[Suggestion] Any way to deal with trench warfare in PS2?

So after playing planetside 2 for a bit now off and on, some thing dawned on me. Since the beginning of the game, PS2 has had a big issue in large fights- and that is the fact that every large fight eventually turns into a space version of WW1 with doors and corners and even hills becoming the "trenches" of PS2.

So what are some of the ways we could deal with this while not making AOE a huge problem again?

I guess what dawned on me is that we could use the tank HE guns and maybe even tweak the bulldog turret some to make the AOE a bit more use able to deal with massed spam. Id be up for slowing the HE guns on tanks down in such a way to give them a "Arc" sorta like a arty shell. Leaves the barrel at a decent speed then significantly slows its self down to help the shell go over hills a bit better to nail infantry hiding behind it.

Weapons like the duster are good attempts but even then, they still have huge drawbacks which I like. And to not make these systems OP or too strong they should have a serious draw back or a increased draw back if it allows.

This topic is usually one people dont like because of fears of AOE destroying the game and making the infantry game more frusterating then it is right now, but at the same time some thing to help encourage fights to be more fluid would help a lot imo.

The reason why fights are often not fluid in this game is, because like you said, of mass spam. Cranking up the AOE on some weapons wouldn't change much there. The problem lays within the game itself, that everyone can just immediately redeploy back to the battlefield again, after they died.

This has its disadvantages, but also positive sites. It makes fights bigger and longer, which is also cool.

I think perhaps they could make the capture timer smaller. When you capture a base, it often really takes some time till the base is actually captured, although you have all the points since quite some time already. This even would help against zerging, and actually gives smaller teams a chance to win against a zerg.

I think in general AoE weapons should have a larger radius with less damage. Less farm, more area denial.

Tweaking AOE to make splash on CERTAIN weapons seems like it would make the most sense- make the bulldog for example have really big splash but significantly reduce the damage drop off from the splash to prevent it from mass farming people.

Imo the bulldog makes the perfect trench busting weapon.. same with the TR AI harasser gun.

How to stop trench warfare?

Introduce artillery. Slow-firing but highly lethal artillery. Can't hit moving targets, but will absolutely destroy stationary ones.

In other words, if you sit still, you are dead. If you duck inside a building for too long, you are dead. Along with that building and everything in it.

Forcing fights out of buildings and into the open would be great for PS2, and the first step to that is to get heavy artillery into the game.

Here are my solutions:
Add another gun on the HE level. This gun is an auto-canon intended for AI use. It has a Viper-style canon but with more velocity and less drop. The AOE isn't very large either, more on HEAT level, and the damage in that AOE is also lower. This gives tanks a valid long-range anti-infantry weapon to shoot enemies on high elevations with, or other entrenched infantry. For this purpose this weapon has a high elevation range.

Additionally the HE gun receives a Kobalt co-axial canon and a better elevation range to shoot targets high-up. Since it's HE it can't OHK aircraft, so ESF would have the time to get out of the effective range of the relatively slow shells.

The HEAT canon also receives an elevation buff, as well as a top-mounted anti-air canon. It would basically be a small Viper designed to damage aircraft without flak. 6-shot Magazine, 8-shots to kill. If the shells have similar velocity as the Viper canon only an ESF hovering above you is really in danger if he's asleep.

I had no idea that there was too little tank spam in the game. I was in a big battle (a fairly typical one) this weekend where there was one main entry point into a base from outside. Defenders were being killed repeatedly with tanks shooting through windows and dropping HE blindly into the compound.

And yes, attackers kept throwing themselves at the same doorway for ages until someone found the answer. And it wasn't "lets throw even more spam at the door". LA flankers started coming over the walls at the back of the compound and Maxes with pocket engies poured through the doorway.

Tactics, lads, tactics. That's the answer............not a spam crutch for the unimaginative.

Pretty much this. You've got a whole continent to work with and there isn't a single trench that runs the entire length and height of your front line. You have all sorts of flanking options.

You guys must be the newer players. Compare to now explosions back then was... lets just say fantastic. But not everyone are fans of fantastic things so it got nurf. One of my play-style is creating/supporting choke points to conveniently grind my enemy. So... yeh you might hate me. But if enemy do this to my team I am also like to blow holes and brake their doings.

Howling pass, echo substation, any biolab with responders, almost any C building, even north grove can be a hassle, pre nerf scarred mesa.
Whats the similarities between these choke bases? Vehicles have no place in any of these fights. If clutch spam is so good then why is it never used unless it's an aura mats fight? Also the whole hex is viable for taking a 10 meter capture this circle? Really?

You mean exactly how it is now. The fury is the weapon you're looking for, it is basically a slower marauder. That however doesn't mean you're ever going to get the right angles on a sundi to artillery it in.

So completely screw people that brought it for killing infantry but make them stick to infantry deterance instead.
How many people do you think will sit there only looking at hitmarks with no kills or points to speak of. I mean I'd rather be doing cortium farming for the love of god, you get points for sitting there and m1ing right? But grinding cort gets more certs.

You're basically asking how can I cut bread without using a knife. You could use a fork but that just turns into a sloppy mess and people won't buy your foife or knork idea.
Here's the thing, you cleared entrenched soldiers in ww1 with one of two things; tanks or artillery, both have AoE. Now the reason ya got mice everywhere entreched everywhere is because you either don't have cats or you don't want poison. We don't have artillery and tanks were deemed "unfun" for stationary targets. So what the devs did was break the cats legs so mice could run freely. Now people are complaining about the mouse population but no one wants to use poison or take cats to the vet to be healed because apparently everyone hates cats and want cats to only kill other cats.

But then what does that do for the attacker? People would still just be holed up in the base without attackers moving up at all.
If anti infantry weapons aren't the answer to infantry entrechment, that should say a lot right there.

Devs have said it's unfun being killed by something you can't see, which includes artillery. Also I don't think constantly shelling a tower some odd 500 meters away would be great for the game either.



It really comes back to: we actually need AoE, but no one wants to say it. But here's the thing, no one wants to do it, as a tanker; no, even aurax tankers will not do it, it's painfully bad in nearly all bases except bases like aura mats, you know, badly designed bases with a giant hill for tanks to sit on for the perfect firing position for an open spawn room, even then, it's better with friggin lightnings or maybe prowlers because of that reload speed. Even if all bases were built perfectly for it, people would still run AP, just to kill other tanks that try to get out, it's simply better for a team effort than ever getting close to a base for infantry support.

This is going to sound crazy, but maybe they should revert the changes they did to MBT HE weapons.
(I think they changed it in 2014 or something)

IIRC it used to be that you could one-hit kill infantry with the AOE if they were right next to the explosion.
Currently, it only kills on a direct hit, which means there is no reason to use HE over AP.
Maybe if more people ran anti-infantry tanks we would have less infantry stalemates.
(It would also mean less anti-armor on the battlefield though. Not sure if thats good or bad)

It's also unfun to get killed by a LA that dropped a C4 package on your from out of LoS... but I don't see that going away anytime soon. If infantry can OHK tanks with C4, then it seems fair that vehicles should shell infantry with impunity.

That problem solves itself, because soon infantry will learn that hiding in a building is a deathtrap and that the proper technique is to spread out and advance into the open (hopefully with vehicle support). The game will change where platoons will adopt a forward defence strategy, which means that instead of holing up right on the point, you instead want to establish a defensive line forward of the point to prevent enemy artillery from getting close.

Vehicles will also adapt to the situation, making artillery less frequent. Air would be the natural counter to artillery, able to strike quickly and from unguarded flanks. Harassers would love targeting defenceless artillery as well.

Sure, players who simply can't learn how to play the game might leave, but that's really for the better.

IMO the real issue that causes this is that non-playermade buildings are indestructible. Dont get your hopes up

Between, the Zephyr, Bulldog, C4, grenades, HE, rocket spam, AV turrets, punder MAXes, ESF rockets, AI noseguns.... I think there's more than enough AI, much more than enough. I think the problem is that troops are instantly back in the front lines as soon as they're killed. So kills don't mean a whole lot, just waves and waves of shear numbers. Increasing re-spawn timers the more frequently you die would help a ton in that regard. It would make individual success mean a little more, both staying alive and getting kills.

The answer is pretty easy. I mean WWI was fought with trenches (and many wars prior), but why did this disappear by WWII?

1) The invention of tanks. Tanks were reasonably heavily armoured (but not invulnerable) and apart from direct hits from field guns there wasn't a whole lot that could take them out head on (apart from getting stuck in holes or other mechanical failures). This meant that hiding in a trench was no longer an effective tactic, as the tanks could simply crawl over the trench and rake it with fire on both sides. Trenches became slaughterhouses for early tanks. You can imagine a tank parked over a trench just mowing down the entire line on both sides:



2) Mobile and combined arms warfare. The Germans proved in WWII that vehicles could sufficiently bypass trenches and break through defensive lines. Sitting in one spot meant that the enemy would simply go around and capture the objective. Not to mention that sitting in one spot would make for a very vulnerable target for air and artillery attack.

So implement those things (stronger tanks and remove buildings from capture areas) and you will fix PS2.

Well, there are three options that I can see to break up trench warfare.
1. Artillery. Indirect and actually LETHAL fire. You keep sitting/swarming over one place - you die. Either win quick, spread out, or take out the enemy artillery and use your own.
Thats not gonna work if the trenches are indestructible buildings tho.... also friendly fire.
Incoming fire has the right of way!!

2. Buff tanks so they can actually do something in such situations. Right now their biggest impact is making heavy assaults roll their eyes before exploding in a hail of rockets. Or C4 from a swarm of fairies. And 10 seconds later the 4 or 5 guys they killed respawn.
Of course its not quite as simple as buffing tanks and be done with, at the very least tanks must be harder to obtain or something.

3. Limit the amount of spawns a single spawnpoint can sustain. Those fights happen because both sides have an unlimited supply of soldiers. If 60 soldiers die, then 60 soldiers spawn 10 seconds later. But if a sunderer can only spawn 12 guys per minute, and a standard base can only spawn 24 - then kills and simple logistics will start to matter and such fights will not happen as easily

Like hummel. 150mm shell. In ps2 that would be scaled up since vanguard tank cannon is 150mm. 150/120=1.25 150*1.25=188


Sturmtiger 380*125=475mm



Karl gerat 600*1.25=750mm

[Suggestion] Any way to deal with trench warfare in PS2?



Answer: Give Shotguns to Infiltrators and watch how quickly they clean out groups of opposing players.

Give the VS a copy of the Eldar Doomweaver.

"The Doomweaver is an Eldar weapon mounted on the Night Spinner grav-tank. It is a variation of the Shadow Weaver. It works by launching a large web of deadly wire high into the air. The web is made up of thousands of miles of incredibly strong, monofilament thread that can shear through any substance, including steel or tank armour. Once launched the web floats ghostly downwards, shredding any victims caught beneath it. Upon hitting the ground the web forms a barrier that may dissect anyone crossing through it, but will eventually settle into a solid blanket that can be moved over safely"