my lengthy diatribe on bunkers

[SumYungGui]

whilst slaughtering a few oppressive Terran Regime soldiers in the cold blooded yet forgivable manner of a war, I happened to have a brief moment of lucidity. for some reason the bunker that was in my crosshairs leaped out at me, mentally slapped me across the face, said 'hey stupid! think about me!' then refused to close the door on the way out of my mind. perhaps it was the fact that in the course of the last hour or more of fighting in this fairly heated battle I had yet to see a single person attempt to occupy it for strategic advantage. regardless, I started this eerie process that some people apparently call 'thinking' and came across a few concerns/ideas.

bunkers seem to me to be largely ignored, and while I feel there are a multitude of reasons for this I still think I can fully understand why. they're pretty much pointless and risky on top of it. as a brief mental exercise, before which I had to do alot of mental "warming up" to avoid hurting myself, I thought 'what if someone was to use a bunker?'. some good came out of this process, and we'll get to that later. for now lets cover the few things I've decided, in my infinite and peerless wisdom, that I don't like.

-their placement and positioning really seems to be out of synch with their usefulness. most of them seem to offer stunning views of the backside of a rock or breathtaking vistas consisting of 10 square feet of hill in front of you, while others offer truly delightful ocean-side views with a guarantee of no nosy neighbors or enemy soldiers ruining your contemplations of life, the universe, and everything (which, incidentally is 6X9=42).

-they have a totally open door behind you in addition to a passage to another bunker that you have zero hope of keeping an eye on as you try to fire at the approaching enemies. you're just barely safer being in a bunker than anywhere else on flat land right outside of your own base

-I personally find the little ramp on the ground in front of the 'firing windows' to be inappropriately designed.

-they don't actually offer anything that satisfies my inner monkey's desire for the 'neato' factor.


risking mental life and limb I continued my mental exercise and asked myself 'self, what would you do to fix them? now remember you simpleton, game balance has to be considered in everything you do so don't go overboard'. cowering slightly in fear of my mean-spiritedness I managed to stammer out a few answers:

I feel bunkers need to stop this childish desire for independance. they're simply not ready for that kind of responsibility. they need to suck it up and become one with the force, err, base. assuming you've played planetside for a little while you know the shape of the gates to a base, which is good because you're gonna need that thought a few sentences from now. herein, I propose to maim three birds with one stone. those three birds are the independance of bunkers, the general feeling that gates suck as defense, and the lack of a warm fuzzy 'safe' feeling while in a bunker. take the bunker, ram it into that large flat, totally gauche section of wall under the overpass on the inside of the gate to a base. after ramming it in there, stretch it a bit and wrap around the wall just a skosh. we'll end up with a vertically stretched 'C' looking shape that now has a commanding view of the passageway between the outside of the base to the inside. don't wrap it around too far, limit the people in there to defending the gate itself. (I'm actually gonna throw the ball in everyone else's court here, and leave it totally open to speculation as to the height of this set up. should it be high enough to leave a blind spot under each bunker that has to be covered by the opposite bunker, or should it be right on the ground so nobody can sneak past?) anyone trying to just waltz through the gate with the new, improved, low low price of a single patch bunker would now have to contend with some actual defense, rather than the inevitable spitfire turret stuffed into that corner behind the gate (you all know exactly where I'm talking about, admit it.) having bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated our bunker into a good position we now need to offer our defenders a way in. this is easy to accomodate, while addressing the second little dash I made up there ^. if the entrance to the bunker is an off-shoot hallway of the inside of the base compound then you have a fair, though not complete and thus still paranoia inducing, sense of security and can concentrate on making dead things out of the currently walking and shooting things trying to get in your base.

next up we have the little ramps in front of the 'firing windows'. they're good in theory, but they need some working. they need to be calibrated so that anyone standing back a few inches, off of the ramp, is at 'eye level' with the firing window. anyone standing on the ramp, when crouched, should be at the optimal shooting level as well, which would give them the crouched accuracy. at the middle of the ramp as we go from left to right there needs to be a little niche carved out so that a MAX can stand there and be at the optimum level.

finally, we have to satisfy my inner monkey always looking for the shiny new stuff in the world. he told me he wants to have some kind of light turret between the top of the bunker and the bottom of the overhead walk-way. nothing as big and nasty as the phalanx turrets we have on the walls, and it should be only anti-infantry in it's set up. he does think it should be repairable from inside the bunker, but that point is open to debate.

so, there you have it. my rambling diatribe on bunkers. bye bye for now.