So how do ground Vehicles really help

[ThePyroRussian]

So as I was playing as tank I realized that every single base basically has been made into only infantry can really or effectively go into it as in you got the buildings and the huge walls so there really is no getting anything in there and ground vehicles kinda just seem limited in really helping to capture a base. So here lays the problem I see that you spend resources to acquire say a tank then you get to a base and your stuck with A.) get out of the vehicle and go in there which means leave the tank and it will probably get destroyed by c4 Or B.) You stay in the tank and you protect it and don't really support the team at all. This kinda leaves a gap in the practicality of ground vehicles that should be filled because there is no fun in A.) or B.) for some one who gets a Vehicle that they spent resources.

[ChipMHazard]

I'll just repost one of my posts over at the official forum:

"Personally I think that it needs to be more like in PS1. Infantry fights inside bases and towers that are completely seperate from vehicle combat. The walls that they've put up around bases? Bandaid solutions that will never have the desired effect. Spawn rooms still need to be underground or inside large buildings, otherwise spawn room camping won't stop. Same goes for the spawn room teleporters, just a bandaid solution.
I agree with Teks, vehicles should be buffed to such a degree that infantry outside of bases are there to support the vehicles. Not decimate them as we see now. The role of vehicles should be to dominate open ground and bring infantry to where they need to go, after which infantry storms the base in question and takes on the enemy infantry. The role of the vehicles should then shift to preventing reinforcements helping, keeping ants away etc. Basicly control the open ground around the base while the infantry tries to take the base. The role of vehicles should NEVER have been to just farm infantry for points.
What we have now with the still too open bases is a situation where infantry have to have viable options to defend themselves from ground and air spamming a base, otherwise it becomes far too frustrating for the infantry.
Heck, in the future they could even design open outposts/depots etc. to be centered around vehicle combat with infantry there to support them.

Combined arms does NOT mean that you have to have vehicles and infantry all duking it out inside a base. That's just a *********** of frustration.
There's absolutely nothing wrong in splitting the combat up into different stages, while making each stage feel fun."

Some of the changes that I think will be required to improve on vehicle combat are: Fewer bases, more open spaces and longer travel time between bases.
Buff vehicles up to a point where infantry become support for the vehicles in the open.
Make vehicle combat more interesting by giving them more to do than just farm a base. (The new resource system will give them a bit more to do).

[Baneblade]

MBTs need to shrug off infantry more. C4 should do far less to a tank. And no, I don't care about the effort involved on the part of infantry. Armor sucks wind against air, infantry are supposed to suck wind against armor. Harrassers and Flashes are not armor.

[AThreatToYou]

Yep, like PS1.


(following the idea where you buff tanks a lot) I would set it up to where the main reason a tank doesn't just roll up and start farming the infantry is because he's getting shot at by other tanks which are obviously a higher priority target.

Much the same with aircraft. Mossies start farming the troops when there are no mossies, MAXs or skyguards shooting them.

And that's how it pretty much was in PS1, right? Cause I played that game. A lot.

[HereticusXZ]

If you buff tanks alot to make them on par with what a Tank is suppose to be then you need to give them a really nasty expensive resource cost and the forbidden concept: Three-man crews w/ dedicated driver to make these powerful war machines somewhat balanced in there complexity.

But it will never happen because any joe can spawn a MBT and solo it, such a broken fraking system...


I can only dream of such awesomeness....

[Timithos]

I propose you give armor and air their own siege-style capture mechanics for each sector (or just some sectors). If your faction holds 80-90% of air dominance at any given moment in the sector, then this contributes to the capture of the facility. If armor possesses a certain key geographic zone (road, valley, plateau, hill, etc.) with 80-90% armor dominance, then the same. Dominate with both armor & air, and you get a slow siege capture mechanic. With attacking infantry it becomes much faster. Dominate with only one, and it would require a successful infantry attacks to contribute.

The problem is bases would have to be made much more defensible so that defending infantry can push out with infantry, armor and air of their own. Our current lack of defensible bases don't support this idea. This should be a combined arms game, not just support of infantry who are the only ones that actually capture bases now.

In PS1 you could drain a base by preventing NTU ants from arriving (with vehicles), or escort an LLU hacking module for some bases (with vehicles). We don't have this in PS2. The only vehicle "victories" we get are spamming those deplorably designed, out-in-the-open fishbowl spawn rooms.... Yay....

(Oh and if defenders get dug in too deep, I propose a base destruction victory path and a power drain path. Again this requires bases to be super defensible.)

[ChipMHazard]

We will be getting a PS1 styled resource system at some point, ants and all.

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by HereticusXZ

If you buff tanks alot to make them on par with what a Tank is suppose to be then you need to give them a really nasty expensive resource cost and the forbidden concept: Three-man crews w/ dedicated driver to make these powerful war machines somewhat balanced in there complexity.

I can only dream of such awesomeness....

I would go even further and give them four person crews:

Operator w/ new Flash style forward oriented weapons (pretty much only a Kobalt), Main Gunner, Secondary Gunner, and Spotter/Commander (the S/C would also use a Kobalt). The Spot Slot would be special in that it only gives a hud indicator to the other tank crew. Spot Slot spots pot rot shot...

Uh, infantry won't be spottable with the special command seat.

Increase the resource cost to 100% of the pool, quadruple the hitpoints, merge the armor upgrades into one cert (like every other vehicle in the game), halve C-4 damage agains them, and give the owner of the vehicle 100% XP earned by occupants (when the owner is inside). That allows the owner to not necessarily be the driver or a gunner.

Disallow internal seat swapping when the vehicle is in motion.

[ringring]

Yup fights need to occur in stages simliar to how it was in ps1.
The fight between bases
The fight to breach the courtyard
The fight inside the base.

I must admit I hadn't thought that deeply about this until after playing ps2 a lot where the faults became apparent. Ps1 had it right.

[Calista]

Facilities are too close together and numerous and there are too many spawn options. I agree with ringring that PS1 seemed to have a better adaptation of combined arms. I think they went a little too far into trying to integrate a BF like feel into the game by creating what is essentially arenas tied closely together for combined arms to work.

[Tatwi]

Originally Posted by ChipMHazard

The role of vehicles should be to dominate open ground and bring infantry to where they need to go, after which infantry storms the base in question and takes on the enemy infantry. The role of the vehicles should then shift to preventing reinforcements helping, keeping ants away etc. Basicly control the open ground around the base while the infantry tries to take the base.

That would be ideal, but in PS2 it's too easy to move infantry from outside of the battle to inside of the base walls, without traversing the region outside of the base.

- Squad Beacons.
- Drop Pods.
- Bailing from throw away aircraft.
- Ill conceived locations for jump pads that negate large swaths of terrain that could be fought over.
- No risk rez grenades.
- Enemy AMS Sunders parked inside of or immediately outside of a base.

Those are the things I can think of which negate the use of vehicles as you described, from a practical standpoint. Sadly, I doubt that SOE will ever change any of those things to create the sensible battle flow you described.

So, alternatively SOE could add hex-wide influence to the regions between outposts, based up the activity of ground vehicles in the region. Essentially, the vehicle-only capture points they talked up in Alpha. I sure they/we could come up with useful reasons to hold such territory, such that people would want to slug it out in vehicles in some of the great landscapes between bases.

It was always fun to be in a tank battle between bases in Beta.

[Shamrock]

Originally Posted by HereticusXZ

If you buff tanks alot to make them on par with what a Tank is suppose to be then you need to give them a really nasty expensive resource cost and the forbidden concept: Three-man crews w/ dedicated driver to make these powerful war machines somewhat balanced in there complexity.

I can only dream of such awesomeness....

Id totally support this, but I know any kind of increase in resources or additional requirement of team-play is immediately attacked as "not Fun, I want to pull any vehicle when ever the hell I want"; which Is the attitude that led to the horrible tank zergs we had early on with SoE's answer of making them tissue paper tanks with just about everything being able to take them out instead of just upping the resource cost so tankers wouldn't treat them as disposable assets.

[Chewy]

You really to need to cut the number of outposts in half to make PS2 play more like PS1.

If you make it so that infantry can just walk from base to base then vehicles aren't going to be important. Vehicles have a decent amount of power to them but they have to room to be used. You can't go 100m without getting in sight of another base almost. If you don't give vehicles room to move about then they always bunch up in the same spots from fear of infantry AV being able to damage them.

Putting spawns underground or inside of something is also needed. Very needed for a few bases that give vehicles high ground to let an army shell the entire place.

But removing every other outpost would help more if you ask me. That not only makes vehicles important it gives defenders time to spawn at the next base to setup and brace for the attack. It also gives time to flank using the already made long ass paths or make it take longer to get back a destroyed vehicle into a fight.

Foot zerging is fun, but shouldn't be such an easy thing to do.

[Emperor Newt]

Although I agree I don't want them to apply those fixes to the continents we already have. Simply because I don't want to play another six months of Indarside because content design gets pushed back because the conts have to be redesigned again.

[Edfishy]

You really to need to cut the number of outposts in half to make PS2 play more like PS1.

I'd agree, especially for Esamir which at this point feels 30% too outpost heavy.