[Suggestion] Flash, Harassars should take damage from roadkills

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Liquidrider, May 20, 2021.

  1. Liquidrider

    I am NOT saying Harassers or a Flash are OP. However the mobility of a flash and harasser in conjunction with road kills is OP.
    This "strategy" has been widely adopted and in some ways abused for years. If a vehicle that isn't built like a tank runs people or a max (hunk of metal) should receive damage. Hell if a flash runs into a max, it should blow up. Its a MAX vs a 4 wheeler.

    A harasser or flash can take out an entire squad without ever firing a shot and leave with no damage taken.
    A max that cost 450 nanites, with limited mobility, is able to get one shot by vehicles that cost less makes no sense
    • Up x 7
  2. Whiteagle

    Sorry, but this is kind why returning to the old-school design ethos of the Original Planetside is important; Vehicle Dominate the Open Field, while Infantry either need Cover or are outright baiting Road-kills into Mine Fields.
    As someone who enjoys "Bowling for Smurfs/Barnies," I can tell you that one of the easiest ways to ruin a Harasser's day is to plunk your Mana Turret down as an Engineer.
    It WILL damage the lighter Vehicles on collision and probably require them to reverse to get unstuck, meaning they're a sitting duck to all that Small Arms fire they just drove into.
  3. Liewec123

    absolutely, people are objects.
    a quadbike or a buggy shouldn't be able to drive through crowds as if they are made of air, and especially not maxes,
    a quadbike/buggy driving into a max should be devastating...for the quadbike/buggy.
    [IMG]
    • Up x 1
  4. Blaargh2K3

    Only 1 thing people need to do to to minimize flash / harrasser runs. Put down more caltrops !
    I rarely see others use them while they can solve so many of these simple issues.

    Other then that i do think it is a minor issue that it takes 5 lock-on rockets to kill a soft target vehicle like the harrasser.
  5. BlackFox

    Funny thing: They have more resistance against tank shells than the actual tanks
    • Up x 1
  6. OneShadowWarrior

    Definitely and the heavier the object definitely the higher the damage, skidding over max suits as if they were mice, makes no sense, it should be like hitting a fire hydrant with a car, dead stop.
    • Up x 1
  7. Liquidrider



    • Mana turret.....? Have you ever tried shooting a harasser with a mana turret ? good luck. Mana turrets limited range, turn radius, slow velocity, cool down & time it takes to spawn vs the fastest vehicle in the game. It is laughable that anyone would try to pull a mana turret out against a harasser. They better be in very decent coverage and have the high ground to even make it slightly viable.
    • Small arms fire. You're correct small arms fire hurts. But unlike an ETF which is wide open, terrain plays a facto
    Nothing you mentioned changes anything. This isn't about old school design. It is simply common sense. And I am not letting this go. It is absolutely ridiculous a harasser or flash takes no damage for running full speed into people.

    While I do encourage feedback and alternative ideas... you mentioned it yourself you enjoy running over smurfs. How often are you on other side of those roadkills?

    As for infantry have cover and vehicles dominate open terrain. I 100000% agree except that a flash can be spawned anywhere and a harasser can get just about anywhere given its upgrades
  8. Liquidrider


    At first I would of agreed, but these are destroyable easily with a halberd. You can spot them from 1000m out. (maybe over exaggerating but you get my point). And if not properly placed there are massive gaps.
  9. Johannes Kaiser

    There should be a metric for "vehicle hardness". If you hit something that is softer, you do damage to it and depending on the difference suffer little to none. If you hit something that is harder, you suffer a lot of damage and the opponent not so much.

    Spitballing some values:
    Infantry: 1
    MAX: 3
    Flash: 2
    Harrasser: 3
    ANT: 4
    Sunderer: 5
    Lightning: 5
    MBT: 6 (From a perspective of relative advantages I'd even say Magrider should have 5, as it's a more mobile to compensate. Also floating, doesn't do wonders for traction.)
    ESF: 3
    Valkyrie: 3
    Liberator: 4
    Galaxy: 5
    Included air vehicles because they, too, sometimes ram things. Mostly each other, but still.

    Each point in difference deals 750 points of damage to the losing side and 500 minus 100 per point in difference to the winning side. If there is no difference, both sides suffer 500 damage.
    That means the vehicles that really hurt when hitting things are the ones less likely to run over people who are attentive and not too occupied.

    This damage is then adjusted for relative speed and subsequently force of impact as well:
    0 km/h: No damage, for obvious reasons as both parties are the exact same speed. If they manage to meet at all the results will most likely be negligible.
    <25 km/h: x1
    25-50 km/h: x1.5
    <50 km/h: x2

    So for some examples:
    - A Flash runs over an infantryman with a relative speed of 61 km/h. Compating their hardness, the difference is 1 point in the Flash's favour. This would mean it does 1500 damage to the soldier (750 for hardness difference, x2 for impact) and 800 to the vehicle (400 for hardness difference, x2 for impact). So the infantryman would bedead, while the Flash would be smoking from the impact. It *can* run over another person or soak some shots now, but not both. Had the Flash been slower, the infantryman might have survived (at a speed difference of up to 25 km/h).
    - The Flash driver did not get the memo and tries to run over a standing MAX with a reduced speed of 40 km/h. The MAX suffers 600 points of damage (a fifth of its HP), while the Flash takes 1075 damage. It destroyed now.
    - A Harrasser decides it were a bright idea to ram an MBT at full speed. This would net it 4500 points of damage for its trouble (2250 for hardness, x2 for speed), while the MBT takes a measly 400 points. If it is burning this may just be worth a gamble, but otherwise throwing a buggy at a tank is just a stupid idea.
    - The Harrasser explodes, driver gets wise a second early and bails. The MBT's pilot decides to run them over. This deals 3500 points of damage to the infantry (as the tank only just started moving and is in the first speed bracket) and none at all to the tank.
    • Up x 2
  10. DarkQuark

    I'll say it then. Flashes and Harassers are ridiculously OP. Especially flashes.
    • Up x 3
  11. Johannes Kaiser

    Nothing beats killing a Harrasser while soloing on a Flash though. :D
    Managed to do that exactly once through insane luck at hitting it (used the Buzzard), and it's still a fond memory, because usually Harrassers kill everything.
    • Up x 1
  12. Whiteagle

    You don't SHOOT the Harasser with your Mana Turret, you use it as a roadblock!
    • Up x 5
  13. Scroffel5

    I guess this could be a thing we could do, but I say no to things blowing up when you hit them. I instead suggest it is thrown off course or slowed down, so you feel like you actually hit something. First off, if you hit a person full speed with a quad bike, its gonna hurt. It has weight to it. It is going like 90(?) kph. Thats a little over 55 mph. If a car (sure it has more weight but its the same type of thing) hit you going that fast, you are most likely going to die. If a Harasser hits you at that speed, you ARE going to die. It should either bring you very low when you hit someone with a Flash and knock you back, or it should kill you.

    On the topic of hitting a MAX, I don't care if it is an armored mech exoskeleton or not. There is a person you are ramming. Its going to hurt. In any case, the MAX is not drilled into the ground. If you hit it, it'd fall over. If you rammed it in the head, it'd kill it. It is an exoskeleton, not a vehicle. The person would most likely die. However, I can see where you are coming from, so make it really slow you down as you roll over it, maybe leaving it with health so you'd have to hit it again. In fact, you can do that for infantry too, but not to the same degree. After you kill someone from hitting them, either bump you off course and slow you down, or keep you on course, roll over them, bumping you all over the place, throwing off your shots, like a speed bump, and slow you down.

    If you want to add damage for hitting people, do it to all vehicles. Any vehicle would take damage from hitting someone if that were the case, at least a little. As for me, I don't really get roadkilled often by a Flash, but I do by a Harasser. I think making it harder to hit the next dude is a better idea for both sides.
    • Up x 1
  14. XRIST0

    Invisible flashes and harrasers were the worst thing implemented into the game.. its hard enough getting into some bases without all these idiots running into crowds of players spawning from the sunderer, that aint fun or funny to anybody except the 1 person doing it.. they just keep adding more cheesy tactics for scrubs to feel self satisfaction leaving others just scratching their head as to wtf just happened, no wonder the player base is dwindling away recently.. because the mechanic abuse and the cheese is just way too high, leaving players frustrated and pissed off.. not everybody wants to play in this cheesy manner.

    Ive come to realise literally just killing brain cells playing this lately, its not as enjoyable as it used to be .. what even is the point ? its just always massive zergs, constantly shooting at friendlies strafing infront of you when youre engaging at somebody, and you get the assist after dealing 99% of the damage ? pfft .. come home after work looking forward to playing just to see VS and the pyjama boi try hard squad with 40+% population, literally every night. You cant compete against this.. at 200ms ping ? forced to play on servers on the other side of the planet. I dont necessarily think the game was meant to be played in this manner, I blame some of the long term players mentality for destroying the fun of the game for everybody else, especially new players.. they must think wtf and log off within 10 minutes.
    • Up x 2
  15. JustGotSuspended


    A part of the problem is the game was pretty good from the start, but severely dumbed down and tweaked for the worst in series of updates.

    Before there was some sense of teamwork, strategy. And there was a lot more balance, despite no queues lol.

    I mean it isn't technically the player's fault. The devs changed the game for the worst, and the people that remain are those who's playstyles were catered to along with a few who do their best to ignore the problems and continue playing hoping one day every bad updates going to be reversed or that the game just dies.

    Seems logical that after so many bad updates, what's left would just mainly be bad players. It's not really their fault the devs threw in wheelchairs and messed up the game in so many senses.

    What's weird is when people try to defend these well known issues in threads, when in the game they fully admit they are abusing cheese mechanics just for "salt".
  16. DarkQuark

    Just came out of a fight on Hossin. Decent little battle going on for the wee hours of the morning. However, it was ruined by some tool mowing down people on a cloaked flash.

    Flashes are cheap transport (they cost few nanites). They should not be weapons of mass destruction. Pull their weapons and for goodness sakes get rid of their cloak or pull their capability to insta-kill people by road death.

    Harassers just need to have a little less armor and health given their mobility and capability to deal damage.
    • Up x 1
  17. Liquidrider

    I can't tell if you're being serious or not.

    If you're being serious..... there are some massive flaws with this logic.
    • A harasser & flash can be stopped by a mana turret, but not a max? A Max which is X times the weight & size of a mana turret.
    • A stationary object that a harasser or flash can drive around
    • There is this little issue with splash damage that nearly every harasser & flash weapon has.
    I actually did laugh out loud, so if it was meant to be a joke. It did its job.
  18. Liquidrider

    Good suggestion and good feedback.

    My logic around taking damage should be based on size armor. If a tank runs over someone it shouldn't take damage.... its a tank after all. And I am also not suggesting that a harasser or flash should blow up just for hitting a max. I am however saying it should take damage or feel like its hitting a wall with some give. I've seen a harasser mow down an entire squad of maxes. (kudos on their XP gains) but they drove off without a scratch on them. That is a fundamental flaw that needs fixing.

    A streamer who I watch frequently called this out. Below are a handful of clips and the final one he calls it out. If you actually watch the segment in its entirety and look at the minimap, the vehicles aren't even shooting at all. They just spend the entire time trying to run people over. This includes an invisible ant.
    1. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/991578393?t=06h05m20s
    2. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/991578393?t=06h06m24s
    3. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/991578393?t=06h13m48s
    4. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/991578393?t=06h08m30s [Streamer finally had enough and calls how the failure behind the design]
    This is just the handful of times that I bothered taking the time too look up.
    I like your ideas of slowing people down. There needs to be something done.
    • Up x 1
  19. Scroffel5

    Sure, sounds good!