The 2 things ruining Planetside 2.

But in all seriousness, your point about the strategic advantages is true. There is also very little higher order strategic coordination at play, although I think this is a question of experience and lack of tools. From an experience standpoint, whenever I've been in command chat, people treat it as a command channel: Telling others what to do, without offering anything or discussing. This would work if we had company level mechanics, where someone was the boss.

But the egos, player base numbers and dynamics preclude that sort of thing.

Instead, I feel command and /orders works best when people use them to coordinate the overall strategy:

Example:

Platoon Leader A:"I'm thinking of taking my guys to get a warpgate touch on Stillwater watch, but I could use some help taking pressure off that lattice. Can I borrow a squad to attack Nott Communications?"

Individual, non-platoon Squad Leader: "Sure, this is [Squad leader], my outfit guys can probably take that."

"Platoon Leader A: Thanks! we're at the warpgate filling gals right now. We'll come down and help you push the amp station after that, we'll turn it into a farm, force them to take Stillwater back, maybe that'll make them fight the NC"

Squad Leader: "Nah, the VS are at 25% and dug in at mani biolab fighting the NC. Do you think you could steamroll Grey Heron instead?"

Platoon Leader A: Good idea. That would cut em off. We may need you up there when we start, otherwise they'll outpop us hard."

Squad Leader: Good deal.

----

That, in my view, is good. Even if it doesn't work out, two units now have a mutually supporting set of missions that could probably work. The VS in this situation would likely pull off Nott/Stillwater entirely and redirect to grey heron to prevent the cut-off, but it has a realistic chance of success.

The real question is: How do we encourage that sort of thing?

Definitely agree there, and glad someone shares that observation !

I agree that there is no direct hierarchy possible as in "I say, you obey" because there is no punishment possible, so like you said, playing on the incentives to work together would be good.

Maybe a mechanic of request to help waypoints, upon which entering and completing the objective, attendees would receive XP/certs, whatever.
I can't recall how many situations where I would have loved to broadcast : Need X Magriders, Need Air Support, Need more men, or Let's ****.

I'm pretty sure those were in the dev roadmap for leadership at some point.

Maybe yeah, I'm not too familiar with the leadership certs. I know that there is a request for reinforcements, but I don't know how precise it can be. Apparently it allows to place Offensive or Defensive requests but I odn't have information behind that. Even then, it is not sufficient to elaborate and coordinate a strategy.

Example : Just today on Indar, I was on my NC toon battling against the TR in a pass where they had the high ground and it was a real deadlock for us. Had someone been able to say : Requesting 10 Liberators, then it would have been a nice display of combined arms assault.

Because right now, you're either spawning in winning battles, either spawning in losing battles. Regardless of how skilled the player is, in a 96+ engagement on both sides, he will make absolutely no difference when the game builds decisive action around numbers rather than force multipliers (1 ESF missiling a clustered area is nice, but the splash damage of the missiles being very low, it's more efficient when 3-5 ESF are saturating the same area).

God.. reminds me of PS1When they "fixed" the lasher. A2G is a part of all military aircrafts functions. Even the air superiority craft. There is always a counter to something in this game. I hate aircraft because I suck at flying them so I equip AA because I'll be damned if I'm going to allow someone else to enjoy them.

So you admit you use OP weapons and yet you still want your counters nerfed?
Well aren't you just a spoiled little baby... (but your prior posts whining about anti-air in general and the whiny gem where you said a single AA MAX is OP against a single ESF kind of already let your cat out of the bag)

I would proffer that crybabies who lack the ambition to increase their own skill level are ruining the game.

You'll have to be a bit more specific. They "fixed" the Classic Lasher about ten or twelve times.

Fist time in a while of seeing what the state of the game is in... I hear a lot of people saying, to the effect, "Continent locking was necessary to concentrate the players into one area since the rapid decline in players"... It really was the other way around.. The reason FOR the rapid decline in players was BECAUSE of continent locking in my honest opinion and, the opinion of about 25 of my guys that played PS2 on teamspeak on a daily basis... We do not play anymore because of this, and haven't for a very long time..

Blame the class system. You tell players grind and build your one class, so you do. Well now you the most OP MAX, OP Pilot etc.. there is once you hit BR100. And there are a lot of BR100 and close to who have their class maxed out and just pawning.

I don't feel sorry for air because once you are cert sinked maxed and have everything you want and more, you impossible to kill. Unless you bump into guess what another maxed out BR on the ground.

In short the game is built to be not enjoyable for low ranked BRs. Well except if you are GOON Squad then you just win by overwhelming force. And I know some fool will say oh them I farm them all day. Yes you do, and they win all day too.

Plus GOON is a good outfit for new players to band together and not just feel like farm food. And since they keep winning they cash in on certs faster than most low ranking BRs and soon they will be that BR100 that will just go out and ruin your pilot day.

Thank you kindly Day Break for this ******** class system cert grind that pretty much forces you to get OP at one thing.

Damn, I love this game !!

I think ESFs should be made to fit a CAS role like one would see in Arma. Complete with the reticle. Force the aircraft to go quickly when firing rockets. Let players call in air strikes on groups of enemies. Heck, give bounty hunter bonuses for killing people within the strike areas. Pods should be pretty exclusively AI, hornets exclusively AV. Like AP vs HE. As for Air-to-Air, I don't have much experience with how other games handle this so I can't say. I would definitely change how this works, though, in such a way that one ESF vs one other ESF almost always ends with both walking away harmed, but not destroyed (one ESF backs out.) I would definitely do away with the current VTOL, reverse maneuver, "Dueling" system of air combat, as much as many vets like it. This should still be an option (multiple thrust modes) but it shouldn't be necessary as it raises the skill floor too high for new players.

Make valkyries be for sneaking. Maybe even give it a short wraith cloak (obviously not cloaked to the extent of a flash, it needs to be visible enough from at least 50m that any new player could see it.)

Liberators and Galaxies should both only be able to be pulled from specific places, like warpgates. Move the Lib to the Galaxy terminal, make it a "Heavy Aircraft." Maybe even give these aircraft runways.

Liberators should be bombers, exclusively. The front guns should be moved to be options for the belly gun, and maybe made less effective. Liberators should become less maneuverable, maybe even remove the afterburner. Make them stall if they go too slowly, and make anything like a dalton shot or a zephyr have such an intense pull from gravity that it can basically be shot straight down. Also add guided bombs, but in such a way that it's a guided falling, like a drop pod. Liberators shouldn't be especially great at farming infantry (should be manageable though) and they should lean most towards killing construction items.

Galaxies are pretty much fine where they are. I would give them less health and less guns. They should be exclusively for troop transport, and should require ESF support for defense.

*bracing for skyknight attack*

I am just glad that no one has found how absolutely broken marauder is, so close to getting it auraxiumed!