I think the walls being a bit of a NIC sink is a good thing as those are needed too, might not want to make this fully player reliant.

Already see an issue, once the initial expense is paid, there is no further upkeep required other than replacement.  We are already seeing wall spam on an epic scale, and some limitation might be in order.  Two possible immediate suggestions come to mind:

1)  Walls become non-permanent structures, that have a limited life and have to be replaced, or require some maintenance to keep them healthy

2)  Walls have an associated cost over time.  Call it a maintenance fee, for every wall segment you have, there would be a monthly fee.

Either of these would limit spamming walls to some extent.  Right now, it's just too damn easy to build thousands of walls all over beta, and for them to remain as permanent features useless specifically targeted with bombs or weapon fire, with no need to do anything to maintain them.

Initially, the wall spamming is working very well as a NIC sink. Its still a new mechanic, so how it is going to afffect roaming, and how often walls are going to need to be repaired from bombs in unknown.

At this point, I don't see the harm in letting the players play with the sand. But I wouldn't exclude the possibilty of some maintance requirments in a later patch.

Kentagura is probably the most walled Island out there, and I didn't notice any lag issues playing between 8 and 11 PST. But the area was also well explored, so there was no 'first time' loading or the area, which may cause lag as the client synchs. Not sure how that mechanic works.

Although walls will probably will be targetable at some point, it seems like it swings the bomb issue to the other direction; that is no one will carry bombs. The 10U requirement means no small bots can carry them at all, and there's little room for ammo then in the larger ones.

Where do you see bombs being used if you can target walls?

As possible variant: limit walls to be constructed in a X KM radius around your structure (outpost), not further.

Adding in some feature thoughts that haven't been implemented yet too, like Artillary which I'm guessing won't need to be targeted, can also be used to take down walls without making the walls targetable.

Targetable walls, like Anni points out, are only as strong as the one tile that can be dps'd down. When they aren't targetable, then that makes them much more complicated to breach.

From a miner's perspective, a detector bot could previously make the rounds on 4 or 5 beta Island epi spots in less than an hour. Meaning it was very difficult to mine on beta without getting spotted, that includes island owners not just ninja miners. This is also true for the more common resources too, and a reason why people are saying they just mine on Alpha.

Walls make it much more difficult to roam around quickly.

From the roamers perspective, there are normally only about 10 players out on the beta islands, and it takes an hour of roaming just to find one.

Now we have a chicken/egg issue. If walls increase the number of players using beta, then the roamers will have a better chance of finding them; Ratters as well as miners. however, until players realize walls make beta safer, they won't go out and use them, making less targets, and roamers will get frustrated.

Its one thing to know there are targets in an area, then bring in bombs to get to them, and another to expect roamers to carry bombs for recon. But allowing roamers to blow holes in walls, means that sense of security disappears again, and we're back to 10 people in beta.

Walls are good and natural growth time is not bad at all.
Charges to make them grow faster is good idea. | Keep charges

anything that can be destroyed should be "PERMANENT" until destroyed by another player the idea of walls growing then dying is nonsense and makes no sense ... the nanobots that construct them all of a sudden decide to tear them down ?!?

All PBS's that come into the game should be designed to allow the player corp to make its make on the landscape forever or until removed by another player corp.

+100 to walls as is !!! -1 for not requiring a skill to use the wall converter modules

+1

Walls are not strong, they are resilient. They ignore low amounts of damage almost completely but you hit them with enough force at the same time and CRACK.

If you're a light robot roaming game, it's time to change tactics a little. You'll enjoy it soon enough.

Walls really have given island owners a lot of power to shape activity on 'thier' Island. This seems appropriate, since they are the ones putting in the time to defend it. Binary's mostly right though, the days of the fastest bots determining where and when to fight is gone. Walls slow down engagements, and give defense time to organize counters. Argueably more strategy and tactics are needed, on both sides.

From a risk reward standpoint, there's always been the issue where the reward of living on beta wasn't offset by the reward. Instead of making the reward greater, the walls make it feel like less risk, balancing it out and making beta more attractive.

There probably needs to be another 'layer' added back in, a Mid-Game though. Where solo and small groups can come together over targets less valuable than saps. outposts are for battles, and small objectives for skirmishes. If the next set of Islands are BIG continents, that that's going to be perfect, because they will simply be too big for corps to control the whole island (at least at our current population) even with walls.

Wallspam is bad for the game.

The best idea I've heard so far is to link walls to some kind of nearby "hub" structure that requires active maintenance (energy, fuel, money, watever, per wall tile). Distance from the hub should be limited (like, 1km radius). Total number of hubs also limited. This way we can build fortifications around bases and other important places, but can't spam indiscreetly. 1km from op/tp limitation needs to be removed in this case. Maybe outposts can serve as proto-hubs themselves.

Also we should be able to shoot wall (and plant) tiles directly.

"Fuel" them up with plasma perhaps? Having them up will be a good nic sink

You call it a wall spam, I say you are jelly because you don't even own a beta island.

"you're not in an MMO to make friends, you're there to make enemies "