For a while I've been kicking around the idea of letting players remotely deploy bases. This is the only thing in the game that requires players to move. In rural parts of the world, there are some people who wouldn't visit 20 zones in several months. This would have been me as a kid growing up in Iowa, before I left for college.

• Should there be a cost to deploying remotely, based on distance?
• Should there be a delay before it is created while the base "travels" to the location?
• Should there be a limit to how far away, or only limited by a distance cost?
• Should you be able to remotely deploy an HQ?
• Can you move a base and incur only the distance cost based on start and end, or do you need to destroy and redeploy from current location?
• Any other interesting issues with this type of feature?

Possibly more simplified solution. What if the act of deploying a second base on the same zone as a first were allowed and then the effect of doing so was to actually deploy said base to the next nearest zone. This should resolve the rural (or immobile) player problem without introducing too much conceptual difficulty or any particular potential for abuse. No idea on the challenges associated from a coding standpoint.

I like JBo's concept. There would be hardly any redesign to the game's UI as far as I can tell, maybe only a confirmation dialog asking whether you want to proceed placing the base in [next nearest zone].

IMO there should certainly be some sort of penalty, maybe a construction time where the base does not generate any credits and/or is blocked from working at the faster speed. Also maybe an 'energy cost' that depletes your energy and generates some overheat because you have to launch a heavy base package over a distance?

Perhaps a simple solution would be that deploying a base would have a range similar to weapons range and increases with level, which they have to wait on to deploy the base in the first place. I have felt the frustration of trying to deploy bases on a road trip and wished I could place more without having to take a detour, not to mention constantly updating my location to try to get one in the zone I think I am in. If deployment had a range, it would help with that issue. That said, since HQ Bases have full rate harvest regardless of faction control, I feel like those should be restricted to be physically in the zone, besides that is likely going to be a new players first zone and in their home zone anyway.

You could have a 1/2 hour window that travels across the globe once a day. If you follow the Window and try to deploy or place a base it works as if you're local. So you could launch anywhere or place a base anywhere as long as the window was going over that area at that time.

I thought of another possibility. Remote Deployment could be a scope upgrade with 4 or 5 levels that increase your range to deploy. It might be a little frustrating for players that are close to max upgrades, but it would even out the ability across all players since everyone would have to make the upgrade.

Additionally, I like the idea because it wouldn't feel so personal to have a base zone attacked. If one of your base zones go down, you would be able to move it to another zone without having to drive to the zone.

It took me over 4 years to get all bases in zones controlled by my faction and they are spread halfway across the US. I have never been able to have my home zone in my faction control because I have always been outnumbered no matter where I lived. I got all my current bases while on vacation. I can really sympathize with players entrenched in enemy control.

Nearest available location for a new base would be the best option to me.

Otherwise anyone would just have 21 bases of their own faction for free, which would make the concept of bases useless...