Infantry to Air & Ground Vehicle equaliser = Jamming Devices

[Mordelicius]

Here's my suggestion to balance Infantry - Ground - Air units.

Infantry Jamming Devices:

The current imbalances stem from unequal one-to-one functions. Air and Vehicles can kill pretty much everything easily. Infantry can't.

Give infantry (except HA and Maxes) a base weapon that can fire sticky jamming devices unto vehicles.

Against tanks:
- cooldown 3 minutes.
- The device must successfully hit to stick
- Disables tank firing for 20 seconds.
- sidegrade disables movement for 20 seconds. (Magrider balance )
- sidegrade slows down movement by 50% and make aim highly inaccurate for 20 seconds.
- Players can remove the jamming bug (by pressing E).
- Jamming bug has a base 60% chance of exploding while being removed (thereby killing the player removing it and damaging the vehicle)
- Players can cert to lower the chance to 50%, 40%, and 30%

Againsts Air:
- cooldown 3 minutes
- The device must successfully hit to stick.
- The device is harder to hit at longer range.
- Disables firing for 2 minutes.
- Players can remove the jamming bug (by pressing E).
- Jamming bug has a base 70% chance of exploding while being removed (similar to tanks).
- Players can cert to lower the chance to 60%, 50%.

Spawn Room AOE jamming:
- Device sticking out of the roof
- Destructible but repairable from the inside.
- Cooldown of 1 minute.
- When fired, any aircraft around the cone on top of building will have their fire disabled and their movement slowed down for 2 minutes.
- Being hit the 2nd time while still jammed will disable the engine, making them plunge down.
- Upgradeable range: Infantry can spend infantry points on the device to increase the range for a certain period of time.

Open field constructible AA AOE Jamming.
- Allow Engineers to build these anywhere outside buildings.
- Similar to the Spawn Room AOE jamming device.
- Destructible/Repairable like a turret (but much more durable)
- Other players can spend infantry points to increase range.
- Can be used by other players.

There you go, a balanced combined arms gameplay.

[bpostal]

Jammers!

[PredatorFour]

^ ....................... JAMMERS!

[Canaris]

You know I'd probably ditch HE grenades for jammers if given the choice to level the vehicle vs infantry playing field. If a vehicle gets to close so I can hit him with a jammer then he deserves to have his weapon systems knocked out.

[Nolerhn]

It's a good idea, though perhaps the disabling of firing has too long of a duration. I don't know what would be ideal really though, you wouldn't want tanks and planes not fearing having their weapons locked (from getting too close to troops and thus coming into range of such an item) because it doesn't last long enough.

What I will say though, after trying out all the classes and vehicles (for TR anyway) I really like playing as an engineer (on foot), and while supplying ammo and supporting maxes/vehicles is fun and all, dear lord would I love to have something else to build besides turrets!

The turrets are good in their own way, but I would love having more choice in constructables to help my team out.

[Mordelicius]

Originally Posted by Nolerhn

It's a good idea, though perhaps the disabling of firing has too long of a duration. I don't know what would be ideal really though, you wouldn't want tanks and planes not fearing having their weapons locked (from getting too close to troops and thus coming into range of such an item) because it doesn't last long enough.

What I will say though, after trying out all the classes and vehicles (for TR anyway) I really like playing as an engineer (on foot), and while supplying ammo and supporting maxes/vehicles is fun and all, dear lord would I love to have something else to build besides turrets!

The turrets are good in their own way, but I would love having more choice in constructables to help my team out.

I think a 20 second nerf is ample enough against tanks. While 2 minutes is good for Air units.
The object is not to make infantry OP but to equalise them with vehicles.

Tanks move faster, hit faster and harder.
Air move even faster and hit even harder.
While infantry are sitting ducks in comparison.

It's to prevent those audacious pilots/drivers who get away with too much Rambo maneuvers with very little consequences.

A jammed tank would have two choices: stay put for 20 seconds and run the risk of getting shot with AV or flee. Meanwhile a jammed aircraft can't shoot and would have a 50% speed debuff so, they either linger and be easy target or move out of range and be careful next time.

It's also to prevent spawn camping. Yesterday, TR at Waterson couldn't do much inside a biolabs. While outside, they simply spam Liberators/Mosquito and bomb the living crap out of spawn rooms.

[Methonius]

I wouldn't mind jammers either, they were in ps1 and they worked fine. Maybe lower the timer a bit less than 20secs though. Also I think if you are skilled enough to hit an aircraft with one it should make them spin out of control and maybe even crash sometimes.

[RykerStruvian]

Originally Posted by Methonius

I wouldn't mind jammers either, they were in ps1 and they worked fine. Maybe lower the timer a bit less than 20secs though. Also I think if you are skilled enough to hit an aircraft with one it should make them spin out of control and maybe even crash sometimes.

That would be pretty awesome. I would love to have jammers in PS2.

[Vashyo]

I'd rather prefer if they just make tanks and planes rare to begin with, they're powertools. You can only fail with them if you're doing it wrong.

[VGCS]

Brilliant Idea! ...I'm sure SOE would probably handle the lockdown mechanics entirely differently from the proposals here but either way it's a great answer to pro-actively improve "Squishy" Infantry survival against Vehicles which is probably the #2 necessity after some kind of Spawn-Room changes.

[Suitepee]

If done correctly, this would be a great idea!

[amballs]

Really great idea! If everything will be done right those jamming devices will surely restore balance.

[Beerbeer]

This won't stop the problem, especially not me as I'm always 200 yards out, zooming in and spamming.

No one else finds the travesty in many people's statement that "vehicles should dominate infantry" without any drawbacks at all? No limits on vehicle access or HARD defense mechanisms from infantry? That's why this game sucks.

Put in shared one hour vehicle timers or buff infantry AV. Problem solved.