Explosive Weapons should flush infantry out of cover, not kill them in it.

[Rothnang]

I think this game would be significantly improved from its current form if the whole way that explosions work against infantry was changed. Currently explosions pretty much flat out kill you. The only way to kind of get around that is Flak Armor, but even with 50% more resistance you are still a pretty easy target.

The reason why I dislike that explosive weapons kill you very quickly is because it creates a situation where anything with a blast radius is an effective tool for killing people who are in cover. All you need to do is shoot it at something behind them or the ground under them and you are doing full damage to them. There are strategies people can use to avoid that, well coordinated infantry squads that attack a tank column from atop a hillcrest are a real pain to deal with since you can neither shoot objects behind them nor the ground below them if you're fighting them from below against the sky, but this is extremely limiting, and this is also a strategy that is particularly weak against any direct fire weapons.

Grenades a little bit better in the regard that they give you some time to get out of the way, but they still rely on the "move or die" approach to breaking cover as well.


I think explosive weapons should do a lot less damage to infantry. It should take at least two explosions of any type to kill any infantry target. It can hurt them pretty badly, take their shield off or something, but it should never just flat out kill them.

Basically all explosives should fall into one of five categories:

1. Standard explosives, like what you find on your dumbfire rockets, HEAT shells etc. These should have a very small blast radius, so they aren't super easy to inflict damage with, and essentially work like bodyshots for various sniper rifles, never a flat out kill.

2. Incendiaries. Basically these weapons don't just deal a big sum of damage, but instead cause a lingering damage effect on the ground that you have to get away from. Shooting multiple weapons of this type at the same area would not cause their effect to stack. These would be your spammable explosives, like the Zephyr. Shooting many of these charges can help you cover a large area, but it can't help you inflict more damage. Infantry has to leave an area that's been hit by these within a few seconds or burn up.

3. Fragmentation. These weapons have a large blast radius and are very damaging, but their projectiles don't explode on impact, but bounce around for a while, giving you time to avoid them. The damage should also be like sniper body shots, bad for your health, nothing you want to take two of, but survivable. These are your grenades, thumpers etc. This principle could also be used in bombs that disperse smaller explosives etc.

4. High Explosive. These weapons also have a very large blast radius and inflict a medium amount of damage, however, their concussive force blurs your vision, makes your ears ring, and is just generally disorienting for a short time after being hit. (1 second) These are your HE cannons, artillery shells, C4 etc. They can kill you, but the main reason why you want to avoid them is because it's impossible to shoot straight while these are bearing down on you.

5. Shape Charge. These weapons don't explode in a radius at all, but instead project a jet of explosive energy forward. They are purely for damaging heavily armored targets, and will only kill infantry when they are struck directly by the projectile. These are your specialized anti tank missiles and such.



Basically by breaking up all explosives into these categories what you get is a variety of explosive types that have effective counterplay without being useless. They all exist in some way or another to move the enemy around the battlefield more than to simply kill infantry easily. Of course they will still score kills as well, if someone shot your shield out and then an HE shell strikes where you're hiding to recharge it you're still dead, but at least it's a concerted effort between two enemies, not just a tank killing you at will.

Weapons like the Zephyr would be a lot better as Incendiaries that serve more as an area denial tool than as an actual killing weapon. Since a Zephyr shoots from above where there is always the ground to explode shells against it's pretty overpowered with explosive weapons, but well suited for using a weapon that's actually about selectively turning the ground hostile. Also giving a weapon like that diminishing returns for hitting the same area multiple times makes it a lot less overpowered, while still making it very useful.


Vehicles should rely much more on direct fire weapons for their high TTK infantry kills. Hitting someone with a heavy machine gun should be way more deadly then shooting the ground near them with a tank cannon. Then we can also start talking about coax guns and such, and get the fight between vehicles and infantry to a point where it's more enjoyable.

[Sonny]

Hi Rothnang,
I think these are great ideas. I think they would add a lot of tactical depth to the use of explosives rather than the 'spam and pray' approach used by players at the moment.

Sonny

[Necroe]

i agree, i mean generally why use AI weapons when AV can do the job jsut as well as well as damage vehicles.

[Zulthus]

Absolutely... there's even a simple explanation as to why AV weapons could do minimal damage to infantry.

Compared to a regular round, a rocket is slow. This gives the nanites in your armor enough time to redirect to the point of impact on your armor, harden, and minimize damage caused. Shots from a regular weapon are much too fast to be detected by the nanites, and thus do regular damage.

[Rothnang]

Yea, there are shields in Planetside 2, so really everything goes, since there is no real life equivalent to shields.

[Illtempered]

I don't die to explosives near as much as I die to bullet fire, so I'm afraid I disagree with your whole premise. When I'm in a class that is in danger of explosives, I cert flak armor. Problem solved.

So rockets should never be a "flat out kill"? Even if they hit somebody in the eye?

[Rothnang]

I said explosions shouldn't ever simply kill someone, if the projectile strikes you you should die of course.

[Varsam]

I have to disagree on the premise that most explosive weapons already operate pretty much on the level that you specify that you want them at (damaging, but not 1hko). Currently most tank shells do 1000 aoe dmg, which is enough to kill an uncerted infantryman outright... but only if they are inside the maximum damage radius of the target area, which is actually only a meter or two across. After that, the damage dropoff on the aoe damage is severe and sudden - it typically takes at least two rounds to kill infantry, more if the misses are wider or the infantry is certed into flak. Explosive weapons are already in a good, yet precarious, place. Making explosive type weapons even less effective I'm afraid would make them not worth using.

I do like the idea of incendiary weapons as an area denial tool though.

[camycamera]

good idea, i hope something similar gets implemented.

[KodanBlack]

I think that your argument is well thought out, and I certainly understand where you're coming from. However, I have a simple counter to what you're saying. If an explosive, like a grenade, isn't going to kill you, why would it flush you out from behind cover, to a place where the bullets, which can kill you, are flying in your direction. I'd take the hit and stay behind cover, hit my medpack and come out when I'm ready.

[Rothnang]

I think that your argument is well thought out, and I certainly understand where you're coming from. However, I have a simple counter to what you're saying. If an explosive, like a grenade, isn't going to kill you, why would it flush you out from behind cover, to a place where the bullets, which can kill you, are flying in your direction. I'd take the hit and stay behind cover, hit my medpack and come out when I'm ready.

That's an excellent argument, but already adressed in the idea. Grenade type weapons, listed under "Fragmentation" will in fact kill you or severely injure you, but they bounce around for a while so you can get away from them. That's how they flush you out of cover.

Explosive weapons like tank shells however don't give you any warning when they are about to strike, so the assumption becomes that the first shell let's you know another is coming, so people will avoid the next one after having been tipped off by the initial, non-lethal damage.

[KodanBlack]

My apologies! I saw that on a reread. My argument has been withdrawn.

[Rothnang]

Who or what are you and what are you doing on the internet?!

[MorteDeAngelis]

So further reduce the killing power of Tank vs Infantry without any benefit to the tank themselves?

[WSNeo]

This was resolved in Planetside 1 by the Armor value on all players, explosive weapons did damage to armor while mitigating the damage done to health. Armor was a value that was restored by engineers using the same tool that they use now making engineers just as valuable as advanced medics .

This prevented people from using weapons primarily used for AV on infantry, and Reavers (A2G common pool aircraft) from farming infantry with rocket pods that were intended to take out tanks. Regular grenades generally took 2-3 to kill a player in rexo armor because of it's higher armor value. Decimators didn't instagib players, it took like 2-3 shots to kill a player but only two direct hits to kill a MAX. It was weird but it definitely worked to prevent people from farming kills with HE and AV weapons.

[Snydenthur]

I agree with you a little bit. I think explosive weapons should be changed a bit. Like tanks. They should just remove the heat ammo. You either go for infantry killing or you go for vehicle killing. Same should apply to every vehicle weapon. Direct hits are a different story, so you could still kill people with ap weapons.

I don't agree with changing grenades. They are designed against infantry and it would be pointless if they didn't kill them.

But the whole cover point, I don't get it. I rather kill an enemy behind a cover than take the risk of dying only because I used a grenade.

[Rothnang]

So further reduce the killing power of Tank vs Infantry without any benefit to the tank themselves?

Tanks could be given coaxial machineguns like they should have for anti infantry work, which would also significantly boost AP cannons as a viable weapon. I don't think tanks should be weak against infantry, I just think their main gun shouldn't be the logical first choice for shooting at a soldier.

. You either go for infantry killing or you go for vehicle killing.

I don't agree there. You can have infantry that's equipped for anti-infantry, anti-air and anti-armor all at the same time with some weapons, so I honestly don't really see the argument why vehicles should be handicapped in that regard. The point isn't to make vehicles really one sided, it's to make anti infantry warfare from vehicles more reliant on things like the Cobalt, which under the current game rules just has no advantage. It kills slower than an explosive weapon and it can be thwarted by cover pretty easily.

[SturmovikDrakon]

Yeah, I agree. Grenade's should have an arming time of 3-4 seconds before exploding. BF3s gameplay lead designer justified it the same way, grenades should be used to get the other guy out of cover instead of outright killing him (unless he's sitting right on top of it), hence they took 3 seconds to explode after landing and you couldn't cook them.

This was resolved in Planetside 1 by the Armor value on all players, explosive weapons did damage to armor while mitigating the damage done to health. Armor was a value that was restored by engineers using the same tool that they use now making engineers just as valuable as advanced medics .

This prevented people from using weapons primarily used for AV on infantry, and Reavers (A2G common pool aircraft) from farming infantry with rocket pods that were intended to take out tanks. Regular grenades generally took 2-3 to kill a player in rexo armor because of it's higher armor value. Decimators didn't instagib players, it took like 2-3 shots to kill a player but only two direct hits to kill a MAX. It was weird but it definitely worked to prevent people from farming kills with HE and AV weapons.

Man, the more I hear about Planetside 1 mechanics, the more I like them. Do you guys think adding armour value to the game would be beneficial? Is it too late? Though I don't know how it would scale for each class since you can't pick your armour anymore

[Snydenthur]

Well, if they actually nerf grenades, I hope we can use that slot for something else then.

[Rothnang]

Because currently people look at grenades as "That thing I can do once per fight to get an extra kill" it's a nerf if they would actually work in a way that was more fun?

I guess the real problem with the notion of flushing an enemy out of cover in infantry combat is that people don't really give a shit, just rush the guy with a shotgun and roll the dice, not like it matters if you die.

[Falcon_br]

I like your ideas, but I already throw a grenade before storming an occupied control point, even if they don't kill anyone, it makes them move, so they don't have me on sights when I get in.
Nothing is better them that plus adrenaline shield and a chaingun to kill them all, too bad they placed 1 shot kill shotgun on the game to ruin the fun.

[Gatekeeper]

Great ideas, seems like this might make vehicle weapon specialisations a bit more meaningful and balanced and make the whole game a little more tactical.

I do think that you might need to nerf infantry AV weapons a little bit to keep the overall balance reasonable though. Hopefully that would lead to vehicles that can stand and fight a little longer, but that need a bit more skill and patience to kill infantry.

Also, if grenade damage is nerfed somewhat (you suggest it would no longer be an instant kill) then you might need to make the throwing action a bit faster to compensate, just to keep it a viable option.

BTW where would ESF rocket pods fit into your plan?

[JesNC]

I can't bring myself to agree with your suggestions. A couple of reasons:

- Crowd Control effects simply aren't fun on the recieving side, especially in FPS games. Concussion Nades are bad enough IMO, but they're fairly limited - giving a similar effect to any HE weapon in the game would result in a total mess for infantry.

- Lower explosive weapons damage as 'infantry displacement' only work until you figure out you only need X amount of medics to completely neutralize their effect on your squad.

IMO frag grenades are fine the way they are - you get an indicator warning a couple of seconds ahead of the explosion, that's ample time to get away. If you don't move, you die. It's very much in line with K.I.S.S., a concept that all FPS mechanics should adhere to.

[Snydenthur]

Because currently people look at grenades as "That thing I can do once per fight to get an extra kill" it's a nerf if they would actually work in a way that was more fun?

I guess the real problem with the notion of flushing an enemy out of cover in infantry combat is that people don't really give a shit, just rush the guy with a shotgun and roll the dice, not like it matters if you die.

Well I don't really see the fun in that. If I throw a grenade in the right place at the right time, it should kill the enemy. Otherwise it is useless for me. Maybe they should just add a new grenade type if there are a lot of people that want to use grenade like you? It would be the easiest solution.

[Rothnang]

Well I don't really see the fun in that. If I throw a grenade in the right place at the right time, it should kill the enemy. Otherwise it is useless for me. Maybe they should just add a new grenade type if there are a lot of people that want to use grenade like you? It would be the easiest solution.

That wouldn't really be a solution. If a grenade that just flat out kills people still exists you'd have no reason to use one that's more avoidable after all. The reason why weapons like that ought to be avoidable is because it introduces a point of diminishing returns for multiple people using them at the same time.

[Mietz]

Impossible to make it useful for PS2s short TTK.
I think I outlined that previously with the example of the Lasher and how its the least effective weapon and doesn't work as intended (does not flush or suppress)

The problem is damage granularity over time where weapon with long TTK become obsolete because most players are easily able to outlast them. i.e. they will be OP or UP and a balance can by default not be found because the math doesn't add up with the current numbers:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/12895612/New%20folder/weaponTTK.JPG

Note that almost all the vanilla weapons direct damage and TTK is identical around 650ms (x-axis is in 100ms) while the lasher direct is almost twice as long and lasher AOE is almost 5x as long (almost 3 seconds instead of 0.6). This means that a medic gun ~lvl3 can out-heal the vanilla lasher AOE (which is small) even without FLAK on the other guy.

Now "flush" grenades would deliver maybe higher damage than the lashers AOE but the -granularity- would be even lower and hence even less effective.

The "hypothetical lasher" is the vanilla lasher with the same damage except its granularity of damage is higher (ROF 1000), it would completely imbalance the game.

This is the same reason why i hold fast to my opinion that MAX Flamethrowers will never work as intended and will just be a replacement for Hacksaws available for everyone.

The most important functionality for suppression or flush weaponry is that it does low sustain damage (DOT) that is able to prevent shields from regenerating as well as deliver damage that can not be mitigated for long periods of time (hence making the other players move).

This can not be accomplished with the current TTK and damage granularity because it is inefficient to suppress/flush if you can instead kill and get the better effect. Running into a group of dudes and C4/Grenade suicide is more viable in flushing or suppressing than anything an AOE DOT weapon will ever do in this game.

We can not fight this, its an inherent part of the combat design dictated by math and personal min-max tactics.

Explosives will continue to murder you because weapons that do not murder you, are not efficient at murdering you, and murdering you is what this game runs on.

[Rothnang]

Yea, the devs weird obsession with making stuff so fast paced that only more or less instant kills are really worth a damn is a huge problem with making this game more balanced, but I still think that you can make some changes to explosives that would overall benefit the game.

Something like incendiaries that introduces more direct area control and gives a real incentive not to just keep spamming explosives into the same place but actually creating a pattern of fire would be a huge improvement to a lot of the spammable explosive weapons for example.

[Mietz]

Something like incendiaries that introduces more direct area control and gives a real incentive not to just keep spamming explosives into the same place but actually creating a pattern of fire would be a huge improvement to a lot of the spammable explosive weapons for example.

I've explained that before too that DOT AOE won't work because the damage built-up just isn't viable combined with movement and TTK.

The problem is that a field of X that does damage over time must do so sustainably and over a large enough area where slightly shifting will not invalidate it.

i.e. just sprinting over the field of fire and taking half your shields damage isn't viable, but increasing damage output creates the problem of mass application of such weaponry being completely OP due to AOE TTK now being higher than comparable damage of direct damage TTK because of sustain (example: pain field).

I'm sorry the numbers just don't work out.

[Rothnang]

If that field of fire is caused by a Zephyr it can take many shapes and be modulated on the fly by dropping more shots. "It doesn't work because numbers" just doesn't really sound convincing to me.