FNO sneek-peek. Dome shields preventing air attacks over bases.

Episode 33, last 30'ish min of the stream.

So basically, they plan to add permanent dome-shields over bases on Esamir, and presumably to other continents later.
They said they have no plans to make them disableable (such as by a generator).
From the footage it looked like every single base had a dome shield over it, and they all cover a huge area, even beyond the base perimiter and walls. Covering an entire amp-station.
Thoughts?

Personally i'm gutted. Luperza answered my question, though despite the answer that it wouldnt cover the entire bases, nor be on every base, the footage shows the opposite. It showed the shield covering the entire outpost, and an entire amp station all the way out to the walls. An entire amp station, i kid you not.
Hopefully it's just a temp thing.

My question was basically, how is our air division supposed to give support to our ground troops if entire outposts and (as seen in the footage) entire amp stations are completely covered from air.
I mean yeah, it's great that it also blocks fire from the ground.. But the only thing that accomplishes is to completely cut off land troops from air troops. We're safe from ground, great. But our ground troops also can't get any air support what so ever.

I'd rather keep being vulnerable to ground, but being able to do something useful.. Supporting our troops..
What else is there for us to do? Just dogfight other aircraft that also can't interfere with the ground battle?
Doesn't that essentially negate any usefulness of dogfighting, since the enemy ESF can't attack the ground either, they don't pose a threat, hence won't be important to take out.

It feels like it will be infantry divisions capping points, capping bases, doing everything useful on the map.
While air divisions will circle above dogfighting in an isolated world with no interaction with the ground, to and from.
We'll be solo rambo dogfighters farming xp with no way to help the base capture, or take out sunderers.

Great... Why don't i just play IL-2 Sturmovik?
Planetside 2 is about combined arms. About cooperation. It's not about cutting off a third of the entire arsenal from the rest.
I truly hope PS2 will not turn into another BF3 Close Quarters.

Air....

I just don't know...

Do you actually play this game? If so, you know that sentence has zero truth in it.

When attacking a base, sunderers generally have to deploy well outside the main area, on the outside of the base, and then assault the base from there. With lattice and huge fights, any sunderer which is parked in a base filled with 20+ enemies will be c4'ed in a matter of seconds.

With the huge walls on the bases that esamir will have, this will happen even more so as bases will be much easier to defend AND you cannot get vehicles inside, this means sunderers. Sunderers will have to park outside.

Sunderers outside the base are still open season to tanks, infantry AND air.


All this changes, is the ability for air to be able to lock down spawn rooms with libs/rocketspam, which is a cheap tactic.

Now Baleur you've got some serious concerns and obviously it was something that concerned here as well when you mentioned it. With the upcoming esf update they will have to be making changes to esfs with these new things in mind.

But on to the actual thing my personal thought:
How about they adjust the coverage to hang over say the vehicle bay and spawn exits while leaving the open spaces unprotected. I don't know if this is achievable with the tech but I wanted to offer it up. Obviously there are some places where they only want infantry to be, but this should be maximum a third of bases. The cog shield could go on amp stations, the dome on the recessed/valley/crater outposts but towers and other types of bases (like bio labs) wouldn't have added domes.

You can still go through the shield and shoot at ground units, then move back behind the shield, you can't shoot them they can't shoot you.

It's really just a way to put aircraft on the same combat awareness level of infantry, you'll have to risk your booty to engage stuff now, without being shoved away by infinitely ranged AA MAXes.

I think it's a win-win.

Also, domes will only cover "infantry areas", not the whole base; I've seen mostly walled areas being covered by domes.


On that note, walled outposts are awesome.

Bases I could agree on .. But out post's aswell ? A bit over the top Imo .. Outpost / air issues could be solved by making Spawn room exit into other buildings not into a killing ground and it wouldn't alienate air from the battle.

I'd also like to note the top half a tech plant is totally exposed so the AA towers can still shoot just fine but not the AV turrets LOL, the design will change.

they could have added more air turrets to the top level of the amp station by the air terminals instead of this. also what about getting way up on hills with tanks and shooting down on the amp station?? they should have made another generator or at least make it so when the point flips the shields go down or something. a 2 way shield over the entire amp station is excessive!

no way to disabled them? ******* stupid change imho. air was already useless now it will be reserved for what hitting tank columns? so air is now only meant to attack transport? wtf

now if the shields cover the inside area of the walls (not including the actual wall topsetc. and can be disabled via the old SCU generators(which would in that case be always vulnerable)

that is something i could get behind, but basically removing the combined arms aspect is utter garbage and who ever suggested it should be shot (figuratively of course, Nerf gun firing squad?)

Ok this seems interesting but there should be a way to disable it. And it should probably only be over bigger bases.

So every base is going to be a biolab fight now?
I NEED combined arms to enjoy this game. It's a bad idea, and I don't even fly.

Good. Can actually enjoy some good fights without being turned into paste by something 600+ meters above me that I can't even see.

goodbye lib noobs

Have you played this game? Or did you mix things up and forget that infantry render at a far smaller distance than air.

Played as infantry and have flown ESF and gunned in Libs. Infantry in bases is EZ certs. They don't even stand a chance.

If this goes in with Lattice, it wont be that big of a deal. Today on indar, playing with Lattice, the majority of the fight was outside of the base, in large open field battles. There was one that went on for an hour and a half, and the entire fight was not in a base. With the Hex system, this would be bad, but with Lattice, not as much, since more of the fight happens outside of the base, where you can support your troops. SOE basically wants those large open feild battles to be where vehicles play a major role, and with Lattice, those open feild battles are much more frequent and much longer. They also want to polish the infantry combat, as at the moment, the only place where there is really good infantry combat is the biolab, because all other small outposts or large outposts just get camped by vehicles and ESFs. ESFs will still play a major role, and this change will increase your survivability. No longer do you have to worry about Burster Max's camping in the spawn room killing you without you being able to counter, meaning flying over the battle field will become much less dangerous, allowing you to really support your ground troops in those open fields battles.

Now I don't think these dome shields should be put on Tech Plants. I have always felt that tech plants were a sort of middle ground for infantry and vehicle combat, with a nice combination of both. Since Tech Plants are so big, ESFs really should be able to effect combat here. The same goes for amp stations. If you want to put these shields over Tech and Amp stations, there needs to be a shield generator for it.

Now, before you pilots and vehicle drivers go nuts over this new change, think about with the Lattice system, and not with the Hex system. There is a huge difference, especially since a number of bases were removed to create much large battle fields for tanks and esfs to have a major impact on. A change like this is hard to place on the game because it so major. It seems SOE is trying to make tanks and esfs more of a support vehicle, and less of a vehicle that you pull to get some easy kills camping a base.

We really are going to have to see how this plays out. But don't diss the idea immediately. Don't just instantly jump to the conclusion that this is bad for the game.

I'm conflicted, on one hand I enjoy smacking down skygods in my burster max and will make my 7 bucks in buying the second burster not as valuable anymore, and I make great certs off it. On the other I don't want to always be a max.

Genuinely well thought out post.
I have to disagree though. Its not about making fights outside bases better, its about making fights inside bases more friendly to infantry. More friendly to MLG and the blacklight retribution (dare I say, CoD) people. More "skillful" if you will. That was the plan with biolabs to begin with, so they would have a place to call their own. Now they are spreading that to all bases, because people complain about vehicles killing them and "good fights" is synonymous with infantry vs infantry for some reason.

To be fair to the devs, it would seem that they did try the combined arms approach, and it had a seriously good feel to it right after launch (although air was very strong) but now the numbers continue to dwindle.
Perhaps more biolabs is the answer. "Good fights" and "skill" like in other games.

It will be a most welcome change but they better nerf AA or air will be left out in the cold. Bad base design has driven all the Vehcile nerfs in PS2. This is a solid step in the right direction to allow vehicles to be effective again. But still give infantry only areas so ground pounders don't always have to look up.

i thought all the air guys wanted to dogfight ? i dont think shielding entire bases is a good idea by any means , but if it takes some of the focus off whoring infantry kills , and puts it more on air to air i dont see anyhting wrong with that aspect , but your right this isnt a flight game , its a combined arms game , and cutting off options to combine those arms is not a good thing .