[Suggestion] The Ultimate Combined Arms Gameplay Thread

Awesome post Bengal Tiger, I really appreciate this level of detail in a response. Now regarding your great ideas.

Aircraft - I agree with your proposed buff to the Skyguard, that being said the AA Max needs a slight range reduction since their current range has them nailing aircraft outside of the aircraft's render range. A2A missiles definitely need a turning reduction as you stated. In fact your prosed suggestions would increase the skill cap so that low skill pilots couldn't just harass high skill pilots with A2A Missiles. Anyhow I completely agree with your proposed suggestions to air, although I don't think ESF's should pop MBT's unless they land 1- 1.5 Salvos to the Rear.

Tanks - I almost completely agree regarding HE type weapons not hurting armor, really good thought process, although I think the proposed armor buffs you're proposing is to extreme. If general purpose AV counters would only scratch the paint off of tanks the infantry would fly off the handle screaming for nerfs. Also I think that rear armor needs a lower multiplier, of maybe 70-80% or what it is now else you'll still find tanks afraid to be on the front lines.

Infantry - Better base design would be very appreciated by any logical person. While I think your city and sewer system is really cool I think the developers could take years to implement something of this complexity. Better base design and limiting bigger bases to have more blocked off areas that tanks can't into would definitely improve gameplay.

Priority spawn list- Is this with only MBT's spawning at the Warpgate and Techplant, or with them spawning in all the locations they have now? I like the idea, I just don't want it to be overkill. That is unless a the spawn list could somehow prioritize between dedicated tankers.

This was a really great response Bengal Tiger, if you can answer my questions that would be great, but otherwise great suggestions and I thank you for providing such great feedback.

Why? MBTs were a big deal in PS1 and the driver couldn't use the gun, this didn't turn people away. Even if it did turn some people away, the people it would turn away would be the people who just want to farm infantry instead of those want to treat it as a teamwork based vehicle; that's what you wanted right?

Giving it a 3rd gun in addition to giving it huge survivability buffs is a bad idea. Infantry need some way of being able to survive against a buffed MBT, and they can do this by dodging around the huge main turret or secondary, giving it a fast firing AI gun in addition would be a bit much.

No, it wouldn't. Reducing the cooldown timers would partially or fully negate the idea behind having timers start on death. The idea is to make the vehicles rarer and discourage spam. If you buff the MBT to the point where someone can last a long time in it, even with increasing the resources needed, they can build up the resources in that time and simply pull another one on dying.

If you reduced the timers as you suggest, this would provide a smaller waiting period and I disagree with that. A minimum of 10 minutes should be the gap between your tank dying and you being able to pull another one.

If you want MBTs to be extremely powerful it also needs to be something you just can't keep pulling on demand. This is an effective way to stop it.

They are wrong. There is a difference between beta and now; the beta was mostly organized players who were already interested in planetside. In the beta they weren't in outfits for the most part, and would join public platoons and help each other out. Most of those players are in outfits now and rarely interact with people outside their outfits. The non outfit pubs now are mostly not interested in organized play and would prefer to just sit at a biolab farm or whatever.

The problem is not with the galaxy, it is with player mentality.

The problem is that when you give an extremely badly designed vehicle like the liberator survivability, you give it the tools to crap all over the battlefield again. I would disagree with any buffs while the liberator is at is now.

Anyway, I'm not being antagonistic and I agree with a few of your other ideas. Just giving you feedback. Keep up the good work.

Automatic logout is evil.... Must ctrl+c the whole post just in case next time.

Anyways:

-Cities: They don't need to be as elaborate, but having an area of 30-40 buildings, with some 5-10 connected through tunnels that both sides can access, infantry would have its non-biolab area where it is the single deciding factor on who wins. Cities could be divided into zones, allowing multiple spawn buildings (and all these should have an exit into the tunnel system). Some tunnel exits should lead into streets to allow people not familiar with the topography to access them.

-Air: I'll agree giving the MAX a bit of CoF to limit its long range effectiveness. I'll disagree that a single nearly full blast of rockets should not kill a tank- with upgraded AA many pilots will have to fire from longer range or cut their attack runs short in order to survive, so this will help tanks out a lot. There would also be damage penalties for not hitting the top, side or rear armor of a tank with lolpods so just rotating to show the front would guarantee surviving 2-3 full salvos.

-Tanks: HE would hurt armor, but only from behind (in fact tank shells should also hurt from the sides with that 50% bonus penalty and hit the rear with nominal damage, they're quite big shells).

General purpose weapons would only not hurt tanks from the front. They'd do half damage to the sides and nominal damage to top and rear, giving tanks an advantage in the open, but still allowing infantry to counter them.

Dedicated AT weapons would do half damage to front and normal damage everywhere else, once again allowing tanks to duke it out in the open, but they remain XP pinatas in close combat.

AP shells would have the unique ability of not suffering a 50% multiplier when hitting frontal armor, so they'd do nominal damage based on the tank's protection level (from 50% on a stock non-Vanguard MBT to 33% for a V with upgraded frontal armor).
This gives tankers a true dilemma- do I want to have splash damage but need to learn to flank the enemy to be effective, do I want to do damage in the new system just as I do in the old one, but not have any splash damage, or do I want to out right fire over there to farm infantry, but do no damage to a tank frontally, and reduced damage to its side.

As for the rear, it's currently at 120% of projectile damage, so my proposed 100% would be a decrease to 83.33% of its current multiplier.

-Spawning: This should apply everywhere, otherwise people would just grab Flashes to the nearest watchtower and spam MBTs at 1 per 5 seconds, bypassing the whole rarity generating mechanic.

As for bases with multiple vehicle spawns, the largest one I know of is Dahaka, with a total of 8 vehicle terminals. Assuming everyone is already at the terminals when control of the base flips, and they are all grabbing MBTs, then it's 1 tank per 15 seconds for the whole base. If that's too much, then the S outpost could have 2 tank terminals changed into Sundy terminals to fix it. Currently, with 1 vehicle per 5 seconds per terminal, it's more than 1 MBT per second theoretically.

Due to the fact the L will spawn much quicker than the MBTs, it would need less damage resistance- such as 33% less instead of 50% for partially damaging hits, 80% less instead of 100% for hits that don't damage MBTs at all on a given side, and only full frontal immunity to hits that don't damage an MBT from the side.
Then we get the easier to get, but weaker tank as well as the stronger one people have to wait 4x longer per unit to get (not counting the Sundies that go in between the L and MBTs).

As for priority upgrades- I don't think it would be too useful, as people who want to get into the next base with a disposable transport will choose to take a Flash or hop in someone's Sundy, making the number of vehicles spawned much smaller due to people not wanting to miss the action. Then there's the problem that everyone unlocks priority and it's same story all over again.

I would like to see 3/3 MBT's, but not have them replace the current MBT's. Classify them as Heavy Tanks and turn them into monsters as suggested by the OP. A mixed bag of armor encounters would be very interesting. I would like paper tanks and iron fortresses.

It is very hard to balance combined arms warfare as perception and bandwagon mentalities shape the results. If one particular style of play is perceived as overpowered, a flood of people will use it. Because of the rock/paper/scissors approach to balancing is used, this overdeployment of one weapon system breaks things.

When Prowler HE was too powerful, you couldn't get near a TR base without finding two dozen Prowlers. Almost everyone that could be in the tank, was. It was nerfed and now I watch TR infantry zergs moving out from bases with MBT capabilities. The nerf didn't make the Prowler useless, but the perception based on the nerf drastically reduced its deployment, turning tankers into open field riflemen.

If the driver is to drive while the gunner guns, tanks also need gun stabilization.

A voice comm channel for the crew of a vehicle would also be quite nice, right now it's either making a squad for a single vehicle crew or using proximity voice.

As for heavy tanks- sure, why not. Just don't make them the new BFR's, they should be targets nearly just as much as MBTs in close quarters or to air strikes, and only have the additional wookie to overrun stuff a bit easier.
These are in fact a subject for a whole topic, so I'll leave it here for now.


I'll agree with perception and people flocking to the stuff that seems easy, but it seems that the HE nerf coincided with the HEAT and AP velocity upgrade, making HE tanks at a significant disadvantage against tanks with any other weapons (or let's put it this way: Vanguards with any other weapons, I don't think the Mags got a boost to AP velocity).

Then there are the AV MANA turrets, which make any unshielded tanks nearly obsolete and the shielded ones at a disadvantage.

And finally, a tank with 2 crew members became worth 700 points, so it's worth going for it more than sitting at a spawn outhouse (Remember those? Also a thing of the past...) and bombarding with HE.

I think this is close to the original idea of having the Lightning as a tank in the game. It's just gotten so easy to kill MBTs that no one sees them as much more of a threat than a Lightning anymore. I think my own stats show that they are almost identical in capability. Having another tier would be great.

1.Well not necessarily, I for instance love driving with a full tank 24/7, but I wouldn't enjoy not being able to shoot at all while driving. At the same time I don't enjoy a Lightning as much as a MBT because I enjoy shooting at things with my buddies helping out. If we make it so barely any people play tanks, as I think will happen if the driver gets no weapons, then there will barely be any large cool tank battles. That and the sheer amount of fire on the few tanks that go into battle wouldn't make the buffs all that relevant. I personally would need at least a cobalt, or some other AI weapon while driving to still find it entertaining. I know I'm not alone in this opinion, and I know there are also people who wouldn't mind just driving a tank with no gun like Colt. That being said I think there are far more team oriented tanks who be a fan of my idea than team oriented tanks who want no gun.

2.Infantry will still be able to survive against my idea of a MBT if they use cover, and treat an enemy tank like a tank instead of an XP pinata. Giving a MBT another AI weapon will only kill infantry that choose to attack a tank with no cover, rush it out in the open, or solo it. If an infantry was going to die to an AI gun, it would've died to the main turret too since the turret has greater splash and the AI gun will require more aim.

3. If a timer would start upon death for MBT, it would need to be that way for all vehicles, and I really don't feel like making that argument. It would be an argument that would likely encounter much more resistance than the one I had suggested. I made the ideas the way they are because they work great for the most people while fixing the game making it a good fix. If the suggestion isn't popular with the majority it won't get implemented. My idea makes it so that people who are skilled in keeping their tank alive can always have one provided they have the resources. Why should a skilled tanker get penalized the same way a zerg tanker who instantly loses his tank?

4. The galaxy is really really slow, so in large battles it gets gibbed by lock ons, lancers , burster maxes, and tanks. Galaxies are merely a support vehicle so buffing their health really shouldn't be that big of a deal. In regards to the liberator, would you rather have it have a small flak resistant buff, or just never be in the battle until the devs finally do an overhaul of them? This could be months away, and my suggested buffs for Liberator is just a band aid.

Thanks for saying you thought some of my ideas were good, until this point I couldn't tell if you hated all my ideas. lol

Cities- again great idea, I could definitely see this happening, but way down the lines when the developers can be bothered to make more elaborate bases.

Air- So you're saying an ESF has to land all it's rocket pods to blow up a tank? I could agree with that, is long as the TTK gives me a chance to actually rotate the tank.

HE- This needs to be more specialized, it should do no damage to a MBT if it's only going to go after only infantry. Maybe a very slight damage to the rear of a tank, but that' it.

Your other ideas for AP and general purpose are starting to sound more reasonable now. I still think you're rear armor reduction bonus doesn't go far enough. It would have to be closer to 50% multiplier IMO

Spawning- I think people should be able to spawn flashes much easier, they are cheap, easy to make, and die really fast.

I like your overall suggestions, there are just a few areas that we are slightly not meeting up at the same conclusion.

To build a city SOE would have to create 2-3 new building types (the taller ones) and then use them along with the already existing several modular types. It really won't be that much of a hassle to set something up (designing it to have fluent battle flow in nearly every direction might take some thinking though; also- tunnels).

I'd have no problem in a slight RoF decrease for planes, a Vanguard with a shield has just enough time to rotate to have the side take most hits when ambushed, but that's nearly 2x the time others get (I also get moving when I see the plane pop up on the map behind me- it shows up so it's shooting, it's behind me so it's shooting me in the @$$).
Once again, my proposition also gives the SG a 15-20% buff in DPS, so planes would have to either keep a large distance or high speed limiting their ability to put their ordnance on the proper side of their target.

Decreasing the effectiveness of planes even further might make tanks a bit too strong.

HE:

The Vanguard has a caliber of 150 mm.

Here's how 6 inch (152 mm) caliber shells look like (front to rear: fuses, shells, brass powder cases behind the shells; all 3 together form 1 round of ammunition):


Here's what a 152 mm shell does to a Panther tank:


While the Panther wasn't known for having "You shall not pass" side armor (in fact it was quite the opposite), that's why I'd say HE shells should at least do partial side damage and nominal rear/top damage (or with a 100% and 50% armor multiplier respectively for the P and M, and 45% for a top hit on the V).

If rear armor gets down to 50% damage taken, it'll be equal to the Prowler's and Magrider's side and top armor, so this just ain't going to work.
SOE selected to make the rear weak, and that's a pretty realistic assumption (the top is getting heavier and heavier on modern tanks), it should be up to the tank and its allies to make sure it does not get flanked.

As for spawning- I guess the Flash could retain the 5 second per unit constructed timer, buggies could get the 10 second one.

I'd prefer if HE did no damage against tanks, sunderer, aircraft and even MAXes so we can justify its power against infantry. When game becomes Heavyside, I wish to be able to bring a specialized infantry fighting tank. And when those infantry guys complain that my tank is OP, I can say to them that they should just bring tanks of their own since I can't damage them with HE rounds.

We need more specializations. I don't want HE round to be 20% better against infantry than AP but 20% worse against tanks.
I want a round which does **** against armor but is able to rock infantries world.

sry, was "a bit" inactive^^

OK.
so i've read the post(s), and i have to say:
GREAT JOB.

i'm just going to mention things concerning the galaxy right now^^
XPchanges. YES. that's a big thing, which is holding back many many players.
a crew (not gunners) can be so ****|ng important.
just imagine, i just landed, because we're heavily damaged.
and the walkers(and bulldogs ) try to keep the air clear.
then you need a crew of 2-4 guys, who repair the galaxy, so we can survive.
but right now nobody wants to hop in, if there are no gunnerseats free.....

-increasing health.
YES.
big, slow and easy to see
==> the health can be as high as a certain country , it still we be taken down by flak/lock-ons .
increasing the health makes up for the "velocity" and the fattyness.

of course, my suggestion is:
bring back G-AMS, and add 1 more gun on top of the galaxy, or let the wing gunplaces be equipped with walkers.

right now, 2 walkers against air are as effective as a needle against a tank.

If you'd want an HE weapon that doesn't damage tanks at all, that sets a precedence for a BR 1 player who needed 10 minutes in the WG to figure out how to spawn a Lightning to win every single engagement- he'd have the HEAT shells loaded up by default in the 75 mm Viper.

AP rounds would pretty much need to do zero damage against infantry, but instagib any vehicle they hit (maybe except frontal shots on tanks).

Not sure if this would be fun, and it would definitely be a big step away from science fiction towards fantasy or something.

Another thing is that if my rework of the armor system was implemented, heavies would need to take one of 3 weapons- 2 which are dumbfire and one that locks only on tanks if they'd want to damage the front of an MBT (and even those would get a 50% penalty, so for a Vanguard with upgraded frontal armor the end result would be 50%*33%= 16.5% of nominal damage, or 13 Decimators to kill it).

I'd say tanks would get enough staying power to only justify reverting the Prowler splash damage nerf (however to the sweet spot where either Flak 1 or 2 or Nanoweave 3 or 4 allows to survive the blast).

While I think having Heavy Tanks would be very cool Travesty, as in I'm all for them, I could see this taking the devs over a year to design and make properly. I think I have suggested a great and balanced way to turn the current MBT into a 3/3 option while implimenting the proper checks and balances to keep it from being OP or spammed. Once they make these changes, it will give the devs time to work on Heavy Tanks, but MBT's need to be fixed now and not months down the road. My suggestions should only take a few weeks to get right and would fix MBT combat.

Thanks for the feedback Travesty , I appreciated it.

The rear armor suggestion I made was for the multiplier, so it would be a 1.5X multiplier. Isn't that still more damage than to top or side armor?

ROF nerf for rocket pods would have to be extreme if we weren't going to buff rear armor to the point where tanks had time to turn around and react or retreat.

HE rounds should do no damage to front armor, very very minor damage to top and side armor, and a little more than that for rear armor if they were to do any damage at all. The HE shells in this game are a different type than the ones that shredded the panzer, they are more specialized to take out infantry while sacrificing a lot against armor.

Well I'm glad you thought my Galaxy Idea's would work, and thanks for the compliment. However I don't think giving the Galaxy AMS would be a good idea, it would kinda make it able for outfits to camp in high places indefinitely. I could see maybe if it was like a hover type AMS where it could be done 100 m off the ground, but there has to be some disadvantage for using it to make it not way better than the Sunderer ya know?

Glad to have another dedicated Galaxy's pilot opinion on the matter

If ESF were forced to travel at 350km/h, we wouldn't have the problem of hover podding.

True, but then how would they land? Have small landing strips at the warpgate?

I think that would be pretty cool.

Damage taken, for tanks in PS 2, is as follows (based on ps2calc.com):

Lightning:
type: Light Tank
health: 3000
front: 0.45
side: 0.55
top: 0.55
rear: 1

Vanguard/(Prowler/Mag after slash if different):
type: Tank
health: 4000
front: 0.38 / 0.45
side: 0.45 / 0.5
top: 0.45 / 0.5
rear: 1.2

Going from 1.2 to 1.5 for the rear will kind of be against tank survivability.

My system would be (now in detail):

Vanguard/(other 2 MBTs):
type: Tank
health: 4000
front:
0.38 / 0.45 (for AP shells);
0.19 / 0.225 - 50% less (Other AT weapons- tank HEAT, Deci, AT Lock ons, default Bazooka, AV MANA turret, AT base turret, Tankbuster cannon, stock Liberator 30 mm, Lolpods, Dalton, MAX AT weapons, Lightning's 75 mm, etc);
0 (all other rounds do not touch it);
side:
0.45 / 0.5 (for all of the above);
0.225 / 0.25 (HE tank shells, Zepher, general purpose weapons- ESRLs, Annihilators, Basilisks, ESF default nose guns);
0 (all others)
top:
0.45 / 0.5 (same as currently; no bonus protection against anything);
rear:
1.0 (down from 1.2; also no bonus protection against anything);

From earlier post:
Due to the fact the L will spawn much quicker than the MBTs, it would need less damage resistance- such as 33% less instead of 50% for partially damaging hits, 80% less instead of 100% for hits that don't damage MBTs at all on a given side, and only full frontal immunity to hits that don't damage an MBT from the side.
Then we get the easier to get, but weaker tank as well as the stronger one people have to wait 4x longer per unit to get (not counting the Sundies that go in between the L and MBTs).
I'll swap the 80% decrease modifier to a 75%.

Lightning:
type: Light Tank
health: 3000
front:
0.45 (for AP shells);
0.30 - a 33% penalty (Other AT weapons- tank HEAT, Deci, AT Lock ons, default Bazooka, AV MANA turret, AT base turret, Tankbuster cannon, stock Liberator 30 mm, Lolpods, Dalton, MAX AT weapons, Lightning's 75 mm, etc);
0.11 - a 75% penalty (HE tank shells, Zepher, general purpose weapons- ESRLs, Annihilators, Basilisks, ESF default nose guns);
0 (all others);
side:
0.55 (AT weapons- those that do 0.30 and 0.45 damage frontally);
0.37 (HE tank shells, Zepher, general purpose weapons- ESRLs, Annihilators, Basilisks, ESF default nose guns, stock Liberator 30 mm- those that do 0.1 damage frontally);
0.14 (all other rounds).
top:
0.55
rear:
1

As for upgrades- these should stack to the basic resistance and then get the multiplier of 0.5, 0.67 or 0.25 depending on what projectile/armor combination there is (so a V with frontal armor would go from 38% to 33% for AP rounds; reduced damage projectiles hit with 33%*0.5= 16.5% of their nominal damage).

As for HE shells- a properly played tank (one that points the front towards the enemy) is untouchable by HE rounds using the new system (a Lightning isn't totally immune, but it would take 21 hits to get killed by a Vanguard firing HE at it, assuming no upgraded frontal armor).

Side hits with HE are also far less damaging (stock Prowler/Mag goes down after 13 Vanguard HE shells with the new system, compared 7 currently).

Rear shots with HE are still quite lethal (3 Vanguard shells leave an MBT with 100 HP left and on fire), just like AP kills soft targets with direct hits, keeping the balance between the two.
HEAT falls in the middle against both hard and soft targets, but now differs more from the other two types of ammo as well.

As for rocket pods:
Currently about 45-50% accuracy allows to kill a tank with rear shots with a single salvo, quite low.
I'd aim for some 75% hit rate to kill a tank in one salvo- still doable, but no longer easy or nearly instant.

Here's what appears to be the original source, maybe some Russian speaking military fan can check what type of shell this is:

http://img13.imageshost.ru/img/2012/08/23/image_5035e1a144146.jpg

осколочно-фугасного снаряда = HE-grenade shell if my googletranslate-fu is good enough.

Wow, well you have clearly thought the damage multipliers out very very well to the point I don't think it would be a bad idea to give it a shot. 2 points I wish to clarify on though.

Rocketpods- If the entire tank counts are rear damage when the ESF gets behind it, then the ESF should have to have 100% accuracy to take the tank out , meaning landing an entire full salvo worth of rockets. I highly doubt most pilots aim for the exhaust pipes of the MBT, they are far more likely to aim for the much easier to hit turret, so then if their rockets do go off they'll hit another part of the tank.

On the HE shells. If we made them powerful enough so they could still fight back against armor, wouldn't that still make them a much better choice over HEAT and AP? Before the direct damage buff of 25% on HEAT 60%+ of the TR community ran Prowler HE with devastating results. Perhaps they shouldn't be completely useless, but I think a MBT going up against an AP Lighting should surely lose, and going up a HEAT Lighting would be a long battle which the MBT might lose.