Ideas to cut down on Air/Armor Spam?

Make ammo refills for vehicles cost resources.
Split the cost of the ammo refill between pilots and gunners.
Either pull the ammo resources from the existing vehicle resources, or make a seperate resource for ammo with Ammo Dumps that need to be taken and held to replenish ammo. (Seperate note: Please make it worthwhile to defend the patch of ground we just capped.)
Sundies in your platoon/squad, that are ammo trucks, will give ammo at a discounted rate.
Ammo Dumps held(Defended) by your faction will produce more/cost less resources than Ammo Dumps that are zerg capped/ghost capped and left behind. Say minimum of 4-6 defenders who will also get exp/certs for defending and holding the base(This should be true of all outlying stations/bases, raise the minimum number for larger bases).
Put no more than two or four Ammo Dumps per continent. This'll make the Dumps a scarce commodity that'll keep factions fighting over them, and hopefully fiercely defending them as opposed to zerg capping ~> moving on.

I don't mind going up against an armor column, and an entire wing of air. But some things should be done to cut down on armor/air being used to farm infantry. After a Reaver chased me down while blowing his load of rockets last night, I thought, "There has got to be some kind of cost associated with the single infantry kill he just got." Lawlspamming rockets/HE shells for infantry kills has no associated cost that deters people from... lawlspamming rockets/HE shells. So infantry takes it. Armor on armor combat is pretty even on my server. Air to air is almost nonexistent. You'll get a handful of fighters that'll chase down Libbies and Gallies because they are "easy pickin's". But actual dogfighting doesn't occur all to often which leaves the bigger birds to get harrassed by fighters with loadouts consisting of whatever does the maximum amount of spalsh damage to get the most infantry kills.

Or maybe boost xp from Armor on Armor and Air on Air kills, then reduce xp from Armor/Air on Infantry kills to persuade Armor and Air to go after each other as opposed to turning Infantry in to grease spots on the ground.

I'm rambling, I need to stop. Just some ideas though.

I like the idea, but then you would have to charge for infantry ammo as well.

If an HA can spam AT rockets how is it fair to to a tank, that has to use resources to spawn the tank and even more resources to fire?

Make every large armor and air purchase to cost 750 resources. So sunderers, mbt's, Liberators, galaxies will not get pulled as fast. Instead of lowering the acquisition timer lower the resource cost by certs.

I agree with this. Especially liberators.

Maybe have Engie Ammo Packs charge a resource to reload AV rounds to Heavies? Throw grenades in this pool also. The Ammo Pack will resupply regular rounds like normal, but if you don't have the Ammo Dump then once you run out of resources you're SOL?

Have you thought about killing them?

You'll have to be disposed differently than dieing 3ft from your spawn exit over and over.

There is something you can do that's already in the game: your side can bring out its own armor and air.

That said, you're trying to solve the wrong problem. The actual problem is that far too many installations can be crushed solely by the armor column. IMO bases should be besieged by vehicles but dominated only by boots.

Yeah but try recovering from a zerghorde that has massed armor/air at a base when they park a Libby and a couple of fighters at the substation you need to back cap to send out your own armor or air.
Which goes back to the main problem I have with this game... nothing is worth doing unless it's farming people for xp/certs or capping bases for the cap points. There is almost no reason to defend anything in this game. In fact the only time anyone thinks to go back for sub stations is when they realize they can't get reinforcements at the current base they are in.

Defend xp is crap. The other day I joined a platoon that was zerg capping bases around Indar. We actually held up and let NC back cap a Tech Station just so we'd get cap points as opposed to defend points.

People really need to stop trying to treat symptoms.

Air/armor spam is not the problem. And if you removed the ability for massive vehicular combat, this game would lose a lot of attraction for a lot of players.

The problem is the utterly terrible base design that allows air/armor spam to become an issue. That's what needs to be fixed.

The best way to cut down vehicle spam is to change the layouts of bases. If the vehicles are no longer the dominant force in every base in the map, it automaticly balances them while making sure that they stay strong where they should be. But I do agree that the resource cost should be higher for MBTs/libs/gals and maybe sunderers, but they might change them somehow.

Some suggestions off the top of my head:
Nerf armor/air effectivnes against infantry, eg. armorpiercing rounds as opposed to fragmenting rounds. Smaller splash damage radius.
Remove their ability to spot targets. Make spotting a requirement of infantry, spot markers last for a shorter time.
Make nightvision more tailored to seeing vehicle signatures leaving troops much less visible unless firing.
Nerf vehicle speed. This will add a requirement of pre-planning for drivers and allow infantry more time to prepare/cover before they're tank zerged.
Give all infantry classes an effective way to kill armor, even the odds. Vehicles are far more capable in 80% of all power struggles in this game.

the guys that respawn the vehicle are not the problem, the ones staying alive and killing everything are the problem.

When Armor and Air are massed against infantry for the sake of farming xp/certs, it is a problem. The system needs to be balance out what goes after what. But by reducing the xp from farming infantry you are basically forcing Armor and Air to go after other Armor and Air. The game does not reward anyone for "doing their jobs".

Like I mentioned, on my server Air is pretty much unopposed by other Air. When we do Libbie runs we rarely have fighter escorts because noone wants to properly play a fighter to counter other fighters. Not enough reward for anyone to do it.

Same with base defense. Why they hell should anyone want to defend a base if it's not going to net them a ton of xp? Unless it's Crown and it's just constant threeway xp farm.

How about bringing back the ANTs and power/nanite supply system from PS1? If you want to pull vehicles from anywhere but a warpgate, you need to protect the supply lines to that base.

I understand the current resource system was supposed to be a replacement, but honestly, the system fails to be relevant in pretty much every way(it's neither a reason to take territory, nor a limiting factor for the majority of players).


Obviously, the gorilla in the room is the trivialization of infantry combat through poor base design. Make infantry combat meaningful, and you'll get more people wanting to do it.

Unfortunetly this would radically alter the playabilty of the game. For example on Estamir the TR could not use Air at all due to the resource balance on the map. (I think its the same for the VS and NC on either Indar or Amerish).

I think you identified the problem but maybe not the solution.

For example reduced certs for infintry kills does not reward the people who cert into the Liberators anti-infintry gun(*) or anti-personal weapons of the main battle tank. This also does removes the tatic of raming kills and raming penalties.

Their are more errors, but that is in my opinion a very big one since it directly affects the core of planetside 2, teamwork.

*Yes people the liberator actually has not one but 2 antimax guns.

At the large regions, (Amp Stations, Tech Plants, Crown, etc), include a smaller Shield similar to the Warpgate's; which blocks Air vehicles and bombardment.

This will force Tank Spam to go into the shield where they are easy pickings for infantry.
This will stop all bombardment from either Air or Ground.

I think the real answer is make bases designed to protect the defenders from vehicles rather than to create free fire zones for attacking vehicles both air and ground. Make it so the only way to capture a base is to get boots on the ground pushing though the base and all those vehicles sitting outside and above suddenly become more a determent than a benefit. So you could bring 50 Magriders/Lib's and 5 infantry to a fight but you will be sitting at the base earning little to no XP for a long time if you do because you will have no chance of capturing the base from even a small group of well dug in defenders.

Increase resource costs for all vehicles and increased timers.

Here's an actually good idea....


Bring back the PS1 Cert system in parallel to the current one to unlock only so many classes / vehicles at a time per 12 hour period.

Or bring back the nanite system from ps1 and use it for base vehicle spawning so a small base has enough resources for lets say 4 tanks, a biolab for 20 a techplant for 30 (numbers need to be looked at but you get the idea)

And if you wanna spawn more you either need to wait for resources to regenerate or get an ANT from the warpgate to the base to refill the base resources or get your tank/sund/lib from the warpgate.

Want to mass spawn tanks then you need a good supply line