Originally Posted by theknits
Turrets did a lot better vs infiltrators in ps1 than its likely to do in ps2. In ps1 most infiltrators probably didn't carry around a response to ce in their tiny inventory's as they had a lot of other things that took priority. In ps2 however your response comes standard in the infil starter kit. See a turret? Just hammer a few rounds into it and move on. If your lucky and the engineer in charge of that particular ce is paying attention maybe he wanders over and you get to shoot him too.
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I'm against the concept of snipefils and shotfils for good reason.
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The thing is the primary reason people would avoid these ce fields is because it's just not very fun to blow them all up. Now sure you shouldn't be concerned with how much fun your enemy is having but it's certainly a concern for sony.
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Think you misinterpreted what I was saying. The point I'm making is that you can create an "obvious obstruction" along a certain line and, pretending the line ends somewhere, create a weakspot: a semi-obvious opening which initially seems to avoid the entire CE line. They don't have to bother with it, they don't have to take it out, but it is an obstruction in their path, so they go around it because that's the route of least resistance. Fun hasn't gotten anything to do with it, they don't avoid it because it "isn't fun", they avoid it because it's a potential threat. Players stance towards CE in PS1 are completely neutral, they take it as a given obstruction, not as a fun quelcher.
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Regardless of where a turret is placed it never really outsmarts anyone.
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Stop here. The remainder of this alinea is non-relevant and well-known and actually an argument in favour of using turrets, because it doesn't provide an unfair challenge.
The point isn't that the TURRET outsmarts people. The player who PLACES the turret outsmarts people by either creating a(n avoidable) death trap for careless players, but beyond that a warning sign, a stalling tool, a force multiplier or as described above, by using the turret as a (psychological) tool to influence the behaviour of another player into a position that is advantageous to the placer of said turret. IF the placer is actually good at it. Think of it like a carrot and stick, where the turret is a stick.
If a player is taken out through any means involving a turret, the turret did not outsmart the player, the player who died fell for, or triggered the trap/alarm set by the engineer.
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If your alone in an area that is relatively deserted the CE does nothing but mitigate risk. Now I understand that the entire reason your there to begin with is to place and maintain this CE but in a massively multiplayer game that pits players vs players vs players you should probably I don't know be working with other players?
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Who says you aren't? Can you imagine this concept of someone being alone working in relation to the rest of the empire? An example. I've seen comments like this when naieve and unimaginative people accuse infils of being skilless noobs who should be going in in teams. If infils go in together and stay close to one another, they hinder their allies by creating a bigger risk of detection and thus triggering a dark light sweep of the area. The best example of teamwork as a loner in PS1 I can give you is when I prepare the gen and spawn tubes at an enemy base, on my own, with boomers, grab a CUD, go to the backdoor, hack the door open again and wait for the Gal drop that's coming in, 7 seconds before they hit the ground, I let the CE explode, run inside and while the enemy starts to respond to the incoming troops at the BD, I drop the gen, kill the spawns and hack the CE creating chaos in the enemy defenses and paralysing the enemy in a way that I could not have done if all attention had been on me due to my group.
In the above example, a loner setting up CE somewhere, does this in the interest of the empire: they blockade routes from small teams, they prevent tactical flanking maneuvres, they obstruct enemies, delay and provide early warning systems for their empire.
So no, per definition, sticking together is not "team work". That you don't value this or thought of this is more a thing to do with what you prefer as a playstyle than that it's not part of the bigger picture. In fact, what loners do can have a more profound impact on battles and the team meta-game than you give credit for. You don't want to know how often, as a loner, my CE destroyed AMSes, Skyguards, tanks and BFRs that were supporting the enemy advance. The mere presence of CE can stall an enemy for half a minute to 3 minutes, which is a HUGE deal in terms of base captures. If they kill something, great extra. You really underestimate the strategic, logistic and psychological benefits of having CE. I can't but say that you really missed out on some massive creative options if you never realised their potential. :/
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Considering sunderers have no cloaking field its pretty easy to determine if you need to advance on a certain position or not. Any air can just fly over look down and see. Besides you don't even need turrets to try and fool people any form of CE will do.
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Sunderers have no cloaking field in PS2 YET (they might or the future actual AMS might). There's also no CE now (YET). Thinking in the now doesn't make the point invalid. It just seems you're interested in dismissing the point even though you do not deny that under different circumstances it can be a tool. Please be willing to think outside the box and consider the fact that anything can be a handy tool in psychological warfare and that where PS2 may provides very few such tools right now, that doesn't mean we'll never get such tools in the future.
Somehow I doubt you considered or see detonating C4 randomly within earshot as the metaphorical stone to distract a guard though. Did you ever consider using an OS as an EMP grenade in PlanetSide 1? I've often OSed towers with the goal of getting inside undetected, rather than throw an EMP in a dense CE field. The OS has to have the appearance of taking out whatever is on top of the tower though. Why the OS and not the EMP blast or grenade? Because I chose the OS JUST to not trigger the Engineer who placed the mines that there's a cloaker sneaking in. It is such an obvious and blunt instrument, that
nobody sees it as a subtle scalpel to take out automated proximity defenses. In fact, I know the engineer who placed the CE will come out to place new mines within 10 seconds, so I didn't even need to use a REK: I popped in while the new mine was being deployed without anyone ever knowing: new mine in place: tower is considered safe: no dark light sweeps.
Psychology. Deception is a powerful weapon.
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It is too easy to capture unmanned bases in ps2 as it stands right now. I'll give you that much. Obviously it shouldn't be hard but atm the defending faction just doesn't have a means of reacting fast enough. This isn't an issue to be solved by automated turrets though. They clearly need to either make it take longer to capture a base, give the defending faction more of a warning period, (something on the map or a popup at the top of the screen indicating that some people need to get to that base on the double) or make it faster/easier to get to the base in jeopardy so you can begin defending it. Preferably some combination of all 3 methods would go into fixing that problem.
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There's a lot of things that should be done about them from base design to tools available. CE shouldn't be ignored as one of the options.
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Well clearly CE should disappear if you change class. Otherwise any player that doesn't have CE deployed would be letting his faction down.
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Clearly? Highly disagree with your statement that "he'd be letting his faction down". Either you never played PS1, or you just don't get that CE is just a tool that you use it when you have time for it. When mines disappear after you DIE and change class because you have another type of enemy to fight, THEN you're letting your team down, because you stopped passively denying easy access to an area, opening them up for getting flanked where they thought they had some sort of early warning (explosion or gunfire required to enter through a certain area for instance - or some people THOUGHT they had defenses against a tank located somewhere).
Besides, you spent resources on it. If you change tanks, your tank doesn't just disappear immediately. In fact, others can enter it and take over. Is that too letting your side down? Should you never be outside of a vehicle or purchase one for others if you have resources for it? Should your tank disappear because you went from medic to LA? No! Especially considering that for vehicle mines to work (dealing at most 80% damage a piece), you NEED to be Heavy Assault to finish up on the kill since other unit types can only use C4, it's ridiculous to expect CE to disappear on changing class. Please, be reasonable. It's simply unfair. You're letting your hatred of automated equipment cloud your judgment. Even though they were operated by players in the sense that it's pretty much a bullet laid down in advance, rather than one fired spontaneously. We're not talking AI armies here, we're talking player
tools.
Simply limit the total amount that can be placed by a single player, just like in PS1. That way they can't be spammed, but can be effective IF all of the following are true:
1. The player certed into it
2. The player has the resources for it
3. The player had the time and will to place it
4. The player has the mental capacity to predict which type of enemy will be coming for them thus is able to select the appropriate type of mine
5. The player is smart enough to place it such that an enemy might actually trigger it without disabling it first, because they are capable of reading the enemy's potential plans and covering those with CE the player doesn't cover personally and knowing what the enemy might see or fall for
6. The player has enough CE available to cover several of the thousands of movement route options one has in PS2.
7. The enemy player is careless
8. The enemy player doesn't bring the appropriate countermeasures
9. The enemy player can't use it against you or your team
10. The enemy player doesn't have other plans/routes than you envisioned and doesn't predict your actions appropriately
11. If to alert: the player has to be continuously aware of what CE went missing and where
12. The player has to be able to mount a response to an alarm
13. If unsuccesful in more than maiming the opponent (most the time), the player still has to be able to follow up on their CE.
That's a whole lot of demands for mines and turrets to function.
2012-10-10, 05:35 PM
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