Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.

[SeraphC]

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

2 Medium size groups(10-30 players) are not viable unless they are highly organized with their own dedicated air support to defend them from enemy air roamers.

You can definitely fight off air if you man and repair your turrets. Other than that just target them and hit them with anything available. It's not like they have a giant HP pool and if they're AG they have to come in close.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

No that is not what I said - and lets not muck this thread up with personal stuff. I like insulting you but If you want to fake call me out do it in another thread.

ô_ó

I'm calling you out on hypocrisy, that's not personal and it isn't an insult.

But interesting to know you simply like to insult someone. That explains a lot regarding your rude behaviour towards others. Anyway.




In this thread you complain that there's nobody defending. Correct? The problem is, you tell people to not actively defend bases yourself:

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

Spawn camping is not a a problem.
IT DOESNT NEED A SOLUTION.


The only problem is that we have players stupid enough to feed the campers when they should realize they have lost the battle.

I believe that's you saying those silly things, right? Here you tell them - along with some other people you agree with - that people should L2P and spawn somewhere else.

Now that they do that, it's also a problem, because they're not fighting the zerg directly and not stalling them and even avoiding them (rather than what you had in mind, form up and attack). In fact, they're attacking somewhere they can make some headway (which is technically the same thing as spawning elsewhere).


People would stay and defend if they actually get a fighting chance and have the capacity to push back even in the face of severe numerical disadvantages. Since this isn't possible and they just feel useless being camped and fighting back from the next spawnpoint is equally impossible for most groups, they'll just move right out of the way.

If they can dig in and have the upper hand over attackers, they wouldn't up and leave. Why? Because then it becomes fun and you feel you're doing something worthwhile. And on top of that, you'd actually get a decent cert gain. Plus, the zerg would get stalled long enough for your side to call for reinforcements, get your zerg to attack or flank their zerg etc. Currently you simply don't get that much time, because attacking is WAY. WAY. WAY. too easy.



And that's entirely down to spawncamping being so easy. It is the easiest way to make experience points, it is very attractive to roll in groups that can just roll over bases, start camping and capture the base in terms of experience points. And yes, because you don't get any defensive advantages that you can turn into experience through kills, nor do you get a chance to reset or push back out, yes, defense is not attractive.

And of course you see that behaviour of apathy spike when cert grinding is involved. Hell, you see that in the aircraft groups that fly from territory about to be captured to territory about to be captured, to net as much extra exp as possible, without actually having been present during a fight. If there ever was any.

Dynamic Exp based on activity (as PS1 vets been saying since what, early beta?) needs to come back in. Defensibility needs to be improved, of every base: in terms of spawn building design, outpost design and capture mechanic design.




Yet here you are stating base design has nothing to do with it, hell, you state yourself that people should just up and leave when they're losing. And you simply never realised that whether or not they come back with a vehicle, they still wouldn't be able to make a stand against that zerg. You still won't realise that organising sufficient groups to come help you fight a zerg is in this game pretty damn near impossible due to lacking coordination tools until everyone is pushed back to the warpgate.

In such a context, can you blame people when they try to avoid the zerg and at least net some exp? Can you blame people when attack is so easy that netting a lot of exp is best done in huge groups? Can you blame people that they don't want to waste the few resources they have on fighting a zerg that has next to no attrition and where the defender has to make all the logistical efforts?

You state it's down to lacking exp gain for defense. Even if that was, even without a base defense capture bonus (WHICH YOU WOULDN'T GET AGAINST A ZERG ANYWAY WHEN SPAWNCAMPED), exp gain is still directly related at how effective you are in the field.

Since you're not allowed to be effective in the field against larger numbers, nobody is going to bother and they will just do what does seems rewarding: reconquering territory you lost to the zerg, which is best done by avoiding and bypassing the zerg.

Small groups simply have it way too hard and there's simply nothing you can do with exp incentives alone to change that unless you go ridiculous and provide a huge multitude of exp per kill in territory that's yours.

But even then, people would get sick of the spawncamping with no hope of making a difference very fast.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by SeraphC

You can definitely fight off air if you man and repair your turrets. Other than that just target them and hit them with anything available. It's not like they have a giant HP pool and if they're AG they have to come in close.

Question, how do you repair turrets that instantly die due to the sheer volume of fire - if the engineer even lasts that long due to HE and sniper spam on an exposed ledge?

[mcFlaw]

It's actually pretty easy to defend against roaming ESF. Get 4-5 dual burster maxes, a few more if you only got one burster per max, a couple of engies and heavies with grounders, and you clean the air above you very quickly.
This is doable by any 12 man squad out there. Just takes a minuscule of coordination.

The problem tend to come when you get steamrolled with a huge amount of ESF, Libs and ground vehicles at the same time. But then we're talking about a vastly superior enemy and you _should_ get steamrolled.

Regarding the bigger issue of zergs avoiding each other:
It is indeed a result of people following the path of least resistance. There's no fix for that behavior. What SOE needs to look at is WHY avoiding fighting in big fights is good. Big fights should be the best and most rewarding you can do, if big fights is what SOE wants to see.

I don't think there's a magic quickfix for it but here's a few problem areas worth looking at:
1. Cap rewards for undefended bases. Maybe scale the reward on how hard the fight for it was? On how long YOU were there fighting more precisely. Have it start from zero and go up. That way the ESF who swoops in just before a cap wouldn't gain as much. Hardy anything at all ideally. Ghostcapping (capping an undefended base) should give almost no exp at all as well. Then people would only bother with it when they need the base for tactical reasons. Compensate all this with an increased max amount of exp upon capture. Getting a huge bonus after finally taking that techlab you've been attacking for the last 3 hours would be something players would like very much I think.

2. Exp bonuses for defense. I know SOE have said this is in the game already, but I haven't noticed it. Perhaps increase it to a point where people actually start to seek it out?

3. More interesting defensive options. Add layered defense lines to the bigger outposts. Small walls with vehicle shields. Turrets on each wall layer that can be powered down by generators inside that layer. Trenches. You name it. Something more than just the successful defense/spawncamped that it is now. Definitely do something about the way a tank column can just circle an outpost and blast everyone within to kingdom come.

Making people want to fight a stronger enemy (i.e. a bigger zerg) is hard. Removing other means for easy effortless exp is a good start.
Having a latice system won't help much I think. It would help with focusing the big clashes we already have and make the back and forth on the continent at large more predictable and slower (a good thing!), but do little to encourage the individual player to charge that zerg.

To sum it up:
The best way to get exp must be to charge that big zerg. Even when you are on the losing side.

[Ghoest9]

Originally Posted by mcFlaw

It's actually pretty easy to defend against roaming ESF. Get 4-5 dual burster maxes, a few more if you only got one burster per max, a couple of engies and heavies with grounders, and you clean the air above you very quickly.
This is doable by any 12 man squad out there. Just takes a minuscule of coordination.

The problem tend to come when you get steamrolled with a huge amount of ESF, Libs and ground vehicles at the same time. But then we're talking about a vastly superior enemy and you _should_ get steamrolled.

Regarding the bigger issue of zergs avoiding each other:
It is indeed a result of people following the path of least resistance. There's no fix for that behavior. What SOE needs to look at is WHY avoiding fighting in big fights is good. Big fights should be the best and most rewarding you can do, if big fights is what SOE wants to see.

I don't think there's a magic quickfix for it but here's a few problem areas worth looking at:
1. Cap rewards for undefended bases. Maybe scale the reward on how hard the fight for it was? On how long YOU were there fighting more precisely. Have it start from zero and go up. That way the ESF who swoops in just before a cap wouldn't gain as much. Hardy anything at all ideally. Ghostcapping (capping an undefended base) should give almost no exp at all as well. Then people would only bother with it when they need the base for tactical reasons. Compensate all this with an increased max amount of exp upon capture. Getting a huge bonus after finally taking that techlab you've been attacking for the last 3 hours would be something players would like very much I think.

2. Exp bonuses for defense. I know SOE have said this is in the game already, but I haven't noticed it. Perhaps increase it to a point where people actually start to seek it out?

3. More interesting defensive options. Add layered defense lines to the bigger outposts. Small walls with vehicle shields. Turrets on each wall layer that can be powered down by generators inside that layer. Trenches. You name it. Something more than just the successful defense/spawncamped that it is now. Definitely do something about the way a tank column can just circle an outpost and blast everyone within to kingdom come.

Making people want to fight a stronger enemy (i.e. a bigger zerg) is hard. Removing other means for easy effortless exp is a good start.
Having a latice system won't help much I think. It would help with focusing the big clashes we already have and make the back and forth on the continent at large more predictable and slower (a good thing!), but do little to encourage the individual player to charge that zerg.

To sum it up:
The best way to get exp must be to charge that big zerg. Even when you are on the losing side.

You are comments on how small forces should be steams rolled by more powerful air group is exactly why the zerg rules. A group of 15-30 is only loosely organized can avoid a more powerful ground force. That means the powerful force can keep them from prime obhjective but they cant stop them cold. But a more modest izell air group can pretty much shut them out of a whole continent. 15 players loosely flying together in a pick up squadrenn 5 libs and 5 ESF are much more powerful than 30 grounds troops in a pick up platoon.

[Bocheezu]

The zerg always takes the same path after capping specific bases, usually in a direction towards the nearest big base. For instance, after breaking out of Allatum, TR zerg will always go west to NS Secure Data Lab and on to Hvar. They will never go to Vanu Archives because that would require them to get out of their vehicles and go in the teleporter to cap it. There also isn't a nice, obvious road that goes straight there from Allatum. NS Secure Data Lab lets people just roll in with their tanks, camp the spawn, and get their 1 cert point for driving over there. It's just a speedbump to Hvar, where the TR zerg on Mattherson tends to get chewed up by all the Vanu air coming out of the warpgate. Then TR get pushed back to Allatum and the farm begins anew.

Sometimes Vanu will break out on the west side through Quartz Ridge, but no one will give a shit because those are the most worthless fights. The TR zerg only cares about Allatum/Hvar, they don't care about Dahaka/Saurva. Once TR gets bounced out of Allatum, then it's like, oh hey, look at all the shit we lost on the west side. Then the TR zerg builds steam recapping all those useless speedbump bases on the west side for the big push either through Quartz Ridge (a miserable fail most of the time) or up through West Highlands to Allatum again.

Similar things happen on Esamir with Mani replacing Allatum. Most TR zerglings go to Mani, none of them go to Nott because that whole east side is a complete desolate wasteland. I have never seen a VS player at Ymir, ever. Eisa can be tough to cap because Freyr is actually closer to Mani and much of the zerg will go there instead. Organized outfits ghostcapping Apex Genetics, Saerro Listening Post, and the bases outside Eisa are really the only way to prod the zerg into going to Eisa.

Amerish; hell, I don't know. I haven't been there since the tech plant change.

[mcFlaw]

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

You are comments on how small forces should be steams rolled by more powerful air group is exactly why the zerg rules. A group of 15-30 is only loosely organized can avoid a more powerful ground force. That means the powerful force can keep them from prime obhjective but they cant stop them cold. But a more modest izell air group can pretty much shut them out of a whole continent. 15 players loosely flying together in a pick up squadrenn 5 libs and 5 ESF are much more powerful than 30 grounds troops in a pick up platoon.

To me it is perfectly reasonable that bigger numbers beat lesser numbers. It would be rather weird otherwise. Equal numbers, but one side has a ton of resources spent on vehicles should favor the vehicle side. Also reasonable.

Yes, unorganised players tend to lose against most stuff unless they are heavily favored by the above factors. This is also reasonable imho, since planetside is a game that favors teamwork.

But all that said, my experience is still that if your are ONLY facing a bunch of air, infantry can defend quite effectively. 30 infantry you say? Well, that could be 10 dual burster maxes, 10 grounders, 5 engineers and 5 medics. 5 ESF and 5 Libs got no chanse at all against that.

Yes, that defense requires quite a bit of teamwork, but that's what the game is about. The game is still rather new, so many of us haven't learned these things yet. Give it some time, and folks won't need an outfit to know when to pull out their AA gear.

My favourite activity in game is to fly in organised air squadrons. Mossies and libs (and even some A-130 gallys), just like in your example. While we wreck total havoc in general, we still do best to stay clear of any area where the infantry have pulled out their AA stuff. That's when we call for our Tank Battalion to roll in. It's all about those good ole´rocks, papers and scissors.
In fact, it doesn't take more than a handful of dual burster maxes to keep our entire squadron at bay (could be because we're not super good yet, but still).
TLR;
It's not that air is OP, it's that inexperienced, unorganised players aren't very effective. Solution is not to nerf air, it is to teach your friends how to counter air. It can be done, and it's actually pretty easy.

[Soothsayer]

Hey Malorn, I think it's got to do with the static rewards for capture. If you wanted to globetrotter the base XP up I'd do a comprehensive dynamic reward that considers several factors (in addition to what was in PS1).

First you take the time slices of nme in the territory over the duration of the capture (as it was in PS1).

Consider the number of attackers in the same criteria, form a ratio.

Factor in who capped/held surrounding territories for 10 min prior to capture being initiated on the main base and give them a bigger piece of the pie, linked to the capture (but also the current reward on the outlier cap).

Incentivize[sic] standing on the point (to some extent) maybe have a circular XP gradient area where you get less and less of a bonus the farther from the point you are.

Take that ratio that was calculated and use it to rate the intensity or difficulty of the fight for the attackers, reward them accordingly. If a fight has been particularly long (due to tug of war back and forth as opposed to nobody on the point) more points!

With smarter carrots you will get the emergent gameplay you want.

[AThreatToYou]

I think the points contributing toward this player behavior have all been touched upon in this thread, but I should make it clear that the points are fairly small. There are a lot of them, but working on just a few of them at a time would make large steps in the right direction.

Obviously, my points are opinionated based on my experiences, but here are some points and a simplified explanation of what I think the cause-effect relationship is.

- Faction populations blob on the continents they own. We are seeing dramatic continental defense, but we are not seeing base defense in the way that is fun. A reason may be that if your faction blobs on a continent, it's much easier to capture bases (by sheer numbers) and thus its easier to earn the base capture XP.

The effect is the game is less fun for the defenders and the attackers and the result of that is that either people log off and wait for primetime or people move to their own continent and absorb the XP there.

Sometimes contingent populations of 24% to 30% from the opposing factions to the owner of a continent rise up. I will suggest that these come from those who are bored steamrolling on their own continent, or they have completely captured their continent. Then, players from the owning faction either log off or go to another continent, allowing the opposing faction population percentages to increase on the owned continent and capture bases back.

Rinse, repeat. Sound good? I believe that is a very solid summary of how (but not exactly why) this happens all the time.

Moving on to more opinionated statements....

Why does this happen? I have a few reasons that have nothing to do with the actual defending or attacking of a base, and some that actually do. Let's start with the conceptual/metagame reasons.

- Base capture XP is rewarded on a flat rate. Honestly, I can fly around a continent and just be there for the base captures, maybe kill a few liberators in the process, and get 30-40 certs an hour. Maybe 3-5 kills, almost no fighting, and yet I can get more certs doing that than I would actually fighting against the dismally low enemy population.

That, or I could try to beset a 50% enemy population advantage on another continent and possibly get very little kills. This is making the result of: it's basically less profitable to fight. Someone has to fight for some of the bases in the first place, but there's very little.

Possible solution: Dynamic base capture rewards, based off of how much fighting went on in the hexes involved in that base.

- Empire footholds on continents. Since you can't lock out a faction from a continent, even if you push them all the way back to their warpgate, there is still a constant threat to your faction's ownership of that continent. As far as "winning" goes, it is actually beneficial to your empire to stay there and defend that continent.

Thus, we get blobs who do just that. There are likely more reasons involved or better ways to explain it, but I think a lot of players can easily agree that there is a problem in not having either faction sanctuaries or home conts.

Possible solution: If it were possible to completely lock out the enemy faction from a continent, then there would be no more reason for your empire to blob on that continent after it is captured.

This should produce a domino effect: Some people would log off, but that number would pale in comparison to the amount of people who would swarm the next available continent.

Thus, we would get more players on a single continent. I'll be honest; the game is actually pretty damn fun when the faction populations are even. We need to encourage confrontations, this is a way to do that.

- There are not enough continents. Three continents is not enough for a warpgate lattice. Sanctuaries really wouldn't work because of that! There's also a binary function of encouragement for each faction to take one continent and lock it down.

I've observed several times for a faction to own two of the three continents, and then some real fights start as the harrying continent-less faction swarms back to retake it. It's really odd how we have this weird continent problem that encourages blobbing, and PlanetSide is all about big fights, but the current in-game "solution" to the problem is to punish one faction and divide the resources (players) of another between two continents.

Possible solution: Obviously, we need more continents. However, that would take a lot of time.

As another short-term solution, I believe we must introduce contestable home-conts to the table.

We can do this by splitting up Indar into three continents. The VS, TR, and NC can thus have their faction foothold on one of the three "islands" that has an open, contestable warpgate on the other side. Not only will this introduce more two-way fights, it will also allow for the current continents of Esamir and Amerish to be open and completely contestable. There will also always be one faction who is out of a continent, because there are always two.

I know a lot of players don't want to see another Oshur happen, but seriously, I think that would work beautifully.

As for the issues that contribute to this on a game mechanics level, where the attackers have an advantage over the defenders, we have a few problems.

- Spawn camping is too easy. You can say just to go away and not let the enemy spawn camp you all you want, but that doesn't change how it gives an advantage to the attackers over the defenders.

Possible solution: Move spawns underground. If I remember correctly, PlanetSide 1 had all base spawns underground. Spawn camping still happened, but it was usually the final death-throws of the battle and it was a nice finale as the opposing faction broke through and took down the spawn tubes. I'm not saying we need spawn tubes and generators back, but I am saying that all outposts and bases should have their spawns moved underground.

Another solution is to make the spawns themselves contestable. Breaking through the spawns and hacking the final terminal would result in an instantaneous base capture, as your Empire would own the spawns. There could be a trigger that would require your Empire to have done something significant prior to that, such as having removed all of the defending faction's points from the capture-counter. It wouldn't make defense any easier, but it would make it less painful. Combining this with underground spawns would also make defense much more meaningful: "Defend the control console!"

- Bases are too accessible. The bases are almost completely open to attack from the air, aside from a small area where infantry combat takes prevalence. In a BioLab, infantry combat takes over completely; but in other bases, these areas are still open to attack from vehicles. There are "doors" in a sense, but they are see-through and are controlled by destructible generators that are put in positions that serve mostly to accelerate the attackers.

- Another problem that ties into this is that some bases are far too spread out. The generators are all in very decentralized locations, which make it even harder to defend them.

Possible solution: Doors, less generators, and more roofed areas. Possibly even moving entire bases underground.

In addition, outposts should have more vehicle shields that restrict the movement of tanks into the outpost, creating a wider window in which infantry attack is needed and making it easier for the defenders to predict what weapons will be needed: Anti-air, and and anti-infantry.

- MAX units are too weak. The weakness of MAX units makes attack easy because now the direct, heavy-armor solution that can be brought right out of the spawn room is ineffective. The anti-vehicular MAX weapons barely threaten a tank, and although a dual-burster MAX certainly threatens aircraft, one is rendered ineffective to infantry by this.

A key point from PlanetSide 1 is that any MAX unit was an absolutely terrible threat to an infantry unit without an anti-vehicle weapon. Even anti-vehicular MAX units could do serious damage to air units that hovered to fire on them.

I think it is a real problem that Uni-MAX is gone, and that MAX units themselves are too vulnerable to just about everything.

Possible solution: The MAX armory should be buffed and possibly expanded, as well as empire-specific MAX abilities making a return. I'm sure you can think of many scenarios in PlanetSide 1 where your empire's specific MAX ability made a huge difference in base defense.

Aside from the anti-air weapons, the clips and rates-of-fire on MAX weaponry is too small.

MAX units having limited mobility will also make it harder for them to be used so effectively in base attack, although I certainly don't want to make MAX units a "defense-only" unit. The support line of a defending MAX will be a lot closer than the support line of an attacking MAX; I think that's enough.

MAX units are also ineffective at range. Empire-specific anti-air weaponry should make a return, as well as the ability for a MAX unit to zoom, including a certifiable increase in accuracy, especially for anti-infantry weapons.

There are more things I could say, but I think I'll end there.

[Forsaken One]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Any feedback from the PSU community on contributing factors to this behavior? I have my own thoughts but I'd like to learn what y'all think is going on here.

Bases need to be funner, defending tends to suck both gameplay wise and cert wise.

Make more bases like The Crown. It feels both fun to attack and fun to defend. Every other base atm feels like "shoot at guys through this hole" for BOTH attack and defense.

Tech plant? Hold up in the main room and shoot through the slot at the top (again both attacker and defense will do this) till the shields are down.

Most other places? Shoot at doorways till someone breaks through and it won't be the defenders.


The game needs better Indoor (bios semi suck)as well as better variety at least with the bases. For the most part a lot of the bases feel the same just with a different wall/object placement.

[Ghoest9]

Originally Posted by mcFlaw

To me it is perfectly reasonable that bigger numbers beat lesser numbers. It would be rather weird otherwise. Equal numbers, but one side has a ton of resources spent on vehicles should favor the vehicle side. Also reasonable.

Yes, unorganised players tend to lose against most stuff unless they are heavily favored by the above factors. This is also reasonable imho, since planetside is a game that favors teamwork.

But all that said, my experience is still that if your are ONLY facing a bunch of air, infantry can defend quite effectively. 30 infantry you say? Well, that could be 10 dual burster maxes, 10 grounders, 5 engineers and 5 medics. 5 ESF and 5 Libs got no chanse at all against that.

Yes, that defense requires quite a bit of teamwork, but that's what the game is about. The game is still rather new, so many of us haven't learned these things yet. Give it some time, and folks won't need an outfit to know when to pull out their AA gear.

My favourite activity in game is to fly in organised air squadrons. Mossies and libs, just like in your example. While we wreck total havoc in general, we still do best to stay clear of any area where the infantry have pulled out their AA stuff. That's when we call for our Tank Battalion to roll in. It's all about those good ole´rocks, papers and scissors.
In fact, it doesn't take more than a handful of dual burster maxes to keep our entire squadron at bay (could be because we're not super good yet, but still).
TLR;
It's not that air is OP, it's that inexperienced, unorganised players aren't very effective. Solution is not to nerf air, it is to teach your friends how to counter air. It can be done, and it's actually pretty easy.

Im not complaining about bigger numbers beating smaller number - I gave that as an example of the what works.

But the issue here isnt about some sort of idealized 30 man force could do to a pick up air group(basically you are saying if ground well organized they could chase air away.)

The issue is what happens with the normal squads in the game. A pick up group of 30 ground troops gets totally owned by a pick up group of 15 people in aircraft when you look at what actually occurs - over and over and over.
And this isnt going to change because most player dont want to spend the evening chasing away aircraft for no gain wbhile the rest of the platoond gets to kill stuff.
Only outfits can force a fair division of labor on the players.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Tatwi

I think it's simply a matter of people taking the path of least resistance to "win". It's no different than Alterac Valley in WoW. Even though the original rules for AV were better for encouraging long PvP battles with neat player driven events, quite a few of those events are still in AV today, yet they are never used. Instead, both sides pass each other in the field and complete the PvE objectives in a race to see who will "win" first. And people complain when one side "turtles", forcing PvP by actually defending their own base and PvE objectives. Personally, the most fun I had in WoW PvP was an AV turtle.

Sadly, it seems that's not what people want. Some want a good fight, while most just want to maximize their xp per hour.

If SOE removed XP, certs, and resources then folks might actually fight each other more consistently. There would be nothing else to "optimize" or "maximize" or "min/max", etc. Terrible suggestion of course, but it proves the point that the problem is with the players and not the game. We can't have nice things (like balanced character advancement through side grades), because people focus on the wrong things, losing sight of the purpose of the game: to have fun blowing stuff up with your friends.

Well, it's not 100% comparable because no one really wants to play AV. Everyone is forced to grind honor to be competitive in arena. No one is grinding base caps in PS2 for some other aspect of the game.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Forsaken One

Bases need to be funner, defending tends to suck both gameplay wise and cert wise.

Make more bases like The Crown. It feels both fun to attack and fun to defend. Every other base atm feels like "shoot at guys through this hole" for BOTH attack and defense.

Tech plant? Hold up in the main room and shoot through the slot at the top (again both attacker and defense will do this) till the shields are down.

Most other places? Shoot at doorways till someone breaks through and it won't be the defenders.


The game needs better Indoor (bios semi suck)as well as better variety at least with the bases. For the most part a lot of the bases feel the same just with a different wall/object placement.

Defending is far greater certwise than attacking. 1500 xp doesn't hold a candle to 15% more xp per kill + a meat grinder.

[mcFlaw]

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

The issue is what happens with the normal squads in the game. A pick up group of 30 ground troops gets totally owned by a pick up group of 15 people in aircraft when you look at what actually occurs - over and over and over.
And this isnt going to change because most player dont want to spend the evening chasing away aircraft for no gain wbhile the rest of the platoond gets to kill stuff.
Only outfits can force a fair division of labor on the players.

Can't really argue with that. I've been in TAW since the day I entered beta, so I can't speak for the mentality of pickup-squads. It's a shame though, it really isn't hard to defend against air, and you definitely do more than chase them away. You kill like crazy! All the coordination we do is basically someone yelling "incoming air!" and people bring out their big guns. That's not really something you must have an outfit to do.
Truly a shame if people think it's not worth it. I guess it's an easy impression to get, since one single inf can't do more than that. But two or more focusfiring and you become deadly.

Here's an example: We were 6 or 7 in a sundy driving towards a biolab. A few hundred meters away, we saw that the place was swarming with enemy air. We parked behind a small hill, got grounders and bursters, and just stood there killing everything in sight. Over the course of 30 min or so we killed maybe 50 aircraft. Enough for me to lose count. They found us after 10 min or so, but couldn't get to us, since we saw them the moment they spawned on the pads.
That was 7 infantry holding down what felt like an entire factions unorganized zerg air support.

After 30 min or so they smarted up, and drove over with a few vanguards and killed us.

edit: grammar failz

[Forsaken One]

Originally Posted by Bags

Defending is far greater certwise than attacking. 1500 xp doesn't hold a candle to 15% more xp per kill + a meat grinder.

What you're forgetting is the meat grinder 9 times out of 10 is the defenders being meat grinded.