Old Vehicles Reborn

In the old Planetside there where many vehicles that never made it to Planetside 2 which i understand that many where merged into one and such. But there is one feature vehicle that was left on the sidelines.

The Loadstar


The Lodestar is a single-crew vehicle that can lift and carry any ground vehicle, including main battle tanks and the enormous Battleframes, quickly and smoothly to a desired location. Vehicles mounted in the Lodestar can be ejected in order to "hot drop" to an overflown location. When landed, the Lodestar can also be used by ground and air vehicles as a repair/rearm terminal.

Now I know that adding a vehicle would be another big request but i could see having this ability to transport other land based vehicles would bring a lot of new ideas to the battle field. Those who know this aircraft know that it would have to land and then wait for the vehicle to drive up into its rear loading bay which under the current game mechanics could be fatal at low health if they bumped the aircraft. In instead of adding the aircraft to the long list of vehicles we currently have its features could be added to an existing vehicles the galaxies.

Feature one - rear loading bay - which would remove 4 of the current seats to load any small wheeled vehicle.
Feature two - Grappling Hook - which would remove all but pilot and gunner slots and make the galaxy look more like a Chinook. This hook could be lowered down to pick up any large vehicle. Of coarse the vehicle being towed would be vulnerable to attack as it would be open to the elements.

This would a great feature which would have even more things you could include to it to become customized.
Special features would be as followed.

TR

Instant Rear Deployment - this feature option would allow the light vehicle to be instantly teleport to the ground as well as the troops within the galaxy.
Accelerated Grappling Hook - This feature would be the fastest of the large transport features. The hook would descend at much faster rate and then ascend much faster as well. Allowing the pilot to get and out faster than any other faction.

VS

Decoy Rear Deployment - This feature would deploy identical decoys which would appear as similar images of the light vehicle in the area to allow the real vehicle a surprise attack. These decoy would appear on radar like the infiltrators current ability would work.
Tractor Beam - This would allow the pilot to connect to a allied large vehicle from a further distance than others which could be out of range of some ground based attacks.

NC

Detachable Rear Loading - This feature option would allow the Rear loading bay to detach and be used as a small building for protection. It would function like the current ANT created wall.
Shielded Grappling Hook - This Feature would allow the Galaxy to create a shield to reduce damage to the attached large vehicle

It'd be great, even if they just added the grappler to the valk.

I wish PS2 had the Router. I dont suppose it would be very useful in PS2 compared to PS1 though, but it was a fun vehicle.

For those that dont know, it was a deployable vehicle,
where the driver could place a "beacon" that acted as a teleport between the beacon and deployed vehicle.
Anyone could use the teleport. Even enemies.

Actually now that i think about it, it would probably be unbalanced if an entire faction could teleport from a deployed AMS and up to a biolab roof or a tower roof.
I suppose it could work by lowering its range.

Also the Tresher and Marauder is something i miss.
Tresher was a VS spesific "harasser" that could hover like a magrider, except much much faster.
Marauder was a TR spesific harasser with a 2nd gunner seat. The gunner had a small kobalt-like machinegun.

I really would like to see them introduce the Marauder, perhaps as an all-team vehicle, that is simply a 3-person "heavy harasser". 2 guns, with the roof top being of the same type as the Harasser accesses and 360 degrees of fire while the secondary gun is limited to Sunderer options (or maybe even JUST the grenade launchers, which is what the Marauder had) and a "forward 180" degrees of fire.

You can pull it from any vehicle pad but it requires a tech plant.

I just want a 3-person ground vehicle that is a not a Sunderer, really.

(And no, the suicide seat of the harasser does not make it a viable 3-person vehicle.)

Incidentally, I always liked the Deliverer, especially the first version of it: carried driver + 4 and had 2 guns on the top. (Later incarnations with 4 gunners was overkill).

Of course, what made the Deliverer special is that it could go through water, which isn't exactly useful in PS2.

Kind of a shame that PS2 has no water barriers, now that I think about it. All impassable terrain is mountains and chasms.

I'm going to say "no" to the Lodestar. It had two roles: vehicle transport and vehicle repair/rearm. The second functionality is already taken by the Galaxy [edit] or the Sunderer [/edit] (no need to repeat again), and in Planetside 2 everything is substantially closer together, so there's not really need for vehicle transport. The only advantage creating a Lodie would give (even though I loved my Lodie in PS1) would be putting vehicles into otherwise inaccessible places.

1. That's like the only "advantage" a maggie has over other MBT's, so "no". OK, that's a little hyperbolic, but still kinda true. VS's "MBT" isnt' actually an MBT at all, and it's "role" can often be filled better by a decent Harrasser team these days.
2. Can you imagine locked-down Prowlers on roof-tops, with just their turrets poking over the walls, in a base spamming artillery fire everywhere? Or parked on a Biolab's airpads? Hell-to-the-"no".

As for the Router, also "no". It was useful, sometimes necessary, in PS1 because most PS1 bases were substantially more defensible than PS2 bases. Getting a clever infil to sneak a router pad through the enemy defences giving you a way past the chokepoints into the base was a clever and viable strategy for breaking a siege. And forcing the defenders to pull back from the walls, push the enemy back to the pad and then eliminate the pad gave those pushing through the chokes fewer defenders to go up against. All in all, PS1 generally required more strategy/tactics than PS2. PS2's bases are too open, with too many easy access points and too many close-range Sundy-zones to need a Router system, so development time on that would be a waste. It would also be massively subject to abuse in PS2.

The major advantage of PS1's Maggie and Thresher was the ability to move over water. Water doesn't really exist in PS2, so there's not really any need to change the NS Harasser to give VS their own variant. Also, the Maggie as currently implemented is kinda underwhelming. I can't think of any but a few, really marginal, cases where I wouldn't prefer to be in a Vanguard than a Maggie. Finally, the dev team is small enough that making ES vehicles is probably really low on the agenda. I'd far rather see new game mechanics (like meta-game, reasons to fight, proper logistics, better squad and outfit benefits etc.) than more new vehicles and weapons. Guess what we're most likely to get, however.............