Hoarding Phalanx Guns

Dear forumside.

I need you to help me understand the mentality behind the people who go engineer and spend a whole day of Planetside inside a Phalanx.

For a while, I thought that these were new players that didn't know where to go or simply felt safe inside the turret. We've all encountered this many times, so dude will sit fx. in a AA flak phalanx 2 bases away from the front line and spam flak at anything that moves.

No one ever goes to deal with them because everyone assumes it's some BR lvl 1-10 player and simply avoid the area as it doesn't matter much.

BUT! I decided to investigate. I grabbed my infiltrator and went to Tech Plant and sure enough, two AA phalanxes were active. But what came to me as a shock was that the two players I killed there were BR 81 and BR 100 :O

I asked them in a /tell how long they'd been sitting there. Only the BR100 replied and he said he had been there for nearly 2½ hours. When I asked why he simply responded "XP"

So I went on PS2stats and checked how many players he had killed. It was 2. Some XP for Air deterrence but really just a minor amount.

HELP me understand. Why.... WHY they do they do this? Does it annoy other players? Mjeah, slighty but not really. Is it profitable? Not at all.
I mean.... I can't imagine how boring it must be O_O It's worse than Truck Simulator.

WHY???

Different people like different things, that's why.

Also at Br 80 and 100 they're a that point where they have all the certs they could ever need. When you don't need to farm certs it opens up this game to play the way you want to, even if it is casually sitting in a turret.

There's more people doing this with Spear turrets than Phalanx turrets. Pretty much whenever I'm facing one, 75% of the time I'll recognize the name.

I spend most of my time in PS2 sitting in a Repair Sunderer and babysitting armor columns. The Kobalt kills and the occasional MAX play covers it up a bit on my killboard but I find the experience not too bad, really.

That said, I really don't think sitting in Phalanx turrets is a good way to make XP. The effort required to find a good Phalanx, babysit it and look out for other XP farmers from stealing "your" turret Battlefield-style is not worth the XP.

Enemy air zerg is anoying, at some point you get so frustrated that you start chainpulling skyguards, that are (absourdly) getting rekt by libs, and finds the nearest AA turret to continue keep the air at bay.

AA phalanx turrets are not rewarding - but they do help your team.

Sometimes, when I am not in the mood to rush headlong into the next battle, I chill in an AA Phalanx next to a contested base. Denying those sky knights an easy A2G farm isn't that much rewarding in terms of getting XP, but it makes me smile anyway. And you know you left a certain impact, when those guys, you blew out of the sky thrice, come for you as Light Assault or Infiltrator.

Cert Farming. What else do most people do in this game? Don't judge them, you all do it too in other ways. Still the same thing in the end.

Sitting in a base turret for 2 and a half hour?

We need a special rules weekend where progress is disabled just to see how people would play.

Very wrong, I have 2 BR100 characters and I don't have every weapon and every vehicle fully certed. The XP up to BR100 is more or less 50% of what you will need to cert everything in the game.

But that isn't cert farming. It's barely rewarding at all. You get so much more if..... well, if you actually play the game. EVERYTHING is more rewarding than that O_O

Sure, if the fight it taking place at your base. But would you sit in a base where the battle has already moved on for hours just shooting at stuff in the distance with little to no reward?

There are many people who would say the same if you said you liked playing games or Planetside. Different people like different things.
I think most of us have at some point had someone say how boring and useless games are, that its just a timesink and that your time is better spent doing something useful.
They are both right and wrong.

I think alot of people have that problem. To some, its incomprehensible that someone with a different opinion or view on things may be right.
Like not understanding why someone likes playing stalker infil 100% of the time, or sitting in a turret all day.

OP: IMO they have a niche figured out. You do get a significant amount of XP even without kills.
I will head out deep into enemy territory and hack an AA turret and bother the air forces heading to the front line. I've made out quite well doing that. Plus you are keeping some pressure off of your team at whatever bases they were heading to.
I love doing it

Honestly, they can be quite helpful. Most average-to-bad fliers will pull out after being hit by only a couple flak shots, stopping their attack run before it even begins. Many of the better players will start evasive manoeuvers; which again disrupts their attack. The best ones will of course realize you're 600m away and only tickling them and ignore the damage for a bit. But still, on average your fulfilling the 'air deterrent' role adequately.

It's not amazingly rewarding xp wise for the player in the turret, but you can get a few laughs from annoying enemy players from such a range. And occasionally know you've really got to them when they switch to infil or LA and come hack/destroy your turret in person.

Hey, some people's idea of fun is just not the same as yours, if we all liked the same thing the world would be a terribly dull place.

Those people drive me nuts.... Some people seem to think that people only pull AA when there's air... wrong. There's those turret-sitters or random skyguards all the time.

My guess is they are either completely dumb either they are eating/watching TV and just playing in a distracted manner because AA is so stupid easy and strong to use.

That would be a very interesting experiment. Perhaps we would get a better idea of what PS2 players WANT to do as opposed to what they feel like the NEED to do in order to get certs.

It is RELAXING and it is a choice...and it's something to do while I wait for the new Trainz to come out. Plus you can OHK running infantry at render range while remaining nearly invincible with a PR6 repair bus parked in the stairwell filled with claymores and a motion spotter. There is seriously very little left to do in this game except find insane ways to play it.

I make it a point to kill all the turrets at a fight, because it severely hampers then enemies ability to counter friendly forces and I like random skyguards...

*drifts away on a flowrider*

They project their way of the couch potato onto their characters in game.

My anecdotal experience says if you sit in a turret long enough one of 2 things will usually happen:

1. You get C-4'd.
2. Your turret gets hacked and tosses you out onto an enemy AP mine.