The Ultimate Combined Arms Thread (Tanks vs Infantry)

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by EliteEskimo, Aug 15, 2013.

  1. theholeyone

    Two shots to kill everyone in the inner splash radius is quite bad for stacking, especially if that side has two tanks working in co-ordination.

    The problem is not stacking, it is how easy it is to take out armor from range as an infantry. On briggs the area around quartz ridge and excav is great for armor fights between VS and NC, against TR we don't bother with armor because it dies too easily.
  2. Cpmartins

    BWC SOP states that abusing any glitches or bugs intentionally is grounds for removal from the outfit. I guarantee you, if there was abuse, it was not intentional. I can vouch for every single member of rampage I run with and yes, at 200+ meters you don't watch for infantry, you watch for hit marks.
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  3. jak

    I personally figured it wasn't intentional due to how far away one of the ones I saw was, so I didn't even worry about it.
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  4. Herby20

    Yep. Ideally the devs should have put more space between each base so there would be an incentive to trying to stop the enemies advance before having to rely on base structures/defenses. That alone wouldn't solve the problem, as you would also need to change the spawn mechanics to stop people from rapidly moving across the continent simply by redeploying. Sadly that is all basically impossible to do now without radically changing all three continents.
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  5. Aesir


    If they use higher ranks of FLAK you gotta splash quite a lot more and the inner blast radius is quite small.

    I hit stacked AV Infantry often enough to tell you that most of the time you kill that one guy, the rest loses his shields, backs off into cover and waits for the shield to come back up. It's a mechanic build into the game that if you would have received a oneshot splash hit from a Vehicle you only will lose your shields. This does not count for direct hits.

    And two close splash are 4 seconds on a Vanguard assuming you have one round into the breach. If you are getting zerged this is not the case and you are on 8 seconds, not assuming any aimtime, maneuvering the Tank. Also not taking into account high ground were you can only direct hit Infantry, rendering splash completely useless.

    I disagree about stacking not being an issue, stacking Infantry is an issue, a single Annihilator is a joke against a Tank, 15 on a pad overlooking flat terrain is a killzone for most Vehicle assaults. This is still the case, Strikers are just better Annihilators but if you got the numbers this does not matter, it actually makes alpha striking easier.

    Open terrain "should" be a advantage for Tanks, not a disadvantage. Which is not really the case right now. I don't know what happens on your Server, but I get field rushed by mass Infantry on a regular basis on mine. There are not really any great Armor fights happening.

    You might see 10-20 Tanks for like 3 minutes after a base move up, but they will either get eaten up by organized 2-4 Tanks or by AV nests.

    You bring up the point of 2 Tanks firing on one Infantry, yes focus firing is important. But you can not stack Vehicles up like Infantry because of collision. 5 Tanks > 10 Infantry, but once the battle escalates it will always be 50 Infantry > 50 Tanks.

    Tanks need so much more space than 4 Infantry that feature about the same firepower than 1 Tank with a gunner. And collision is hindering stacking of Vehicles because it renders them less effective for lack of cover and bumping into each other, etc.

    You can't get that much air or armor on a base because of how Vehicles are setup right now and how Infantry works in this game. Which should be the case. It is a combined arms game after all. But there is little Vehicle Players gain for being in numbers, they only have a critical mass and a maximum limit within the AO.

    PlanetSide 2 is still advertised to allow and support you in your choice of arms, they said it in several interviews and trailers that you as a Player can be a dedicated Flyboy, Groundpounder or Tanker. Which is why the current resource system, vehicle acquisition, vehicle layouts and so on just flat out speak against this.

    I never heard them say, "yes vehicles are just there to get you from one base to the next, you should not primarily fight with them, after all we are an Infantry game". If they would ever say that they would kiss quite a lot of Players goodbye. But this does not change the fact that Vehicles right now feel like a total afterthought, something they only implemented so it's in there but never really thought out the concept behind them.
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  6. EliteEskimo


    Really so on the open desert wastelands of Indar and the frozen rivers of Esamir's battles are pointless? NNG and GOTR throw some tanks are way. Sounds to me like it's not that DA is incapable of pulling armor they just don't want to because that would require getting out of their MLG comfort zone that they are used to dominating. GOTR is a skilled outfit with good tactics and they have some very skilled Magrider pilots, Byron stands out big time as an ACE Tanker. What gets me ticked is that you're not making full use of your outfit's talent. All the other big name outfits throw a few tanks our way, while you guys do not. Are all other VS outfits just wrong? Unlikely... At the end of the day I want to fight DA in Magrider's which are competitive in the open field.

    It would probably only be 2-4 MBT's tops. But that would be awesome if we could do that next time, I can't even remember fighting a DA member in a Magrider in my entire Mattherson gamer experience! :eek:

    Aww I'm sorry Herby but Aircraft are getting a ton of developer attention right now and have been lately,

    AA Maxes got nerfed, AA Maxes render better, and lock on's are getting changed which was the other major detriment to pilots. There wasn't much to be said and I wanted to see how the lock on changes and other ESF changes happened before I commented on that. BWC Pilots have seemed pretty happy lately, and all other pilots of other factions complain about Strikers and Lock-on's which are getting nerfed soon so I didn't have anything Ultimate to mention. AJAY already had the Galaxy covered with his picture thread and the developers responded to it. Not sure what to do with the Liberator, it's awesome in small- medium battles but still gets quickly destroyed in big battles. Making it tougher would likely make it completely OP in small to medium battles. It just needs an overhaul if it is going to change.

    Tanks on the other hand are in such a bad spot against infantry that they have no strong suit anymore. Not in bases, not outside of bases, yet they cost really expensive, have pathetic splash, ect. '





    It probably happens when we are waiting around for a base to flip and are shooting at guys running out the door ways. I don't even recall a time where I killed a guy that I didn't see and shoot at though.

    Splash radius was highly reduced and if the point isn't right next to the door of the building or located around a corner a tank can't do much. Tanks are already allowed in many of the bases of Indar and that has worked just fine. I'm expanding on what has worked to Esamir with it's big dumb black walls sealing things off.

    I said face rolled because there is nothing you could do. You're getting shot at as you run out of spawn and you lost the fight. Perhaps camped would've been the better term but it had nothing to do with the fact that you were bad, merely that there was nothing you could do since the base was lost. *shrugs*
  7. Giggily

    No, it's because pulling vehicles in this game actually is almost completely pointless and I laugh whenever I see huge armor pushes moving between bases during alerts. They're just not practical at all, unless you're using something like flashes to just drive between a friendly base and an enemy base just a hundred or so meters away.

    Vehicles are worse than infantry for a couple of reasons, but to point out the big two: infantry beat vehicles in fights, and infantry are more mobile than vehicles. The most played class in GOKU is the HA, followed by the engie. Both of those classes are capable of fielding weapons which can positively, absolutely demolish armor pushes when used right. It's one of the reasons why almost nobody used armor for a few months on Mattherson. A platoon of HAs sitting on a hill with Lancers or Strikers are going to kill a platoons worth of tanks. I'm sure TR has been noticing this even now when trying to push Quartz Ridge on the server. The other thing about infantry being more dangerous is that they don't cost resources. Tanks eventually run out, but you never run out of HAs with rocket launchers.

    So, besides being able to kill vehicles, infantry can also get around a lot more easily. This may come as a surprise to some people, but if you press delete on your keyboard your character is dissolved by space wizard magic nanomachines and you are brought up to a map screen where you can respawn at a nearby base something like every 15 seconds. When you respawn at a nearby base you can actually press delete in the loading screen, and this way travel about 10+ meters a second as regular infantry. This allows players to pretty easily travel across all of the territories their empires are holding much faster than pulling vehicles or aircraft to transport an entire outfit.

    At the same time, there's also a feature in this game which selects certain bases under attack and allows anyone on an empire to spawn there. This means that, in about 25-30 seconds, it's possible for an entire outfit to get the entire way across the map without actually having to pull vehicles. You can get directly from one base to another without actually having to go outside, completely bypassing the need to pull or use or even see vehicles at all! They're literally completely irrelevant for defenses.

    But that's not all. The Galaxy is also useless as a general transport, only really good for attacking enemy facilities. This is because of a feature that allows squad members to spawn at the closest spawn to their squad leader, and one which allows them to spawn on top of their squad leader in a drop pod, and another one which lets them drop on top of their squad leader, and ANOTHER one which allows a certain class to basically keep an infinite amount of people alive forever! By flying ESFs to the base you want to attack, and having your squad members either insert deploy or squad deploy it's possible to get around significantly faster than you would by using galaxies, and once they're deployed you don't even need Sunderers to keep offensive pushes going at bases.

    So basically, what I am getting at here is that all of the game mechanics that SOE have put in to make this game more accessible for lone wolf players have also made it so that vehicles are completely irrelevant to competent outfits, I.E. DA and also GOKU when we feel like it.

    e: I will say as an aside that the planned changes to spawn beacons and squad deploying that are currently on the test server will make the whole "infantry can completely bypass vehicles" thing a little more difficult to do, but it'll be a problem as long as you can get around the map through the respawn screen and squad deploy.
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  8. theholeyone

    Like all things, there's a tradeoff to stacking, infantry can focus fire on one tank at a time, but if they are grouped for cover multiple tanks can focus fire on the whole lot and massacre them. Often with infantry you can clip through an ally or they through you when firing for friendly fire incidents.

    In all my time on briggs, the only time vehicle 'stacking' is an issue, is due to my own poor route selection. Don't confuse choke points as an unnecessary vehicle stacking issue.

    There's a lot in the game that still needs work, resource revamp will happen (including ANT thingies), as will lock on changes and turret render fixes. I think those things stand a good chance of making a difference.
  9. Giggily

    The thing about this is that vehicles render at 800 meters, infantry at about 400. So there's a 400 meter zone where the guys shooting at your tank are literally invisible. Soon you'll be able to see their projectiles, but that won't fix the issue.
  10. Herby20

    You also forgot that skyguards got buffed. A small group of skyguards is pretty ridiculous at clearing the air right now. Anyways, the biggest problem with aircraft, even with the changes they are making, is that the ESF, and all aircraft for that matter, are too dominant in small battles and too irrelevant in larger battles.

    For the record, I am happy at the moment as well. But I am mainly an air superiority guy, so I was pretty happy before all the changes too.
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  11. Sock

    That's nice, but you failed to address the point that those battles are useless. It's fun, sure, and if that's what you enjoy then by all means carry on, but as a small outfit it's a waste of our time and a complete misallocation of resources.
  12. Aesir

    Stacking Infantry is an issue because it has no tradeoff. It's the best against Air, Armor and Infantry. Tks are useless because in that zerg you will have a ball of medics in the back of it hungry for revives. Coordinated splash firing does nothing against balled up Infantry in advantages locations and in the field they are spread out in lines ...

    Stacking Vehicles never was an issue, there were always counters to it which date back to beta ground lock ons like SKEPs or Crows. Only the spawn room design was even worse than now. In beta some were not even splash proof.

    The entire Vehicle combat needs a rework, it's more of an attachment instead of being a core element. It's like, yeah you can drive in Vehicles but we never really through about how this should work ...
  13. bogroll

    I think the solution would be for a different kind of map for the future, with open and expansive plains; a zone where tank, air and mechanised support come to the fore.

    Huge tank battles going nose to nose, with ESF/Lib battles going off overhead; broad frontlines with large amounts of MBT's and Lightnings etc with repair/ammo sundies supporting behind. With a map like this, the infantry would have to rely on transport to get to their objectives (Sundies or Gals). They'd be the supporting feature, but crucial when it came to capturing.

    Tank battles are, in the current state of the game, basically just skirmishes for the greater part. I'd love to see one continent where we all get mechanised, in large/huge numbers; where we could use tank tactics and strategy and flanking manoeuvres ....solely for a change in perspective and pace. The game mechanics should work perfectly with this I hope.

    (Question: Were their any maps in PS1 that did that?)
  14. Crashsplash

    Although I am a great believer in the new Esamir bases I am also someone who is also worried that tank-play is going to be designed out but I don't agree with your suggestions.

    Courtyard bases such as those in PS1 worked. Courtyard bases such as Amp Stations don't. The reaons being that when the battle gets to such a stage that tanks can enter that means there are many friendly troops holding the CY in order the destroy the gens and from there the battle is then essentially over. There is a camping the spawns phase but in 99% of the cases it's finished.

    I admit I don't like the Amp Stations, I think they're boring but I will spam the h*** out of the spawns given the chance, other than that forget it.

    Tech Plants are a little better because of the more open nature.

    The difficulty in my view is that the terrain between bases is being made more Tank unfriendly. e.g. Amerish, the centre and East of Esamir, Hossin and Nexus. The revamp of Esamir could have simply canged the bases and added a few trees in my view, the terrain changes were unnecessary.
  15. theholeyone

    The tradeoff is splash damage, how can you say this isn't a tradeoff? One shot damages far more enemies than one tank to tank shot. We were able to destroy an AA nest last night with dalton and zepher fire primarily because we could hit 4 or more with the first few rounds, which hugely reduced their numbers and the amount of return fire making it easy to mop up the rest. The same can be done with armor though I do not play armor for AI so have less experience there.

    If vehicle stacking isn't an issue, then what is the problem?

    You drive vehicles to kill things, sure they need more of a purpose or less of a cost, but I think the upcoming changes will go a long way to sussing that out. And tbh, I've always been able to chain pull vehicles (often of the same type) and do alright with them, I think there's still a lot of problems just being overstated here.
  16. Aesir


    First, you are compairing 2 totally different cannons, the Dalton and Zepher have both double the splash radius than Tanks since they were not affected by the Tank specific nerfs.

    Second you can not use splash as effective with a Tank as you can from the air. Most kills Tanks do with mainguns is not splash but direct hits. You will notice that most good Tankers have 45%+ hit rate on their mainguns, we hit, we don't splash.

    Third is that the Dalton fires every 2,5 sec and the Vanguard every 4 sec, the Zepher has a 6 round clip with the potential to kill several Infantry with said clip.

    Fourth, Libs have way greater thermal render distance than Tanks, Tank mainguns have ~180m render distance, Libs have over 250m. Greatly increasing their effectiveness against Infantry.

    You can not compare your Liberator experience in any way shape or form with Tanks. If you compare those 4 points alone the Lib is the way better AI vehicle than a Tank ... I would have no issue if the MBTs would be 3 seated and you need a second guy to effectively use a Dalton/Zepher maingun on a Tank ...

    Back to the issue, Vehicles do not stack, Infantry does. This is an issue. The current by the devs planed changes are no where nearly enough, the entire system surrounding Vehicles needs more weight behind it as a total. Right now PlanetSide2 is around 70%+ Infantry ..
  17. theholeyone

    The same principals apply, splash is the downside to stacking.

    Right now I can still have a lot of fun as any class or vehicle type, I'm happy to wait for the proposed changes to come through before asking for more big ones.
  18. Aesir


    But Tanks can not use splash effectively, a Fury Harasser is more dangerous to Infantry than a Tank. Get the idea of Tanks being splash monsters out of your head, they no longer are, since over half a year now. The only exception is a max rank anchor down Prowler. But that one trades all that output for being rooted solid in one spot.

    That being said, most of the splash nerfs to Tanks had reasons heavily linked with how Vehicles are acquired, supplied, maintained and the amount of manpower required. Oh and base design and a working engine that does not let splash pass through walls ...

    If MBTs would have been setup like Liberators as dedicated, crewed Vehicles right from the start, nobody would have complained about them being more powerful, spaming would have not been an issue because you needed 2+ Players to get it rolling. It was heavily complained about this in the beta forums that we wanted dedicated MBTs.

    Most issues we now face have been predicted in the beta forums, base design, vehicle design, hex not working, resource system not working and we joked about the silly TF customization ... I tell you the patriot gun was not the end ... Higby's Hair will be taped to your standard helmet ...

    I'm by no means a game designer nor do I think that I'm very smart but it was very predictable that this kind of things would happen. Other than the Lattice(which is not on all Continents), new weapons, UI changes(which were highly asked for in beta) and Optimization changes(I actually had a better looking and more smooth running game in beta) we are still in the same patch as end of beta ...

    Since over 4 months have I been reporting a bug regarding Tank reverse steering and it's option in the menu and still is it not fixed or even acknowledged. I take that free rival 3 chassis for reverse steering because in the standard option this is turned off.
  19. EliteEskimo


    Giggly if vehicles are pointless why did I see you and 3 other Vanu Harassers at Saurva Bio Lab trying to take out a Sunderer I was trying to guard instead of trying to rush it by yourself with just a few infantry? Because me and my Gunner would've blown you to smithereens before you got there. (Btw I enjoyed that nice fight against you until it got interrupted by a 2 GOTR Harassers. ;) ) Using vehicles as a team is still among the best ways to take out a defended Sunderer and defending an open ground type point. Heck the other day BWC's Rampage force was a big part of holding back SG and general NC Zerg at Onatha Bio Lab on Amerish even though we were clearly outnumbered.

    That being said Giggly you make a lot of great points such as infantry not having to rely on vehicles to cross large distances when they can just teleport there via the spawn room or spawn beacon. This alone is a major problem that makes vehicles like the Galaxy and Sunderer play a much lesser role than they should, and I personally find that sad.

    I also just wanted to say that you're forgetting that one of the most competent and respected outfits on Mattherson Vanu is GOTR. GOTR pulls tanks and ground vehicles on a regular basis and they get a lot done on the battlefield. They also have a few ace tankers which are extremely fun to go up against.

    Overall Giggly I was impressed with your post and a lot of what you said I found myself agreeing with completely. If the game is going to get better on a combined arms scale the game must start getting more friendly towards vehicles to allow them to intermingle with infantry more. My issue is why aren't other people speaking up about it besides myself? Making the game more lone wolfish just makes it more similar to competitor games on the market, and lets be honest this game should try to be different than BF4 not similar. That can be done through improving vehicle and infantry synergy by bringing vehicle's role back in transportation and protection in the open field on a much bigger level, and allow them to interact with bases like they can on Indar.
  20. theholeyone

    Not splash monsters, but tank splash does significant splash damage which encourages grouped infantry not to stack up so much... if the splash loadout is equipped.