Vehicles are far too SQUISHY!

[Trafalgar]

Originally Posted by Ironside

Devs are bringing in another class...Landscape Gardener, you can deploy cacti and rocks everywhere, your kill count will be through the roof

It's a cactus! Duck and cover!

I'm sure this'll be addressed in some fashion in beta. I'd kind of expect an ATV like the Flash to bounce up over or flip over when it hit a rock, or bounce off (with the potential to throw or injure the driver and any passenger, if it has passengers). Tanks exploding when they hit them? Yeah, that's a bit extreme, but this is alpha still.

As for the cactuses, who knows? They could be crazy alien cacti with shells formed using a particularly dense element (lead, tungsten, etc) available in sufficient quantity in the ground for the cacti in that part of Auraxia, along with internal bracing to support the shells, and let's say a 6 meter long taproot with the same shell material, starting at the same diameter as the plant itself (Assume the cacti start growing without shells, then build them as they harvest the materials underground, using large root networks stretching out from their taproots).

If you rammed something like that head-on at high speed with a large ground vehicle it would at the very least crunch a cactus-shaped indentation into your vehicle, bring you to a stop, and depending on how fast you were going, could injure anyone in the vehicle (or break or weaken parts of the vehicle's mechanics or electronics due to the sudden deceleration?), I would expect.

[Hamma]

Cacti and Trees have a long standing tradition of destroying vehicles in PlanetSide. I think that tradition should continue..

[lolroflroflcake]

They are definitely too squishy. It should require multiple people working in concert to take out a MBT if your gonna fight it on foot. Thats the whole point of armor in this game, to dominate the out doors completely.

It can't do that if one guy with a rocket launcher or C4 can take them out so easy. Especially since everyone and their mother will be pulling AV at the first sign of a tank push. Planetside should not be an infantry centric, that is the cancer that ruins combined arms games.

Not trying to be rude or anything, but if your looking for that, then this isn't the game for you.

And yes this means I think they should nerf trees, to hell with tradition, I want to see my long standing nemesis finally made harmless.

[Mechzz]

Originally Posted by lolroflroflcake

They are definitely too squishy. It should require multiple people working in concert to take out a MBT if your gonna fight it on foot. Thats the whole point of armor in this game, to dominate the out doors completely.

It can't do that if one guy with a rocket launcher or C4 can take them out so easy. Especially since everyone and their mother will be pulling AV at the first sign of a tank push. Planetside should not be an infantry centric, that is the cancer that ruins combined arms games.

Not trying to be rude or anything, but if your looking for that, then this isn't the game for you.

While I agree that tanks are currently too squishy, I'm afraid that if SOE has decided that the big bucks lie in making an infantry-centric game because that's how they will maximise revenue, then anyone who prefers a vehicle-centric game may be SOL.

[wasdie]

I'm sure they'll balance it all during the beta.

[Neksar]

Well, with the advent of the driver-gunner, squishier vehicles are an unfortunate by-product. The original driver-gunner setup forced teamwork, so a tank was greater than the sum of its crew. Since MBTs are now drivable and gunnable by one person, they must be accordingly squishier. Case in point: the Lightning. It was squishy and a light tank in PS1 precisely because it could be driven solo. Now SOE's forced to make Lightnings on par with MBTs in a 1v1 fight because they now have no real advantage over an MBT besides speed.

I have no doubt that I'll enjoy this game. I also am quickly losing steam for my belief that PS2 will maintain the same feel that PS1 did in terms of massive ground battles. Much of that feeling is because a tank will no longer feel like, well, a tank. The resource cost and inherent awesomeness of pulling a tank quickly loses meaning when a single determined infantryman has a fighting chance against it. If I recall correctly, there are weak points behind tanks that can be sufficiently damaged even by a Light Assault's weapon.

This shift to an infantry-centric game is necessary for sales, but it doesn't mean I'm going to like choking it down when I dream of what could have been. Part of PS1's charm was the realization that, while you could play your part on foot in open battlefields, the real damage-dealers were in vehicles, with infantry playing the absolutely necessary role of support. Whether it be by repairing, taking pot shots at other infantry, using AV weapons, or moving the front up with CE, I still felt like I was doing my part. That doesn't even take infiltrators into consideration. Hell, even AP ammo made me feel useful, regardless of whether or not I actually was.

[Sicklylol]

Has anyone else noticed this? I have been watching the e3 streams and I noticed that tanks are losing 25% of their health from clipping into the side of a rock. This issue also exists when any pilot tries to land on flat ground. I've seen so many people blow up from slowly landing.

Has anyone else noticed this?

[IgloGlass]

I've noticed it as well. The developers did mention that they are trying to balance the damage from terrain, in the stream I believe.

However at times, like when a tank-driver tried to drive between two large rocks and didn't fit. Let's just say he exploded and that was totally valid at the moment.
Aircraft should be able to land on flat surface without taking heavy damage, though they should easily explode if they hit a giant rock while descending.

So yeah I've noticed it as well but the high damage is sometimes valid and sometimes not so I'm pretty confident that it will be balanced eventually.

[Vorgan]

Yup, been a few threads about this. Chalk it up to the game being in Alpha. Certainly won't last through the Beta. If it isn't changed prior to beta, feedback during the beta will address this issue.

[Sledgecrushr]

Yup its broken, im positive this is something on there to do list to fix.

[lolroflroflcake]

Originally Posted by whymad

You can't have strong vehicles in a game leaning towards casual infantry focused run an gun gameplay.

Why not if your stupid enough to try and fight armor and air on foot you should ... no, you deserve, to be ground into the dirt so hard you respawn missing your nose. This is still a combined arms game last time I checked, they'll see in beta that armor needs to be tougher when entire armor columns start getting smoked by five guys with some rockets.

[Reizod]

I have a funny feeling that, in order for us to have "Beefy" vechs in PS2, we will need to purchase "sidegrades" for them.

I've been trying to figure out exactly where and how they plan to make their $$$ from PS2 beyond the playing dress-up with your characther/vech stuff.

Having the vechs start off weak, pretty much will start the waiting line outside SOE/PS2 store within the first few weeks of the games launch.

My only hope is, that certs would do the trick rather than having to plop down my cash.

[DerFurst]

The Germans were probably the first to develop an effective way for infantry to combat tanks.

The idea was to take an RPG (panzerfaust) and get up really close to a tank, fire, then run/hide as fast as possible. It was a very risky maneuver, but obviously very rewarding. The same should go for PS2. Infantry should have a very difficult time individually taking out armor, for the sake of balance and realism.

[Mechzz]

Originally Posted by DerFurst

The Germans were probably the first to develop an effective way for infantry to combat tanks.

The idea was to take an RPG (panzerfaust) and get up really close to a tank, fire, then run/hide as fast as possible. It was a very risky maneuver, but obviously very rewarding. The same should go for PS2. Infantry should have a very difficult time individually taking out armor, for the sake of balance and realism.

It will be interesting to see what the First Platoon's take on that is. They may disagree. Just sayin'