Hi everyone, Sorry if it is a bit of a read, Ill try to make this as entertaining as possible and make you laugh while im making my point, alot of it will be stuff you already know but that is just to highlight why this suggestion is important. I'll also be trying to keep this formated into different parts so you can jump to what part you want to go The overall idea of this suggestion is to get more players excited about getting into the sky and making ESFs alot more interesting Fair warning, I main NC and there will be a alittle complaining here or there, but ill try to keep it to a minimum unless justified... Part 1 - Making a case (Overview & Introduction) Part 2 - The Unique flavour of the factions (Examples of other faction specific equipment) Part 3 - The Actual Suggestion Part 4 - Im not done, lets add some MORE fun stuff Part 1 - Making a case(Overview & Introduction) Lets start with an overview of the ESFs as they are now Vanu Scythe, Terran Mosquito, Conglomorate Reaver Yes, these are the the "Unique" ESFs to each faction but what exactly is the difference? lets find out - One is better at hovering thanks to the power of pure faith in papa vanu helping them defy gravity as well as some tech wizardry and it is built much like a bit like flying piece of paper... very hard to hit from any direction except from the top or bottom (VS Scythe) - Another is like a flying needle, and just as scary, its very narrow profile means it can "Do a barrel roll" and confuse anyone which way it is actually going to go when it does start to go. Your best chance on hitting it is swatting at it from the sides like the damn mosquito it is but goodluck with that, you'll need it (TR Mosquito) (and yes I kinda hate these things when they are against me) - The last is just a flying brick with rockets attached to it to make go, its like it was built by Jeremy Clarkson screaming "POWERRRRR" the whole damn time and sure, he did get this brick to fly but can anyone argue that it is any good?, and correct me if im wrong, out of the 3 this one is actually best engaged.... *checks notes* from the front?... as it is shows more surface area and the previous 2 in this regard so easier target (NC Reaver) BUT after all that, to my knowledge they all are as fast as each other, as maneuverable as each other, same health as each other as well as the same resistances to damage as each other the only difference so far is appearance --- How about we look at weapons, Here we can see alittle difference HOWEVER ... all 3 factions do have some really similar weapons - The default one (Sauron laser canon, M18 Needler, M20 Mustang) and despite one being named after who has an obsession with rings and ruling middle earth, another just wanting their naming to be on point with their aircrafts needle like appearance, and the last probably wanting to appeal to car enthusiasts even though this is a aircraft (Get out of here Clarkson!), these weapons really good accuracy and are quite favored by the professional dogfighters of Auraxis - The fast shooty one (V26 Maelstrom Turbo Laser, M18 Rotary, Vortek Rotary) aside from the one steali... um i mean borrowing a name from star wars and the other 2 in a legal battle over the attempts to trademark the name weapon name "Rotary", This is the one where everyone wants to try and have more dakka in their lifes, how effective that is in combat depends on the pilot really, with me my mag dumping of this weapon it seems to hit nothing but air =( - The "I'm going to keep shooting till your dead" one (Antares LC, M18 Locust, M20 Kestrel) Now I cant joke about the names on this one except the TR forgetting that they already have something called a M18 but all 3 of these have the highest ammo capacity and are just as effective from hitting something at point blank range to hitting something from one warp gate to another which would be pretty impressive if you could actually hit something that far and id call you a god or a hacker if you killed something at that distance --- OVERALL all of those are the same, there are differences in fire rates and damage per shot but it all balances out quite well that it is a moot point but HERE is where the ONLY difference I can find in the ESFs come in, their "Unique" weapons - The Vanu's Light PPA; A glorious weapon that infantry fear and enemy ESF's and other fast moving things laugh uncontrollably at, delivering slow moving orbs of guarenteed DEATH upon an enemy, the only answers to seeing one of these bombarding a entrance/exit is wait until its out of ammunition and needs to reload OR that you find another entrance/exit because there is absolutely no going out when the death orbs are coming for you. This weapon truely embodies the will of papa vanu bringing a spectacular light show of death and destruction! - The Terran Republic's M14 Banshee; Pretty much Planetside's embodiment of the main weapon of the US Air forces A10 Thunderbolt/Warthog... the BRRRRRRRRRRT cannon, delivering 800 coke bottle sized explosive rounds of FREEDOM per minute... wait a minute... delivering "freedom" is the NC's job... GIVE THAT TO US!!!! ... but in all seriousness once your in the sights of this thing as a infantry person, you may as well pull the pin of your frag grenade and eat it whole because your already dead! and this things impressiveness does not stop there it is also able to be decently effective on enemy ESFs and and other vehicles as well, so its a solid choice for any pilot not dedicated to dog fighting but still wanting the option. - The New Conglomerate M30 Mustang AH; ... A shotgun... there, done... no need to go on, I cant be more funny or descriptive than that... yes the NC are known as the "Shotgun faction" but still, shotgun on a attack aircraft is just...*sigh*... To be effective you need to get up close and personal, in air to air fighting its possible but difficult as your going to be knocking everything off your desktop with your mouse and occasionally smacking your friend sitting beside you in the mouth just trying to keep on target... air to ground your putting yourself at great risk, still need to get close and it just takes 1 heavy assault even with bad aim with 1 NS Decimator to ruin your day and steal you of 350 nanites and whatever lunch money is in your pockets (if I can make a suggestion within a suggestion... "Shrapnel shot" ... Cannons back around the late 1700s and early 1800s they had a thing called "Shrapnel shot" which would be fired from a cannon as a solid peice and remain a solid peice and after it traveled a bit it would detonate alittle to release tons of tiny balls like a shotgun, using this as a ammo type for the M30 Mustang AH could increase the effective range meaning less up close and personal and more reasonable engagement ranges) --- Continuing on with weapons you have all the secondarys; afterburner pods, Air to Air missiles, Air to ground missiles, hornets, wyrms... once again all the same, not going to go into that Part 2 - The Unique flavour of the factions(Examples of other faction specific equipment) There are already unique attributes and styles to the factions and because I like writing (who would have guessed after part 1) I am going to go over the differences here of the unique parts of the factions and how it may in some way guide part 3 of this novel im writing Overall the 3 factions have their unique styles to them; The Vanu Sovereignty are high tech with no bullet drop and a heat mechanic every now and then, they are accurate yet average in in rate of fire and damage, thanks to the high tech gadgetry the VS also seem to be the most maneuverable of the 3 factions (more on that later), also it might be because of their snazzy spandex uniforms but they also seem to be imposible to see at night until they start up their surprise rave party complete with a light show quickly followed dead ally icons appearing on your minimap. The Terran Republic are the dakka faction, doesnt matter if your bullets dont do much damage or your not accurate with them if you fire fast enough to much more than make up for those 2 points, EVERYTHING about them is about getting more bullets down range as quickly as possible to overwhelm an enemy and make them regret ever showing up to your base in the first place ... supposedly according to lore they are also a very "Mobile force" meaning fast but I have yet to find evidence they are really any faster than any other faction in fact, the TR seem to like locking themselves in place to further increase the rate of fire and even bullet speed (more on THAT later as well) The New Conglomerate like a true business care about getting that bang for you buck, each bullet is like a cannon shot with high damage but its always a high recoil thanks to that as well as not exactly the fastest fire rate, but it isnt just the high damage per round the NC are about, they also have a focus on defense with shields ready to fulfil any star trek nerds dream of loudly exclaiming "SHIELDS UP!", but all those shields dont matter when your own allies are running in front of you while you are sending bullet shaped freedom towards the enemy, I suppose it just looks so attactive to your allies that they just want to catch a few for themselves. --- A VERY important thing we should discuss is the MBT of each faction and what it says about how that faction behaves (trust me this is very very VERY important later) The Magrider, Papa Vanu in his infinite wisdom said "behold my children, you dont need a turret on your tank, when your tank IS the turret" and thus the worshipers of vanu celebrated the creation of their beloved magrider the most maneuverable tank in the game hovering left and right dodging fire and in the hands of an ace with vanu branded balls of steel it is nigh unkillable when there is cover to Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive and Dodge behind and with cert upgrades like "Recharge" and "Multi-directional Exhaust" it only builds on that maneuverability, although great papa vanu help it when it is in the open as people will come out of the woodwork to exact their just revenge on the spidermonkey of a tank known as the magrider. How I see the magrider and its abilites is that the Vanu Sovereignty like to be in control of how engagments happen, or using their unique abilites to harrass people constantly until they win, not to mention they can get to places impossible for others, raise your hand if you have seen a magrider somewhere where you know other MBTs couldnt dream of going like on the roof of a building for instance... come on... dont be shy, you know you have seen something like that... and thats the point! the Vanu show up when you least expect it and get away before you can try to make them regret it, that is their power and that is good! The Prowler, You know the guy who designed this had some gun collection nearby and looked at a double barrel shotgun on the wall next to some mounted heads of some traitorous NC and cultist VS and said... "Hey, why dont we put TWO cannons on it" and the other designers in the Terran Empire drunk at the time said "*** it why not!" and so the citizens of the empire cheered as their new prowler tank rolled off the assembly lines and towards the front lines of battle where it gave even new recruits a second chance to do damage after horribly missing their first shot and in the hands of a veteran it was absolutely devestating actually able to land BOTH shots. It is quite impressive for a tank to be able to one shot a light assault coming to hand deliver some C4 presents of joy to you and still be able to shoot another light assault doing the same before having to reload, and the pure awesomeness of locking down("anchoring") increasing the speed of your shells with something like the "Rampart Projector" giving not only you a increase to defence but a shield projected around the tank for vulnerable allied infantry to shoot from behind and not get hit (of course balanced by the whole tank takes the damage instead from larger stuff) not to mention a 3rd ability "Barrage" that can be used at the same time increasing the rate of fire you have a tank that one can truely be envious of in team play games Truely an amazing machine, but what does this say about the faction? ... locking down in place with that protective rampart shield equiped...that it says "THIS AREA IS MINE! and I will keep my allies safe while they will do the same for me, now come to me and face your doom!", man seriously this tank just screams teamwork and the fations motto "Loyalty Until Death, Strength in Unity" couldnt be more applicable The Vanguard, the king, the tankiest of tanks the VANGUARD!!!!!, the crazy executives in the New Conglomerate basically wanted a tank that was near indestructable so when they did go to war they were less likely to lose their investment and so the underpaid overworked R&D department simply slapped some extra armor on the tank and called it a day, but their laziness was also their brilliance as the Vanguard comes with a whopping 1000 extra hit points than the VS and TR counterparts, and to add insult to injury they threw on some shields known as "Foward Vangard Shield" on it only adding to the near immortality of this beast, and to make matters worse (or better if your NC) the Nimitz Reactor module eats that 1000 extra HP and turns it into shields giving you a resistance to some chip damage Seriously the only way one of these tanks dies is if the driver is an idiot who wholeheartedly buys into the "Invincible Vanguard" PR campaigns the executives in the New Conglomerate headquaters launched and the driver actually believes his is in fact completly invincible like Boris Grishenko in James Bond - "GoldenEye" yelling "I AM INVINCIBLE!!!", and many a new recruit actually do that, but what does this mean as a example of the faction, well I think that should be obvious.... STAY ALIVE!!!! how you ask? shields, shields, shields, shields, shields ... Embrace your inner star trek nerd and yell SHIELDS UP!!!! --- MBTs and ESFs are not the only thing to be different the MAX suits have different abilities as well so ill quickly go over them as well Zealot Overdrive; Increase of speed in exchange for reciving more damage if you get hit, once again it seems like maneuverability is king in the eyes of the vanu, although if i were designing this, I would have gone with a decent increase in speed using like a boost mechanic like on harrasers, ESFs and magriders at the cost of not being able to shoot during and up to a second after use but thats just me... suggestions within suggestions Lockdown; once again the TR are basically saying "THIS AREA IS MINE!!!" locking down in place and making sure everything the max sees dies thanks to higher rate of fire, bullet speed and reload rate, im starting to get the feeling that the TR are simply just territorial *in David Attenborough voice* "And here we find the TR max suit, it has set up a home in this facilities control point overlooking the entrance with such determination, we have to be very careful because if this max notices us it will attack uncontrollably until we are either dead or have retreated to the warpgate. The lesser TR engineers present offerings of repairs and ammunition to the alpha max perhaps in some sort of mating dance, however the danger of getting closer to fully observe this is just too high for my crew and I" Aeigis Shield; Basically a Riot shield... before I continue on if you are easily offended please just skip to part 3 ... alright back to it... Basically a Riot shield, I dont think there is anything more fearsome to VS or TR holding a point than a number of the boys in blue charging into a room with these riot shields and shotguns screaming "STOP RESISTING!, STOP RESISTING!" ... and for those who are offended by this... im sorry BUT you have to admit, it is 100% accurate. (Splitting up the suggestion to 2 posts as there is apparently a 20,000 character limit)
PART 3 - The Actual Suggestion(The part you've been waiting for) First off, congratulations to whoever went the long way through parts 1 and 2, to the lazy bums who just came to part 3, you dont know what humor is! In Part 1 - I have shown that there isnt really anything different between ESFs as they are now In Part 2 - I have shown how the unique aspects of each faction says something about themselves In Part 3 - I will offer my suggestions on possible unique features for the ESFs in Part 4 - I am going to be talking about some extra things for ESFs so stay tuned for that One thing I will note before continuing is that this is a suggestion, alot more work and collaberation with everybody will be required to get details right for balance, so the numbers I use here are just a initial starting point and subject to MASSIVE change so feel free to comment on what you think numbers/ranges should be instead The Vanu Scythe - To me the unique aspect of the Vanu is having the ability of controling where and when combat happens, everyone chases them like shadows in the dark only to find the vanu on their flanks a couple of seconds later. To help with that I suggest that In the defence slot of the Vanu ESF a cloaking module be added on after the vehicle stealth option much like the sunderer does although this wont produce a field that cloaks everybody, just the Scythe itself and only for 30 seconds, although this ESF version will have a couple of restrictions. FOR BALANCE; - #1 Even with the vehicle stealth maxed when decloaking not only shows up on the minimap but flashes for second or 2 to give a chance of someone noticing before returning to the current max rank stealth ability. - #2 Weapons cannot fire until 1.5 seconds after decloaking, you can blame this on the time it takes to transfer power from the cloak to the weapons - #3 (depending on balance requriments) Scythe cannot cloak again until the energy has been recharged (although quick recharge rate), this will be to limit hit and runs... this cloak should be to either start of with a huge advantage in combat or be able to escape a combat that is not likely to turn out well for you, it should not be both This would be an amazing ability allowing the Vanu to bypass defences, avoid detection and be a overall menace on the battlefield, and just like the magrider with cover, be near impossible to kill! The Republic Mosquito - The TR equipment seem to want to play a big part in any battle locking down in place and relying on and supporting friends in battle, but how do you lock down a aircraft? well you dont BUT you can support your friends and somewhat sacrifice yourself to give your friends a better chance on success... and how do you do that? well allow me to introduce you to the Utility slot item "EMP Field generator" The EMP field generator when activated requires charge up time and discharges energy when triggered and fully charged or after a while of being fully charged up, this will unleash a POWERFUL EMP pulse that destroys players shields, small deployables like mines, recon devices and shield recharging fields. although the main reason would be to temporarily powers down vehicles for 5 seconds preventing them from firing and any movement would be thanks to momentum before the blast even deployed sunderers wont be able to be used as a spawn point while powered down, not even base defences would be immune stopping AA towers from shooting and even skyshields could be affected (although not for anywhere near as long maybe just 1 second) FOR BALANCE; - #1 Range of the field will need to be discussed heavily but i think just alittle bit beyond whatever the normal dogfighting engagement distance is would be fair (anyone who is good at determining ranges please post in the comments) - #2 EMP also affects allies equipment and vehicles - #3 When activated it cannot be deactivated or canceled (you are definitely going to discharge the energy at some point) - #4 While charging and charged have a VERY visible electrical field surrounding your Mosquito so people know what your doing, this is for allies benefit as well - #5 Become a glass cannon, this ability will need to be high risk high reward so for the powerful ability you will need to be more susceptible to damage, to a point where even 1 lockon rocket can ruin your day although probably to give you a chance at 10% onto the standard lockon time - #6 25% slower speed after you discharge the EMP for 10 seconds and loss of whatever afterburner you had left - #7 (if not balanced enough already) as the source of the EMP you are also affected by the EMP although only for 1.5 seconds This ability would make Mosquitos even more terrifying on a battlefield, having everyone scramble for anti air capabilites whenever one is nearby, and god I would LOVE to see the ESF EMP kills someone gets with this, just imagine it... chasing down a fleeing NC Reaver in some indar canyons activating the field as he is turning to avoid rocks only to be powered down and fly helplessly to their doom, the lols would be unbelievable or a magrider doing some rockclimbing losing power to its hover ability and sliding and crashing all the way down to the beginning or seeing some harrasser dodging fire from a few lightings and simply powering him down so the lightings have a easy shot, the utility of a EMP equiped ESF is amazingly undenyable The New Conglomorate Reaver - You probably guessed it from what i said in part 2 about the vanguard and that is lets give this baby some shields!!!! You want us to get up close and personal with the M30 Mustang AH? well give the NC a way to do so in the true NC way, with overconfidence in a shield putting us in a position of overwhelming danger and unlikely able to escape in time before we are destroyed by the concentrated fire in our direction YEAH!!!!... what you want details? alright here we go; The Reaver shield when activated provides a whopping 2000 extra hit points on top of the standard 3500 all ESFs have, much like a heavy assaults shield this takes time to reacharge and decays slowly while active, but unlike any of the other shields the heavy assaults and the NC has this is also a double edged sword as while it protects your Reaver from external damage the pure heat generated from this shield actually damages the reaver as the shield slowly decays the Reaver's health will also decay until the reaver goes on fire or the shield's health runs out, whichever comes first FOR BALANCE; - #1 the previously stated shield decay damages the ESF, if a freshly summoned reaver activates the Reaver shield when the shield reaches 0 hit points the ESF will have just reached the on fire point for the ESF, Decay rate will need to be disscussed but it cant be too fast to make it worthless or too slow ... alot of testing will be required. A possibility could be that the decay rate could be reduced with the purchase of ranks in this ability - #2 The shield cannot be activated while the ESF is on fire and does not remain active while the ESF is not being piloted - #3 Lockon magnet! this thing is gonna be generating alot of heat when active so lets give those lockons a easier time targeting us, while active the standard lockon time is reduced by 50% - #4 While active forward speed is reduced by 15% (or all movment speed) and afterburners are unavailable ... for "Safety reasons" - #5 while active the reaver is pretty much lit up like a blue christmas tree, lets make a pretty target for everyone - #6 when shield is broken it cannot be activated again until fully charged (i hate this one but it is fair....) - #7 does NOT protect against sticky grenades, anti-tank grenades or C4 ALREADY attached to the Reaver, lets not deny those daring C4 space fairys known as light assaults for their impressive skill of tossing a C4 onto you mid flight This will let the NC Reaver live up to its name as the flying brick and let the the NC continue with its shotgun and shields strategy it has going for it Part 4 - Im not done! lets add some MORE fun stuff Sure, those 3 things for those 3 ESFs would really have a impact on the game but this is supposed to be a ESF update, so lets add some more things like more weapons DISCLAMER - I am no expert on balance, the suggestions below are just a starting point and to get an idea across, much change is needed for balance purposes Weapon #1 (secondary weapon) Nanite Systems - "Dodo bombs" The Dodo bomb is designed to make whatever it falls on extinct as it deals a large amount of damage if it hits its target, to acomplish this the engineers at Nanite Systems decided to leave everything up to the pilot of an ESF instead of giving the bomb any method other than gravity and physics to reach its target, intead filling the entire thing up with explosives. The Dodo bombs come in a set of 2 with a 0.4 second delay between dropping the first bomb and the second with a total ammo pool of 8 and each bomb deals 1500 direct damage and does 500 spash damage up to 0.2 meters tapering off to 200 spash damage at 1 meter The characteristics of the bomb are simple drop and hope for the best either by going directly above the target, attempting a dive bomb maneuver or trying to drop it via bombing run hoping your understanding of physics are enough to land it on the target (also if you release it while upside down your only going to bomb yourself) These bombs can be shot out of the sky by the very tallented or lucky player (earning them a explosive device destruction credit) or by air burster weapons like the burster max, skyguard, ranger. Weapons intention - Be highly damaging but requiring high skill and understanding of physics to land a hit and do that damage Weapon #2 (secondary weapon) Nanite Systems - "Moth guard" Noticing the dangers that the soldiers and pilots go through on a daily basis Nanite Systems began work on a way to keep people safe, a recent technological breakthrough of the Ordnance dampener and field tests of the common infantry of Auraxis lead to the development of the Moth Guard. An ESF equiped with a Moth Guard helps protect the ESF and other aircraft nearby safe from the explosive flames of battle. While active (equiped and selected) the Moth Guard provides a 50% damage reduction from explosives to all allied aircraft, vehicles and infantry within 60 meters. This does come at a cost of ammunition known as energy that will last a total of 1 minute 30 seconds (maximum upgrade to 2 minutes 30 seconds), this can be restocked by ammo sundies/galaxys and landing pads but the recharge rate from such sources will not be higher the power cost of the Moth Guard This is only active then the Moth Guard secondary weapon is selected and when selected will not start up until 5 seconds has passed (plenty of time to check where your charge rate is when recharging) This can be a excelent advantage to large numbers of aircraft, especially helping protect galaxies going in to drop a squad of commandos onto a heavily defended base, just to make this worth it experience wise probably award some experience like you get for air deterance... call it "air protection" or something Weapons intention - Give ESFs a way to support others, limited duration is intended as it should have a decent enough range to protect multiple aircraft Weapon #3 (Primary) Vanu Sovereignty - "Slicer" Vanu technology continues to advance, and the latest advancement is the slicer, very apt for its name it is a plasma contained in a thin energy field the shape of a crescent projected towards the enemy slicing through infantry and vehicles until it dissapates or hits terrain or structures. The Slicer stats: - Fire rate of 200 RPM - Muzzle velocity of 550m/s - Max range of 800 meters - Damage 420 - 15 round magazine - 200 round ammo pool - 5 second reload time The Idea behind this is that the "Scythe" is a blade... so I want it to be able to cut things and cut through things (think sabot ammunition) as for how this "Crescent" projectile would work is that it is very wide projectile (about 3/4s the width of the scythe itself) but a very thin tallness, at the risk of losing credibility for this idea but to help you visualise it, just think of some anime with some sort of water or wind magic cutting something.... COME ON THAT WAS ONLY TO HELP VISUALISE IT.... I can hear you cringing already, stop that! Weapon Intention - To add more alien uniqueness to the scythe, and a flying blade cutting through anything seems to fit the bill and although daybreak games wont add the physical model of this happening, imagining a blade going in to make a headshot and decapatating an enemy seems pretty vanu to me Weapon #4 (Primary) Terran Republic - "Wild Weasle Missile System" TR pilots are busy people constantly proving their superiority in the air and providing close ground support to their allies on the ground and more often than not they have come back to base and complained that there was an entire area filled with hostiles and they just wanted that area in particular to die but the current nose guns of their beloved mosquitos just couldnt shower an area wide enough to do so. This complaint was so common between pilots that they decided to do something about it, pulling out the nose gun of a mosquito they started to fasion their own weapon system, a tightly packed cluster of high explosive missiles all fired at once to pepper an area full of explosions, only issue is that the guidance systems of these missiles were quite... eratic, once released from the mosquito they would rapidly and suddenly change course making the weapon quite unpredictable, despite the behavour of these missiles the TR pilots were pleased with their work and dubbed it the Wild Weasle Missile System Wild Weasle Stats: - Magazine Size 20 (all fired at once) - Ammo pool 240 - Reload speed 5.5 seconds - Effective Range Medium - Direct Damage 150 - Indirect damage 250 before 1m - minimum indirect damage of 100 at 1.5m - minimum arming distance of 10 meters (safety reasons of unpredictability) Weapon Intention - To provide a barrage of a large area of high damage but equally highly innacurate missiles ment to harrass entire armor columns or swarms of infantry at once, maybe not killing an infantryman outright but 2 or 3 rockets hitting someone would kill them although in one volly that would be very rare due to the high unpredictability of it Weapon #5 (Primary) New Conglomerate - EX-4 "Gungnir" From the Experimental labs of the New Conglomerate the "Gungnir" designed to be a dedicated anti-armor weapon is being rolled out for testing to the NC's best pilots during field operations, While the scientists creating the weapon want to continue testing in lab conditions the Suits of the New Conglomerate fronting the money of this highly expensive project want to see the results of the progress made so far. The Initial results from the tests proved highly promising with successful strikes on TR and VS armor columns the scientists in charge of the development continue to argue the weapon is not complete, seeing the "Successful" results and not wanting to fund further development the suits have ordered the "Gungnir" into full production Gungnir's Stats: - Magazine Size 1 - Reload time 4.5 seconds - Charge up delay before firing 1 second - Ammo pool 30 - Muzzle velocity 1000m/s - Damage 2200 up to 150m - Damage 750 after 450m - Minimum Cone of fire 0.2 - Rounds peirce multiple targets but each target it goes through reduces speed and damage by half Weapon Intention - to deal MASSIVE burst damage to a target but requires pinpoint aiming to hit the target accurately, coupled with a slow fire rate and large delay before firing this weapon would be rather ineffective in anti infantry and anti air combat but against enemy ground armor, taking out a MBT in 2-3 shots should be the overall goal of this weapon DONE Let me know what you think, any changes you think need to be made or maybe some other unique ideas that might be better than mine... I just want ESFs to be more interesting Also Thanks for reading =D
If you are going this in-depth, shouldnt you actually do some research in the current status-quo? The 3 ESF have different hover, maneuver and speed options for example. The TR have the fastest cruising speed and the NC have the fastest afterburn speed for example. All of your idea's seem more like "oh cool!" Idea's without consideration for what it would actually do. I would find a 5 second cloak for the Scythe to be ridiculously powerful in combat, but you give it a whopping 30 seconds. Or the NS Dodo bombs. Their AOE is microscopic but their damage could go any direction because we dont know what kind of damage modifier it has. If its something like the Hornet missiles it would practically delete 2 or 3 tanks in a single low pass as it deals 3x the damage and 2 bombs would kill any tank. Almost every bit of information you have is the same: the information is incomplete, inaccurate or downright wrong. Go back to the drawing board, do the research and revise your entire thread. Sorry, you put a lot of effort into this.
A Cloaking ESF... making it even easier to ambush anything at mach-10, and escape even easier, from G2A. What fresh hell is this? Something that can't be outrun, is self-repairing, with radar, and you want it to be incredibly hard to spot at a distance, with full lockon immunity at a moment's notice? It can cross the entire map in 30 Seconds. An ESF that knocks out spawns and nearly itself? While also half-healthing every infantryman near it? Good luck taking a TR base ever. An ESF that tanks damage like a sponge, till the last moment where a pistol can kill it? Good luck killing that in an ESF Duel. Weaponry: If I read VS's right, a wave weapon that penetrates through armor & infantry, with headshot capability, on a flying unit that cloaks, with the ability to deny most cover thanks to angles. This might be the least effective one, and that's concerning. Yay, even more effective Rocket-pods for TR.. with massive AOE, so no prayer of dodging the barrage, which is front-loaded. Paired with the full shield-loss, the Kill-streaks would be hellish, as is interception, since it'll line up & aloha-strike the target. Old-Pattern Hornet-Rockets, that decimate MBTs, on something able to reinforce itself with additional HP, on the fastest Air-unit. That even can kill the Engineer on the opposite side of the tank(s) as well, good-bye MBTs and any sunderer with LOS to the Sky. This thread is terrifying. Creative but terrifying, as dear lord, fighting that would be suicide - in several cases, physically can't fight it, already dead.
Good summary. It's nice to see some really creative ideas, but while they do make the air units more diverse and unique, they also buff the one part of the game certainly not in need of buffs.
at one point the esfs were a little more unique, but people complained. reaver did heavier damage than the other two to make up for having a hitbox nearly twice the size. but people got it nerfed, so now all of the ESFs work similarly, despite having vastly different hitboxes. i'd welcome any kind of faction flavour.
Something that always bothers me about that picture: it shows the Reaver in hover position. That is fair for the usual hover combat but what about the Scythe? Its landing gear is invisible, but can it be hit? Does it maybe protect the scythe? We know that a Scythe using his landing gear to ram another aircraft doesnt get a lot of damage, so could it protect it? Or does it increase the actual hitbox? Also some actual fair calculations of its hitbox size from the top/bottom, with also a calculation how much surface area are holes in the frame. The famous donu shape isnt half as big as people want you to believe. The spikes at the front and back are much smaller than the amount of air between them yet people act like its a giant brick instead.
Yeah, absolutely not. VS already get **** for being "Papa Wrel's favorite faction" or just generally being the "OP weird anime Korean zerg guys who everyone hates." Your suggestions for the Scythe alone would just cement that mindset. So no, get out with those bad ideas.
OK, that's a pretty huge wall of text and I appreciate your attempt to make PS2 a better world. But sum it up and make PS2 a better world in just 2 words: Delete ESFs
I always thought it odd that the common pool air craft became empire specific. In PS 1 the mosquito and reaver where common pool vehicles. I think it would have been better if they had new names instead of stealing the names of common pool vehicles. How come the NC forgot how to build a mosquito and the TR forgot how to build a reaver? Besides that I think one way to improve the game play on them is rework of how you use primary and secondary weapons. IE the nose gun is controlled by left click and the wing weapons by right click. This means in combat you can use both without the need to hit a key to switch. This would lead to a increase of dps that would suck for us on the ground but would add more favorable air combat. (I would also suggest adding coaxial guns to most tanks. a machine gun as well as main gun for the driver.)
