[Suggestion] Empire Specific Artillery?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by TankHunterCobra, Mar 28, 2017.

  1. LordKrelas

    Why is no one mentioning the VS Artillery piece is a highly accurate extreme-range weapon with the ability to cloak, while the other two have abilities related to helping them with their shots near solely?

    Like, I like artillery, until it's able to literally take pot shots without needing any guidance from the front line - IE 1-man cannon.
    IE designater tools, paired with your artillery piece requiring at least one guy that was at your weapon, to be there in person.
    - If the designator isn't firing their pointer, the artillery can not fire, and must fire within a degree of the point indicated.
    That'll make it so you can't just aim the pointer 2 meters from the artillery, and fire at will.
    While still letting you use an artillery piece, while making it require some level of coordination; Which all artillery does.

    This prevents as Demigan said, farming at range, without any risk, setup or exposure.
    As what is likely to hit it? Aircraft, or another artillery piece - the second one being unlikely given target size.
    Not to mention, VS's cloak would grant it an undeniable advantage in survival, given it would be able to traverse any terrain & hide itself from any threat.

    - About the cloak:
    The Other two are basically slow, exposed artillery which is logical for artillery.
    A nice replacement for the cloak would an ability that improves accuracy at the cost of movement & a small amount of damage.
    This puts it on par with the other two for surviving, and still keeps, I think at least, to your seemingly picked faction-traits.
  2. AllRoundGoodGuy

    What if we gave a 'mini mortar' to HA in place of their RL? Maybe half damage or something...
  3. ColonelChingles

    Simply put, you can't have a war game without artillery. Artillery has been the first and last word on the battlefield. Infantry may have bravery, tanks may have armour, aircraft may have speed, but in the end it is the artillery that kills. In fact, generally speaking the only real purpose of tanks and infantry is to force the enemy to sit still and slug it out until they are blown to bits by incoming artillery (or to a lesser extent find targets for the artillery to shoot at). Few people should be dying to rifle bullets and maybe a few more from tank shells, but most deaths on the battlefield should come from artillery shelling. We need so much artillery that players start to go insane and begin to rant and rave. We need so much artillery that it's impossible to hear anything else with all the explosions going on.

    In war, there are only two types of soldiers. Artillerymen... and targets. PS2 is sorely lacking in this department.

    [IMG]

    [IMG]

    But yes, we need far more ways to make infantry cry and to put an end to stupid static base battles.

    [IMG]

    Yes, infantry ought to get artillery too. Mortars, unlike vehicle-based artillery, should be organic to the squad and allow more responsive fire than asking for heavier fire support.
  4. Demigan

    Thank you for recognizing your own stupidity, yes 20% of what you say is actually responding, the rest is just dumb. However, that 20% where you respond is mostly dumb as well.

    Ah, and you instantly go for the unreasonable! Ofcourse vehicles can't kill infantry instide a building from 500m away, but neither can infantry kill vehicles from inside a building from 500m away. In fact, even from 50m distance infantry will have difficulty dealing with vehicles except in a few niche cases, while vehicles have no problem murdering infantry from farther ranges. But that kind of distinction is too hard to grasp for you, because you can only think in extremes.

    Why on earth would you think that vehicle handling is separate from vehicle numbers and mechanics? These things are inextricably linked, having an effect on each other.
    Ofcourse now you will complain "but my Vanguard shield is a mechanic, and it doesn't affect my vehicle handling!". That's because you only think in extreme's. Not all mechanics have to have an effect on vehicle handling. But things like Anchor mode, Magburn and vehicle chassis have an effect on the vehicle's handling.

    Why would I ask a question I know the answer to? They don't include both because of time constraints, because the developers that are working on the game now didn't design the physics and vehicle mechanics and will have to figure out what the previous developers did, so that changes don't cause far-spread problems with things they didn't want to change.

    I would rather point the finger at you and say that it was you that made them think it was stupid.
    I understand that you can disagree with many of the changes. I disagree with the execution of many changes too. But I don't disagree with what they tried to achieve with it (most of the time), even if they failed in achieving it. And that's the difference. You just complain about what you disagree with without any sense of why things were changed. You also look at the impact of changes from only one perspective, without taking the impact on the rest of the game into account.

    You don't learn vehicle play by shooting infantry. In fact, 'learning vehicle play' by shooting infantry makes you dumb. Players who learn vehicle play by shooting infantry become the tunnel-visioned turrets we have now that have enough "skill" to maneuver their tank to the next base over but that's where it ends.

    How many times have I already explained this? Infantry players avoid vehicles, and the base designs are specifically there to help infantry avoid vehicles and stay safe because vehicles completely and utterly crush infantry otherwise. Also the battle length is waaay different. Two infantry fight each other the battle is done in seconds. Infantry vs tanks and the infantry will only show their face for a second at a time to avoid the OHK shots, and the reload extents that time. However that doesn't mean that vehicles have far more firepower and capability to deal with infantry. Vehicles creates zones around them where infantry will be reluctant to go because there's no chance to properly deal with the vehicle while the vehicle can freely shoot infantry. In the meantimee a group of infantry trying to creates a no-go zone will simply be rushed.

    It's also a question of mass. Chingles himself already concluded that he spends more than 60% of his time as infantry, and he's a dedicated vehicle player. There's simply way more infantry shooting each other at any time. Does that make infantry more deadly to infantry? No ofcourse not!
    This is just like with the Magrider. The total amount of MBT's the Magrider kills per month is lower than that of the Prowler and Vanguard, but the actual amount of MBT's each single Magrider gets is almost equal to that of the Vanguard, which is considered the best MBT killer. But just because there aren't that many Magriders pulled compared to the amount of Prowlers and Vanguards people think that the Magrider is worse at it.

    What kind of bullshi t story is this? Bulldogs weren't just nerfed because of a single person. Also you are trying to victimize yourself with "Oh noes, now it's harder to aurax the Galaxy, so they were deliberately trying to make it harder! Oh the woes! They must be targeting us because now it's harder!". That's Pathetic Laughingdead.
    And what the hell are you drooling about when you talk about the Masamune? Finally a weapon designed against the super-tanky Galaxy and you moan? It was a good change.


    Oh my god, a montage where the player just happens to get the kill despite there being a minimum of 3 and maximum of about 10 other guys shooting the same target with dedicated weapons! Now I suddenly believe you!
    If this video proves anything, than it's that concentrated dedicated fire from multiple sources, including MAX's and in some cases tanks on damaged vehicles, is powerful. It doesn't prove that the Masamune is OP. In fact if you look at the video, 90% of the damgae dealt to every single target was a different weapon than the Masamune, and the guy is just killstealing by shooting at the right moment.

    Yes, you are.
    Bugfixes are great, but they don't create revenue. Weapons like the NSX line give a small revenue impulse that keeps the servers running and allows the developers a little bit of time to spend on the game... For example to fix bugs.
    But such simple logic is too hard to grasp isn't it?

    Key words: "Which is what it looked like in the video".
    Stop seeing what you want to see (or in your case, absolutely not want to see) in everything you lay your eyes on.

    Ok, so infantry never had a good role to play? Infantry always only capped points, right? In the meantime vehicles are absolutely vital in getting the spawn in place needed to capture these points, and the vehicles can then put pressure on the defenders allowing the attacking infantry to more easily take a point.

    Seriously get sober or something. "A point to cap isn't much of a role" while 95% of the complaints since the beginning was "well infantry can capture points but we can't!".

    In an open field setting, infantry gets pushed out by whatever damages infantry!
    In an open field setting, aircraft gets pushed out by whatever damages aircraft!
    In an open field setting, water bottles get pushed out by whatever damages waterbottles!

    The entire argument you are making is bullcrap. Adding new roles is good. And depending on the execution, these extra points could work wonders on the metagame and enjoyability. But ofcourse you have to simplify it so you can understand it, and then you just make moronic statements like the above.
    Hell, first you say "Infantry get pushed off points by MAX's" and then you talk about how you think that's easier by Heavies. This kind of super-generalization taints everything you say or do. You only think in extreme's, black and white. "All infantry gets pushed off by MAX's".

    You are truly stupid.

    First of all, you say " losing a tank is 9 minutes and losing infantry costs nothing". Even though you just converted the nanite system to time. And what happens if an infantry guy dies? he's out of the fight for a short period of time. So infantry does lose stuff.
    Also your entire point about "well you can use 400m rockets from a cloaked sundy" is one of your extremes. You instantly assume that vehicles won't be able to retaliate (despite infantry with AV and AI weapons, even if they don't have them equipped, rendering to 450 to 500m). You instantly assume that the vehicles will just sit there and take it. In the meantime the points, such as the point shown in the PTS, can't be shot at safely that easily from 400m distance, and getting a cloaked Sunderer in place is a sure-fire way to get killed by... all the vehicles that roam the area. But those vehicles don't need coordination to take them down.

    This idea, this role, isn't tacked on, it isn't forced. It's less forced than capturing bases in the game: It's part of what you do in the game. It isn't necessary for anything, but it can help if your goal is to fight other players and capture stuff from them for that feeling of victory. The vehicular capture points are less a requirement than most things, so they are even less forced than most other things you can do in the game.
    And lastly I would like to hear your idea for a non-forced vehicle role to play they could add. Because shouting "I disagree" to everything is easy, especially if you back it up with completely insane idea's.
    • Up x 2
  5. BrbImAFK

    I'm completely opposed to all LONG-RANGE artillery. Not because it doesn't make sense to exist in a war-game, but because it doesn't make for a fun GAME.

    If artillery is shelling an infantry position, all the infantry can do is cower down and hope somebody does something about it. Or redeploy out. This is not fun, and frustrating to boot. From the artillery's perspective, it's not fun to use either (a lot like current G2A systems). I approve of requiring artillery to need a designator to work properly (another role for stalker infils). The designator makes a little mark on your screen, you aim at it and shoot. Then you do it again. And again. And sure, you might get some kills and, if ignored long enough, rack up an impressive KDR, but this too is boring and (more importantly) has pretty limited risks - especially if you're firing from beneath a Skyshield at some PMB.

    So, no.... I will never agree with long-range artillery in the game and will fight it at every turn.

    That said.... I quite liked the mortar idea. You're close enough to the battle to be at risk, and it could provide a nice non-infil (counter-sniping or stalker-stalking) counter to snipers and ridge-campers. I think it would work best as an Engy thing, as a replacement for their turrets. I think a rough firing guide on the minimap is probably sufficient in terms of usability, and I think that the engy should be glued to the turret during the firing AND reload cycles. Yes, it'll make you sniper bait - BUT you're completely behind cover from the main battle line (or, you should be!). You'll need to rely on your teammates to keep the flanks clear of snipers who're just drooling to put a round through that nice, stationary melon of yours! :D


    I'd also like to see some variation on the abilities for other classes as well, but that's a discussion for another place.
  6. Cullwch


    You're raving. If it is realistic for vehicles to crush infantry, then it is just as realistic for infiltrators to carry two sticks of c4. Infil c4 is a ridiculous idea, but it is realistic, so should we do that? See how long artillery lasts against the stalker army?
  7. ColonelChingles

    Well, I'm more thinking that the infantry would just be wiped out in pretty short order. Artillery ought to be able to penetrate any structure (including spawn rooms) unless those areas are deep underground. That solves the having to redeploy-out issue.

    Because they'll all be dead.

    Of course having infantry assistance with your artillery would be very useful. In order of effectiveness:
    1) Infiltrator with GPS-linked designator that can have a shell land within 5m of a target.
    2) Manually correcting shots based on verbal feedback from observers.
    3) Firing blind based on a known distance to the target.

    Introducing artillery in that sense would be a very important part of combined arms. Infantry get a great job of directing artillery instead of stupidly running into a base and trying to clear it with rifles. Aircraft and tanks would have plenty of fun times hunting down enemy artillery.

    Vehicle artillery is also quite vulnerable. It's vulnerable to fast-moving aircraft. It's vulnerable to assaulting enemy tanks. And it's vulnerable to enemy artillery in the form of counter-battery.

    The only thing it's fairly invulnerable against is infantry. And it's totally okay for artillery to slaughter infantry with impunity, because if one side only brought infantry to a combined arms fight, they deserve the massacre that they asked for.
  8. LaughingDead

    Some of this stuff, man, just really really boiling down to name calling.

    Niche cases like lancer, lockons, archers, manaturrets, mines which you don't even have to be remotely near, you could be on a different continent and they still work, but infantry can't deal with vehicle within 50 meters? What sorry heavy are you playing? Or playing with? And "no problem killing infantry from farther ranges" what? 500 meters? Or do you mean 50, oh **** are tanks not supposed to operate within 50 meters so that you can fight them? I suppose I must be thinking in extremes, I'm going out killing tanks and you're complaining about their next to no long range capacity.


    Being able to damage X has no capacity on how fast you move unless you're a galaxy. If you really think they are making vehicles more lethal and vice versa for infantry, then why the hell would they not put it on pts.
    Me eh? Alright, overlord supreme vehicle master, with all of your overwhelming experience with vehicles, what exactly happened with the thermals nerf? Less A2G ESFs fly, people left because they never got a refund and lost trust with the devs, A2A flyers had less to learn off of by killing the A2G ESFs, new tanks had harder times spotting infantry, AI busses lost the ability to put randoms in and have them learn how to turret for the bus, learning to prioritize targets, thermals was never going to hurt any of the already skilled vehicle players, it simply shut more beginners out of the game to play with vehicles TO WHAT END? Making it more skillful to use vehicles? Isn't that the exact opposite of what we want to do if we want new players to learn the basics?
    Or do we just say play infantry, forever, because all vehicles are evil because they kill things. I didn't just think it was a vehicle nerf, I think it was completely ******* stupid for all aspects of the game except the whiners that complained about said vehicles, who did not think about the entirety of the game.

    Personal note, libs have fun with it, makes tankbusting even easier. Like we needed that.

    Seconds? Excuse me? You let it go on for entire seconds? That's adorable, it really is, but infantry has always had a higher capacity to kill other infantry quickly over vehicles in most cases. In fact the only weapons that killed infantry faster than a pro or just a decent headshotting player could would be the AI noseguns (nerfed several times, I suppose PPA goes on for seconds) and direct hits with shells. Oh, canister as well. That is indeed a die or live weapon. Let's say I give a leetist player, like Xoniq, a tank to kill infantry in an open field. How many do you think he would kill with a tank over an LMG. If you've seen or know what xoniq does it's clear people, very well, with an infantry weapon.
    Also, buddy, nope zones go both ways. Vehicles will never go near infantry because of 3 reasons.
    1. Vehicles are cautious of more vehicles, taking damage from a stray rocket can be a loss against another tank
    2. Infantry, as you don't seem to believe, is actually pretty ******* lethal. I LOVE busting tanks as a heavy, even if you think you're safe, I know how much even one rocket hurts, and back to 1, vehicles have to be careful of other vehicles, playing peekaboo with a heavy is not efficient, it's not effective, you should not do it because even if you get the one kill, you could still die.
    3. Almost everyone EVERYONE runs AP weapons over AI, literally the worst weapons for the job of stopping infantry.

    "Nope zones" aside yes mass does matter, infantry deaths happen by the truckloads, but what about vehicles? Does nerfing the 2% of all deaths, one of the portions that actually make the game interesting, actually worth it? Bases are designed to keep vehicles out, infantry players (new ones however, barely) avoid vehicles, I'm not here to say otherwise, I'm here saying that the community turns down almost every single vehicle suggestion that involves suppressing infantry, probably because we don't have effective enough weapons to suppress them without having horrid die syndrome from literally everything else just because it's a bad specialization.
    I've said how bad going for kobalts are over bassys, or grenade launchers (that got AI nerfed) were the best even if they were the shortest ranged and could barely respond to anything else, well not the case anymore but that kinda proves that nerfing vehicles AI is just getting stupid.
    Actually no, they were all using masas. Well on the biodome anyways, killing tanks from what, about 500 meters out? Killing gals that simply got close? Masas do almost a third of a gals HP, setting it on fire at 3 loads, this is more damage than a dalton does to a gal, more damage than a tank round, literally more damage than any other vehicle in the game can do to a gal and it's in the hands of one of the most common units in the game, that's supposed to be balance?
    You mean small revenue to fix bugs which instead goes towards making stuff that no one asked for, instead of fixing bugs over a year old and brand new ones. I can let brand new bugs slide. Spawning directly into a vehicle is cool and all, insta-deaths happen with latency, that's understandable, but tank hydraulics and flipping for no reason should have been fixed a lot sooner than 2 years. That's only one of the vehicle bugs mind you.
    Keywords: He drove a tank over a bumpy road and it flipped. Any of the devs could have literally picked up a mouse and drove a lightning to test this.
    The guy was running this test on medium settings at around 60 fps with smoothing, the first 15 seconds is literally him running up to the console, spawning a lightning, driving forward and then it doing a sick kick flip which tanks are not supposed to do.
    Here ya go.

    Yes. They improved it, but really, he drove 30 feet and it did a flip, this made it to testing?

    And ugh, I do not have time for this so heres just short quick quips for your paragraph walls.

    1. Infantry do a ****ton more than just cap points, vehicles are either spawning or destroying spawns, there is little to nothing inbetween, this makes vehicles stale. Making vehicles cap a point makes them stale still.
    2. I've never seen tanks push infantry off an enclosed building point I will give you that. However, standing on ******* points is not making tanks more inclusive, it just makes it a requirement. Have you ever had fun standing on the point while an infil simply decked you from a window or a heavy coming up the stairs because he knows you're right ******* there? Same for tanks except you have no cover.
    3. Odd, you call me stupid and ask for an idea that makes vehicles more inclusive? K. Artillery be a thing. Tanks actually be lethal. Infantry can stay where they are. Air suppresses infantry. Have ******* AI weapons that do better AI than the HE shell of disappointment. Let engies have AV barriers that can easily be destroyed by infils and someone just shooting. Make everything important instead of just infantry. We don't need tanks, lightnings, harassers, galaxies, ESFs, Libs, flashes, valks, ants or sometimes even sundis. Infantry generally has the best answers because they have mass, damage, hard to remove without specialized weapons or an incredibly good situation for them, and yet the infantry, sacrifice next to nothing to remove vehicles, like playing heavy is such a detriment to bear.

    But then that would be me being stupid right? For vehicles to actually fight infantry, that would be such a travesty.
  9. LaughingDead


    I don't really know what to say except I approve.
    Well except the penetrate buildings part to a degree. Maybe that can be a special once per 30 seconds shell but not to spawn rooms.
    • Up x 1
  10. Eternaloptimist

    Artillery / long range bombardment always gets a big 'ole argument going doesn't it?

    I think the operator has to take some risk to use it (Demigan's point, I believe) or you could just sit way back and spam HE from a tank, which is what often happens already.

    So the unanswered question for me is what does it bring to the game which is new and different? By which I mean features people will actually use, so not new strategic options (AFAIK no one uses the ones we've already got much, if at all :eek:).

    I would imagine that, for balance reasons, anything too powerful would be expensive or particularly vulnerable in some way. And if it was a bit weedy then who'd use it?
    • Up x 1
  11. BrbImAFK

    You've kinda side-stepped by main issues though.

    Sure, everything you've said is a wonderful idea and would play out perfectly in the real world. Now, I know that this probably comes as a shock, but we're playing a game, not talking about the real world.

    Games need to be FUN and games need to be BALANCED.

    The biggest reason everybody's always crying about the air****ters farming ground stuff is because the relationship between air and ground is UNBALANCED and UNFUN. I'm sure the pilot whoring all the kills is having a decent time (even if he should feel like an ***), but the large number of his victims are most certainly not..... that's a net loss overall. Then there's the problem with air being lethal to everything, while simultaneously being able to avoid and disengage from pretty much any fight it decides it can't win. G2A is a "deterrent" and not a particularly effective one at that, and even that's not particularly fun to use.

    Getting farmed by air is UNFUN because you can't effectively respond. Playing as G2A is UNFUN because it's crap gameplay and doesn't even have the decency to reward you with kills for your efforts. Air is lethal and G2A is a deterrent is UNBALANCED. Air is mobile, meaning that it can go to another fight, while G2A is exclusive, often meaning you can't do anything else, when the air invariably ***** off.

    None of the above is FUN or BALANCED, which is why so much tears and salt has been crapped all over the forums about the air-ground relationship.


    The exact same things as the above apply to your artillery ideas.

    Sitting in a tank in the middle of nowhere shooting at elevation markers is not FUN. Getting shot at and killed by dudes who aren't even in the same HEX as you is not FUN (hell... that's one of the reasons DBG's been nerfing AA turrets and removing AV turrets etc.).

    And if they make artillery trails (which they shouldn't actually have) like current RL's have to assist you in finding them, then the artillery guys will whine that they're getting ganked. And if there's no trails and the artillery's running Vehicle Stealth (like it should be), with a good camo (and especially at night!) it could be ridiculously hard to find. Oh, and that's not to even mention how VS will get screwed over again if artillery DOES have trails... NC and TR get nice greyish-blackish trails that aren't hugely visible in the day, and invisible at night. VS, on the other hand get bright-glowy-blue ones which are hugely visible in the day and death-sentences at night!


    And finally, when you get right down to it, we've already tried this. We had the Flail in Planetside 1 (it was artillery) and EVERYone hated it. Hell, most Flails usually got more TK's than enemy kills and most of them died to TK as well, as their "allies" got tired of being shelled and blew them up.


    No, I'm sorry. Your ideas make perfect real world sense, but they make for TERRIBLE gameplay and shouldn't be implemented!
    • Up x 1
  12. JonnyBlue

    If you ever played WoT you will know Artillery is despised with a passion they call em clickers because that all they do not much skill needed but they have the ability to melt a tank in 1 shot or splash damage it.

    While I'm no lover of tanks as an infantryman and any tank blown up gets the thumbs up from me I do feel this is going a step to far and I also feel if artys were put in the game they would just end up targeting groups of grunts instead of a tank pretty much like now with tanks:p
  13. ColonelChingles

    Artillery would be the biggest game changer since lattice lines. Probably be even more important.

    Essentially, what artillery has always done is to strongly favour aggressive fighting over static turtling. Artillery is why we don't draw our military tactics around castles anymore and instead rely on mechanised warfare. In modern warfare with artillery, if you stay in one place for too long and the enemy knows it, you're likely to be dead.

    In PS2 the effect would be that fights would move out of bases and instead into the hills, valleys, and plains. This is because to truly secure a base you would need to make sure that artillery was incapable of shelling it. And the only way to do that would be to make sure that artillery can't get within range and stay there long enough for a prolonged bombardment.

    In turn, this gives PS2 a required combined arms environment. Simply put, it would be impossible to win by only playing as infantry; such a force would be ripped apart by artillery. Infantry could not hope to possibly cover and defend all the land that artillery might hit them from. You would need to rely on air patrols to spot artillery, or fast Harasser patrols to secure a perimeter. Tanks would have something else to do instead of shelling spawns; ambushing artillery and supporting elements. Likewise, the opponent using the artillery would have to employ vehicles in order to support their artillery assault.

    In short, adding artillery would do two very important things to fix the game:
    1) Make the land outside of a base invaluable to hold.
    2) Force armies to employ both vehicles and infantry, instead of just predominantly infantry.

    I would imagine that artillery would get a variety of shells. "Bunker buster" shells would be one type that the artilleryman could choose. It would be optimised for penetrating the roof of structures to kill all the infantry hiding inside a room, but would probably have a smaller area of effect.

    Possible shell types for artillery might include:
    -Screaming shells. Slightly less damage and blast radius in exchange for screaming noises as the shell flies. Great for psychological impact.
    -Smoke shells. Not only shields attackers while they manoeuvre, can completely disable all infantry AV weapons.
    -Incendiary shells. Creates a temporary area where infantry and light vehicles will take constant damage. Meant for area denial.
    -Gas shells. Infantry caught in the blast area experience constant Concussive Grenade effects. Effects can be avoided with the use of the new Rebreather implant.
    -Illumination shells. Not only makes the night as bright as day, but temporarily marks all enemy targets within a large area.
    -Dud shells. Scream like the screaming shells, but do not explode and only cause damage if they happen to land right on top of the enemy. Meant to scare enemy infantry into fleeing but to avoid friendly fire.
    -Cluster AP shells. Explode above the battlefield, dangerous to infantry (of course), but also to armoured vehicles. Meant to deal damage to static concentrations of enemy vehicles, though does less damage against specific targets.
    -Bunker buster shells. Able to penetrate foliage and structures to explode inside. Smaller blast radius, but kills hardened infantry.
    -HE shells. Your typical "goes boom" infantry killing shell. Large blast radius and significant damage to infantry and soft targets. Much less effective against vehicles.

    I don't get your point. IRL artillery is very balanced, which is why our military forces are not made 100% of artillery. As I've pointed out, there are many ways to blow up artillery. By aircraft, tanks, or rapid assault vehicles.

    Sure if your side only played with infantry it might not seem balanced. But that's just because your faction is not using all the tools at its disposal. If you choose to handicap yourself to infantry combat only, then I don't think you have any right to complain.

    As much as WoT is enjoyable, the problem there is that like PS2 it is not really a combined arms game. It's just a game of tankers who want to tank, much like how PS2 is just a game of infantry players who want to play infantry. Neither WoT or PS2 does a good job of integrating artillery into the game, because neither is really a combined arms game.
  14. Eternaloptimist

    Still not sure I get it, given that the safest place to be in the game would be inside a building wouldn't it? - it is now against HE and the ground outside the the base can become a kill zone for HE from either side.

    But my point is that I see the effect of HE bombardment being delivered by tanks already. And when HE from a Lightning is already enough to kill you from far enough away to make retaliation hard, what difference would a bigger explosion delivered from further away or from a different type of ordnance make?

    I get the point about needing to prevent artillery getting close enough to a base by going out and meeting it but that holds true now for advancing tanks as well.

    I'm not anti artillery on general principles, I just can't see the point yet as I genuinely don't understand what it would be able to do that a bunch of HE tanks can't already do (and seem to do fairly regularly now).
  15. ColonelChingles

    With bunker buster artillery, no. The safest place to be is either on the move or where the enemy does not know you are. Both of these mean that warfare is shifted from boring base fights to dynamic assaults on the exterior terrain.

    If you choose to stay inside a building during a dedicated artillery barrage, you should expect that eventually your building will suffer from a direct hit and everyone inside will die horribly. Hence the better option is to get aircraft or tanks (or if you want to be infantry at least go mechanised/motorised/airborne) and secure geographically advantageous terrain on the perimeter.

    Your other option is to just hide from artillery, to be in a position where they are not likely to shell (ie not the spawn room or capture point). That works too, especially if you expect an imminent enemy assault on your position. It doesn't remove the continued threat of artillery though.

    It's indirect fire. That means that direct retaliation is not just hard, it's impossible. If the enemy HE Lightning can see you, that means that you can see it. And in the majority of cases there are still options for infantry to retaliate. Lock-on rockets, AV MANA turrets, or Lancers if you happen to be VS. Maybe not kill it, but certainly to suppress the Lightning.

    Indirect artillery on the other hand can only be countered by getting off of lazy butts and actually working hard to fight for a change. Or counter-battery fires. Either way, as I envision it heavy artillery support would make staying in bases a deathtrap, which currently is not the case against tank assaults (though in my opinion many tank weapons should allow for barrier penetration as well).
  16. TankHunterCobra

    Yeah I saw that concept art, the main reason I didn't like it was because it was just a Sunderer with a gun on the back, like we need more Nanite Systems vehicles. This thread was created for giving an idea for 1: new Empire Specific vehicles, and 2: An anti zerg weapon, Boy would I love to see a lot of TR heavies crushed by a barrage of artillery fire. Because honestly, one reason for farming is poor base design. Bases are just small infantry arenas where soldiers are kept in a box to kill each other, and anything that can shoot them from the air and "farm" them. If we had more open areas, but with cover, this would function better.

    The functionality of the artillery would be this:
    The artillery is able to fire on a LIMITED range, with LIMITED gun traverse and LOW ammo count. The velocity on every weapon would be rather slow, so that the gunner would require that he/she lead their targets, and would be god awful against moving targets. The reason I am against the designation thing is that it will probably just be irritating, however, I think an upgrade for the vehicle that can target a hostile that has one of those recon gun thingies on it, could be real neat, and maybe give more use to that tool. Say you have a squadmate shoot a prowler with a recon dart thing, if the Prowler is in range, it has a way point on it and a marker on the map for only 5 minutes, after that the marker goes away. The reason I want them to only be operatable by 1 player is to avoid it becoming something as cancerous as the Harasser.

    For the cloaking ability, it's supposed to last only 3-5 seconds so that the driver can run off, or confuse enemies. The ability has to recharge like the shield on the Vanguard, not like the suit on Infiltrash.

    The artillery would have its aim distorted at steep angles, so that firing sideways or something would be difficult, and that once spotted by enemy air, or tanks, it is screwed completely. But it is mainly for anti zerg & supporting purposes, it won't/shouldn't be useful in places like Amp Stations, Biolabs & Tech Plants due to the heavy amount of defenses, air & armor that fights there.

    Even if this idea gains the devs attention, it will probably be really bad & just a generic NS vehicle nobody wants, unfortunately. What we should have gotten instead of the Harasser was the Enforcer, Thresher & whatever the TR had from Planetside 1, and the Valkyrie should have been rethought or just not put in game, it's design looks odd compared to other aircraft & it is too much of a gunship now. Galaxies don't need bulldogs since they serve very little purpose & aren't beneficial to the vehicles role.
  17. Demigan

    I use insults to show how I feel about it, but I add the reasons why. So it's not just namecalling.

    Niche cases like Lancers, Lock-ons, Phoenixes and Ravens being used in large groups from high positions against tanks at long-range.
    And the Lock-ons aren't used that much in that manner.

    So yeah, there's little you can do within 50m. Mines? You have to place them waaay in advance, and they are one of the few OP weapons but mostly people ignore them to focus on C4 instead, which takes 15x more risk and skill to pull off. Lock-ons at 50m? You are dead. Lancers at 50m? There's rarely any position where you can use enough Lancers at 50m to be effective. This counts for most AV weapons btw. The critical mass required to actually kill a tank before it simply flees is massive.



    Because of all the reasons I already explained previously? Seriously learn to read? Oh wait, you don't read larger amounts of text, because a well composed argument is something you can't handle?

    With the thermal nerf a giant portion of players who like crutches left.
    It's no different than when the Rocketpods got nerfed, a lot of "pro aircraft players" left then as well, not being able to kill an entire platoon with a single volley at a Sunderer was oh so bad. Or the nerf to noseguns so a nosegun couldn't kill vehicles faster than pre-nerf Hornets could, people left then too. Or when ZOE was nerfed, a lot of people left then too because they couldn't farm as easily. And when HE was nerfed, or when Gatekeeper was nerfed, or when any OP weapon system at all was nerfed, the people (ab)using it left because they lost their crutch.

    Oh deary me, because A2G ESF had a harder time being OP against infantry, the A2A fliers now don't have enough targets? This only proves that the entire air-game is currently lobsided. If you needed an OP crutch to use OP weapon-systems against infantry to have enough aircraft in the air, it proves that the entire A2A game doesn't work currently.

    No, old tanks have a harder time spotting infantry. New tanks will learn some actual SA to protect themselves, instead of relying on clearscope crutches.

    No, now they can finally actually learn. It's not hard to spot infantry, you do it all the time in the game regardless of you being infantry, tank or aircraft. How come you act like it becomes impossible the moment you touch a vehicle? Why would it be hard to spot infantry if you are in a vehicle?

    You learn better to prioritize targets but also to prioritize SA over using a crutch to spot targets for you.
    Seriously, what you are saying is basically "if you let a computer write for you, you learn to write faster".

    Then why did the skilled players complain?

    No it didn't. Who were the people complaining again? Oh yeah, the players who had "like, a thermal for every vehicle weapon". These players had put in the time, they had put in the effort, but they couldn't tank without thermals because they never learned without. They were worse off because they had always relied on thermals. New players? They didn't need it, they can now learn to play the game properly, without a clearscope.

    The basics are "learn to spot your target, learn to aim, learn to move". Ofcourse most players never learn to move, and because of thermals they never learned to spot their own targets. This causes tunnel-visioning as players relied on their thermals to do the work for them.

    Oh dear god, how dare you say that you think about the entirety of the game? You've been looking from one side only the entire time, victimizing yourself or whoever you were talking about without ever thinking of the consequences it has for the overall game.

    You are missing something big here.
    If a tank OHK's a player, he kills that player faster than other infantry.
    However, infantry simply approaches these fights differently. In an infantry vs infantry fight, players have no problem leaving cover or running&gunning to their target. This doesn't work against vehicles, as you need multiple hits with long-reload weapons to pull it off. Because that's another thing you are ignoring: The incredible amount of time required for infantry to fight and kill a vehicle. Anyway, infantry will stick to cover more because they have to and make it harder for tanks to kill infantry quickly. Not because tanks are bad at killing infantry, but because they are good at it.

    Just imagine: You have two routes. One takes you across enemies where you have a more-or-less 50% chance of winning the battle. The other route takes you to enemies that take an easy 50x more time to kill compared to infantry, where you have less than 10% to "win", and a win will usually result in the tank going behind cover and repairing up, to be back and murder you later.
    Which route are you going to take? Well if you are anything like 95% of the playerbase, you'll stick with the first road where you have a more equal chance to succeed. This heavily increases the amount of infantry kills infantry make.

    Here's some better reasons:
    1: Vehicles don't need to get close to infantry to OHK them
    2: Infantry AV has a much shorter effective range on most weapons, meaning the closer you are the more power the infantry have.
    3: After the initial vehicle battle, Sunderers are set up and the amount of enemy vehicle interference drops. Vehicles stop being wary because they don't have to. That's why you can find so many tunnel-visioning non-moving vehicles around a base under assault.
    4: The reason everyone uses AP over AI is because the AV weapons are more than good enough to deal with the infantry. In fact this proves my entire point: If infantry were as lethal as you claim, people would pull the dedicated AI weapons. They don't, because the AV weapons are good enough to deal with the threat.

    yes ofcourse it does.
    Those 2% of deaths happen in specific scenario's. During those scenario's players get a certain feeling. In this case: Helplessness. They dislike the game, they dislike the mechanic, they complain, they want it changed.
    It's the same reason why players complain about C4: They feel helpless. They don't notice every time they kill a C4 fairy in time, but when they are blown up it's because they didn't see it coming and they didn't have time to react. That makes them feel helpless, and they want it nerfed or changed. And if it were changed those players would enjoy the game better and you have a better player retention, because that 2% you talk about has a huge impact on how players feel.
    Hell, stop thinking in terms of deaths, start thinkin in time lost: Players feel forced to go in different paths to avoid vehicles, so they have to go through... an Infantry chokepoint, giving more kills to the infantry meatgrinder. Then think of the time lost on fighting vehicles. Those 2% deaths take far more time and effort from the player than the infantry fights, meaning thats a lot more impact on the player's gameplay than the actual % seems to indicate.

    Although I would like to see your proof that 98% of the infantry deaths is actually by other infantry. Because it's a completely new statistic for me that I'm hearing off for the first time. I would expect people like Chingles to have jumped on that stat years ago if it were true, but it sounds more like an extreme exaggeration to me.

    And in the passed they didn't. However, vehicles were so powerful that just two vehicles and 4 infantry could completely stomp a 48+ infantry group and prevent them from defending or attacking a base. That's why they added walls: Infantry didn't have enough ways to deal with tanks, so they segregated it.
    Was it the right way to go? No! But it was better than leaving it as it is! And even with the nerfs, if you removed the walls vehicles would instantly overpower almost every base again.
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  18. Demigan

    The reason why people don't want vehicles with suppression is because it's a bad mechanic, period.

    People should stop about the Furies. The furies got AV nerfed, their direct damage got the biggest hit. But if you directly hit infantry, you also get the AOE hit damage on them. Hitting infantry directly is still powerful on Furies, and using the AOE damage alone was never a good option on Furies. Besides that, the AOE damage was much less nerfed.



    Yes, because you are exaggerating. Most of those targets weren't 1,5 bases far away, which would be about 500m distance. They would more likely be within the 200m mark. And again, hey a niche opportunity! Did you miss btw all the flak MAX's and alternative weapons stomping around in the video?



    More than enough things are added that people do ask for, but then people start saying things like "but we didn't ask for it" purely because they themselves don't agree or didn't ask for it. Hell, there were people saying "we didn't ask for ZOE to be changed" after it was nerfed.



    And like I said, a developer might never have experienced this issue when he tested it because he has a different PC setup. That's why they put it on the test server. Otherwise they would never needed a test server to begin with.
    Also we know that they test their stuff. Look at the patchnotes for the update: They know that if you equip the Glaive and Orbital bombartment that there's a problem with one not functioning properly, they even told people about a workaround to make it work. Is that perfect? No, but it does help add a much-requested feature to the game much earlier, and allows more players to simultaneously test it compared to the test server. Since the current bugs in the orbital bombartment aren't that big and easily worked around, it's a good decision.

    Yes, this made it to testing, because the developer might never have encountered this problem, which is why they let it be tested by players as well.

    Also, it's known that the VR and live servers have discrepancies between them, does this player experience the same problems in the live server? Does he experience it when he uses different vehicles? We don't know, and those would be extremely important to test as well.

    Vehicles do a lot too. Similar to infantry they push, take ground, destroy important targets and better than infantry they create no-go zones and help force enemy infantry into chokepoints they would avoid if there were no vehicles.

    However, this still comes down to "oh booohoo, they added more roles to the vehicles and I'm still going to complain about it!"

    Since capturing the vehicular point is far less a requirement than capturing other things, it's far less a requirement. Especially for the attackers who can utilize Sunderers.

    I call you out of your complain mode, force you to actually contribute instead of on your "but I disagree" perch where you barely have to defend anything but your subjective idea's.

    Tanks already are lethal. Upgrading only the tanks to be more lethal is going to be worse for the gameplay, and increase the amount of ways to exclude vehicles. Infantry will avoid tanks more, bases will get even more walls and crap to segregate vehicles from infantry. You might as well add in old ZOE "because people will use it then!". Yes, and ruin the gameplay experience of many more players than enjoy it. During the ZOE days, VS had the least fights because of the OPness of ZOE, causing the TR and NC to fight each other rather than the VS. So your first idea is already counterproductive! Yey!

    No they can't. See all the reasons I have already given, and the complete lack of reasons you gave. Also, the less infantry can do against vehicles, the less vehicles will be included in the fight.

    Vehicles to be lethal against infantry, air to suppress infantry, anything infantry is allowed to do? You realize that if you do this, the only option is to create more Biolab type bases to keep vehicles and aircraft out so that players, of whom even dedicated vehicle players like Chingles play 60% of their time as infantry, can actually enjoy most of the time they spend in the game?

    Hell, if infantry is suppressed, then what are vehicles going to be doing? Sit around watching a doorway where infantry won't come out of because they are being suppressed by air and murdered by even more lethal tanks?

    Increasing HE shells wouldn't increase inclusion of vehicles.

    Although interesting, the destruction method doesn't seem to be that much about including vehicles. Although giving infantry better ways to protect themselves against vehicles will absolutely help. Hey your first idea that might work!

    Infantry have mass because they are the de-facto spawn. I'm all for removing resource requirements on most vehicles/allowing players to buy vanilla vehicles with weapons of their choice for free, and making people pay for special ammo types and certed vehicles and like. That way players have the option to always spawn as vehicles, lethality between infantry and vehicles is allowed to go up since the vehicle players can't hide behind "but I was so skillful to use a terminal and pay for something that recharges automatically", and gameplay can be centered on combined arms where vehicles and aircraft have capture points and are able to join combat in most bases, you could even have exclusive vehicle or aircraft bases where infantry can't capture anything and is the support.
    That said, infantry doesn't have the damage. Infantry is only hard to remove due to the way bases are setup, IE the bases are designed to segregate infantry from vehicles because vehicles have proven to be too lethal. In the meantime infantry sacrifices time and enjoyment in the current engagement with tanks.

    Yes, most of your idea's actually were stupid and would have backfired in your face, as it would reduce the amount of fighting between vehicles and infantry.
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