PTS update

having troops flow from a different area each battle might really break up the monotony. Not enough to get me playing again, but a very interesting step that might really help out. I dig it.

I'd like to see a source on that, please. Otherwise, HTFU or go play COD/BF.

I'm certainly impressed by the new changes too. They need some work, but they're based on some great ideas. I'm not too worried about continent and facility benefits at the moment, as I imagine that those are pretty much in flux, so we're certainly not looking at the final versions.

Lots of interesting stuff but no one seems to have mentioned the awesome-sounding infantry will get xp from damaging ground vehicles bit...........at last, it will worth something to shoot at tanks with a RL. or mana turret.

Meh. I can get plenty of XP playing medic. What I need is kills to complete my directives and auraxiums because of the stupid design not rewarding non-kill contributions in any way. A bit of XP isn't going to solve that problem.....

It really seems like half an April fools joke mixed in with some promises they made in the past.

Like they first talk about the forward station still regenerating shields, then they talk about it regenerating 42 health a second. Thats just weird. What else is weird is the ams restrictions towards enemy Sunderers. What purpose does this have? How will this be visible? If its invisible then people dont know what's blocking them, if its visible you can easily track down all sundies.

As for laughingdeads comments. Defenders never were capable of using vehicles to clear attackers. The moment you have the vehicles to clear the infantry you've got enough control to wipe out the sunderers instead. So the forwards station, which they might have picked up from the many threads I made of one, is a necessity to breaking a spawncamp: smuggle a Medic outside of your spawn or into the base and you have an alternative (non-redeployside) spawnpoint.
Only thing they should add is make it a utility. If this spawn os costless it becomes too easy to fill a base with one or replace destroyed ones.
As for "oh noes, too many people would spawn on it to destroy it", thats bullcrap. If that were true then current Sunderers would be absolutely untouchable due to their increased health, resistances and special abilities.

As for "now people stop having a goal if the continent lock rewards arent as good". Thats even bigger bullcrap. Most people dont even care about locking continents, theres even complaints they lock too fast. People play to have a nice fight. Thats why sooooo many people join biolab slugfests. It doesnt matter if you win or lose, but its a good fight.

they will still be just as reliant as they are now if you can EMP the medic's spawner pad, second the reason sunderers aren't defended is because of player stupidity, not balance.

sundies do not need more survivability, the only buff needed is a buff to player's brains which is beyond the reach of programming. if they are going to insist on sundie survivability buffs then they should tie it to deploy mode and players spawning on the sundie, otherwise i see battle buses coming back to OPness.

this change is counterproductive to the battle bus nerf.

they need to stop balancing around the lowest denominator and balance around the midway point between 'braindead' and 'l33t' players, if players won't defend their sundie that is taking fire as they spawn then that sundie deserves to be destoryed.

i see this hurting smaller fights with hard to kill sundies and hurting large fights where the 3rd faction decides to bring a sundie train from halfway around the map to attack a hex they can't even capture.

Honestly, with the spawn device, i hope they make it "emp resistant" by which i mean, it would stop working for say the same amount of time an EMP disables a persons HUD or the time it disables a turret, but doesn't destroy it, that makes EMP's useful for stopping them, so that we can hopefully clear a room, and then wipe it, but EMP's wont destroy it like it does other deployables so that it wont ruin a fight. this also allows for some "coordinated" play, to let us wipe out spawns if you work together, as opposed to spawn rushing with a Zerg. This in my view would be good balancing as it doesn't make EMP's useless against them (why would they when very few other things are), but wouldn't let a single EMP infil destroy a fight.

Also I think it should have a deteriorating health pool if there are no friendlies within say 30-50 meters and enemies are within say 15... namely because this would prevent spawn camping an area without spawn shields... I mean we have all heard the stories of people farming player made base spawns. This would stop when someone spawns and kills the peep in 15 meters, but if they die it would continue to deteriorate.

Right. That's enough of that, I think. Reported for spamming.

Ummm... no. The reason sunderers aren't defended is simple.....

1. Sitting around doing nothing is boring and PS2 is far more actiony than strategic (like PS1). Back in PS1, vehicles could be hacked if they weren't occupied (and towards the end of the game, even if they were occupied). That meant that, if you wanted your sundy to stay in place, you needed to sit in it. I led full platoons daily back then, so I had no problem sitting in my sundy, given that I spent most of my time on the map, or giving orders, or communicating with other platoon leaders. Hell, I auraxiumed my AMS back in PS1. But PS2 is a very different game, and sitting in your sundy twiddling your thumbs for 20 minutes doing nothing is not part of that game.
2. There is zero guarantee that the defenders will even attempt to take out your sundy. That means that you could easily be sat in your sundy for 20 minutes, doing nothing, waiting for something that will never happen. So, you get to the end of a fight, cap the base and you've achieved almost nothing. Hooray. Now, not only are you bored, but you're frustrated as well.
3. If the defenders DO attack your sundy, there's a decent chance you won't be able to do anything to stop them. For example, if you've parked your Deploy Shield sundy in the garage, and the enemy rolls a 1/2 MBT up on you, there's a better than even chance that he can shoot you without either of your guns having an angle on him. What do you do then? Try to shoot him up with rocket launchers as a Heavy? Pull a MAX, wasting another 450 nanites to probably not stop him killing your sundy? Charge him as a LA with C4, hoping he can't kill you before you close the distance? So now you've spent all that time sitting in the sundy doing nothing, and you STILL didn't manage to save it when it got attacked. Now you're bored and angry.
4. And as for having a half-squad sitting around as vehicles and infantry guarding every sundy, firstly, that's going to put you at a massive disadvantage to the defenders, given that you have to defend the sundy all the time, while they can attack it at any point they choose (or not) which means they can use their entire force to push the point, or blow the sundies or whatever, while you have to break yours up. And secondly, refer back to points 1) and 2). Now you've got BUNCHES of people who are bored and frustrated / angry.

No, the problem with people not defending sundies isn't stupid people, it's stupid design. And the solution is NOT to make sundies more durable. They've already got the same health as an MBT, and almost the same resistances!

The shielded sundy garage here is one possible solution. I also like the new "Forward Spawn" they're looking at on PTS. There are probably other possible solutions as well, but without a drastic redesign of the base gameplay, defending sundies is just something that isn't going to happen, and ******** on players without understanding why, like a moron, is not going to help.

if you are attacked by a tank or aircraft or whatever pull some rocketlaunchers w/enginners repping the sundie and fire on the threat, if there's no cover then it's bad sundie placement, you don't need to kill a tank to make it a non threat to your sundie.

i've seen many many times where there are at least 6 people spawning on a sundie that jsut run off even though they can see the sundie is taking fire from a tank, yet they could defend it with some rocket launchers as a group, yet they don't cause 'mah K/D'

you don't need to garrison a sundie, all you need to do is keep a general idea of what is going on in the area with your map so if there is armor aproaching your sundie you can pull counters before the armor fires on your sundie.

again it's a player made problem by wanting to just farm infantry battles and putting more importance on their K/D then keeping the fight going.

one lightning can destory a sundie, one MBT can destory a sundie, one heavy assault can destory a lightning or an MBT, two or three HAs can easily kill one attacking a sundie.

player error, not balance problem. it's the same reason why sometimes there aren't enough sunderers around because there are no smart players that think to pull multiples and instead have one sundie up which makes it easy for the defenders to win.

a sundie with a few people who want the sundie to live is difficult to destory if the driver placed it well.

they writed that that this last patch make you like vehicles ... sure i prefer stop game that playing.

4-6 secondes alive with a sundy when a enforcer/marauder/haraseur come to shoot you, even a light tank make more time to kill you.
Sure like this new game with thiis new patch .... IF you bought all constructions, make castle if few seconds and if you are not in sundy ... but me i'm ammo support , so now i cant find my place in this game. its i play just to get a sundy and be destroyed few seconds after. i prefer stop the game the P2W game (now) and say to you "Good luck..."

sorry for poor english.

So.... your response to bad design is to require a half-dozen or more probably uncoordinated players to suddenly cooperate like a well oiled machine, to take on vehicles that can potentially gib them with a single shot, probably without decent cover, using weapons that are a relatively minor nuisance and either a) require more than enough exposure time for the vehicle to kill you, or b) that have low RoF's and low chances to hit unless the enemy vehicle is an idiot and comes far too close / remains stationary.

Clearly you've never tried to defend a sundy before.....

Oh wait.... you play on Briggs. Never mind. You wouldn't have a clue.

Lol just done the same thing to that idiot myself

Need some construction balance updates.....This is missing anything of the sort - I suggest Limit Hives to 3 per faction and non-stealable or transferable - this would make for much more balanced gameplay on the hives.

Wow, when reading through this I got so hyped. Think of some of the things the forums have asked for in the past...

Deploy-able spawns?
Drop-pod flash thingy?
Updated Continent bonuses?

All of these I'm 99% sure people have asked for, and they are doing it.

I think this update will be great for the game.

3 hives that can't be stolen from the enemy, nor moved.
So if you manage to destroy that Hive, which doesn't hault or undo Hive progress to a Victory point, they literally can just rebuild it near instantly.
And all 3 sides, have the same hive counts, making it a contest to see who's hives are up the longest and more constantly.
Wait, we have a lattice? Thought it was Defend-the-hive-till-we-win gameplay.

Balanced? No, no that would not.
Make the Lattice even more pointless, oh so very much.

A free Flash for everyone and deployable indoor spawn points?
This only makes sense if they're planning to remove Redeploy.

sunderer durability is not a problem, infantry's strength has and always will be numbers, people need to actually TRY to defend a sundie to even succeed at defending at a sundie, yet they don't even try!

the problem is players not sundie tankiness, sundies are among the most tanky vehicles in the game, the solution is for people to actually care wether a sundie lives or dies, not a band aid fix to player laziness and destructive self centered behavior.

you don't need 6 people working as a well oiled machine, you need 6 players that care to defend the sundie when they spawn on it while it's under attack, when all is said 3 heavies shooting rockets at a tank while 3 engineers repair the sundie will drive off or destroy the tank if there is any decent cover.

tank's strength is firepower and speed, infantry's strength is firepower in numbers, just like AA(except AA is far less effective).


no doubt if they buff sundies again 3-6 months down the line someone will whine that sundies aren't tanky enough to stay alive undefended.

Ah so shells lethal to infantry in the description and the mere existence of said weapon doesn't mean I should use that weapon is what you're saying? I basically said I thought vehicles were supposed to support infantry to get out of a spawn lock, on top of that how the **** is a spawn port going to make spawnloacks for the defenders less likely? I could just as easily put an assaulting spawn on a roof and have heavies pour out suppressing fire from a spawn defenders can't reach. How does no one see that is how ridiculous this item is? Hell I'm not the one saying there should be spawn beacons, why are you telling me to go play battlefield when planetside is becoming just that?

Actually that makes more sense then the update does. Except people are still going to need a hardspawn at frontlines