I like the idea of walls when built have predetermined turret placements.

Wall - turret - Wall

|%%%%|__|%%%%|__|%%%%| <-- Walls built with turret spots ready for turrets

|%%%%|-T-|%%%%|-T-|%%%%| <-- Same wall now with turrets placed in the turret spots.

Modular, mount turrets on top of walls or in front.

and I will not stop requesting manually Painted Zones for terraforming as best conceptual solution to ending the madness of bottle-necking TPs and other island choke points.

Logically,

The POS system is there to make the terminal and immediate facilities secure, essentially securing your base against small groups and roams.

The problem with Gamma 1.0 was that a combination of bad design and player creativity allowed us to redefine an entire island as "our base".

Thus my original suggestion... Multi-tile walls and gates, allowing us the creation of proper castles. Tie it up to terminal bandwidth (walls need to be powered), make it so walls & gates have to be part of a closed loop system (to prevent walling off peninsulas), figure out a reasonable way of limiting it so it's not a 5x5km base around a teleport or whatever, and go from there.

I just don't see a way how to fix terraforming without it being a ticking timebomb.

I've just had a thought actually...

I don't know about you guys but I'm quite sick of the blue/yellow/green hued islands and lighting. Terraforming is MUCH more then shoveling dirt around and piling it on top of each other... What if you could power a POS structure that terraforms the very island around it to a different color/something new all-together (why do you think its called TERRAforming)?

Pipe dream I know.

I would look at EVE's wormhole system though, their entire mechanic is very interesting there are definitely some great ideas and lessons to be learnt from that - even if they can't be directly applied to Gamma.

+1 dead-end chains of gammas, central gammas, variations variations variations variations

Thats the point. Mud walls were never meant to be a defence.

Zoom, I don't see why vertical terraforming walls is an issue within your idea of Manually Painted Zones. You can keep them isolated to designated spots on island (far away from TP). Bases will need strong defenses as there will be no way to deny access to island.

Of course you have to Paint carefully, taking into consideration turret range from the edge of your painted zone.

Would love to see this concept tested. You can even start testing with existing mechanics.

Here is the point of and problem with Terraforming

Players in pvp use terrain to their advantage even on the beta islands where you cant terraform, players take high points .. use hills to block los between them and their opponent ... Use structures (veertical walls) around teleports to block los and kill their opponent. and all other types of strategic manipulation to gain an advantage over their opponent.

once you accept that terrain is a offensive and defensive counter measure in combat the sooner we can come to a solution for gamma. This is a LAND based combat game of course terrain is going to be used as a counter measure!

Archipelago and make terraform able to flatten only. Once you have a good understanding on how gamma is working you can release terraforming again on massive islands.

Based on the Elder scrolls online fort capturing system, i'd like to see Attack on a well built base consist of the following stages, I do understand that players will find ways to use them in ways they were not intended though.

Siege

• Use long range artillery (Slow/Stationary, Large energy use/Heavy ammo) to take out perimeter defense. (Only damage certain structures, turrets/boosters/nodes maybe to prevent being used to destroy or put major non-defensive structures into reinforced/destroyed)(Maybe requires target painters to see from a distance and can't be used at close range) (Doesn't hurt players very much?)

• Defenders have an oppurtunity here to form up and counterattack, where they try to take out the slow enemy artillery bots/deployables.).

Breach

• Destroying the enemy gate/s or Wall (High HP/High cost structure (Based on rank), can't place near each other etc)

• Using a Short, one way teleport to breach a portion of the enemy defenses and gain access to some interior of the base. (High Volume [100U?]Long chargeup based on distance?, no cooldown but limit on number of players 5/10/20 etc, short range, maybe have another deployable on the other side to set up 2 way travel.)(Think of this as putting a ladder on an enemy keeps walls or tunneling under them or something)

Assault

• Attack enemy structures, destroy or put into reinforced mode, kill resistance, or be killed, defenders have advantage of being able to redeploy quickly.

Other Thoughts

• Limit Terraforming, but not to the degree it currently is (Maybe a height limit between tiles) need to be able to flatten out areas of land for use, and build roads with highways.

• Encourage use of walls (New walls as an actual structure with gate/turret intergration?) painted zone might work to stop teleport walling, and discourage use of terraformed walls (Increase Breach time when near a wall?

• Some way to make verticle walls or slanted built ones, not high ones, but extreme stretching of cliff textures is ugly.

• No degredation on concrete tiles within "Claimed Area", maybe extend this to deployable walls, still can take damage though.

Basically, i want the player to be able to build a castle if they want, but i don't want it to be invincible from a well organised force.

No way you read the whole thread. Anyone advocating Flat islands is advocating to just shut down the servers.

Also, though you are missing lots of suggestions the one I most want to see tested is quoted in my signature from about 4-5 pages back.

If Devs think it would be 'easy' to manually paint terraformable zones, then the 'easiest' thing to do would be try that with the Old Mechanics and lets discuss from there. On test server, start with old Gamma Mechanics only on painted portions of some Gamma map ...then adjust from there.

I guess I'm like the only one who thinks this is a fair idea

This is not a bad Idea ( I kinda like it ) but with this change in addition to (terminal distance restrictions) It would basically be the equivalent of 1 terminal per gamma island on most islands with a 3 to 5 K build / TF radius around them. I am assuming that the devs will "paint" an area in the center of the island small enough so you can not TF off 75% or more of the island.

The old mechanics are i think the best way to do terraforming ... sadly because of the bad taste left in the devs mouth from the walls of Imidero they are hell bent on not allowing vertical walls. This is sad that adjustments can not be made to the system, but the system as a whole must be thrown out, instituting sever height limitations was all that was needed to begin with but that was never even tested.