[Rivenshield]

/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.