Ground Vehicles Required in PS2?

[Landtank]

Well what happens if you lose your tech plant? Then you have no access to Galaxies, and you have to really rely on ground vehicles to transport large quantities of troops to the front lines.

[Sledgecrushr]

Originally Posted by Akadios

The 100 infantry in galaxies that you will be dropping. The original post was about using exclusively air to provide cover and transport for your full infantry platoon. (Which is 100 infantry in PS2). The other factor here though, is that an enemy hiding inside has already lost. Half the battle is taking the Courtyard so if this happened it would actually be ideal.

All Im trying to say is that if you could keep your armor intact by keeping them under cover then your 100 infantry would be at a disadvantage. I personally will try not to fight an enemy the way they want to fight.

[Akadios]

Originally Posted by Pepsi

Personally I'd want the air vehicles to always be at a disadvantage in these situations. The air vehicles not only get to decide when, where, and how to fight an AA tank, but the aircraft can also just zip away if it gets weak (good luck trying to hide or run away from a helicopter/jet).

I totally agree, I would prefer if AA vehicles > AV Reavers. I am not sure if that is the case though as we didn't have anti vehicle specialized air craft in PS1. If anyone has seen footage from alpha on this please enlighten us as too the current balance here.

[Wayside]

Originally Posted by Akadios

I have been kicking this around in my head for a bit. Are ground vehicles really going to be necessary? What I mean by this is not in the general zerg sense but in a more organized outfit sense.

Changes from PS1 that brought this line of thought on:

Galaxy's ability to deploy as an AMS
The ability to spawn on your squad leader
The ability to spec out aircraft for anti-vehicle roles


The concept of a ground vehicle less structure:

25 or so Empire Specific fighters
15 or so anti-vehicle reavers
10 or so anti-infantry reavers
10 or So Galaxies filled with infantry (1 full platoon ie. 100 infantry)

The question: With the above setup is there really a need to have an armor column if it meant you had to remove some of these assets and couldn't remove infantry? Would there be any reason that ground vehicles would be better than fighters, reavers, or gals?

I wonder about this as well. Certainly ground vehicles are going to be the slower transportation option, by a long shot. So the question becomes what makes that slow option worth while?

The quickest answer that comes to mind is survivability. This is something I'm hoping to see the devs work on during beta. If a galaxy gets smoked as soon as it exposes itself to a well defended enemy base, and a sunderer is tough enough to drive straight through the defenses and into the heart of a complex, that becomes the justification for a ground-based attack.

I'm of a strong opinion that vehicles like the main battle tanks and the sunderer should be just about invulnerable to small arms fire. Nothing short of weapons specifically designed to take out vehicles should pose a threat. Anything short of that kind of toughness and you really do have to stop and ask why on earth you'd waste time crawling around the map in a slow moving ground vehicle.

I say all that as a pilot. I've got a long list of hopes and dreams for the flying game, but I'm going to be seriously disappointed with the state of game balance if its a trivial task to take out a MBT or sunderer. I want that to feel like a hellofa accomplishment.

[Malorn]

Planetside is a game of hard counters. From what we saw of resource costs, ground vehicles were also a bit cheaper. ES fighters looked fragile from the footage, two missiles often enough to bring one down. Between AA max, HA missiles, Lightning skyguard turrets and AA config secondary guns there are plenty of hard counters to air.

In the streams the ES aircraft didn't do a lot of air to ground, they were too busy worrying about the other aircraft. I think ground forces with sufficient AA cover can take ground and cause what enemy air is around to screw off.

[Stardouser]

I think this is an important question. If infantry can easily perform AA roles and AV roles, especially if on a 1 to 1 basis like some people want, then why not always do Galaxy assaults through the air, for speed and ability to reach anywhere, instead of slow ground assaults that might just get bombed on the way?

[Trafalgar]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

I think this is an important question. If infantry can easily perform AA roles and AV roles, especially if on a 1 to 1 basis like some people want, then why not always do Galaxy assaults through the air, for speed and ability to reach anywhere, instead of slow ground assaults that might just get bombed on the way?

Because your galaxy will get shot down by enemy air superiority fighters?

[Vreki]

I expect it to follow the old Predator-Prey cycle.

*Be too heavy on Ground Attack Aircrafts, and the enemys Air Superiority Fighters will destroy you
*Be too heavy on Air Superiority Fighters, and the enemys Armour will largely ignore you and roll over your base.
*Be too heavy on Armour, and your forces will be decimated by Air before they reach the enemy base.

[OutlawDr]

Have lightnings with a skygaurd turret act as hard counters to an all air force. They should have the clear advantage over any AV air vehicle in a straight fight. Like someone said, the air vehicle can always fly away easy enough or launch a surprise attack on their terms. While the lighting is left very vulnerable to ground troops and vehicles.

[windlord]

Personally I'm looking forward to utilising the cover the ground provides.

Besides combined arms is always going to be the best strategy. Then comes the issue of how many should be thrown against what point for what gain. Many light strikes?

[Trafalgar]

Flak is all well and good until someone starts dropping GPS-guided bombs on you from a stealth bomber flying far above the cloud cover at night time.

I have no idea if we'll have anything resembling this capability, of course.

[Brusi]

don't forget how shit people are at flying...

in the current build cactus > both ground based and air based AA

[WNxThentar]

Originally Posted by Akadios

After everything said I should say I agree with everything people said, I think the only thing I wonder is,

Are anti-vehicle specc'd reavers an even match for an anti air specc'd lightning or MBT? Do we know the answer from e3 play, i haven't seen anything?

If an anti-vehicle reaver is a 1vs1 match for an anti-air vehicle than the only factor would be cost as far as I can see. I know it sounds silly but it all comes down to how well anti-vehicle reavers can clear out anti-air. If it is similar to the ability of a MBT to kill an MBT than it really doesn't seem like there is a need to "Switch it up".

That being said if it is that way than the air may be better. Let me explain why I think this. If the av reaver is a match for an aa mbt than it will also kill an av or ai mbt. As such if you roll the reavers to kill the aa they can also kill the ai and av, the same can not be said for ground vehicles which in AA mode would have difficulty killing vehicles or infantry, or in av or AI mode would have trouble with air, etc.

So if you have say 50 people other than your infantry force and the enemy is fielding a mix of everything (which can be assumed for the most part). Than if the AV reaver is a match for an AA MBT would it not simply be more efficient to have 35 AV and 15 interceptors rather than mixing it up with units that can't just kill everything?

I would hope that a MBT with AA is more then a match for 1 air vehicle, maybe minus a lib and even then the lib shouldn't be able to go nose to nose. Air vehicles are inherently more fragile and offensive wise shouldn't pack as much of a punch. It is a lot easier to wheel a ton of ammo across the ground then fly it around. The air vehicles benefits should be in their 6 degrees of freedom and speed.

Think in PS1. A reaver is no match for a sky guard unless the reaver really gets the drop on a skyguard. As a lib pilot I used to think that the lib was a bit over powered against AA maxes because as a lib pilot is was fairly easy to go nose to nose with a max and win as long as I could close the distance before they started firing. Having air vehicles on par with tanks is just over kill because they have the ability to get out of a situation a lot easier and faster then ground vehicles.

[Mezorin]

Here's a thought experiment: take about 3/4ths the units in Planetside 1 and ask "Would my outfit be better off manning this vehicle, or having x number of reaver/mossie bail commandos?" with x being the number players it takes to fully man a vehicle. This is the reason most vehicles in Planetside 1 were redundant or subpar, because there is no way you could ever justify in terms of "Playing to Win" having that vehicle over an air cav group.

For instance, take the Terran Republic prowler tank. Can you really say that thing is worth the fire power and survivability of 3 reavers? Or that you can justify a turkey like the Raider that took 5 players to man that otherwise could have been flying?

[TeaLeaf]

As long as ground based AA is twice as effective as airborne AV neither vehicle type will dominate. AA beats Air which beats MBTs. Quite a nice Rock, Paper, Scissors balance there.