Systems: Outfit certifications + Vehicle variants/sidegrades

[Lanka]

For starts, I search the forum&scanned through first 10 pages. If this has been discussed in detail - and in this context - it was probably on the page 11 and I'm sorry for making new post. Well, actually I'm not.. On with it.



Reading through the suggestions it occured to me that there's dozens of ideas for what people want current vehicles to do. Some of these require massive changes to the current vehicle configurations that probably would break them if they were just added as weapon/utility sidegrades/certs.

In their current form vehicles are very balanced sets of weapon/utility choises that players can pick&mix their ideal combination - however, they can hardly include special parts like active camo/invisibility or massive stat changes towards certain role.

I recall reading there will be Outfit certifications for specializing Outfits to chosen tasks, and we don't yet know what all they'll include. But all the special vehicles could very well fit under the specialization as variants of the common vehicles. System would enable various variants of the same common vehicle - for various roles with more specific set of customization options.

Player has certification for vehicle x + Outfit enables variant of x = player can customize&spawn the variant long as s/he's in the Outfit&Outfit keeps the certification. This would reduce number of special vehicles in the field - and give specilized Outfits more variety on their chosen path. Also it'd be possible to keep the number of variants in control by making them more expensive in certain resources or have additional cooldown timers.


So what all could you fit under the variants as their own vehicles? Ideally anything that'd use (mostly) same model as the current vehicle while offering something very different.

Here's some I've seen suggested&discussed - and where the variant(s) could fit in:
*Galaxy - Gunships, who wouldn't want them? Or Bombers? Replace the transport section with explosives sounds like a plan (of making expensive firework.) However there are more possible roles for a massive flying rhino than just slapping it full of guns; change all the seats to carrying overall reduced number of MAX units, or significantly reduce passenger seats to fit in vehicle/cargo space. Remove all the passenger capabilities and make it all spawn point with rudamentary spawn/repair pads for light vehicles and camo? It could even in some degree replace Loadstars.
*Liberator - I pondered if you could make a spyplane out of the Lib. Replace the main gunner's gun with targetting tool, change the weapons to be just self-defense - and add some handy gizmo like camo to make it harder to spot in the sky? Or the darklight. Or stripping armor plates off it, and fitting it for air-to-air combat. Really, what you couldn't think for 3 man heavy jet to do? Maybe even return of the bomber..
*Tanks (MBT/Lightning) - There's the back-and-forth argument over artillery units and that's one thing you could in some form slap on a tank - be it inaccurate rocket pods or massive barrels. Tank destroyers? Wouldn't that (at least by WoT logic) be just a tank with strong anti-armor weaponry and sacrifice everything else? Or replace the whole turret with anti-air weapons platform. Even variants with heavily stripped armor over boost in speed&handling - or vice versa for something that barely moves. Additional gunner slot(s) for taking over MG/AA turrets would fit here as well.
*Sunderer - throw out speculated spawning system for more passenger seats, or get in couple more MAX units? Or sacrifice most of the passengers for better spawning system with some additional supportive functions. And since there's demand for Galaxy Gunship - why not just slap half dozen more gunner slots in the Sunderer?


I left out fighter jets as so far they seem balanced and come with various weapons systems. Ofcourse nothing stops adding them into the variants list as well - there's always something you can strip off the craft and replace with something else.. Groundattack craft with no armor platings, no coaxial gun and really just tons of rockets and overall speed boost? It'd probably fall from someone looking at it meanly, but it could work.. And ATVs already have hardly anything you could fit into them - other than weapons they've got.

However shielded or unigunned MAX units could actually fit as Outfit sidegrades with their own weapon sets - assuming adding few dozen different configurations under usual MAX units would get messy.