What do people think of the new turrets?

Recently we've been getting deep into balance debates,
so time for a little change of tone to something lighter!
what do people think of the new lightning/mbt turrets on PTS?

I'm quite happy with them all!

The TR one overall feels best with its monstrous DPS, it feels like the 'big boy' version of gatekeeper!

I'm also quite looking forward to NC's 'mine is bigger than yours!' Cannon!

VS answer NSO ones will likely be exceptionally strong on live
due to their ability to land shots easier at very long ranges were TR/NC will have trouble returning fire.

Overall, good looking patch so far, time to breath some new life into a stale tank meta!

Honestly, I hoped for a Railgun Cannon for Vanguard. I believe it/was at an incomplete state in the game files for ages.

Ditto, I was expecting something similar to the new gun, but with high velocity and low drop, but a whopping huge charge up before firing! The new gun seems fun though, maybe could use a bit more aoe range, 150 damage at 5m doesn't scream 'artillery'

For starters, I am thoroughly pleased that something I've been paying for has finally begun to get attention.
It never made sense that the NSO were left so unfinished for so long -- even still -- are very incomplete. One of the main reasons I unsubscribed since NSO is my main and only... Paying customers left with an incomplete unfun game isn't a great business model.

Chimera:
C-135: Odd that it wasn't increased to 275m/s like the other weapons in class. Disappointed. Maybe will be made up by the new turret?

Turret: The new NSO turret is nice, though will need to make sure the damage is on par with the Cyclops or similar weapon. One issue the Cyclops has is for shooting light, the ballistic arc is absurdly outperformed by other faction rounds. I cannot count the times I had to elevate 20+ degrees to come close, while enemy rounds fly nearly straight. So, will be interesting to see the new round perform.

Chimera & Lightning (Larion) PPC: Welcome change, the performance seems very under par in a 1:1.
Damage against infantry is unbelievably bad. 3-4 rounds, direct hits, to kill infantry. Not if this is an attempt to inappropriately balance something that should be competing with other faction high velocity rounds, but huge issue in performance.
Damage against armor seems low, but the magazine size is also small -- so you will likely need a resupply solution to actually enjoy this. Much like the NSO Chimera Pixie and Defector rounds, they're ultra low damage, ultra low range to trade off for unlimited ammo which makes for an unfun unusable weapon system. In this case, the PPC has ultra low damage with ultra low magazine size. If the other weapon systems are any indicator of this in combat -- it would be safe to say will be a severe disappointment to the average/ common player. Aimbotters though? heaven.

Planetside 2 Larion PPC Chimera - YouTube


Utility: (Power Spike): Useful, but the ~2.5 sec manticore sting seems too short. Skirmishes last 15 seconds, so the Chimera still becomes situational and doesn't have a competitive edge. Shield doesn't really reduce damage

Unique Defensive Slot: NONE still... very surprising.

NSO Defector: Still ultra-subpar, weapon performance, speed, armor,... missing utility etc...
NSO Dervish: Still missing capabilities and performance changes, speed, weapons,.. and unique utility...

Seems you were shooting allies, I've forgotten about the friendly fire changes in the past myself!
But on your video you were shooting allied vehicles, so damage is halved.
It should 2 shot infantry since the damage is 700.

I feel it's purpose will be to sit far away from the enemy and chip chip chip, kinda like an AMR but with 4x the damage.
Also unless I'm mistaken, you should be able to kill bastions with it!
Since you should be able to pierce through the bastion and hit top spots.

It wouldn't be wise to use it for normal engagements
Satyr for cqc, Cyclops for general work, new one for long range harassment!

The best tanking faction got better (TR)
The NC got a nice gun in close combat, with the splash damage being the special AV damage.
The VS got... nothing, crappy infantry piercing which is a joke and then NSO got the vehicle piercing anyway. Bads will love to shout "no bullet drop!" whilst anyone with actual skill in a tank gets diddley poo.
NSO finally got an ability (old vanguard shield, lol) and the turrets will make TR lib pilots understand what flying over tr terrority is like for everyone else. They are so-so for ground combat, bads might like them thanks to no bullet drop & high velocity tho.

Harassers got an indirect nerf with the velocitys of "normal" tank cannons increase.

You know what, you're absolutely right on most of that. Great points.

New Conglomerate
- blast damage effected by Vehicle Armor
JGX12 (Vanguard):
700 Direct(Tank Shell Damage) & 450(2m)-150(5m) Indirect(Tank Shell Damage)
4.25s Reload Speed; 270 Base DPS, On par with AP Prowler DPS
JGX11 (Lightning):
700 Direct(Tank Shell Damage) & 250(2m)-100(5m) Indirect(Tank Shell Damage)
3.75s Reload Speed; 253 Base DPS, On par with Viper DPS

I would recommend an adjustment to these Reload and Damage Values:
JGX12 (Vanguard):
700 Direct & 450(2m)-150(5m) Indirect & 4.5s Reload Speed
256 Base DPS, Above Viper DPS
JGX11 (Lightning):
550 Direct & 350(2m)-100(5m) Indirect & 3.5s Reload Speed
257 Base DPS, Above Viper DPS
As much as I would love the Vanguard to have AP Prowler levels of DPS, I believe that just having the damage potential to 2 shot the rear of a MBT is good enough as is. For Lightning's cannon I believe it should have an equivalent focus on it's Blast Damage as the Vanguards. Also, further dividing the Vanguard and Lightning reload times could lead to them having slightly different use cases.

To be honest that sounds like a good AA turret, certainly will test it for that when it comes out

NC got the best one because it has the most snap shooting potential. We'll see about the TR one, but I think it might struggle in tank vs tank situations because targets shouldn't be staying in the open long enough for the extra 2 shots to do much. NSO is going to be great in mass tank battles, and the Vanu got something that will be a bit ok sort of against TR at a distance when the TR are locking down, but the VS got shafted compared to the NC.

i was dabbling with it on PTS and it seems that it will indeed be quite good for AA, but i think AP might still be king for AA

Damn, after 10 years tanks are finally getting new weapons.

I think the weapons definitely need some adjustments. I don't play TR, VS or NS, but from what I can tell the TR one seems fine and won't need too many more adjustments, the VS one is quite convtroversial (several strong points and weak points) and the NS one being a total armour column wrecker (infinite piercing with Havok effect on a 20 second cooldown... seems balanced). I'll comment on those more once I get a better feel for them.

As for the NC JGX12 and JGX11... first of all, can we give them better names? I'm not a fan of non-word acronym names followed by a bunch of numbers as they aren't very memorable. MAX is such a cool name and you can easily tell it means "Mechanised Assault eXosuit". What the heck does "JGX" stand for, and why 12 and 11? Make it "REA-V" and "REA-L" or something ("REA" for "Repurposed Excavation Artillery", V and L for Vanguard and Lightning).

Moving onto actually important things, while I'm a bit disappointed that the NC got a bigBuzzard rather than a bigRailjack, the actual idea behind the gun does work and it does fill a niche... except not the intended niche. The JGX12 absolutely won't be used as artillery, unless you count a 5m splash dealing 450 AV damage flying at tennis ball speeds "artillery". Its got severe drop, don't get me wrong, but not nearly enough drop that it can be used as proper artillery where arcing over hills is possible, nor enough splash damage where that would be a worthwhile endeavour. Additionally, it does not have any new feature that would allow for proper artillery gameplay (think World of Tank's artillery firemode). The direct fire aspect will still be way more prominent, and that's ok; the new tank gun isn't (and shouldn't) turn the Vanguard into purely a support-fire platform. As it currently is, the JGX12 is going to be more like a tank-mounted pump action shotgun with a bit of splash damage as a gimmick, rather than a bigBuzzard. I believe it would be a good idea to make any balance decisions with that base design of the tank gun in mind. That means it will be a close-range, big alpha derpgun (and NOT an artillery gun). The TR Kingsnake, being a close-range big alpha burst gun is comparable as it fills a similar tactical niche. The VS Perihelion and NS Larion, as long-range low-alpha guns, should not be compared to the new NC/TR tank guns as they fill a different niche.

I did notice a few strange things about the JGX12 and JGX11

• The JGX12 has the same (frontal) TTK against MBTs, Lightnings and even Harassers- I get that it already frontally three-shots all of them and frontally two-shotting a Lightning would be beyond silly for an actual tank, but why does it need 3 hits to destroy a Harasser?
  • For reference, Titan-150 AP also takes 3 hits to destroy a Harasser, and hitting that buggy with the JGX12 will be much harder than with Titan-150 AP
  • I feel like it should only take 2 JGX12 shots to destroy a Harasser
  • As Harassers do not take additional directional damage (15% for sides, 50% for the rear), but Lightnings do, the JGX12 can kill Lightnings (from sides and rear) and MBTs (from the rear) faster than they can kill Harassers from any direction; this is absolutely ludicrious
• The JGX11 (Lightning) has even harsher drop and velocity than the JGX12 (Vanguard)- IMO, there's no reason for the Lightning version to have worse drop and velocity than the Vanguard version given how neither are going to be usable at long range anyway
  • The JGX11's gun handling characteristics should be standardised to the JGX12's so players who frequently switch between the Lightning and Vanguard have a smoother aiming experience
• The JGX11 only does 950 combined damage on a direct hit (700 direct + 250 indirect), which means it can't one-hit-kill (OHK) infantry(except Infiltrators) - For the slowest-reloading single-shot gun avaliable to a tank that doesn't have a secondary gun, this leaves the NC JGX11 Lightning incredibly vulnerable to infantry
  • For reference, the AP gun on the Lightning (avaliable to all) does 1200 combined damage on a direct hit (700 + 500), which allows it to OHK non-Flak infantry, even if they have Auxillary Shields, and also fires faster and is actually usable at anything beyond barrel stuffing range
  • If the normal Lightning AP can OHK infantry, there's no reason for why the JGX11 is not able to OHK non-Flak infantry; perhaps buff the damage (either direct or indirect) by 50 so that the total is 1000, which would allow it to OHK non-Flak, non-Aux Shield infantry

Finally, I really think that the devs need to update the tank camera view modes. Firing tank guns (both the main weapon and the topguns) from 3rd person view has always been horrendous (it isn't even aligned properly, with the actual aim point is a below and to the LEFT of the aim dot when in 3rd person view!) and with the severe drop of the JGX12/JGX11 it makes them unusable in 3rd person since you own tank blocks the view of the enemy vehicle just to get the gun high enough to him them. While "1st person" view mode with tank guns, the aiming notches below the crosshair should be properly marked with distance ranges (they can be baked into the image; no need for real-time distance emasurement, as the Sweeper HUD implant will do that).

Finally (for cosmetics), I also found some pretty terrible clipping issues with the Vanguard JGX12 and various cosmetic armour pieces for the tank. This is to be expected, given how those cosmetics where only designed with the original Vanguard turret shape in mind. But what isn't so normal is the clipping issues between the topguns as the JGX12 turret; the topguns are CLEARLY floating above and behind where they are "supposed" to be on top of the JGX12 turrent's visual model. To fix it they will either need to redesign the JGX12 turret model, or make it even bigger, or move it even further back on the tank chasis. The latter two options will make some cosmetic clipping issues even more comical, not to mention that making the turret even bigger would make the already huge gun absolutely ginormous, to the point where it will become an actual visibility issue in the "1st person" view mode of the gun.

I tried them all except the NSO one because you can't directly create an NSO character in PTS.
All of them are bad against infantry. They probably don't want any more infantry farming weapons on vehicles.

I think TR got the best vehicle weapon again, Prowlers are going to delete any vehicle instantly if they ambush or get near them. Lightings will be dead instantly without even noticing the Prowler. (with a gatekeeper gunner)
Kingsnake's bullet drop is also very low, so it will probably be good at range as well.
This will make TR's vehicle superiority even more noticable.

I personally didn't like NC's weapon, yes it has high damage but the drop and low velocity will be a problem if it's not at the close range. But at close range it's a beast. 3 shots a prowler. But then again, I don't see any reason to choose this over TR's Kingsnake. Loses too much to have some splash damage.

VS's weapon will be bad from close to medium range, but it will be really annoying/dominating at long distance fights.
It will lack DPS against NC or TR from closer ranges and lose those encounters because of TR/NC's new high damage toys.
Its crescent beam only hits from the center, right and left edges don't damage even if they touch infantry. I think this may be a bug.
But I just don't understand why this weapon has infantry penetration feature, those weapons are really bad at killing infantry anyway. VS AMR Slicer got this feature as well and it's totally useless. This feature just makes it worse because it can't hit splash damage if it penetrates the infantry.
If they removed it and added 25-50 more velocity to upgrade it, it would be better.

I dont see the point of the NC version at this time.

The TTK is 0.25 seconds faster against MBT's compared to the AP Vanguard, but at the cost of the weapon's range being 1/10th of the Vanguard AP. That is not "a beast" as some people describe it, thats a bad trade-off.

The best way to make this weapon somewhat useful is decrease direct damage and increase indirect damage. That way you are more likely to deal useful amounts of damage to surrounding vehicles and repair crews that hug their vehicles too closely. Outside of line battles where vehicles are piled on top of one another this weapon would not have much reason to be used by anyone over the other Vanguard cannons. Even for CQC it would be easier and less restrictive to just mount an AP gun.

Hey man, I enjoyed this post as it seems very insightful and got some off topic questions for ya. I used to main TR (cause red and black is cool) and with my crappy aiming, and the huge bloom issue i felt like no matter how fast the bullets came out it wouldn't matter if it only took a few from NC / Vanu. However I did notice TR Mosquito seems superior in all dog fights as well as against ground targets. You're also saying the Prowler is superior compared to most tank fights. So my question to you is (and i apologize for my lack of knowledge as i only have personal experience to go by) are TR weapons bad because their vehicles are superior? And the reason NC weapons are superior because their vehicles are bad? Of course it could be said that weapon balance could be "pretty balanced amongst faction" regardless how i feel differently. And since you do have a lot of knowledge in general, what should i specialize as a NSO Freelancer? And if for some reason the playstyle doesn't suit my taste what should i specialize if I were to go to TR?

I play all 3 factions but my main is VS. In my opinion, infantry weapons are generally balanced. Some VS infantry weapons have advantageous gimmicks.(no bullet drop, lashing ammo, unstable ammo, heat mechanic etc.) VS has that while sacrificing high damage/dps from their weapons. (except few weapons like betelgeuse) So we can clearly say VS is an infantry-weighted faction.
NC has higher damage per bullet(heavy hitting guns), NC has many weapons with 200 damage per bullet, they are balanced with lower fire rates. Also they use gauss/railgun tech so their bullet velocities are generally high. TR has high fire rates. (brrrt faction) TR weapons are good if you have decent FPS in game. Jackal, Kindred, MSW-R are signature weapons. NSO is always the mediocre or middle ground among factions. So it's your choice.

When we come to vehicle balance, TR has the best farming potential. Prowler with AP shell is the best tank at the moment(according to general opinion). It has the best DPS among tanks but has similar defense to Magrider. It can farm anything; ESFs, other tanks or infantry with the same AP cannon. TR has the best vehicle top guns as well. Also most tank players choose TR as their faction. I see so many tank outfits on my server at TR side. NC tank Vanguard has the shield ability and high single hit damage which is good in close range 1vX fights but in general, slow reload and low mobility lowers its potential a lot. I hear people saying Vanguard is OP because of their shield at 1v1 encounters, but that's it. NC players prefer to use tanks less. VS tank Magrider has high mobility, afterburner and side strafing ability but it lacks defense and disadvantageous at close range. (strafing doesn't help much at that range) Also its turret doesn't turn around, you need to turn with whole tank. It's advantageous at medium to long range, strafing is too advantageous at this range and will stay like that when the new tank guns come.

Air to ground superiority belonged to TR with mosquito's advantages and TR's faction specific launcher striker, now NC has the advantage with backing Masthead support. I think both Banshee and Airhammer are too good against infantry and maxes. VS's PPA was once good but it was nerfed and it's still really bad compared to Banshee and Airhammer. Those need to be balanced but only god knows when.
Air to air is still dominated by TR pilots, Mosquito has clear advantage here with its small body and needler. Again, I observe that most pilot-only players choose TR. But some of them moved to NC to annoy ground forces with Airhammer.

Ah, I dont really care for land vehicles, more of just throwing nanite to kill a sundy or annoying tank. Air vehicles are completely awful as in... its just a challenge of epic proportions just to fly from point a to b without dying by crashing into anything. The struggle is real. I've seen experts of the sky and that will never be me. I did enjoy NSO and TR but after feeling pathetic with NSO weapons (outside Mako and that one NS Rifle that starts with an N). However you say Vanu is best for infantry but on Emerald it feels like VS and NC overpopulate the server. So I didn't mind being NSO or TR to help balance the server. But picking the other 2 i feel like i would do a diservice to the game and the community. I just like to go full auto at mid-long range as i dislike close up battles cause i feel like i suck to much to be such an easy target.
Also someone told me that NSO Directive weapons outside of Newton are awful and its better just to get cert weapons. So that kinda of killed my will to touch my NSO character RIP the two 1 year heroic boosts i applied to it the other day.

VANGUARDS DO WHAT NOW? The turret doesn't turn on its own but has to rely on where the tank is faced? That seems like poor balance and i feel bad cause i kept claiming vanguards are the best but now i'm kinda of just pairing them with Chimera's...

I didn't say that for Vanguard, it's the Magrider. Vanguard's new cannon can turn around but it has high projectile drop and low velocity. It has the best single shot damage. But I guess it will be hard to hit with it from distance.

Tbh I was expecting/hoping cannons with the ability to shoot from underwater.... Oh well.
Oshure's water is a death trap for Van and Prowler.

I am happy they increased the mussel velocity. Wish they'd increase the Incline of the cannons.

Kingsnake's 1,400 damage sounds tough, if you land all shots. I mean just two is 700 damage which is higher than getting one hit with TR's AP by 100 but any player with good vehicular movement will be okay. Since it automatically fires all 4 shots, unlike the AP which gives you the choice to fire the second shot. Harassers and Mags should be good against them. Also, because of the barrel width you have to expose yourself more to have all 4 shots hit your target. Not that you'd be able to do it often, but you can also get right up alongside it and they cant hit you as infantry.
Deployed Sunderers and other stationary targets will get blasted and die very quick! Hard telling how much or what to nerf from it, till we get some good live play.

VS' Perihelion defiantly needs a buff. Thing should pierce light vehicles, not just infantry imo. It appears to pierce up to 4 infantry... I'd say go 5 or 6. (less damage the more it goes through ofc) Since the situation doesn't happen often and it's the main perk. Over all it is lacking. Perihelion doesn't feel like an MBT weapon too me. Increase the damage or widen the projectile's width. (The latter would be neat.)

NC's JGX feels good. Rep sundy balls are going to have issues with the splash. Only thing I'd change is the arc, seems abit too much.

NSO's Larion seems okay too me as well, but it is bugged on Test. 50/50 chance it will pierce vehicles and won't pierce anything if you hit a sunderer first.
I think, when it works, it goes through 3 vehicles. Maybe increase to 4? Idk. I don't do Chimera at all because gunner's position is awful!