Two vehicle ideas & and idea on how to give points to active transport pilots.

[Memeotis]

1. Buggy. A three-seat vehicle; one driver, one passenger and one gunner. Little slower to accelerate than the Quad-bike, but has a higher top speed. I think it would be a nice addition that would fit in between the Sunderer and the Flash in many respects. I know this vehicle was in PS1 and I would like to see it return.

2. Rapid dropship. A six-seat aircraft; one pilot, five passengers. A fast, mobile and relatively durable aircraft that can carry half a squad and perform very rapid infantry drops. Other than ramming soldiers, the pilot does not have the ability to kill ground- or air-targets. He will of course be able to apply defensive mechanisms (flares, auto-repair, ECM, etc), but should also have a more active role like dropping ammo crates and a cannon that fires straight down from under the ship to deploy smoke-shells(like the sunderer) or EMP blasts. They should all be non-lethal support abilities.

The Galaxy pilots gets points whenever somebody spawns in the Galaxy, which is fine - but what will actually incentivize him to stay in the air? Or rather landing and taking off repeatedly to pick up soldiers

i. Assist points from the next action(s) done by players that have recently dropped from the ship. This will of course be cancelled if the player becomes incapacitated - even if he is revived.

This idea is a little unconventional, but I think it's important to somehow reward the players who use the dropship/galaxy for its intended purpose: to drop players onto the map to give them a strategic advantage.

And though I will be perfectly happy if the pilot only gets assist points once per player dropped, I think it would be much more meaningful to give the pilot points for the next three consecutive actions. This will tell the pilot whether his drop was good, great or excellent. In order to indicate this to the pilot, the assist point would have to increase for every action a soldier on the ground completes without dying. In other words the first action could be worth 14 XP (good drop), the second 15 XP (great drop), the third 16 XP (excellent drop). Or however much you get for an assist.

Just to clarify, this would apply to individuals, not the entire group, meaning that if one person completes one action and gets the pilot 14 XP and a second player completes another action right after, the pilot would still only get 14 XP for the second player's actions. The second player would have to complete a second action for the pilot to receive 15 XP.

And yes, I know that the amount of points a player is likely to get after a drop is largely dependent on the soldier's skill and not the pilot's, but over time this feature will still help the pilot pin-point what is a good drop, and what is not.

And of course the points don't have have to 14, 15, 16 - they could also be 10, 20, 30 or 25, 50, 75 - as long as they are increasing.

This would of course only apply to the Galaxy and Sunderer, and the pilot/driver would only get these points when he is in the pilot/drivers-seat.

[Rexdezi]

I love the idea of Galaxy/Sunderer drivers recieving some sort of reward for doing their job, I'm not sure how exactly, but something

[Saifoda]

Yes, I definitely like the idea of the galaxy-assist system; provides incentive for players to become gal pilots, though of course we don't want to make it TOO good or else you'll have 200 players on a continent and 115 of them are gal pilots lol.



I think there should also be bonuses for players getting into a gal. I remember one of the more frustrating things as a pilot or eager passenger was waiting on other people to get into the gal so we could have a good drop -- I think this was pretty apparent at E3 as well, most of the gal drops were 30-50% capacity; not as cool as being fully loaded.

Perhaps the bonus could work in the same way but for the player being dropped, so that the first action a player gets xp from after a drop would have a 30% bonus to it or something, and/or just immediately give them 15xp or 20 or something like that.

[Zolan]

The Buggy-type vehicles will definitely be added later on so you don't have to worry about that.

The second idea could be a worthy addition though. The galaxy needs to remain the "go to" ship for troop transporting though, so I would recommend some modifications to the idea. I would also add a couple of mounted weapons so the ship isn't entirely defenseless. Just a couple of wiffle ball bats to swat the kids when they get too close.

I would recommend going with a Pilot, 2 Co-pilots (gunners) and 2 passengers. That would allow a platoon to roll 6 of the ships in order to transport the entire platoon (5 x 6 = 30 players). It would be the airborne equivalent of a Deliverer (PS1 ground transport). As such, it needs to find a place between the Galaxy (Sunderer) and the Liberator (Buggy) as the Deliverer did in the original Planetside.

Secondly, in an effort not to take away from the primary roles of the other ships, the mounted weapons would have to be less intimidating than those on the Liberator and Galaxy gunship. Therefore, I would recommend going with something like a couple of chain-guns similar to the tail gun of the Liberator.

Depending on how large this ship would be, one of those three passengers could be a max unit. The number 5 would work well with a "shock" squad. Since infiltrators are rather squishy, it would allow you to transport one of each other class better suited for up-front fighting and support, making it a self-reliant half-squad transport ship.

Of course you could always add some certifications/abilities that modify the way the ship operates. For instance...
(+ = Benefit / - = Trade Off)

Default Focus (5 players) - 1 pilot/2 gun/2 pass

Transport Focus (6 players) - 1 pilot/2 gun/3 pass
+ 1 passenger slot
- No MAX passengers

Combat Focus (5 players) - 1 pilot/4 gun
+ 2 chain-guns
- No passengers with Heavy or MAX armor

Stealth Focus (4 players) - 1 pilot/3 pass
+ Cloaking device
- No mounted weapons
- 1 passenger slot
- No MAX passengers

[maskedskull]

As someone that is considering going down the pilot route it hadn't even registered that I wouldn't get any reward for doing my job as a Galaxy pilot so I'm all for a system to be put in place to reward them for doing what they are supposed to do.

[Zekeen]

Buddy, I don't know where you came from, but you deserve a freaking medal.

I love your ideas, even anything that isn't fully polished gets the point across, and the idea of a rapid transport aircraft, oh hell yeah! Something faster and more maneuverable than the Galaxy, but pricey enough that there's a cost for it being better (better in a way, not entirely, the Galaxy is still my baby).

Altogether, I like the ideas, they work very well for use dropship pilots who live off the thrill of being armored high profile targets.

[Memeotis]

Originally Posted by Zekeen

Buddy, I don't know where you came from, but you deserve a freaking medal.

I love your ideas, even anything that isn't fully polished gets the point across, and the idea of a rapid transport aircraft, oh hell yeah! Something faster and more maneuverable than the Galaxy, but pricey enough that there's a cost for it being better (better in a way, not entirely, the Galaxy is still my baby).

Altogether, I like the ideas, they work very well for use dropship pilots who live off the thrill of being armored high profile targets.

Thanks.

Yeah, the Galaxy pretty much has two purposes: drop and spawn point, and I suspect the latter will be the most used, since it will probably drop some soldiers and then land for the rest of its lifespan, simply because it's slow and clunky.

So I figured it would be cool to have a ship more dedicated to the dropship-role and to have abilities that can help the soldiers who have just been dropped.

Some guys have suggested to give it abilities that are a bit more offensive, but I'm a bit on the fence about that, because if it's quick and mobile, it could become very strong against infantry. So yeah, if this ship is ever implemented, the whole assist-points-from-dropped-soldiers-idea will have to be implemented too, otherwise the pilot will not get any points and players will not want to become dedicated dropship-pilots.