First off, I have indeed tried Planetside 1. Obviously it's too late to go back and and spend 5 years playing it, and yes only played about 7 days worth, but I have tried it, so, if you would excuse me for saying nothing further on that.
With that said, it seems you have gotten the impression this is all for the purpose of creating a special operations mission. That isn’t true.
So:
1. This is for buffing AA at fixed main bases only. I am only saying this because you are referring to it as "buffing AA", which in my mind includes all AA. And I don't consider it a nerf of aircraft, but if you want to consider it a nerf of aircraft relative to 10% of the game area(the airspace over the main bases), fine, I concede that much.
2. The purpose of this is not just to create special operations missions. I threw that in as an extra benefit mention, and if that’s confusing, well, sorry. And I’m well aware that that already exists in Planetside 1. So, let me be clear: I know that exists in PS1, but it hardly seems to be highly important. I am suggesting it become even more important. Feel free to disagree with the value of making it more important.
3. So, now that we are clear that the “special ops” stuff was secondary, the outline of the main purpose of this is as follows:
- a. It will create a situation where cooperation between air and ground matters more. Currently, there’s no reason why you cannot simply have all 300 people in your attack force spawn Reavers to sweep across a base and then bail as infantry to get the flags. I am not saying that that is an optimum strategy, but I am suggesting this in order to help it be even less optimum than it already is. You may disagree that it’s valuable to try and enforce this level of cooperation, that’s fine.
- b. If defenders can keep their AA up, it will keep away constant bombardments. I did not play PS1 during the golden age, and there’s no way to do so now, but from what I did see, I never saw base defenses play a major role. And engineers doing repairs will be even more important.
- c. This will encourage air outfits and squads to make a greater effort to intercept ground convoys in the transit areas between bases. Frankly, this is probably the most important of all the reasons. I only wish we could make the continents 15km X 15km for the same 2000 people, which would double or triple the transit times, making the chances of fighting between bases even more likely, but we can’t do that, at least not for Planetside 2, so there’s no point even asking.
- d. And, pursuant to C, since ground attack aircraft will be making extra effort to patrol between bases, that gives players who want to do air to air dogfighting a chance to perform combat air patrol roles.
- e. Furthermore, it will increase the value of feint attacks. That means, let’s assume that Main Base X is behind the lines and we are not going to attack it, we’re actually going to attack somewhere else. Since the AA is so valuable at a main base, sending in a team to blow it up will possibly cause the enemy empire to overallocate defenders while we attack elsewhere , in other words, adding urgency in the enemy’s mind for such a feint tactic.
- f. Aircraft will still be able to attack either the AA directly, or other things inside a base, but they will need to use tactics such as flying over the base at maximum height and then dropping straight down in a dive attack. While I believe that the fact that base AA will be looking more horizontal than vertical should be more than enough to permit this, to bolster that, the firing arcs/blind spots can also be designed to make them slightly weaker to a dive attack from directly above, to ensure that this tactic has a chance. They could also fly low using terrain as cover from the base AA, and pop up to destroy targets.
- g. It will make bases more defensible against Galaxy drops(forcing Galaxies to drop outside the base and make attackers walk in). Although my experience with Galaxies is limited, people have also said that when 20 come in hot, it's damn hard to shoot even 1 down. You may disagree that this is a valuable thing to cut down on, of course.
I think that, at the very least, the above is enough to demonstrate that I have not suggested this just for the sake of changing it. You may disagree that these changes would enhance the game, that’s fine. I am not actually sure that any strategies are lost, though certainly, haphazard, unorganized air attacks would become less wise. Though, if as hinted at in A, an all Reaver type attack is made a lot less likely to succeed, I won’t mourn the loss of that strategy.
Also, someone in IRC suggested that maybe the AA would only work like this if upgraded at heavy resource cost. There’s that, as well.
Lastly, I wanted to respond to the idea that this handicaps attackers. First of all, my goal is the reasons I listed, and I am not seeking to handicap attackers. Secondly I disagree, that this does handicap attackers, though certainly it does change the tactics required to attack. There are also two things that overpower defenders or handicap attackers that I don’t agree with:
1. Jump pads overpower defenders and relieve the defenders of any responsibility to deploy where they are needed. I am only mentioning this as respects defense vs offense,
not trying to start a jump pad thread.
2. Drop pod squad spawning(instead of simply appearing on the ground by your squad leader): I am only mentioning this as it relates to offense vs defense,
not trying to start a drop pod thread. But, as we know, drop pods will give away your location, as well as your squad leader if you drop by him. Since defenders will be able to spawn at all the spawn locations in their base,and therefore, be unlikely to use or need Squad Spawning, this is unlikely to affect a defensive force. It therefore handicaps attackers.
Also, I predict that Beta, when it hits, will reveal some other factors that handicap attackers/overpower defenders. For example, as I said, defenders will be unlikely to need squad spawning, so they will respawn at their own spawn tubes. However, I suspect that Squad Spawning, very important to attackers, will have a heavy respawn delay. Spawning at deployed Galaxies might have a delay relative to defender respawn timers as well.
2012-05-27, 05:43 PM
Linear Mode
