Officially Unofficial Weekly Discussion #12: All Your Base Are Belong To Us

[SeraphimKensai]

Welcome to another week. This week we delve into a bit of a subculture/subgame within the game base building.

 

Do you make your own base or use a sg or a friend's? Do you just use a base for a teleporter room and to store your loot, or do you use it for other purposes? What about base tours, are there any amazing bases that you want to bring up? If so who built it if you know? What are your thoughts on base PvP? Or potentially bringing back base raids? What features would you like to see bases used for in the future? Any big needs in the base editor?

 

Feel free to add pictures or base codes and servers if you'd like people to check out your bases.

[Glacier Peak]

When I saw the Weekly Thread name:

[Doc_Scorpion]

[DougGraves]

I have a SG I created and haven't touch since the day I made it.

 

I do have a base teleport macro for some base that I use occassionally.

 

And I have checked out some holiday decorated bases.  They can be very cool.

[UltraAlt]

4 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Do you make your own base or use a sg or a friend's?

 

I use some friends bases. I look at other people's base. I have made bases on all the servers, but, so far, not more than 3 bases on the same server.

 

4 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Do you just use a base for a teleporter room and to store your loot, 

 

All the bases that I have created have teleporter hubs to all locations.

I mostly store enhancements. I really only use salvage tables for holding holiday salvage. I don't put insp tables in bases.

 

4 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

or do you use it for other purposes?

 

I put an trainers, enhancement sellers, insp sellers, tailor, and an empowerment station in the bases I build.

My bases are built for role-play and, therefore, themed to the supergroup ... designed and decorated as such.

 

4 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What about base tours, are there any amazing bases that you want to bring up?

 

I don't really do base tours, but I provide access to my bases for anyone that asks or doesn't have one to use.

 

 

4 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

If so who built it if you know?

 

I think that is all listed in the thread listed above.

 

4 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What are your thoughts on base PvP?

 

Great for the people that want to PVP in their bases.

It isn't something that I do

 

4 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Or potentially bringing back base raids?

 

No. Please, no.

I'm glad base raids are not a thing.

 

4 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What features would you like to see bases used for in the future?

 

There are other base features I would like to see, but I think bases pretty much cover their purpose(feature?) as-is.

 

4 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Any big needs in the base editor?

 

@Dacy has several threads about base suggestions running.

Dacy is the Community Rep For bases

 

4 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Feel free to add pictures or base codes and servers if you'd like people to check out your bases.

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Supergroup_Base

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Everlasting_Base_List

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Excelsior_Base_List

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Indomitable_Base_List

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Reunion_Base_List

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Torchbearer_Base_List

[Spaghetti Betty]

Base Building is easily one of the coolest and most unique features CoH has.  And we have some absolute wizards when it comes to making cool bases. It requires an absurd amount of knowledge, time, and spatial awareness to make stuff. Or maybe drugs. It could take drugs.

 

I have a friend whose base looks like an expedition team digging for ruins in oceanic caves. It really surprised me.

 

My base is more or less a utility base with some rooms I made that I thought were neat. My base code is BETTY-17192. Anyone on Excelsior can stop by.

 

6 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What are your thoughts on base PvP? Or potentially bringing back base raids?

If it works like PvP but with custom maps, that sounds really cool. That can even open up things like people making their own "game modes". I just hope it never becomes anything like Base Raiding.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Spaghetti Betty

[Dacy]

57 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

@Dacy has several threads about base suggestions running.

Dacy is the Community Rep For bases

Dacy is actually one of the TWO Community Reps for base building, the other being @Easter Bunny.

 

Yes, I use my own bases. I mostly use them for the convenience of having nearly everything I need all in the same place, plus the salvage so I don't have to go buy each thing I need when crafting. But bases have many uses. Some people use them for  RP, some people use them for socializing (in clubs and such), and they can even be used for games. My Witch's House, which I open every year for the Halloween season and do a huge giveaway on Halloween, is more of an experience than anything, like a haunted house + amusement park ride.

 

I have slowly been doing video tours of some of the amazing bases that I know, but, the awesome builders here are outpacing me. So far, I have tours of some of my own bases (excluding the Witch's House, which, as I said, is meant to be an experience, the fun is in the surprise), plus : The Pagoda GHOST-1471  (by @Spirit aka Squidget) , Rat City RATCITY 2259 (by @CrazyCataka Gizmouse) , Sleigh Belles XMAS-7920 (by @Easter Bunny) , Karma KARMA-508 (by @Dropout), Paragon Galleria PSHOPPING-13668 (by @TwentySix aka Pshaw), and coming very soon, RAINYDAY-14113 and SKYHIGH-15065 by @BBBadger). Future plans include showcasing Granny Victoria's Tea Room TEATIME-17990 (by @aalyasenai aka Aalya), Vault Luxe VAULTLUXE-17647 (by @Easter Bunny and @BBBadger with some help from a few others), and I hope Boardwalk BOARDWALK-20034 (by @Wravis/Jibily), All of those except Sleigh Belles are on Everlasting. There are so many bases I've missed; not sure of codes on all of them. I do recommend Shades of Arachnos 315-6811 on Excelsior (by @Gio Valia), and DIVINE-1512 (by @Invigilium). And I need to get out more because that is by far not all of the bases that are awesome.

 

PvP in bases could be a lot more fun and perhaps challenging than in other places. Base raids are a nope, would rather keep bases are they are, because what has allowed us to build as we do was in part, getting rid of the rules that they needed for PvP.

 

Many people want to be able to put foes on a base map; that could make for an interesting custom mission.

 

Base needs: well, see my thread, but we'd really like everything from more building pieces that are basic in different shapes so we can use them in many ways, to smaller letters, customizable NPCs, a copy/paste feature, the end of base shift, the ability to surface map surfaces so we can FINALLY get sand and snow, more walls, doors, door jams, windows, floors, ceilings and roofs...and so many more things. 🙂

 

-Dacy

[twozerofoxtrot]

8 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What features would you like to see bases used for in the future?

 

1) A WW/Shady NPC to access the AH.

 

2) An AE console.

This is a hard ask, I know, because you're trying to acess an instance within an instance. But I've been in a few RPSGs where we sort of had to dump verisimilitude of the scene to relocate to an AE tower somewhere in the overworld to get to the custom content to continue the story and that kinda sucks. 

 

 

Edited January 18, 2023 by twozerofoxtrot
I realized after posting I answered a question that wasn't being asked but too bad. The post stays!

[Clave Dark 5]

Never made a base, hardly in any either.  I do have a few codes to use them here and there though, at least on a few of my characters.  It's not a common thing for me though.

 

I have seen some amazingly wonderful and creative bases though, like during Halloween.

[Uun]

I belong to a SG on Torchbearer that has a full blown base with all the bells and whistles. I use it occasionally, but find it too big and unwieldy for travel and use one of the transit hub portals for that purpose.  I also don't use it for storing enhancements I don't want to share, as the current system only allows restricting access by SG rank. It would be nice to have the option to create personal enhancement storage. On Excelsior I have a personal SG for all my characters and built a 1-room base. It has zone teleporters, medical bay, enhancement, salvage and inspiration storage, pillar of ice and fire, empowerment station, trainer and vendor.

[Doc_Scorpion]

I do have a base for my personal SG, but it's pretty bare bones.  An entrance room, a teleporter hall, a medic/inspiration bay, and a crafting/storage area.  I did do the bare minimum to lay it out rather than having just One Big Room...  But yeah, it just barely misses being One Big Room.  There's no decorative items whatsoever.

I eternally plan to do something more with it, but then something I'd rather do (such as a dentist's appointment) catches my attention and so I never get around to it.  This is partly due to actual lack of interest, partly due to how annoying the editor is.

I don't PvP and have no interest in PvP and so have no opinion beyond "whatever you do, don't muck up bases for the majority to appease the very loud minority".  Let them jump through the hoops.

What I'd like to see in the future...  The ability to build smaller bases!  Everything is so. darned. huge.  (Even the basic building square/cube is sized for a Titan.)  I always feel like an ant.

[srmalloy]

5 hours ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

A WW/Shady NPC to access the AH.

This has been rebutted over and over again; the AH is accessible in open zones because the entire zone accesses a single copy of the AH data that is loaded when the zone is spun up. To make the AH accessible in bases (or any other instance), each base would have to have a copy of the AH data, which would be loaded each time someone enters a previously unoccupied base. Think "City of Slideshows". The limitation is, unfortunately, baked deeply into the code, and would require a major rewrite, with all of the unfortunate bugs that such a rewrite would introduce, to be pounded out over time.

[UltraAlt]

9 hours ago, Dacy said:

Dacy is actually one of the TWO Community Reps for base building, the other being @Easter Bunny.

 

Whoops. Sorry. My bad. No insult intended @Easter Bunny

 

 

 

 

Edited January 18, 2023 by UltraAlt

[Andreah]

I use a public Teleporter/Conveniences base on my server for most of my base teleport/crafting/icon needs.

 

On Live, I made a number of large, decently well designed bases via furniture/bookcase/safe-stacking techniques. Ugh, but it worked.

 

Here and now, I have three bases of my own for solo groups I keep some of my characters in.

 

One base is for storing items I craft/convert/trade on the auction house.

 

Another base is older, and was intended to be a roleplay thematic residence base, but my builder quit and the architectural/decorating challenge of it is beyond me to finish. The base editor does a lot, but has a high barrier of entry, and has significant bugs remaining - key among those to me being the one where if you use a large screen, only the left hand 1/3 of it works for placing/moving objects.

 

My most recent base is a hybrid of some storage and a very elementary thematic set of apartments for my characters in that group. it's unfinished, but I am working on it slowly.

 

[Greycat]

I've *built* bases in the past, but find myself without ... plan or energy these days, so mine tend to be mostly utilitarian. I have friends who do other bases which we tend to use for RP purposes. Only one I've done anything close to "publicly" was one called Stages, pre-Echo plaza, just to have somewhere to bring people for costume contests with steady lighting, and I don't think it was ever used - I threw in an extra room (a 'borrowed' warehouse/garage) for a scene at one point, but other than that.... *shrug*

 

I keep thinking of rebuilding some, but... time, energy, ambition. With the whole "building above the base" thing, there's one I'd love to build/expand, but ... yeah. No idea where to start, and what I have in mind I think would get annoying and/or frustrating for me quickly.

 

As far as PVP? I don't really care about it in the base. *shrug* I can do without raids.

 

The editor (like a few other things) needs a complete overhaul. I agree with scale - both for the base "blocks" and several items (like the old "you are all toddlers at the grownup table" sized SG tables - with chairs you may not be able to get in.) Being able to do things like... let's say Sim City style, drawing a road (with road texture,) raising and lowering some terrain, having basic shapes (you can texture) to deal with really building things, having "walls" and "floors" where you don't have to guess which has a texture on both sides, being able to lock (say) a string of fence pieces together to move as a single longer fence, being able to copy/paste bases or have some premade ones available for people who want a spot without all the building - yes they'd be more generic, but for "I have my house," it'd be fine...

 

Rgh. Could go on with that for days.

[Dacy]

16 hours ago, Andreah said:

- key among those to me being the one where if you use a large screen, only the left hand 1/3 of it works for placing/moving objects.

That is not a common bug! I’m not sure what the cause is, but it’s not an editor bug, because I can place anywhere on the screen. I’d have to say, and I’m not an expert on how systems work, but seems like a problem in your system. 
 

-Dacy

[Dacy]

3 hours ago, Greycat said:

he editor (like a few other things) needs a complete overhaul. I agree with scale - both for the base "blocks" and several items (like the old "you are all toddlers at the grownup table" sized SG tables - with chairs you may not be able to get in.) Being able to do things like... let's say Sim City style, drawing a road (with road texture,) raising and lowering some terrain, having basic shapes (you can texture) to deal with really building things, having "walls" and "floors" where you don't have to guess which has a texture on both sides, being able to lock (say) a string of fence pieces together to move as a single longer fence, being able to copy/paste bases or have some premade ones available for people who want a spot without all the building -

Agree some things need resizing, but as for the rest of this: first, remember we’re working with a game that’s 20 years old, has a volunteer work force with limited time, and the base part of the game is complex. It’s doubtful an entire overall could be achieved without blowing up everyone’s bases, and the team doesn’t want to do that. Regarding comparison to the SIMS: in that game, building your environment is at least half the entire game, instead of a quality of life sideline. They could afford to put the kind of resources towards that that you see. We do have one of the most flexible editors in the industry, you can do things with this editor you just can’t even dream of in other games, or really in most games. I’m not saying it can’t and won’t be improved, but you’re never going to see those level of changes. 
 

-Dacy

[Dacy]

Oh, I mentioned that I had another base tour debuting shortly, and here it is:

 Comments and upvotes appreciated on YouTube so that more people see it, if you feel like being kind. 🙂 (And if it's genuine, of course!)

 

-Dacy

[SeraphimKensai]

41 minutes ago, Dacy said:

Oh, I mentioned that I had another base tour debuting shortly, and here it is:

 Comments and upvotes appreciated on YouTube so that more people see it, if you feel like being kind. 🙂 (And if it's genuine, of course!)

 

-Dacy

These people are infinitely more talented at base construction than I am. Shit is almost like one of those HGTV shows my wife likes to watch "Lifestyles of the Rich Enough to have a 3 million dollars house budget, and be oblivious to the rest of you scraping by paying a mortgage or rent".

[ZemX]

Ain't nobody got time for that!

 

Okay, okay... that isn't true.  I am just lazy.  Soooo lazy.   I make my own SGs for my alts and more or less the same utilitarian base for each server I have any characters on.   Portal entrance room with trainer, QM, nurse, tailor, and rezzer.  Four arms leading off that with three being teleporter rooms, each colored red, blue, and yellow for hero (+co-cop), villain, and Praetorian zones.  The fourth room is where I stuff all the bins and work tables.

 

Boring!  But it works.

 

My wants are mostly things HC team probably can't do, some of which is already mentioned, like the AH access.  Be nice not to have bugs associated with going to base while on a mixed faction team, respeccing, or boosting/attuning enhancements while inside a base.

 

Maybe another check box to allow teammates to enter your base even when you're not the team leader?  Yeah, you can give out the password but that's less convenient than just having it show up on the menu when you click the portal.

[Snarky]

I have the obligatory storage base.  95%+ of all my toons are in it, and no one else.  It is on the biggest footprint and it is howling empty.  Except for storage, telepads, and random large sculptures to fill space.

 

Cosmic Council has a few great bases.  Its main base is very detailed.  But of particular interest to me is the Cosmic Council Revenant Base.  Top notch work.  I have seen a number of high quality bases, generally during festivities around holidays when people are doing events.  There is a lot of real talent in the player base indeed.

[Andreah]

On 1/19/2023 at 3:51 AM, Dacy said:

That is not a common bug! I’m not sure what the cause is, but it’s not an editor bug, because I can place anywhere on the screen. I’d have to say, and I’m not an expert on how systems work, but seems like a problem in your system. 
 

-Dacy

Others have had this bug too.

 

In my case, I run in 4K unscaled mode -- Under Windows "Settings" -> "Display" -> "Scale and layout" I have it set to 100% instead of 150%, which makes 4K monitors fuzzy and unsharp. Basically that makes your 4K monitor run at 2560x1440. 

 

Then I configured CoH like this:

Edited January 20, 2023 by Andreah

[Andreah]

Another "need" I can see in the editor is for more of the placeable objects to be fully enclosed on all sides. E.g, if I raise a wall up, I'd like to not be able to look up inside it.

 

It would also be cool to be able to "mirror" objects, but I suspect that would require making extra 3-D models of them.

[Andreah]

Okay, here's one potential very useful feature in the base editor -- the ability to nudge an object exactly one grid unit in any of the six cardinal directions; up, down, left, right, forward, backward.

 

Or maybe that's there and I've never found it?