxy mines as an engi or inf and you can later switch classes and the mines will still be in place. Static defense is another tool that you must utilize or you can't say that you have a strong defense.

[AuntLou]

I’ll start by saying I'm all for allowing beacons to render at a farther distance and I also wouldn't mind if they removed squad deploy. All I’m defending here is the squad becon.

Originally Posted by wasdie

You make it sound so easy when in practice it's not.

You can see and hear a galaxy coming and you have active base defenses that fight against that.

You can also see the mode of transport the squad leader took the get the beacon down. Also you can see a big bright beam in the sky and it can be destroyed allot easier then a galaxy.

Originally Posted by wasdie

The only thing preventing a squad beacon from raining down 11 over soldiers behind your defense requiring you to abandon your defenses making them completely irrelevant is if somebody can see the squad spawn beacon, which can pop up at any time anywhere throughout the base completely unannounced and silently, and destroy it before all 11 other squadmates fall within the base.

As others have pointed out, this isn't an easy task. You don't even know which players have the capability of spawning troops so there is no possible way for you to know where the droppods will start raining down from. The entire strategy is reactive to the droppods which gives the droppods a major advantage that is easily exploitable.

Squad beacons don't just "pop up". The squad leader has to penetrate the base to put it up. It’s a far more difficult task then you are making it sound. Yes there is a good chance 11 other squad mates will fall into your base behind your precious defenses. Not sure what the problem is with that? Are your guys not taking care of that? Not putting up sensor webs? proxy mines? Drop pods are large metal boxes that usually make a player a sitting duck when they first land. It's really not hard for a few defenders to handle drop pods. It might not be Planetside 1 but in remember in Planetside 1 anyone could just bail out of a aircraft and drop down wherever they pleased with no damage and WITH NO HUGE POD showing.

Originally Posted by wasdie

You're supporting a mechanic that makes bases pretty much irrelevant and makes it impossible to sustain any real attack as zones of control are completely useless. Walls, buildings, turrets, shields, gens, engineer turrets, and mines are all almost irrelevant with the ability to easily drop within the confines of a base or on top of an enemy sunderer without any real counters or warning for the defenders. It's simply not a good mechanic and it's working against the flow of each battle.

During a large fight the interior of a base is pretty much chaos with droppods falling on top of the base constantly from many different squad deploy and squad beacons. The outside of the base similarly chaotic thanks to defensive squad deploys falling behind the attackers point of attack. This is a far cry from the nice flow each base had back in Planetside 1 and it's a key reason why people call base design terrible. There is no real way to defend against the constant stream of drop pods falling behind you. There is no reason to cover your flanks since the enemy never has to physically travel to reach them, they just have to fall out of the sky with no counters.

Poor base design makes bases irrelevant NOT squad beacons. Every base in Planetside 1 was surrounded by walls. Towers were pretty easy to defend as well. Most importantly every spawn was internally connected to the main objective. If bases were anything like this in Planetside 2 we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. Planetside 2 needs revamp every base to force an indoor battle. Moving the objectives into tiny little buildings, adding little tunnels and adding cute little walls does not make up for it. Once again all this having nothing to do with the squad beacon.

Originally Posted by wasdie

There is no real concept of controlling sections of a base with mechanics like the jump pads, teleports, and drop pods. Both attackers and defenders can utilize these various mechanics to get behind the enemy constantly. This ruins any sort of flow we would generally see in Planetside 1 and it's something this game would really benefit from.

If you want to drop a squad behind a line you should have to use a galaxy. There the defenders at least know where you are coming from and that you're coming at all. You can't just teleport behind them with virtually no warning. You have to work a bit if you want the element of surprise.

If they removed squad deploy and left beacons as is I believe this would solve this. Defenders would know for sure when there is a drop pod there is a beacon and they should seek and destroy it. The beacon timers do prevent this from being spammed to an extent that it makes base defense impossible.

Originally Posted by wasdie

I'm not one for static defense myself, thus I rarely man turrets or lay mines, but the ability for an attacker to spawn closer to an objective via a sundy, squad deploy, or squad beacon, ruins base defenses in this game. Even an active defense is difficult if you constantly have to resweep over every objective just to clear out the enemies who have appeared out of nowhere. Small outposts can be overrun a matter of seconds with absolutely no warning from the squad beacon or spawn deploy and objectives at large bases can be overrun with no real defense from the dop pods falling from the sky.

Here you are stating negative factors to the beacon that also hold true to the galaxy. You could reiterate that you know the gal is coming but then I’ll just reiterate that the spawn beacon is a large beam in the sky yadda yadda yadda….

Originally Posted by wasdie

In no way is it good design. I know people think it's all "good tactics" to get behind the line, but the methods used to get behind the line are not the same as actual flanking and cause more issues with the overall flow of battle than they benefit the game. Galaxies are severely underutilized and every base fight has become a TDM until the attackers can camp the terribly located spawn rooms all aided by the ability to continually drop right within the confines of an enemy base ignoring logistics and defenses.

I think it’s great design, amazing tactics and most of all they are fun as hell! Laying beacons, destroying beacons and dropping down in pods has become a large tactical aspect in Planetside 2. I enjoy using them and I don’t mind defending against them. Destroying a spawn beacon to me is just as rewarding as destroying a sunderer.

Get rid of the squad deploy, increase the render distance of the beacon or even increase the XP for destroying one. But please don’t remove them, make drop pods faster or less maneuverable. It will ruin a very fun and amazing aspect to Planetside 2.

[Dodgy Commando]

How about this:

Just a quick suggestion, based loosely on Section 8.

Bases have an SOI. Drop Pods have brakes.

You can drop into the SOI, but the base's turrets will track you automatically should you not brake (you come in faster, but risk being destroyed). Should you choose to brake, turrets will not track you, but you stand a greater chance of being spotted by players before landing.

Outside of a base's SOI, Drop Pods work as usual.

-e-
Player-occupied AA turrets could include an 'Incoming Drop!' warning indicator.