Driver/Gunners... NO!

[ThermalReaper]

Wait, how come when I suggested an option to give control of the gunner it was ignored and some elitist made fun that someone would be boring enough to be a dedicated driver?

[Bobby Shaftoe]

Originally Posted by Highwind

All of the rambo solo-tank talk is funny, because if the devs have done their job they have already provided an in game answer to it... making a skilled 2 man tank crush them, until they learn to get a gunner of their own.

Do you honestly believe that stuff you typed out?

Why would you bother having 1 tank with 2 people when you can be 'skillful' and have 2 tanks with a person each?

Please tell me how well do you think your secondary armament is going to match up to another whole tank?

All this is doing is shifting 'teamwork' from within a single vehicle (ie Driver AND a gunner), to 'teamwork' starting at multiple vehicles (Driver/gunners)

It's bizarre how people rationalise the driver now being the main gunner too with PS1 anecdotes of never being able to find primary weapon gunners and now bizarrely think you're going to get people swarming your driver/gunner vehicles now to sit in the piddly secondary weapons position in PS2. You also somehow think your 'awesome teamwork' skills are going to match up to 2 people just pulling 2 solo MBTs.

You guys.

[Figment]

Bobby, they're all hypocrites that just "don't want anything to change before beta" so it reaches beta unchanged as they know nothing significant will change in beta anymore, so they will continue to stall our feedback and pretend we're only here because we hate change. :/

"Nothing is as permanent as temporary."



Not because we actually simply weighed the alternatives and consider one thing that happened to be the way PS1 did it, to be better.

Take the people bringing up the Prowler's third crew member. They completely ignore that that entire balance issue is resolved if you either make the other two tanks require two gunners as well, OR if you make the Prowler require just one gunner as well.

No, instead they pretend it's only sorted if you create solo-mbts. Which is a solution out of left field that doesn't make any sense.


The same for people that think it's hard to get gunners, which I continuously question because I require two gunners (MORE than a heavy tank!) to be effective in a Thunderer and I never had issues. Never! Then how come they keep bringing this up? They just think that if you repeat it a lot, it suddenly becomes true, while indeed frogetting the context of PS2 where you have MORE potential gunners since there are more players, but all of those people are currently enticed to NOT gun but play solo.

They're enticed to both footzerg (respawning on squad in the middle of an enemy base) and drop directly on control points (as the latest longer stream showed: you can drop 5 feet away from a control point on the roof in some areas and bypass any and all defenses and nobody here complains about that - Skill my arse, exploiting game mechanics is what that is).

If we say people are going to solo most the time and this being visible in every piece of footage, then we're told to wait for Beta. Why wait for something we already can point out with substantial evidence, backed up further by the people here who just post about wanting to kill stuff themselves? Why should these ego-centrists that hate teamplay be catered to? Hate teamplay yes, because they keep complaining about the incompetence of their random gunners. Meaning they're not pro-active in training them, finding regular partners or even working with their own outfit. Meaning they're basically not worth listening too because they're lazy. Why should lazy players be catered to and teamwork players be worse off than lazy players?

And the "compromise" of handing out your gun later is still much worse, because of the balancing manpower aspect between units. So we might hand over the gun to someone else and suddenly we have one gun manned by two people (even if that one guy can switch) and solo tankers have two tanks with two guns manned by two people and double the armour. Plus any sidegrades you dumbed into that are off set by someone else dumping it in other things that make their stuff work better (for them) - which you won't have till some time later. >___> The compromise doesn't balance anything, it just skews power distribution further (it makes teamwork units require more manpower and gives them less guns to work with at a time without compensating in armour values) and therefore is a horrible non-compromise.


But hey. That's a reasoned argument. It'll be countered by "wait till it's completely set in stone in beta before you complain". Tbh, it probably already is.

[fod]

yeah i dont get the "cant get gunner" thing also as i usually dont have any problems getting one or two or three
infact lately i have had people RUSHING to try and gun my magrider when i dont have my dedicated gunner around

all that said im quite happy as long as there is an OPTION for me to have a dedicated gunner - i dont mind at all that some people want to drive solo

[Klockan]

Tanks aren't 1 man vehicles, they just aren't useless as 1 man vehicles. In most tanks you will have a secondary gunner for the machinegun, the machinegun is still worth more than an infantry player.

Originally Posted by Figment

And the "compromise" of handing out your gun later is still much worse, because of the balancing manpower aspect between units. So we might hand over the gun to someone else and suddenly we have one gun manned by two people (even if that one guy can switch) and solo tankers have two tanks with two guns manned by two people and double the armour. Plus any sidegrades you dumbed into that are off set by someone else dumping it in other things that make their stuff work better (for them) - which you won't have till some time later. >___> The compromise doesn't balance anything, it just skews power distribution further (it makes teamwork units require more manpower and gives them less guns to work with at a time without compensating in armour values) and therefore is a horrible non-compromise.

If you pay less you get less, how is that hard to understand? Also if they had a "sidegrade" to make a gunners seat, then it would be a "sidegrade" ie the gun would be much more powerful to make up for the extra manpower drain. But two tanks should still be stronger than your one tank since they put more resources into their setup.

[Furber]

Doesn't have to end up one or the other, both ways should be implemented. That would add depth to the game. It gives the tank operators more choice for what to use their certs on.

[Figment]

Klockan, you don't get less in PS2 if you solo as a "team". You get MORE.

How difficult is that to understand? You get more firepower and more hitpoints/armour, two separate perspective points, more targets for the enemy to fire at and you can change seats internally in PS2 meaning if you specialise your guns you end up with more firepower per player in solo tanks as we've seen throughout all the videos and not having been changed yet.


What do teamwork guys get?

Less enemies for the target to fire at. Half the hitpoints of two tanks. A little bit more situational awareness from the perspective of ONE tank (and that's the kicker people who argue solo tanks can't comprehend - we're argueing about the same manpower used differently, they can't get over the idea of one man in a tank being alone being completely retarded), but that's actually less than the situational awareness of the perspective of TWO tanks, they don't get to switch guns to suddenly have double the firepower in another field at the only advantage of being less stationary in doing so. So maybe you pay half the resources? Great. You also die twice as fast. Think that kinda offsets that...


Unfortunately tanks aren't exactly fast or hard to outmaneuvre, so it's not really a benefit.



Please, enlighten us oh masters of PS2 pre-beta, how do teamwork guys in ONE tank on your side actually get an advantage over TWO tanks on your side? Please. I'm interested.

And don't you @$#&(@^$@*# pretend none of the above has been said and repeat the same clueless dribble. Other advantages, because there's no advantages to the situation described above that does two crew tanks justice. Come on?


But as you say Klockan, two tanks are more powerful... That's exactly what we don't want. So if you agree with our conclusions, stop pretending we're wrong.

[Klockan]

Originally Posted by Figment

Klockan, you don't get less in PS2 if you solo as a "team". You get MORE.

How difficult is that to understand? You get more firepower and more hitpoints/armour, two separate perspective points, more targets for the enemy to fire at and you can change seats internally in PS2 meaning if you specialise your guns you end up with more firepower per player in solo tanks as we've seen throughout all the videos and not having been changed yet.


What do teamwork guys get?

Less enemies for the target to fire at. Half the hitpoints of two tanks. A little bit more situational awareness from the perspective of ONE tank (and that's the kicker people who argue solo tanks can't comprehend - we're argueing about the same manpower used differently, they can't get over the idea of one man in a tank being alone being completely retarded), but that's actually less than the situational awareness of the perspective of TWO tanks, they don't get to switch guns to suddenly have double the firepower in another field at the only advantage of being less stationary in doing so. So maybe you pay half the resources? Great. You also die twice as fast. Think that kinda offsets that...


Unfortunately tanks aren't exactly fast or hard to outmaneuvre, so it's not really a benefit.



Please, enlighten us oh masters of PS2 pre-beta, how do teamwork guys in ONE tank on your side actually get an advantage over TWO tanks on your side? Please. I'm interested.

And don't you @$#&(@^$@*# pretend none of the above has been said and repeat the same clueless dribble. Other advantages, because there's no advantages to the situation described above that does two crew tanks justice. Come on?


But as you say Klockan, two tanks are more powerful... That's exactly what we don't want. So if you agree with our conclusions, stop pretending we're wrong.

The question isn't whether 1 two manned tank is as strong as 2 one manned tanks, the question is whether 1 two manned tank is as strong as 1 one manned tank and an infantry guy or 1 one manned tank with a machine gun because those two setups have the same costs. If they put in an option to modify the tank to make it stronger while giving away the maingun some people will do it to cut down on their tank costs, ie a team of two can probably spend most of their time in tanks if they take turns driving after each time they die while if they went with 2 tanks they would be momentarily stronger but when those two tanks are dead they would be forced to go infantry for a while.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Klockan

The question isn't whether 1 two manned tank is as strong as 2 one manned tanks

Please explain why not. Because it's one of the main balance issues that determined how players selected vehicles in PS1, in WoT, C&C (only there power per resource) and any other game with choice between units as well.

Simply ignoring the issue in favour of another issue that needs looking at AS WELL is not making it go away.

the question is whether 1 two manned tank is as strong as 1 one manned tank and an infantry guy or 1 one manned tank with a machine gun because those two setups have the same costs.

At a moment in time purchase, yes. But over time you'll see it's a different story as the two tanks will last longer than one tank and the one tank with two people in it will have to get a new tank faster.

But yeah if you only look at one moment in time, which may I remind you, is a bit shortsighted in a continuous warfare game, then yeah, you get your argument.

Problem is, it's not about that. It's about what players will choose to use. Plus, if nobody waits for gunners and everyone has access to all vehicles, what stops them from getting any other vehicle? Why would you possibly want to gun if you are actively looking for a vehicle? Most vehicles seem pretty cheap and the hem isn't very restrictive in resources with all the sources available.

If they put in an option to modify the tank to make it stronger while giving away the maingun some people will do it to cut down on their tank costs, ie a team of two can probably spend most of their time in tanks if they take turns driving after each time they die while if they went with 2 tanks they would be momentarily stronger but when those two tanks are dead they would be forced to go infantry for a while.

As I've said before, that's not true if the two man tank dies faster since all enemy fire is concentrated on that single tank, etc. etc (see above and in previous posts). A single tank is much easier to trap and kill. Meaning that a single manned tank will last significantly longer, meaning also that the single guy's income will be more significant over the period of driving his tank. Especially if the empire is winning, which is an issue with skewed resource distribution the devs by their own admission still haven't fundamentally solved, apparently.

So if you're winning, a two men crew tank is unneeded because you have enough resources. While if you're losing a two men crew tank is disadvantaged by the overwhelming enemy numbers of tanks. >__> Given they die faster as you agree, that means they run out of their low number of resources even faster (!).



Btw. The fun thing is, you get to assume random assumptions as long as it supports solo-whoring, without being told wait for beta, while others are simply told wait for beta. I'm not going to tell you to wait for beta though, I just hope you try to use the complete picture we've got right now.

People who wait for beta to me are like theists complaining about missing links.

[Littleman]

Do you know how I know people against one-man tanks are just thinking in PS1's terms? They're not thinking outside of the tank regarding their coveted teamwork, and are obsessing over who controls the main gun. They just know and want the multi-man tank. Without external support, a tank is actually going to be a big, juicy target this time around. It now matters from which angle one strikes, and their hunters have the tools to make the strike work.

It's not hard for anyone to see which direction the turret is facing and approach at the right time from the right direction.

But to continue thinking within the confines of tanks only, we're honestly arguing tank vs tank fights? Can we honestly not imagine how they'll play out? Seriously? 1 v 1, unless the two-man driver and gunner tank gets a buff, the solo variant driver/gunner MBT won't be at any disadvantage outside of looking where he's driving as he tries and flank around while keeping a bead on the 2 man tank and that might not even be an issue depending on the lay of the land. But yes, 2 people in two tanks probably hold the advantage to 2 people in one, except...

If the driver/gunner built the second gun for AV, he now has the superior firepower provided someone is manning that turret, period. A driver/gunner tank without a secondary gunner is a one-trick pony with just the main cannon alone. The second seat is what makes the tank specialized, and it gimps the tank for the driver to switch to that seat because he's alone. The tank can't be driven without someone in the main seat. And he STILL has the weakness of only being a single set of eyes, only now he's immobile too, and seat switching won't be instantaneous. Nor will exiting the tank.

Is it possible for the 2 manned AV built tank to win against 2 tanks? For that we'll have to wait an see. Requiring everyone driving an MBT to find a dedicated gunner? **** that. It's a convoluted restriction, not a necessary one. It doesn't make the tank's main cannon any better or worse either way, just requires more people for the sake of requiring multiple people, and the actual advantageous over a driver/gunner are fairly situational.

Driver AND gunner or driver/gunner, a tank that runs off to fight alone dies alone, the former's driver just has company.

[Figment]

Love how you make claims about ease of killing one crew tanks that apply equaly to two crew tanks with the exception that if you beat one two crew tanks you beat two at once.

Littleman, you are a biased person. You have no idea what you are talking about in "who just wants PS1", those people only exist in your mind. We wouldn't be referencing the PS2 context and content otherwise. READ bobby's arguments for once and notice he talks about interaction with infantry and other units a lot. You not getting the core debate strikes me as typical though.

Edit: and for crying out loud, this is a Manpower Distribution debate so stop referencing the stupid situation where solo tankers are driving completely isolated from the rest of their empire!

[Klockan]

Originally Posted by Figment

Please explain why not. Because it's one of the main balance issues that determined how players selected vehicles in PS1, in WoT, C&C (only there power per resource) and any other game with choice between units as well.

Simply ignoring the issue in favour of another issue that needs looking at AS WELL is not making it go away.

In PS1 tanks were basically free so there the question was warranted, in WoT everyone always got their own tank, in C&C if 1 tank costs 600 and another costs 800 you don't ask yourself if you want 2 of the 600 cost tank or 1 of the 800 cost tank. In PS2 you wont have enough resources to buy tanks all the time so there will always be guys around to get into your gunner seat, the limit to the amount of tanks is then resources and not players thus you should calculate strength with resources as the main limiting factor.

Originally Posted by Figment

At a moment in time purchase, yes. But over time you'll see it's a different story as the two tanks will last longer than one tank and the one tank with two people in it will have to get a new tank faster.

But yeah if you only look at one moment in time, which may I remind you, is a bit shortsighted in a continuous warfare game, then yeah, you get your argument.

What, my argument is in a continuous warfare and not in a single moment, your argument is for a single moment aka 1 tank vs 2 tanks. In a continuous warfare if one side uses coop tanks and the other uses standard tanks then on average both sides will have exactly as many tanks on the field, the difference is that the standard tank side will have more infantry to back up their tanks. Why? Because on a grander scale people aren't coordinated, while 2 guys might team up to get two tanks at the same time others will not have the resources at that time to get that. Then also people playing continuously even as a group of 10 not all will have money for a new tank for each engagement so they could use coop tanks to fill the void.

Originally Posted by Figment

Problem is, it's not about that. It's about what players will choose to use.

A pair of players who wants to play together and only got resources for a tank would use it. This make the rest of your points moot then.

[Littleman]

Originally Posted by Figment

Love how you make claims about ease of killing one crew tanks that apply equaly to two crew tanks with the exception that if you beat one two crew tanks you beat two at one.

Littleman, you are a biased person. You have no idea what you are talking about in "who just wants PS1", those people only exist in your mind. We wouldn't be referencing the PS2 context and content otherwise. READ bobby's arguments for once and notice he talks about interaction with infantry and other units a lot. You not getting the core debate strikes me as typical though.

Honestly... someone who waves off the idea of the sundy getting AMS capabilities because they insist a true AMS should be reintroduced to PS2 has no room to talk regarding "bias" or as earlier, who is egoistic.

[Figment]

You reference C&C and ignore that higher cost just makes you pick those by default because it is more cost effective to have one medium tank over a light tank and more coat effective to have a heavy tank over a medium tank and more cost effective to have a mammoth tank over a couple heavy tanks?

But then forget to realise there was actually a big power distance between them? Nice way to skew the debate. Power distance between one and two crew is minimal, so its better to get two one crews. Even if one is a cheaper lightning tank.

Originally Posted by Littleman

Honestly... someone who waves off the idea of the sundy getting AMS capabilities because they insist a true AMS should be reintroduced to PS2 has no room to talk regarding "bias" or as earlier, who is egoistic.

Wave off? You realise I got around 12 reasons for that, right? I don't dismiss off hand and redesigned the entire AMS for PS2 purposes and context, stop being a biased prick.

[Klockan]

Originally Posted by Figment

Power distance between one and two crew is minimal, so its better to get two one crews.

Thanks for enlightening us, oh all mighty one
That quote kinda makes all your other arguments useless. For example a coop tank could fire 50% faster and it would probably be fair without making solo coop tanks too viable.

If a team of 10 players who all buy 10 tanks and then in an engagement loses 2 tanks, if just one of those guys have the resources to buy another tank would he buy a solo tank or a coop tank to go with the mate who didn't have a tank? If he goes for a coop tank in that situation then the team will converge to only using coop tanks. If it is better to go with solo tank and an infantry ally then the coop tank is probably too weak and should be buffed.

Edit: As for the cnc argument you brought it up. I know that in cnc the power per resource of the tanks goes up as the resource cost goes up. Can you clarify your argument there what this have to do with Planetside 2? I know that having much power at once is better to have less power spread out over time, ie 2 tanks beat 1 tank + 1 tank. But that isn't the point. The point is that teams of people can only use one tank each when they have tons of resources, as soon as their resource reserves start to dwindle they will start using coop tanks if tanks is what they want to use. In a situation where it is possible for everyone to buy a tank right now it should be better to go with only solo tanks since that is a bigger opportunity cost, but in general people wont have the resources to buy one tank each. Thus you shouldnt do 2 solo tanks vs 1 coop tank but 1 solo tank + infantry vs coop tank since those are the choices people will have.