Rethinking Vehicle Air Tranport

[CutterJohn]

Any lodestar equivalent would have to be able to carry multiple tanks if it was to have any value at all. PS1 proved that 1 at a time transport was for the most part of little practical value, except for ANT/AMS transport. The AMS transport is covered, and mechanic changes rendered the ANT unnecessary, so there is little purpose left for them.

The problem with hauling multiple tanks would be the thing would have to be pretty dang large.

Unless.. maybe.. I think i have an idea for a cool concept. I shall play around with it a bit.

[Sabot]

Shrink rays!!!! Haven't we already discussed them?

[Timealude]

Originally Posted by Gonefshn

I don't really prefer the idea of transporting vehicles at all. To have a Galaxy carry 3 MBTs seems excessive and only 1 is pointless. I don't think it's necessary to have vehicle air lift in the game but it wouldn't bother me if it was there for people who want it. Just the idea of more than 1 vehicle being carried by the galaxy, atleast MBTs I don't like.

thats why people were saying carrying light vehicles only, besides the main battle tanks are huge in planetside 2. logically they couldnt fit multiples in them anyways because no galaxy on auraxis would be able to hold them. i personally like the multi vehicles idea, it made the lody pointless to have almost just having one. Also make it so you cant put sundies in it, or balance it so that you lose the troop transport in order to hold multi vehicles.

[Kipper]

I like the idea - but the more MBTs a single galaxy can carry, the less galaxies you would need.

I'm thinking its more equivalent to a heavy lift helicopter, which is only going to really be able to move one piece of heavy armour at a time.

Sure, you can get the huge planes that can lift three or four - but they require infastructure (long runways) and aren't really used to insert near the front line, just to take stuff to the 'main' bases. In Planetside, since all territory is up for grabs, I'd expect that 'near the front line' becomes 'on or behind' the front line, and you can just construct a vehicle at the main bases anyway.

I do think there is something to be said for arranging a 3 or 4 galaxy drop, say 3 tanks and 15 men, that would be enough to have an effect and would look cool too

[Toppopia]

As long as you can hop in the tank and watch as you fly through the air, that adds an extra 2 or more people depending on the vehicle.

[Mechzz]

Originally Posted by Toppopia

As long as you can hop in the tank and watch as you fly through the air, that adds an extra 2 or more people depending on the vehicle.

Watch?

Hell, if I'm swinging in my magrider under a skycrane, I'll be giving those feckin' TR mossie pilots a good dose of my PPA or uber-AA cannon using my seat-switch button

A magrider would be the best AA gun in the game, swinging from a Gal.

[Kipper]

Originally Posted by Mechzz

A magrider would be the best AA gun in the game, swinging from a Gal.

Which is exactly why vehicles in transit should need to be fully powered down

[Mechzz]

Originally Posted by Kipper

Which is exactly why vehicles in transit should need to be fully powered down

Spoilsport!

And allowing MBT's to fire while swinging from a Gal would also solve the problem you pose in the Sunderer thread about the lack of an air vehicle in the suppressive fire role.

Imagine a few vanny's getting flown in circles above your base - it'd be a brave soldier to venture into that cy! (jk)

[PeteHMB]

Originally Posted by Alduron

I literally agree with every single character written.

+1. The 2 MBTs / 4 lightnings / etc setup is exactly what I had in mind. Looking at pics though, I don't see why Sunderers should take up more slots than an MBT. I think 2 Sunderers would fit fine size-wise, but I could also then see the loadout being exploited to double the carrying capacity of personnel in that Gal. Still, if that's how someone wanted to do things, I think it'd be awesome to take a Galaxy + 2 sunderers full of people into battle, drop the Sundies off to flank around the back of a tower while the Galaxy crew assaults the front...I mean, that's a full platoon right there. You'd be a big fat target, though still faster than either Sunderer alone, and would have to coordinate with other air crews for defense, but it would lead to some interesting tactics!

[Fenrys]

I really like all your ideas.

[laelgon]

To get around the size problem for it carrying multiple vehicles, have it basically act as a nanite transport. When you pull it, you can set the vehicles you want to spawn, 2 mbts, 4 light, etc. Then when you land, it acts like a vehicle pad for those specific vehicles. I imagine you'd need passenger slots and some way of locking the spawned vehicles to specific people, but I think this kind of solves the problem of how stupidly huge an aircraft would need to be to carry two main tanks.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by laelgon

To get around the size problem for it carrying multiple vehicles, have it basically act as a nanite transport. When you pull it, you can set the vehicles you want to spawn, 2 mbts, 4 light, etc. Then when you land, it acts like a vehicle pad for those specific vehicles. I imagine you'd need passenger slots and some way of locking the spawned vehicles to specific people, but I think this kind of solves the problem of how stupidly huge an aircraft would need to be to carry two main tanks.

Nonsense.

[Xyntech]

Just do something kind of like this:

Originally Posted by Figment

Something like this?


http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b..._Skyscrane.jpg

but with the tail being able to telescope out so it can carry more shit. It would still fit on the same footprint as the regular Galaxy, so it would be able to spawn at the same pads, but could have enough room for 2 MBTs. Just have the tanks park sideways under it to maximize space efficiency.

I would tend to go with the 2 MBT 1 Sunderer thing myself. Galaxies already can only carry 12 passengers, so having this variant able to carry twice as many AND in an armed and heavily armored vehicles would seem imbalanced. Even if the Lodestar Galaxy carrying 2 Sunderers was slower than the regular Galaxy, the regular Galaxy would still probably become underused. I guess removing the spawn feature from the Lodestar Galaxy may be enough to even it up, but it still seems off.

I think just having the advantage of dropping in with an armed and armored vehicle would be enough of an advantage. I vote 1 Sunderer.

1 Sunderer
2 MBT's
4 Lightnings
10 ATV's (in 2 rows of five)

[Sabot]

Yeah.. one sunderer is enough... 2 fully loaded sundys on 1 gal is a bit OP tbh. Sundys aren't exactly easy to blow up, and remember they are currently repair points, which means they could in theory be dropped and then repair eachother, and at the same time deploy a lot of infantry... and then the gal acts as a spawn point for said infantry. Very, very powerful combo

[Skepsiis]

I would rather a galaxy remains focused as a troop transport with all the customisation options catering to different varients on that role.

A vehicle transport should be seperated out into a different vehicle so that it can be more specialised in that regard and has a few cool specific unlockables without breaking the balance or function of what a galaxy does.