News: PlanetSide 2 Empire Debrief – The Terran Republic

[EASyEightyEight]

For what it's worth, I'm not expecting the same multitude of weaponry and vehicles in PS2 that we saw in PS1. I mean, in theory, extensive customization of a few weapons and vehicles could easily cover other weapons and craft. The mosquito is the most agile, lightly armored aircraft, but that doesn't necessarily mean it can't be tweaked by the player to perform largely like the old reaver. It might not match the PS2 reaver tweaked to be even more heavily armed and armored, but it can compare.

Same goes for the tanks. Little in the way of the confirmation of buggies (shame) but that doesn't mean we can't potentially modify our tanks into essentially being buggies. Personally, I feel we don't necessarily need a skyguard (for example) if we can strap SAM launchers/flak cannons to our tanks and rig them out for speed and maneuverability over being lumbering oxen that can take a beating. In this way, "tank" might be misleading and simply calling it a weapons platform might be more appropriate. I'm not expecting this extreme an amount of customization however. It will most likely act like a light tank at best.

As for the TR 3 man rule: A 3-manned tank should dish out more damage overall focus fire, and is multi-role simultaneously. The 12mm machine gun on the PS1 Prowler just plain sucked compared to it's old 20mm version. I think that's what it had pre-BFR's anyway. I know the downgrade to smaller ammo was so that the bullets could pass through the shield. Unfortunately, that left it largely useless against armor, including the BFR's.

EDIT: Oh, and I think the TR with a handgun is becoming a running gag.

[Xyntech]

Prowler, Vanguard and Magrider were all called Medium Battle Tanks back in PS1. They teased and promised us Heavy Battle Tanks as a future addition, but what we got instead were BFRs. I don't mind that they kept the MBT naming for PS2, as I hope that they take the opportunity to do HBTs right this time, instead of making them BFRs. I'm picturing HBTs being slow, unwieldy, heavily armored mobile fortresses. Like miniature towers that you can drive around. I'm not sure on the specifics of how exactly to balance them or go about keeping their numbers low, but I feel like a properly done HBT could be an interesting and valuable addition to the game.

As far as there only being two ES vehicles (at least that are being confirmed), Planetside only launched with two ES vehicles as has already been mentioned. The ES tanks and the ES buggies. We already knew that they weren't including buggies for launch and that they weren't bringing BFRs back. What else does that leave from PS1's ES vehicles? Tanks, which we already knew were being included, as well as ES variants like deliverers have. Well, ES variants are included in the form of ES customization options for common pool vehicles in PS2, so really there isn't much we are losing.

They haven't ruled out buggies, they just aren't including them at launch. I hope they put a lot of thought and revision into them and make ES buggies be even more valuable and interesting than they already were in PS1.

Now I may be biased as a pilot, but if I had to choose between having ES buggies or ES fighters at launch to go along side the ES tanks, I'm picking the ES fighters every time. Why have both of the ES vehicles be land based? At least with the fighters, they are giving ES coverage to both the ground and the air, the major realms of vehicle in Planetside. I love buggies as well, I just think that if they have to wait until after launch to be implemented, the game won't suffer too bad in the meanwhile.

I like that shot of the Mosquito. Nice to have reference of it from more angles. Anyone else getting a slight Gunship from HL2 vibe from that profile of it?

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by IDukeNukeml

for a vehicle that is suppose to be extremely fast and the inability to hover, it sure looks motionless in this picture.. perhaps hovering is reinstituted? Regardless, if that bitch is moving at any speed, it should have SOME blur.

They never said hovering was removed I don't believe. I think the most we have heard on the subject was that they had gotten a good system for controlling the aircraft while hovering and a good system for controlling aircraft while flying at high speed, but that they were at the time having problems with the transition between the two.

My guess would be that they knew exactly what kind of shot they wanted to get, so they hovered the skeeter into position and held it motionless while they took the screen shot.

One thing that would be pretty awesome is if low hovering aircraft would kick up a bunch of dust like a helicopter coming in for a landing.

Originally Posted by Spectre

I thought it sounded more like the Medium tanks were 1 man tanks, and the Prowler is the only 2 man tank.

The way I have understood it is that for all medium battle tanks, the driver drives the tank and operates the main cannon and that there is an additional gunner slot who can control a separate turret, be it an AA gun or an AI gun or what have you. My guess would be that the Prowler just gets two of these additional turret slots, instead of the usual single gunner slot of the Magrider and Vanguard. They have confirmed their intention to make those gunner controlled turrets be a real threat, so I would assume that both of the additional Prowler turrets will be able to be made into fearsome weapons.

Does this mean that a Prowler has the ability to be the most all encompassing MBT? The drivers main cannon taking out vehicles, one gunner turret taking out aircraft and the other gunner turret taking out infantry? It will be interesting to see how they balance this.

[Furret]

That mossie looks like a bitch to have to hit from behind.

I already suck at dogfighting D:

[Brusi]

I think it's just supposed to be tricky to hover now, instead of something you can do while you go AFK to get a sandwich/beer.

Also... +1 for kicking up dust while hovering!!!

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by Bags

Prowler yet again called a "medium tank".

I hope heavy tanks are part of the long term plan, but not for launch. If there's only 2 empire specific vehicles in, then a launch heavy would be common pool only, and that would make me kind of sad.

Originally Posted by IDukeNukeml

for a vehicle that is suppose to be extremely fast and the inability to hover, it sure looks motionless in this picture.. perhaps hovering is reinstituted?

They did not remove hovering. They just changed the control scheme.


Is anyone else a little perplexed at the TR having the fastest vehicles? That used to be a VS thing. We had the weakest tank, but we got to pick our fights. How is it going to work if the TR have the best speed and still get great firepower with the extra gun?

[Brusi]

It might balance out if Mags can move faster over difficult terrain?

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Talek Krell

Is anyone else a little perplexed at the TR having the fastest vehicles? That used to be a VS thing. We had the weakest tank, but we got to pick our fights. How is it going to work if the TR have the best speed and still get great firepower with the extra gun?

My money is on the Magrider being able to travel at the same top speed in any direction it chooses. Combine that with the fixed forward gun and you have a recipe for circle strafing.

Considering that tanks are meant to have the strongest armor in front and the weakest armor in the back and it becomes pretty clear that keeping your front armor facing towards the enemy is the way to go, even on tanks who don't have a fixed gun.

Now consider the fact that to keep their heaviest frontal armor facing towards their targets, the Prowler and Vanguard will have to be driving straight towards, slowly backing away from, or standing still relative to the target. To keep themselves a moving target, they will have to expose their weaker side armor. To retreat with any speed, they will have to expose their highly vulnerable rear armor.

The Magrider on the other hand would move about freely, deciding both where it wanted to move and which way to point it's best armor.

Obviously this is all speculation at this point. The effectiveness of this idea would also depend greatly on the Magrider being able to turn faster than the other MBTs, but considering that it has a forward fixed gun, I assume that a faster turn speed is already the case.

[EASyEightyEight]

Originally Posted by Talek Krell

I hope heavy tanks are part of the long term plan, but not for launch. If there's only 2 empire specific vehicles in, then a launch heavy would be common pool only, and that would make me kind of sad.

They did not remove hovering. They just changed the control scheme.


Is anyone else a little perplexed at the TR having the fastest vehicles? That used to be a VS thing. We had the weakest tank, but we got to pick our fights. How is it going to work if the TR have the best speed and still get great firepower with the extra gun?

We haven't kept our armor up to date with with the massive, rail powered shells and hot plasma fire of the Vanguard and Mag-Rider respectively I presume. The fire power bit might just be because 2 people can simultaneously focus fire their weaponry on a single target, and no other tank will be able to match that damage output. With hightened lethality, even a machine gun for the secondary weapon might actually be lethal vs infantry for a change, and the main gun can actually focus on armor.

[Graywolves]

I said this before and I'll say it again.

I don't like the idea of "this empire is designed for strength in numbers"

Just bad design. Makes you handicapped on the individual level.

[Infektion]

Originally Posted by xSlideShow

Ermmerica

Soooo this is pretty much them reiterating everything they've said so far plus TR tank iz koolz (Oh yeah) and Mossy is rwellly faast... Am I the only one disappointed? I wanted real info... I dunno Pretty cool screen shot I guess... And I suppose they have more info coming. So I shouldn't go gay bashing just yet.

I'm right there with you brother... I could have wrote this myself. Nothing we don't know...

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Infektion

I'm right there with you brother... I could have wrote this myself. Nothing we don't know...

We've learned that the Prowler is the fastest MBT, a significant departure from Planetside. We also learned that it will be able to be armed with more weapons than the NC or VS tanks, which heavily suggests that the three man tank will be making a return, something that I personally didn't expect considering how many people disliked the 3 man aspect of the PS1 Prowler, although it sounds like it's going to be done better this time around.

We also got confirmation that the Mosquito is the fastest ES fighter, which makes sense given the aircrafts PS1 origins, but it's something that we didn't know for sure after finding out that the skeeter and reaver had become empire specific.

Note that the Prowler is the fastest tank and the Mosquito is the fastest fighter. This marks a significant change for PS1, in which the VS generally had the fastest vehicles. This leaves the door open to find out what will replace this advantage once they (finally) release some info on the Vanu Sovereignty.

So did we get a wealth of new information in that one post? No. But we did get some new information as well as some confirmation on a few points that had been uncertain before. We also got a picture of the new Mosquito from a completely different angle, which helps us get a better idea on what the entire thing looks like in three dimensions.

Most importantly, the week of TR information isn't over. We have been promised more information about the TR, new screen shots and some 360 degree turn arounds of some armor models. We also get the usual Q&A session.

I don't see how this is worse than any of the previous weeks of information and it's certainly better than the backstory week last time with the retarded "We ask you questions, lololol" nonsense.

If they had been dishing out truck loads of information for months and suddenly they went silent, or just rehashed a bunch of the same stuff with absolutely no new information or confirmations, I could see getting pissed off, but jesus. Chill the fuck out. Save the whining for something else.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Graywolves

I said this before and I'll say it again.

I don't like the idea of "this empire is designed for strength in numbers"

Just bad design. Makes you handicapped on the individual level.

But when we work together (read: have more people) we are "one of the most fearsome and deadly forces you’ll ever meet on the battlefields of Auraxis".

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Bags

But when we work together (read: have more people) we are "one of the most fearsome and deadly forces you’ll ever meet on the battlefields of Auraxis".

It sounds more like it's a design style than an actual advantage or disadvantage based on numbers to me.

If you wanna put an AA and an AI turret on your Prowler, you suddenly have a single vehicle that is very hard for any lone enemy to take out, but to do so you have to put 3 eggs into one basket, which puts more lives at risk with the same amount of armor.

This harkens back to the thread about drivers controlling the main guns on tanks now. Is it better to put two people in one tank or have both people pull tanks and double their total quantity of armor. My argument in that thread was that you would end up with a mix of solo and two man tanks under the new system and I still stand by that.

The question now is how viable will it be to put 3 people into that same tank instead of 2? Why not have the third person grab their own tank? Get a fourth person to gun for it if you really want that extra turret. Is it worth having 3 people protected by 1 tank worth of armor? That is yet to be seen.

I just don't think they are going to make larger numbers actually give the TR an advantage, or smaller numbers give them a disadvantage. I just think they are going to stick with the whole 3 man vehicle thing as well as the high rate of fire thing to exemplify the strength in numbers mantra.

If they actually gave real advantages and disadvantages to them depending on their numbers, then high population TR would consistently steam roll the NC and VS, while low population TR would get trampled, causing more TR players to log out, making the TR get even more weak. It just doesn't make sense as a balance choice.

[Bags]

Three in one basket? Try two. Gunner + Driver.