[Suggestion] Begin Working on ANT Modules for Sunderers

This made me lol

That's not how business works.

They need to appease enough customers to keep making money.

They ANSWER to shareholders. So unless you hold some SERIOUS SOE stock you're basically extremely deluded.

I agree.

A new vehicle might be cool, but it won't happen.

OH WAIT, lets rant and rave how the game will be ruined if Sundies get ANT module

I DGAF if sundies get ANT module or we get a new vehicle. I just want the new base power mechanics in the game and I want them NOW!

That likely means a MODULE for the most expedient means to getting it in.

Personally I have no problem with Sundie and Galaxy getting all the logisitical crap. If they're spend effort on making new vehicles they should have some fun new gameplay combat purpose.

Backpack ant on an LA do it now



ANT PS1 system= awesome

as the arguement about stated (im hugely paraphrasing)

space trucker = good
reason: gives another dimension to the game, challenges the brain, makes you feel contributing and such.

space trucker = bad
reason: It will force THAT player who doesn't want to space truck, to space truck due to the necessity or loss of bases/whatevertheHigby

My 2 certs:
space trucker is needed as a seperate vehicle, move the ammo and repair feature from sundy to "ANT" let it run on nanites so it cant give infinite amounts of ammo and repair. that way the ant must be recharged at some point, either at a base (which also has a stockpile of nanites like PS1 bases did which drained over time) or even at warpgate.


My only gripe with my own idea is that we need to enable galaxies to be able to transport ANTs like PS1 this will allow the emergeny "oh Higby" moment where a base needs an ANT asap then we get the " NC are going for an ANT, crap keep them away from the base" but this would mean later phases of the system which is now out. so ahem PS1 gogggles off.

That's the dumbest thing I've seen in a while. They answer to the shareholders but what do the shareholders care about? Making money. If the devs do things we don't like, we wont give them money, if we wont give them money they don't make money, if they don't make money their bosses get mad. So no, they do most certainly answer to us, the community, because it's up to us whether they turn a profit or not.

As I showed, if four guys in their spare time can produce a fully functional and working ship of that quality in less than six months, I expect the devs to be able to make a little nanite transport in significantly less time.

Except you're confusing your own personal vendetta with what the masses care about.

The masses don't give 2 flying squirrels butts about what vehicle transports the power as long as it's not a blockaded sunderer (ie; particularly difficult to destroy)

So yes, if releaseing ANT module caused SOE to all of a sudden lose all their customers, yeah, shareholders would throw a fit.

That's not the case though and once again we return to your delusions if you think so.

You make posts and they sound like you think you're proving me wrong or something. In reality you're just proving my point.

The fact that the community DOESN'T care is what I'm talking about. It's depressing. People like you are all fine and dandy to let the devs take the lazy way out. New vehicles? New models? In a timely fashion? New unique gameplay? LOL! You'll buy our hats no matter how much effort we put in, why should we actually do work?

What I'm saying is the community SHOULD care, we should demand that soe doesn't half-*** things, we should demand that the devs actually give us high quality content, we should hold them responsible and we should hold them to a standard beyond a bloody one man indie dev team. Christ even Notch put more effort into his game at this point. As long as people like you are content to just eat up whatever the devs throw out, they'll never feel any reason to actually do anything well.

Again, I feel you keep ignoring it, four guys in their spare time produced a vehicle that works, flies in engine, has full interior, and is significantly higher quality and larger than anything in PS2. They did this in less than six months. Why are we allowing a AAA dev team to put out content that's inferior to stuff made by four guys in their bloody spare time? This is what I don't understand, I don't understand why people like you are fine with this. They could make a proper ANT vehicle in two months if they wanted, it's been proven countless times by others. Why aren't we holding them to that standard?

Look, ANTs are a net-negative in game depth relative to the other vehicles in the game. They're shallower because unless you're suggesting new, unique, deep driving mechanics for them they are just like tanks except worse.

• Tanking skills: Driving + Managing engagement depth + Aiming + Ability use
• ANT skills: Driving + Managing engagement depth

ANTs aren't an economic challenge. That's the logistics system. The ANT is the problem, not logistics. Pay attention.

ANTs aren't going to challenge your brain. Not at all. The logistics system is the thing creating the interesting decision of "oh we need to do this logistics thing now", not the ANT. The act of driving the ANT is almost entirely brainless. 80% of the journey is empty and devoid of threats. The final 20% involves a tiny bit of managing engagement depth, but you do that nonstop in a tank anyway so it's still a net-negative below the tank.

A good RTS game is a non-stop flow of critical decisions. (I've worked on several RTSes, including AOE2: The Conquerors and Rise of Nations.)

An ANT is a monotonous, dull road trip. A comparable RTS analogy would be if C&C games had shared unit control and your jerk teammate said, "Don't control anything except this single harvester." When you play the entire RTS, there is a constant flow of interesting decisions. With a single harvester, you're limited to a subset of shallower decisions.

And yet, as much as you claim it's dull and boring and nobody likes it, several people in this thread alone said they'd enjoy the mechanic. So clearly it's not as dull as you think. So if people enjoy it and it doesn't negatively impact the enjoyment of those who don't enjoy the ANT, why shouldn't they add it? There's literally no downside to you if they add it, so why are so you zealous in your crusade to keep it out of the game? If you don't like it, don't drive it, I like the ANT and I enjoyed driving one. I enjoy driving through the country side on supply runs, I like that style of gameplay and so do others. You STILL haven't given a good reason why we shouldn't be allowed.

Even that post right there can be summed up to "I don't enjoy it thus it shouldn't happen". You have yet to give even one non-personal reason why the ANT shouldn't be added. People want to drive it, if you're gonna say they shouldn't be allowed to have fun playing the game then you need a damned good reason why.

A new land vehicle would be super cool.

I don't care because it's not worth caring, because if I did care, I'd just be bitter like you and still nothing would change.

Even if all of forumside cared, that's not a large portion of population.

So yeah, I don't care... cause it's a game.

And also, it really doesn't matter for the bloody ANT. I couldn't care less about it. I just care about the functionality. Which is something the Sunderer would do with a module just fine.

They're doing the Valkyrie right now and the ES buggies after that, and the NS colossus somewhere in there. ALL of which interest me FAR more than the ANT.

You mad that I don't care?

I don't care about that either. Hope that makes you mad too.

You're completely missing the time-critical nature of logistics runs. The time crunch is what puts a constant tension on people running logistics, you've got to optimize your routes for multiple bases while adapting to how your faction's population is distributed.

The effort of transporting the nanites to the front is a big part of what makes the logistics system real and tangible. Simply having infinite nanites rain down on the bases automagically reduces the scarcity factor and removes opportunity for counterplay.

It'd be like if you took the Logistics Truck out of Project Reality. Suddenly SLs could just plop FOBs down wherever with no concern about how they're going to get crates there, and TOWs/Mortars become completely OP because they have infinite ammo. The logistics truck is vital to tying everything together and keeping it in balance, and there's no shortage of people to drive them.

Though honestly logi trucks are fun (and a bit scary) to drive even if you don't really have a reason to be in one. They're really fast for their size (especially downhill), armored with cardboard, and a bit top-heavy. So basically when you make a logi run you take a break from FPS for a bit to play survival horror.

The logi truck is pretty much what we would want the ANT to be. It supplies bases, is the primary source of spare ammo for everything, and field-repairs vehicles.

The time pressure didn't mean driving ANTs was deep. It was still a shallow activity. The decisions before you started driving were interesting, but the act of driving was just a tedious chore.

How many posts do you need me to say "logistics isn't the problem, shallow ANT gameplay is the problem" until you start responding to what I'm saying? If you tell me ahead of time, I can just copy-paste a bunch of posts for you.

Apologies if English isn't your first language, but you seem to not actually be responding to the discussion at hand.

Logistics isn't the problem, shallow ANT gameplay is the problem.

Logistics can be implemented without forcing players to engage in a shallow mechanic.

You know you keep spamming that yellow line but not once have you offered up even one suggestion that has engaging, fun logistic mechanics that actually utilize players. How about instead of spamming a factual bias opinion you give up a counter suggestion. Because as I've been counter-spamming, some of us ENJOY this "shallow mechanic" and you have yet to give a reason why we shouldn't be allowed to do it nor a better alternative. If you hate ANTs so much, then suggest an alternative, goddamn.

alternative - FLYING ANT

Five possibilities exist:

• Shallow ANT + Irrelevant Logistics. Implement shallow PS1 ANTs, but have them be largely irrelevant (make logistics rather meaningless so I'm never forced, as one of few perceptive members of my faction, to do the ANT driving myself.)
• Deep ANT + Important Logistics. Have logistics be very meaningful, but implement awesome deep driving mechanics for them, so that it's fun and skill-rewarding to drive on. There would be a big difference in the speed/effectiveness of a skill vs. unskilled driver, and mastering the ANT would take a while.
• Automated ANT + Important Logistics. Have automated ANTs (possibly player-initiated) which make the runs for you, and you can escort in a combat vehicle and as a result experience deeper gameplay (because all the other vehicles are deeper than PS1 ANTs.)
• Create an entirely new mechanic + Important Logistics. There are hundreds of ways to add varying amount of logistics to the game, small and large.
• Don't add additional logistics gameplay.

For someone who insists it's possible to make player-operated logistics with 'deep' gameplay you sure didn't present any ideas. I asked you to give alternatives and two of your give alternatives aren't even alternatives. I'll break it down for you.

"Shallow ANT" isn't an alternative, which I asked for. Ignoring it for now.

"Deep ANT" isn't possible in planetside 2, there's no way for the devs to make driving around fun in your eyes as obviously they wont add in manual shifting and stuff like that, and while that might be "deep" to you it'll just be a nuisance to everyone else.

Automated ANT runs are, again, not an option because that requires AI and PS2 is exceptionally AI light. Beyond that, it's not player controlled. The whole point here is that PLAYERS control logistics, not the game, but players. If the game is controlling the logistics then it's automatically failed. So really this is another discarded idea as it doesn't meet the requirements.

Creating a new mechanic is fine, you say there's tons of ways to do it, then list one.

Basically, you didn't list a single viable alternative so I'll ask you to try again. I'll re-detail the requirements for any alternative you provide.

1: It has to be player operated, the players have to be the ones controlling where resources are and where they're going.
2: It has to have a meaningful impact on the game and allow players to make or break attacks by their usage of logistics.
3: It has to fit into the game.

So again, I'll be waiting for those alternatives because you insist there's oh so many of them, you shouldn't be having this much trouble suggesting them.

My point is that the Project Reality logistics truck is not shallow, and neither is the ANT.

You're the one stuffing their fingers in their ears and screaming "BUT I DUN WANNA DRIVE AN ANT I WANNA SHOOT DUDES" over and over. Well then don't bloody drive an ANT if you really can't go that long without shooting somebody, leave the job to somebody who's actually good at it.

Your base runs completely dry because your entire team is as stupid and selfish as you are? Redeploy to another base that isn't dry, if nothing else the enemy will stock up the other one for you because they're clearly smarter than you are.

Now see, the problem with this list is you're clearly just blowing smoke out your fourth point of contact to cover up the fact that you just don't want logistics to be in the game at all.

Because you have not proposed any viable alternative that would actually fit in that list, and you vehemently oppose any suggestion that would be remotely workable or balanced.

You continue to miss the point that we have already proposed ANTs with incredible depth. You're just being a crybaby about it because they're not also OP killing machines. Honestly this sounds like it's more about your KDR than your shallow concept of "depth".

Depth is not juggling multiple tasks at once, that's complexity. A mechanic, by itself, has no inherent depth. Ergo, there is no such thing as a "deep mechanic" and your constant demands to come up with one (which so far seems to amount to demands that the vehicle be heavily armed) are all a bunch of bovine manure.

The depth is in the interaction between the players. The depth is in the decision to pull one in the first place, the planning to get it to its destination intact, and the decision of what you will do with its cargo once you get there (resupply the base, repair friendly vehicles, or provide ammo directly?). Your decisions then influence the decisions of everyone around you, and that reaction cycle is where emergent gameplay is created.

The fundamental problem seems to be that you don't even know what depth is, you're just throwing the term around and claiming that it's not there when it's sitting right in front of you.

The need to physically transport supplies is what makes a logistics system engaging in the first place. When supplies just magically rain from the heavens, they are nothing more than a glorified cooldown timer. When you need to actually pick them up and move them to the front, then they become a real tangible thing that you need to put manpower towards.

And besides, although keeping a big top-heavy truck from flipping over while it barrels down a hill at 90kph isn't necessarily "deep" (because, like all the things YOU usually cite as alleged "depth", it's an execution challenge), it sure as hell is fun.

agreed.

Well said!

They still haven't learned how PS1 got base and terrain design better, so...