New single person mechs designed from scratch for PS2

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Then replace one of the vehicles with something a bit cooler. Wheres the harm in that? Its a futuristic shooter, but we're running around on ATVs?

Are you suggesting we replace ATVs with mechs? ATVS are lightly armed/armored and are designed for very fast infantry ground transport that is completely lost when you replace them with mechs. They have a specific role, and are fun to drive and zip around on.

Also, there are always more roles that can be added. More nuanced options that split the difference between other vehicles, or add previously missing roles on the battlefield.

If you think of a role not already occupied by an existing vehicle that a mech would be really good at, please let me know.

I'm of the rather solid opinion mechs have no role on their own because they are basically tanks with legs. So you have either tanks or mechs, and tanks are a lot better because
1) they have lower & smaller profiles (thus taking less damage while still peforming their job)
2) more stable shooting platforms (smooth ride vs bobbing from walking)
3) better serve the "armor" role by shielding infantry from small arms (mech legs dont do that very well)
4) faster & more maneuverable

And the only thing mechs have is height for better firing angles, but that comes at the cost of being much easier to hit and thus taking a lot more damage. Steep price.

Yes. All of them. Theres a ton of AA because there is a ton of air, and AA is the only viable counter to air, a role held by two units(well, three, counting bfrs). All other ground vehicles, and all infantry, have troubles with air units. Deli's could be a halfway decent AA platform, but even with 3 people, it was less effective than a skyguard.

The state of air balance for PS2 can't really be gauged effectively by looking at PS1.

* They stated that there would be "viable" infantry anti-air.
* Flying will take a lot more skill so we'll likely see fewer pilots from that alone (and at least fewer effective pilots)
* cert roles means the one-man-army mosq/reaver pilots are unlikely to exist, those players will likely gravitate towards being full on pilots or more infantry-oriented since they cannot do both simultaneously as in PS1
* vehicles can get various upgrades, including anti-air capabilties
* we don't know the state of repair/rearm in PS2 - this was a HUGE factor to the popularity of aircraft in PS1. Before repair-rearm you actually didn't see a lot of aircraft.
* we don't know what sort of vehicle timers exist in PS2 and whether they are on shared cooldowns - this made a big difference also when they cut the timer from 10 and 5 and made it easy to have both mosquito and reaver in a bundle in PS1. That + repair rearm had a drastic increase in aircraft population.

That's a lot of different stuff there and that makes it very difficult to gauge whether we need specific anti-air.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the Skyguard get replaced by an empire-specific buggy anti-air upgrade. Though the Thresher with flak guns does sort of seem ridiculously OP.