Cloaking takes away the fun

Keep in mind that the Flash lacks the automotive body to engulf the driver or passenger unlike most other vehicles and that the driver can be killed without the vehicle being destroyed. The flash is not very known for its survivability, if not in motion/cloaked.

A basilisk destroys a Flash in 9-13 shots, and a default dumbfire lights a Flash on fire. If it doesnt, shoot it a few times and it'll be on fire, then the guy has to get off.

I can assume we are talking about the infantry side of this discussion, so I'll just say this. You are supposed to aim for the driver. Thats why they are exposed and can be damaged. You are an experienced player, and you know that their vehicle cloak shimmers when they regain shield, right? They are usually still in the area after a drive-by, so you know to wait for that and keep your eyes peels, right? For me, I don't waste time shooting at the Flashes since they all do the same thing. Renegade Flashes will just pull up, Fury Flashes will sit still (as will Kobalt and Basilisk Flashes), Starfall Flashes aren't used anymore, and that flamethrower flash will constantly follow you, lighting you on fire.

The ability to cloak them, because it's the same as with the infiltrator: They often can't be countered until their presence is known and in 90% of the cases they have the initiative. It's harder to pull those ridiculous stunts off when being under constant fire

here's one:

The ability for a 50 naninte vehicle to arrive at a parked but sparsely defended sundy, mag dump, disappear, return, mag dump, and repeat until the sundy is gone.

One player had a blast doing their meta. The rest of the players in that small fight had their fun ruined.

Depending on circumstances (NOT every time) it can be more effective at killing a fight than a lightning, MBT, or Liberator. All because of the cloak.

it's ******** and not a fun thing.

Scroffel5, dude, stop.

Stop using "learn to play" stuff in your discussion. You insult your reader. Just assume until you figure out otherwise that the folks this far into the discussion have some clue about how to play.

Everyone already knows how to deal with flashes and cloaked flashes. It's not rocket science.

The discussion here is beyond that. ie, why GOOD methods of dealing with them still fall short. We're discussing imbalance in gameplay mechanics. Not imbalance in skill.

Plus you throw in their ultra low - often isntant ttk weps and it's basically impossible to react to them. It's just silly

If the distance isn't that long, 300 to 400 meters, I'd WALK over there to the next base as a stalker and place a C-bomb beneath the sundy if it's not on a slope where you can't put it down. Very risky, especially against a cloaked sundy when I shine brighter than a christmas tree, and very rewarding, since I can damage the sunderer seriously, causing it to burn. I don't need a Flash for damaging it.

I think anyone can agree that the safety of the mobile spawnpoint should be among the top priorities. People claim they know all that and know of all these counter measures to do so and don't need a reminder, yet somehow they don't apply it and these kind of things keep happening to them, causing them to resent certain elements of the game. This is what confuses me.

People resent elements of the game that are imbalanced. It's just a core psychological thing. If a persons lack of skill results in a bad outcome it's not frustrating. They just work more and improve. It's the nature of gaming. But if a person demonstrates skill and does not make a mistake but still has a bad outcome that will be frustrating and not fun. Objectively. In any game.

Making something nearly invisible is strong ingredient in the recipe that makes things imbalanced. There are few *effective* counter measures to something you do not see.

I'm not confused by this.

Ah yes, we'll ask players to defend Sunderers while it can take more than half an hour before any enemy arrives, or it could take seconds. At which point the defender is at a disadvantage since you cant be alert for 100% of the time and your enemy will be prepared for any potential defenders. And that is the point: defending is a badly designed chore. The game is filled with bad design and players want to have some good design. Saying "its a top priority" does not excuse having to do something boring or unfun.

You could argue "ah but mines/spitfires!". But that doesnt work since you are limited in their use. Its pretty bad to ask players to sacrifice their slots for something that might never happen, and in the case of the Spitfire not even having the ability to swap classes.

Its one of the reasons I've proposed adding deployable defenses at Sunderers designed not to kill but to warn the owners and slow down any attackers. That way any would-be attacker basically has to announce themselves and players can actually react. There would specifically be no defenses that kill outright like current mines would since having passive murder weapons is not a good design.

Deployable defenses are nice and fine, but certainly need to be installed and maintained, right? Which means someone, anyone, must do these task in time or you can spawn back at the last base and THAT is surely not a fun thing to do over and over again either. No one likes guard duty, since it is not rewarded properly in this game, there is no incentive or directive to do so. I get that. Maybe there should be a directive chain to do precisely that and earn deployables like Darklight searchlight towers or something else. If we don't give people a reason to do so, they will not do so. So an AMS-Guard directive would maybe be a step towards the right direction.

What could be done would be the implementation of a base-specific silo that can be fed Cortium via ANT to raise a shield wall perimeter around the base in order to keep tank fire outside. Penetrable to infantry men, impenetrable to enemy tanks, tank fire and bullets to both sides. Can be activated from a terminal at the spawn room. I would even go as far as to put terminals into the SCU room to remote control any remaining turret at an extra double cost of cortium until the turret is either destroyed or hacked.

That is a very pedantic argument. If you die, you need to walk back to the fighting. That is par of the course. The defenses are similar to the Sunderer: you bring them, you deploy them, they offer you an advantage that creates a fun gameplay loop. The Sunderer gives you a spawnpoint that reduces the time you need to get to the fighting and the deployable defenses give you time to return and defend it without having to babysit. The time it takes to replace them is small since you just grab them at the Sunderer and place them.

For someone who makes a show of "oh deary me people are so agressive here" you make far too much effort to blow up minor details to extravagant sizes. "Someone needs to do these tasks and that cant be fun!". You might as well say "those poor people deploying mines, they have to replace them after each cheap kill. That cant be fun!". While ignoring the much greater time and effort required to keep yourself safe from them.

The AMS guard directive would be worse if we ask players to pull guardduty around a Sunderer. You never ever want to reward people for unfun gameplay, as they will actively pursue it and destroy their own enjoyment in the process. You need ways to defend the Sunderer without having to pull guard duty but you dont want fully automated defenses murdering any attackers.

Well then, if there is no incentive and no responsibility to do a thing, there can be no authority to complain about no one doing a thing, which means everyone is free to storm into the base and leave the Sunderer to whatever fate there lurks. You said you want to make the Sunderer defense gameplay fun with deployables, yet at the same time you say one can not force the people to do unfun guard duty (I agree, but that aside) and it is unwise to reward unfun gameplay. So how to do this? Mines are not a valid option, spitfires are not a valid option, caltrops are not a valid option, rewards are not a valid option...

At this point, I toss my arms into the air and ask: Quo vadis? We are running in a circle with maximum effort gaining no results, blaming vehicles using cloak running you over, yet no one feels responsible to do a thing. Every measure proposed to appease you guys gets tossed out of the window: "No! We don't want no stinking OHK mines!" Well in that case: What is it you want? You refused deployable explosives, you refused automation, you refused incentives to make people think about helping you guys out. Sorry, if I have to be that blunt, but... What else is there? Someone! Please! Tell me!

Sunderer garages with a 0 way spawn shield (maybe make it a 1-way going out), powered by a gen that has a 10-15 second timer. One at every base, some bases can have multiple.

Still allows for other sunderer spots, still gives a reason to have stealth module.
Still allows for sunderers to be killed by armour before getting there.
Prevents 200m sniping.
Prevents suicide runs by infantry.
10-15 seconds is not a lot of time, but it gives enough for the attackers to defend.

"You don't like these trash mechanics that cater to braindead playstyles? These mechanics that are incredibly frustrating to play against for a myriad number of reasons? Here, have some more! Whhaaaaaat, you guys don't like these new suggested mechanics to? Well, I suppose there is just no pleasing you guys!" - u 1856

With as closed minded as you are about changes or nerfs, i'm not even sure why you're talking at all.

I see. So there is a generator that can be blown up, before the zero to one way shield crumbles. Yes, might need some rework of already existing bases, but I see what you are aiming at.

There is having a closed mind and there is at some point losing patience when everything offered is either 'braindead' or not good enough in another kind of way. So, asking of what WOULD be enough seemed to have finally yielded a result, let's work on it. Or would you rather toss some more insults in my direction?

Don't be so obtuse.

We want the !#$!@#$ cloak fixed. You think we're 14 pages into a cloak discussion because we want suggestions on spitfires????

It would also need some way to make the gens be owned by the attacking faction, as right now they are all owned by the defenders. Instead of gens, even a terminal like in containment sites could work, and just give the shield a 10 second count down before dropping and the same for going back up.

It's 'braindead' because of how the mechanics work; any mechanic that can be placed or used with next to zero thought, be left to its own devices, and still do its job is a braindead mechanic and either needs to be next to useless or so rare/expensive that it justifies how strong it is for how easy it is to use.

And your closed mind is due to your ridiculous stance on changes in general; something something 'adapt'. Further, you came into this thread insulting anyone who wanted nerfs or changes to infil in your first post, you just didn't use strong language. But continue playing the victim because you don't like the truth.

And yeah, when you offer trash suggestions you get trash in return.

That works about once, especially if they respawn in the same place, save for the Renegade, which you have little chance of surviving if you don't take him on before he gets to you. Plus, you can hear them coming up from a good distance away. Literally, its a Flash sound, and not a lot of people are just driving Flashes, meaning that you can hear it, look at the map, identify that there are no friendly Flashes in your area, and get ready. You can even hear the general direction they are coming from and if they are getting closer!

Do you guys die to Flashes a lot or do you just especially hate it when you do die to them?

Either you yourself or Demigan said it; an undefended sunderer dies. Listen, it takes a single guy to stop a Flash from destroying a sunderer. A SINGLE GUY. Get in your top gun. If it is a Basilisk, yay. 9-13 shots, not even a 4th of your mag, and they are toast. AND you can outrep the damage he does in that run. If it is a Fury or a Bulldog, yay. You can attack from the same range as them and outdamage them. If it is a Kobalt, even better than a Basilisk. Faster firerate, more accuracy, just eat the Infiltrator on the Flash. If it is AA, oof. Depends on your elevation.

Now I will admit that I did the strat you were talking about with a single Flash, but it only worked because I had a Light Assault on the back. Y'know why I won? It wasn't because the Flash was OP. It was because the enemies were stupid, and one of the guys on their team literally called them idiots. Not one of them hopped in the top gun of their sunderer. Not one of them put out a single mine for us to run into. Not one of them watched us go in a literal circle for the 6 returns it took us to destroy that sunderer. Only one medic decided that he was going to wait at a position we came to. The problem for him was that he gave off his position before actually hitting us. He aimed at the Flash. So we literally drove backwards uncloaked to get some recharge time and went down the hill and stayed uncloaked, using the hill as our cover.

This is a rare circumstance where every player is braindead. Usually, you try it once, do a little bit of damage to the sunderer, and have to run away because someone respawned to blast you off your Flash. Come back, and someone has placed some mines somewhere or just a decent player kept shooting at you after you cloaked...

Good methods of dealing with them involve attacking with awareness, and those don't fall short. I assume you guys should know this stuff, but your replies don't make it evident that the counters you try don't work. In fact, you guys rarely, if ever, mention any counters that you use. Yeah, I said to shoot the driver, not the Flash. Thats not rocket science. But if you do it, it works. Flashes move somewhat predictably even when cloaked because it takes time to turn and you aren't going as fast as, say, a Harasser.

For me, I literally just listen and I can tell where a Flash is coming from. Just yesterday, I spawned into a base as a Heavy Assault and I heard a Flash, but didn't see one, especially not one on my team. Dead giveaway that there is a cloaked Flash, as you know. I see a MAX. I reason that he is probably going to try to kill that MAX. I run towards where the MAX is while listening for the Flash. I hear it coming from the left. I look left and don't see it instantly. I look a little farther and I see it. I start shooting at it. I hit the Flash first, realize it, and aim up a little bit. Dude has a Renegade, gets me when I only needed one more shot. He cloaks, teammate instantly finishes him.

He is a Wraith Flash main. He is coming back. I pull a sunderer, get 2 guys to hop in. I hear a Flash but don't see a Flash. I think its on the right. I can't really tell, but I hear it. I turn right. I back up and turn right. Bump. I tell my gunners in proxy chat, "Yo, cloaked Flash." They sit there looking around. I hear its wheels spinning. I full throttle reverse and blow him up. I tell my gunners in proxy chat, "Nevermind."

The ONLY times I die to a Flash are when they are using a Renegade or a Flamethrower, and I die after they have already been "torched". I can count the times I have been roadkilled by one on two, maybe three fingers.

So yeah, I'm gonna keep gisting "L2P" as long as it works for me.

The flash with no cloak and weapons already exists.
It's called a javelin and it is an absolute joke in vehicle play and a meme vs infantry.
Can't believe people are seriously suggesing turning the wraith-flash into that, well I can, infantry-siders suggesting total rubbish to "fix da vehicles" has been a thing for a long long time.

It's not. You're now wasting your words.

Done listening to you when ALL you do is reply with **rudimentary** L2P. Seriously re-read yourself and see if you are making a point about the cloak or about players. I made you a promise pages ago that I would tell you if you told me something new. Still haven't. It's blah blah blah now and paragraph after paragraph of the same.

Coming pretty late to the conversation and firing up a straw man as an opener eh? You can't believe it because it's not really being suggested. The javelin is a wholly separate vehicle with different mechanics and weapons.

You yourself already suggested it:

lmao.