Bases should not be immune to vehicles

The main issue with Esamir's walls, IMO, is that they have zero ability to project power outside said walls.

They have no battlements, no turrets, no windows or pillboxes. They're more of a trap than a defense. Projecting power outside the walls is important because it creates a "transition zone" in their immediate vicinity where vehicles and infantry can interact, and makes it so that there's actually a battle to *approach* the base rather than having the current state where you just roll right up to the walls and then wait while your infantry battle the bottled-up defenders.

Though of course there's more to this than the walls themselves. In order for the walls to be remotely useful, they have to be on favorable terrain where they have clear fields of fire. Putting them in the center of craters, as most amp stations are right now, cripples their ability to project power and guts their defensive utility.

Vehicles were nerfed because infantry didn't have ready access to Flak Armor (it being a cert purchase) while HE rounds are an SC purchase.

The problem is that vehicles were nerfed for a game that had exactly 4.5 ways for infantry to kill them:

Dumbfire
1000-cert G2G lock-on
Mines/C4
Phalanx Turrets
UBGL rounds (kinda sorta maybe?)

There are so many more ways for infantry to kill tanks now that those nerfs need to be reverted. Lock-ons now cost 250 certs, we have the Annihilator, the Decimator, the ESRL's, the MANA AV. Infantry are not hurting against vehicles like they were at the beginning.

While I agree to a point with the OP..vehicles do have a role in base fights just they do need to be restricted a bit more than they are in many bases.

To me the Crown as it was before the stupid changes made to it was the one and ONLY base that offered true combined arms fighting that people keep wanting.
It offered one of the only locations in game that could actually have defenders defend against a larger force and hold out or even win the fight.
For the attackers it put the vehicles into the roles I feel the should have during a base fight. The tanks would sit at distance on the hills (Magrider Hill) and shell the tower to keep the infantry pinned down while ESF/Liberators did the same for the upper platforms.Galaxies could make drops on the platforms to try and take the place from the top down. All the while the infantry would be pushing in below to take the points..with the occasional tank to such coming up in support.

That to me is how all MAJOR bases should be.Able to be actually defended with tanks/vehicles playing a secondary support role to the infantry who are trying to cap the base...not the main force they are now in base fights. Smaller ones of course would need their own style for fighting over.

I would prefer the mixed type.

And by mixed I mean the kind you get at

• Quartz Ridge between A and B points
• new Zurvan back courtyard,
• the crown buildings area to the west
• up into TI Alloys mini-courtyard
• back courtyard of old amp stations
• the back of Zurvan Storage where the pipe is etc.
• Up into Splitpeak pass, where you can cross the bridge with a Vanguard

Where it is possible to get a tank in there to support infantry but it is also extremely dangerous and ill advised to do so. You can't maneuver much or find cover as easily, and infantry can C4 you from multiple directions. Any ill equipped tank or incompetent drivers are quickly destroyed by infantry in those situations as they are at a serious disadvantage, but an excellent tank driver can provide support for the infantry surrounding it in that situation for a decent period of time.

Stuff like surrounding a tower and shelling the crap out of it is silly though.

Attacking that base is a nightmare for vehicles. Possibly one of the worst after Skydock & Vanu Archives.

Defending it in a tank though is freakishly awesome.

Vehicles were nerfed because infantry were far too exposed to them to begin with in their own bases. To this day, they still are. Because of this, infantry have been handed progressively better tools to deal with vehicles in vehicle-friendly environments, because nothing short of a biolab is completely safe from them. In the beginning, infantry were completely helpless. The developers recognized this as a balance problem instead of a base design problem. As a result, vehicles have been nerfed to the point where their only legitimate role is sunderer support, and three or four guys with annihilators will completely deny vehicles to a region. There's no need for massive tank columns anymore, save for a few exceptions (indar ex, crossroads, etc).

Was access to counters a problem? Definitely. It was a crime for g2g lockons to be 1000 certs in a game with tanks that can strafe and shell you from 150 meters away. However, that was only a small part of a much bigger issue. If the bases were layered, we wouldn't need lockons or rocket launchers to begin with. Base exteriors would be have spear turrets here and there, and when those went down, attackers would have to push into a closed off area to capture the facility.

But, no. We can't have nice things like that. So, now we sit at a point where infantry-vehicle balance is broken from the ground up because every base in the game except for a biolab is an open air farm fest. Instead of each aspect of the combined arms game having a role to play, the game is to simply HE spam the big open field/road between the spawn room and the centerpiece of the defense game, which clearly wasn't meant to be accessed on foot. And they're still making this critical mistake to this day.

How it should be:
Spawn Room - Control Node ------ base interior ------ base exterior ------ no man's land
How it is:
Spawn Room ----- No man's land ------ control node ----- more no man's land

Even with many of the new bases on Amerish, this is still the case. Why is this core problem still completely unaddressed?

That is how bases look 90% of the time in Planetside 2.

Its glorious...
Think of all the enjoyment the TR are having in this battle!
the NC where nice enough to not cap the points so they can reward the TR with being farmed even longer!

This outpost needs to be like 2x - 3x (maybe even larger) the size, divided up , but part of the same lattice link. You would be required to lock down all of the sections in order to advance. These sections would be the outer layer to a major facility.

If we had the PS1 AMS, PS1 mines, PS1 spitfires, and PS1 motion detectors segregating infantry and vehicles wouldn't be necessary.

You like the idea of tanks bpmbarding tower bases? The more I have played the more I wish tower bases to be infantry only once the have entered the building. There should be be actual walls on all the floors with some openings for shooting the attackers and give LA a chance to play a role. Im surprised to hear someone like the phenomena of tower shelling.

I think tech plants are the best or only bases where there is some mixed warfare. Theres a big main building for infantrt to fight in and outside there are buildings in various sizes and cover and enough space for vehicles to move around and play some role. Techy plants lack the walls of amp stations which would otherwise isolate the combat from vehicles much. Tawrich is muh less vehicle friendlh thouh because vehiclws can onlh come from one direction. Mao tends to be all about the south so its limited as well in practise. Havr is rather harsh for vehicles too. Eisa and Mekala tends to have most combined arms I think.

Amp stations sometimes have vehicles fighting outdoors but thwre s not much for them inside to do except when defendrrs are pushed to spawn room and its all about keeping them inside tvere. Nott allows vehicles more use because its much easier to get in and there are less obstacles in the yard so they can travel from one entrance to another.

I know what the problem is. See we need more cover, like we had in PS1.

Welcome to the Mattherson VS where 98% of the players are MLG with a small arm but are outwitted by a monkey with a banana.

Because SOE refuses to require people to have hardware newer than an IBM adding machine.


If you were around for the first two months, Tech Plants were SUPER defensible. The only real way to take it was to get 50 people together in a 10m circle and coordinate a march into front door to take advantage of the HORRID rendering of this engine.

Instead of improving the engine and upping the requirements of the player's hardware, they spread the bases out an INCREDIBLE amount. This just created large kill zones for vehicles to slaughter infantry.

Hey look another picture that shows how imbalanced the Prowler is compared to the Lightning. I see 18 Prowlers and only 4 Lightnings. Something must be wrong because they actually have more than 15% Lightnings in the tank zerg. Someone must have pulled one by accident when they meant to take their own solo Prowler.

Prowler - 2 guns, 4000 hp
Lightning - 1 gun, 3000 hp.
There's is no imbalance, Prowler is just plain better for one-time vehicle purchase. My tech pool is full 99% of the time, if I have option to take Prowler or Lighning I see no reason to take weaker tank.

P2 Heat splash 700 @ 1.5m and 1 @ 5m x2
C75 viper splash 550 @ 0.5m and 1 @4m x6

despite some claiming C75 is better in base shelling, from my experience P2 HEAT is better. Infantry will only expose themselves for a sec before running to cover, thats when extra splash radius and damage benefits.

This is the worst idea i have ever heard, sitting on a hill bombarding infantry fights and racking up certs with no skill at all is NOT taking part in the fight. Here;s an idea Mr Botanical balls, why don't you actually get out of your tank, eureka what an idea, and get your hands dirty with a little close quarters skill based combat. Then when you have died a few times and your team mates have taken the base you can roll back into your cert machine onto the next base.

I don't think bases should be vehicle immune, just at least some should be. the closest we got are Amp Stations. Tanks can't easily get in to them until the shields are down. Biolabs are ground and air immune but thanks to the design, they turn in to farms.

I'm fine with vehicles getting a tactical advantage, but when you got a 48+ (probably closer to 100+) zerg and half of it is tanks bombarding your tower's narrow halls, it makes me leave and go to another battle.

Killing large numbers of infantry sure sounds like taking part in a fight to me. It's certainly helping his allied infantry.

There is a difference in killing a large number of infantry with great risk to yourself and farming large numbers of infantry with almost no risk to yourself.

What the OP is asking for is the latter.