Developer Thread: Valkyrie

Will there be any ability to roll and use lockons? They're interesting in theory, but:

• If the Valkyrie maneuvers, the heavies cannot achieve lock, enemy ESFs get close, the the Valkyrie probably dies.
• If the Valkyrie does not maneuver, the heavies MIGHT get lock, but then the Valkyrie is all sitting and ducky.

I'm not a huge fan of the flight model. Passengers get whipped around too much, they're too far inside the cab, but it could be fixed a bit.

I agree 100% here.

The entire crew should be effective as an AA/AG carrier with HA's rolling round in the "Superman Seats".



Don't just make the seats concave little alcoves, give us some aircraft versions of the old 1920's running boards that mobsters used to use for driveby's.


See that cop, 3rd from the left chilling on the outside of the car there?
The part he's standing on is called a "running board".
Back in the early days of automobiles, it was perfectly legal to hitch a ride out there, no matter how fast your driver wanted to go.

Mobsters in the prohibition era would sometimes have a guy out there, one hand on a grip rail, the other would be open so either a guy inside could hand him a tommy gun, or he'd just reach in and grab said gun off the back seat, and they'd do a driveby like that.
(They only had a guy stand out there if they needed to spray large numbers, because the extra open view made hitting more people FAR easier than gunning from in the back seats. This tactic was usually reserved for whacking a rival boss, with a large number of his cronies around him.)

They'd cruise by at 40 mph bobbing and weaving with a guy out there as they escaped the cops or the surviving members of the rival mob they just shot at.



So having an HA doing something similar on a Valkyrie with running boards, able to stand out there (Just say a nanite cloud temporarily forms an invisible mesh of microfilament wires to hold him securely from falling from the rails and let him sit out there on a ledge so he has a full, unobstructed field of view as you cruise by. Or whatever lore friendly excuse you want to make it happen) and blast away would be far preferable for AA/AG armor use.

Well then I think you've got a bug somewhere because right now on test rumble seat passengers die almost instantly when the Valk starts getting hit by flak. Tuned to damage air or not, this extreme vulnerability makes the rumble seats a complete waste of time.

Will the pilot earn XP for picking up and/or dropping people? Or maybe a small share from the XP these soldiers make on the ground during the 5 or 10 minutes following the drop?

I mean, you said yourself that the Valkyrie was intended to be 75% transport, 25% combat. So, if the pilot's first job is to taxi people around, he should get XP for it, right?

Plus, without that additional XP, all a Valkyrie pilot would have to look forward to in terms of reward would be the share from whenever his gunner actually manages to kill something, and that seems a bit miserable an amount from where I'm standing, considering the pilot is probably the person who certed and pulled the Valkyrie with his own certs and resources to begin with. (I'm not even taking into account the share from the rumble seats kills because, frankly, from all I've seen so far, said rumble seats are way too unstable and exposed for any class to be able to reliably kill stuff from them.)

That, or give the pilot his own weapon to make his own XP, but I guess that would move the craft away from transport and more toward close air support, and from what I understand of your position so far, you don't want that.

I don't think that the range on the engineer repair tool is long enough to do that. I mean like dropping ammo resupplies for vehicles and/or infantry.

What is the ETA for Valkyrie release?

So the flight model might stay the same, okay, I'm alright with this (kinda). But, since autopilot only allows for one input (forward) will that be changed or looked into?

The only reason why I'm not 100% okay with the flight model as it is now, is because visually it looks like a VTOL craft, so it should fly like one. Make it look like a futuristic helicopter and THEN I'll be 100% with the flight model. So sticking with the "Nothing is permanent" is the art assets for the Valk set in stone (as we haven't seen any visual change with any of the other vehicles so far (no vehicle gear does not count, talking about the basic design))?

Hi PlanetSide 2 team,

what is the reasoing behind all the weapons thermal optics having only 50 meters range? That is too short for a ground vehicle, let alone an air vehicle. Would it be possible to raise the range to that of a ground vehicle at least? Something around 150 - 200 meters?

Best regards,

Schlauke

I see lots of requests for a cloak but why not instead give the ship a way to counter flak and lockons? Its apparently pretty weak in the armor department so why not, say, give it a button that makes it disable flak / lockons for the duration of a nice bright and easily noticed shield over it? Maybe during shields uptime it disables use of equipment and weapons. *random idea toss* Any input on anything similar to this?

So it sounds like the vehicle will launch without addressing any concerns of the players and thus be totally useless. Once launched it will move to the roadmap map where it will sit in unscheduled for eternity.

Forgive me for not being excited by this boring looking, useless vehicle with no purpose or function that is not better fullfilled with other vehicles.

BTW: There is zero chance of this outrunning an ESF under the trees of Hossin.

Can we give the nose gun a spotlight! O: I'd give all my monies for it.

Just a one question:
This thing is stuck in hover mode, Is It Intended?
Because if yes, the valkyrie is a waste
i'm serious, you are making a thing that is:
- vurnerable to small arms fire (3 mags to kill)
- as durable as an ESF (maybe a bit more)
- SLOWER than a galaxy
this make impossible to engage the enemy nor escape the enemy
infantry dies to flak so fast it's even funny
But if that's just a bug, everything seems to be ok (except for transport cababilities, it should carry 6 people)

have you guys thought of maybe having an ability that allows the valk to switch from its original helicopter style flying into a more standard esf style flying for a limited amount of time, so it would be better at dropping infantry and escaping quickly? Or if not that, perhaps just speed the valk up and just have it where the camera tilts up slightly when the nose is pointed down, seeing as the pilot has no nose gunner anyway.

Thank you, all I needed to read is here!
Cloak for the Val is a bad idea, afterburner is a good idea
I hope the 2 extra passenger seats will be in "the middle" as only 2 of them will be able to shot the sky
If you can change something about the design it would be great too (a thread:https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/valkyrie-design.197661/ )

Thank you again and please, do whatever you want about it but no cloak

useless as it is. i think this is the civilian version, were is the military one?

It's not a good transport because it lacks speed, protection for the cargo, protection for it self and not cost effective against main rival which is the galaxy.
For a squad you need 2 which will most likely cost more than one gal. you need 2 pilots, more logistics, etc etc.
The galaxy is the perfect CAS because of the bulldogs and has huge HP. it transports maxes, and drops troops from any altitude.
To make it competitive against the galaxy i would make it invisible and faster with no fighting role. Stalker cloak for the win. It's ugly and big target in the sky. It cannot fight and can't escape.


if it's cloaked rumble seats will have some protection.

as a squad leader i will not risk my guys being transported in combat area by a vehicle that offers no advantages over the galaxy.
stealth is the only thing that would make me consider using it for an insertion in a hot zone.

In terms of infantry being vulnerable to flak, why not add some doors onto the side of the Valk? They take a short time to open or close (maybe 1 1/2 seconds?) controlled by the pilot. That way, when they're en route to their destination and taking small arms or even flak, the jump seats can be protected until they reach their destination. Also, as mentioned before, could have the two forward most jump seats be set out a little further and provided AI MANA turrets. I'm not sure having them shielded would be a great idea but maybe tweak the shielding to be less forgiving or remove it all together.

As for the total survivability of the Valk, maybe we could have it setup so it innately has a sort of "stealth". Perhaps a super quiet engine with low level stealth to keep it from showing up outside of 50-75 yards unless spotted. It would then be used more for small squads that are after a sneaky flanking maneuver over flying in loud and proud and way up in the sky on a Gal.

That should help with the survivability of the Valk and its compliment of soldiers.

since the valkyrie is a troop transport, will it have the same squad spawn in mechanic as the gal and sundy? (spawning inside it)

It is too fragile, even with composite, to be close support.
It carries too few infantry.
Visually, the pilots fpv is cluttered and cramped.
Its acceleration is poor at best.
It is impossible for heavies sitting in the rumble seats to maintain lock-on's.
It has no role not done better with other vehicles.

Buff its resistance against small arms.
Increase rumble seat occupants by 2. Total 4 infantry can be inserted at objective.
Clean up the pilots fpv.
increase acceleration.
Have 2 of the rumble seats equipped with mini-chainguns.
To give it a real role. Add one more certable ability. A cloak like the ATV.
If you are a pilot infiltrator and have certed the cloak the Val becomes a potent covert insertion vehicle.

It needs, as a default, to have those players dropping out of the rumble seats not inherit its velocity or momentum and drop straight down; so you can safely drop troops quickly and leave again in a battle area. Currently in order to drop troops safely it takes too long to land, or go slow enough, so they can get out without getting killed, or badly injured. Flying low to the ground is dangerous enough as it is, the Valk should be able to drop troops without having to slow down at least.

Also as it's not supposed to really be a 'fighting vehicle' a scout function that might be useful is something like this: Deploy Stealth, the Valkyrie upon landing can activate a stealth mode, that renders it virtually undetectable. The weapons of the craft and all passengers are rendered inoperable, the craft (and all passengers) become invisible. There is no timer, however the Valkyrie must un-deploy the shield to move or fire again (taking a short amount of time, say 0.5s). Thus allowing small forces to move into an area and hide out until they want to engage; though of course if they are seen landing their position will be known.

Along similar lines if its supposed to operate at low altitudes, why is the main armament on the underside? Surely a turret, on the top would have made more sense. Thus also giving it a larger traversal and not having a huge blind spot area, which encompasses everything behind, directly below and anywhere even slightly above currently. Right now when moving in to drop troops off, not only are you going slowly and close to the ground, you also have to way to even deter air threats; so an ESF can easily kill you, with almost no danger to them. I can see the weapon as something to clear the ground before dropping troops in, but the current selection fails utterly at this. A smoke/conc grenade launcher would be more useful for that, if only to provide 'cover.'

And lastly, the current 'chase' camera view is tilted upwards, unlike every other aircraft that is tilted downwards. It's horrible, though I'm not sure if that's intended or a bug.

Please give the extra 2 seats something to do. Even if it's just a very good 3rd person or 1st person camera view so they can be spotting for everyone else.

Would be really cool if they had more interesting things to do like shoot sensor darts, a directional proximity radar, a large / long reaching darklight, etc.