Concept is pretty simple for this I think. We're all excited and happy that PS2 will have hit boxes/locational damage for players and vics, but how about seeing some effects to that besides just armor/health damage effects?
I think this would really only work well for vehicles/air vehicles and not so much with infantry (maybe MAX, but I think that might be getting a bit picky and also make MAX's undesirable).
Vehicles (and air vehicles) all have certain components that make them function the way they do -- engines, turrets, weapons, tracks/grav(VS). I'm thinking that if you get, say for example, a direct hit with an AV weapon on the tracks of a vehicle it might damage those tracks directly, making it more difficult to drive (or even completely immobile with, say, two hits). Maybe destroying the gravity generator (or whatever) on a VS magrider would cause it crash to the ground, making it immobile. If you put a direct hit on the main cannon with an AV weapon on a Vanguard (or insert-vehicle-here) would cause that weapon to be immobilized.
Some good examples of this being implemented in other games would be Company of Heroes (damage can be done to engines, immobilizing them, killing gunners, destroying the main gun, etc...) and also Star Wars Empire at War (screenshot below for reference).
http://i2.listal.com/image/866082/93...screenshot.jpg
With the screenshot above you can see that there are several green icons on the super star destroyer (the big ass grey ship, for you non-star wars nerds). There are also some items in yellow and red; these signify damage that has been done to them (yellow being damage sustained and lowered efficiency/effectiveness, and red being destroyed/immobilized).
Also note that from the star wars example above, there are MANY points you can directly target, but obviously for Planetside 2 we're not dealing with any super star destroyers, so there would only be 2 or 3 spots you can damage/destroy on vehicles (and honestly, mostly probably through luck or very well placed shots). I think it would add a level of realism to the game and could balance the vehicles a bit more. For example if you've got a column of tanks moving towards a base, it would probably be better to destroy the tracks/wheels/grav before they get to the base (or the engine) rather than going for the gun; on the other hand if the vehicle is already on a ridge firing down onto a base, it doesn't do you much good to target the tracks/grav, but may be useful to take out the main gun. And obviously these could be repaired by engineers.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. And of course if SOE picks up this idea, I call dibs on royalties
2012-06-06, 03:53 PM
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