Remove S-AMS, remake the old AMS vehicle with upgrades, Sunderers/Galaxies are dedicated transports.

Proposition

Remove the S-AMS certification from the Sunderer.

• Sunderer certifications are purely related to it's abilities to repair vehicles and transport troops.

Re-institute the Advanced Mobile Station (AMS) vehicle from the first game.

• About half the size of the Sunderer.
• Faster than the Sunderer.
• No weapons.
• Gets a cloak bubble when deployed.
  • Passing through the bubble causes it to become slightly visible.
• Respawning happens within the bubble itself, kind of like how the Sunderer spawn mechanics already work.

Now, here's the twist. The AMS becomes a total empire logistical vehicle, rather than a simple spawning platform. This is just a blueprint, so bear with me.

• The AMS vehicle has a total of three modules.
• The certification tree allows you to spec into any logistical role you want.
  • Examples of roles could include: 1) the spawn field, 2) the cloaking bubble, 3) an EMP artillery cannon (explained later), 4) a mine-layer or mine-sweeper, 5) [insert other logistical ideas here].
• Each of those abilities would take up a module on the AMS. So if you wanted to be able to spawn friendlies and cloak the AMS, that would be two modules used up. Perhaps you have to cert to unlock the third module too.
• Artillery explanation: The EMP cannon would be controlled by a laser designator carried only by the AMS operator. It would function like the PS1 laser designator. The operator would laser-designate a target for three seconds which would call in an EMP shell that would fire from the EMP cannon back at the AMS. The EMP shell would have a 5-10 yard splash radius (with certs to increase it). The EMP round would simply disable vehicles for five seconds.

The goal of this AMS is to provide the game with a vehicle solely dedicated to support and logistics, thus giving players who choose to drive the AMS more gameplay options than what was available from AMS driving in the first game.

Discuss.

I support this post whole heartedly.

Considering every single idea there can be a possible cert for the Sunderer and the time/money it would take to create a brand new vehicle, why? Moving the spawn capability of the Galaxy to the Sunderer may have been THE BEST move by the dev team.

Also, no to cloak unless it is temporary with a cooldown (like the infiltrator) and it can't be used while deployed.

Because the spawn vehicle needs to be more nimble, smaller, have better hill-climbing, and a cloaking ability.

As it is now, an outfit that hangs around the 10-12 guys zone has to deploy a Sunderer to conduct operations, then the Sunderer gets spammed by the first five fighters with rocket pods that happen to see it. This game is very unfriendly to outfits that want to hang around the one squad range.

Giving the AMS back its cloak would mitigate that problem.

PlanetSide 1's AMS cloaked, again, it was not an issue. It was always possible to find the AMS. There were various methods of doing so.

The real problem of the Sunderer right now is that S-AMS can potentially do everything;
Transport, Supply, Respawn, Repair (swap engi), AA (swap Max)

while other variants like Gate breaker are pointless.

Why?

Seriously, why? The logistics provided by an S-AMS is the key to taking any contested position. Squad beacons are barely used, nearby bases are too far. Sunderers provide the only solid way of quickly getting infantry into fights. Why on earth should the ability to bring more troops to the field be made even faster, smaller, nimbler, and cloaked?

We need the old AMS; but it shouldn't function better than the sunderer for driving capability. It should, however, be capable of cloaking itself. Artillery, EMP or otherwise, not needed. Would definitely like mines though, ala ACE.

Agree with OP

Like I said in Beta - don't reinvent the wheel - especially when that wheel has had years and years of refinement and testing done to it.

I think we need a dedicated AMS to make the other roles of a sunderer more useful.

pointless ? If you have a gate creaker sunderer, you can take the infiltrator class, go in the shield, hack a a terminal for vehicle and let your teamate (or ryou if you have both upgrades) spawn an ams. in that way, no plane can attack you, and you can see ennemies coming easily (i am talking about amp station). You can take the base with no generator destroyed, clef en main. And you can spawn vehicles inside the shield too.

It's only useful on Tech plants; in other cases why would you prefer it over a galaxy, or just flying your infiltrator with a scythe ?

Including an AMS won't make people pull the sunderer for other things anymore than they do now... they just won't pull the sunderer as often.

A cloaking field can be included into the current sunderer's list of gimmicky things it can do under the defense tree.

And if you really want to essentially bring the old AMS back, know that it handled virtually like a sunderer anyway, just without transport capability. So... why are we still obsessing over this again? The AMS' primary function has been melded into the sunderer as one of the sunderer's potential major roles. Sans the cloaking bubble, that's more than good enough for the purpose of providing an army a mobile spawn point.

It doesn't NEED to be anything. That's what you'd really like it to be, just how pilots would like their ESF to have nukes as their secondary weapons.

And seriously, complaining that your outfit of 10-12 players can't defend your Sunderer is a laughable point. Planetside was, and Planetside 2 is even more of a numbers game. If you don't have enough people to assault a position and defend the Sunderer, get some backup or go somewhere else. Spawn points are high priority targets because until they're destroyed, enemies keep coming back.

A cloaked Sunderer would indeed fix that problem. In fact, combined with the render distance, it would mean air would be pretty useless against finding them. Then again, that's exactly what you want.

90 AMS sundies with no other special's (armor and such) 9 properly geared sundies (ams and armor/reload (usually from someone in a good outfit)) 1 armored sundie with dedicated gunners to destroy everything that comes along (crazy tank hunter).... easiest fix to everything take away the spawn xp, no spawn xp then theyll be used tactically and properly. You should see what a rival 4, blockade 4, AMS Sunderor can do.........Good times Good Times.

Agreed, yes, /signed, LOOK ------> AMS Mk.3 design (for when it does get into PS2)

I personally, and this is my opinion.

I agree that we need the AMS back.

But! I would like to see it return as maybe an 18 wheeled semi that deploys kind of like Optimus Primes trailer did.

The walls of the trailer fold down, and there is a few spawn tubes in the trailer. Also there is a tower that extends a few feet in the air and disperses a cloak bubble to enclose the AMS and a small radius around it.

NOW THAT! I WOULD CERT AND DRIVE!

I fail to understand your arguments.

Thank you for agreeing that PlanetSide 2 is even more of a numbers game that the first one. Finally someone agrees.

Spawn points aren't high priority targets for the reason you put it. It's not a game of whack-a-mole until you destroy the mole machine. Sunderers spawn points are priority targets because they are mobile spawn points and can be strategically used. Yes, a side effect of that in the common zerg fights is that until they are destroyed, enemies keep coming in swarms. That doesn't mean that they are fine and balanced.

If we don't have enough people, we either join a huge zergfit so we do have enough people are we transform our outfit into a zergfit. See the fail in your logic? PlanetSide 1 was, and can still be, very friendly to both large and small outfits. This game is only friendly to large. The only thing small outfits can do is basically stay organized within the zerg or as tag-alongs to bigger outfits. The number of options to small outfits is "laughable," as you put it, compared to the first game.

Comparing nukes for a fighter to a cloak for the AMS is hardly a good analogy. I have 10 years of evidence of how a cloaked AMS was balanced. What do you have? Baseless claims because you like the status quo, and you don't give a flying rat if it changes because you're already happy.

Leave render distance out of the argument. It's a whole other problem, and yes, it has to be fixed. Badly.

You know what's funny? When people in the original game asked for a gunner position or something similar to be added to the AMS, people's replies were the exact same as yours.

Here are the benefits of having a different, separate vehicle as the AMS that can cloak and is more nimble and maneuverable:

• Small outfits can deploy these things to run special ops, flanking hacks, etc. Currently, if a small outfit rolls an S-AMS to any position, it gets spammed by a very SMALL amount of enemies with superior weaponry, like tanks or aircraft. It gets spotted instantly, and unless a lot of people pull AA, then the aircraft will win. And in an outfit that aims to have 10-15 guys on daily (such as mine), there really are no options left other than to retreat to the zerg. The Galaxy was even worse and I'm glad its not the only spawn vehicle anymore. It was even easier to see and battles suffered for it.
• It puts more skill into logistically placing an AMS. You can argue that the S-AMS requires more skill to park because enemies can see it, but that would be wrong. Having a visible S-AMS, and one that is as big as the Sunderer as well, means that if you want to hide it, you are relegated to extremely tall and long structures, meaning that the enemy already knows which areas to look for it anyways.
• The cloaked AMS of PlanetSide was not imbalanced, overpowered, or otherwise unsuitable for the game. In all 10 years of the game, no one complained about its cloaking ability. Why? It created fun and dynamic gameplay.
  • Players could infer where enemy AMS positions were based on the which direction the infantry were attacking from.
  • Dedicated scouts/infiltrators would search for such positions behind the battle line, then report that back to players that could do something about it.
  • Ground battles lasted longer (they still are too short in PlanetSide 2. I feel like PlanetSide 2's fighting is limited to a 200m radius around any man-made structure, with the in-between battles being extremely short and limited to whoever can bring the most MBTs and Skyguards.
  • There were adequate drawbacks to the cloak. Any movement into and out of the cloak bubble caused it to flare and become visible. The AMS was also defenseless and slow, but it was small so that it could actually fit into a variety of locations.
• The Sunderer will get used more as a transport and repair station, which were its intended roles. Granted, this game really shuns rolling in a Galaxy or a Sunderer, and promotes spamming solo MBTs and Fighters, but that's for a different thread.

Another funny thing is that your last sentence touches on another problem. The do-it-all class system and vehicle system of PlanetSide 2 that makes everyone any role at any time rather than PS1's cert system where the numbers of vehicles, weapons, and specialized equipment were limited to who had them certed, not the whole frakkin' empire like PS2.

What about people who have already invested certs into the Sunderer?

Refund them the certs for reallocation as they choose.

Here's an idea:

To make it so that not every single soldier on the empire can bring an AMS to the field, make the WHOLE VEHICLE a cert tree unlock on the Sunderer tree, a very expensive one that only very dedicated people would get, but since its a separate vehicle it has no other functions besides its cloak + spawn features.