[Suggestion] Cheaper Sunderers

Not sure about you guys, but I feel like battles can only occur in bases, and that outside of the major zergs combat just stalls out. It's gettin old. I'm thinking part of the issue might be the cost of actually creating combat. By that I mean to actually initiate an assault on a base it it absolutely necessary to have one of two things. A sunderer or a platoon gal circling overhead. I was thinking lets make sunderers cheaper. I'd love to see tons of spawns and some more fluid back and forth. I don't want to see an assault that belongs to my team or another fail just because the only guy who dumped 500 vehicle resources lost his sundy. I guess I don't see the downside of more sundies. In smaller battles it allows attackers to actually sustain the combat. In larger battles maybe we'd see some more intense combat outside of the bases as attackers and defenders are inched forward and back. I'd like to see combat in the field not in the base and that can only be sustained by sunderers. I don't think resource cost should deter the want to create combat.

I wouldn't have a problem with this.

I frequently go hunting sundies as a max with dual Falcons by flanking them from a distance and unloading rockets at them. More targets would be more fun.

But on the other side, we don't really need an over abundance of vehicles, sundies included. That's why vehicle costs went up in the first place. And on that note, there is a resource system revamp coming sometime in the future. So hold onto your pants until then.

Make the sundies cheaper and more durable then remove about 50% of the bases on every map. There is just not enough time in transit from a to b to allow a real fight to break out. Additionally getting rid of lolpods or remove ESF hover capability, and have the only air to ground be liberators and aircraft nose guns would help a great deal imho.

Ground forces right now (vehicles and infantry) are subject to anti-ground forces and aircraft looking to simply farm kills, while this should be the Liberators role and to a lesser extent the Galaxy; ESF's should be engaged in getting rid of Libs and Galaxies and not focusing on ground forces as much as they do atm.

This in turn with distance mattering more between bases would create more chances for active battlelines to develop, of course a strong Liberator presence could wipe it out but with m9ore sundies it would give infantry places to set up AA nests, although I feel Bursters are a bit too strong atm and lock-ons effectively create too many denial zones when either or both are used in mass.

In my opinion none of the things I mentioned are going to happen but if you think about the fight from X'roads to Broken Arch to the Tech Plant close by and it's three satellite bases there is simply no space for a fight to develop.

TLR The ops idea is good, but I feel there is much more needed to create open field fights atm.

The problem isn't the cost of Sunderers, its the (no) cost of Infantry AV options that obliterate them and the Tanks escorting them.

A 0 resource AV Mana turret, HA rocket, or 200 resources of C4 or 150 resources of Tank Mines are all it takes to obliterate a 450 and 500 resource vehicle. This of course not even counting the absurdly cheap Air Vehicles that can do the same even better, and to multiple targets.

Sunderers and Galaxies should not really cost resources at all, they should be tied to a timer only. The force multipliers should be resource bound, but have their timers removed and certs refunded. This way the faction that is getting pushed back to their warpgate still can't easily field an entire armor column with air support, but they would be able to keep the fight in play by pulling mobile spawn points. Currently, it's "welp, we're out of resources guys, redeploy to another cont so we can recharge" which is a mechanic that incentivizes leaving good fights to find bad ones.

Ya I just dont want amyone on my faction or the enemy faction to feel like pulling their sunderer or gal isnt worth it. Sunderers and gals = battle. We should encourage them.

Yeah I think cheaper sunderers is something that's needed to happen for a while now. I also think they need to be slightly more agile (better handling, but not faster), and that Sunderer Spawn XP needs to be increased (I'm unconvinced it was a problem at beta values where I think it was 10 per spawn? I mean...there's an XP cap system in place to prevent things from getting out of control, so there's almost no risk to making this change.)

Cooldown would remain the same (although an overall pass on cooldowns might be helpful, especially given how extreme a difference the cert reductions make.)

If your assault is getting nullified by a lost Sundy, it's because the guy driving the Sundy parked it in a risky spot and left it there to be blown up. Even if the placement is correct and he is paying attention to what's happening, sometimes it still gets destroyed and that.....is war.

If I'm going to back a siege with one of my precious racecar Sundies, I'll be an engineer and I will STAY in the driver seat, ready to GTF outta dodge and retreat when things get heated.

I always park in reverse, look for a quick escape route before choosing a spot, etc etc.

Too many guys just dump their magic bus anywhere then step out to join the zerg and leave it unattended.

Driving a Sundy is an assignement you give yourself and it's such a crucial aspect of battle that it's your responsibility to maintain it and close the shop when feces collide with the ventilator.

^^ With that said, I think the price and timers are all correct, people treat them as disposable spawn points instead of cherishing them like they should.

I only get out of the driver seat if I'm 100% sure that things are under control. There is PLENTY of XP to be made maintaining Sundies, especially when equipped with vehicle resupply modules.

No one thinks the sunderer is WORTH it. I agree, if sundereres were plentiful there would be more fighting and people wouldn't spend most of their time hunting sunderers for the insta-win. What if when we fought over a base the most important thing because holdingthe point? That might be fun too? We could always keep flanking the attacker as defense and kill their spawn point so we don't actually have to face them... that is fun too right?

Everything is overpriced since um.... some update that changed the prices.
A flash used to cost 23 ressources!

Flash was 25. It cost 23 if you had the Esamir bonus. And it was GU11, it primarily increased the prices of everything in the mechanized pool.

So the solution is dirt cheap Sundies and a spawn XP bonus boost?

There will be chains of sunderers circling every base. It's already annoying when players switch battlefronts early when they think the battle is lost. Now everyone's gonna run away at the first sign of Sundy spamming.

Er, even with fast transit times, fights right now are super vehicle-dominated and maybe 60-80% of the time you should be in a vehicle. Removing bases to increase transit times would only serve to decrease the already-near-nonexistent value of infantry. (In the rare situations where they do get a fully-indoor fight, overpowered MAXes stomp over them.)

Personally I tend to choose my loadout based on what's most powerful, so I'm interested in seeing this stuff balanced mostly so I can play with a broader variety of toys without feeling like I'm gimping myself.

Suggesting that ESFs shouldn't be able to adequately engage ground forces is ridiculous. They just need to become more specialized. Right now you can take the best A2A (nosegun) and best A2G (rocketpod) weapons in the same loadout, but there should be noticeable drawbacks (which will mean that the best A2A loadout requires you to be bad at A2G, and vice-versa, with a flexible build in between them that functions a bit like the Basilisk.)

The changes that would make this happen:

• Rocketpod damage reduced
  • Maybe Hornets too, though they were noticeably inferior to Rocket Pods last I tried em
• New Nosegun added: Armor Piercing
  • This is the Tank Buster's younger cousin. Great AV damage, but less accurate, more projectile drop, and slower projectile speed than other ESF noseguns.
  • The negative traits should cause this weapon to underperform in A2A fights.

Taken together, this creates an A2G loadout that has about the same power against ground targets as the current loadout. It also balances your loadout a bit more, since the current A2G loadout is like 85% of your damage from rockets, 15% from nosegun, while this loadout would probably net out closer to 50/50. In fact this is really the most important trait of these changes, since it means that even if you choose the best A2G nosegun or secondary and pair it up with the best A2A nosegun or secondary, you'll never be as effective against either target as an A2G+A2G or A2A+A2A player.
Players can still take nosegun+rocketpod with these changes, and the advantage of that loadout will be its flexibility, but it won't be as good against ground as the A2G loadout and it won't be as good against air as the A2A loadout.
And lastly, the A2A loadout basically already exists (nosegun+coyote). Although I could definitely see them tweaking this side of the equation the same way as I suggested tweaking the other end. (By making one of the noseguns shoot faster, with less drop, and faster projectiles, but do worse damage against armored targets.)

wat

When there are no sunderers it is not because of resource cost, people simply just don't care. Tons of people have their resource pools full but never make use of them. Even if they cost 0 resources, people will just stare at the map until a sunderer deploys, I'm dead serious.
Having the only sunderer at a battle does feel empowering. At any time I could simply undeploy and the battle would be lost. Now that's real power

Sunderers are boring, slow, huge targets and are primaried by absolutely everything on the battlefield. None of their weapons are very interesting, or even very effective.. If there was an IFV (think tall lightning tank with a small autocannon) that could seat 4-6 and spawn squadmates (maybe only when stopped or deployed), I'd pull that all the time.

It seems the design is to limit the attackers abilities by limiting deployment of Sundies due to: 1. the new no-deploy zone around bases that is in place by the base itself. [ why cant you deploy anywhere?, it's a definate advantage to deploy right next to the A point building.] and 2. the new cirlcle of no deploy zone because another Sundie is already deployed in the 300 foot? radius to your Sundie. Both of these limit the attackers position. Usually the Sundy that survives will be the one with the swarm of tanks or even a couple tanks nearby and the one off a long ways BECAUSE of the no deploy zone will be C4'd or rocket launchered or Engi tank mined and even tho I am sitting in the gunners chair with thermal sights on a Bull Dog i cant hit the hide and seek HA's who are killing me, and even tho i have proxy radar i cant see the LA's in time to kill them. I also have night vision on my WALKER to take out the endless ESFs that come to rocket pod me, but when more than one or even a lone LIB comes I cant do anything to stop it.
Imagine if you didn't have the no deploy zones and you had the ability to find a good protected positon and had 5 Sundys parked around the base. The action would continue on regardless of 1 or 2 Sundys getting destroyed, oh my....that wont do, lets limit the attackers. Of course Sony in it's wisdom also limited the deffenders. Often your base is under attack and you cant re-deploy to your own base that is under attack, WTF? Or even better you are at the base and have been there for 3 lives so far and hit Spawn and without choosing another base magically show up at some other base because the Game decided where to put you. That feature is also new and very irritating to me. If i want to continue fighting at the base i'm at, and i hit respawn I should not be sent to some base that the game decides is more important.

Winning bases revolves around controlling sunderer placement (vehicle-dominated fighting) and then winning the indoor battle (MAX-dominated fighting), so yeah infantry are fodder everywhere. At least if MAXes weren't overpowered infantry would be more valuable indoors, but they don't even have that (hence why you see all organized matches be very MAX-heavy indoors, because all the smart players understand they're overpowered.)

^that's a lot of max hate for a thread titled "Cheaper Sunderers" And no Maxes are not op, learn to use conc grenades.