Rethinking the Drivers and Planetside Vehicles as a whole

[Sirisian]

I've always preferred vehicles where the driver and gunners work together without leaving the driver out of the action. This is going to sound controversial, especially for veterans, but the change that I'd make to enable that is to give the main weapons of a vehicle to the driver and let the gunner offset the weaknesses of the main weapons with secondary weapons. (Breathe. This is similar in concept to the BFR). I assure you I've included changes that make this balanced.

So how I see this changing things depends on the vehicles. Some would stay like they are while others would see a different gameplay.

Starting with two single person planes that many view as "solo but can work with a team such as a squad". That is they don't have mandatory teamwork.

Mosquito
Focus on anti-aircraft/anti-infantry. The idea would be to keep them agile and suited for taking out other aircraft while also allowing them to kill infantry in quick attacks. (As I said in another thread I'm not a fan of hovering and I prefer A-10 Warthog type strikes with high fire-rates).

Reaver
Focus on anti-vehicle/anti-infantry (depending on the rockets) ranged sneak attacks. Like normal they'd be good at damaging targets and avoiding AA.

Liberator
The liberator in Planetside is a 3 person vehicle with a lot of down-time especially for the tail-gunner. I foresee a whole new gameplay model for it.

The bombs would be weaker making the driver inline with the other aircraft and focus on tactical strikes. The physics for the bombs would be changed such that they behave like real bombs keeping the velocity of the plane that releases them. That is you can fly at a target then release a bomb and pull up and the bomb would be thrown into the target. (This would alow allow you to throw a bomb through a door, but that's less likely). Or if you start out high in the clouds then drop straight down on a target and release bombs one after another they'd hit in the same spot. The main idea would be giving the driver more control over the skill of using a bomber. The driver would lose their front gun and become a more specialized aircraft. When you see a bomber you know what it's after basically.

There would be one gunner for it. The tailgunner would have anti-vehicle cannons or anti-air rounds. With the increased maneuverability (6 degrees of freedom flight) the tail gunner would actually make sense in the new game. It could be used to defend the plane or to aim at targets with AV rounds if the plane was low bombing. (A single bomb wouldn't kill a vehicle basically, thus why dive bombing to focus multiple bombs would be used if a person wanted to do more damage).

Tanks (Prowler/Vanguard/Magrider)
With this change tanks would function more as a slow firing heavy hitting vehicle. That is when you saw one you know they can only attack one piece of armor at a time but they can do this very well. For instance, if you saw a vanguard fire there would be a loud blast and smoke particles emitted from the muzzle and the vehicle would rock backwards and the barrel would recoil into the tank then slowly reset itself. The round would travel through the air in a long arc then explode when it hit something. You'd immediately know that whatever it hit probably just sustained a lot of damage.

However, because of this slow firing heavy hitting you'd know pretty well that they were vulnerable to infantry and air attacks. This means that a secondary gunner would be very beneficial. The top of a tank would have either anti-infantry or anti-aircraft weapons.

However to keep things simple they'd be generally the same.

Prowler: AI = Long Range Dual Rockets, AA = Air-Burst Flak Rounds

Vanguard: AI = Long Range Dual Cluster Rockets, AA = Shotgun Flak Rounds

Magrider: AI = Long Range Dual Plasma Rockets, AA = Energy Flak Rounds

The AI would be used to attack with nearly the same distance as the main cannon and the AA would be used to tell aircraft to stay out of range.

The whole idea here is to make both the driver and gunner important roles and keep both interesting in the battle with ideally no downtime. While this seems like it makes the gunner's roll unimportant, without one a person using a tank would set themselves up to be ambushed by infantry and air attacking the weak components of the vehicle since the reload time would make leave it defenseless.

Also I really didn't like the old gameplay of the tanks; shooting the main cannon while driving 50 through a forest. Ideally the tank would be doing one of two things. Either lining up a shot and shooting something or moving into position. Their role would be focused more on open terrain combat where both the driver and gunner are bombarding the enemy. The gunner would be much more able to shoot while driving whereas the main gun would difficult to aim exactly while moving.

Skyguard
Possibly one of the most specific vehicles in the game with the strongest AA in the game. It was fun to gun for, but driving them them wasn't nearly as rewarding. It had a huge role overlap with the AA max which was probably the main problem. Not sure if this was anyone's favorite vehicle, but since the driver never got any kills I've always wanted it to be a deployed dual AA turret.

That is it wouldn't have a secondary gunner. It's teamwork would be more of a big-picture stationary air-turret for taking out fast moving planes from afar. Rather than flak though I've always wanted a super high rate-of fire anti-aircraft gun. That would basically totally re-invent the skyguard. (The original did have a machine-gun though).

Did anyone enjoy driving this vehicle?

Empire-Specific buggies
The way I imagine making them more interesting is giving the driver a forward facing chaingun and letting the gunner still deal with the main gun. That is the marauder would still promote a fast agile attack platform and the driver could stay occupied if it was chasing something. (This is similar to the old magrider's front gun which wasn't that great as a front gun).

Ground Transport
In the 8 years the games been out I've only used them once or twice. I'm sure some people found them fun, but they weren't as rewarding as any of the other vehicles. Pulling a galaxy for my squad was usually my first choice. If there was terrain or caves in the new game where these could be used then maybe I'd change my mind. Not sure how those will even work if they're included in the new game since it sounds like they buffed the role of the galaxy even more.

Conclusion
Now a few people are probably going to think to themselves "what if 50 people try to use these vehicles solo?" Ideally they'd be designed with a weakness like the tank such that they'd leave themselves open to a wide range of attacks.

Also since I was in IRC the comment of "This just promotes solo play" came up and I agree to a point. The idea is to make all the vehicles rewarding to use even as a driver. Some people found driving extremely rewarding getting their gunner into the perfect positions to fire. I personally didn't enjoy it as much as the developers probably intended.

What do you guys think about these ideas? (I know they're going to be compared to other games, but describe what you don't like about how it was handled at least in those games with how I presented the driver/gunner relationship). Also if you enjoyed driving say that. I'm in the minority on that I'm almost 100% sure.