The 'NTU Silo' Discussion and Tower-Variants

[Tiletron|Hyncharas]

In the early Beta for PlanetSide, there was the idea of having an NTU Silo in some of the tower-variants, but in the end it was abandoned because hacking a tower would take less than a minute to complete, and probably provide too much of an advantage.

Going on to what I said in my last thread, this is where the 5-minute timer would come in. Say we put the NTU Silo back into the Watch Towers, and have a mechanism or vehicle pad outside that could ferry a power cell containing 10/100% energy to a nearby base. That could then serve as an acceptable compromise. Becuase it only carries 10% and it is much like the size of a Wraith, it would be both a one-person vehicle and lightly armoured, probably with the speed of a MAX unit at half-running speed due to its cargo.

Now, what about the other towers. Well, the Air Tower currntly completely repairs and re-arms an aircraft. This is a good thing in practice, but it provides a bit too much "invulnerability" for my taste. A better one would be so that it completely re-arms your aircraft, but only brings your hull integrity back up to 50%. There could also be a similar repair device found on bases, which does the same thing for ground vehicles.

Finally, the Gun Tower. At present, it has the same armanents as an Air Tower, but with no other features. To do a similar thing with the Air Tower, one equipment terminal could be removed and replaced with a Health terminal like the ones found in bases. Again, this would be similar to the Aerial pads and Repair Bay for the Air Tower, so healthe would only be replenished up to 50%.

[evregade]

I had my own idea on tower NTUs...

The Towers are linked to bases, unless the towers don't match the base empire.

Consider Cyssor for example.

The two Faro Towers, will share NTUs with Faro. The Warpgate Towers, never run out of NTUs because they are linked directly with the gate. Finally all outpost towers are linked to the Capitol (Gunuku). If the towers don't belong to the base, then they run off thier own NTU silo.

What do you think of that?

[Tiletron|Hyncharas]

What would you say for every other continent that doesn't have such benifits, "tough luck"?!?

My idea at least means like with AMS's, it would have to be escorted in some way to reach its destination. I would only like that idea if all the continents had a similar system.

[evregade]

Sorry i should have been more specific, i was using Cyssor as an example, of course this would be implemented on all conts, Cyssor was just the first thing that popped into my head, if someone tells you to name a PS base theres a good chance your gonna say Gunuku, cmon ;)

[Redford Blade]

Actually, I usually think of Wakea, Mont, or even Sedna first. :D But seriously, since vehicle construction and respawning take NTUs (Don't repairs need NTUs as well?) then the only facility that truly needs NTUs is an air pad, since it has those incredibly useful repair pads. If it runs out of power, it should be able to drain the base, or simply die. If the attached base is held by the enemy, then no power can be drained, and the tower dies. Of course, this would only apply to the repair pads, as the tower itself theoretically has some sort of generator for most stuff.

[Tiletron|Hyncharas]

Each soldier and vehicle has an energy bar that consists of NTUs (for vehicles it comes from the shield collectors used to add secondary armour, and with soldiers it consists of stamina). You could have it like that, I suppose, and make it so the warpgates recharge any vehicle in the area with a partial shield back up to full strength.

In other words, the tradeoff for repairing at the towers would be a drain on the shield/stamina bar, which for infantry reacharges over time anyway.

There is also the possibility that you could have the NTU-Transport ferried backwards and forwards by a Lodestar, which means the ability of having some form of protection would be possible. It would just lack the armanents to defend itself.