Sunderer Idea?

[eXpo]

Hey guys,

I know a lot of people recently have mentioned the sundy spam and that fact that its nearly impossible to defend a base when there's 10+ Sunderers in the area and the attackers just keep spawning off them.

The devs have also said they are implementating changes so you can't deploy a sundy within the radius of another.

Going on from this, I think a good idea would be to give a sunderer a limited number of "spawns" from which people can use, lets say, 30. It would give the defenders a much better chance and hopefully would encourage the attackers to use more tactics rather than just running in blindly.

What do you guys think?

[McFeeble]

Only 30 spawns would be gone in a couple of minutes, possibly less in a real fight? How about 100 non squad spawns (not sure on number tbh) and permanent squad spawn. Promotes team work and wont freeze out anyone immediately not in a squad.

[Mox]

In a real big battle with a good position for your sundy it will need about ten seconds to reach the cap of 30 spawns.
I dont think we need a spawn cap. Lets try first the radius thing. It already proved in ps 1 that it work.

[Qwan]

Gotta agree with Mox on this one, I believe radius is the best answer, limiting spawns, you would burn threw them in like seconds if your in a good position.

[Crator]

The S-AMS should be an objective to take out. I agree, it should have deployment radius limits. But does the deployment radius really help with clutter? I don't think so. It helps give the driver exclusive spawn rights to an area is what it does.

Will the deployment radius really fix the issue with S-AMS spam? What's the drawback to parking (not deploying) a S-AMS by another deployed S-AMS? In PS1 the drawback to this was exposure of the deployed AMS cause it had a cloak bubble around it. You wouldn't want to park other vehicles by the deployed AMS because that would draw attention to the cloaked AMS already deployed.

[Dagron]

With just the radius idea people will for example still invade a tower, hack the terminals and spawn half a dozen sundies in there and keep deploying them one at a time when the previous one explodes. It'll help the spawn screen have less "Sunderer - 3m" lines, but it won't help reduce the spam in the least.

[Ritual]

Since they are going to keep the change in where Sunderers can be spawned at any vehicle pad then the radius change is not going to stop the "spam" in my humble opinion. There will just be Sunderers parked as "backup" waiting to deploy when another is destroyed.

A good change to make would be to make Sunderer's cost a huge amount of resource to spawn at outpost vehicle pads, and a more normal amount to spawn from base vehicle pads. At least one's with spawning capability.

This in combination with the radius change might bring balance and give Sunderer AMS a more rarer feeling.

I will bet that the way it is now is not going to work. People arent even good at the game yet and there are Sunderers everywhere. Wait until people learn where to park them so they arent exposed, to setup backup Sunderers, To keep them flowing instead of all at once, to use tanks to push up and then deploy them, etc.

The playerbase hasnt learned organized tactics yet, and they are already a problem.

But like any change, I am keeping my mind open.

(In Planetside 1, when AMS drivers were real men, we had to travel 100 miles by dangerous road through blinding blizzards to get to where we needed to be, you younger generations have no idea how good you have it).

[Qwan]

I think the radius size is going to make a difference, the object is to have the AMS as close as possible to be effective. Depending on the sized of that radius, it will push other ams vehicles further away. I dont think the bus is the issue its the ability of the bus, its good to have bus availibility at every terminal, I mean if you moving a large squad or platoon you can make one bus ams, one blockade and one smoke. I mean if your fighting outside a bio-dome for example, you may need a ams sundy, hack a terminal, equip the bus with the spawn ability and spawn it. Boom you just saved the day. Im just saying with the sundy at every spawn terminal isnt the problem its the ability, and not having a radius on them. Remember the main job of this vehicle is to move troops.

[Hamma]

The radius will help. Limiting spawn would just be bad though.

[Dagron]

I agree that limiting spawn might be bad, but the radius idea has zero chance to solve the issue. If things stay as they are just with the radius thing implemented, i plan on keeping my truck as backup and decoy near the deployed one so we don't lose too easily the ground we worked so hard to gain.
Waiting outside the radius just so i can get a couple spawns in would only divide our forces and when the one closest to the action went down, pushing again to reach it's position with a new one would be much harder than just pressing "B"... so in short, spamming will still be the best tactic (lame, but still the best).

That said, i wish i had a better solution to suggest, but i don't usually have great ideas... to me it's easier to see the problems than the solutions. :(

[PoisonTaco]

Increased spawn timers will help both attacking and defending. It's really hard to clear out a sundy nest when people can spawn almost instantaneously, and it's very heard to push into a full biolab when people spawn in less than 3 seconds right next to the spawn generator.

That 10-15 second respawn timer will help a lot in addition to sunderer restrictions.

[Carver]

Sunderers from EVERY vehicle pad was not a good idea.

I'd like bases themselves to be a no-deploy zone for enemy sunderers. Then attackers would have to at least park their 6 or 7 sunderers on the edge of the base or maybe 50m away and not in the middle of the base or IN the vehcile bay.

A slight delay to spawn at a mobile spawn instead of a base wouldn't be so bad, as long as it's not longer than 10-15 seconds.

[Helwyr]

Radius limitation is a good idea. I don't think limiting spawns is a good one.

I'd like to see vehicle hacking reintroduced. So that poorly guarded AMS Sunderers can be switched by an advanced hacker.

[Conq]

The radius limitation will be enough. Defenders can summon Sunderers too, more easily in fact. It's all balanced.

[Ghoest9]

I'd like to see vehicle hacking reintroduced. So that poorly guarded AMS Sunderers can be switched by an advanced hacker.


It would be nice.

I dont see why we cant just hack and steal any common pool vehicle.

[Sifer2]

I'm also with the crowd that feels the radius fix wont really solve the issue. The issue is more complicated than that because the Sunderer is not an AMS. It's harder to kill, and has turrets on it. Any and everyone can pull it. From everywhere. That's a world of difference from the PS1 AMS. So just saying oh we had radius on AMS in PS1, and it worked fine is silly. Cause that doesn't account for the rest of the problem. Just IMO what they should do is:

Make an AMS variant of it that doesn't have guns, and fewer passenger slots to make room for the spawning equipment.

AMS variant Sunderer only able to be pulled from Base vehicle terminals. Not even Towers.

If it's still a problem after that then also put it a lot higher in the cert tree.

[Dagron]

Well, it's an interesting proposal to make small facility terminals unable to spawn AMS sundies, only regular ones. Dunno if it would solve the spam problem, but it would definitely mitigate it... and it would solve the issue they were concerned with when they first made them spawnable everywhere: squads wouldn't be stranded in small outposts when their transport blew up.

[Aaron]

Radius alone may not be enough to solve this issue. Players need to work harder to pull one of those things. Increase the distance they'd have to drive them (by limiting AMS spawns), increase the resources cost to spawn an AMS equipped sundy, or increase the cert cost of the AMS.

The devs have several tools for controlling this and I think they'll hit the sweet spot.

Oh, and you should probably be able to tell whether or not an AMS is deployed. This would help defenders target the current threat.

[Dagron]

Increasing cert cost isn't a long term solution, eventually most people would save up enough certs to get it... be it one week from the first time they logged in or 2 years, inevitably the problem would still appear.

[bullet]

I think the radius limit will help but won't completely solve the issue. Since everyone can pull one, there will always be plenty of any useful vehicle. Where I think the radius limit will help the most is pushing back the offense/defense. As of right now when you're in a large fight there are normally 2-3 sundies parked on top of eachother. If you manage to take one down, they still have others to spawn at close by. With the radius limit, if you manage to destroy one, the whole zerg is pushed back and you gain that ground for over coming the opposing force.

The radius change coupled with the new mechanic that Engi's repair guns can over heat after being used for too long should help with taking out the Sundies, I hope.

Oh, and you should probably be able to tell whether or not an AMS is deployed. This would help defenders target the current threat.
Yea, I didn't really think about that but it would definitely help. Maybe this with the idea that they could make the S-AMS unique so you could tell it apart from other Sunderer variants.

[Dagron]

With the radius limit, if you manage to destroy one, the whole zerg is pushed back and you gain that ground for over coming the opposing force.

Like a few of us already said in this thread: it would push attackers back, if people didn't park several of them right next to each other just like they were doing until now... which is not only still possible, but also a good idea.

[Crator]

Like a few of us already said in this thread: it would push attackers back, if people didn't park several of them right next to each other just like they were doing until now... which is not only still possible, but also a good idea.

You are correct sir. What do you think the OS is going to be good for? :D

[Dagron]

Lol, but seriously i'd still prefer a way to reduce the advantage of spamming sundies instead.

So far the best idea i saw was the one of making it so they could only be spawned with the S-AMS equipment in major facilities. That way attackers wouldn't just run to the nearest outhouse to spawn one, they'd have to drive it a long way once it was spawned in their base, which would increase the odds of them being ambushed or spotted from the air and bombed before they got to another base (specially if there were 10 of them together).

Though i'm not sure how could terminal hacking be handled in that case... should they be able to spawn an S-AMS of the attacking force? If they were, it could either negate the solution and things would be the same way as they are now, or it could give terminals a much greater strategical value, which might be a good thing - more things to worry about defending/attacking instead of just capture points or generators.

As for making them look different from regular sundies, sounds good and i support the idea. :)

[Crator]

Didn't they just add the ability to spawn at the Flash terms a while back? That made them more spammed correct? But there was an issue with not enough of them getting to the fight quick enough then, correct? So let's take away the ability to spawn them at Flash terms but give the GAL the ability to transport the Sundy via air. :)