There's a lot of talk of sunderers getting destroyed too easy in low pop or with cheese strats. What if the guns could be replaced for mounted shield batteries or other helpful things like deployment shield type barriers, so like when low pop you dont get just freely domed by the sunderer guy spawning into it but it takes longer to kill. It could also have full tank busses that would rely on teamplay and in high pop when a sundy gets fully overtaken it dies anyways. Good for the average person that just wants to pull a sundy to start a fight AND cloak sundys that have to lock their busses because people shoot the weapons to reveal it, thus denying the quick safety of it in attack or orbital strike. Fills the 'just get a spawn point to fight at' niche.
Nah, we dont need unattended vehicles to be this strong. What we could do is add defensive deployments that you can buy at any infantry terminal, such defensive works should have the goal of slowing the enemy rather than killing them. Examples: A shield that blocks or even launches back enemies trying to pass through. Makes a lot of noise and a map-icon when damaged and destroyed. One mag should be enough to down it. A mine-layer which deploys highly visible low-yield mines (say 100 damage each) around it. Only if you run straight through could you get killed. Forces the players to shoot the mines or take the risk of being damaged after passing through and finding enemies there. The mines make a distinct explosion sound to warn they are being cleared to anyone in a large radius. A deployable flash-camera. When it detects an enemy passing nearby it will launch a directional flash to blind them momentarily. Does not have to be a fully blinding flash. A device that prevents nearby explosives from going off through normal triggers. So AV mines and C4 wont go off unless you shoot them. Grenades and shells would detonate normally. Encourages players to either find it first or manually detonate the explosives. Etc. Slowing down and warning allies to come to the rescue should be the goal. Never should a vehicle require no input from its owners to defend against an enemy geared to destroy it, regardless of them being alone or not.
- playing as an Engineer - equipping my Sundie with Deployment Shield - putting a Spitfire turret - putting AP mines - putting AT mines - if I'm in an outfit, putting Caltrops - putting Hardlight barriers There is a lot that can be done to prevent my Sundie to being picked up and destroyed, or at least slow them down a bit. I don't think extra tools are needed.
Yeah i figured, i think they are fine, just low poppers get annoyed and wondered what others thought since some swear up and down it should be way tankier. Thanks for stopping by.
Just make routers an universal tool (like medkits, costs nanites, can carry only one per run, 100 nanites ea, etc) where everyone but infs can equip and call it a day.
It would be nice if a bit more variety in preventing your Sundy from being picked up and destroyed. For example I use LA a lot and place Sundies in positions to make use of that, that precludes the use of Spitfires and hardlight barriers for example. It also means that if I want to bring mines as Infiltrator or specifically try to use AV mines against targets from my Sunderer I have to drop a lot of my protections just to execute my plan. I say we need a more robust system designed for protecting Sunderers, but also for letting defenders fortify their base prior to an attack so they have more reasons to leave a base when its lost and prevent the attackers from taking the next one. Relying on a single class to protect it is not a good idea, especially since one Infil with EMP grenades can wipe a lot of resources in one go and make your efforts to keep it protected rather futile. Besides that it is a nice way to score a few kills by using their own explosives against them.
Nah that is what the Forwards Station was supposed to do, not the Router. The router which incidentally canibalized needlessly the Forwards Station to keep players interested in construction with the removal of HIVES. The Forwards station was originally designed as a deployable for a bunch of nanites that acts as an AMS, but only Medics can carry and place them. It would reduce spawncamping as defenders have more options to spawn and attackers have more places to stage an attack from than just the Sunderer Garages. The inherent weakness of the Forwards Station and its lack of terminals would keep Sunderers valuable. It makes Medics of a higher value to the overall game structure. It would also reduce the value of pure kill-classes as the HA would have a harder time tracking and destroying such Forwards Stations compared to Infiltrators and LA's. Ofcourse the devs were already screwing that up by making it a rechargeable on Medics and limiting its range to something like "you have to die/redeploy within 50m" but that is besides the point.
I wouldn't go this far, but routers don't belong in the construction game. This is coming from a builder main who even runs router nights for groups who don't do construction stuff. I do routers because it's something I can do which many others won't. Even so, it's out of place in the construction game, and having it there heavily penalizes a faction who don't have a lot of ground. I personally would just add a universal routing spire to the warpgate which any player willing to pay 200 nanite can draw a router from. The 200 nanite cost would probably be enough that platoons wouldn't bring 48 routers, but if they did then just keep raising the cost until they aren't getting spammed. @Demigan Interesting point about forward stations, I actually hadn't heard of those. Were they in the beta? I actually missed it, but joined in 2013. Perhaps that's something the dev team could look into.
In 2018 a few months before HIVE's were removed the devs added the Forwards Station to the PTS. It stayed there up until the update was released that removed HIVES and at that last moment it was removed from the PTS and changed to the Router instead in a desperate attempt to keep it relevant. It was really sad for me as I had been the only one suggesting the Forwards Station, and even the dumbed down version they had going would have done more good to the game than most large updates did. Even though the FS they designed was essentially a 50m range revive tool. Laughably enough I just read some of that update and they said it aimed to make construction less of a singular player excersice and more of a group maintenance thing.
