I've seen talk of infiltrating an enemy base, hacking a terminal and pulling a Sundy. Is this just a party trick at small, largely undefended outposts or can it have a use inside bigger, better defended complexes? I realise the Sundy isn't going to survive that long but would it be a legitimate distraction tool to pull defenders away from walls/Generators/etc for other platoon members to take them out? Would I be correct that AMS and Stealth are the de facto upgrades, with perhaps anti-personnel weapons to try and keep the area clear for as long as possible? Does anybody have any other tricks for getting a squad inside an enemy base? I was wondering about the possibilities of being a squad leader or dropping a spawn beacon somewhere. The spawn beacon is a bit bloomin' obvious, I known but if you have a squad ready to deploy on it there could be a dozen men on the roof or tucked away within ten seconds.
Generally speaking, if you can pull a sunderer out of their vehicle bay and have it survive, you've already won. In that situation, all you've done is speed things up a bit. Spawning an AMS, in my opinion, is useful in exactly 2 situations. You stay one hex in front of the zerg, providing them with an immediate spawn point the instant they have adjacency. This can let your troops beat the defenders to the next base. You get behind the enemy line and cut them off. The best place I've found for this is crossroads watchtower when people are up on tank siege hill. They totally forget to defend the base. Oops, you lost Crossroads; now the Crown is safe. I would actually recommend mine guard over stealth. Most places where you are pulling stuff out of their bay, they are going to see where you are. Often, they also have a tank mine or two on the vehicle pad. Mine guard means you don't die the instant the Sundy spawns.
Considering how often I've pulled sundies and parked them inside tech plants and around towers to completely reverse the course of battle I'd say it's a hell of a lot more than a simply party-trick. If it's a large battle the moment it's deployed people will swarm out of it and it's easy to have outfit or squad mates pull back ups in case the first goes down. A sundy in a base is and always will be the easiest step towards capturing or defending that base for your empire and pulling from a pad within the enemy base is the fastest way to get a sundy where it needs to be. As for upgrades AMS obviously but I know next to no one who uses stealth. Blockade Armor or Mineguard, with a leaning towards Blockade Armor since it helps against almost everything (rockets, tanks, c4...) while mineguard is very specific. For weapons right now nothing beats the Fury which destroys infantry and hurts vehicles.
I would say the issue is not necessarily keeping the sunderer safe once deployed (as said, more can be spawned once the position is established anyway); instead the main issue is spawning the sunderer in the first place (and then getting it to deploy before being destroyed). If you can do this, then either there are not many people defending or the vehicle bay has already been comprised by encroaching forces (in which case, the infiltrator is merely a quicker way than driving the nearby sunderer closer). Example - TI Alloys, enemy has been pushed off the vehicle bay back towards the capture point and their spawn; you can spawn the sunderer now and protecting it is not likely to be an issue. However, you could just drive a sunderer up instead since you are winning the push. I chose TI Alloys because it is one of the few bases that get fought over in numbers that has an easily taken vehicle bay while the enemy still has a presence. The issue for towers (i.e., the Crown), Tech Plants, and Amp Stations - which make up the vast majority of large base battles - is that the vehicle bay is near (at least one of) the capture points. They are almost always the defender's HQ and primary spawn point. Once taken the battle is usually over, or very close to it. Trying to get a hack off there is very difficult. Trying to get a sunderer to live for more than five seconds even more so. I think giltwist's post is pretty much spot-on regarding this.
What might be useful is if hacking a terminal spawned like 5 neutral vehicles at random that nobody could pilot but helped conceal which one the infiltrator is driving.
If the big bases had more than one vehicle bay location that would be useful - the enemy forces wouldn't all be camped out at one spot.
I would roll stealth rather than mineguard - theres plenty of places you can hide a sunderer for a great deal of time. Its also sometimes worth announcing you have pulled a sunderer over the /re channel so people know.
