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

if you unlock an AA gun on your harasser you have a fairly nanite cheap air defense that isn't range limited like rocket launchers. I forget if flak hurts the Valk's occupants as much, though it's fairly inaccurate if they're just floating at max height and such.

You know. Now that I think of it PS1 solved the problem quite nicely. Every base had a tower (nothing like ps2 towers) that could change hands relatively easily but was a hard point you could spawn at to get to the fight. Couldn't blow it up, you had to force your way in and secure it for your faction while people were flooding out of the base of it..

There you have it. Create secondary spawn points at every base (similar to some of the multi point amp stations) That attacking forces can occupy to create an AV/C4 proof spawn point.

The other obvious thing would be to allow players to create some of the construction elements (not everything less they be stronger than the base itself) outside of the no deploy zone around bases but near enough to influence the battle.

blanket ban TEMO outfit on all server. problem solved

Umm, it's not about you. sorry.

Bro, when you PMd grisha at NC arsenal to tell him TR was ragequitting (right before you made this thread) we were the ones blowing the sundys up. He pasted your pms to us in squad chat lolol.

Don squad loves babysitting us; we blow up AA guns for them

It's the design.

You guys are like first year frat boys.

BakaRaymoo in a nutshell. That's why i left connery. I couldn't do anything with them constantly doing that garbage to me no matter where i was. Choose to fight NC? Too bad, Raymoo's dropping C4 on me from a Valkyrie . Pull a max in a VS or NC battle? Too Bad, Raymoo's there waiting for me in his Valkyrie. Pull a Prowler, sunderer, or skyguard? To bad, Raymoo always knows where i am, proceeding to shut down everything i do, that's why i dont play vehicles.

It's also part of the reason i left Connery behind, i kept having to drop what i was doing to rid the area of the Valk, grab my friends, chase them off, and then return to what i was doing for all of less than a few minutes before it was back. It was one of the quickest ways my nanites depleted, all for no gain or enjoyment at all.

Baka promised me salt when I joined TEMO. He delivered...

via Imgflip Meme Generator

As we all see the problem i want to make a solution.

So far some important points are made:

• Sundis are important and too easy to kill, jet killing them is the only way to proceed from defenders point of view.
• Only a limited number of sundis is available, usualy too less

So my idea:
Remove the no deploy area that sundis create, like we had before, or reduce it size down to 10m. We have now the repairbus nerf. That way there is no excuse for 12 attackers to not have at least 6 sundis, since everyone can deploy, even right next to a friendly sunderer. Sundis still can be killed, but since it is worth bringing them in numbers, a lot more will be there and it will not matter if one or two blow up. Instead it gives the attackers a good amount of time to defend them or bring new ones.

In contrast no deploy zone from bases should work also for defenders, i can imangine it not to be fun to run against multiple shielded kobalt sundis (On the outside those can be countered by tanks...)

Ahh thank GOD, there are still people with a clue on this forum! Someone who understands that blowing **** up is the name of the game and also understand teamwork is OP!

No!

You know what makes it really easy to avoid getting stomped on by valks? Multiple people bringing sunderers up to the frontline. If you banked your whole assault on a few sundies, you lose.

Don't remind me! Burned, burned, and burned again.

Agreed. And something that many players seem to be missing is that blowing up the deployed Sunderer is part of this cycle.

Attack and defense in this game is skewed mostly in favor for the attacker since the beginning of the game, and this is easily visible in the stages that each team (defenders vs attackers) needs to go through to cap/defend a base.

The attackers:
First phase, the vehicular attack phase: For whatever reason they now have the ability to pull enough vehicles to move to the opposing base. The vehicular attack phase can be as small as driving a single Sunderer to an enemy base and deploying because there's no enemy resistance all the way to a full-scale war in between the bases al the way up to the walls of the next base.
Second phase is the infantry attack phase: The Sunderers are deployed, the vehicles are taking up position around the base and if need be are fighting with the remaining vehicle resistance in the area. Infantry now spawns en-mass and starts moving to the capture points. Infantry sometimes have a secondary role to fulfill by overloading generators and the like.
Third phase, Holding the capture points: The attackers have moved up and captured the points and are holding them for the few minutes it takes to cap the base. Once done we move on to the first phase again.

The defenders:
First phase, vehicular defense phase. You pull vehicles to keep the enemy away, and potentially become the attackers yourself if you win this phase. If you lose this phase you become the defenders.
Second phase, Infantry defense phase: The attackers have placed their Sunderers. Unlike the attackers you have two goals here. One is to defend the points and one is to hunt down and destroy the enemy Sunderers. Defending the points does not get you victory, it only prolongs the attack until you lose. The only way to end the attack is to destroy the Sunderers.
Third phase, the recapture phase: While the attackers get to attack the points for hours on end, the defenders need to recapture the points within minutes or they've already lost. This is a fundamental difference between attackers an defenders. No matter how long the defenders hold on to the points, they cannot win the battle this way.

Each phase ends with the defeat of the other faction. If the attackers win the first phase then the next phase begins. If the defenders win a phase the attackers move back one phase (although they don't have to if they have enough Sunderers or manpower). So destroying the Sunderers in Phase two puts you back at Phase one, the vehicular Phase. And there is nothing wrong with that! For all the complaints that vehicles need more roles in the game, this is their most important one: Fighting to give the Sunderer a safe spot to be deployed. If the Sundy is destroyed then you are back at the vehicular Phase. The only other option is to make it even easier for the attackers to capture a base! And that's absolutely not necessary.

Except for the "C4+rockets is a problem for deployed Sunderers" this is true. C4+rockets is as much a problem as an Engineer with a Carbine is a problem to an LA. It's just giving the players the proper tools to make it interesting and allow them to fight eachother.
As for Sunderers being a bottleneck. Absolutely true. I've already pointed to this problem before: Attackers usually are the only one's having access to these spawnpoints (any defender Sunderer will get destroyed by the vehicular superiority of the attackers except in a select few bases), and while they have more freedom in the spawn placement than the defenders they are still completely reliant on the Sunderers. The solution? Create alternative spawnpoints. Such as a resource costing faction-wide spawn beacon that creates and uses the same no-deploy zone as Sunderers. It functions like a sunderer in how fast you can spawn there, it lacks the terminals to switch classes or resupply so that the spawnpoint and Sunderers are still important and it allows players to create alternative spawnpoints, including the defenders. Alternatively instead of a spawn beacon you could allow players to place an Elysium tube so that you can place the tube inside buildings. This removes the bottleneck, it improves the differentiation between classes (Heavies are less good at hunting down and destroying these beacons than Infils and LA's) and it promotes better gameplay overall.

As an addition, most area's should sport micro-bases. These micro-bases would be captured by vehicles who stand on a point and offer a spawnpoint for infantry and for non-MBT vehicles. This would expand the control necessary of both the attackers and defenders to succeed in a battle. These micro-bases could also function as waypoints. For instance by putting them on top of roads with one or two AV turrets, giving you a nice forward defense if the attackers roll in. However if you are pushing the attackers out then this waypoint suddenly helps the attackers retain a foothold. Some micro-bases could function as small fortifications in the area that need to be captured/held. Even if the attackers capture the main base they would still have to capture the micro-bases or risk getting flanked or giving the defenders a way to instantly counter-attack.
Ofcourse you would need some form of protection so that Infiltrators don't have a field-day capturing these micro-bases and then spawning Sunderers or tanks without anyone being able to prevent it because of the amount of micro-bases. So for instance the terminals are impossible to hack at these micro-bases and to capture a micro-base you need to place a non-Flash vehicle on top of the cap point for a short while. Additionally all micro-bases can only be captured if you have a lattice-link to the region.

All I remember at Launch was a lack of players having C4 to counter vehicles, the available infantry-AV weapons being woefully inadequate (it still is) and vehicles having far stronger weapons. Saron was both an anti-tank sniper as well as functional as a super-heavy battlerifle: Accurate, semi-auto and deadly in 2 or 3 shots. HEAT canons sported AOE's similar (if not bigger) than our current HE. Vehicle Zergs often piled up around bases where you literally could run across several tanks without ever having to touch the ground, and far closer to the bases than we have now as vehicle didn't even have to fear infantry in CQC. Additionally most bases were still designed so that infantry and vehicles could fight eachother, allowing vehicles to literally crush infantry on top of capture points without really getting punished for a lack of support.

I don't see the tip in the scales. All I see is some proper back-and-forth between the defenders and attackers. All I would propose is giving Sunderer garages different geometry so that the players who spawn there are more likely to accidentally secure the area around the Sunderer. For instance by increasing the length of the walls towards the Sunderer so that the players spawning there get exits that are farther apart and anyone attacking the Sunderer has to go through a larger area with almost no hiding places to approach it safely.

If we expanded the average deployment methods we would also expand the game's scope, the roles that infantry can play would be better rebalanced and shift focus from "the class that's best for killing is the best for just about anything" to "different classes can fulfill different roles, and every class is can be almost as valuable as the next class".
If we started protecting deployed Sunderers even more then it would become harder and harder to push off attackers. Attackers already have the advantages (vehicle superiority because they could place Sunderers safely, multiple spawnpoints to attack from rather than just one spawnbunker, defenders can hold the points for hours and not win but the attackers only need to hold the points for a short while to win). So increasing that by making their Sunderers even more resiliant would skew that even more in the attackers favor.
Motivating players to defend more Sunderers is tough, and probably won't work. You would have to make waiting enjoying. Stealth games are one of the few games that make waiting enjoyable by giving the player a sense of progress. Every second they sit still they are learning how their enemies patrol the area, every second they sit still they are working on idea's to circumvent the current set of defenses. However defending a Sunderer is much tougher to make enjoyable. You would have to give the players something to do. Setting up defenses like tripwires for alarms, shield-barriers that slow down enemy progress, and using detection methods. However at the same time the risk of the Sunderer getting attacked needs to be high as well. Few players are willing to set up a full-scale defense grid if it takes 10 minutes before the next enemy arrives, especially when they could be enjoying a fight that's literally 10 seconds away. As for setting up separate Sunderers, that's more of a problem with players not pulling more when there's still a Sunderer alive at the base, letting their number of Sunderers dwindle till nothingness, at which point they suddenly shout "OMG! All our Sunderers are gone! I now have an easy time blaming C4 fairies so let's do that!". Although you might remedy this by making the amount of spawnpoints more visible, and increasing the overall situational awareness. If it's easier to see where enemies are and where friendlies are it's also easier to see where you could use another spawnpoint. It's also easier to see if it's safe to place a spawnpoint, rather than the player running into the enemy while being on-route because it's currently almost impossible to see what enemies are doing beyond 300m distance, even if there's allies there that do know and have spotted enemies for you.

PS2 actually did have these at release, typically only on major bases, definitely biolabs, not certain about the others. They were often referred to as 'externals', had a simple point and a spawn room, easily flipped from one team to the other. Personally I liked the concept, but the points were a bit too easy to get to (some were just too far from the spawn room to be defensible) it spread the fighting out of the small area near a point to a wider zone. Something I wish more bases had, multiple layered objectives spread out over an area to create wider, fights, not just more dense ones that we have now.

But for reasons I don't recall, most of these were turned into actual bases at some point, or removed altogether.

You pressed B to deply the AMS, just like in ps2, you're talking a few months after release where you had to get out, if even that long. Did you play for more than 5 mins?

O and the sundy or at least the ES variants that replaced the sundy had:
Inbuilt stealth (no radar signature)
Inbuilt EMP blast
Inbuilt darklight range enhancer
Inbuilt gate shield diffuser
Ability for driver to wear reinforced exo
Ability to carry maxs

Believe me, there were plenty around, being able to bust into a CY, through the active gate shield, blasting all the mines in your path and depositing 7 troops and 2 maxs into the front door of a base was well worth it. Its a shame you never saw it tbh, great fun.
Also dont forget we had the deliverer, a much smaller 5 man transport vehicle with better weapons and amphibious capability. Most people used those for transport, or the ES buggies.
Vehicle hacking wasnt a problem due to the dedication it required.

Your argument about hot dropping on a CC is mute, you can do this in PS2 aswel, infact its easier due to the cert system, so we should remove the sundy from ps2 right? Not sure why you mentioned this.
It also required certing into Air Cavalry, not everyone wanted to do this, and indeed for the games entire lifetime i certed mossy for about a week, instead prefering Air Support so i could transport the players who didnt have air transport (im discounting the silly BR40 nonsense times). Certs were limited, and if your level was low certing a solo farm wagon was not a priority in PS1 for most people.

I can absolutely see the advantages in multi use, but i think it helps create more balance problems than a dedicated spawn vehicle would. Instead of spawn mods, we could have bridging equipment, or amphibious transport, or something more out there like a jump capability or something. Anything to help get troops into battle. Currently these options would give the sundy AMS too many placement opportunities, and wed be back to BETA problems when gals could deploy into an AMS.

Dont get me started on AMS vehicle rearm combos. WTF is a troop spawning vehicle doing resupplying vehicles?
Multifunction is 1 thing, multi roles at the same time is a bit OTT imo. The rest of the game isnt allowed that multi role functionality.

Played through the fracture and the introduction of the battle islands. Quit after BFRs. Honestly I'm not sure if I can recall them being deployable from inside. You could be right. Maybe I'm thinking of ANTs. It has been almost 10yrs if not longer.

Will stand by my statement. Sunderers were next to worthless and never pulled in the time I played PS1. They even introduced deliverers to try and get people to use troop transport during the time I played. They ended up being not much more than battle buses far more than an actual transport.

AMS used to be a cert. Not enough people pulled them to support the foot zerg once you needed to actually take a base. Or maybe it's the other way around and no one used anything but AMS and they wanted better logistics for vehicles. Either way that's why they put it standard on every sunderer. You can improvise in a situation and throw up a spawn point even if you're a repair or rearm sunderer. Game is better for it.

Maybe they'll make deployment shield standard, or add in an actual AMS and we can watch the sunderer become extinct again. Is the rocklet/C4 LA really that big of a problem? Hell I almost think an engineer team dropping from a Valk would be just as effective if not more so. Repairs plus 20 bricks of C4 or 25 mines. If you're really good you could toss them from the rumble seat.

Well, I didn't think that I'd actually be agreeing with OP about the cheese of c4+valk. But today, one valk crew single handed took out an entire nc armor column. Sure, if the valk got damaged, it would go away, but 1 minute later it was back and would insta kill a tank from max altitude with one c4 fairy. So cheesy...

Yeah, not like I didn't get my LA Araxium armor BEFORE the rocklet rifle using max stealth valk and C4'ing oblivious Prowlers.

Not like Gals or Valks full of engineers didn't drop 3 - 5 tank mines each into the middle of an armor group and throw sticky nades at them.

Not like Gals or Valks at max altitude full of an endless supply of respawning Heavies with decimators didn't drop into Armor groups and blow up sundies and usually a few other vehicles.

C'mon, get real. Be part of the solution instead of b!tching. Pull a shield sundy: put a basilisk and a Kobalt on it. Farm C4 ferries non-stop! Super fun!

were comin to emerald soon boys