Poll on driver gunning

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Figment

That's not a lot.

How many do you expect there to be?

MOAR VEHICLES! will not make a bad game better.

[Captain1nsaneo]

Originally Posted by xSlideShow

Link me where the took the 3 man away. That's upsetting :

Well it doesn't seem to be in the UK gaming article which isn't in the media archive that also included our first look at the prowler.:

Originally Posted by CardiffGreens

I've got a quick scan here (1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6) - I'll type some key points up when I return from my evening stroll (since I know some of the text is cropped from the edges of the pages =( ).

If the links don't work (highly likely, due to my stupid fingers - the album is here) hopefully no one will have my balls in a vice for such blatent copyright infringement =P

But I'm not the only one who remembers it according to google.

BUT APPARENTLY I'M WRONG!
https://twitter.com/#!/brewkops/stat...65679658397696
WOOT! Still a 3-man!

[CutterJohn]

Thats sad. Lib should be 2 man. That back gunner seat was *boooooooooooooooring*. Almost impossible to find people for it.

Unless its more like the GG, and each gunner just covers a side arc or something.. that would be nifty.

[Zulthus]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Thats sad. Lib should be 2 man. That back gunner seat was *boooooooooooooooring*. Almost impossible to find people for it.

Unless its more like the GG, and each gunner just covers a side arc or something.. that would be nifty.

The tailgunner was still pretty necessary if you wanted to stay in the air for an extended amount of time. Sadly it seemed no one knew how to aim it effectively.

[Xyntech]

I have to say I'm actually somewhat surprised that it is still 3 man. Everything else seems to be going towards 2 man, passenger slots aside.

[Khellendros]

Originally Posted by Zulthus

The tailgunner was still pretty necessary if you wanted to stay in the air for an extended amount of time. Sadly it seemed no one knew how to aim it effectively.

When I couldn't get to friendlies for help, I often turned to dogfight my attacker with my lib. Won a good deal of those dogfights, heh. The thing about the tailgunner was that it was a challenge for the pilot to keep the enemy air in view of it, since it couldn't aim up from the long axis of the lib.

I really wanna see/hear more about the lib as I'm still not sure if I'm gonna fly it in PS2. I want to, because it was my second skin in PS1.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

How many do you expect there to be?

MOAR VEHICLES! will not make a bad game better.

I expect there to be more roles that are not shared among vehicle platforms to make it more interesting and varied gameplay. Rather than sharing all roles among all vehicle platforms because it cuts down on development time.

And not defining vehicle roles and niches properly will lead to confusion, disregard and improper use, not to mention generalised playstyles.

Defining the function of a unit is very important as is making it recognizable for others. It makes all the difference to how you can handle or approach such a unit. If everything looks the same from a distance, it is going to be very annoying and very boring over time because these situations cannot vary a lot. Even with some tweaked stats, they will still handle and be handled approximately the same, where as if you have more platforms you have room for alternative combinations of vehicles to create more strategies and combine different advantages and disadvantages. Some overlap is fine, but I'd rather they are distinct vehicles, that can be tweaked than jacks of all trades platforms which you you customize for the situation each fight at the touch of a button. Handy for the user, but IMO that will become rather annoying gameplay wise as someone you just had the advantage over as a paper (AV vs air) platform, suddenly has changed at a vehicle term to a scissors platform (AA vs air) during your second pass. How easy it will be to switch remains to be seen of course, but such situations will probably occur a lot around base fights.


Still, there can already be huge differences between just light, medium and heavy tanks and they can differ even greater depending on the armour plating thickness and angles you provide them, their turret, viewing systems etc. Two unit platforms to cover ALL OF THESE roles on top of roles that are not traditional tanking roles is very little. If you only use one basic platform, your options are becoming very limited, regardless on whether you can get a small armour buff or change the colour of the headlights. I presume they will be using multiple hitboxes on the new vehicles to dedicate weakspots, which will mean you'll be aiming at the same weakspots over and over even against tanks of different roles. That's a bit boring as it is predictable, not?

Compare with World of Tanks where every tank has completely different hitboxes, engine locations, plating setup, periscopes or not, big or small turrets, heavily reinforced or light turrets and hulls, big weight and low weight to engine ratios, etc. Those units each behave in their own unique way and each is modified with modules making each behave different with different loadouts. Basically we will only get a couple of those whereas there you got dozens of tanks that each play differently and play even more differently when you load different modules. Each unit has different weakspots you can make use of and here they'll be pretty much the same every time (if there is such a thing as vehicle hitboxes at all).

In PS you don't need as many platforms as in WoT, but I find it annoying that a one crew vehicle like the Lightning already removed the Skyguard niche and a dual crew vehicle at that.

[Raymac]

Does World of Tanks have light and heavy infantry? Max units? Fighter jets? Air transports? Air gunships?

Sure they have a wide variety of tanks, but the name of the damn game is "World of Tanks", so of course they do.

Fact is, Planetside 2 will have a good variety of units at launch and will likely add more units over time. Then when you factor in the level of customization not only in loadouts but visually, well hell the game is going to have waayyy more variety than the original.

You seem to be stuck on this idea that we are only going to see 1 or 2 "default" units in the game, but that just sounds really unlikely to me.

[Figment]

Why would they add more units? They covered everything already with variants of two. The variety of units at launch will be far less than in PS1 because they started mixing roles into jack of all trades vehicles and that made the need to add more later a redundancy thing.


Ask yourself why the Skyguard existed: because NO GROUND VEHICLE had an AA role. Now we already have two.

Why did the Harasser exist? AI.

Was it used? No. Why not? Other units were better at AI.

So why add an AI buggy now?

[Raymac]

So you think they arn't going to add any more units after launch? OK, guy. Sure.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Raymac

So you think they arn't going to add any more units after launch? OK, guy. Sure.

You have this weird tendency to not really understand an argument, don't you? Where did I say none? I said I don't see a lot of niches that haven't been covered multiple times already including all variations there of through customization of basic specs (speed/armour/firepower), thus there is not a lot of room for more, is there? As such I said I see little reason to add more. No way does that equal none at all.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Figment

I expect there to be more roles that are not shared among vehicle platforms to make it more interesting and varied gameplay. Rather than sharing all roles among all vehicle platforms because it cuts down on development time.

K. We can do that. I vote infantry gives up AV capability. Can't have everyone able to do everything, now can we!

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Figment

Why would they add more units? They covered everything already with variants of two.

Yeah, I wonder where would I get the idea that you said they wouldn't add more units?

Do you have issues with short term memory?

[Figment]

My word the two of you are really starting to look foolish now. :/

For the record, here are some vehicle designs they might have actually based some of these ideas of since I posted them (for PS1) on PS Idealabs.

Note how I made these such that they do not have the exact same roles or benefits as other vehicles and require gunners to use to compensate for their power. My implementation is obviously different from these devs as I leave plenty of room for other niche vehicles, be they lighter or heavier, by giving them specific weaknesses you can't remove by changing the setup of the tank.

Of course these are designed within the PS1 context.

Taken from this thread: http://comms.planetsidesyndicate.com...ead.php?t=4290

Originally Posted by HanSime

Warpath - Heavy Tank:



Vehicle Role: Heavy Assault Tank

Armor: 1.5-1.8x a Vanguard.

Crew and weaponry:
• Driver: none
• Gunner 1: Dual 100mm Cannons
• Gunner 2: Defensive Short/Medium Range Flak(let) cannon
• Gunner 3: 15 mm Frontmounted Machinegun

Top Speed: 55

Handling: Mediocre to Poor

Trunk Capacity: 19x 11

PSU note: compared to other tanks bigger crew req. to have all guns, but increased armour makes it interesting none the less. Has many disadvantages due to weakspots and agility issues. Complete teamvehicle with supportive role, rather than solo-pwnage role. It is designed to push, hence the forward aimed 15 mm, that can't be used to defend the sides, thus requiring cover from other units.

Porcupine - AA Tank:



PSU note: Gunner has just a line of sight, high angle machine gun AA Turret: does not infringe on normal tank, not effective against infantry and does not have flak advantage like Skyguard.

Crocodile - Amphibious Tank:



PSU note: has completely different balance from Thunderer and Deliverer (decent armour + weak gun vs medium armour and powerful guns)

Messenger - Amphibious Light Vehicle Transport



PSU Note: does not infringe on roles of Sunderer variants or Lodestar

Parasite - Personal Aerial Transport



Pondering on giving the Parasite a Laze Pointer for scouting purposes.

PSU note: Was intended to split up scout and solo transport role from fighter role from Mosquito (Mosquito pilot would have been reduced to standard suit only and lost ground radar).

Cavalier tank - Medium Common Pool Battle Tank


PSU note: this is a tank with more jack of all trade ability, but is far less powerful than a normal ES mbt and an inbetween between mbt and Lightning. At all times requires gunner, flak does not have same range or clipsize as Skyguard flak. It therefore is a choice to make between solo and two for getting power and it is there to support other tanks and give you more chance in no tech setting. MBT would be choice with tech. Lightning without second crew member available and Skyguard would still be the better AA defense.

Vanquish - ES or CP tank destroyer



PSU note: Trade off with MBT is that it lacks a turret, but has a more powerful gun. Extremely weak against agile units. Designed to take out heavy tanks and BFRs. Very specific role similar to Fury, but very different gameplay.

[Kouza]

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