The Resource Revamp. What we need, what we want, and what we expect.

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Vehicles.

Basically, the game is suffering. Vehicles have been nerfed into oblivion, the only real tactic is piling as many as you can into the point, and infantry is the do it all class of choice.

But it doesn't have to be. The resource revamp is coming, and we need to get on the table what we should ask the devs. We've been demanding 'meta' and consequence for ages. Let's sit down and define what we want. Here are some starters that need be done. The most important part is fixing vehicles and their role in the game.

It needs to be established, and I cannot overstate: VEHICLES FARM INFANTRY BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO DO. Hunting sunderers is limited. Once you pop the sundy, you're done. The recent vehicle changes have bolstered the vehicle population, thus allowing more vehicular conflict, but the damage is far and done. They've been nerfed hard, and infantry do their job better in most circumstances. They're glorified taxis. How do we fix this?

The concept of farming as it is in Planetside needs to die. A horrible death, please. Ask any dedicated tank driver. We don't hunt infantry for the sake it. We're looking for the HE tanks, the sundy spawns, their armor support. That's what we want. We don't want to shoot at sometimes helpless, most of the time deadly infantry. We do it to protect ourselves, but that isn't the point.

Cut XP earned by killing infantry while in any vehicle in half. Bolster all vehicle kills save the flash by an additional 50 XP. Add vehicle kills as a valid kill stat. Remove any death by a vehicle from your death stat. Kill it in the API, too, if possible. Same with kills. Tank farmers K/D doesn't go up, and they get crap certs. They'll flock to something else, leaving the people who actually want to play tanks without spamming to do so. Tanks then can be buffed back up to be fearsome instead of the weak as piss strength they have now.

Then you have a small reward for self defense, farmers need to work twice as hard, and a kill on their vehicle is as valid as the infantryman inside. If need be, the XP for infantry kills can be reduced further. We don't want tanks to shoot at infantry because it's the most profitable way to gain certs. We want them to hunt other vehicles.

You might then ask what the point of vehicles may be. Give vehicles secondary objectives. In warfare, tanks don't kill soldiers, they destroy infrastructure. This is infeasible in Planetside, naturally, but what isn't? Installations. Large HP things that are like turrets. There are few of them, so there isn't a doors issue. They have a lot of HP so tanks are the primary killers of them.

Com stations that, while up, give a second off spawns for defenders. Kill that. Is good.

Ammo towers? Wreck 'em to slow down resupplies. Air pads, too.

Return dome shields and place warpgate feet as their generators. The dome shields prevent attacker's airpower from hurting the base. Defender's air power has advantage of friendly area for repair. Enemy armor destroys them to eliminate that advantage. You want air superiority to protect your tanks or kill theirs trying to take down your domes. TACTICS. Combined arms. Depth. Also would help against spam.


The ANT needs to be implemented. Siege tactics. Protect your ANT runners, kill theirs. More stuff for tanks to do. Less infantry farm. This is also good.

Of note, however, is that ANT runs need to be carefully tuned. This is a faster paced game, and doing what amounts to gopher work is boring. Missions might be of assistance here, with ANT runners getting a 'defend me' mission and opposing empires being alerted that one is making an attempt and to find it. A cat/mouse dynamic is interesting. Trucking 5 kilometers because someone has to do it is not.

In that vein, give harassers ANT modules to attach to their backs. Their supply will naturally be lower. They can be the frontline siege breakers. You can also grant them the opposite side of the coin: ANT bombs. Not in the old Planetside explody sort, but one that neutralizes an enemy supply of them. Sunderers are too tanky and babysitting the ANT nodule with enough firepower to stop delivery is boring, but harassers are fragile enough that their risk matches the reward of sapping away precious nanite supplies. More tactics, more roles, more depth.

As for air, their role would be recon, armor elimination, and maintaining that protection. Galaxies maintain their current roles and keeping them alive to slip through dome shields would be critical.

In summary, you absolutely have to give vehicles some additional roles and objectives in the game. You can use existing assets and base design, SOE. Rather then walls, simply convert to shields with HP in certain sections. Ammo towers, air pads, you name it. Nerfing rewards for infantry will kill much of the farming that creates horrible, horrible gameplay. Tanks can be bugged up that a single infantryman's reaction is to not rush the would be cert pinata, mitigating concerns of punishment for tankers needing to kill infantry in self defense.

I think, right now, the problem is that killing a vehicle or MAX doesn't have any lasting effect. By the time you kill a vehicle, there's another one to take it's place. Vehicles are stronger than infantry when it's equal numbers, but their spammability doesn't justify it. When that gets fixed we can start working on beefing up their survivebilty vs. infatry.

Well thought out post. Why not?

Did I just read something rational?

What...what is this. :O



I keed, I keed, this has some good ideas that sum up what many are hoping the game moves towards. ANT's for PS2 SOE! Make 'em happen!

I disagree with the ANT portion of your post as I've argued at length in a topic dedicated to the ANT. I strongly disagree with just slapping a half-***** ANT module on a pre-existing vehicle. The ANT should be a new vehicle dedicated to logistics, not only should it serve the ANT function but it should steal the repair and rearm modules from the sunderer, as currently the sunderer does more roles than every other vehicle combined. The sunderer should be a troop transport/infantry support while the new ANT vehicle would be the dedicated logistics vehicle.

In that same ANT thread I pointed out that 4 guys in their spare time made a ship for star citizen that's larger than a galaxy, twice as detailed as anything in PS2, has full interiors and animations for everything and it flies in engine. They made that in less than six months. So I feel we, as a community, should absolutely demand that the devs put in a little effort and give us a new vehicle instead of slapping yet another function on the already overloaded sunderer.

Other than that it all seems pretty legit.

I majorly disagree with the whole vehicle thingie, but approve of the ANT section

Vehicles are already nerfed to hell , and planetside 2 is basically Infantry > Vehicle.
Vehicle "Farm" only happens because people allow it to happen , if you see a tank killing your teammates , you pick a rocket launcher and shoot it , unless it's a tank-base camp then it's a lost cause since they disabled drop podding from squad deploy.

People are farmed just because they're masochists and love to eat high explosives.
"I simply bail from a base if I die more than 3 times to a vehicle."

Hitting the farmers in their precious k/d ratio is probably the best suggestion ever.

The max is a bit of a different kettle of fish, but any tank you kill you send back to the next base so they can pull another one. A minute or so out of the fight isn't huge as timers previously, but it's still more then enough to kill sunderers, secure a position, or alter the battle.

I believe there should be a bigger impact to losing a vehicle, but I'm not sure how to do it and be fair about it. With that said, I think we need the ability to despawn vehicles for a 50% return on resources. This would allow people to leave their vehicles once they get to the base without feeling like it was a total waste of resources/time. The very large zergs resort to shelling bases partially because they don't have other vehicles to shoot at, but don't want to lose their vehicle either, since that's time and resources. Resources don't matter right now, but hopefully they will in the future.