Squad Sunderers are a little too powerful

Let's run down why they are a little too good for the game.

1. They completely remove the need to have to throw down a squad beacon. While a squad beacon is great for dropping down onto things the problem with this tactic is it tends to scatter your squad. While you can do some slight aiming in the beginning the pod isn't accurate enough to allow for multiple people to come out of a single area.


2. There really is no downside as it doesn't require any type of deployment. For instance a sundy can now move freely around without ever having to take the risk for deploying. You can in fact with a very small amount of coordination cycle an entire platoon through a single sunderer (which is done by the platoon leader making the person with the sunderer Alpha leader and cycling leader ship of said person to the other squads.) Allowing an platoon to disgorge from the sunderer. It is not immediate, but with coordination I've seen an entire squad drop out of a sunderer in well under a minute. It was fairly impressive, but personally it was super annoying.

3. It can make sunderers really hard to kill. When you kill the defenders of a sunderer there is always a risk of having to spawn back into something that is stationary and most likely under fire. Or to take another risky move and drop pod in.

However with a mobile sunderer every person you kill only needs to wait a few seconds before being able to just drop out of a moving sunderer again and continue the fight.

I've seen 3 repair sunderers and an ammo sundy drive around a base drop heavies to discourage any air or armor from attacking them as well as knocking any LA's out of the air and it's not a pretty sight.

TLDR: While I understand this mechanic benefits squad based play I would say that it would make a lot more sense to at least have some kind of timer the way that every single other squad mechanic based item or system in the game works, because as of right now it's actually better then any squad mechanic that is in the game. One of these systems either need to come up, or one needs to go down.

While the same thing can apply to a galaxy I feel that since it is a much larger target it's a lot easier to knock out (with sustained fire even at long range) rather then something that has a much smaller profile but for the free range of their turrets can be somewhat of a threat.

And that's one of the reasons you pull armor. To control the space between bases, destroy enemy sunderers while defending your own.

If they disgourge enough stuff while staying constantly mobile? You chase them? Tank mines all over the place. You don't? Heavies with rockets. I'm saying for what they allow you to do (spawn into an area w/o having to set up) is better then any other squad based mechanic.

It is a mechanic that you are able to counter if you try.

Yes and by that logic you could counter counter strikers before the nerf, and the saron before the nerfs, or even the fracture before the nerf. You absolutely can knock out galaxies and sunderers with enough armor/tactics/dudes. However, from the perspective of using things like squad beacons (which you have to spend certs on) this is just simply a little too good for the fact that you get it for free.

If you know how to do it you can counter a sunderer with a flash. <- Smiley because I wanted to add a smiley.

Cloaking C-4 attached skull bashing? De-cloak, hit it with a clip of the thing that can actually hurt armor that escapes me right now, and run right into it. It's a great way to knock out any armor. It's also a wee bit harder to pull it off on a sunderer that never needs to deploy and is constantly changing locations. You can still do it though.

My point is isn't me saying "THIS CRAZY OP NERF NERF NERF DUR DUR DUR!!!1!!!one!!" My point is it's just a little too good for the fact that it's free.

Im somewhat inclined to agree.
I would think this would make a good ability slot choice. It does seem a little much to get AMS and squad deploy and what ever option you chose for an ability. I'm not entirely convinced on this. I do like the increase use of sunderers in use of more of a aggressive role but I do see the added power this give more organized/higher skill level outfits. And effectiveness was not something they where lacking in the first place.

Just make it a built-in function of AMS that has an activation time and cooldown.

Maybe "Activate this module to enable squad members to spawn on the vehicle for 20 seconds. 60 second cooldown."

It's not the same as strikers, saron, fracture, phoenix, zoe etc... for a couple reasons. All of these were nerfed because they gave the faction a clear advantage in any given situation where they could be used. Enough strikers rendered vehicles(mostly air) useless, while the TR could pull as many vehicles as they wanted. ZOE maxes...do I even need to say?

The Sunderer squad spawn mechanic keeps squads together, it rewards teamwork over mindless run and gunning. If anything it makes the game less frustrating and more enjoyable. It has it's strengths, and it's weaknesses, depending on the situation. During primetime hours, chances are you aren't going to last very long roaming around in your giant "please shoot me" cert pinata if you aren't careful.

You also must spend resources to spawn a Sunderer, so it isn't free. The spawn beacon, once purchased, has no resource cost. It is still a viable option in a pinch.

You can't park a sundy on top of tall structures and have your squad drop in from the upper levels of a tech plant or amp station. Hell people still stick them on vehicle ammo towers because they're hard to get rid of unless you're also an LA. People have adjusted to drop pods as well. They can't crush vehicles hundreds of meters out from the beacon, but it's still an effective way to get your squad back in an area without a galaxy.

You can only spawn in a sunderer OWNED AND OCCUPIED by a squad member, so no platoon crash is going to come out of one.

You could coordinate anti-air and anti-armor out of a single AMS sundy before this change. It doesn't make the biggest boxes on wheels any harder to blow up now.

Gonna play devils advocate here.
It intact IS free. In a ground battle its extremely likely to have a sunderer off cool down among the squad at all points. Cool down and point cost is meaningless.
It has no REAL weakness. You pull it and its useful or it isnt used. It blew up? someone else can pull one. Even the deploy feature for randoms is pretty dirt cheap and a uncerted sunderer with dual default guns is fantastic.
The sunderer is a lot of value in one vehicle.

The sunderer is a support vehicle. Essentially, you should be constantly trying to gain the upper hand through positioning and a balanced mix of tanks and sunderers, while denying the enemy the same opportunity. People say it all the time, this is a combined arms game, and teamwork is essential.

I don't believe that post even vaguely tried to disagree with you.
100% agreement.

You can't spider-tank remote repair sunderers.

If a sunderer has remote repair equipped, that sunderer cannot benefit from another sunderer's remote repair.

It's a decent way to do it, but personally the sunderer gives you easy access to quick deploying squad unity.

To which you can switch people out from one squad to another. It's really not that hard.

Yes, but if done right it makes sunderers much harder to destroy now. While you can use the AMS you don't really need to anymore. It takes the AMS out of the equation.

Well yes, but it was more about them being highly mobile and very hard to kill as they kept belching out infantry, while at the same time gave it the ability to dodge dumb fire rockets, or to pull around a building to avoid lockons.

Again I'm not saying it's OP like the strikers or even the ZOE. I never said that. I didn't say it's the same. I was saying the idea of "countering" something that was problematic didn't make it not a problem. I'm not arguing that it should be removed, but I am arguing that it could use more tweaks.

This is the direction I'm coming at. It's a something for nothing gain. It absolutely is. You don't need to have anything to get a heck of a lot of use out of it, when all the other things that cost a small amount of certs like a squad beacon (and has a cooldown dependent on how much you spend on it and a 2 min + cooldown is pretty problematic if your squad gets wiped but the beacon is still up) or a slot on your sunderer (like the AMS spawner.)

Can it be countered? Can you deal with it? Yes of course you can.

Is it as OP as the striker? No of course it isn't. But in my opinion it is just a little too good. Not crazy OP, but just needs a tweak to it.

It's more like "this is kind of like the times were the liberators were just a little too good." Everyone had access to them, but that isn't the point. It's not giving any empire one specific advantage over another, but that didn't matter. It was just a little too powerful. I think this mechanic needs to be tweaked.

A beacon when well placed could get troops into a hot zone faster than running or falling through dead mans land.

Battle Sundies have Blockade Armor. Which means... they don't have mineguard.

Drop mines. Profit from the certs.

Did this earlier today, PL called for mines behind the gate shield and I put three down in a cluster. Not even 20 seconds later, poof.. 12 kills and a ton of medals, ribbons, and certs.

If there's three sundies fully loaded. Thats 3 drivers, and 6 gunners. A total of 9 people operating the sundies. Imagine what you could do to them with 9 reavers? Or 4 libs filled 2/3? Maybe 4 MBTs and a Lightning. Before you post something like this, count the number of people it takes to make these tactics work. And usually you need that many people to counter it. Because if you find something that doesn't, then the counter (not the sundies) needs to be nerfed.

No one mentioned groups of fully loaded sundies anywhere in this thread.
It takes one to pull then occupy the driver seat.

Probably just copy paste from another thread?

My whole point isn't to remove the feature, but to tweak it. Seems like there are those who are so intransigent about change that any suggestion of change is met with skepticism and immediate rebuff. Granted it is the PS2 forums, but to me just because every side benefits from it doesn't mean it shouldn't be tweaked (like how liberators did need to be toned down a bit.)