vets! I seek your knowledge!

From time to time on the forums I have seen the term "base raids" referred to. Apparently it was something that was in game before but isn't anymore. I'm only coming up on my 12-month vet badge in April so I guess I missed this. What was it? Was it fun? Why did they stop it? I read in the web blog that all the threads are on right now that it was coming back possibly. Is there a build that would be good for this or will anything (io'd or not) do?

the base raids is you pvp'd in sg bases to steal items of power

i never took part because i dislike pvp, and i dont remember why they disabled it, but it was disabled around i13 i think (which was about 1.5 years ago)

I wouldn't bother thinking about builds for this, if base raids do come back it's not gonna be for a while and they're probably not going to resemble the old style base raids (and even if they did, the game has changed a lot since then). If you really wanted to be prepared for the return of old style base raids, work on a PvP build for your character, since that's what base raids were.

EDIT: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Base_Raid

EDIT x2: My original post is slightly inaccurate, I didn't realize base raids were only turned off with I13, I thought it was much sooner than that.

So I guess I just missed it then (came in 2 weeks pre-i14). Just after my OP, I remembered seeing a raid button on my VG window. Did everyone actually have visible bases? Or would they just tp to each other's bases?

sounds pretty cool all the same.

you'd take a base raid teleporter to the opposing group's base

I can't remember the exact problem to what made them turn base raids off...something to do w/ pathing issues I think.

also, yes, they were quite fun, though there were still a few bugs with it before it went offline

-you'd lose all your buffs (ally given or inspiration) upon teleporting
-your toggles would be turned off upon teleporting
-spawn in the same spot after teleporting (well...can't remember if that was a bug or not...)

This didn't happen all the time, but was quite annoying when it did. I can honestly say though...fighting a all Mastermind Team when it's their turn to defend their base is quite troublesome...lol

nice, thanks for the 411, everyone!

the mish computer still has the option "configure raid teleporter for cathedral of pain trial" but if you click on it it will just say its disabled (IMHO they should have just removed the option for now)

i think there is also a "raid" button on the sg window as well when you click on someone it has a "challenge sg to raid" option, although neither of those will work now (again, they should have perma-grayed those out or removed them for now, IMO)

Technically what was advertised as base raiding NEVER fully came online. People had the ability to engage in 'practice raids' up until I13, which essentially were PvP on player generated maps (the defending Super Group base).

The original design for base raids, something that was originally slated to go live with CoV, was that of taking Items of Power from other Super Groups. There was a raid style event called the Cathedral of Pain in which up to three teams were to attack the Shadow Shard to get these Items, which would grant bonuses to anyone in Super Group mode. Having one of these Items would make the Super Group leader set a window or time, two hours each week, where other Super Groups could enter the base and attempt to take the Item for their own.

Unfortunately, either the Trial or the Items themselves have never worked right. Exploits and bugs have plagued the entire system. What may have been the killing blow was when the devs tested, that's when they found out about PvP's imbalance, and thus the PvP changes.

yeah, Teams spawning in separate instances was quite the problem, though I'm sure the biggest problem was that you could get all...7? IoPs in less than a hour.

At the PAX discussion

Q: Any plans for PvP getting some changes?

A: It is something on the slate, but it will be a couple of Issues from now. Base Raids, Items of Power are also planned on being repurposed but fixed

I remember coming across a thread in the Base Construction boards where someone was pondering a Base Raid scenario where one SG was going to be purposely malicious to the other SG's Base. From what I can remember, while capturing the Items of Power is the main objective in a Base Raid, during the Raid, you can also damage and destroy Base equipment. This is so you can neutralize the automated Base defenses.

The "what if" scenario is: what if the malicious SG's only goal was to enter an SG base to destroy its Tier2 or Tier3 power supply? I forget how Prestige is handled with restoring a destroyed Base object after the Raid is finished, so I don't know if you have to pay extra to recraft it. However, cost isn't much of a concern to an SG who is big enough to have afford one of these already. The problem is: how would the SG go about recrafting it?

Unlike the Tier1 power supply (Basic Generator/Power Crystal) which is purchaseable, the Tier2 (Turbine Generator/Ley Tap) and Tier3 (Fusion Generator/Dimensional Vortex) need to be crafted with an Advanced or Expert work table respectively. And for a work table to "work", it needs power -- but the Base has no power (because it was destroyed during the Raid).

The fact that the Base is using one of these high end power supply implies that the Base is huge to massive. The current way Bases are set up for power, it is all or nothing. You need enough power for everything before anything that needs power to work. Just buying a Tier1 power supply won't be enough to power up the Base and you can't buy more than one.

So now the victim SG is screwed. The only way to create a new Tier2 or Tier3 power supply is to sell off a major quantity of their Base's powered items to get their overall power requirement low enough for the dinky Tier1 power supply to kick in so the work table can be used. This can effectively cause the SG to strip out hours, days or weeks worth of design efforts and lock them out of future Base Raids until their gutted Base is rebuilt.

I think base raids were fun....to a point. It was fun just to raid different bases to try and win. You 'won' by a few conditions: 1.) steal the Item of Power if the other SG had one or 2. Blow up 6 'dimensional anchors' that were in the other SG's base.

It was usually # 2 since I think only a very handful of SGs had IoPs (because the CoP trial was taken off before base raids were). CoP trials were taken offline first because of buggy-ness with 'em...sometimes people couldn't zone into the CoP trial/zone and sometimes they could....and sometimes people could zone into a regular mission which would mess up that team's ability to enter the CoP (If I remember right).

So it was fun a few times that I have done a base raid with sg peeps. Being the attackers was neat because we'd all zone in and just spread out and try to find the anchors and blow 'em up. There was at least one time that we didn't think we could make it (oh and there was a time limit for the raid btw)...but one of our PBs popped a few inspirations, zoned in and then phased (PB phase power) and then blew up the last anchor and we won


The few problems I had with base raids were as follows:

1.) SG base layouts. There were quite a few 'exploits' or tricks or whatever you wanted to call them. If you were "smart" enough the defenders could build a "jail" in their base and have someone teleport foe into the 'jail'. This jail was a construct of multiple base decoration objects and basically made it so that you couldn't escape (unless your teammate tp'ed you out...which usually didn't happen since they were either being attacked or didn't have recall friend). I was 'lucky' enough to be tp'ed into jail once on my main (Kin/Rad def)....couldn't jump/run out...didn't have tp, but even if I did, there wasn't a way to tp out... /stuck didn't work....had to /kill yourself to get out....yeah ...not fun.

The other issue with SG base layouts is that the way a base was laid out there were only certain entry points where attackers would spawn. Once you knew where they would spawn, the base builder could just lower the floor and raise the floors/tiles around that spawn point so that you couldn't just walk/run up the stairs...you had to jump/tp out. Doesn't sound like an issue right? Well....it's not; until the defenders are spawn camping those spawn points with Tar Patch or Quicksand or any other various powers that do -jump -spd....ta-da....insta-death! Not fun for the attackers.


2.) Each team member (remember you could have more than 1 full team of 8 attacking an SG base) of a team of 8 could spawn at different spawn points. Not a 'huge' deal but...if you're being attacked and killed repeatedly it's hard to have your teammates heal you when 5 out of 8 spawn elsewhere.


3.) Of course the 'biggest' issue was scheduling. Sure a base raid was fun....but if your SG is spread out across different time zones....it was hard to try to get everyone together to raid and/or defend the base.


I'm definitely looking forward to a re-vamped CoP trial and/or base raids though!