Sunderer Deployment Shield - a bit over the top?

Order of operations is important.

If you had C4'd first, then followed up with rockets, the Sunderer would have died on the first attempt.

It is specifically designed to prevent a single player or couple of unorganized players from popping one of the most important vehicles on the field. Combine it with someone actually staying in the vehicle, and you have a relatively well defended little base.

If you push enough troops or vehicles close enough to it, or use the right weapons and equipment, you deserve that kill. But just running up and throwing AT mines on it is pretty weak.
Also consider, you lose composite armor, ammo, repair, and anything else someone might be arsed to use for this extremely situational protection.

Right, the shield is perfect like it is at the moment. It stops single infantry from instant destroying a sundie. If it was any weaker, the shield will be a useless upgrade. All the enemy has to do is strike at it until the shield is broken. Afterwards, it is just a basic sundie with no blockade that will fall easily. The blockade at max rank is just as useful since the added defense is always in effect making it easier on the engineers. Ammo and repair sundies are usually used much more often than the other 2 since they are key to keeping other tanks healthy in large battles and provide a nice steady xp income to an extent.

With that said, I would not consider shield sundies op. Only thing op about them would be their low cost in my opinion, but since people target them at high prority, it may justify. I think a 250 or 300 price tag would reduce the sundie spam a little though, but there are worse problems to deal with on the game atm like rendering bugs.

Just a question on how it works since I haven't fully tested it out - can it stop a single engineer with maxed utility belt from destroying a sundy?

Yes. At least in the VR test it could. I do not have it maxed outside of VR to test though. I heard splash damage does not work in VR, but some form of splash does work otherwise I would not be killing myself from it in the process.

It has something to do with how the game represents the infantry targets oddly. For some reason the infantry targets in VR are immune to splash damage, the Phoenix passes through them, and they can't be roadkilled.

It works just fine against vehicles in VR though, which is why mines and C4 still work, and you can still damage yourself.

If the LA had been carrying a crossbow with explosive bolts he could have kept shooting the sundy with it to prevent its shield from regenerating, though he probably would have killed it in the time for you to run back to spawn and resupply.

People seriously underestimate how useful that crossbow is for finishing off wounded vehicles.

I'm those guys who solo a sunder and I like the shield because I also deploy them. So from my opinion if you want rambo the game go off and play shobox and no game station instead.

LOL, Viper Lightning cant even kill a Lightning in a reasonable amount of time. I have HEAT on my Lightning and it took me like 10 hits to kill another stock lightning.....Sunderers are even more so.

The Sundy shield should increase it's effective health by maybe 25%. The OP makes them sound like they are Land galaxies now.

So it's okay for someone to drop and leave a sundy (individual effort that helps the team) but not for someone to be heroic and take one down (individual effort that helps the team).

The tactic of using resources to pull and park a sundy is worth more than the tactic of pulling a vehicle, suicide run at the sundy, drop resource causing explosives and destroying the sundy is not valid because sundy's cost resources?

Just dumb. Defenders are always getting hit with a harder and harder time actually defending.

Remember how much you like the sundy shield when you're being pounded by an enemy and little to no hope of taking out their spawn source. Oh wait.. you're probably the type to just give up and deploy elsewhere...

the shield should just be increasing the HP of the sunderer and it shouldn't matter what order you do damage in as long as you surpass the kill threshold before the shield recovers. do the shields themselves have separate resistances?

they are pretty friggin chewy.

with a proper heavy assault loadout you can still solo them, but it requires A LOT of explosives. 2x C4, 4x AV grenades, and 3 decimator rockets when i did it.

I think 3x Deci would bust the shield, then you could just use 2x C4

due to resistances I think it's more efficient to use Deci and or nades vs shield, then C4 against sundy

problem is once you start attacking people notice so in my experience C4 kinda needs to happen first. plant C4 quietly, detonate and then start unloading with everything else as quickly as possible before they figure out exactly what is happening. i used to use my rockets to trigger the C4, but rocket blasts don't seem to set off C4 anymore, making all types of sunderers harder to attack.

As far as I know, a pair of C4 is enough to drop the shield on its own and then do some damage. But part of the issue is that the shield recharges. Since he used his rocket first, and then later someone else came along and C4'd, the shield likely had time to recharge before the other guy got there. So then after the C4 the shield was down, but he didn't have any rockets. So the shield recharged again while he was getting more. So basically he dropped the same shield three times.

A C4->rocket combo prevents recharging, and should (as far as I know) kill the Sunderer.

Unless you're using a Phoenix, in which case the shield will likely have time to recharge every time you reload.

Edit: Also if you're placing the C4 yourself, if you start firing rockets at a distance then the time it takes you to walk up to the sunderer, place C4, and then wait for the C4 to arm is often long enough for the shield to recharge. So again, by placing the C4 first you can then start firing rockets *immediately* to avoid the recharge.

ok that makes more sense. i assumed we were talking about one single rapid strike, and as far as i know the shield is just like infantry shields and won't recharge as long as damage is being dealt. in my opinion if the sunderer isn't destroyed within a single run then that is a failed run and you need to try a new plan with possibly some new equipment, because retreating to resupply or for any reason gives plenty of time for the enemy to repair the sundy completely, unless the enemy is parked right next to one of your weapon terminals or sunderers (less than 10 meters away).

I don't necessarily understand this argument... Defenders can pull Sundys too... If the enemy has taken out your Sundy and pushed you back in to the base, past your v-term, and is camping you at the spawn room you can either sit in spawn room and hope reinforcements arrive or respawn to the adjacent base you own and prepare to defend it next or try and counter attack the previous location you just left...

Now, don't get it twisted, I do agree that there are some locations that have horrible layouts that don't favor the defender but that's another topic...

Personally use the Phoenix like a deci (eject as soon as I fire it, thus a smaller reload times then a fair few rocketlaunchers).

1 AV nade, as you put 2 C4 on the sundy. Then shoot your rocket of choice...
1/2 explosive X-bow bolt's will take out a shield so, put 3 mines then shoot sundy with Xbow as you throw the nade to set off the mines.

Honestly they have made it easier to take out sundys as the "shield can stop solo bombers", thus people don't defend them. But when people do defend them, they are about as hard as a mineguard sundy to take out (eg only Engiee or heavy can destroy them solo).

would be a waste of a rocket with the shield anyways.

Shield is good at absorbing singular massive blasts.

It's actually worse against sustained enemy fire with active repairers. Max Blockade is FAR more potentially durable.