Great fights routinely ruined. Yes, C4+Rocklet, now from Valks

Another typical "Ogre" (the OP) thread. A lot of tears for a thing called Teamwork.
Yes, they kill Sundies. From your "Story" nobody challenges them. Sure they continue. They are at least 3 ppl (Pilot, Gunner, Wingman), so stop complaining when you can not regulate the situation on your own. 2 AA ESF will make short work.

Be happy they didnt use a galaxy and dropping heavies with decimator and AV nades, that would be a lot cheaper! And could realy be done all day. The light assault or C4 is NOT the Problem here!

My best score as a c4 fairy was about 70 vehicles in one hour using the continent bonus to my advantage and a few tank mine kills in the process. Depending on the situation it's easier to c4 vehicles (obvious I know) and I understand that most of the times it ain't nice getting killed like that.

It's pretty fun playing as a c4 fairy but if you try to find a reasoning as to why would 2 small bricks of c4 do more damage than 5 AP shells I don't think anyone can figure the logic besides c4 costing nanites.

As to why so many people complain about getting their tanks c4'd is more of a natural thought process, in real life you never expect someone to fly over your tank and throw some plastic at your tank and you explode from it and they didn't or never will adapt to the many ways you can die in this game probably.

TBF the Scythe out-performs the Reaver and mosquito quite handily, I'm not a fly boy so I can't speak for them, but I feel no great compulsion to pull TR air against literal space-fighters. That'd be like pulling a WW2 prop against an X-wing.

I have my very first forum stalker! Welcome LtBomber1 !! I'll try to wear something cute when I post to give you a bigger thrill

Mojo--you're points aboves are what I am talking about. Thank you for taking the time to make them.

LtBomber1 has no reading ability, so he missed all my points (as he stalks me <flattered!>) about the importance and value of team play, coordination, etc.

But he's easily bruised...so Ltbomber1, as you creep around in the bushes outside my window, please do be careful not to hurt yourself. And please dress warmly, it's old out here. <kisses his widdle boobookitten Ltbomber1>

The issue is DBG's poor design choice involving Rocklets.

People in the thread make points assuming ALL sunderers are Deploy Shield sunderers...without the slightest recognition that proves the issue is real.

Poor game design in one area nullified all sunderer types and gun selections but one, and further defines (forces) a specific type of use of the one remaining sunderer type (that is still likely to be blown skyhigh....)

Meanwhile, core game play will continue to deteriorate. Eventually, people will wonder wtf happened to PS2.

Reacting to poor design is one thing, and leads no where good.

Fixing poor design is another thing, and leads to good things.

Let's not have 9 months of inaction this time around.

Nope, nope nope.
Sunderers have one primary role: Being a spawnpoint. That's it. The other roles were secondary, or were supposed to be secondary. The fact that people could make battlebusses work to beat down tanks was a mistake. As for using "other Sunderer configurations"... If you pull a repair Sunderer and deploy it, you don't expect it to survive longer against enemies than a shield Sunderer, right? The whole point of a Shield Sunderer is to function as the penultimate spawnpoint. However if you go for something inferior, like trying to make a stealth Sunderer work while you put it in the most obvious place you can think off, you shouldn't be surprised at all that it dies faster. Stealth Sunderers are the only other 'true' AMS you should be thinking of. And those are for backup Sunderer spots as well as alternative attack routes that the regular troops aren't going to use.

So you aren't being "forced" into using one specific Sunderer type any more than before. All you are getting is the giant notification of "Pick the available defense slots, defend your Sunderers for once and don't act surprised that they get destroyed if you just leave them somewhere".

Also if we are speaking about poor game design, how about how Hover frame trumps just about any other airframe? Or how AP/AV oriented tanks are 90% of the loadouts picked? Or how the Heavy can play just about any important role you would want to perform on the battlefield as either the best or second best class? Ofcourse you aren't up in arms about that, no you must be up in arms about LA getting baby teeth!
Look, it's not as if Sunderers are indefensible, like you claim. They are very defensible, you just don't defend them at all and you expect inferior Sunderer modifications to pull their weight against backdoor attacks. Shield Sunderers were introduced to prevent Engineers from insta-blowing the crap out of Sunderers, and ever since the complaints about them stopped despite tricky Engi's still being capable of doing it. So why is this suddenly a problem now that LA's have similar power as Engi's to blow up unshielded Sunderers?
Also I have to point out that you are saying "reacting to poor design is one thing and leads nowhere good. Fixing poor design is another thing and leads to good things"...
So where's your "fix" in the OP? You make some suggestions later on in another post, but all you've done in the OP is make a thread with a prelude to all the reactions you are going to make to other things you think are poor game design. As for the fix it's easy: Defend your Sunderer, use a shielded Sunderer.

^^This. To pull the cheese, you need 3 to 5 people working together. If you show up in 3 to 5 ESF's with AA, the valk won't stand a chance. If they're willing to work together and put the time in, and the defender isn't that's not a design issue - that's a motivation issue.

Re: "What people log in for is big brawls." - that's where you're (a little) wrong. A *lot* of people might do that - and if you do that, then I suspect most of the people you're interacting with feel the same way - but what a lot of people log in for is the teamwork, the territory, the strategic element as opposed to strictly running hamburger drills on a 96+/96+ battle front. As a career inf, I look for 24/24 or so, as do the guys I play with - we're more useful way out in front of a zerg, or capping surrounding areas, harrying the enemy, hunting snipers, etc. There's a lot of ways to play this thing - for a lot of us, just jumping into big big big battles all the time sounds like a snooze, what with all the run, shoot, kill, die, rinse, repeat stuff. Give me a break - I'm old and jaded, and I have to use my brain - my reflexes are shot.

Not true. You used to have cert and equip a slot to make a sunderer a spawn point (AMS).

Repair, ammo and gate shield sunderers used to have (and still do have) different roles.

Even today, you see more support sundies (repair, ammo and battle buses) than spawn point sundies (because of the no deploy zones, which make sense).

Basic problem here is not all the good debate points above. Basic problem is a poor game decision that went live.

I actually like Rocklets, but Rocklets + C4 are the problem.

Cheese is cheese guys.

A is A.

Hi Scatterblak, good points above and I agree. But DBG needs cash flow and if they ruin the "bulk" of people's fun, the they run out of cash flow. I don't want that. I've played Everquest since 1999 and PS2 since 2012. Good games.

But the Valk teams destroying sundies with near impunity for "fun" ... we'll they DEPENDS on big brawls for targets. The guys on Connery actually /yell chat that is why they came. One of them is pretty darn smug about it.

Again, not blaming them, they are coordinating and that is good. What is NOT good is DBG's poor design that created this...and this will only grow. Kill a bad thing when it is small.

Hence my many times repeated suggestion: Light Assaults should have to choose between Rocklets or C4.

Any class that is overly dominant is a problem. Some classes will naturally have more uses and be more dominant in some scenarios...but if you were around for the poor design decisions a few years ago regarding Harrassers and ZOE MAX....ugh. Ruined gameplay. DBG sat on that for 9 months. Population never recovered.

Games bleed players when poor game design is not addressed.

Most who bleed out don't bother to post. Most just move on.

I move on in two months anyways =)

ps: I'm old with similar reflexes. If we ever meet on the battle field, we'd both better have full ammo, we're gunna need it all.

C4+rocklets isn't the problem. Failure to use proper Sunderers and properly defend sunderers is the problem. I don't see more support sundies, I see sundies being used for transport from base to base and spawnpoints the most, with some dualling as repair/ammo sundy if the vehicle battle takes a long time and needs support. However once you reach the enemy base you either get yourself a proper sunderer or you accept the consequences of using an inferior one.
And so what if there's more support Sunderers? Weren't we talking about AMS Sundies? So if you turn your support Sundy into an AMS Sundy, you have to accept the premise that you are using an inferior setup for spawn sunderer. And what the hell are you talking about when you talk about Sunderers with different roles? Just because there are different roles doesn't mean each and every single one is constantly in use in equal amounts, or that it's smart to be using a gateshield Sundy as spawnpoint, or that you have a right to complain about it getting destroyed if you didn't have an optimal setup.
Also the whole reason that AMS was added as a permanent slot for Sunderers was because it was sort of an automatic thing everyone added to their Sunderer. They made it an auto-granted slot so that people could diversify their Sunderer and put additional defenses on it without sacrificing their AMS role. Then they added the Shield Sunderer so that people would stop complaining about people quickly killing their Sunderers. Now people like you are complaining about... Players quickly killing their unshielded Sunderer! Yey! Something that hasn't been a problem because you had the option to pick a shield Sunderer is suddenly a problem when one extra class can kill unshielded sunderers quickly, something the HA and Engineer could do forever already! Not to mention something that creative LA's could already do with a secondary!

Routinely? I dont know what its like on Connery but i have only seen this happen once or twice on Miller.
And even then, the LAs were farmed as they drifted down to their deaths until they left.

The strategy requires like 3-4 people, and at that point you may as well just coordinate ESFs with rockets.
Or as Ltbomber1 pointed out, just drop Heavies and be better off.

There are tons of easy/effective ways for a few organised players to hunt and kill Sunderers, and the Valkyrie+LA strat (even with rocklets) is pretty far down the list.
If this really was as effective as you make it out to be, people would do this all the time.

I do think the Scythe is infinitely better at A2G thanks to properly tracking Hornets, but in A2A it's only slightly better. I do think a lot of try-hards switched to VS for that slight advantage, but it's only an advantage in that .1% of fights where it's a pure draw. The Reaver is still the best Ganker with the highest top speed and highest dps, but that's really all it does well. The Mossy is alright at everything, but with higher vertical speed, better front profile, and higher dps, the Scythe just wins.

You don't see it all the time because this is basically a single player game. Everything is balanced based on a single infantryman being able to handle anything. If you look at better games, you have roles within a squad. Not so in PS2 where even medics can OHK any MBT. The strategy you see all the time is a single LA going to blow up a Sunderer because this game is geared towards solo players.

I haven't seen the specific thing with the valkyries, but rocklets have definitely made sundies die more often/frequently which is never good IMO as someone who just likes having good fights and shooting people in a first person shooter. Anything that ends fights faster is a bad thing.

I allways read that there would be no fight when the sunderer dies.
Since i do not agree on that statement, i want to argue on it: I like epic fights with a lot of players, too. Most of the time i enjoy settlements and big vehicle fights.Often there is a sundi nearby, but usualy not, and if its just for ammo and repair or cheesy snipers.

In gerenral there are 2 kinds of people: Those who want balanced battles with equal numbers for fun and those who do everthing to "win". Those people will not work well together, esspecally not with all the possibilities given to get the upper hand in PS2. I like winning. If I want that sundi dead, it is gonna die (Having friends with the same mindset does help a lot here). Does the battle die?
No. The battle is shifting. Next the battle will be on the roads, deciding who will have the next opertinity to attack. Then the settlement will begin at new, either we can hold the sundi and the point, or we are washed out. Circle closed.

Like most people allready noticed: A shield sunderer is allready basically not soloable. You simply do not have the time, if someone spawns. C4 is cheap, but so is a sundi... If only 12 ppl (usally a smal fight) would bring a sundi each...

I assure you I am not. I see far more esf's pulled by TR than both other factions combined which relates to the OP making this sound like it's an exploit primarily used by the VS and that as a TR his faction is unable to counter it.

Imo this is yet another nerf C4 thread for vehicle spawn farmers while trying to sound like it's defending infantry play. I play on Connery pretty regularly and though I play a lot of LA, it's not for C4 farm. And I rarely die in a vehicle to C4 because I pay attention. The same can be said for defending your spawn points.

TR is usually overpop, and when they have Indar they have more air than everyone combined, but they're noobs and not effective in the least. VS has got air gank squads down to a science. Spend a week flying at different hours for TR instead of making observations from the ground and come back. All that said, OP is complaining about a valid playstyle instead of countering it, but it's an annoyingass playstyle that many would prefer not be in the game.

So it's the other 2 factions problem that the TR would rather A2G spam with banshees? I'm not a new player so I think I'll skip doing further research thanks lol. And I haven't seen DonAlfrego doing any air squads for awhile so I think it's all in your head. But keep spouting off like you're some sort of expert if it makes you feel better.

Are you implying that a Walker can look directly up?
If so you are incorrect.
An Anti-Aircraft gun cant look directly up, but the crafts it shoots can look and shoot directly down.
DBG at its finest.......

Read my other stuff, I'm blaming TR and the OP for not doing what's needed to counter VS air superiority. I haven't played in over a month, so maybe things did change, hopefully they did. And really, look at TR air. They pull more aircraft than VS + NC + NC, but they hover over a zerg and farm with their Banshees and do zero to contribute. They don't count. Either way, there's only so much the players can do at this point. The battlefield turns in to a big mess around the zergs and basically turns in to a no fly zone except for very quick little jabs by ESF. All that's left are a few small fights and then you're an A2G****ter. It's just not balanced, none of this is. Infantry needs AA that's effective but doesn't scale up as dramatically as it does. The whole flak and lock-on mechanics just need to go.

Calling player creativity "cheese" in an open game world.

We truly live in the dark ages of gaming.