What could get me into a Tank: Vehicle-only Continent!

Mordelicius · 2014-09-04, 03:59 AM

I dislike vehicle implementation in PS2. They are cheap to acquire, non-modular and easy to destroy. I'd prefer a modular (with states of functionality), expensive and hard to destroy vehicles.

How hard do I dislike PS2 vehicles? The last time I pulled a tank was in November 2012 when VS was zerging with the super OP Mags and I have no other choice but to pull one to help break out of the WG. I probably pulled 4 in total ever, several of which fell into the vehicle pad abyss due to a bug

.

Imo, PS2 is best if objectives and capture points are more important than farming. Hence the only vehicles I used are Flash for radar scouting or Sunderers for spawning players into fights. Liberators and ESFs etc, I never flew or used one ever.

This leads me this point. Since vehicle philosophy is not going to change, I have a suggestion that I believe will make vehicles enjoyable for players such as myself and at the same time enhance vehicle gameplay for current ground vehicle and air meta warriors.

Vehicle-only Continent!

Why make another continent with with a slight variation to a theme? We already have four of those! Four of the same type is already a saturation.

Here's a concept of a vehicle-only continent:

Death Zone Continent - If infantry is out of the vehicle (due to toxicity, radiation, extreme heat, air-vacuum make up the lore), will quickly lose health (strong pain field).

Continent is resource heavy - Nanite resource tick is faster (so vehicles acquisition is commensurate to vehicle destruction).

Capture Points - are in an open field and can only be captured by vehicles (ground or air). Vehicles can only be repaired by other vehicles.

Modular Bubble base - Players spawn in small self-contained bubble base with built-in AV and AA turrets and 4 vehicle pads on 4 sides within the hex. Inside this bubble, players can survive.Thinks of it as a square inside a sphere. The turrets are their to prevent camping.

No infantry fights -The Devs do not have to worry about newbs being farmed.

Vehicle Playground - Current tank and air fighters get their own playground.

Equalized and Newbie/Casual Friendly - Players who like objectives first and newbies will be enjoined to fight (since the playing field is equalized).

Continent is easier to make - and faster to roll out. It took at least a year and half to produce Hossin. All this continent require is sculpting terrain and Bubble bases where players spawn in and get their vehicles from.

Do we need buildings? Not necessarily. If it's uninhabitable and/or abandoned due to a new unhospitable environment caused by nature or a disaster, very few buildings is needed just for aesthetic or cover. And no special attention is needed to protect infantry. There is not even a need for a No-Deploy-Zone

(not that is needed anywhere anyway

).

Special alert types- that synergizes with vehicle gameplay such as carrying objectives.

Example: An alien ship exploded in the atmosphere. Find and Recover the salvage littering the map and transport back to the Warpgate. If the ground vehicle carrying the cargo blows up, the artifact gets dropped to the ground. Imagine the mayhem fighting over these artifacts for an alert!

Transition Continent - especially when PS2 someday aim to be seamless with bodies of water.

New Vehicles - I hear PS2 will roll out empire-specific buggies, a new NS MB tank and other primary tank abilities. What could be a perfect place to use these new vehicles and abilities but a new vehicle-friendly continent! And the Devs will presumably want these vehicles driven and kitted out with Marketplace accessories and cosmetics. What other ways are there to encourage vehicle use without ruining infantry fights?

Some Possible Issues:
- Rumble Seat vulnerability. Solution: bubble the rumble seat
- Max allowed to walk since they are in a self-contained suit, but not repairable due to lack of infantry.
- Where will it eventually fit in a future intercontinental lattice.
- XP gain between vehicle vs vehicle destruction may be adjusted so it doesn't eclipse the other continent and encourage vehicle farming.
- Too many vehicles could degrade performance.

I believe coming off from 'infantry-friendy' Hossin, they can change the new continent a bit. We don't need 5 similar continents.

Gatekeeper · 2014-09-04, 06:30 AM

Must admit I was pretty sceptical of this idea from the title of the thread, but having read it all I actually really like this idea.

I have a few suggestions to add to this:

Make it a Battle Isle
Makes it quicker and easier to implement and means that if it doesn't work out, it could be dropped and replaced without being a huge loss. If it works well and is really popular they could always scale it up later.
Make the entire island a giant no-deploy zone
Otherwise there would doubtless be confused people spawning in and dying and then rage-quitting. Make sure there's a clear message that explains why the Sundy can't deploy though.
Show infantry clear warnings when straying out of safe zones
This would tell them they need a vehicle or MAX to survive outside safe zones on this continent. Again, the last thing you want is people dying and not knowing why.
Add repair-bay areas to bubble-bases
Make sure there's enough space inside the spawn-point bubble-zones for vehicles to fall back there and be repaired by Engis - maybe a wide 'pit lane' tunnel under the base? This equates to faster repair rates when falling back to a base rather than in-field, which rewards and reinforces territorial control - and would further discourage camping spawn points.
Reduce vehicle cost instead of giving extra resources
This stops people going there just to quickly recover resources, and means there's no boost to infantry or MAXs, which encourages people to get into the vehicles-for-all spirit.

Baneblade · 2014-09-04, 07:27 AM

I like this idea. But all that will happen is air farming worse than usual.

Gatekeeper · 2014-09-04, 08:15 AM

Well if air becomes too dominant, you could always make aircraft full price while ground vehicles are cheaper. Or extend the discount to MAX units to encourage AA.

Mordelicius · 2014-09-04, 11:05 PM

Originally Posted by Baneblade

I like this idea. But all that will happen is air farming worse than usual.

Is air really that dominant? Air does not have an equivalent of a repair Sundy. I believe that's the equalizer. If there's a repair Galaxy, it's going to be a pain.

Unless you're referring to just solo tanking everything. Soloing obviously involve more risk for tanks, even on the current live server. I know this because I repair a lot of tanks as a foot engineer.

Or if you mean aircrafts being farmed? Aircraft always have the first option to initiate fights vs vehicles or not. Imo, there are good dynamics with this type of continent. It would be Air vs Ground, Ground vs Ground and Air vs. Air. I could see alot of Galaxy stomping moves though.

If players just camp at the capture point with their vehicles, they will get pummeled, so they got to keep moving and countering. Imagine 30+ vehicles on each side colliding and flanking with air support. With a 3-point base, it will even be crazier.

Baneblade · 2014-09-04, 05:51 PM

Or go the Defiance route and simply make air travel too dangerous.

Baneblade · 2014-09-05, 11:12 AM

Air doesn't need a repair Sundy. Most of them auto repair while hiding from the enemy. Then they come back at full health.

Air has only one disadvantage in PS2: Other air.

Player for player, air will always dominate vs ground.

Mordelicius · 2014-09-09, 12:05 AM

Originally Posted by Baneblade

Air doesn't need a repair Sundy. Most of them auto repair while hiding from the enemy. Then they come back at full health.

Air has only one disadvantage in PS2: Other air.

Player for player, air will always dominate vs ground.

This is all not necessarily true. It all depends on force composition and loadouts.

A fully AA ground vehicle group with repair sundies will beat air equivalents. The problem with this stacking is AP ground vehicles will decimate this AA group so fast. You'll never know what the other side will be pulling. Hence, there will be always need to diversify force composition rather than to stack them.

Perhaps, Air shouldn't be allowed to interact with capture points to prevent campers and farmers. The real advantage of aircrafts is they can initiate fights whenever they like. And this is not balanced when losing/capping bases mean absolutely nothing. If a faction simply spam aircraft just to farm, they will slowly lose territories until they can no longer have resources to fight.

This is obviously dependent on resource meta 2.0 that supposedly - according to some Devs - will include power supply and logistics. The current resource update isn't even complete yet (that's why players are still holding back criticism over the new system).

The current resource tick rate encourages use of expensive vehicles with practically no downtime during turnover. With a more complete and rational system in place, spamming expensive vehicles can no be sustainable without downsides.

Baneblade · 2014-09-09, 07:02 AM

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

This is all not necessarily true. It all depends on force composition and loadouts.

A fully AA ground vehicle group with repair sundies will beat air equivalents. The problem with this stacking is AP ground vehicles will decimate this AA group so fast. You'll never know what the other side will be pulling. Hence, there will be always need to diversify force composition rather than to stack them.

Perhaps, Air shouldn't be allowed to interact with capture points to prevent campers and farmers. The real advantage of aircrafts is they can initiate fights whenever they like. And this is not balanced when losing/capping bases mean absolutely nothing. If a faction simply spam aircraft just to farm, they will slowly lose territories until they can no longer have resources to fight.

This is obviously dependent on resource meta 2.0 that supposedly - according to some Devs - will include power supply and logistics. The current resource update isn't even complete yet (that's why players are still holding back criticism over the new system).

The current resource tick rate encourages use of expensive vehicles with practically no downtime during turnover. With a more complete and rational system in place, spamming expensive vehicles can no be sustainable without downsides.

All the air really needs is a single squad on the ground and they can take as many territories as they want, as long as they maintain air superiority, and by extension, ground superiority. Composition does matter, certainly... just not nearly as much for air. They have too many universal weapons (all of them actually) while the ground has to specifically intend to counter them. It is imbalanced from the word Go.

People keep saying PS2 is gruntcentric... I just wonder what prescription they are on.

Gatekeeper · 2014-09-10, 05:33 AM

I think the real problem is that ground-based AA weapons are generally very specialised, and are extremely weak against other ground targets - while most vehicle-mounted weapons can be used flexibly as either AV or AI, and some air-mounted weapons (nose guns, especially) can serve all three roles.

Personally I'd like to see ground-based AA become a little more flexible, while making sure that AI and AV weapons become a little more specialised.

Baneblade · 2014-09-10, 06:13 AM

Ground AI and AV are already pretty specialized.

Mordelicius · 2014-09-10, 10:31 PM

Originally Posted by Baneblade

All the air really needs is a single squad on the ground and they can take as many territories as they want, as long as they maintain air superiority, and by extension, ground superiority. Composition does matter, certainly... just not nearly as much for air. They have too many universal weapons (all of them actually) while the ground has to specifically intend to counter them. It is imbalanced from the word Go.

People keep saying PS2 is gruntcentric... I just wonder what prescription they are on.

If a faction stack aircrafts, the other faction can do it to. But I'm going to make a list of reasons how air is or will be mitigated below.

Originally Posted by Gatekeeper

Not sure I agree about that, across the board AI weapons often fill a secondary role of AA and anti-light vehicle and AV weapons are almost always deadly to infantry. Plus the MBT main cannon defaults are very effective at both AI and AV.

In terms of weapon versatility I'd say it goes Air > Ground Vehicles > Infantry.

While air has some of that innate advantage as well as a better first strike capability, there are some factors that dampens these advantages (in random order):

1) Air vs. Air - If one faction can stack aircraft, so can the others. And they will face each other first.

2) AA Turrets - I suggested in my op, there ought to be AA turrets at least in the spawn bubbles. These are effective air suppressors.

3) Costs per vehicle - Ground vehicles are still ahead at this meta. This advantage will only amplify once the resource revamp is finalized.

4) Resource Revamp 2.0 - A good resource revamp will cause certain factions to have their Rate of vehicle destruction > Rate of vehicle construction. That simply translate, they are losing. Hence, I proposed only having ground vehicles cap the points. That will help choke off air-farm specialists.

5) Repair Sunderer - This is a unique advantage for ground vehicles. They can mitigate damage while aircraft has a limited self-repair variation.

6) Ammo Sunderer - Again, this is not afforded to mobile aircrafts. And this function synergizes with the Repair Sundy, Battle Sundy and other ground vehicles.

In conclusion, yes, I'd agree air stacking can be problematic. But, I think this problem isn't purely about Air vs. Ground, but more of an aesthestic battleflow imbalance, in that large groups of players in equal numbers will just be farming and not really participate in the actual objective warfare.

Hence, I'd suggest that only ground vehicles be allowed to cap. This will force players to diversify or else they will keep losing territories.

Figment · 2014-09-12, 08:12 PM

Originally Posted by Baneblade

All the air really needs is a single squad on the ground and they can take as many territories as they want, as long as they maintain air superiority, and by extension, ground superiority. Composition does matter, certainly... just not nearly as much for air. They have too many universal weapons (all of them actually) while the ground has to specifically intend to counter them. It is imbalanced from the word Go.

People keep saying PS2 is gruntcentric... I just wonder what prescription they are on.

The same thing was true for mossiefarmers and reaverfarmers in ps1: they were the sole units that were Jack of all trades: they dominated air vs air (to the point they outright demanded to be the SOLE effective counter to air, as they hated "aa-peasants ruining their dogfights"). Then the Wasp got introduced As air vs air only vehicle, meaning it was more effective at fighting air and ineffective at fighting ground vehicles. Airside exploded with rage, because "surely they should dominate both ground and air at the same time without having to deal with a superior, but specialist foes?! Afterall, their "role" was fight air and armour and infantry". Strangely, that logic never got turned around: the idea that aa would actually perform its sole purpose effectively made them cringe: they would have to flee from anti air instead of taking it on one vs one even if the aa required two crew to operate and their reaver only one and the AA max was useless against anything else and required lock on timers that they didn't have... For some reason, something purely built to counter them that was built to attack any type of unit, had to be worse than them or at most equal, because they argued, aa were ground units and they were also designed to take put ground units.

They deliberately ignored that they should make some trade off in fighting capacity in a game where specialists exist. Specialist units should always be better, otherwise they are pointless. But they then argued there would be no fly zones. Well yes. That is the point isn't it? Becoming reliant on combined arms to clear the AA for you?

Air power has always been unbalanced in planetside games because the Jack of all trades has been pronounced "god of all trades". Trade offs didn't exist for things like speed and agility, firepower, base access points reachability, having bailing options, were never compensated with reductions of firepower. Even endurance can hardly be said to have been traded off in PS1 especially.

The wordt excesses however, are introductions of heavy endurance, heavy firepower units. When light solo-player aircraft are already impossible for solo-player AA to deal with, then how is heavy air going to be balanced fairly?

You will notice that pilots will always argue that they must have special privileges. I think it is down to the context in which they work: they are alone, high above everyone else and detached from the reality on the ground. They are not reliant on anyone directly, arn't in touch with others on the ground visibily and hence cannot connect with them, let alone work with them or treat them as equals. Especially not when they can treat their opponent's equivalents as snacks. Often because their aerial point of view gives them more standard situational awareness as they have an overview of the fight. You'll often hear them argue you should use situational awareness against them, even if they can weave into view and fire from outside of radar and hearing range from any direction, making it harder to spot them and then get behind cover faster because of their flight capability, speed enhances even by afterburners, breaking any locks.

Overall, ps pilots never gave me reason to take them as fair players. They are generally unable to take a loss, even prefering to bail than get shot by "skilless flak".

HereticusXZ · 2014-09-06, 02:41 PM

It will regrettably never happen. PS2 caters far to much to Infantry, canceled my 1 year sub over this frustrating fact.

Sarloh · 2014-09-06, 06:56 PM

Let's make an area that is restricted to vehicles only, or a smaller continent (a slightly larger verzion of the a battle island) who's job is to be vehicle only except inside bases.

Also and most importantly there should be more focus for open areas. One of my favourite ways to fight is in an open area as a foot zerg or a tank stand-off and it would be nice getting more of these.