Feedback on SCUs for Higby - Page 5

Bocheezu · 2013-03-08, 09:20 AM

Originally Posted by basti

SCUs need to be removed, thats the fix.

Remove them, replace them with generators powering the pain field and shields of spawn rooms.

Make Spawn tubes killable. Add tunnels as ways to get to the SCU to prevent them from being destroyed.

This is the best solution. Let defenders have their spawn shields to lessen the chance of getting camped by vehicles when the base is still in contention, but when they are beaten, don't let them just sit in the spawn room and camp. It's just dumb.

It's like SOE totally misunderstood what players were going to do when the SCU gets destroyed. They expect players to rush out and give one last-ditch effort to possibly resecure their base. That's not what they do at all. With only one life, they choose to camp from the spawn for cheap kills. Everybody knows the base is lost once the SCU down; I've never seen defenders resecure at that point without a Gal drop or a sneak Sunderer.

Rothnang · 2013-03-08, 09:38 AM

Yea, spawnroom shields get abused way too much in this game. Biolabs are freaking terrible when it comes to shields, just absolutely awful. Burster MAXes are pretty much only as popular as they are because they get to abuse the shit out of spawn room shields, and the new spawn rooms only made that worse.

I don't think you should be able to remove the shields personally, but once you're out you should be out. You shouldn't be able to go back in.

Stanis · 2013-03-08, 11:44 AM

With the ticket system the ability to resecure is basically dependant on the SCU.
This is only really using the good model of a biolab. Everywhere else it's the defensibility of combined arms spawning camping v. infantry.

This goes back to the many different objectives that somehow the defenders must reach and cover - while distances to objective from spawn, distance from enemy spawn to objective and a whole host of other factors stack up against them

The fight is over when the SCU goes down because you can't get enough bodies to 2 seperate points to halt the advance of tickets.
You can't get even more people to the 4 shield generators and SCU to get base defenses back online.

You can't do this for 5 minutes that it takes to 'resecure' the base.

All of this from the spawn room. Or a single sunderer.
We can concede that you shouldn't allow the attackers to get a sunderer that close - but we have no provided intel such as radar or interlink benefit highlight these. The attacker can pretty much consider anything 'outside' the base a valid deployment location. Attack in depth if you will due to multiple vectors.
Meanwhile the defenders have a precarious courtyard - that the enemy knows they will be in. That the enemy knows they need to remain in.
The viable defence deploy options are pathetic by comparison. A quick comparison in viable spawn area between a 100m radius (defender) and 300m radius circle (attacker) should suffice tovisualise the problem. 31k sq metres v. 282k about an 8:1 area advantage.
This doesn't even consider that a sunderer within say 50m of a jump pad or teleporter effectively ignores any intervening terrain.

You could - and in fact your best option - is probably to stage a counter-attack against your own base facilities that the enemy holds.
That bit disgruntles me - my own base until it falls should always be my asset. It's depressing that at any point until they capture it the enemy gets more benefit from it than I do.

The concept of a last minute resecure - doesn't exist. I wish it did.
The concept of a squad or even platoon dropping into a heavily contested base and being able to get to one location and make a difference - isn't there.
The liner model of CY shield -> Base shield -> SCU shield -> SCU was added to provide the defenders a chance in the swiss cheese of base defence.

It does however oblivate last ditch efforts. There is no returning the spawns, restoring the shields or rescuing the cc at the 11th hour to miraculously turn the tide of battle.

So some ideas.

Make the shield generators a chain.
If we repair ANY generator in the chain - they power the SCU shield.
So we can desperately try to hold a generator and then sneak an engineer into the shield room.
This means both the attackers and defenders have to play whack-a-mole keeping them up/down as required.

Make base capture infantry only. Please remove combined arms and vehicle line of sight/fire from base capture.
They must get out of their vehicles if they want the base. Simple.
Let them influence one set of bonuses - the satellite bases and maybe the CY shield gens.

If we want to focus on generator destruction being a negative for the enemy and reward players. Also make spec ops workable and interfering behind the lines possible - but not a 5 min ghost hack that destroys the ability to respond sensible for organised teams.

While the generator is down - the base goes offline. Tickets drop at a fixed, steady rate. (With 100% adjacency this might be 30mins to go neutral.)
Thats the kicker - while the generator is down - the base stays offline you can't capture or resecure it.

I am thinking bases need a 'neutral' status.
When the defending empire tickets hit 0% .. the base, lattice, etc goes neutral.
(Jobs for a hacker! Terminals revert back to neutral after 30 seconds)
This is a double edged sword. It shuts out both attackers and defenders from equipment, vehicles, spawns.

Any empire with adjacency can then capture. This means you can earn a reward for recapturing your own base.
On a successful capture everything reboots and comes online for the victorious faction.

When I say base comes back online - shields up. generators repaired. turrets active.

socksTR · 2013-03-10, 05:32 AM

The SCU should be somewhere easily accessible by the defenders and at least minimally defended, Bio labs are a perfect example. I imagine all SCU's to be right outside the bases spawn room in their own little room with force fields protecting the doors at every base. Give every SCU a generator that takes around 30 seconds to destroy and removes the force field, the generators should be placed further away in the bases anywhere. Now SCUs should have a longer timer like 5 min, after the SCU is hacked and activated it will slowly add time to the defenders spawn timer making the defenders wait longer to spawn untill it blows up and ends spawning for the defenders for good. (Kind of like the SCU is shorting out). I feel this change will give defenders a proper chance to redeem themselves because the added time to their spawn should not be too much just enough so they know their SCU is going *poof*. There needs to be sirens going off in spawn rooms and red lights as well, just like Planetside because there is no way the defenders will not know that their SCU is under attack with those visual and audio queues. In closing I believe all this will only work if the SCU is near the spawn rooms, again like the bio-labs.

Once the SCU is gone and destroyed 9 times out of 10 the fight is over so after the SCU blows the capture-timer should move a lot faster so the attackers can move on to the next base assault.

I typed this on a tablet I apologize for the short handedness.

OctavianAXFive · 2013-03-10, 06:59 PM

Sorry if someone else pointed this out, I don't think that I saw this reading through the thread.

I just had a brainstorm and perhaps this might shed some light onto why Higby is asking about SCUs.

The rush-lane system. Think about it!

In Battlefield, the Rush game mode has two MCOM stations. The attackers have to destroy the MCOMs before moving on to the next map area. Think about what he might be implying/asking about in terms of the new map system.

I'm not making this as a suggestion, it just occurred to me what might be floating around his head. What if he is thinking about making the SCUs like MCOMs. They are indestructible until the attackers have reached that point in the lane. Instead of a conquest style capture point, what if outpost captures were now based on holding SCUs?

Perhaps some suggestions around how they might do that/or comment on why you think that's a bad idea.

I'm not sure what to think of it myself just yet. This thought just occurred to me and I'm mulling over the pro's and cons. Figured I would go ahead and post to see what other people come up with.

zulu · 2013-03-10, 08:00 PM

I like the basic way that the SCU is set up right now (generators power the shield that protects the SCU, and eliminating the SCU stops spawning), and I think making the SCU no longer work quite like that threatens to make battles in this game even more drawn out and boring.

I think most battles that aren't in a base or one of the handful of defensible minor bases/outposts basically boil down to this:
1) Attackers arrive.
2) They immediately overwhelm the defenders.
3) The defenders sit in their spawn room and take potshots for five minutes or so.
4) Eventually the hex flips sides, and everyone rushes the spawn room and slaughters anyone who didn't respawn elsewhere.

That's just awful. It's boring if you're on offense OR defense. I also think it's the source of a lot of complaints about "tank spam" and the like -- defenders get hit with HEAT and HE rounds while taking potshots, the tanks rack up kills, and the defenders feel helpless because they never really got a chance to defend before the attackers pushed them all the way back to their spawn point, and so they lash out at one aspect of the attackers, as if that were the source of the problem.

So, returning to this issue of SCUs, the SCU actually gives some structure to large base fights. These fights already tend to be better than the small base ones, because the defenders actually have a chance to stop the attackers before they crash the spawn room. But the SCU gives the battle some additional structure besides just "sit on the capture points," which frankly is usually pretty boring, too. Once the SCU is done, the battle is basically over. There's usually some waiting, but there's less of this continual potshot nonsense you see at the smaller bases and the outposts.

p0intman · 2013-03-11, 04:21 AM

Originally Posted by zulu

I think most battles that aren't in a base or one of the handful of defensible minor bases/outposts basically boil down to this:
1) Attackers arrive.
2) They immediately overwhelm the defenders.
3) The defenders sit in their spawn room and take potshots for five minutes or so.
4) Eventually the hex flips sides, and everyone rushes the spawn room and slaughters anyone who didn't respawn elsewhere.

That's just awful. It's boring if you're on offense OR defense. I also think it's the source of a lot of complaints about "tank spam" and the like -- defenders get hit with HEAT and HE rounds while taking potshots, the tanks rack up kills, and the defenders feel helpless because they never really got a chance to defend before the attackers pushed them all the way back to their spawn point, and so they lash out at one aspect of the attackers, as if that were the source of the problem.

Base. Design. Forcefields and wide open spaces are bad, kay devs?

Fenrys · 2013-03-11, 12:14 PM

I like it in principal, but some geographical changes might need to be made to support Higby's proposal.

IMHO, the SCU should be located underground or indoors, in a tunnel or series of rooms between the spawn room and the relevant control point. They should be fairly deep inside, so vehicles can't really effect that part of the battle.

Defenders pushing for the point will naturally end up defending the SCU.
Attackers holding the point will want to look toward the SCU from behind partial cover.

The defenders will need (an) alternate route(s) out of the spawn room to flank the attacking force holding the control point.

Figment · 2013-03-11, 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by Fenrys

I like it in principal, but some geographical changes might need to be made to support Higby's proposal.

IMHO, the SCU should be located underground or indoors, in a tunnel or series of rooms between the spawn room and the relevant control point. They should be fairly deep inside, so vehicles can't really effect that part of the battle.

Defenders pushing for the point will naturally end up defending the SCU.
Attackers holding the point will want to look toward the SCU from behind partial cover.

The defenders will need (an) alternate route(s) out of the spawn room to flank the attacking force holding the control point.

Pretty much this.

We had that in PS1, the main issue some people (not all, mind) had with it was that the corridors were too narrow without cover so you couldn't really advance through the suppression fire.

The problem was not that there were corridors to traverse in the first place.

I'd much rather take my chances traversing a corridor (with foxholes and crates for cover) facing infantry fire, than an open field facing explosives. Make reaching an objective worthwhile and it'll be done.

Unfortunately, there's the noobtube now and extremely low TTKs. Tunnelfighting with one hit kill explosives is not going to be fun either, even if the the tunnels were better designed. Noobtubes and similar equipment will need to be fixed (anyway).