Empire Specific Atributes

[Peacemaker]

Now this subject is open to just about everything about the differences in the equipment that each empire has. Vehicles, guns, maxs. I'm really going to focus on Vehicles, but I do have concerns for the Weapons. Ill hit on that fast at the end.

Lets review the old PS A tributes:
TR: Rate of fire = win
NC: Huge Explosions = win (Oh and more armor)
VS: Versatility = win

My concern basically lies in Vehicles such as the Prowler, vs the other MBTs, and other Empire Specific Vehicles. The best example however is the Deliverer variants.

Raider : 1 Driver 4 Gunners = Max DPS
Thunderer 1 Driver 2 Gunners = Max
Aurora: 1 Driver 2 Gunners = Max

Anyone see a problem here? With a squad of Ten you get two raiders or THREE of the others.

Next Issue, same vehicle, slightly different Idea

Raider: 4 gunners need to see, identify, track, and hit WITH ALL 4 guns
Thunderer / Aurora :2 gunners need to do the same.

Anyone not getting the issue? Id like to see PS2 fix this by not making ALL TR vehicles require a 3rd or 4th gunner. In equal population environments its too much of a disadvantage, and they are also just giant targets.

On the Infantry weapons, RoF advantage only works if you can land the rounds on target. The cycler in PS1 despite having the best RoF still got out DPS'd by the Gauss and Pulsar. In a situation where ping is key, lower RoF more damage = larger advantage than should be allowed. 5 High RoF bullets fired, but b/c of lag and bloom 3 miss vs 2 Low RoF bullets that both hit is the problem. The same can be applied to the vehicle weapons too.

Yes. I played all 3 empires. Yes I found it considerably easier to play as Vanu and NC. No I don't think TR guns / vehicles suck. The logic behind them is slightly flawed and should be addressed.

[Bags]

NC weapons are slow and heavy hitting, not explosive. Agree with the overall message though.

[MgFalcon]

Lasher needs to lash through doors, and lash from 20ft away. Then the game will be fixed and balanced!

Oh Omniscient Vanu God, I hope they bring my disco-ball launcher back

[Soothsayer]

yeah they need to burn any drawing boards that they went back to when they were cooking up the whole TR Concept...

If TR takes more bodies and that's the way you want the design philosophy to go, we need a bigger pop cap

hah not at all serious, TR can keep the more bullets is better philosophy, but they need to do it with less people.

[Valdae]

Its a good argument, but in truth I never saw the TR with less vehicles than other empires at any point.

And whilst I played VS for years, I used TR on another server cause I liked the Prowler. I believe that using 2 people to control 2 separate guns at the same time was much more dangerous than having one person switch between 2 - regardless of empire attributes. And dont even get me started on the magrider lol..

[Ranik Ortega]

Agreed. For the love of god SOE don't make TR have to have extra men to do the same thing the other empires do. The prowler 12mm was almost never manned as well as the deliverer variant.

[BorisBlade]

Originally Posted by Valdae

Its a good argument, but in truth I never saw the TR with less vehicles than other empires at any point.

And whilst I played VS for years, I used TR on another server cause I liked the Prowler. I believe that using 2 people to control 2 separate guns at the same time was much more dangerous than having one person switch between 2 - regardless of empire attributes. And dont even get me started on the magrider lol..

The problem is, if its you and another friend. You get a prowler and the main gun, sounds fine, but you run into any aircraft no matter what, even a mosquito and he can kill you and if he's smart will try. If you get attacked while in a vanguard you just switch to the 20mm and kick his ass. If i take my platoon out, i can get 15 vanguards and can handle the air or ground targets. But on my tr toon i can only get 10 prowlers. Or can get 15 and be a sitting duck to air. And yeah you can mix in a skyguard etc but its all a pain and just less effective than what you bring with a vanguard.

The extra man thing only works if you are still evenly balanced without using that other slot, aka you can have a weapon to hit air with just like the vanguard can. But then that just makes the tr tank end up even with one gunner but more powerful if the other gun is manned, its just options for the sake of options. bad design imo.

And dont get me started on the marauder, 6 people to gun 2 of those rolling coffins or for the same manpower get 3 vanguards. 2 marauders vs 3 vanguards, its absurd.

Best choice would be the heavy tanks of all empires require pilot + 2 gunners, one with the main cannon, and one with a machine gun or similar that could be used for AA or AI. Helps to balance the manpower vs vehicle power better. All buggies should be pilot +one gunner only. Light tanks would have some transport ability, aka deliverer style and would have around 2 gunners with heavy caliber machine guns that are balanced much like the 20mm vs different targets. Mainly tho crew numbers between empires would remain the same for comparable vehicles.

[Peacemaker]

Having a higher RoF would be acceptable if the RoF was MUCH higher. And yes, most of the time the secondary gun position went unmanned. But if you look back at TTK comparisons for things like the Prowler vs Vanguard vs Magrider the Prowler needs its 12/15mm to beat out the Vanguard / Magrider in DPS AND it needs to hit every time to win. The vanguard has more armor and the Magrider has that drivers gun station. Flawed in the basic idea, but it seems you guys understand what I'm saying.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Ranik Ortega

Agreed. For the love of god SOE don't make TR have to have extra men to do the same thing the other empires do. The prowler 12mm was almost never manned as well as the deliverer variant.

Cycler should require two people to use it.

[Volw]

How many TR do you need to screw in a lightbulb?

[kaffis]

See, I always envied the Raider -- when my squad wanted to do the Mech Infantry thing, our two drivers could pull Thunderers, sure, but that left 4 guys staring at their screens waiting for us to arrive, instead of manning a gun or driving.

Sure, we could have had 3 Thunderers, I suppose, but that requires more people to dedicate certs to driving, and sucks NTU resources dry faster for the same population.

Look at other vehicles: Everybody loves Marauders; they were doing the party van before the Deliverer variants made it cool. Contrast with Enforcers, and I think you'd find significantly fewer on the field. (Threshers don't enter the discussion because, like everything Vanu, they're not even on the same scale as the other empires' equipment when it come to role and usefulness)

Prowlers and Vanguards compare pretty favorably, IMO. The Prowler has a slightly slower TTK, but it's damage under a middling skill gunner is much less spiky due to the higher ROF allowing somebody who doesn't have that gut-instinct level mastery of the trajectories to make small increment corrections on moving targets more easily. Poor gunners get a much more magnified difference in favor of the Prowler (because poor Vanguard gunners outright miss a lot, and lose a lot of damage for each miss), while master Vanguard gunners edge out similarly skilled Prowler gunners. So, yeah. Slight edge to the Vanguard in a 2 v 2 crew situation.

Throw the third Prowler crewman in there, though, and the Prowler's survivability against battlefield conditions goes way up. Making a Vanguard gunner choose whether to be killed by the enemy ground forces or the Reavers floating around isn't an advantage when you're talking about pitched battles on an appreciable scale.

So, I'd like to politely disagree with the premise that extra gunners = bad design. It's good design, and can be an advantage if your teammates cooperate with you. Fewer gunners means more drivers per capita means more certs "wasted" on the driving and engineering. Every gun manned by either empire is a player that can leverage the advantages of vehicles simultaneously with the ability to grunt it up on foot with the best of them. If TR don't make use of that advantage, well, I'd say that's on them.

[Ranik Ortega]

Originally Posted by kaffis

See, I always envied the Raider -- when my squad wanted to do the Mech Infantry thing, our two drivers could pull Thunderers, sure, but that left 4 guys staring at their screens waiting for us to arrive, instead of manning a gun or driving.

Sure, we could have had 3 Thunderers, I suppose, but that requires more people to dedicate certs to driving, and sucks NTU resources dry faster for the same population.

Look at other vehicles: Everybody loves Marauders; they were doing the party van before the Deliverer variants made it cool. Contrast with Enforcers, and I think you'd find significantly fewer on the field. (Threshers don't enter the discussion because, like everything Vanu, they're not even on the same scale as the other empires' equipment when it come to role and usefulness)

Prowlers and Vanguards compare pretty favorably, IMO. The Prowler has a slightly slower TTK, but it's damage under a middling skill gunner is much less spiky due to the higher ROF allowing somebody who doesn't have that gut-instinct level mastery of the trajectories to make small increment corrections on moving targets more easily. Poor gunners get a much more magnified difference in favor of the Prowler (because poor Vanguard gunners outright miss a lot, and lose a lot of damage for each miss), while master Vanguard gunners edge out similarly skilled Prowler gunners. So, yeah. Slight edge to the Vanguard in a 2 v 2 crew situation.

Throw the third Prowler crewman in there, though, and the Prowler's survivability against battlefield conditions goes way up. Making a Vanguard gunner choose whether to be killed by the enemy ground forces or the Reavers floating around isn't an advantage when you're talking about pitched battles on an appreciable scale.

So, I'd like to politely disagree with the premise that extra gunners = bad design. It's good design, and can be an advantage if your teammates cooperate with you. Fewer gunners means more drivers per capita means more certs "wasted" on the driving and engineering. Every gun manned by either empire is a player that can leverage the advantages of vehicles simultaneously with the ability to grunt it up on foot with the best of them. If TR don't make use of that advantage, well, I'd say that's on them.

Spoken like someone who didn't play TR and never had to struggle to get someone onto the extra gun.

[Peacemaker]

Originally Posted by kaffis

See, I always envied the Raider -- when my squad wanted to do the Mech Infantry thing, our two drivers could pull Thunderers, sure, but that left 4 guys staring at their screens waiting for us to arrive, instead of manning a gun or driving.

Sure, we could have had 3 Thunderers, I suppose, but that requires more people to dedicate certs to driving, and sucks NTU resources dry faster for the same population.

Look at other vehicles: Everybody loves Marauders; they were doing the party van before the Deliverer variants made it cool. Contrast with Enforcers, and I think you'd find significantly fewer on the field. (Threshers don't enter the discussion because, like everything Vanu, they're not even on the same scale as the other empires' equipment when it come to role and usefulness)

Prowlers and Vanguards compare pretty favorably, IMO. The Prowler has a slightly slower TTK, but it's damage under a middling skill gunner is much less spiky due to the higher ROF allowing somebody who doesn't have that gut-instinct level mastery of the trajectories to make small increment corrections on moving targets more easily. Poor gunners get a much more magnified difference in favor of the Prowler (because poor Vanguard gunners outright miss a lot, and lose a lot of damage for each miss), while master Vanguard gunners edge out similarly skilled Prowler gunners. So, yeah. Slight edge to the Vanguard in a 2 v 2 crew situation.

Throw the third Prowler crewman in there, though, and the Prowler's survivability against battlefield conditions goes way up. Making a Vanguard gunner choose whether to be killed by the enemy ground forces or the Reavers floating around isn't an advantage when you're talking about pitched battles on an appreciable scale.

So, I'd like to politely disagree with the premise that extra gunners = bad design. It's good design, and can be an advantage if your teammates cooperate with you. Fewer gunners means more drivers per capita means more certs "wasted" on the driving and engineering. Every gun manned by either empire is a player that can leverage the advantages of vehicles simultaneously with the ability to grunt it up on foot with the best of them. If TR don't make use of that advantage, well, I'd say that's on them.

Now make it 6 guys. 2 Prowlers vs 3 Vanguards. Vanguard wins, hands down. The Vanguard hardly "Edges out" above the prowler it down right demolishes it. On your first point though, Thunderers are absolutely god like next to Raiders. Go jump in game right now and get in a Raider. Get 4 gunners and see how many kills you get. The range is low, the DPS sucks because how hard it is to stay on target, the thing cant shoot a Vanguard thats on top of it, AND it requires 5 guys instead of 3. Ill take 3 Thunderers to 2 Raiders any day and come out on top. Hell 2 Thunderers would probably beat 2 Raiders.

[Hamma]

I never understood why the prowler was 3 man.

[Bags]

Thunderer is hands down the most fun vehicle to gun in the game though.