[Grovel] Please do not add yet another role to the Sunderer.

Earlier today on Reddit, Malorne said that rather than creating another vehicle to act as a resource harvester (such as the ANT from PS1) the Sunderer was going to be given yet another module that would allow it to perform harvesting duties.

Let's examine the Sunderer's current roles, shall we?

• Advanced Mobile Station
• Mobile Vehicle Repair (Air/Ground)
• Mobile Vehicle Ammunition Supply (Air/Ground)
• Mine Sweeper (Mine Guard)
• Battle Bus (Blockade Armor + Weapons)
  • Anti-Air
  • Anti-Infantry
  • Gate Crasher
  • Mobile Infantry Bunker (NOT YET RELEASED)

I think we can all agree that the last thing the Sunderer needs is yet another damn role when compared to every other vehicle in the game. In place of the super tough and defensible Sunderer, we need a weaker, moderately quick, and defenseless one-man vehicle to do our resource harvesting. I don't care if we call it the ANT, the ART (Advanced Resource Transport), or a Chevrolet El Camino as long as it isn't yet another goddamn Sunderer module.

I envision this vehicle having the following roles and modules:

Roles

• Harvesting/Transporting unclaimed resources.
• Stealing/Transporting claimed resources.

These abilities work while the vehicle is deployed (B). While the vehicle is deployed, it moves at half its top speed while a cloud of nanites gobbles up nearby resource nodes or leeches a resource vat (or however/wherever bases store resources).

Modules

• Defensive Modules
  • Composite Armor
  • Mine Guard
  • Nanite Auto Repair
  • Vehicle Stealth
• Performance Modules
  • Surger Chassis
  • Racer Chassis
• Utility
  • IR Smoke
  • Wraith Cloaking Device
    • Allows the vehicle to cloak temporarily if the driver is an Infiltrator; same as Flash. Cannot be used while harvesting.
  • Advanced Mineral Extraction
    • Allows the vehicle to harvest/steal resources faster if the driver is an Engineer.

Teamplay and Secondary Objectives
In order to encourage team play it is a must that this vehicle remain weaponless. This is going to be the logistics portion of the game and each faction must be responsible for coordinating and maintaining their supply lines. In order to prod players towards working together to defend their supply lines, the vehicle must remain weaponless.

The secondary motivator must be rewards. Everyone loves a carrot on a stick. I implore you (SOE) to provide extremely generous XP rewards for escorting ANT/ART/El Caminos during their duties. XP rewards must be at least on par with the average amount of kill XP that could be acquired during the duration of the resource vehicle's round trip for both the escort crew and the driver. Any less and people will feel that it is not worth their time or energy to do this.

Closing Argument

higby/malorne pls

Thanks for your time.

Though, to be fair...

If you make another vehicle to take on the role of resource duty, you gotta buy all those other things for it, too. At least if it IS a sunderer again, you get to not have to buy all the frame and weapons and such again.

i totally agree
its like they have a phobia of adding more vehicles into the game

That's actually part of the point of adding a new vehicle with different modules. We'll have something more to work for and in the future they could expand this vehicle with another role or two that aren't appropriate for combat vehicles or other vehicles over-saturated with roles such as the Sunderer.

After all the hate the Harasser got, can you blame them?

I don't even want to try imagining how long it took them to put the original assets into the game in the first place, let alone all the tweaks they made after they released it up to this point. (and they're probably still nowhere near done with it.)

The Harasser gets its deserved hate because it is a 3 man Tank that drives faster than a lightning and does comparable damage to 1/2 MBT's.

The Harasser was ill concieved and was given tank secondaries. On tanks, these weapons are fairly balanced between the factions. On a very fast, agile and durable machine, they are very...imbalanced. SOE doesnt seem to really sit down and think about the ripple effect of the things they add to the game. We wanted buggies; they gave us one. Kinda like an evil genie who grants you your wishes, but makes sure you regret them in the end

Instead of adding a whole new vehicle to the game, they routinely add unique trees and options to vehicles that already exist. in PS1 there were lots of variant vehicles, in PS2, there are fewer vehicles, but your certs and weapon choices inherently alter what they can do.

With the suggestion of adding things like ammo, repair and spawn to a galaxy, the Sunderer could potentially see a lot less use - Think about it, a repair/ammo galaxy is by far superior to a sunderer, why would you pull a sunderer when you can use a galaxy, which has more armour, and health, and can fly,a nd relocate quickly, and get in and out to resupply places quickly when a sunderer cant - Adding a new role to the sunderer doesn't seem like a big deal at all..

I'd also like to refute your list a little, mostly because its very rare to see sunderers in a specific ammo/repair role, even if there are a lot of them, and you also forgot the Gate Diffuser. To me, the Sunderer roles look like this

• Spawn (AMS)
• Resupply (Repair/Ammo)
• Battle Bus (Blockage/Mineguard/Gate Diffuser)

Just because there are lots of options, doesn't mean each is its own role, all you would do is add in a new utility role with an ANT like system. Why would they go through all the effort of making a while new vehicle with art assets and animations and mechanics, just to fill a role that the Sunderer is perfectly capable of filling AND one they have described as needing a large, heavy vehicle to do. When they describe the sort of vehicle they would want for this, they always end up describing the sunderer anyway.

Adding more vehicles is good (empire specific light assault vehicle please) but adding new vehicles when you DON'T need to is just silly and make-work for no reason.

So long as adding the ANT (or whatever) module to the sunderer has some cool visual effect, whats the big deal? Why do you WANT a whole new vehicle which can only do one thing when you are using your Sunderer for things anyway?

I would, however, like some sort of cosmetic option to make the sunderers feel more empire specific.

One thing to note. While vehicles that have branching roles, such as the sundy, do allow you to conserve certs, what it also does is limit you via the cooldown timer. Granted, those are likely to be removed when the resource revamp comes out.

Largely, I see no real issue with the sundy being an ANT. Though it would be equally nice if each faction got a specific version of it.

Well its not like they doing a bang up job on the ground vehicle physics. They may be more afraid of forumside crying about how it can't climb over that 1 foot high rock and then explodes when you try.

I disagree with your list as I feel it is too consolidated and ignores the true implications of load-out switching.

I consider each "Battle Bus" variant to be it's own role, just as MAXes switch out between AA/AI/AV roles and other classes do similar role switching with different load-out configurations. An anti-air and ammunition dispenser Sunderer is a vital support role for any organized armor column (tanks are weak against airborne prey and ammo is invaluable for a column) just as a gate crasher Sunderer can turn the tables and end a long stalemate. These are two very different roles, as are mine sweeper Sunderers or anti-infantry blockade armor Sunderers.

I have several reasons for wanting new vehicles, from getting my money's worth (I'm a big financial supporter of this game) by having new vehicles added into the game to (most importantly) game balance.

A Sunderer is a very durable vehicle with the capability of defending itself against small groups of infantry (unless it's snuck up on by a C4 faerie/kamikaze engineer with mines or your gunners suck). I do not feel that it is appropriate for such a durable and already versatile vehicle to be given yet another role that by all rights should fall to a vulnerable vehicle that encourages team-play and coordinated escort efforts rather than a durable vehicle with its own deadly arsenal of built-in defenses.

The ANT/ART/El Camino vehicle is necessary because there is not currently a sufficiently vulnerable vehicle in the game that is also moderately quick (in between MBT and Lightnings) while also being unarmed. If there were I wouldn't be against adding this role to that vehicle, but nothing in the game currently fills this niche.

To your unrelated cosmetic point, it would be pretty rad if all of the common pool NS vehicles got a bit of faction-specific aesthetic love that didn't involve the cash shop. It'd be nice if they painted the damn doors on the back of Sunderers to match the vehicle camo as well.

They screwed up when they added empire specific weapons to Harassers. It was fine before that.

The ANT in PS1 was a vulnerable and defenseless vehicle that needed to be escorted and defended. Sunderers are heavily armored, well-armed vehicles with a lot of health that can do fairly well on their lonesome and with the appropriate escort are extremely difficult to take out. I don't believe that this important logistical role should fall to a well-armored and well-armed vehicle.

To your resource point, the ANT/ART/El Camino is by definition a utility vehicle and should be much lower in priced than the Sunderer or other combat-ready vehicles. This is another reason why it should be a separate vehicle rather than another module for the already versatile Sunderer.

I agree that an ANT-like vehicle would be a positive addition to Planetside2.

This is true, though I sincerely doubt that with the AV options in this game, a target as big as a sundy yet weaker will survive. Like, at all.

You can escort it all you want, but you can't block every AV turret, striker lock on, lancer spam, C4 fairy, mine jihadist, or angry max.

It doesn't need to be as large as a Sunderer. I was imagining something more Harasser-sized, except slower due to the rest of the vehicle being a resource storage tank.

Dear Devs,

Reddit is not your forums.

Sincerely,
Everyone who watches the damn forums to see what's up

So where is my dedicated Ammo+Repair armor column support vehicle?

I don't care what they do, just make gate diffuser useful again.

I like the idea of adding anything to make battles more complex. I WANT more things to have to worry about, it makes it more fun.

Ideally there should be more viable Objectives than any one squad can handle. At the moment it's "Kill their sundy" or "defend the point" with some "Get/defend the gens" sprinkled around. More things to kill/defend is very welcome!