What this game should have been: - Bases are infantry only fights - Getting to bases involve going through terrain where vehicles rule the roost - Fighting is relatively evenly split between vehicular combat outside bases and infantry combat inside them - Air is split between anti-ground bombers that can wreck the field in short burst bombing runs but are extremely vulnerable to fast anti-air fighters What this game is: -It's really easy to bypass terrain and drop your squad/platoon anywhere on the map near instantly -90% of the fights take place inside bases or just near bases. Very rare to get big open field fights between bases - Bases were poorly designed, allowing vehicles to farm infantry all day. Then some bases (not all) were improved, and infantry got powerful AV toys, and now there's no real point to vehicles except farming. They don't make an impact on the map. - Air is split between flying tanks with massive ammo reserves that can't really be balanced (if AA is weak, liberators farm everything all day, but when AA is strong liberators can never stay on the field for long); and the fighters are better against ground than they are against liberators (a competent lib crew can beat an ESF easy) How could the devs go about fixing this? Is it even fixable at this point?
"Should have been" based on what? 1-Bases are infantry fights only , any time you see an MBTs it's rather a siege and these MBTs would be destroyed in the following 5mins. 2-Getting to bases , people still use flashes ,sundies , Harassers and even pull out armor. 3-Fighting is already splitup equally , it's the mentality that denies the defenders from pulling armor and fighting off the attackers(vice versa) 4-Libs and with the reverse-maneuver people with fuelpods have a bit of advantage over lolpodders.
The continents (or to be more specific: the bases) need a (more or less) complete rework. What I think how bases should be designed: -They should only have a few entrances and as long as the enemy doesn't has the territory around the base is usually only able to attack from one side. -Bases should have more turrets, especially more against infantry, so the outside fight needs vehicles to attack turrets and cover infantry. -Bases should have a radius in which no Sunderer can be deployed. No more Sunderer parking next to the walls. People will need to think about what they do, because if you die you have to walk back to the base against. This will also give Sunderers a new role as transports as close to the enemy base as possible (the way from the parked sunderer to the frontline). -Because battles in bases usually (will) have a clear frontline (if the changes work as I want them to work) most defenders are defending that frontline. This makes Galaxydrops much more useful because you can land behind enemy lines and do a lot of damage to the defending forces and sabotage generators. -Droppods should be reworked. No more droppodding to the squad leader and no more droppodding with the instant action (instead instant action uses Sunderers and base spawns). The only way to use a droppod are beacons. But the radius in which a drop pod can land has to be drastically reduced. Plus you shouldn't be able to place beacon everywhere you want. Maybe show a radius around the spawn beacon: drop pods will only be able to land in this radius, plus this radius has to be flat terrain (more or less). -Tanks should be more expensive / have more preconditions to pull. Tanks shouldn't be used in as high numbers as now but more frequently. Currently we see some fights in which noone is pulling a tank, and some fights in which you see noone without a tank and it's impossible to move forward because really everyone is sitting in a tank.
-Redesign bases...we all know this one. Include automated turrets (which can be overridden by players), motion sensors, more hackable points, more interactables. -All vehicles require crews, ESF and Flash are exempt, due to limitations. No more one-man powerups. -More cover between bases (woods, trenches, etc) so infantry can hide. Important to note that most areas would remain open, but some areas would be ambush havens requiring infantry to clear through or risk annihilation. -Huge buffs to vehicles, but tanks/ESFs/Libs can only be repaired fully at facilities/towers. (Not Gals/Sundies/Flashes, these are low-tech nanites and require less specialised nanite repair...best fluff I have right now. Jury is still out on Harassers.) Battlefield repairs will only be able to repair a percentage of damage meaning after a bad encounter, a driver must retreat to fully repair, making lines important to keep secure. -Dumbfire missile velocity buff, lockon nerfs pending the upcoming lockon changes. AV turrets should be less of an issue due to enhanced armor survivability. -Muzzle velocity buffs on all Infantry weapons, slight velocity buffs for AP rounds and possibly HEAT rounds. Positioning and suppression are now a bigger deal. -Remove redeploy except to WG, remove Instant Action, Squad Deploy puts you on the ground with your squad. Only Squad Beacons will use drop pods. Gals/transport sundies are now essential. -Remove all intel from non-friendly territory (enemy numbers, etc) so scouting becomes important. From here I'd watch how this affected the game and adjust accordingly. Could this be implemented? Yeah? I guess? There may be some performance limitations, but I suspect the reason we don't see a lot of this stuff already is marketing. This game is F2P, gotta cater to that ADD audience.
I challenge your definition of good combined arms game. a game in which vehicles are mostly irrelevant, is at best a poor combined arms game. By definition for it to be a combined arms game, you cannot segregate the game into 'world of tanks' on the road to the base, then 'infantry only' inside. This is not a defense of things as they are.
The perfect combined arms game: Take Arma3, streamline it a bit, add various PS2 specific art and game design as required. Profit. Arma3's game design/balance is perfect. Because there is none. There is no "balance" for weapons because they are modeled on the real thing, as realistically as possible. Everything works as you'd expect it to. Everything is consistent. Nobody thinks "OMG, that ATGM is OP!" How to streamline: no peeking, no prone. No multi-stance. No stamina. No bleeding out etc. Simplified damage model, simplified physics model (still keeping Arma3's flight model however, just reduced fidelity to reduce CPU load). Add in PS2 art (this is probably the easiest part) Add in PS2 game design: terrain design, base design, lattice, player classes, abilities, implants etc. Inventory/loadout revised to have a combination of total maximum volume of all items carried and total mass carried. Carry too many large items, they all won't fit. Carry lots of small, high mass items (grenades for example), they'll be so heavy that they'll slow you down and/or reach your maximum carrying weight. This design keeps players from going too far in either direction. Every vehicle/vehicle role redesigned to be more focused/streamlined: Liberators: ground attack aircraft. Loses the tail gun, gains more direct fire options (rocket pods, laser guided bombs) ESFs: air to air *fighters*. Still able to strafe ground targets, no more LOLPODs. While still as effective as ever vs. ground targets with their nose guns, Liberators are much more effective for air to ground attacks. ESFs primary role is killing Liberators and Galaxies. MBTs are big, powerful and hard to kill. They're also rare. Like 700 resources each, given the existing resource scheme as context. ESRLs are rare too. Each missile costs 150 resources per use. (again, speaking in current resource terms). 5 missiles destroy a tank, 2 if they hit the rear armor. Anything smaller than a dedicated AV ESRL or a main tank gun with AP ammo simply doesn't damage MBTs at all. Zero. MBTs will shrug off HE rounds with no effect. HEAT are marginally effective. Infantry are there to combat other infantry. 99% anti-infantry focused. Vehicles are used as the primary tool to remove vehicles from the battlefield. AV weaponry is rare and hard to come by (with respect to resource costs) for typical infantry. Any infantry with an ESRL has to give up his primary weapon to carry an ESRL and is only allowed a pistol or PDW/SMG. Speaking of which, armor/shield behave differently. Both armor and shield have minimum protection ratings. If the incoming round does the same damage or less than the minimum protection rating, then the round doesn't penetrate and does zero damage. Example: target's shield has a MPR of 80. The incoming round does 78 damage on impact due to distance travelled. The round does zero damage to the player and doesn't even deplete the shield. This simulates armor/shields being able to simply deflect any incoming round below a particular power factor. Anything above the MPR does the full amount of damage to the shield and/or armor until the shields/armor HP are gone. When a player has 0 shields and 0 armor left, he's dead with the next round. Anyway, waaay too much detail for such a simple question. The more real the better, but keep it streamlined for ease of use. The end.
Commander mode. Allow platoon leader to micromanage vehicles and infantry by giving him RTS style interface. Select unit or group of units and right click on map(actual RTS style map, not the minimap). Player playing that unit receives that order as a personal waypoint and knows where exactly he is supposed to go. Real problem with combined arms lies in troop coordination, not weapon balance. If we could get commander with strategic view of the battlefield to micromanage his troops then that would promote combined arms more than anything else.
Not sure why OP suggest how to build a good combined game with a long list of suggestions that mostly removes combined arms features..... (shakes head). -- Bingo. And even platoon leaders have better ability to post missions would help a lot. I imagine a game where platoon leaders can cert into a range of missions to offer, each offer lasting a time amount that appears on maps and on a separate tab both outside their platoon. The platoon leader offers a transport mission from the warp gate to some output. Picture a dedicated galaxy squad leader who's already made his unit available for transport--he accepts the mission and is automatically attached via game channel with that platoon both in voice via "1" and as a that squad leader being visible on the platoon's organization screen. The gal drivers can see the squad and plt objectives and complete the mission. The platoon leader says thx and hits the MC button, effectively freeing his mission slot and detaching the galaxy squad and freeing up the squad leader's request for mission slot. The same could be done for ground support airstrikes(ie., A2G), combat air patrols (ie.,A2A), ground transport, armored support etc. -- In addition add in more MMO definition to players--so if a reaver pilot wants to emphasis his play style, he can trade infantry resources, say a max of 500, for a highest limit on aircraft, say 1000. (sadly the devs seem to want to go in the opposite direction)--even if those were engineer subclasses (tanker, pilot etc). A robust ingame coordination that magnifies the rock-paper-scissors aspects of the game, and allows more MMO customization is whats really needed to build a good combined arms game. -- And I hope PS2 comes to realize that combined arms, not the large battles was the really unique and fun aspect of PS2.
