Base defense seriously hampered by bouncy trampolines + hard-to-repair turrets

Rivenshield · 2012-12-08, 06:45 PM

/another shameless crosspost from the official forums, where it vanished without comment amidst the threads screaming about hackers

Just logged off after about fifteen minutes of utterly futile effeorts at base defense this morning... not ragequit; just a 'I don't want to deal with this pudu right now; I think I'll go read a book' thing.

1) Those freak-fracking bouncy pads that catapult you from one tower to the next are supposed to (a) make the defenders able to redeploy more easily, and (b) be a sop to the Tribes kiddies, right? Well, I've got news for you. They're bugged. Perhaps one time in four or five I land and take *another* bounce into the landscape beyond. I don't take any damage from the fall, but the landscape is full of Vanu with pew-pew laser guns, and *those* do damage. Did not make me happy at all.

The reason I was using them over and over is I was chasing attackers that had gotten into our base -- light assault, mostly -- and were using the pads to bound around our base like a bunch of rabid fleas. They sabotaged a generator, blew up our AMS, and generally played merry hell. Which is fine. There is no fair in Planetside; there is no CRYING in Planetside.

What cheeses me off is that this makes the base way way LESS defensible, not more. And that's not only the opposite of what they're supposed to do, it's the exact opposite of what we need. Did I mention they're ridiculous and farcical instead of hard SF-ey? Did I mention they're bugged? Replace the doggone things with teleport booths that only the defenders can use, as in the BioLabs.

2) Turrets can't shoot until they're at 100% health. This cheeses me off just as much. You kneel patiently while you take damage and the turret does; someone comes up and helps you; he dies; you get it up to maybe three-quarters spec and you want to hop in and freaking SHOOT BACK. But you can't. In PS1 (YES I'M BRINGING UP THE ORIGINAL GAME AGAIN, SHUT UP) you could get a turret up to I think half health and hop in and start taking potshots. You could repair and use turrets under fire and buy time for the defense. Now you can't. Fix it.

While you're at it, give them some kind of shield. Tie it into possession of an Amp station. That will buff them without making them harder to fix, and add a bit to the strategic metagame.

Not a rant, just a couple of observations. PS2 bases are the size of small cities, and impossible to defend even with a couple hundred warm bodies. They need to be made more defensible, not less. Hop to it, devs.

whipster · 2012-12-08, 06:54 PM

perhaps they should make them only usable to the faction that owns that base.

Rivenshield · 2012-12-08, 07:13 PM

Originally Posted by whipster

perhaps they should make them only usable to the faction that owns that base.

They'd still be stupid. It's an immersion-shattering dumbass video game device. It has no place in a hard-sci-fi mass slaughterfest.

whipster · 2012-12-08, 08:25 PM

Originally Posted by Rivenshield

They'd still be stupid. It's an immersion-shattering dumbass video game device. It has no place in a hard-sci-fi mass slaughterfest.

Any other way would require a complete revision of so many bases that we would get know other content(maps) for months. its an ugly solution but its the best one.

Sturmhardt · 2012-12-09, 08:46 AM

The pads suck and should only be usable by the defenders. They do more harm than good right now.

IronDagger · 2012-12-09, 09:48 AM

Yeah, last night a pad shot me right into the outside wall of a defense tower. No damage to me though. The guys in my outfit who saw it got a good laugh out of it.

Babyfark McGeez · 2012-12-09, 11:02 AM

I agree and can only repeat myself: Jumppads belong to over-the-top arena-styled shooters like Quake or Unreal Tournament but certainly not to planetside.

RSphil · 2012-12-09, 12:00 PM

i agree about the pads on the walls. im not too keen on them. the wall itself never gets used to get from one side to another. i think once i a great assault going along the top of a wall with 7-8 other NC. was awesome fire and maneuver stuff.

most of the time though its just jump from one corner to the next. jump pads are ok when getting to bio labs ect but they need taking off the walls. it spoils great fire fights.

Electrofreak · 2012-12-09, 12:57 PM

I'm not a fan of the jump pads myself. They make it far too easy for an LA attacker to relocate himself wherever he wants in your base in a matter of seconds. They should be making their way through the base rooftop to rooftop, using smoke grenades / flashbangs to avoid return fire and assault an objective like a generator. Instead, they just jet to the top of a tower and bounce around a few times until they're on the tower overlooking the generator.

Lame. PlanetSide is about tactics... a mechanic such as this just waters it down. Lets face it, defenders will generally spawn in the approximate center of the base and run towards the side they want to defend, or they will spawn at the AMS closest to that point. The jump pads are more useful to attackers than they are defenders.

Beerbeer · 2012-12-09, 03:21 PM

Lol, I spent a good few minutes going back and forth on those pads while attacking an amp station while four people tried to kill me. It was actually pretty funning as we all ping-ponged back and forth. We must have crossed paths mid-air six times as I tried to stay alive.

Also, there's a weird jump pad at the stronghold that just vaults you 100 yards into the road, near the vehicle re-arm terminal. No idea why; it should vault you to the cliffs above.