Adding Teamwork to Air Combat

[Zulthus]

I don't know about completely defenseless... I've found that AMSes have a pretty nice capability for rolling over softies...

[Traak]

To make teamwork more alluring, like a hooker, you have to dress it up and give the user a more direct and immediate motivation to engage in it.

And the best way to do that is make weapons that don't suck so hard they make a deep-space vacuum look like a dynamic overpressure from an RDX explosion, and to make it so that the people manning those weapons are actually IN the thing they are expected to protect.

What are you more motivated to protect? Some spawn point that won't kill you if it goes all mushroom-cloud, or your own plane with your own ass in it? Stuff that is support-oriented needs intrinsic rewards for the players to protect it, not extrinsic, airy-fairy "good for the empire" crap that just does not motivate.

When it's YOU you are protecting, not just some abstract spawn point or base, or mod, over yonder somewhere, it is going to have a lot more likelihood of surviving. Witness people mowing over my CE, for no reason whatsoever, other than they could who were in my empire. Now, if that was THEIR CE they had laid out, they wouldn't be so horny to ruin it for fun.

You have to make mission-critical stuff have immediate, personal rewards and threats for it to be adequately protected. Right now, that is not the case. There is nothing in the game that is support-oriented that can even defend itself, unless you call the ultra-weak guns on the Galaxy some form of defense.

Want to make them truly viable? Give them no damage degradation, and a ROF of a minigun: 5000rpm. Or better yet, as I said, flak that is area-effect and proximity-fused. Then it will be rewarding to defend yourself and your spawn point, not just feel like you are a rape victim that added that extra zesty thrill for your rapist by struggling. "I love it when they struggle" is the cry of sickos the world over. It isn't fun to be the person trying, but doomed to fail, to protect yourself, and that is the Galaxy as it sits now.

[Sabrak]

Originally Posted by Traak

Leave the protection of a vulnerable ANYTHING to others? You have never actually PLAYED Planetside, I'm guessing.

I have played the game for years, thank you.

But yes, you're right.
Random people won't defend random spawn points.
That's where squads and outfits jump in action, though.
Ever planned an outfit raid from the Sanc, using Galaxies and Aircav?
Didn't the aircav actually defend the Gals, or at least tried its best?

That's the whole point of my post.
Coordination between gals and ES-fighters should be done easily via some tools like radars or whatever.
Random people might not try to defend the Gal, yes. But it's a MMOFPS. Make a squad or whatever you want, organise your shit and get your guys to defend your support vehicule.

Giving AA to a Galaxy, that's just plain stupid and overpowered.
Do that, and you can be sure to see a Gal-Fest in the air at every battle, fighting for air supremacy, with no fighters able to come anywhere around.

[inigma]

Originally Posted by Erendil

...I love the idea of giving gals an AWACS system...

For a second there I was thinking you were talking about a hair removal product for ladies.

[Traak]

I still think intrinsic rewards, such as "you didn't get blown to bits as you sat in the AA or AV turret of the deployed Galaxy Spawn Point, and you got to make kills," not just "sit there gibbering and crying hoping uncle doesn't come to YOUR room again tonight" is going to do a lot more to make the game fun, for support people, and yes, even the people who treat support as if it is their worst enemy and most hated ex-gf, because they will be in heated BATTLES, not just "Hunt for the weakest enemy, preferably unarmed, and kill him, then run away shrieking" that it is now.

Give support weapons and armor so they don't NEED to depend on the magnanimous kindheartedness of someone else. You don't see Planetside 2 Reavers needing a flying escort, or the tanks having to have a separate gun vehicle to protect them. We need support vehicles that are vehicles of war, not just the weak boy in the shower at prison. He doesn't NEED teammates. He needs a shank.

Let's quit pretending like anyone cares, directly, about anyone but themselves, and make the game so that the support people don't NEED others for protection. We got our own guns, our own armor, and our own balls. We don't need you riding to the rescue. We need YOU to go out and attack their main battle weapons while WE defend our XP-generating spawn point, ANT or whatever, OURSELVES.

Quit shackling the hands of the support vehicle crews and just give them weapons and armor. It's a FPS, not a FPSHHDBMGTTOMG First Person Sure Hope He Doesn't Blow Me Up This Time OMG.

In PS2, I want to see support vehicles and crews who aren't emasculated, unarmed, bleating sheep. I want spawn points and ANTS to be things you gotta get a whole lotta crew together to destroy. Who the heck ever came up with the idea that everyone gets the guns but the support people? Ever been on an FOB? Every soldier in the place, from the cooks to the machine gunners is packing an assault rifle, squad machine gun and/or sidearm, with ammo on his person.

Time for Sony to wake up and do the same, ON A VEHICULAR LEVEL. I don't WANT your charity, pilots and HA/AV people, I WANT MY OWN GUNS, ON MY OWN VEHICLE, THAT CAN PROTECT ITS OWN SELF. That way, the empire has a spawn point, and we don't have to depend on others, unlike ABSOLUTELY EVERY SINGLE OTHER PLAYER IN THE GAME, for protection.

Make the FPS a FPS for EVERYONE. Quit sadistically punishing the support vehicles by making them weak, sissy, easy prey for EVERYONE.

Balance? Don't even talk to me about balance. They can crank out as many support vehicles as we can. All three sides can have however many will fit on a vehicular-SOI basis.

Gimme guns, Higby, ON MY SUPPORT VEHICLE. Then let's see the battles! Instead of Captain Shrieker being able to sit on his ass behind a turret and OS from afar, or any cloaker being able to run up, unhindered, or any airplane, or any vehicle, or any soldier, or any MAX, or pretty well ANYTHING, give the support vehicles TEETH. Not just the token peashooters on the Galaxy, I mean real weapons that demand you stay away or DIE, weapons with a spherical FOF around the whole vehicle. Wanna go up against a Galaxy? They you better bring a big team, especially if it lands and deploys, then your ass is grass.

Why? Why this emphasis on spawn point protection? Because SPAWN POINTS ARE WHAT PEOPLE NEED TO GET INTO THE FIGHT!

We don't need more of the 30-second spawn timers for people and five minute timers for vehicles, so that in addition to being killed by (usually a cheater/hacker/exploiter/dual empire scum) an enemy, we get our face rubbed in particularly stinky and maggot-ridden crap of having to wait to get back into the fray.

No. More gunning, less running. More owning less spawning (time-wise). Let's put the Shooter back in First Person Shooter, and remove waiting and travelling WAY too long to get to the point of even being able to get ONE shot in.

More survivable spawn points means more action. And whether it seems like it in your world, the reality in this game is that spawn points are disproportionately targeted, and are unbelievably weak and defenseless. This is bad because moving spawns FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR across the map makes gameplay into boring "wait to spawn, wait to get a vehicle, wait while I slog back to the front, wait while my implants fire up, wait for this, wait for that, wait, wait, wait." I don't want more inviolate spawns because I'm a support guy. I want more inviolate spawns because I like soldiers to spend more time gunning, less time running, as I have been saying in global since I first busted CR5.

It's good for the game to make it so support is strong and mighty. It makes us able to focus on killing enemies, instead of gaining our Boredom Merit Auraxium by lagging about spawn and other support stuff to protect it from an attack that may never come, as opposed to getting in the thick of it and KNOWING we have a fight on our hands.

Then you know who's gonna win? The best first person shooters. Not the best Long Distance OS'ers, or the Rocket Spam from 1200M guys who know they have absolutely no resistance whatsoever built into the spawn.

I hear the hot-drop guys whine about how CE slows the game down. I laugh, because I wasn't trying to slow them down, I was trying to kill them. But, the problem is it DOES slow the game down, another thing to add to the massive stinking heap of junk that SLOWS THE GAME DOWN.

Support vehicles with built-in defenses, both thick armor, and heavy, effective weapons that can swat you back if you swat them, from whatever distance you are at.

Then, watch the paradigm shift from the admittedly boring slog of trying to protect our weak, fat, slow pig AMS to "Now that the spawn point is fairly self-defending, we can get about the business of combat."

Quit making the support vehicles gutless, nutless victims, and let us protect our OWN stuff.

[FastAndFree]

Tanks do need escorts. Without AA cover tank columns get eaten alive by aircav.

If a Lodestar could fight off several vehicles. And repair other vehicles (including other Lodestars)
What would be the point of using tanks...


I agree that support needs to be more fun. But not by becoming BFRs with gluegun/spawntube attachments

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by FastAndFree

Tanks do need escorts. Without AA cover tank columns get eaten alive by aircav.

If a Lodestar could fight off several vehicles. And repair other vehicles (including other Lodestars)
What would be the point of using tanks...


I agree that support needs to be more fun. But not by becoming BFRs with gluegun/spawntube attachments

B-17s had plenty of guns, but still needed a fighter escort. I don't see a problem with giving support vehicles weapons, but Traak's premise is flawed.

Defending something was boring, not because it didn't have weapons. It was boring because it wasn't getting attacked. An AMS's best defense was it's cloak. Defending anything that isn't being attacked, whether it's a cloaked AMS or a hack, is boring because you are waiting. When you attack something, you have the initiative and can generally find something to shoot at. When you are defending, the fight has to come to you.

Putting guns on a loadstar won't change anything. In fact, when I would hunt and take out loadstars, they were either defended by an AA Max or Skyguard, or by the aircraft and tanks that were repairing there.

There's nothing that can be done to make defending an objective that is not being attacked more exciting. The only thing you can do is tell the enemy where you are, and then fight them off.

[Traak]

Originally Posted by Raymac

B-17s had plenty of guns, but still needed a fighter escort.

They would be the equivalent of the Galaxy facing Reavers with its guns. I'm talking about giving it flak cannons, not nearly-useless machine guns.

The idea isn't entirely to make support have something to shoot. It's to keep enemies away from support and have them attack other armed enemies.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Traak

They would be the equivalent of the Galaxy facing Reavers with its guns. I'm talking about giving it flak cannons, not nearly-useless machine guns.

The idea isn't entirely to make support have something to shoot. It's to keep enemies away from support and have them attack other armed enemies.

I understand, and that's fine. I've run into a few good gunners on Gals, but the majority of them aren't extremely effective. The point really is, it doesn't matter if they have machine guns, flak cannons, or the Death Blossom. None of those will change the fact that defending an objective that is not being attacked is inherantly boring. Waiting around with a bigger gun is still waiting around.

[The Admiral]

I believe that the only way for PS2 to achieve its full potential for epicness is if its not just a rampaging rabble of 2000 people. The game mechanics need to be specifically designed so that the horde will self-organize into a well-oiled fighting machine, which will only occur if it is easy to form a team, being in a well-organized team has incentives for the individual player, and a disciplined force is able to defeat a much a much larger force that is poorly organized. Why are real militaries well organized? Because it makes them more effective in battle. Many outfits will always pursue perfectly coordinated unit tactics as a raison d'etre, but you have to give the masses a reason to prefer making the effort to form a tank column or an airborne infantry unit over the kind of mindless murder-death-kill gameplay found in all other modern fps titles. If you do provide the proper environment, then I think you'll see even common players wanting to participate because that is the core of what makes this game epic and stand-out from the others in the first place.

I don't support giving the Galaxy uber-powered weapons, but I do think we need to have some reason for fighter pilots to at least coordinate with galaxy pilots, such as an AWACS radar that only the galaxy pilot can view, which makes him the eyes and ears of the attached fighter squadron(s).

[Tasorin]

We will be flying with a "Carrier Fleet" mentality. You should never run into a Gal by herself. Just like when you face a Naval Carrier you face the entire Fleet that is assigned to it. Expect to see a compliment of Gunships and Interceptors with Every Gal. When we break down into A2A dog fighting, you should be facing a 2:1 ratio that we hope to be able to maintain in even the larger A2A Global Fights. With Global and Phantom capabilities in the VoIP options out there we find it easy to communicate even when broken down into smaller groups. The hard part is herding the cats into the pen and getting them to shut the hell up for two seconds...

In short we will follow a Driver and a RIO as it were...



Sorry I couldn't resist.

[Traak]

Originally Posted by Raymac

I understand, and that's fine. I've run into a few good gunners on Gals, but the majority of them aren't extremely effective. The point really is, it doesn't matter if they have machine guns, flak cannons, or the Death Blossom. None of those will change the fact that defending an objective that is not being attacked is inherantly boring. Waiting around with a bigger gun is still waiting around.

Ah, but with people constantly spawning at it, ANYONE could jump in the AA turret and fend off some enemy air, or jump in the AV turret, or perhaps each turret does both, I don't know. With people spawning at the spawn point, no one would have to wait around, the defense OF the spawn point would be built into it, so instead of being some softie taking a missile barrage, you would be some softie able to jump in the AA turret.

During travel, when the ANT or Galaxy, and whatever else they have is moving, it would be nice to be able to defend yourself en route, while loaded with troops in the Galaxy, or loaded with NTU for whatever ANT they may or may not have.

My standard reaction to being at an AMS being attacked? Decon. There's nothing much else you can do. But with turrets on the Galaxy, you have more options than just run away!

[Effective]

Giving AA to galaxies is dumb. Just saying

[xSlideShow]

Originally Posted by Effective

Giving AA to galaxies is dumb. Just saying

I'm xSlideShow and I approve this message.

[Fate]

Originally Posted by Effective

Giving AA to galaxies is dumb. Just saying

QFMFT.

Teamwork should be encouraged, but not required. If you force something on people that they don't want they'll just find something else to play.