Why The Combined Arms Initiative- Isn't

Combined arms is an approach to warfare which seeks to integrate different combat arms of a military to achieve mutually complementary effects.

After reading the combined arms initiative post, one might think that "Combined Arms Initiative" is a mis-nomer. There may be something else to call it (and I'm sure there is), but thinking these points are enhancements to combined arms play is embarrasing.

1.More territory goals for vehicles. Vehicles should feel like they have a stake in territory capture, which means adding lattice-based goals that can come in the form of vehicle-capturable control points and hard spawns.

This idea draws vehicles away from infantry units, and vice-versa. As part of larger (combined arms) team, vehicles already have a stake in territory capture. It is found in the securing of approaches, and base capture.

2. Vehicles that are more fun to use. We'd like to see vehicles that handle better before you cert into them, as well as alleviate some of common frustrations with handling, like the lack of traction while maneuvering on hills.

Lack of traction on hills in a combined arms environment means that a weapon system that opeates better on hills (infantry) would secure hills.

3.Meaningful vehicle/infantry interactions. We want vehicle encounters (vehicle vs vehicle and vehicle vs infantry) to last longer and not feel like either side gets destroyed too quickly. This will include changes to weapon damage potential and effective ranges.

Making weapons less effective does not enhance combined arms gameplay. It makes it take longer to destroy something.

4. Remove Continent and Facility vehicle benefits and restrictions. More consistent resource flow should reduce force multiplier advantages for singular factions, while encouraging players to pull the vehicles that will have the most impact on the given situation.

Controlling player behavior is a good way to achieve game stagnation via repetition. Combined arms tactics allow for a myriad of combinations; the victor is the one taht puts the best recipe together.

5. Incentivize coordination and transportation. We want to increase rewards on transportation objectives, as well as allow squad and platoon leaders to help direct vehicles to areas that need their support.

Already being done.


What is happening is not a combined arms initiative. It sounds like a bid to seperate weapons systems and further copy other shooting games.

Very interesting way to look at it. While I would like to discuss this, I do not have time atm. But BUMP

Ziggurat8 makes an interesting observation in
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/bunkers-are-coming.244787/unread

Vehicles potentially capturing and holding a point (maybe with engie help to mine counter attack lanes) that gives their team a hard spawn in a bunker, to be able to continue the fight for a base while more Sundies are called up to replace casualties?

If this is how things will work it looks quite a lot like infantry / armour co-operation towards a common objective

"We want vehicle encounters (vehicle vs vehicle and vehicle vs infantry) to last longer and not feel like either side gets destroyed too quickly"

No matter how much spin that they apply to this, they're going to break the ground vehicle game play and players will leave. I can just picture the changes where you need to run over infantry five times with your tank just to take down their personal shields.

battles can already last awhile,

I agree with everything but the last parts. Vehicles are dirt cheap and disposable as it is, the continent bonuses make that worse. It's common for Indar pilots to just ram their opponents, as it's quicker to just spawn another plane than get a gun kill for average players. And that's just **** gameplay. I'm all for the continent lock bonuses to change. The next thing I disagree with is vehicle transport, it's basically non-existent. You'll see a Max crash now and then with Gals, but that's it. I'd love to see full Sunderers with people lining up to gun on them because they're so valuable. If you want combined arms to mean something, vehicles have to be expensive and powerful. Just like I say about HA missiles, if you want them to be effective, they can't be free.

There is one big problem with point 5. It's called redeploy.

While it's no longer as painful as it used to be when 90 planetmen could pop out of nowhere, that's still the main reason why logistics do not exist in Planetside 2. Modern CoD kids do not want to drive and search for a battle: they want to shoot other planetmen immediately.
Too bad they seem to have missed the tutorial part explaining Instant Action.

Imo the IA cooldown should go, and redeploy should only take to the warpgate. After that we can start talking about transportation.

If tanks no longer OHK infantry or aircraft, I will cancel my membership and walk. I love the rest of the ideas, but the potential damage nerf worries me.

I had a recent conversation with someone. His main points was this:

"no one likes to fight vs(connery vs) because you guys don't give good fights...either double team or you guys leave."

When ask what he consider a good fight (also I asked if he meant on the ground, vehicles or in the air).

"it happen in the air and on the ground, that is why nc and tr fight each other so much/because we give good fights"
"they fight armour with armour and air with air, infantry with infantry and so forth"
"for you guys when its infantry fight, you pull a2g scythes, when its armour you pull harrasers, when we bring air, you just leave, so boring"

That the gist of it, so do you people actually agree that the game should be moving toward something like this for it to be a better "game" albiet one you may not agree with or keep it as it is closer to a war "game". I prefer the latter type of "game". I mean I won't mind playing any of those game serparately, (BF, warthunder, WOT) but planetside can be and to some extent already, is all of those combined, and I despise those who fail to see the potential this game has. So depending on how Wrel and the dev team handle the upcoming resource revamp for vehicle(because mark my word its-a-coming), I'll reconsider supporting this game again.

Personally, I think the game balance wise is not good(play rock paper scissor if you want total balance because White moves first in chess), but its not terrible. It is just lacking a central command to tie in all the forces and make it a true combined arms game. Otherwise you just have random harraser/tank/airsquad (organization wise at best), going around killing what they can without much of a purpose unless its just a general zerg to a main facility.




(Keep in mind, this is a decent person, a lib pilot(irony in that he should be the last person saying this), he did not come at me calling me names and spewing insults. We had a short disccusion but he called me a troll and said he ignored me after when I mentioned Mori and HHCN airsquad, and in his word, "hhcn airsquad is harmless". I could post the full convo for a new thread, but that takes too much work.)

Those 5 points look rather confused... It is almost someone gathered 5 completely different things and put them under a cool umbrella "combined arms initiative" to make them more palatable.

1.More territory goals for vehicles.
Vehicles do not conquer territory but allow infantry to do it... Just read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanized_infantry

2. Vehicles that are more fun to use.
Nice and fine ... But what has this to do with "combined arms" ?

3.Meaningful vehicle/infantry interactions
If you want to give real meaning introduce location damage (e.g. tracks/wheels, engine, sensors and weapons) to make fights more interesting and varied. An infantry rocket (guided or not) could disable tracks (mobility hit) but not penetrate the main armor. If you want to make things even more interesting add the option to damage if you have multiple hit in the same spot (mark with a decal the damaged location), which again is something quite real: even ERA systems fail to protect a tank if another rocket hit the same spot. C4/mines could instead damage tracks and/or engine, leaving tanks disabled but still dangerous and capable to fight back until finished by other tanks. That is combined arms. Oh and BTW make troop carrier more fragile than IFVs and MBTs. Do not simply nerf weapons damage and/or ROF and/or range, it is already hopelessly stupid as it is. The Sagger guided missile used during the Yom Kippur war in 1973 had a range measured in Km against the 300 m D) of the Phoenix. And since we are in the future, why not introduce EMP-like warheads that can disable a vehicle for say -10 seconds or more-, or specialized ammo for the MBTs (AP, AA, Sabot penetrators)?

4. Remove Continent and Facility vehicle benefits and restrictions
Why? That will level things even more instead of forcing people to develop some basic tactics.

5. Incentivize coordination and transportation.
This seems good, but what's the point of transporting anybody when it is far more safer and quicker deploying a Sunderer to allow instant spawn? Instead, reduce the Sunderer to a pure transport carrier BUT allow it to deploy a "spawn gate" with the help of a couple of engineers, which will need time to build the "spawn gate" and will require protection while they do it. So a Sunderer needs a composite crew of planetmen to do something. That is coordination.

Spin up the RL velocity (so a straight hit can be possible within 80-120 meters), increase the reload time, decrease ammo pool for it (2 with the loded rocket and 4 with the pouch)
make HA's shied mean something, not just a 1.5 bullet corner peaker (even increase its recharge time if needed)
re-do all of TR HA arsenal, because it has only 2 viabe options - NS15 and CARV

re-make the prowlers siege mode, so it will fire in mortar like style while loosing the ability to fire straight (and maybe retainig 30-40% mobility speed)
it wont have pinpont accuracy, something in 3-4 meter radius (thus making standard and E rounds viable)
bring back pre-nerf GateKeeper

Air units must loose the ability to hover (so they will engage in propper dogfights), thus giving valks their true role as attack choppers (they can get an armor increase) + passengers accuracy in valk will be as if he's running (avoiding the RL spam)
liberators mobility must be downed, and its armor nerfed.
Give air 4 packs of flares with a 1.3 min on full discharge

Galax must get 2 optional wing guns with high angle of freedom againts infantry (but with very limited range)

increase TTK

C4 must get a 20-30 meter radius of available activation (going out of that radius will deactivate the charge), plus give it a directional blast (so a land planted C4 will disharge vertically, with less radius, while a wall mounted one will have a moderate blast cone)


Medics deploy field must nullify any EMP effects in it (faraday cage)

Very interesting idea.

And that has always been the biggest ******** ever in PS2. Any attempt to bring depth and strategy in this game will always fail until Redeploy exist.

It's not rocket science: talking about transpiration and logistics in a game where anyone has a free teleporter does not make any sense.
That's why the Sunderer gradually became more a tank than a troop transport unit, and that's why the Valkyrie has never found a place in the game.

It will not work for 2 simple reasons:

1.) There are changes during the last years that happened because they wanted to cover up technical weaknesses of the game that where never fully thought through. On the otehr hands there are changes that where planned and needed but never took place because money > balance. Its hard to get balance when working this way.

2.) Players are encouraged to be egoistic. Everyone needs kills and certs. No matter what is changed. Players will most likely take whatever is easiest do gain certs after wards. Since tehy dont want to change the concept of gaining XP nothing will change.

All they have to do is actually develop new features. Editing numbers all day tells me that they either A. dont have any competent coders anymore/skeleton crew or B. they just dont care about the game as a whole? Seriously give us new continents, a galactic map with home continents, maybe some ingame weed and we will be happy campers. But NOOOO they have to keep ******* with the core game that isn't as broken as it seems. The balance between air/tank/troops matters less then actual content. Which we haven't even had a new continent for 3 years. 3 whole friggen years, thats like 2 decades in MMO time! Nope the problem is the tanks. whatever dude daybreak is killing this game

Well that's gonna happen so you might as well just un-sub now and get it over with. Yes they put out their PR lines but don't expect them to act on it. Infantryside is king and it's always going to be that way.

Its a Great way to ruin the game

The problem of TRUE combined arms are the players. For combined arms you need organisation and a chain of command and for that you need dedicated / passionate players. I dont see a lot of them.

It comes down to multiple question.

Why should i join an outfit?
What is the benefit of playing in platoons?
What qualifies you to give me orders?
Why should i play a support class and kill my k/d?

These and more questions are asked by new and casual players. As long as the game doesnt give them answers and realy shows them the benefits, we will always have problems with combined arms.

The answer is there is nothing wrong with the current balance, If I want to destroy a tank I do. Alone or in a group I have many options and ways to do it, you have to use tactics if you are alone plain and simple.
Nerfing the tank because people dont know that they shouldn't step out in front of a tank is frankly stupid. The TTK in the game is fine and if you are stupid enough to get shelled by a tank in an aircraft you deserve to blow up. We need to stop putting kitty mittens on the players and let them learn how to play. The Nerf of AA turrets frankly is one of the stupidest things I have seen, what is the point of AA if you cant use it when the enemy is in sight? I haven't had many successful kills with it since.
Frankly the Devs are just stirring **** up because they dont know how to actually make the big changes we need to progress the game, Not many are the original Devs and I doubt many of them even know how to use the Continent editor enough to make one from scratch. They are just going to dumb the game down to COD levels so that joe schmo will pay to play it. its really sad

The game is underdeveloped, the player base is supposed to teach each other really but its not happening because the game is stagnating