Larger Crew Vehicles, Good or Bad?

[GuvNuh]

I looked through the forum to see if anyone had posted about this yet. Didn't look like it so i though i'd take a crack at it.

In planetside there were a number vehicles which took several people or more to man. These saw very little play towards the end of planetside here due to low pops.

You know what though? I thought they were fun as hell, i loved taking out a group of 2 raiders(5man) and3 deliverers(3man) out onto the rivers of cyssor and just mowing down vanu tanks and aircraft. And when we had more people that was an option. however now with the same amount of people you could get 5 tanks, and so the larger crew vehicles became kinda obsolete.

I would like to get the community's thoughts on this. I would love to see a number of large crew vehicles, however they are not always the most practical thing in the world. What would you all like to see for larger crew vehicles or do you think they're a bad idea?

Even if they're not always the most useful, there's the fun factor. The Marauder(Hillbilly Tank) was one of my all time favorite TR vehicles. Was basically a ford pickup with a machinegun on the front and an automatic grenade launcher mounted onto the bed. Wasn't the most useful vehicle, it's main role was anti-infantry and harassment, but MAN was it fun to drive and gun. Same with the Raider, a Hummer with 4 10mm chainguns wasn't always the most useful and you could get more firepower by getting those same people into a pair of tanks. However, they were fun as hell to run around in and they let you get at the enemy from an unexpected quarter, especially for TR.

Saw someone post a picture of the German Landkreuzer prototype for a TR tank suggestion, and yeah, i'd like to see something like that, taking a full dozen people to man effectively, with a bunch of turrets and stuff on it's deck to man.

And does anyone remember an xbox game called crimson skies? Friggin great arcade-style aircraft game. You were a sky-pirate with your own zeppelin and a bunch of cool prop aircraft. In one of the bigger fights you have to take out an army of aircraft and nearly a dozen huge zeps. It's still worth trying if you got a spare 10bucks for it in the marketplace. Anyways the zeppelins had up to 2 dozen turrets on their surface-top, bottom, and sides. I would love to see behemoths like that in game. Having 3 of those just float in ominously and open fire would be something to see. Of course, i would also love destroying something like that. qualify it as a superweapon and dont allow more than 5 on the battlefield at a time. I dont care, just give me a giant zeppelin to invade something somewhere with.

[Coreldan]

Not much to say except that I always liked those vehicles too. Partially perhaps cos I didnt really have armor certs myself.

Crimson Skies was a good game I horribly sucked at it though. Played it on PC, though.

[Captain1nsaneo]

I am always in favor of things that require large numbers to operate. Anytime we'd steal a raider it was always a race to see who'd be able to get one of the guns. One of my favorite memories was running a full Leviathan with 2 AA MAXs on board and beating up tanks and BFRs.

[ringring]

Back in the day when we used to do outfit events ...
we would do prowler events, which were great but the best by far was Raider events.
When you got 4-5 fully manned raiders working together it was the most fun.

[GuvNuh]

I also think that Mega-class vehicles would be a great centerpiece to hold an event around. Say the faction leaders want a place taken at all costs and gives your army a limited number of these super vehicles to supplement your forces.

Would also increase competition to excel. Say that the pilots for the mega-vehicles were drawn from the top 25% of vehicle pilots on the leaderboards.

[Figment]

The problem with them is balancing them properly towards other units.


Three crew vehicles are relatively easy to balance in terms of armour endurance and firepower/focus/speed and agility, four crew might be possible with a very heavy tank, but when you have 5 or 6 crew you are creating balance problems.

The Galaxy Gunship and Raider are the best examples of this. The Raider because of its manpower inefficiency (MUCH better off using multiple vehicles), whereas the Galaxy Gunship could be exploited by using less crew, in fact, the most exploited version I've seen is dualboxing Galaxy Gunships where one guy using two accounts flies a single gunship. That means that all that armour and at least one very heavy firepower weapon is applied to one person, whereas a random other person gets for instance an ATV worth of armour. The guy had a 270+ K/D when I jacked his GG out of the sky by jumping on top of him while he was camping a watch tower.

So yeah, it's possible to do, but very hard to give it a niche that isn't either overpowered or underpowered in relation to other manpower spending options.

[GuvNuh]

Originally Posted by Figment

The problem with them is balancing them properly towards other units.

Three crew vehicles are relatively easy to balance in terms of armour endurance and firepower/focus/speed and agility, four crew might be possible with a very heavy tank, but when you have 5 or 6 crew you are creating balance problems.

So yeah, it's possible to do, but very hard to give it a niche that isn't either overpowered or underpowered in relation to other manpower spending options.

Exactly! That's also the main problem i come across when i think about them. So I think they should be vehicles you ONLY see during events. Some ungodly, overpowered monstrosity your faction gets a few of for the day. I even state the impracticality of larger crew vehicles in my OP, but they're so damn fun i think they still have a place in PlanetSide2. Especially when you think of how much larger the faction pops aught to be. I think Mega-Vehicles would be ridiculous fun if you only got to use occasionally, but would get old like BFR's if seen all the time, so having them available for an event would make more sense. Plus you'd also never know what kind of monster you'd be getting, let the designers go nuts building different apocalyptic machines to play with every so often.

[Coreldan]

I guess one thing could be that a player heavily certed into the heavy ground transports could get 1) extra seats for moar people inside just for travelling purpose 2) perhaps more boom to the weapons or just more weapons.

[Sifer2]

I like them I think they are cool. But obviously harder to balance relative to one/two man vehicles. Since if your driving a Mega Tank that takes 7 people to crew then how many one man Standard tanks should be required to destroy it?

If they feel they could balance them well I would happy to have them in the game though. Would just add to the epic feel an be extremely satisfying to kill something big like that. Would be neat if they had interiors too and Engineers had to run around inside making repairs or reloading the guns.

[xSlideShow]

Outfit resources to pull certain vehicles? Just take a lot so you would barely see them? It could be in the outfit tree. For a heavy spec'd ground vehicles outfit? Even one for air I dunno.

[Jimmuc]

Originally Posted by xSlideShow

Outfit resources to pull certain vehicles? Just take a lot so you would barely see them? It could be in the outfit tree. For a heavy spec'd ground vehicles outfit? Even one for air I dunno.

interesting idea. outfit vehicles like a heavy tank or a land raider (wh40k) type vehicle. while well armored and armed, they do come with cons. they would be slower, take more people (3-5?), need special resources to make, limit how many can be fielded at one time per map/outfit/empire, vehicle timer is like a 12 hour cool down. just the thoughts that sprung to mind lol

[Figment]

Every time you come up with a multi crew vehicle like that, ask yourself how often will these be manned by two people instead of 7 and if it is then still fair to give them the added protective armour of a crew of 7.

[Kouza]

Love multi people vehicles... WHAT I DON`T LIKE: One empire requiring more people to operate their weapons.

IE:
A platoon of prowlers vs a platoon of Vangaurds is 10 prowlers vs 15 vanguards o
A platoon of raiders vs a platoon of thunderers is 6 Raiders against (Assuming guns only) 10 thunderers.

Yes the raider was capable of more DPS but, is it really worth having almost half of the vehicles? It certainly wasn't twice the DPS lol.

[Trolltaxi]

Oh, the good ol' Raider events with at least 3-4 fully manned raider! Those 4 chainguns/veichle melted any armour and the raider being able to swim gave us a great flat firing platform... And enemy air wasn't a problem either - unlike taking 2 prowlers with 4-5 men.

BTW glad to see Hill finally made it to the PSU forums!

[Shogun]

i want an unarmed buggy type vehicle that can be used as mobile weapon platform by 4 max units.

4 ports for max units to cling on and use their maxsuit weapons while being carried around by the buggy ;-)