Will the resource revamp be vehicle Nirvana?

It's just around the corner, at least according to the lying Roadmap. Go peruse: https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/july-resource-revamp.170991/

What I'm really hoping for is vehicles becoming truly disposable. Right now they live in a weird quasi-state where they are expensive, on long timers and can be very fragile as you'd expect from a 'power-up' style force multiplier. On the other hand, the are infinitely rearmable/repairable as you'd expect from a system where they are a playstyle. With the roadmap guidance that you can expect a resource refill in roughly 10 min though. This means that vehicles should be nearly chainable. Just imagine everybody being able to pull whatever vehicle they want, whenever they want.

You want vehicle battles between bases? Expect them! Why bother walking? Even if it's a 3 min cap, by the time it's done you'll have resources for another Harasser/Lightning. If everybody's running around in Lightning 'taxis' you can bet there are going to be more than a couple of giant tank scrums. I can only hope this is why they're tightening up AP/HE in the tanks: They know that very soon the surface of Auraxis will be covered in a thin layer of tank carcasses.

Flight more your thing? Imagine the skies with infinite ESFs. Huge clusters of cannons and missiles and explosions, lighting the sky as if a second sun. Skygod ganked you 300m from the flight pad? Just get in another ESF with 11 of your closest squadmates and explain the joys of Coyotes. I guarantee your Lib tail gunner will have something to shoot at all day long.

Get tired of one style or the other? Ground-pound for a few minutes: A new set of wheels is a base cap's wait away. Always wanted to tool around in a MAX but knew that you could expect to live for about 30 seconds before C4 fairies put you back in the spawn room? Give new meaning to ground pound with the ability to set up shop in your comfy new suit for good.

Quiver in anticipation my fellow Auraxians. Soon we shall shake the earth under the might of our treads*, and choke the skies with the shining jets of our supremacy.**


*Magriders are SOL.

**Supremacy not guaranteed: It's the roadmap. The roadmap lies.

The strength of infantry is in their flexibility, small profile, and free spawning.

Without the PS1 AMS infantry are extremely inflexible as their, fixed immovable and marked on the enemies map to exact precision, spawn point is easily camped.

While I rarely am ever put on a timer, and not very often out of resources, so I don't think this will change much for vehicles for me, I can't wait to get my 12,000 certs back from acquisition timers. That's gonna be great. I actually think this will have a bigger impact for maxes then for long term vehicle users. As you say though, we may see a lot more people pull disposable vehicles, which in turn will get left outside of bases, which I in turn will farm with my lockdown Prowler. Yay certs!

Not directly, but there are a lot of noobs/non-members who do run out of those on a regular basis. If they actually figure out that they can start pulling vehicles whenever they want instead of the self-defeating "I could, but I'll be the only one. I'll get ganked and be on a 15 min timer. Might as well snipe from the spawn", they you will see the glory of this fully operational Death St... vehicle spawn terminal.

I think there will be less vehicles actually. There will be no more "My x resource is full, why the hell not?" Instead you'd be continuously eating into it when using grenades and the suchlike, reducing the people who want to waste it on an expensive taxi.

Indeed. Less tankers pulling MAXes should they have downtime. Less LAs (or really, people in general) pulling ESFs for lulz. I don't think I'd trade three flashes or C4s for my lightning, considering how poorly I do with it. I don't even see myself using frag grenades much anymore.

It'll definitely encourage people to focus on their chosen playstyle more, which may or may not benefit the tankers.

IMO The problem with res is that the balance is off because of the subscriber bonus.

No sub = out of resource very quickly
Sub = swimming in a sea of res you don't even know how to spend it anymore

A subbed user doesn't have to give a damn about losing his tank or max because he can just pull another one infinitely and I don't think that's very fair.

Dedicated tank/ESF drivers will finally get their wish of being a class, while Death Frisbee chuckers and C4 fairies won't be able to stock up on explosives via five minutes on Amerish and then come back to nuke tanks on Indar. Warpgate idling will probably double.

Overall a great idea but some Some of the things they want to do are just Stupid and will make the game not fun. You have to think about how you want to use resources right now and can plan ahead. You can switch from infantry - tank - air as needed. In the future they appears to be a 10min change tank - air at least.

Marked stupid ideas in red.

Personal Resource (Nanites)

• Single resources automatically spent when doing an activity that has a resource cost.
• Supplied automatically to the player by a facility/region.
• Vehicles and MAX will reserve a portion of the player’s max resources while active. (definitely reduce #s as you have to regain resources after losing the vehicle/max. Can't regain resources while using it even to use for other purposes.-infantry)
• In ideal conditions, empty to full in 10 minutes.

System Overview

• This section is a summary of the major features of the system.
• Personal Resource Unification (Nanites)
• Single resource for all personal resource consumption.
• Removal of inventory so all resource activities are pay-on-use. (absurd if you can't plan ahead, you will constantly have to monitor resources as you switch play styles, i don't need them auto resupplying my load out i am using).
• Removal of acquisition timers.
• Removal of XP generating resources.
• Recalibration of resource income and costs of all resource-consuming activities.
• Base income rate is assumed to be 60 resources per minute, so resource costs translate directly into a time estimate.
• Vehicle maintenance costs, which reduce income and maximum reserves while vehicles are active. (ok i like this but vehicle people will not and it if couples with the reserves resources your screwed).

Will have to wait and see how they implement, but i see far more complaints from the vast majority in the future. SOE has a bad reputation of doing everything wrong when making changes.

For everyone excited about getting certs back, If the 200 cert advanced laser sights are any indication, I would be amazed if they didn't change the timer reductions into an equally expensive line of cost reductions.

And their plans are 10 minute zero to full under ideal circumstances, and they also said they were going to start out at an initial resource gain at something like 70% of the ideal best cast until phase2.

That's probably going to be the biggest mental hurdle to overcome. Right now it can take almost an hour to get resources for another tank (for non-members anyway), so losing one can be a very big deal even without taking timers into account. But if you knew that you'd have the resources for another one is less than 3 minutes? Even if you're trying to be a dedicated tanker, swapping over to an ESF should be no more than a couple minutes away.

Worth taking those concerns to the Roadmap thread. It probably won't do anything at this point, but they did change the ES pistols based on feedback.

But I think most of those points are going to come down to what the balance is between cap/cost/reserve. For instance, if we assumed that pulling an ESF would still take 1/3rd of your cap then you should be able to pull one every three minutes or so. The remainder gives you a buffer for having to pull them back to back after a gank, but as long as your average is only every three minutes then you're golden. And of course if you want to switch to another vehicle, you've got the resources to do it. If you blew all your resources on C4, you only need to wait a few minutes and you'll have enough to fly again.

I'm torn on what the dedicated vehicle players will think.

Tankers will probably like it because they can actually get fights, but if this turns out like I hope it will most of our current SkyGods will probably quit. There was a pilot focused podcast ("Under the Radar" I believe it was called) linked on the forums a few months back talking about this very thing. The hosts had been in a Server Smash and were talking about the air game, and while they found having a well populated sky novel it was too chaotic and full of A2AM for their tastes. There were similar complaints on reddit about a recent Smash where they turned vehicle costs off completely so they sky was always full.

Now, I wouldn't actually care if the current crop of Sky Knights were to all leave. But I know the forums will be full of tears as they come to realize the Coyote zergs can't be put down anymore.

I'm excited for the resource revamp, I really hope it will force people to specialize.

I hope so, the air game and dog fighting seems to have slowed down greatly. I can only assume it is because of lack of resources and the fact that Air seems to over use the OP coyotes

If I can have a net gain of resources in a vehicle, I'll be fine. If being in a vehicle lowers my resources no matter what, no thank you.

The revamp is supposed to limit vehicles. You can now only pull 1 vehicle every 10 minutes as opposed to right now where you can endless cycle through Max/tank/esf and never play infantry at all.

Also, when you're in a vehicle the resource income is reduced. Which I hope forces people to play infantry for at least 5 minutes before jumping in another vehicle.

The new resource system will be the opposite of what you said. With a shared pool and no cooldowns, people will be much more careful on what they spend it on and will be far more likely to get resources starved, especially if they do it as they say they will and make bases matter much more in terms of resource lines.

It sounds very promising for creating of more endgame content.

What i do not understand is how this will work for consumables in combination with suit slots that allow the carrying of more stuff ( Mines / C4 / Grenades. )

If it is deducted on use, does it mean you can for example, keep laying mines until you hit the hard limit of 4 active mines, WITHOUT needing extra pockets, as long as you have enough resources? Will the extra - carrying capacity cert lines be removed?

Or does it mean you can lay as many as your extra pockets allow, but only if you have the resources on hand that very moment, meaning there are now 2 hard limits, carrying capacity AND the resources you have the very moment you want to use things?


The description sound like the second interpretation is what will happen. The first one would allow consumeable spam that would not be good for the game. But the second interpretation also is a direct nerf to extra carrying capacity loadouts. You have extra pockets, but you may find them empty. It is a bit like in those cartoons where a guy jumps out of a plane to find that the backpack does not hold a parachute but something else. There needs to be a resource counter on screen all the time for such a system to work. And the ammo counter for consumables needs to show how many you can actually really use that very moment, not the potential number.

And how will restocking / resupplying work? No more stacks of consumables apparently. But how exactly does resupplying work then? Say i have 4 mine slots, and only resources for 2 when i leave the spawn. A few minutes in the field, i have resources for 3. A few minutes more, resources for 4. I place all 4 mines, and am back to resources for none. The mines detonate all. I do not go back to an equipment terminal. Will my 4 mines refill in the field / be placeable again once i have the resources? Do i have to resupply at a terminal after having the resources back? Or before i have them back? Does resupplying, when i do not have any resources, do anything?


I am really confused about this, and imho, paying for the consumables as i pull them, just as a Max / Vehicle costs on pull, makes more sense, as long as i get the resources back on death if i did not use the consumables. That way, i know exactly how many Mines / C4 / Grenades i have in my pockets, ready to use.

That is the wrinkle that I think could make or break the whole thing.

It looks like the idea they're going for is that a base can be 'starved'. So any fight on a lattice link is a mutual death race where each side tries to be the last one that can still draw tanks. I think it's awesome if the idea makes it so every base is covered by a crunchy mobile armor exterior that needs to be cracked before you can get to the chewy interior. I wonder though what that means for when the outer defences are actually breached. Can we expect that bases will be effectively 'unpowered' at that point, denying the defenders any MAX/mines/grenades for the interior defence?

I don't see how that could possibly be true. Right now a subscriber has a large flow of resources, but most players are dealing with the double whammy of long timers and low resource flow. I've been on continents where getting the 250 air resources for a new ESF takes 45+ minutes. If you're already used to pulling new vehicles when you want then there's probably no difference. For those of us who are looking at only being able to pull a couple of ESFs and a tank every hour? That 10 minute refill is looking pretty good.

Even at 70% average (which would mean a roughly 15 min wait for a complete restock), that's still easily double the rate we get now. I don't spend a lot of time on continents that my faction is dominating, so I'm usually looking at ~100-130/5 min. With that income rate in a single hour I could pull 6 ESFs and 3 Tanks. Under the new system (admittedly assuming cost:cap ratio is unchanged, and handwaving the average income and whatever income reduction being in a vehicle gives) I'd get 12-18 ESFs, 8-12 MBTs or any combination thereof.

The possibility is there for huge vehicle fights. I'm going to hope my interpretation of the roadmap* is correct.

*roadmap is still a liar.

There are people who think the current vehicles aren't disposable? I mean they're disposable tools with real utility to them and you'd be a fool to completely ignore that utility, but if you ditch a vehicle somewhere you're not exactly going to be hurting for it unless your empire has been playing the strategic game badly.

Honestly you can't really post this without knowing the costs for things. The costs could be prohibitively high to the point where now using your ESF means you can't immediately pull a tank afterwards. Unless more details were released that I'm not aware of, we can't really say which side of the spectrum it'll end up, or somewhere in the middle.

Have you seen the sort of ridiculous garbage that gets posted here?

But you're right. They might be using this as a way to eliminate vehicles entirely by making them so expensive that even an occasional grenade will put you below what you need to pull a Lightning. This sort of quote from the roadmap* gives me hope though:

It'll never be exactly what I want, as I'd rather just have the vehicles be free. The revamp I'll hold out some hope for.

*lying, lying roadmap