The Lightning, towed weapons, a few deployables and various other delusions

[Incompetent]

Ok, this is going to be a long and, almost undoubtedly pointless thread that was written when I was very tired. Basically, when asked what they want put in the game, most people will ask for some stupidly complicated massive floating ship, boats or space combat. So, confident that my delusions can�t be any worse then most people�s let me begin, first off�

The Lightning, at first glance, seems like it would be a respectable weapon of war, it has decent armor, weapons, speed and maneuverability; unfortunately, it is just a small box that guarantees you can�t be rezzed, so I�d like to see its armor bumped up anywhere between 25 and 50 percent; however the more important change would be to introduce is variants. Basically how this would work is that you pay your initial three points for your Lightning cert, which can also be accompanied by numerous 1 or 2 point variations. For instance, you could pick up a flak lightning, with the 75mm and the 12mm each replaced with a single 40mm flack cannon, or maybe a 2 point rocket variant, which mounts a Reaver style rocket launcher, or a twin linked 30mm variant, the possibilities are practically endless. This would make the lightning a respectable weapon of war and a dependable vehicle that people would be proud to have a cert in and would almost certainly bring more vehicles onto the battlefield, hopefully moving the battles further away from bases and out into the terrain.

Now, onto my next deluded vision, towed weapons, this is sort of complicated so I�ll start from the start. This would most likely be a 3-4 point catchall cert that would offer a lot of bang for your buck, seeing as how it�s mostly defensive. It would need its own inventory station most likely, hopefully wedged outside, near the v-pad for ease of use, the weapons could be pushed by infantry, but that method would be very slow and suited only for fine-tuning the positioning, the most effective way to move them would be to hook them up to the back of a vehicle, now, depending on the vehicle they would slow it down a certain amount depending on what type it is and the vehicle, so a Basilisk would strain to make thirty dragging a 75mm around but a Sunderer might never notice it has a 25mm coupled to it.

They would require time to set up, obviously you could throw down the lighter ones faster then the heavy ones, mostly I think they should use weapons systems already in the game, such as a flak battery with quad 40mm flak cannons on it, or a 75mm for general havoc, with the 25 an 30 for anti-infantry and light anti-armor use. The only additional weapon I would like to see is a 50mm flat line trajectory AT gun specifically designed to kill tanks, APCs and assault vehicles, but almost totally ineffective against infantry due to its COF size and zero splash, although if it hits it should do very respectable damage. Also, lighter weapons such as the 20mm and 12mm should be either twin or even quadlinked, to provide both advantages and disadvantages over the MGs that I will (hopefully) lay out later in the thread.

Now, as for protection and armor, those will need play testing, but I think a good general rule would be that the platforms crews should be protected from fire in coming from the general forward direction, but be vulnerable from behind, emphasizing the importance of infantry support and maintaining a frontline. As far as health goes, they should have a good bit, but not an insane amount, extensive play testing would be needed to balance that out. They should have a trunk system similar to vehicles as far as ammo is concerned.

The idea behind all that crap was to give the defenders a clear and present advantage, a way to smash the attackers if they were stupid, and put up a massive fight no matter what, combined with some xp bonuses for killing in friendly SOIs (share not split perhaps?) should give more people an incentive to defend, and to develop real battle lines.

Onto my next delusion, a short list of deployable items I would like to see, most likely tied to combat engineering. First and foremost, I want my Dragons Teeth, or I could be convinced to settle with angle iron, most of you know what they are, big metal and/or concrete objects that the infantry won�t notice and might even like while driving tankers to suicide. Each engineer should get anywhere from 5-10 and they should follow the basic rules of most deployable, with a few exceptions. These suckers should take up a rifle slot and be the same size as any other MA weapon. Sound like no big deal right, just give them a shot from your 150mm cannon and they�re gone, right, well here the catch, the only way to remove them is to hand place a boomer on top of them. Also, hover vehicles that try to pass over them are extremely heavily damaged, for now lets spew some shit about how they interfere with the magnetic fields and shut down any projectors that come over them, or some such crap.

The primary other deployable I would want to see would be a fighting position, similar to the ones on the Pillar of Autumn if you�ve played HALO, nothing to complicated, each engineer gets on two man weapon position for a MG, two one man positions and a MAX position, nice simple, and can only be destroyed the same way as the Dragons Teeth.

Alright, I�m about to shut up, but I just want to mention one last thing; heavy, medium and light machineguns, 25mm, 20mm, and 12mm respectively. First I want to talk about the LMG, this would be a HA sized weapon that uses standard 12mm ammo boxes that must be fed into a trunk style loader that holds only 1 spare ammo crate, so you would need a loader, and thus, some semblance of teamwork. LMGs would set up fairly quickly and would be primarily useful for offensive actions and fairly useful for defensive actions. This would be the only MG usable by Agile armor, although that wouldn�t exactly be recommended.

The MMG is next up; with this you get a weapon equally useful for offensive and defensive actions. The catch with the MMG is that it comes in two pieces, the HA sized main weapon and a MA sized bipod / ammo feed / miscellaneous bullshit that is required to be carried by another character, along with the same setup with the ammo feed, so unlike the LMG, which you might be able to manhandle into a usable form solo, this would be a team only weapon. It�s setup would be in between that of the HMG and LMG, and would hopefully be equally useful in offensive and defensive applications.

Finally the HMG, the 25mm monster that rips the Zerg apart like wet toilet paper. It would most likely come in two, HA sized pieces that must be carried by two separate people, and noticeably slows them down. It would take forever to deploy and once again have the same ammo feed setup as the other two and would as such require two or even three people to use to full effectiveness. This thing would very rarely be useful on offense if the enemy is paying attention, but if your lucky you could do some serious damage, however if would be primarily be intended for defense.

MGs would be a 3-4 point cert and would have advantages and disadvantages compared to towed weapon, most likely these should be deployable inside bases and bunkers, and in combination with some of the ideas in SumYungGui�s thread would hopefully help encourage defense.

Ok, so there it is, finally over, so just jam a generic and logical statement about how these ideas, with the exception of the Lightning, would encourage defense and make the game more fun overall right about here ______ and lets get to the Flames about my lack of intellectual abilities�

edit: this is a premptive acknowledgement that my grammer and paragraph placement sucks, so lets not start down that path.