Ideas for vehicle modifications

[Xyntech]

It was originally stated that PS2 wasn't planned to launch with any stealth vehicles, however Higby later said he would bring up the idea of a stealth modification. The game is still relatively early in development, so I figured we could spitball some ideas that we think could be good for the game.

If they are really good and somewhat easy to implement, maybe we'll get them before launch. If not, maybe they will get included in the to do list for the 3 year plan.

So to kick things off, an idea for tanks:

There has been a lot of debate about the old school 2 man tanks vs the new concept. Now I personally believe that the new system can be balanced, but what it can't do is give old school PS1 tankers that classic experience they want. The solution would consist of two modifications.

Mod 1) A heavy anti vehicle turret for the gunner position.

This would essentially give an ordinary tank double the AV damage (possibly more depending on if the extra gun was equal to or stronger than the drivers gun). This would become one of the deadliest variants against tanks, but would still be vulnerable to aircraft and probably even infantry in the right environments. It would still require team work and a driver who could drive and gun to achieve maximum devastation, but it's average armor and lack of AA or dedicated AI weaponry would still leave it open to many forms of attack.

Mod 2) Replace the drivers main cannon with a smaller AI gun and double the armor of a regular tank.

Suddenly you have a tank that is far less powerful or useful solo, but has even more armor to keep the tank alive for your gunner position. If you just want to drive and don't want to gun, just ignore the little AI gun and focus on driving.

If you mount an AI gun, the two AI weapons + running people over + double the armor would allow you to mow the lawn with infantry, while still being exposed (albeit with better armor) to vehicle and air attack.

Mount an AA system for the gunner and now you have what amounts to a beefed up skyguard, hard to hurt from the air but quite exposed to everything else.

And finally, most importantly, combine the heavy AV gunner of the first mod with the beefed up armor of the second mod and you would suddenly have a tank that is very close to what we are used to from PS1.

I don't think it would be too hard to balance either. A tank with two AV guns vs a tank with one AV gun and double armor would probably end up pretty even with each other, perhaps even favoring the latter due to having a driver who can pay all of their attention to maneuvering. Both of these variants, variants that require team work, would beat a solo tank, maybe even two solo tanks if the secondary AV gun did some extra damage.

Best of all, since for the moment it seems like we are stuck with a fixed gun Magrider, this solution would allow a more classic, turreted Magrider to exist without changing the new Magrider design at all. Just slap a smaller AI gun up front, double the armor and make the gunners turret be a big ol' tank busting gun. Quite possible, without needing to overhaul the entire current design of the Magrider.

I'm sure there are flaws with these ideas that I'm not thinking of, but I think they would bridge the gap and make an excellent and balanceable compromise between PS1 and the current PS2.

So let's hear some feedback and some other ideas for vehicle variants. Let's just try not to turn this into another outright tank debate thread, we have enough threads covering that at the moment.