MAX revamp

CutterJohn · 2011-02-19, 11:48 AM

MAXs, for reasons left unstated, were never all that popular in PS. Likely because they were a supersoldier in one tiny cert, capable of killing lots of infantry indoors without much hastle. The downside, lack of any tools, was not much of a downside considering the rest of the zerg had them.

I think we can improve on the idea of MAXs without making them giant death robots indoors that are spammed by everyone looking for an advantage, and also by making the MAX gameplay rather more interesting and varied, instead of one of the more boring things in the game, a big part of which is shifting their focus to outside use more than inside use.

Firstly, a change to MAX armor. There is just a single one, and the weapons are separate certs, which you can get at an equipment terminal.

Now, to bolster the use of MAXs outdoors, they have a 2nd running gear, a jog or trot. This moves you at a pretty good clip, the speed of agile or greater. Like run mode, turn speed is pretty crap, but you can use your weapons, and get some good jumps going. You have lots of armor now, some mobility. You use this to keep pace with vehicles and fight in the field.

Totally OP you say. They will dominate indoors. Yes. Except.. MAX armor no longer protects against white ammo. They are as easy to kill for infantry as REXOs are, except..

Brace yourselves... They have a shield(it doesn't recharge!). When this shield is active, the MAX takes 50% reduced damage from all sources.

The MAX has 3 systems. Weapons. Movement. Shield. The trick is, it can only power 2 at once. A MAX thusly has 5 distinct modes of operation for various circumstances.

1. Runmode. This is both travel and to act as a linebreaker. Charge past with fast speed and lots of damage soaking potential, cause chaos, break the stalemate. Or get to the next base.
2. Jog mode. This is for outdoors combat(indoors you'll be hitting walls too much) moving along a line or with vehicles, albeit slower paced vehicles.
3. Walk mode. Indoors combat. The slow, ungainly MAX we all remember, but significantly easier to kill.
4. Standing mode. Defensive posture. 25% damage absorb, since the legs have to be kept ready for action, though it takes a second or two to activate.
5. Anchored or crouched mode. Heavy defensive posture. 50% damage reduction. Limited forward firing arc.

But CJ, won't number 5 make those things reeeaaaaallly tough to kill indoors? Not if you don't forget your friendly Jammer grenade, which temporarily disrupts the kung fu action shield! Not for long, but perhaps long enough. Jammer grenades also disrupt run mode and jog mode, in case you need to.

What happens with this? The max has several roles now.

-An open field infantry, charging the enemy position or mixing it up with the vehicles, with quite good speed.
-A defensive stronghold, a mobile turret. Once it roots itself in place, its a tough nut to crack. Quite tough for vehicles, and a challenge for infantry. But they are immobile, and vulnerable to jammer grenades.
-MAX crash, of course.

What they aren't so good at? Walking through bases pounding infantry. They'll die to other infantry like other infantry does in that situation. You would use MAX units to establish defensive lines, pushing forward with infantry and holding the line with the MAX units until the infantry break through so they can move forward again. You can also use them to charge past and cause chaos behind the lines in max crash fashion of old, but without infantry support, they will quickly fold to the vulnerability they now share with the rest of the infantry units.. the dreaded white ammo which everyone possesses.

Some other thoughts regarding MAXs..

Self repair. Again, please don't rage. MAXs were often expected to be used outdoors, indeed one was solely useful outdoors, and as you can see I would like to expand on this attribute. And out there, they certainly weren't OP, or even that special. One might say that most often, they were just fodder unless held back in tightly protected areas. Part of the problem was there complete lack of self reliance. They were, in fact, the only vehicle or armor where this was a problem. Getting repaired meant one of three things. A long haul to the base to use the repair terminal. A trek to a base or tower console to burn a cooldown for a replacement, or begging. Not one other armor or vehicle had this problem.

So what I'd like to see is MAXs able to fit a medgun and gluegun for self repair only, and activating these things shuts you down for a length of time equivalent to what a vehicle driver exiting and entering his vehicle takes. Call it a 5 second shutdown, however long it takes to repair(which you could cancel), and a 5-10 second startup to bring the MAX systems back online. You are motionless the entire time, with no weapons.

I would also like to see an improvement in the variety of weapons MAX units can field. Short and long range AI and AV weaponry, and a choice between direct fire/flak and guided rounds for AA or something.

DviddLeff · 2011-02-19, 12:15 PM

Personally I don't have a problem with MAXs at all, I don't use them myself, and love to Lancer them.

In my upgrade project I make the following changes:

They take damage like normal infantry, but only with a very high absorbtion rate.
They can choose the 3x6 or 3x9 weapon they use from any they have certed
MAX armour costs 4 points

Bags · 2011-02-19, 12:17 PM

I didn't have a problem with maxes until 80% of the VS had unimax.

Jonny · 2011-02-19, 12:19 PM

RAAAAGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Just kidding. These are great ideas, and for every power you give, you also suggest a weakness which is good. Your post sounds like some interesting ideas to make MAX's more interesting, because as you say they are mostly used as indoor clearers?

Is the shield you talk about on all the time, or only activated when crouched?

And whats white ammo? (not played planetside) :P

Tikuto · 2011-02-19, 02:12 PM

Key for MAX is to sustain itself lifetime through its defences, and so I agree with this post. AV weapons and tanks are always in the field so they're a constant failure in open fields. They're ok with facility exteriors and interiors, so let's keep that in-mind.

My Contributions:

Diversity - Each Empire still has their own unique MAXS. However, enemy players can acquire them aswell! Changes could be made to make all Empire MAXS not be so different from each other.

Greater Dependancy - MAXS are more dependant on others. They cannot heal or repair themselves.
Each militant in the warzone is dependant on another for some support: excessive damage output, heals, fortifications for safey and cover by vehicles. We're all not an Arnold Schwarzenegger lone-wolf Commando at all and neither are the MAXS. The MAXS ought to be more dependant on others similar to like they are now as a control against too many MAXS.

Originally Posted by Tikuto

"Epoxy Nano-Hardener" - a personal shield for mechanical and metallic armory which is applied on the surface and activated from an energy source using complex circuitry. The energy source is slowly rechargeable through multiple internal and external power-generating methods. It hardens their material and excess energy creates a surface-shield. This technology is typically used on MAX suits.

SOURCE: Thread: What do you think of this? (Class System)

Effective · 2011-03-12, 08:40 AM

These are changes I would have made/looked at for PS in terms of max suits.
Obviously since I have no idea how max suits are going to be implemented in PS, I have 0 idea if any of my ideas/concepts are even going to be applicable.

Make the max a suit with inter-changeable weapons. You can cert either AA (2 points) or AV (3 points) max first, but you must have 1 of them to cert AI max (2 points) OR you must have both AA/AV certed to cert AI max (1 point). This prevents maxs from being able to abuse the issue with a max being able to rotate between max armors to reset it's armor back to 650 and it effectively prevents players from just coming back to the fight in another max right after they've died. With the max armors being combined into 1 suit, reducing the timer on the max also becomes a viable option.

Reduce the effectiveness of AA/AV max units to infantry.

Bring the scatmax inline with other AI maxs. In comparison it's way to strong.

Make it so max units cannot use special abilities while auto running, which yes, means that VS max units won't be able to jumpjet while auto-running, and NC maxs can't use their shields. This brings the a bit more inline with TR maxs, who's special ability can't be used to increase survival while auto-running

Make it so max units can't shoot while using their abilities (this obviously wouldn't apply to TR maxs, as their ability is to shoot faster). VS maxs wouldn't be able to fire while jump jetting (but they could still fire on the way down, since they're no longer using that ability). - This particular idea I'm not 100% sure, it's an idea I've simply toyed with for a little bit, contemplating whether or not it'd truely be balanced.

Make it so max units cannot use personal shield (I'm more in actual favor of the complete and utter removal of pshield from planetside, but that's a different topic for a different day). Maxs already have 650 armor points, they don't need more.

Buff the AV max to do less self-damage (regardless of whether or not damage to infantry is reduced). Any person who uses a max constantly knows that if they get into an unavoidable fight with the AV max, the best thing to do is to get as close as possible and try to get the splash to kill the max, though this works best with NC max units. Doing this prevents said max from having any chance at another encouter like that, because he/she will suicide on the enemy max.
OR
Add a specific anti-max (AM) max (no explosive weapons just armor piercing rounds, think an AI max with AP rounds) to planetside. The last part gave me some thought, AV maxs aren't perfect since they can kill themselves depending on the scenario, so what if there was another alternative? A specific AM max could do what an AV max couldn't since, it could go toe to toe with more maxs in a row without having to worry about suiciding. However, I'm against giving the AI max AP rounds for 1 reason, and that'd be because it'd be to versatile.

On the note of the AV max, make them decent at there role Anti-Vehicle. The only AV max that's good at that role is the pounder max. The comet's projectiles are to slow, and the clip is to small for it to really be effective at AV, it is however a great Anti-Max max.

Make it so medical terminals can no longer repair armor, which means you have to rely on teammates to repair your armor as a max. With the removal of armor repair, med terms could heal stamina instead.

Give the decimator 1 extra round. This gives a single decimator a chance to actually kill an NC max with shields (keep in mind 4 deci shots can kill a pshielding fully shielded NC max IF you hit every shot into the max, rather then just splash him)

Finding a way to prevent maxs from autorunning into a wall so they cant instantly move forward at full speed when they leave the corner. The exact way to accomplish this is an unknown to me, other then "hitting the wall stops a max auto run". I don't particularly like that idea, there's probably more then a few ways to better balance it out.

Making a auto run capacitor that functions like the special max ability, but obviously on a different capacitor (maybe even have it set to where you can use your ability capacitor to double the length of your auto run if you use it all, def. NOT the otherway around though, twice as long max abilities? pass), I haven't thought up the exact distance for which the maxs capacitor would last (I'd say have it be a longer distance from tower to base, so that way max crashing is still a viable strategy), exact capacitor charge time would need to be discussed to, have it be the exact same as the max ability capacitor maybe? - Just another random idea I threw out there, not really needed for overall implementation. (Also, instead of an extra capacitor, it could use stamina instead).

Either nerf AP jackhammer or lancer, or buff the decimator so it's ttk is either the same or faster (I don't care which) then them. It's rather silly that the decimators (very specific anti-max weaponry, as it's to slow to be used anything but stationary/vehicles that are close, and even then due to the tiny clip size it wouldn't ultimately be useful) have a slower ttk then a AP JH/lancer. Though this might mean that the AP JH needs to be nerfed, though I don't think the lancer needs a nerf. - Also not 100% sure on this, there's probably a better way that I haven't thought of.