Class-Switching Mentality

[NewSith]

Originally Posted by Palerion

Sure thing bro. Support and sniper set up a position in a building nearby a base. Set up machinegun and sniper on bipod, the assault in the squad places a healing pack by their side, the sniper places a motion sensor by them. Engineer and assault go to the point which the support and sniper cover and begin to cap it. As enemies become aware of the cap, they begin to defend the point, but are made quick work of by the sniper and support. The health pack mitigatws any damage that the support and sniper take. Those who pass through are taken out by the assault and engineer. Through the use of the motion sensor, the sniper and support detect someone entering their building. They cover the exits and eliminate the opponent. A tank arrives, the engineer eliminates it with his javelin. The point is capped. Just one scenario in which all four classes are made use of.

Okay, the genral thing I noticed straight away is that what you are proposing is human teamwork, not class teamwork. There may aswell be two Supports, one packing claymores, the other one packing C4, or two medics. Or actually two medics and two supports.


Now if we close our eyes to that, here's a similar situation:
MAX+LA+Infiltrator+HA+Medic+Engi

A Biolab fight occurs near an SCU Shield Gen. A MAX, followed by an HA with a Decimator (against enemy MAXes) jumps in. Medic keeps the infantry alive, while Engi pocket-reps a MAX. Behind them a sniper is using his bolt action sniper to easily pick off enemies at close distance. LA does not follow the group and jumps on top of the roof. The group pushes through to B, and sets up a defensive perimeter there. Infiltartor puts bouncing betties down, Engi places an Ammo Box. Infiltrator stands on it and keeps spamming Sensor Darts. The fight goes on, and LA on the roof keeps the bridges secure. Anyone who comes close enough to entrance and gets shot at by forces inside, is after that finished off by LA with a revolver. When a situation gets dire, LA let's all hostiles through and then jumps in after them with a shotgun clearing out the building and holding it for a bit more until the team can reenter the fray.


The problem you say exists is probably caused by PlanetSide's scale. BF3 offers squad play on a very small scale, with vehicles being heavily limited on top of that. PlanetSide 2 doesn't have that small scale combat when a group of 6 is pitted against a group of six (that type of combat is typically uneven), thus it may seem that all classes are standalone. But in reality, 1 engineer is enough to supply a group of 10 HAs, or two infiltrators with darts and one engi is enough to get a legit wallhack on a relatively large radius. In other words, the reason you see shooting classes dominating the battlefield is probably, because of how support roles are not restricted by the numbers they have to support.

If you compare it to vehicle combat for example though, you'll notice that any improvised vehicle depot (a place where engies massively repair vehicles) has a number of engineers significantly higher, than a number of currently repaired vehicles.