Base assaults, base defense, and rivals. These three activities, along with assignments, are the primary features of endgame and they’re all centered around region score.
However, none of these activities mesh well and players are actually discouraged from partaking in them due to the way the system works. Destroying these targets reduces region score, which is the opposite of what you want since that slows down gameplay!
Rivals are rewarding, but destroying them results in less rivals spawning. Furthermore, rivals tend to spawn alone or in small groups and are easily isolated wherein they just become bullet sponges.
Base assaults feel wholly unrewarding for the amount of effort they require to destroy. High level bases are devoid of anything interesting and just eat up time and resources to knock down wall after wall with little of value behind.
Base defense feels like a waste of resources. Everything built without cement gets blown over by a stiff breeze and anything built with cement is only slightly tougher; yet the rewards rarely amount to even breaking even with repairs. Even for those of us who are loaded with resources and want to have fun, we’re restricted by build limits, and after all that we get 5-15 minutes of gameplay and then it’s over.
I want to suggest a couple of changes to make these activities more attractive, but more importantly bring them together into a more coherent system.
Region score should not go down by by killing rivals and destroying bases; that’s basically punishing people for success. Instead, score reduction should happen on being incapacitated; as that’s the general failure state. i.e. Things keep ramping up until the player is overwhelmed.
Region level should dictate how quickly activities come and how quickly they get stronger. So say… every level will give FNIX one “point” per “cycle” to spend on spawning or strengthening rivals/bases.
Now, instead of just gaining HP, rivals have several aspects that FNIX can upgrade to enhance their deadliness.
Enhance Sensors: Rivals project a radius where they begin tracking players if they enter.
Enhance Aggression: This determines map speed when wandering or tracking.
Enhance Warform: This is the standard toughness that you see currently.
Enhance Battlegroup: Each upgrade strengthens the type and amount of enemy machines following.
Reaper can’t upgrade but has infinite sensor range and high chase speed; as to be a constant menace befitting its name. Also, give the Reaper a “World slot” separate from rivals.
Let’s move on to FNIX outposts:
As I said, bases are a bunch of walls filled with nothing, so let’s put stuff in them and hopefully make them a more organic part of the world. Give bases similar features as above, but also have those features introduce vulnerabilities and loot.
Base Entrenchment: More walls and defenses as we’ve already seen.
Radar Array
- Upgrades boost the range of the bases abilities.
- Deploys the smaller, destroyable radar dishes in the area along with runner escort
- Deploys a large radar dish at the base which can be destroyed to reduce radar level.
- If you attack the base without destroying the dish, the base can send out an alert and call nearby rivals.
Quick Response Force:
- If you enter combat in the base’s radar range, it will send airdrop reinforcements with a cooldown.
- The higher the level, the shorter the cooldown.
- Deploys Fuel canisters and Production Facilities at the base, which can be destroyed to cause damage and lower QRF level.
Area Patrols:
- The base will send out armed patrols to guard the areas in radar range.
- Number of patrols, unit rank, and unit strength depends on level.
- Deploys fuel storage and production facilities at base which can be targeted and destroyed to reduce area patrols.
Fire Support:
- The base will launch out mortar strikes (like when attacking the core) if you enter combat while in radar range.
- Cooldown depends on level.
- Deploys mortar cannon and ammunition storage at the base; which can be destroyed to reduce mortar level.
I’m sure there are plenty more you can add with some thought.
So we have these things that fill up bases, but we still need to add a reward for them right? Right now the common idea is to either snip them in the bud or go in with overwhelming firepower and blow everything down. So how about we reward players with the ability to salvage whatever isn’t destroyed?
The core will give uranium as normal, and then you’d get a percentage of whatever walls weren’t destroyed and captured facilities.
Okay, so we have powerful rivals that hunt us, powerful bases that make things harder; how do we keep players from being overwhelmed? That’s where player bases come in.
Player bases are where we can put stolen FNIX facilities to use and, more importantly, face large numbers of enemies in an environment that gives us the upper hand.
First off, let’s put those facilities to use:
Radar Jammer: Having an active jammer reduces the sensor range of all rivals/bases in that region. Having more set up increases the effect.
Production Facilities: Stolen production machines can be repurposed to create raw resources or craft items at a much more resource-efficient manner at the cost of time. Having more set up increases the amount of product(s) that can be made.
Fire Support: Utilizing stolen FNIX weapons, you can call down fire support using Binocs. Having more allows shorter cooldown or multiple stored uses.
Having these facilities (especially if they’re large or oddly shaped) makes base defense a bit more multi-faceted instead of just having boxes around the base truck. You can cap the amount of facilities of course, but if something like that was added; I’d rather have a soft cap that requires additional things like generator pylons or something.
Now, FNIX isn’t going to take this lying down and will send assaults to your base. Having a pending FNIX assault causes all facilities there to shut down if the assault isn’t dealt with in a timely manner. Lifting the siege will resume activities as normal.
However, it’s not just that. You can start a FNIX siege at any time; and active Rivals and FNIX bases will also come in to attack; 1-3 of depending on difficulty. Letting you fight hard battles in a place you have an advantage. A FNIX base that sends support to a base assault will lose 1 level of a random upgrade (rivals will probably just die); so you can keep it up to drain their power.
Before all that though, we actually have to build a base. Regular base defenses use up resources and get destroyed easily… which is fine for the most part. However, I suggest we allow players to decide what resource they want to use.
So first off, we introduce “Building Materials” which I will shorten to Bmats, feel free to use whatever name you want. To get Bmats, you simply add any crafting material to the base stockpile (although maybe exclude things like uranium just in case) and it will convert into Bmats at 1:1. Base buildings such as walls, doors, and defenses will all use Bmats instead of just steel/wood; decorations can keep using whatever to save time; while stronger defenses will use cement or both. This is a one-way conversion only. Bmats, along with base-building exclusives like cement and captured FNIX facilities are stored in a shared “Building supplies” accessed from the base truck. Thus, freeing up space in recycling.
That being said, I’d appreciate it if the defensive building limits were softened and if turrets were allowed to use all types of ammo instead of just 7.62 (which already dominates the gun list). And cement buildings will need to be significantly buffed to be used as the core of building defenses whereas Bmats will form the primary throw-away defenses.