Driver/Gunners... NO!

[Azren]

Originally Posted by sumo

realism vs fun as usual.
this is a sci-fi game and therefore not based in reality. they could just make up some technobabble that tank driver now have a nano helmet of some sort that help them to drive and shoot a tank and at the same time.

i never played ps1. but i do know that in bf3 noone want to take the driver position in the all so powerful and heavily armored troop transporter.

Read the thread fist. Nobody argued to have dedicated gunner and driver because it is more realistic.

The arguments for dedicated d/g setup are along these lines:

• The MBT is the only multi crew ground combat vehicle. A design that does not require a gunner, effectively makes it a solo mashine, thus leaving no option for those people who want the experience of being dedicated gunner or driver
  
• The survivability of the PS2 setup is low because the driver has to split his attention between situational awareness (rocks, trees, enemy positions, friendly positions) and gunning (which requires keeping focused on one spot, making situational awareness low). Add to this the already far faster gameplay which also came at the cost of much lower TTK for MBTs.
  
• Finding a gunner for a vehicle with low survivability will be very hard. For reference, try finding a gunner for a Harrasser in PS1, you will even have a hard time with ES buggies.
  
• The drivergunner setup will encourage a much more stationary gameplay than what we had in PS1. Take PS1 lightings as reference, you will se how they tend to fire from a static position instead of while being mobile. If they do the later, they usually end up hitting a tree or a rock.

Originally Posted by Klockan

That's really biased talk. Half the vehicles are team vehicles and half are solo. Flash, lightning and aircav are strictly solo vehicles while Galaxy, Liberator and Sunderer are strictly team vehicles. The MBT is a mix, it works with a solo guy but its effectiveness is ~doubled with a guy on the top gun so both are viable.

Would it be biased not to count transport and support units as assault vehicles? I didn't think so. If you look at assault vehicles, here is the rundown:

solo - ES aircav
solo - Flash
solo - Lightning
soloable - Liberator
soloable - MBT

I see no vehicles in that list that require a team of two or more peole, do you?

[fod]

Originally Posted by sumo

realism vs fun as usual.
this is a sci-fi game and therefore not based in reality. they could just make up some technobabble that tank driver now have a nano helmet of some sort that help them to drive and shoot a tank and at the same time.

i never played ps1. but i do know that in bf3 noone want to take the driver position in the all so powerful and heavily armored troop transporter.

not really as i find it more fun driving a tank with a seperate gunner than i do a tank which i control the gun
i dont give a crap about realism

[sumo]

Originally Posted by Azren

Read the thread fist. Nobody argued to have dedicated gunner and driver because it is more realistic.

The arguments for dedicated d/g setup are along these lines:

• The MBT is the only multi crew ground combat vehicle. A design that does not require a gunner, effectively makes it a solo mashine, thus leaving no option for those people who want the experience of being dedicated gunner or driver
  
• The survivability of the PS2 setup is low because the driver has to split his attention between situational awareness (rocks, trees, enemy positions, friendly positions) and gunning (which requires keeping focused on one spot, making situational awareness low). Add to this the already far faster gameplay which also came at the cost of much lower TTK for MBTs.
  
• Finding a gunner for a vehicle with low survivability will be very hard. For reference, try finding a gunner for a Harrasser in PS1, you will even have a hard time with ES buggies.
  
• The drivergunner setup will encourage a much more stationary gameplay than what we had in PS1. Take PS1 lightings as reference, you will se how they tend to fire from a static position instead of while being mobile. If they do the later, they usually end up hitting a tree or a rock.

Would it be biased not to count transport and support units as assault vehicles? I didn't think so. If you look at assault vehicles, here is the rundown:

solo - ES aircav
solo - Flash
solo - Lightning
soloable - Liberator
soloable - MBT

I see no vehicles in that list that require a team of two or more peole, do you?

That makes great sense.
Thanks for summing up 36 unread pages.

[Klockan]

Originally Posted by Azren

Would it be biased not to count transport and support units as assault vehicles? I didn't think so. If you look at assault vehicles, here is the rundown:

solo - ES aircav
solo - Flash
solo - Lightning
soloable - Liberator
soloable - MBT

I see no vehicles in that list that require a team of two or more peole, do you?

Liberator isn't soloable since there is no reason to drive a liberator solo when you can just drive aircav solo with better results in every way.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Klockan

Liberator isn't soloable since there is no reason to drive a liberator solo when you can just drive aircav solo with better results in every way.

Depends on what you want to do with it. Liberators with a front mounted gun can be used to solo and there are several situations where you can draw a comparison to the MBT here.

Liberators were frequently used solo in air and air to ground combat (particularly during one event where Reavers and Mosquitos were removed from use by SOE). En mass (when outnumbering an enemy), their endurance with better front gun firepower becomes more important than their capacity to maneuvre as their wingman get the chance to cover the others without being fired back at. So you can compare that to the situation where a group of MBTs outnumbers a single, "enhanced crew" MBT: they simply overwhelm it with total endurance, where they'd have lost one on one.


So if aircav would have required more manpower, the comparison would have stood up as when making the choice, you would have had to choose between more units with high armour or fewer units with more agility. Instead, aircav is also solo and with equal numbers to pick from, agility, speed, firepower and flexibility trumps endurance+firepower. If aircav had required three players though?

So yes, it's the better solo option as you can have equal numbers of aircav for the amount of Liberators you can bring. That's where the comparison falls flat: there's no other, better solo units.

And with MBTs, these ARE the best solo units for their vehicle category.

[ruskyandrei]

I think you should also consider resource cost here. Everything we've seen so far is in no way indicative of what effect resource cost (and cooldown) will have on vehicle use.

Your main point against the driver/gunner, soloable vehicles, seems to be that they would be too powerfull for a single person and everybody would get one.

Yet you never once considered the fact that these vehicles cost resources and have cooldowns (therefore cannot be spammed as you describe).

Both the resource cost, and cooldown will mean using 2 or more people in a single vehicle will almost always be beneficial in the long term (sure you could have everyone in your team pick up an MBT and not have any gunners but apart from the fact that they will get destroyed by AV infantry and air vehicles since they have no second gunner, this style of play will also leave your entire side resourceless in a very short timespan).

The possibility of having a cert that allows for 3 people to man an MBT has been suggested and it makes no sense that people still argue against that as well.
On the one hand you have people opposing the driver/gunner system because it's "too easy", and on the other you have people saying it's "not as efficient as separating the driver and the gunner". Would you please make up your minds ? Which is it ? OP or not good enough ?

[Azren]

Originally Posted by ruskyandrei

I think you should also consider resource cost here. Everything we've seen so far is in no way indicative of what effect resource cost (and cooldown) will have on vehicle use.

Your main point against the driver/gunner, soloable vehicles, seems to be that they would be too powerfull for a single person and everybody would get one.

Yet you never once considered the fact that these vehicles cost resources and have cooldowns (therefore cannot be spammed as you describe).

Both the resource cost, and cooldown will mean using 2 or more people in a single vehicle will almost always be beneficial in the long term (sure you could have everyone in your team pick up an MBT and not have any gunners but apart from the fact that they will get destroyed by AV infantry and air vehicles since they have no second gunner, this style of play will also leave your entire side resourceless in a very short timespan).

The possibility of having a cert that allows for 3 people to man an MBT has been suggested and it makes no sense that people still argue against that as well.
On the one hand you have people opposing the driver/gunner system because it's "too easy", and on the other you have people saying it's "not as efficient as separating the driver and the gunner". Would you please make up your minds ? Which is it ? OP or not good enough ?

Did you read this thread or just decided to chip in at the last minute? Just a few posts before I wrote a list of the arguments that were brought up in support of dedicated drivers. You might want to read that.

Resource cost... let's just assume for a second that an MBT will cost a lot of resources, do you seriously think anyone would pull one? We saw how easy they die now, the TTK on a tank is like 4 seconds tops. It woud be a waste of resources and never used in game.

There is no way the cost of any vehicle would be high. Maybe you will not be able to constantly pull them and die without scoring any points, but if you idle around a bit, the automated resource gain should be more than enough to get a new MBT.

Remember PS2 is a fast paced game with short TTK, high resource cost would only result in a forced foot zerging, that won't happen.

[ruskyandrei]

You seem to assume that the values you see now (for everything from resource cost to TTK) will be the same when the game releases. I doubt that will be the case.

I did read your arguments, I just don't agree with all of them.

In particular:

The survivability of the PS2 setup is low because the driver has to split his attention between situational awareness (rocks, trees, enemy positions, friendly positions) and gunning (which requires keeping focused on one spot, making situational awareness low). Add to this the already far faster gameplay which also came at the cost of much lower TTK for MBTs.

I'm just going to dismiss the last part about TTK because as I said, this game is still in beta (actually, it's not even started beta) and things like TTK for tanks can change radically in a single patch.

But touching on your first point, which describes lower survivability with a driver/gunner setup: I agree, which is why it makes PERFECT sense for a high level cert that allows you to spawn a tank with 3 slots instead of 2, while leaving the driver/gunner option as default.

The MBT is the only multi crew ground combat vehicle. A design that does not require a gunner, effectively makes it a solo mashine, thus leaving no option for those people who want the experience of being dedicated gunner or driver

Again, the 3 slot cert option (which has already been hinted at) would allow people who wish to play dedicated driver/gunner to do just that.
And as you described above, 3 people would make the tank better than 2, so it would fit in nicely.

Would it be biased not to count transport and support units as assault vehicles?

It would if you consider that it has been clearly stated the galaxy can be outfitted as a gunship instead of a transport, and the sunderer has decent if not very good anti-infantry and air potential at least.

[Flaropri]

There are three arguments in this thread:

1. Being able to solo operate an MBT is overpowered.
2. Driving and gunning at the same time is less efficient than driving and gunning being split between players.
3. The game needs to encourage team-play.

My responses to these are:
1. Being able to solo operate an MBT is only "overpowered" if resources are meaningless. There are still many situations and variables that point to soloing an MBT would not be stronger than using the cheaper lightning.

2. Anything that both improves general access and the skill ceiling in the game seems like a very good thing, so I disagree that it is a problem.

3. The game needs to encourage team-play... and it does. MBTs are less valuable when driven solo for all the reasons from argument 1. Libs, Sunderers, etc. are relatively pointless without other players working with you. Personally I would rather the game's vehicles be accessible and teamwork encouraged than to restrict the game's vehicles and try to force teamwork.

Originally Posted by Figment

@Fla: I don't get how you can say that and then conclude it is okay to forego balance for the reason that people love lots of uncompromised power over others.

Seriously?

Go soak yourself.


I have NEVER said it's okay to forego balance. Nor do I think that I or other people are desperately trying to increase individual power over other 1-crew vehicles in the game. You conclude that solo-driven MBTs are imbalanced, that's your view, not the word of God or concrete fact, in fact there is no concrete fact about what is over powered in the game because Beta has only just started, and even in Live there's a very good chance they'll patch things for the sake of balance when necessary.

In the mean time: I have said over, and over, that the likely balancing factors for 1-crew MBTs are:

1. Lower individual firepower.
2. Lower flexibility.
3. When used in place of being a gunner for another MBT: greatly increased resource costs.


In my view, pending costs, a 1-crew MBT should be about as powerful as a Lightning (including "intangibles" like speed and manueverability) in total with focus on different areas (AV firepower and/or Health vs. Speed being the main example but not the only one). If it is particularly expensive in relation to a Lightning (like, 225%) then that can go up slightly... again as long as resources are balanced/meaningful, and only slightly.


You say people are horribly underestimating the value of 2 1-crew MBTs, and I say you're likely overvaluing it. I also say that there isn't enough information because the resource system isn't balanced yet (at least such that we have any good information on it).

You also say that 1-crew MBTs don't encourage team-work... then go on to describe how multiple MBTs with just driver can work together to flank multi-crew MBTs... I'm not sure how that isn't teamwork even if that turns out to be viable when you consider everything else, like infantry, terrain, and air support, which is dubious to me on top of resource considerations. Teamwork doesn't only mean being in the same vehicle. Teamwork means working with others, whether it be other friendly tanks, crew-members, infantry, air support or whatever. 2-crew MBTs inherently support teamwork but it isn't the only thing that does.

We aren't at this point talking about the difference of 2 and 3-crew optional variants with the same overall capabilities. We're talking about 1 vs. 2 crew and why it is balanced because resource to resource the capabilities are cut in half in Firepower, group maneuverability, adaptability, and battle-field awareness. I understand in PS1 the limiting factors were spawn timers and people with certs, but there are new mechanics now, you can't base everything on manpower alone.

[EisenKreutzer]

Smedley on driver/gunner tanks: I realize a lot of PS1 players are going to look at stuff like this and be uncomfortable. The truth is part of our job is to get more people able to play the game right when they jump in.. but we have to balance that with making the game still be Planetside. Changes like this are just straight up more fun

[Zedek]

Driver/Gunners... YES!

It's my tank, I want to shoot the cannon.

If you want that "dedicated gunner experience", then I would not be opposed to ALLOWING the owner of the tank to designate dedicated gunners. In fact, I think that would be awesome.

Driver/Gunner does not diminish teamwork. It frees up more people for tanks and requires even more coordination between more tanks for effective field dominance.

You don't need to discourage soloing. You don't need to give a buff to people who coordinate. It will happen passively as coordinating people will have an innate advantage. Solo Tank VS Dedicated Gunner Tank - They have the same cannon, but one will be more mobile because the driver can watch where he's going.

It takes care of itself, and it's nice to not have to sit around waiting to get a gunner.

[vVRedOctoberVv]

I'm sure the new setup will work fine. And in practice, as people have mentioned, the backup gunner watching your six will be critical, since tanks can be nearly one-shoted from behind now. Intelligent crews will "do their jobs" while idiots will not.

It's just a preference thing, more than anything else. I don't like certain aspects of the current system, but it really isn't "the end of the world".

And what is Buggsy even doing here? He left PlanetSide, I thought. Get going already!

[Azren]

Originally Posted by Zedek

You don't need to discourage soloing. You don't need to give a buff to people who coordinate. It will happen passively as coordinating people will have an innate advantage. Solo Tank VS Dedicated Gunner Tank - They have the same cannon, but one will be more mobile because the driver can watch where he's going.

It takes care of itself, and it's nice to not have to sit around waiting to get a gunner.

The point is not to discourage soloing, it is to encourage teamplay both in vehicles and overal. This is what Planetside is, this is why it is still around unlike all those BF and CoD games that came before the latest release.

There is a major problem with the suggestion to allow dedicated gunner as a cert for the tank: You would need one extra man to operate with the same firepower as a tank with drivergunner.
That is a hefty price to pay and not balanced. For this to work right, a tank with the optional dedicated gunner would have to sport greater armor than the normal counterpart.

This also doesn't solve the problem with the magrider. There the devs could create a secondary model (with rotatable turret of course) which gets spawned if the cert is active.

Originally Posted by vVRedOctoberVv

I'm sure the new setup will work fine. And in practice, as people have mentioned, the backup gunner watching your six will be critical, since tanks can be nearly one-shoted from behind now. Intelligent crews will "do their jobs" while idiots will not.

No. An intelligent crew does not get in a situation where they can be shot in the 6 in the first place. Situational awareness is where it's at! Exactly what will be lacking with the drivergunner setup.

Besides, you can not seriously belive that your gunner will watch your 6... he will look forward just like you, probably shoot the same enemy as you. Or do you think he will keep watching 6 when he knows that his tank is being damaged by an enemy at 12?

[Zebasiz]

Originally Posted by Azren

Besides, you can not seriously belive that your gunner will watch your 6... he will look forward just like you, probably shoot the same enemy as you. Or do you think he will keep watching 6 when he knows that his tank is being damaged by an enemy at 12?

I've been the secondary gunner sometimes on PS1 and I do watch the 6. as well as all the other time slots. It's why I'm in there. So yeah, some people will support the tank and watch its flank.

[ruskyandrei]

See, this is what I was talking about. You contradict yourself here.

First you say:

Originally Posted by Azren

There is a major problem with the suggestion to allow dedicated gunner as a cert for the tank: You would need one extra man to operate with the same firepower as a tank with drivergunner.
That is a hefty price to pay and not balanced.

What I take from that is that you believe that having a cert for a dedicated gunner seat would be bad because it would be a weaker setup than a drivergunner + secondary gunner alone.

But then you say this:

Originally Posted by Azren

No. An intelligent crew does not get in a situation where they can be shot in the 6 in the first place. Situational awareness is where it's at! Exactly what will be lacking with the drivergunner setup.

From which I understand that you consider a drivergunner setup inferior due to the lack of awareness caused by having a person as both the driver and gunner.

And if having a dedicated gunner is better isn't that balanced ?

So which is it ? Is drivergunner bad because it's too powerful, or because it's too weak ?