spawning bikes so I can get around..and thats about it EDIT oh, and buying the better ammo types, and weapon modifications
Upgrading Bases should be a faction choice as to which bases need to be fortified or invested in to manufacturer more RP. This sort of thing seems to be one of the key reasons why a War Council should exist at all, utilizing territories, figuring out which need to be strongholds, and which shouldn't be much invested in at all because they are maintainable positions. The strategic aspect of the game. Plus the aesthetic and longevity value of someone new coming along and deciding a different use for a territory.
Base Upgrades, or at least defensive upgrades, would also be crucial to lower the threat posed by random Tyranid attacks. It is an important choice whether you invest reources in an NPC defense that allows you to keep fighting in other territories while it keeps the Nids away from your ones, or whether you use the RP in the field but may have to drop everything and run back home due to critters of unusual size knocking at your door.
I would really like to have an open discussion with Miguel on this topic. I am aware he is currently on vacation & I have no interest in cutting it short. He has been working very diligently & deserves every minute of it. Seeing as those employed by BeHaviour are bound to the ethos "BeTrue, BeFair, Betransparent" I too will abide by these virtues & speak as plainly as I can with you on the subject. BeTrue: With the successful release of the founders program & the recent AMA, my expectations for this game reached an all time high. While very little had been stated regarding base upgrades, I assumed it was under development. When I found out yesterday that base upgrades were no longer apart of Eternal Crusade I was devastated. Base upgrades represent an integral part of base design & appeal to those seeking deeper strategic gameplay. BeFair: I recognize the overwhelming difficulty of adding something of this nature & resources needed to successfully implement it. BeTransparent: We are in Pre-Alpha. As an investor of this product I am very concerned that such a highly important/highly anticipated CORE feature is being removed from the game this early in development. While it was stated: "This might be a candidate for a feature to bring back after launch though!" leaving open the possibility that such features could be added later on....for each time I have heard this from other game developers I could give you 100 examples where features never came to fruition or were abandoned entirely. Right now there are thousands of potential customers...waiting...watching.. They are wary to get invested because they have been hurt before (Warhammer Online, Dark Millenium etc). MMO players are all to familiar with these kinds of "cuts" in development that often come in the form of red flags. It was stated that base upgrades were a likely candidate for after launch. This suggests that it is not a limitation within the engine itself but rather the resources available to BeHaviour. "If we get as much money as e.g. star citizen, sure, we can for sure add...." http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/will-there-be-variation-in-ork-size-mass.22035/page-4 If base upgrades are not within your means financially at launch then you must renegotiate with Games Workshop. This is a very important aspect of base design & will do wonders to separate yourself from your competition (Planetside 2) and appeal to those seeking deeper strategic gameplay. We are told as founders that we have involvement in the development process & that our input is used to help create Eternal Crusade. Please pursue this...
I think it's understandable to be dropped, it's like all forms of software development, you have deadline, a budget, and a finite resources to get everything done for the client, some tasks MAY take longer than expected to finish, in which case there is less time for other tasks to be finished, and sometimes that means certain features with a lower priority have to be hacked off during development to make up for that. But base upgrading has never been a definite feature, it's always been an idea, if it turned out they finished a bunch of other tasks really quickly then they may decide to pursue base upgrading and other ideas they've had as well.
the devs are humans so they might miss judge the time or the resources which are needed to create something besides if BE would do it like other games we wouldn't even know that they have planed to make bases upgradeable! maybe they don't even have a clue how to design upgrades for bases?
I don't want to sound overly cycnical, but seeing how this feature got dropped, I don't see how having known about it would make things much worse. It's naturally not as if bE had praised this particular feature to heaven and back, but the expectations of fans are a very fragile thing are very fragile and thus should be handled with care.
The concept of base upgrades sounds great. In reality, if you're thinking about making the focus on base defenses, it probably won't work in a game like this Scenarios: * A team spends loads of RP in super upgrades for a base + Yay, user engagement + Your team can divert attention elsewhere without having to worry about this base - It isn't fun for other players to try to take the base - The battle lines move away from your super base as you take more land - You've wasted a load of RP in a base that never gets attacked * You spend loads of RP in small upgrades to a base + I'm contributing to the team! - You still lose the base - You've wasted a load of RP in upgrades that didn't make much difference in the end result. * Somewhere in between the above two + Enemy teams have to mount a sizeable offensive in taking the base, awesomesauce, that is what we want - You've still wasted RP in a base that was taken any way When a player spends RP on upgrading to an elite or hero, they benefit. When they die, they've wasted the RP, but at least they had fun doing it. You'd have to counteract this effect by giving the user feedback on how well the defenses are doing, but how? Presumably, every player can't place their own turrets, so what, they get statistics on how much their X RP helped defend the base? Turret 3 done 6% more damage to the enemy, before it was destroyed, thanks to your upgrades! yay. What I'd like to see, is the war council determining upgrades for a location - players can then contribute RP to those upgrades (crowdfunding). I would try to vary the capturable locations as much as possible. Warp anomalies, mountain choke points, cave systems, air strips, bridges, silos, factories, etc. The majority of bases would be small outposts that can be established once the enemy has been cleared out of the strategic point. For example, the Space Marines could set up a teleporter beacon, a couple of hab or research units, etc. This comes flying down from the sky in drop pods The eldar set up a warp gate and bring supplies through. The orkz just pitch some tents. Something that could be torn down and re-erected else where. The upgrades that the war council place would be things like scanners for gathering intel, beacons for decreasing respawn times, generators that power the thing of value in the area. Maybe some placeable defenses like mines. Some of these would be mobile, so the war council can move their assets around. Some might be reclaimable; even if you've lost the point and can't reclaim it, you might be able to salvage some of your tech before the Orkz overrun you. As for the actual main defenses, they'd be determined by the location. Ork, Chaos and Space marines would be fine hooking up their generators and control interfaces to the area's technology (be that weapons, shielding or whatever). Eldar love to turn other races' tech against them.
