Gameplay: Dropship Idea (revisited)

[Memeotis]

Before I post my idea, I'd like to outline a mechanic which will have to be in the game in one form or another for this vehicle to even interest anybody. Why? The pilot of the following vehicle will get his XP purely from support actions and assists.

a. The Mechanic

The Galaxy pilots gets points whenever somebody spawns on the Galaxy, which can only be done once it's deployed on the ground - but what will actually incentivize him to perform continuous drops?

I think the following mechanic will balance the XP-gain between a Galaxy pilot whose aircraft is a deployed spawn point and one who is performing repeated drops:

Assist points from the next action(s) done by players that have recently dropped from the ship. This will of course be cancelled if the player becomes incapacitated - even if he is revived.

This idea is a little unconventional, but I think it's important to somehow reward the players who use the Galaxy for one of its intended purposes: to drop players onto the map to give them a strategic advantage.

And though I will be perfectly happy if the pilot only gets assist points once per player dropped, I think it would be much more meaningful to give the pilot points for the next three consecutive actions. This will tell the pilot whether his drop was good, great or excellent. In order to indicate this to the pilot, the assist point would have to increase for every action a soldier on the ground completes without dying. In other words the first action could be worth 14 XP (good drop), the second 15 XP (great drop), the third 16 XP (excellent drop). Or however much you get for an assist.

Just to clarify, this would apply to individuals, not the entire group, meaning that if one person completes one action and gets the pilot 14 XP and a second player completes another action right after, the pilot would still only get 14 XP for the second player's actions. The second player would have to complete a second action for the pilot to receive 15 XP.

And yes, I know that the amount of points a soldier is likely to get after a drop is largely dependent on the soldier's skill and not the pilot's, but over time this feature will still help the pilot pin-point what is a good drop, and what is not.

And of course the points don't have have to 14, 15, 16 - they could also be 10, 20, 30 or 4, 5, 6 - as long as they are increasing.

This drop-assist-mechanic would of course only apply to the Galaxy and Sunderer, and the pilot/driver would only get these points when he is in the pilot/drivers-seat.

b. The Dropship

A very versatile support and transport aircraft. It has a total of six seats, five of which are passive passenger seats.

Unless the pilot roadkills a soldier, he will never kill a single player in this aircraft. It will be purely focused on earning points by completing swift and very accurate half-a-squad drops, whilst having several non-lethal abilities to complement the on-ground success of the five soldiers.

In terms of stats, I imagine it to be slightly more durable than your average jet, has a slightly lower top speed, and mobility not too much lower than the Scythe. But this I just how I would want it to be, based on my play style. It would make sense to have it be very customizable with regards to its stats in order to allow players to fine-tune; juggling things like speed, health and mobility.

In terms of abilities, the pilot would of course have the standard range of defensive abilities: ECM, infrared flares, auto-repair, stealth(?). As for the following ability suggestions, I wouldn't know how to distribute them between the defensive, utility and offensive slots, but here goes:

Smoke shell - Behaves in the same way as a smoke grenade launcher, in that it explodes on impact. The main difference is that the barrel is fitted under the aircraft and is fixed in place. It's designed to give passengers a momentary advantage, by keeping them out of the enemies' cross-hairs once they land on the ground. This ability can of course be used in more situations, but being accurate and effective with it takes a lot of skill.

EMP - A weakening or disruptive blast that does exactly what SOE want EMPs to do in Planetside 2. It's deployed in exactly the same way as the smoke shell, and thus takes a lot of skill to master.

Flare - Not to be confused with the type that misguides lock-on rocket. This is an ability designed for night time play, where one or more flares drop from the dropship. The flares fall onto the ground and light up the area. Any enemy killed which is both within the radius and within line of sight of the flare will give the pilot assist points. It's again an ability subject to the same restrictive, skill-intensive mechanics of the previous two, but rather than getting fired out of the aircraft, it merely drops out and descends down slowly. It's only works for a finite amount of time.

Spotlight - The game already supports headlights, so I thought it would be an interesting addition to allow this aircraft to have something similar, just with a much longer range. Here is a picture. The spotlight would be fixed in place at the nose of the aircraft, with the option to turn it on and off. Any enemy killed within the range of the cone will reward the pilot with assist points.

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That's all for now, might add more abilities if any come to mind. What do you guys think?

[Tooterfish]

/signed.

[Dagron]

I'm kind of in a hurry so i just skimmed it, but it seems cool.

Smaller transports (ground and air) for when you don't have enough people to fill up a galaxy/sunderer and want to avoid being a big target is one of the things i'm hoping for in the future.

[Memeotis]

Having posted this on the IRC channel, I've realized that both these ideas were 'sort of' in PS1 in form of the Phantasm as well as a point system for Galaxy pilots.

[Iccee]

to drop players onto the map to give them a strategic advantage.

Isn't that kinda the incentive?

[Memeotis]

Originally Posted by Iccee

Isn't that kinda the incentive?

Of course it is, just like deploying the Galaxy in a strategic position is, but why only reward deploying and not dropping?

[Dagron]

Originally Posted by Iccee

Isn't that kinda the incentive?

Yeah, but if a player wants to only do that for his entire career and he gets no XP for it, he'll never level up and get certs.
Even if that's not all he does, doing it would still slow down his leveling, which is enough to discourage people from doing it at all.
 

[Saifoda]

Originally Posted by Dagron

Yeah, but if a player wants to only do that for his entire career and he gets no XP for it, he'll never level up and get certs.
Even if that's not all he does, doing it would still slow down his leveling, which is enough to discourage people from doing it at all.
 

Exactry.


The trick with balancing this whole idea (btw I approve/+1/etc...) is to make sure that the numbers game with the XP works. Gotta figure out the average xp earned for the spawning from gals and then make the drop higher. Maybe even just have a basic drop xp amount (not based on future actions, but on the drop itself). Could have it be so that drops only give the gal pilot xp if it is over an enemy owned hex or something like that.