Magrider Fixed Gun

[Hamma]

I agree with Malorn on this.

In my opinion the original Mag Rider had no real weakness. It had all the benefits of other tanks AND it could move sideways, and over water. Not even mentioning the lack of a firing arc. Making the gun fixed makes sense to me from a balance perspective - that way it has at least one small weakness.

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by Hamma

I agree with Malorn on this.

In my opinion the original Mag Rider had no real weakness. It had all the benefits of other tanks AND it could move sideways, and over water.

Err... no. The other two MBTs could one-shot infantry with their splash (particularly the vanguard, yow). The other two could stop on a dime if they saw mines.

I always thought the driver's gun was more a trap than anything else. "You're armed! You don't really need a gunner. Go on, you'll be fine... >dies<". The only thing it was really good for was letting the gunner know there was something to shoot at in front of the tank.

Now what the magrider had going for it was good stuff, don't get me wrong. VERY accurate main gun, even at 100+ meters when aiming at other tanks. Hovering over water during bridge battles was HUGE, but it only mattered during those battles. Other than that, it just shortened trips on some continents (which came in handy for the odd LLU run, lemme tell ya).

I was also part of an NC outfit for a long time. Came to love that big 150mm main gun on the Vanguard. And I knew to switch to the 20mm cannons when a Magrider was over water... lower DPS beats the hell out of zero DPS.

So if the mag rider in PS2 has a fixed main gun, that's actually kind of a limitation. The speed the barrel can traverse will be limited to the tank's turning speed (which I suspect will be relatively slow, though perhaps faster than the other empires' MBTs, if only because the main gun is fixed). It'll make it that much easier to get out of its line of fire.

The strategy will be: get close, run in circles, blast the stuffing out of it.

And THAT is when you'll want a secondary gunner. No secondary will mean no weapon with a 360 field of fire, which means infantry will eat you alive... particularly if they do locational damage such that attacks from the rear hurt more (and I believe that's the plan).

Ditto for air. A fixed ground weapon is all but useless against aircraft. A secondary gunner means the first reaver that comes along doesn't get a free tank kill.

I'm starting to think the gunner seat will be pretty important. And I like it.

[Malorn]

Damage and the effectiveness of the secondary guns are irrelevant to the topic of fixed position of the driver's gun. BF2142 had a fixed main gun, tank worked great. PS1 also had a fixed driver gun that worked fine also.

Whether it has effective secondary guns or the damage of the main gun are completely orthogonal discussions.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Every other tank has turn only, so the swivel on the turret is natural. Mag has turn & strafe, rendering it not needed.

Turn + strafe + swivel is 3 degrees of movement. You only need 2 in order to have an effective tank, and more than 2 makes it hard to use.

Agreed. The strafe needs to go away if a turret is added. Less keys to worry about also and it brings in more inline with the other tanks.

Originally Posted by Hamma

In my opinion the original Mag Rider had no real weakness. It had all the benefits of other tanks AND it could move sideways, and over water. Not even mentioning the lack of a firing arc. Making the gun fixed makes sense to me from a balance perspective - that way it has at least one small weakness.

Agreed. It was a lame design. The lack of a firing arc, the strafing, and driving over water alone made it so different than the other tanks. It would have been far better had it been implemented as a hovering tank that rotated slowly with a turret and arcing plasma shells with no strafe or water driving. Much easier to balance and from what I can tell compared to the "tank" in the trailer it would function more like a real tank and less like a point and click laser.

Originally Posted by Malorn

PS1 also had a fixed driver gun that worked fine also.

It was actually kind of lame. The Magrider driver gun didn't really do much. It was really only effective against infantry so it only barely helped when chasing down other tanks.

[Draep]

The magrider driver gun of PS1 is to be ignored unless in extremely close quarters. If you are driving your magrider correctly, you shouldn't be in close anyway considering you have the weakest armor for a tank, the fastest speed and the best distance weapon.

I remember pretty well that the a lot of the VS didn't grasp this concept too good and got spanked in standup fights to my prowler. When the TR sanc locked the VS one time and we got magriders....oh boy. We had the best DPS tank of the game and the distance shooter. We ran columns containing both tanks and didn't lose very much until the vehicle benefit was gone.

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by Malorn

PS1 also had a fixed driver gun that worked fine also.

I disagree with your assessment. The PPC (I think it was) was too squirelly to be kept on target and pitifully weak. It couldn't hurt anything slow enough to track and couldn't track anything small enough to hurt. It mostly functioned as a device to distract drivers so they'd get themselves in over their head and die.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Damage and the effectiveness of the secondary guns are irrelevant to the topic of fixed position of the driver's gun. BF2142 had a fixed main gun, tank worked great. PS1 also had a fixed driver gun that worked fine also.

Whether it has effective secondary guns or the damage of the main gun are completely orthogonal discussions.

You definitely make a good point, but I still don't like it. Quite simply, a tank's main gun should be on a turret. I'm usually in the "give the devs the benefit of doubt" camp, but in this case, I just don't like it.

I'm not going to like everything about the game. Like Led Zepplin wrote songs that not everyone liked, they left that to the Beegees.

[Brusi]

are you saying i like the beegees?

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Brusi

are you saying i like the beegees?

It's ok, I don't expect you to admit it.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Talek Krell

I disagree with your assessment. The PPC (I think it was) was too squirelly to be kept on target and pitifully weak. It couldn't hurt anything slow enough to track and couldn't track anything small enough to hurt. It mostly functioned as a device to distract drivers so they'd get themselves in over their head and die.

The strength/effectiveness of the gun is not relevant to this discussion.

Squirrelliness and tracking speed are adjustable characteristics of the vehicle that can be easily tweaked to get the control to feel right. I agree that it did not feel right on the magrider. The position was too low on the vehicle and the vertical speed was much too quick compared to the horizontal turning speed (they needed to be similar). But that is stuff they can easily tweak to make the vehicle handle better and feel more natural.

None of these are evidence that a fixed gun is a bad design idea, only that the magrider had issues with its gun in PS1 having poor handling and weak damage. Both of these are easy to correct.

Originally Posted by Raymac

You definitely make a good point, but I still don't like it. Quite simply, a tank's main gun should be on a turret. I'm usually in the "give the devs the benefit of doubt" camp, but in this case, I just don't like it.

Now "feel" of the tank is something that I cannot disagree with. If you don't like that feel/style then well, you don't like it.

But given the decision to have a main gun in the driver, and the decision to have the magrider a strafing tank are opposing conditions. One of them has to give. So the real 'poll' in this thread should be not whether it is on a turret or not but quite simply whether you would prefer strafing w/ fixed turret or prefer no strafing with a turret.

I would argue that the magrider wouldn't really make sense without strafing. It's the biggest feature from the other tanks. NC use rail-gun and magnetic technology so the no-arc fast moving projectile isn't even distinctly Vanu. Only the hovering/strafing aspect is VS-specific. Without it I think the magrider loses its Vanu feel.

Originally Posted by Sirisian

Agreed. The strafe needs to go away if a turret is added. Less keys to worry about also and it brings in more inline with the other tanks.

So as with the above point, the real poll for this topic should be "strafe + fixed main gun" OR "no-strafe w/ turret". There are no other options without removing the driver-manned main gun (and a driver-manned secondary gun makes even less sense given that secondary guns can have things like AA flak cannons on them....hard to shoot aircraft as a driver with a fixed secondary gun).

From the rest of your statements it just seems as though you didn't like the design of the magrider at all. I think a lot of VS players will disagree with you. The lack of firing arc was an advantage against many targets, and the projectile speed was very fast, which made it king in long-range tank engagements. I also knew many mag gunners that could hit aircraft with that thing quite reliably. Add in superior speed and maneuverability and you have the best general-purpose tank in Planetside. Vanguard and Prowler were better for things like camping doorways but whatever...

[CutterJohn]

Hopefully its something like this:

[BorisBlade]

Seriously? I cant believe you guys even think the idea of bfr style tanks is a good idea. This is just idiotic. We need real tanks, with SEPERATE PILOT AND GUNNER AND WITH A FREAKIN TURRET!!!

Just put a tank turret on it. Then put a gunner on it and let the pilot...you know....pilot. Wtf is goin on here, this is a team based game and we are gettin these completely stupid solo kill whore crap vehicles. I want my planetside vehicles back!

Yeah if you leave this crap style of tank in game, then sure its fine fixed if the hover is the same speed sideways/backwards as forwards, since it hovers. But the real issue is that we even have this awful massive design change in the first place.

[Zulthus]

2 Things on the Magrider;

1) The damage on the Rail Cannon was the tradeoff for its no-arc, fast moving projectile. It was pretty bad. You needed 3 direct hits on infantry to kill them, and if you and another MBT got in a fight, each hitting every shot, the Magrider wouldn't win. It's meant to be used at range, away from the hard-hitting shells.

2) Fixed main gun is a no-no. This situation took me 10 seconds to think of. Once in a while, you'd be running away from another tank or something dangerous while it was shooting at you in a close chase. Your Mag gunner might be able to fend them off or kill them before they kill you, but if the driver is in control of that gun, then it CANNOT be a fixed gun. It would have a great disadvantage to the other tanks whereas they can go full speed forward and shoot behind them, and the Magrider would have nothing to do but keep going and hoping you won't die.

Also, what BorisBlade said.

[Raymac]

As I've said before, I simply don't like the idea. However, I have thought of 1 major reason why you won't see very many solo tanks, and that reason is me, or more accurately Reaver pilots.

I'll be in my Reaver looking for tanks, and any time in PS1 that I see a Mag with no gunner, or a Prowler with no chain gunner I lick my chops and slow down for a nice relaxing easy kill.

So I guess I'm saying that we will probably not be seeing as many solo tanks as we may think, just as we don't see many solo Mags in PS1 because Reavers and Libs keep them in check.

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by Raymac

So I guess I'm saying that we will probably not be seeing as many solo tanks as we may think, just as we don't see many solo Mags in PS1 because Reavers and Libs keep them in check.

Not for long anyway.

And the organized folks with the nicely specced secondaries with actual gunners will do Just Fine.