Changes to EMP Grenade, Tank Mines, and Drifter Jumpjets

YISSS! So much yes!

This must make it too live. I can understand "situational" but right now drifters are literally only good when defending a tower with spread-out capture points, and only if the enemy doesn't hit you while you slowly glide through the air.

I personally think that friendly Spitfire turrets should experience the effects of EMPs unless the owners of the turrets also have EMP shielding equipped. This, I feel, would be more intuitive as EMPs in reality are pretty indiscriminate and so they should be in Planetside 2.

I also believe that the destruction of ammo packs is counter-intuitive as they don't appear to utilise electronics and would also be more damaging for the infiltrator who threw the EMP.

I think that instead of draining jump jet fuel and HA shields, the EMP should instead temporarily disable them whilst still retaining the current amount of fuel/charge. When disabled, the jump jets/HA shields should not be able to charge.

As for the medic, the EMP could also disable their medic tool for a short period.

I used to use drifters as my primary jump jet as they were much better than the standard ones, however the lack of height became crippling. Finally looking forward to using them again!

I love these EMP grenade changes and thank you devs!

Most infils I see are too far to be useful with an EMP grenade.
They rarely use recon darts so EMP will only be for the outfit teamplayer infil.
Pug infils will be the ones who aren't helping any and will not be using EMP's

So I don't see too much an increase in EMP.

So if all the changes go in, this is a list of potential effects they will have. Let me know if I missed something.

EMP:
-Drains personal shields
-Removes HUD
-Adds minor distortion to screen
-Drains Heavy Assault shields
-Drains Light Assault jumpjet fuel
-Drains Medic ability energy
-Destroys beacons
-Destroys Motion Sensors
-Destroys motion darts (can we get some XP for getting rid of these too?)
-Destroys shield generators
-Destroys ammo packs
-Detonates tank mines
-Detonates anti-personal mines
-Detonates C4
-Temporary disables autoturrets
-Temporary disables MANA turrets

Just putting it up as it makes it a bit easier for me to see it laid out.

This is ridiculous a fast moving ground vehicle moves too fast? It has turbo!!!! THats what the Harasser does, MBTs and lightnings can almost keep u pwith harassers without turbo (on level terrain) and not gonna mention ESF's. Thinking Harasser too fast is RIDICULOUS!

Why does it not disable MAX suits as well?

The EMP nade changes could be interesting if we new the numbers involved, except for the destruction of ammo packs that's just OP man (now if they were to "disable" it like the rest that would be ok). And is there gonna be a radius for the grenades "drain" ability? I hope so.
Don't know nothing about the mines, seems ok, but i just love the changes made to drifter jumjets! Needed that for a loooong time, no more going up on elevators just to make it to high ground for the drifters to work, yay!

Notice you said "On level terrain" I simply laughed and disregarded your entire comment.


A lightening can't turbo its way up a 90 degree incline and escape any and all harm. A lightening can't warp 0-100. A lightening can't have an engineer repairing it while its on the move. The developers actually had to increase the explosive range of tank mines because, Thats right... Harassers were going so fast, They could pass over them before they detonated. You want me to keep going? No, I think you're done.

That is what I thought when I looked at the list I put up. Where is MAX ability drain?

Anyway, as Zica96 says, we need to know the numbers. Like how strong are the effects for each of the range tiers from the center blast and so on. Would they only drain abilities via line of sight, or work through walls? Little things like that.

Will you get like 5-10xp for destroying an ammo pack and what about letting LA ADS again?

So, most classes will now be targeted and affected by the EMP grenade. And there's an implant to reduce the impact of it. And it costs a lot to use.
And this is a buff that comes on top of the ability to sneak around while nearly invisible and kill players without being seen. How is it really to be fighting in the front lines, getting killed now and then randomly by a player who fundamentally is not playing by the mechanic others rely on to play?

Strongly disliking it.

Does anyone know how to get additional altitude with drifters? Pressing jump multiple times isn't working for me.

Feedback: I see improvement on duration of Drifter jets but not on vertical trust (even on repeatedly pressed jump key)
Everything ok with EMP grenade. But i expected larger radius of effect.
Tank mine is great now it does not slide too much, sticks better on sloped terrain.
It does not stick to vehicles it just drops on the ground after vehicle moved away.

i think all of this is good BUT the EMP grenade taking out the medics ability, i mean to new people that have that and havent upgraded it a lot, it takes some time to recharge and use it again and i would hate to be playing and someone throws an EMP and BAM! my ability is gone again and i have to wait longer to use it, but maybe thats just me.
not going to explain bugs....too many lol. but one thing i saw is my performance went way down, like norm i never go under 60 frames unless its BIG battle like 200+, but being by myself i was going down to like 20-40. normal i play at 50-110 frames. all my graphics are down and shadows is off, render distance is to 1000, low.
otherwise i think this is all good (nice work on the content, big improvement)
i5 @ 2.6GHz
4GB ddr3 RAM @ 1333MHz
nvidia GE Force GTS 250 with a 675MHz GPU and 2gb of ram, a good card
windows 7 home 64 - bit

MAX suits and Infiltrators should not be excluded from EMP effecting them, especially if every other class is so greatly affected. If you are justifying EMPs destroying a Medic's AOE heal and a LA's jetpack, then cloak and MAX suits should also basically be ruined.

I like disabled the AoE heal, but perhaps in terms of heavy shields or jump jets, a temporary disable and deactivation would be a better solution, especially in terms of the heavy shield. The heavy shield takes a LONG time to charge passively, and having all that taken away is a much bigger hit to the average Heavy's playstyle than if a light assault loses his jump jets temporarily. With this, perhaps then change EMP shielding to shorten the disabled time instead of reducing drain.

Super glad about the tank mine changes! The main reason I wasn't using them was because half the time harassers can just drive over them without giving a *care. That and I mainly play infantry vs. infantry, so tank mines have little use for me in that respect, but good to see this getting fixed.

AS for the drifter changes, OH ALMIGHTY LAWD!!!! I have been WAITING for these. If this stuff actually makes it through to live this time, I will never use Jump Jets again.

However, the changes may not be a good thing, at least not in their current state. While the alititude gain does drop the skill floor a good margin, allowing newer players to more easily pick up and use drifter jets in everyday fights, I fear that for more experienced drifters, this change will be too powerful. I would keep an eye out and make sure that these changes don't make drifter jets TOO good.

* Ahem *

We've never *Not* been affected by them... I've been using Bandolier + EMP instead of flashlight in most cases to reveal almost every Infiltrator I encounter in-game. It's SUPER effective b/c EMP range is huge. (but tends to backfire often)

EMP already drain your cloak energy so when you throw a EMP nade you lose your cloak most of the time.
They should do so medics dont lose their energy but their medic tool should stop work for 3s.
Same with engineers, to cancel their repair tool should be great when attacking sunderers or trying to take a base.
Idk about maxes because if it affect them it should affect vehicles too.

They should make a vehicle emp grenade that turn of vehicles for 1-2s and turn off vehicle/weapon terminals for 5-6s. But it should have no effect on infantry.

This !!!!

Can we apply this to vehicles as well, so sick an tired of the slip n slide vehicle traction across all of them, regardless of the chasis being used. Every map is ice capades on wheels when it comes to any sort of grade/bump.

Didn't take that burm straight on at max speed, how about rail slide the entire way until you lose all momentum/torque traction or control!