Some nice amphibious vehicle combat today. :)

Figment · 2012-07-04, 09:10 PM

Today we've been platooned with around 16 people in a platoon consisting of four different outfits (80% Armored Fist and Brutal-Deluxe, remainder 1st Hot Drop and Formido). We've had a blast and you may have noticed our group quite a lot this evening, started around ten, kept it up till about 2 - hell, some of them may still be at it!

Also heard that Renegade Legion, Fight Club, Mercs and one or two other outfits also ran some Thundies with a full platoon.

Our platoon had 3 - 4 Thunderers (and a Deliverer now and then) and eventually one Vanguard running the whole day on the edge of the zerg, bypassing the water and flanking, capping Nzame and Honsi without much opposition and pushing the VS Zerg back across the water from Leza to Tore. Later on we flanked a VS/TR zerg a bit for fun and giggles and did quite well. Personally got around 100 assists virtually all vehicles from driving and repairing, but that's a fraction of the amount our group shot.

Nice to see a decent Mag team and Prowler team give some decent opposition (of course we made most headway!

Nice of you two empires to run into on another like that in the NE too though!).

Just a shame there was apparently one Magrider who was literally invincible for a while as it could not take damage. Oh well. Noticed our Thundy sometimes rushed over mines and the lag caused them to detonate much later and then we took no damage either (did take regular damage), then the next minute we'd take full mine damage, quite quaint. Server is still quite stressed it seems.

And now for a little rant, if you can be bothered, otherwise, ignore.

[rant]

Either way. Why do people think we should do the gunning ourselves? Our drivers were constantly preoccupied with driving and maneuvring, dodging mines, trees, rocks, enemy fire and missile spam, we really couldn't have fussed with them having to deal with aiming as well! Was too busy driving and because of teamwork between dedicated drivers and per thundy, two dedicated gunners, all on TS and tackling enemies one by one from a side they didn't expect us to come from, we didn't die all that much. I can't imagine how often we'd been dead if we had to gun ourselves. Of course, then we'd have had 11 tanks instead of 4. Which would be a bit silly, not?

Most of them were our outfit members, but often enough when there was a bit of people in a base, our thundies would be full before our outfit members could get in, or our drivers could lock the vehicles - if they get in, at that point we just decide to pull more armour or an extra aircav though if the extra armour ran out of greenies in the area.

But here on the forums, people regularly go "Oh no, the devs are right! We can never get gunners so we should gun!", supposedly spamming in vain and all... You know, you could also drive up to a tower where a fight finished, or an AMS in the field instead of waiting at a half empty base where half of the players are afk or grabbing their own vehicles.

So really? You still got issues? What are you using? Prowlers? Most of the enemy Prowlers were full and quite a pain to deal with because the gunner could focus on hitting us instead of driving! Same for when the Mags coordinated (luckily they were easily divided and conquered)! They were all full and the driver gun was not really the thing that hurt us. So if not those, what then? Vanguards? Nope. Always full.

Raiders then, like the guy in the other thread who thinks getting FOUR gunners for the price of one vehicle instead of two is smart? Aurora's like T-Ray? Or the Deli we came across that WAS full because it's actually straight fire instead of super-arced? Not sure who ran the TR and VS BFRs, those tended to have less gunners though, but were usually full. Perhaps they get a few less because of the fricking annoying shaking on BFRs that makes players seasick and stops them from aiming unless you're the pilot? So maybe that's a design flaw with traveling tall, high frequency WALKING units with gun positions on their extremities that move a lot more back and forth than other units that get a relatively smooth ride? Or because they were one man flight variants? (who got crushed btw by our group). Or those Lightnings? Who didn't stand a chance and crashed into the first rock they saw while trying to flee from us?

Skyguards? Always full, though yesterday a SG was gunning for himself - my Fury made short work of that.

Btw, Fury is nice and all, but if you die in one shot that's a bit different than driving a heavy tank alone.

Why is it though, that if people supposedly as those here claim, want to gun so much as a driver, people don't like to play as BFRs? The hatred for them aside? Is it because it feels cheap to wield something that large and powerful alone or virtually alone?

Why is it that NONE of our people in the platoon and on TS understood why they wanted to hand out the gunner role to the drivers? All of us had a blast, whether driving or gunning, we couldn't do it without each other and I can guarantee you, it was not boring!

People stand in line to gun for our vehicles. Maybe it's because we're from Werner, where we've always appreciated good ground vehicles en mass. I noticed most of the Mags and the TR outfit running the Prowlers (GarfieldNL and co) were also from Werner.

Maybe there's something wired differently with the US players that makes them more prone to solo vehicles and aircraft? I don't know, but it can't be that driving is boring! Quite the opposite! Multi-crew vehicles with dedicated roles are incredibly good social fun, exciting, teamwork, perform well and overall are rated and viewed as more friendly, fair (better balanced and stops people from solowhoring) and good competition.

And people that say it's hard to get a good gunner and you can't stand that? Don't be such a crybaby and a bad driver! Yes a bad driver! If you don't communicate with your gunner, which is even more important if he's a random, you're a bad driver! Even if they're absolute noobs, just learn to use the voice commands as a driver, invest 10 seconds in establishing some ground rules ("only engage when I yell V-W-V, cease fire on retreat, etc"). And no, that's not hard. In fact, with VOIP for vehicles in PS2 that should be even easier! If people don't turn it off, of course.

So yeah... Where the hell do people get the insane idea that PS1 gunners were hard to find or that our drivers hate driving and that this would be some sort of concensus? Why can't I find anyone in game who feels that way? Why can't I ever find anyone who quit over not being able to solowhore with a Prowler, instead only people who thought it unfair that the Prowler's gunner couldn't switch to secondary?

And remember that the potential gunner pool in PlanetSide two is 5 times as large! That's a potential driver pool 15 times as large. I'm not sure if that is advisable... not to mention because each will have a different skin and texture to load...

Maybe that's it though? Maybe they really want to monetize the skins by making sure there's more drivers who might buy cosmetics?

[/rant]

TL;DR:

Was a lot of fun driving with a bunch of dedicated drivers and gunners, fighting other dedicated drivers and gunners who are always easy to get if you know where to look and are always decent if you agree on how to communicate.