Half Price Sundies + 7 Sec Respawn + AMS Shield

Expect to see a ridiculous number of sunderers with every push if these changes go through. Not only that, but they can be left unattended while all enemy troops push onto the point, since it will be impossible for any class to even carry enough firepower to destroy one. And even if they do come under fire, help is only 7 seconds away with a /suicide into quick respawn. The best part? It will cost the defenders more resources to destroy them than it did to purchase them, meaning the attackers will win a war of attrition.

An AMS shielded sunderer will require far more explosives to destroy than either a blockade armor or mineguard sunderer. With max level blockade armor, a sunderer will die to 4 C4 placed close to its center of mass. Level 1 AMS Shield will take 5 C4 to destroy. Similarly, with max level mineguard a sunderer will die to 7 tank mines. Level 1 AMS Shield will take at least 8 tank mines detonated simultaneously to destroy. This is not a sidegrade. It is a direct upgrade to both and provides resistance not only to explosives, but rockets and vehicle fire as well. "But wait," you may say, "It only works while deployed!" If you wish to intercept incoming vehicles, the perimeter you must defend increases exponentially the further away you get. It is simply not practical to set up defenses in a 360 degree circle around your base.

These sunderers will be difficult enough to destroy even when left unattended. Thanks to the upcoming quick spawn mechanic, the likelihood of an enemy randomly spawning on top of you while your weapon is holstered in a futile attempt to place explosives increases by 71%. Kill him, and another may spawn, get another kill and the first will be back and your magazines empty. These changes don't lend themselves towards tactical sunderer placement and strategic allocation of forces. They will serve to fuel the zergs.

Zergs which can now afford to pull a sunderer for every player. Forget carpooling, swarm the enemy to death with sunderers! No respawn timer and you get a new one every 4 minutes - conveniently how long you'll be spending at each base. Own Esamir and your sunderers cost a mere 100 resources to purchase! And cost your enemies 375 resources worth of C4 to get rid of! Each sunderer your own private graveyard with which to raise an army of necrominions every 7 seconds!

Do not let these changes go through. Logistics should be important in a war game. Reinforcement points should be valuable and rare enough to be worth defending. Respawn timers should be sufficiently long to make both kills and revives rewarding, and allow for a side to advance after clearing one wave of enemies before the next arrives. A large part of the defender's advantage comes from having a spawn that cannot be destroyed - take that away by adding SCUs and giving attackers near invulnerable sunderers, and we will see far more ghost zergs because nobody will think it is worth trying to defend - and they'll be right.

This game is already so slanted in favor of the attacker, that it really doesnt matter anymore. At least now maybe I'll be able to spawn at a sundy, 9/10 times the one sundy the TR bring to a fight lasts about 14 seconds. As for getting a medic revive, idk. I did get revived a few times over the weekend, but not since then.

Both the attackers & defenders get these benefits.

When you put it like that it doesn't sound like the game is getting dumbed down further at all ..

Well at least their being honest and fully coming out and admitting this is a run of the mill TDM and not an MMO, where the load times between matches are replaced by the time it takes to drive your sundy to the next base.

I don't mind it, more sunderers to destroy, which I mostly do with a tank.

I don't get it. The resource revamp is making vehicles more valuable assets worth keeping alive - except the Sundy, which is now incredibly cheap. Is the Sundy supposed to be weak and spammable, or strong and costly? I'd much rather the latter.


Spawn timers are ridiculous. I really don't think I'll want to play PS2 if that change goes through, the game is zergy enough as it is. Spawn camping is already a major tactic but it's going to become practically mandatory if people you kill simply don't stay dead and keep rushing you with no respite. This is so anti-PS2 and pro-meatgrinder-deathmatch.

What sorts of things do players commonly say about infantry deaths? They're meaningless and have little cost associated.

SOE should be going in the opposite direction and giving AMS spawns a 1.5 second queue per player (or spawn in batches of 4 every 6 seconds) and increasing spawn timers if you die often. Result: people try to work together, use cover and tactics and stay alive because they benefit from it.

Please create an environment that breeds quality gameplay, not mindless, reckless rushing.

Why is everyone stressing about the spawn timer? It's a 3 second reduction, and you can only use it to respawn at the last spawn point you used with the exact same loadout. Lets be honest, 3 seconds? Is that really going to change the game? The exact same number of people will be in every fight, regardless of spawn timer, all that happens is that some people will respawn 3 seconds sooner. That guy who saw the incoming Galaxy and switched to burster max to deal with it, he's not spawning any faster. That guy who went from smg infil to HA, nope, no 7 second respawn for him.

Seriously, death in this game has no penalty as it is. Does it really matter whether it's 7 or 10 seconds? Wow, the 4 kills someone got while camping in a spawn room will be back 3 whole seconds faster now, whoopee-do. I've heard a bunch of people saying this change will make it so nobody waits for a rezz from medics. That's awesome if you're a defender. Trying to defend the point room, enemies all choose to respawn 3 seconds earlier from their sundy, HELL YES!!!! I like that, make that 30-60 second run back to the point, Meanwhile my team's spawn is right there.

As for the sundy changes, I dislike the fact it's so cheap, but I get why they are doing it. More sundy's = more attacks. As for making it so one player can't destroy it, ALL IN FAVOR of that. I don't care how many people whine because of it. Wanna destroy a Sundy, now it really will be a team effort. No single player can destroy one. But get a squad with 6-10 HA and have them spam rockets at it, it will go down quick. So what if it takes 10-15 or even 20 rockets. A squad of HA will burn that sucker down quicker than snot. Specially when you figure all those explosions will be taking out a lot of the engi's standing right next to the sundy trying to repair it. Of course you can say "wait wait, the new respawn timer means a huge number of people can just respawn quickly and protect the sundy." Yes, that is true. But look at the flip side to that. If they are protecting their Sundy, then they aren't attacking your point.

Respawn timers won't change the number of players. You're not going to suddenly start seeing 500 attackers swarm your point. A 24v24 fight won't suddenly feel like a 24v48 fight. Some attackers will respawn and be back in the fight 3 seconds sooner, but so will some of your teammates.

^ What terrible logic. If player move speed was made 3x as fast, it doesn't change the game. Everybody moves just at fast so it all equalizes out... >_>

Actually, it does change how many you're fighting. If we had 30 second long timers and you were to wipe an enemy squad in 10 seconds then you would get 20 seconds, plus however long it takes for them to reach you, of unhindered cap time on the point as a reward - a period of fighting ZERO enemies. Whereas, if you drop the timer to 5 seconds people will be spawning in before you've even finished taking out the squad.

Now make the fight platoon or multi-platoon size, how many can you keep out of the fight in a 7 second window? It just becomes a constant grindfest. Yes, both teams have to deal with that mess, that doesn't make it fun.

As for it only affecting players that don't swap classes, that's most spawns in the game and encourages people to not look at the map, spawn in better positions or swap to appropriate classes. I posted this elsewhere, except it's 10 seconds not 15, but still:

I like 48v48 fights and I hate it when some lone wolf rambo LA decide to end the fun so yeh im all for the new sundy changes. The only players that will be complaining are the ones that do not like 48v48 fights.

What you guys fail to realize is that sunderers and 7 sec respawns are just as useful to defenders as they are to attackers. Take advantage of this new shield and deploy a defensive sundy next to the point you want to defend and watch as the attackers struggle to take it down. If you're surrounded by tanks, well your base was pretty much screwed before the advent of the sundy shield anyway.

If anything this change will encourage combined arms by making tanks more important to the battle. One suicidal LA/engineer won't cut it anymore. It takes two of them now (big woop)

Player speed would be a huge change. Which is nothing like what subracting 3 seconds off the respawn timer is. Add 3 more bullets to every mag for every weapon. How broken is the game now? Yeah, not that big a deal.

I get your point, and you are right as you say it. Going from 30 seconds to 5 would be a HUGE change. However we're going from a ten second respawn timer, to a 7 second timer. 3 seconds does not hugely alter the game. In those 3 seconds, nobody is running back to spawn and restocking mines or frags, swapping classes or what have you. You wouldn't have had the time before the change, so nothing lost there. About the only thing you lose is the chance to maybe pop a medkit (which btw would make medics MORE valuable) or maybe move a few feet to try and take better cover behind a crate or doorframe.

The point isn't that SOE are creating a problem, it's that they're making it worse. They're lowering the timers when they're already as low as is reasonable and should be going in the other direction - meaning variable timers that go up to ~30 seconds if you die, or rather respawn, a lot.

Plus, it still does not explain why people are penalized for checking the map or swapping to a more appropriate class. That actively encourages people to do the wrong thing in many circumstances.

A step in the right direction if you ask me.

Now all we need to do is drop the price of infantry consumables.

Why don't we just make Sunderers vulnerable to AP rounds when deployed. Give those tanks something better to do than farm and loiter. Doesn't affect battle sundies and gives tanks a role (AMS busters). If a sundy can get somewhere it can be shot and it can be destroyed.

It actually takes 5, but you have to place 3 on one end and 2 on the other so they don't detonate each other. You shoot the cluster of 3 mines, then the cluster of 2 mines after a second and it will destroy the Sunderer. If you detonate all 5 mines at once the shield will absorb more damage than it's supposed to and the Sunderer will only be reduced to 3/4 health.

P.S. I think the shield is over powered.

The end of lynchpin Sundies? Sign me up!

Stop playing on Indar?

Considering you can't solo a Sundy anymore (not with placed explosives anyway), I think that's actually 100%.

Did Sundy price drop to 200 while I wasn't looking?

It takes 8 simultaneously. If you have time to walk in circles placing and detonating tank mines in precise piles on different ends of the sunderer, whoever deployed it isn't paying enough attention.

It's part of the resource revamp and is currently live on PTS.

This portion is not actually correct.

Math:
Currently 2 C4 put a sunderer to 10% (or maybe 5%.. but for sake of example. 10%.
Assume the sunderer has 1000 hp.
That means C4 does 450 dmg (450 x 2 = 900 dmg, 90% of a 1000 hp sunderer)

blockade armor max rank reduces C4 dmg by 60% (so it now does 40% of its original 450 dmg).
That means C4 now does 180 dmg.

To kill a sunderer it will take 6 bricks. (180 x 5 = 900, not enough to kill it)
5 bricks will put it to 10%, same as 2 bricks did to a non-blockade sunderer.


But yea.. explosives need a resource cost reduction if this goes through.. or they expect us to use tanks for everything maybe?