[Vehicle] Buff the Flash

The Flash

The flash is our personal disposable taxi, and from time to time it can be used to annoy the enemy with the M40 Fury, but it has no utility, it's one of the few vehicles that can go inside buildings, but it's very useless and vulnerable in CQC and it has no real advantage over infantry.

I have a series of suggestions to modify the role of the flash to a support role, giving it more utility and combat capabilities.

General modifications:

Passive shield diffuser: Flash can now pass through shields, except spawn shields, opening new tactical uses, the flash is a small vehicle, even smaller than the MAX, I think it should be able to pass through shields, it opens new tactical uses, specially for wraith users.

The Turbo becomes a passive cert line, does anybody even use it over the radar or the wraith?

Resource cost increased to 100-150 to compensate for its increased combat and support capabilities

Composite armor gains extra resistance against explosives and small arms and applies to both vehicle and user (only an small percentage is applied to the user).

Right now composite armor is weird, you can survive C4, something that puts lightnings on fire, but you can't survive a rocket or a few bullets.

Radar now replaces the rumble seat with a big radar dish, and must be deployed (B), but it works even if you are not using the flash, it's not compatible with other certlines that replace the rumble seat.

This has an easy justification, being an static radar hidden in a corner is not fun and awards very little exp, I think losing the rumble seat and having to deploy the flash are good trade offs.

New utility: the Resupply terminal: replaces the rumble seat with a resupply terminal, I added it here instead of adding it to the new slot so infiltrators can use it with the wraith cloak.

The fourth slot

A brand new slot for support utilities, the wraith cloak will be moved here.

Class specific utilities:

Light Assault: Thrusters, like jumpjets but for the flash, they'll make the flash more adaptable to combat environments.

Heavy Assault: Frontal shield, an unidirectional shield you can toggle (F), big enough to cover a few allies, it can stop some bullets, but explosives will bring it down, non-sticky grenades will bounce back, it can also be deployed (B) to create a bubble shield.

Medic: AOE heal you can toggle (F), also comes with a deploy mode (B) that creates a shield repair station.

Engineer: Ammo dispenser, for both infantry and vehicles, but it's less efficient compared to an ammo sunderer and it has less radius, comes with a deploy mode (B) that will make it a repair station, being able to repair vehicles and MAXes at half the rate of the repair tool.

Common support utilities:

Secondary gun: Adds an AI gun for the rumble seat, similar to the MANA turret.

Turret mode: The flash can be deployed (B) and becomes an stationary turret with a frontal MANA turret like shield.

Radar jammer: Blocks enemy radar and tracking devices, allies will only show in the enemy minimap if spotted manually (Cert cost and radius is the same as exploration radar certline).

Weapons

Flamethrower: For your own personal flame wars (Forumside not supported), good for area denial and building combat.

Vehicle weapons: PPA, Canister, Marauder, Saron, Enforcer, Halberd and Vulcan, they'll further enhance the role of light cavalry.

Wraith cloak

It loses the ability to equip weapons and can no longer roadkill, in exchange it becomes permanently and completely invisible (you can only see them with the flashlight), and can be used as a respawn point for the user (you respawn mounted in the flash, so you are invisible).

Why?: Now it becomes a more tactical utility, designed for deep infiltration, for example, it opens the posibility to mount stealth invasions to organized outfits.

I think you've forgotten to add in justifications or premises for your arguments/assertions, you can only edit for 20min (or 30 min?) after posting, hopefully you notice.

it would take the dev team in its current state, 18 months to code all that, release it, and 9 more months to fix the bugs.

It would be fun though.

They are just some modifications, most of them just add utility and diversity they don't really need a justification, but I'll justify some modifications to current mechanics.

Flash! Ahaaaah!

If the flash doesn't have that as a horn yet, it needs it.

Well, most mechanics already exist in game, I'm just adding them to the flash.

I have to disagree with adding a resupply terminal on it, the amount of ways that you can abuse something like that.... it's just asking for trouble.

I'll just use this to link to an old thread of myself, in which I suggested a new cert slot (deploy) for flashes myself:
It also covers gals and sundies, but Flashes have the biggest part.

clicky

PPA on flash , please.

I can't think of anything incredibly OP, except grenade and rocket spam.

Edited: wrong thread.

Please God, no.

You know, the Flash is mainly a transport vehicle. For this buff you would really need to increase the cost of the Flash, which wouldn't make me happy, though the shield ignoring would be quite interesting.

My flash has utility - I often drive into buildings close to a battle so my scout radar can work. Yeah I usually die but it helps out the attack when they know where everyone is.

Playing the role of static radar is not fun and the exp is very low, that was my main complain when they removed the permanent radar and made it only work when you are using the flash, how do they expect teamwork in this game when teamwork is underrewarded? radar should give you a kill assist not some crappy 10xp.

Rocket spam , grenade spam , that infiltrator up on a hill that seems to be too good to be true - never running out of ammo , having the ability to blow up a ton of Sunderers because you can refill your mines as you're driving etc..

The only thing I would do from this list is passive turbo.
The Flash is already is nice state now, not being super OP or super UP. Adding all this is just unnecessary, and some are actually OP. The terminal & Faction weapons are a no go.

there was a reason, why they removed this.
It was verry cheap and easy, to hide a stalth(not cloak) flash with radar somewhere in the base, and provide intel to your team, now you have some real drawbacks, for this huge buff to awarnes

"Buff the Flash" -> removes Flashes only real viable ability.

I guess these changes would enable PPA camping and Halberd sniping, but we already have a vehicle for that. Do we really need another? And one that would be even less useful for anything not long range PPA/Halberd spam?