New Sunderer Weapons Please

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by HaxMax, Jul 24, 2020.

  1. HaxMax

    Can we get some new weapon options for the Sunderer please?

    It feels like other vehicles and weapon options have been introduced but the workhorse that is the Sunderer has been left behind. It's a sad state of affairs that in many cases the best option remains the humble Basilisk... the original/stock weapon. Note that this is not the case for any other vehicle.

    In particular, something that offers a little more deterrence against enemy armour would be VERY welcome.

    Cheers.
    • Up x 4
  2. HaxMax

    Even a total sidegrade to add a little spice to the life of the Sundy crew would be amazing. Maybe faction-specific options for flavour?
    • Up x 1
  3. The Shady Engineer

    A looooong time ago there was talk about giving Sunderers empire-specific anti-vehicle weapons. If you're interested, take a look at this video here.

    I legitimately have no idea why these didn't make it to the game. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive with a couple minor complaints (TR's Siegebreaker has too much DPS, NC's Paladin too easy to use if I remember right).

    I hope Sunderers get some love in the future. We've been getting **** on for the longest time now. Furies nerfed (our best defense against vehicles), can't deploy in friendly bases' no-deploy zone anymore and light assaults (our biggest threats) got some extra AV power with the rocklet rifle because **** Sundies amirite? It's not like we're the ones creating fights for the rest of the players or anything.

    /endshortrant, your friendly Auraxian Bus Driver.
    • Up x 2
  4. HaxMax

    I can't believe they went through all the effort of creating these assets and then decided not to release them. Balance issues can be adjusted just like anything else... what's the problem here?

    With the new (Armadillo) cosmetics already on the way for the Sunderer, now's the time to bring back these weapons, or possibly something even better! In all honesty, just re-introducing those existing assets would be a HUGE quality of life improvement over continuing to use the Basilisk in most situations.
    • Up x 2
  5. Demigan

    When I read the threads the reactions were scared. The Fury Sunderer of old was still in the minds of many people. Having Sunderers with blockade armor drive up to you and win from a 2/2 AV MBT with plenty of health left was just not a good idea for such a cheap resiliant vehicle.

    These models did make their return as potential new MBT/Harasser topguns. The TR siegebreaker had become a hybrid carrying the DPS of the Vulcan with the ease of use and range of the Gatekeeper, with a bonus that the missiles had a small laser-guided maneuverability to make hits easier.
    The Aurora became a weapon I proposed for the NC many times: it could fire instantly for decent damage or charge up for a higher damage shot. If you charged up your total DPS went down but you could hold the shot charged up and release when you wanted. The shot was a long horizontal wave that would penetrate all vehicles and infantry in its line of fire. It's damage and mechanics were all extremely balanced in terms of what it did and the trade-offs you got.
    And then there was the NC Paladin. They really went out of their way to make this one crap. Its base DPS was lower than an unupgraded Halberd. It had a short reload speed but also several seconds of charge-up time before it could fire, basically the reload happened when you charged up. Worse: unlike the VS it could not fire without a charge-up and it also could not hold its weapon charged but was forced to fire the moment it had charged up. It could not OHK infantry and as said its damage was less than Halberds while still shooting just one projectile per magazine. Its only advantage was high velocity, but it also had such a high drop that a Halberd was again easier against long-range targets. Its as if the devs thought "how can we make this NC gun the worst of the worst?".
  6. Campagne

    The Paladin always made me wonder, do the devs. actually knowingly choose to propose such a thing? Surely they had to have known the thing was complete trash, and yet they tried to go ahead with it anyway.

    They couldn't have made the conscious decision to give the Paladin such awful stats and low DPS, right? :confused:
  7. Demigan

    I think that there is a small bias to the VS in the devs, but that in general they seem oblivious of the actual impact of the stats and mechanics they choose.

    For example the NC Vanquisher is an obvious OP tool. It's got great damage, great burst ROF and wonderful accuracy. It's not as if the NC is given purely crap. This weapon should have been dialed down but so far that hasn't happened.
    Then take a weapon like the Starfall. It's basically a shorter ranged Prowler AP gun mounted on a Flash. That's not going to be a problem at all! No siree!
    Or look at how they "solved" the problem with 2/2 Stealth Flashes that would decloak and use a Fury+deci to quickly destroy an MBT from behind. They wanted to curb specifically that power, so they gave a penalty to stealthing again after decloaking. Which hurt every other tactic you have with the stealth Flash except for the one they tried to fix.
    Or look how they treated the Forwards Station. They had something that could actually have a huge impact on the overall game, then at the last second they removed HIVE's, realized that they wanted something to attract people to PMB's so they introduced the Router instead sacrificing a much better idea in the hopes of keeping people paying for PMB stuff.

    Best yet is the Escalation update. There must have gone an absolute ton of work into that. In a short time period we've gotten Bastions and the Colossus with a bunch of extra tools and mechanics on top. It should have propelled the game forwards but they screwed it up with their intention. They had seen that outfits held the most player retention, so they decided to basically force people into outfits and assume that magically all those people would have a higher retention without a regard for how these people got there or how the tools were distributed.
    Just look at the Bastion, it's supposed to be the epic conclusion of a full Outfit's cooperation. Yet there's one dude who racks up hundreds of kills using the work of his outfit and the rest has to protect him. It could have been the rally-point for the entire faction! A pocket base meant to offer infantry and vehicle spawns and local abilities to support the troops! Instead it's a murder-machine for one guy.

    They have done no research into why outfits have more retention. The rewards they give for cooperation is making a single guy have big guns and enjoy 100+killstreaks by clicking the damn map or firing off the work of their entire outfit in orbital strikes based on "there's a concentration of dudes here and I want kills". Most of it is disjointed, not in line with what they wanted. There's no thought in it! And I know that was obvious from the first sentence but damn these devs are dumb! I hope that many of the devs below the top think "I know this is going wrong but I can't do anything about it" because I refuse to believe that all of them are incapable of seeing the consequences of what they are trying to create.
    • Up x 3
  8. NotziMad

    The sunderer, in 99% of the fights, is the only reason there is a fight to begin with.

    The sunderer is at the heart, at the core of Planet Side 2. No sunderer, no spawn. No sunderer, no fight. No sunderer, no capturing territory.

    At the same time, it's the most boring vehicle available, it's slow, it's heavy, it's not manoeuvrable, it's loud, and it's a huge rolling rectangle, easy to target.

    And at the same time, it's the weakest of all vehicles. You heard me, it's the easiest vehicle to destroy, easier than a flash. Why? Because once deployed, it can't move. Because it's big. Because most of its guns (and here I am coming "on topic") are useless.

    Some are very good (almost overpowered) against infantry. Some are pretty good against air (although mostly a deterrent really). All are useless against armour

    Whcih is why experienced sundy drivers don't defend their sundy using the sundy guns. They go on suicide missions as infantry and face the tanks on foot.

    So I obviously support the OP in his request.

    That said, I don't do it for the same reason.

    I do it because I have something else in mind, and I actually made a few threads about this before. And that is that I believe the game could do with a lot more people starting fights, instead of 99% of players simply "green dot surfing". No one pulls sundies except some occasions (zergs is one example, for some strange reason, zerglins always pull a million sundies).

    To make the map more "pro active", to enhance a player's sense of conquering and defending territory, it would make sense to make the sundy more fun to drive and use. At the moment, it isn't, but if it were, more people would use them, and I really think that would help the game in general.
    • Up x 3
  9. The Shady Engineer

    Used to battle bus religiously before Furies got hit by the nerf bat. Only 2/2 AV MBT I could reliably kill was the magrider. Prowler out DPS'd the bus by a significant margin and Vanguards had (pre-nerf) shields to easily win the fight. I did win some fights against the other 2 but it was usually because I managed to sneak up on them and hit them in the rear with the first volley. Frankly, if they let a big blocky blockade Sundy sneak up on them, they deserve to lose.

    Lightnings were food for battle buses but also consider this: a 1/1 solo vehicle loses to a 3/12 teamwork vehicle.

    The Sundy top guns must've returned to PTS when I was on hiatus, shame. Both changes to the Siegebreaker and Aurora sound backasswards. I liked the initial implementation. TR had the big DPS but on a burst weapon platform that also had high drop and mediocre velocity so it'd be hard to hit things at range but if you managed, you'd be rewarded for it. Kind of like the Viper on a Lightning, DPS is theoretically high but it won't be able to take advantage of it outside of CQC unless the gunner is really good. Giving it guided munitions mitigates the downside of the high DPS and breaks the weapon. Bad idea.

    Aurora changes are just weird. It was in a good spot. Straightforward, hyper accurate, mini Saron laser.

    I think you're selling the Paladin short. Yes it had high bullet drop (for some reason, shouldn't had existed imo) and lower DPS than the others but it had higher bullet velocity than the god damn Mercenary carbine. ON AN AV WEAPON. It would have taken a little bit of time, but once NC gunners dialed in their sights and got used to compensating for the bullet drop, I believe the Pally would have been a long ranged powerhouse. Not just against armor but against air and infantry as well.

    Also, shouldn't you blue hooligans be happy that you finally got an actual railgun instead of another shotgun? :D
  10. Campagne

    The problem with the higher velocity was the firing delay. It was really a lot like the Railjack, in that because of the charge before firing combined with the inability to hold or control the charge, it effectively meant the projectile would hit well after the trigger was pulled anyways. The one real advantage it had was null in most situations where it could have mattered and was a downgrade in every other aspect.

    As is the Halberd is and was better as a long range weapon. Better DPS, versatility, and maximum range with the gravity more than made up for the punctuated velocity.

    The fact that it was a real railgun was cool, but in my opinion is was kinda ugly and the firing delay was awful. I'd have taken an AV Canister, honestly. Some shotgun-Vulcan thing would have been much better.
    • Up x 1
  11. Demigan

    I would have loved it if they had just given the VS version to the NC. The only thing different to their idea and the one I've been proposing for half a decade (!) Is that it uses a wave attack like the Aphelion charge thing, that the velocity doesnt increase with charge and that the uncharged shot also penetrates everything.

    Give the VS something else. Mount a damn tesla coil/Obelisk hybrid on top for all I care, as long as its fun and balanced.
  12. HaxMax

    The Sundy is largely defenseless against other vehicles, unless it's full of dudes ready to jump out and attack with explosives. If you run into even a stock Viper lightning, and you have 1-2 people in your Sundy, you have no chance and the Sundy is dead. It's not fun.
    • Up x 2
  13. HaxMax


    All they have to do is tune the DPS of the faction-specific Sunderer weapons properly, so that a MBT or AP lightning kills the Sunderer faster. How complicated is that? Park the vehicles in front, in rear, etc., do some testing and find good values!

    They just need to close the gap in TTK when a Sundy faces a MBT or lightning. Of course the tanks should take less time to kill the Sundy, but the difference right now is so drastic that it's completely hopeless for the Sundy and its crew. Combined with the fact that your best weapon in these situations (and best weapon all around) is the ubiquitous and thus pretty boring stock Basilisk... it does not make for fun gameplay.
  14. Demigan

    The question is for more vehicle deterrence, but with the Sunderer's high resiliance and dual topguns its a very hard thing to balance. The rest of the thread also focuses on the Sunderer being able to defend itself against enemy vehicles while deployed, so shouldnt the Sunderer focus on defense and non-lethal perks?

    For example, imagine a type of Bulldog that if it hits an enemy tank nerfs its speed and reload speed? Topguns are also spot&shoot right now, what if topguns get access to secondary abilities? You could have a shield projector from the turret that basically projects a large version of the MAX shield a distance from where the turret is facing.

    Also rather than bringing back combat busses you could also focus on fortifying around the Sunderer. Imagine if Sunderers had a small nanite-costing set of items available to help protect the Sunderer? Deployable shields, minelayers that deploy low-yield mines to slow down and deter enemies, items that distort the air like a cloak bubble except that the farther you are the more distorted it looks, fake holograms, items that create nerfing effects to enemies if they are nearby etc.
    • Up x 2
  15. HaxMax

    While these are all really cool ideas (also why not have a repair turret?), they would all take more work to implement than simply putting the turrets THAT ALREADY EXIST back into the game and doing a little work on balancing them.
    • Up x 1
  16. Clone117

    give sundy access to halberd top gun. And maybe even faction specific mbt top guns. shall name the double halberd sundy battle bus 2.0 although even if we had a double halberd sundy it would still get rekt by c4 fairys. Harrasers and mbts. But it would stand a better chance against armor. If a simple change like this was made.
    • Up x 1
  17. Demigan

    Yes! Having more effective health and double Halberds will definitely not make the BattleBus OP! Especially a Blockade or shield Sundy for long-range wouldnt be a good thing at all! Just imagine how disappointed the first Vulcan BattleBus would be if he can only kill 2 MBT's per run with hit less than 50% of the cost per MBT with a vehicle designed to be an armored truck rather than a tank?

    And C4 fairies would just teleport on top of your vehicle and insta-kill it. Its not as if a moving target that BattleBusses are represent a tough target to land more than 1 C4 on unless the dummies sit still all the time. Also wouldnt BattleBusses pick the good old Blockade Armor, which makes C4 an almost trivial thing?
  18. Demigan

    Many of the things I propose also already exist, they also need a tuning to work but the thing is they have a far larger margin for error compared to a BattleBus with guns.
  19. HaxMax

    Yes, with the data that already exists, the margin of error for Sunderer weapon tuning is small. And any error that becomes evident after implementation can easily be corrected.
  20. HaxMax

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