Comparison of Ground and Air Vehicle Parallels

This is in the context of the design and balance of PS2. In real life there are no equivalent parallels between ground and air, hell they aren't even deployed from the same places when they go out for a battle engagement, they don't wear the same uniforms or hail from the same military branch, and a tank shooting down flying aircraft with shells in real life must be something like one-in-a-million.

Don't make me dive through the SOE Live Q&A panel recordings to find where Higby specifically refers to them as parallels. Because I'm not sure where they are all posted....

It is obvious that they are parallels. Single crew ESF and single-crew tank cost about the same resources, are meant for a single operator to go solo or roll with a group. MBT and Liberator are heavier vehicles, requiring a crew, meant to be more durable and able to lay down more sustained fire for a longer period of time, and having less vulnerability than their smaller and faster counterparts. The Galaxy and Sunderer are exactly parallels of each other if you ignore S-AMS and vehicle repair / rearm systems, one has wings and a few gunners because people can't dive out to fire back at enemy threats, one has two guns and does expect a crew to come out to fend off incoming attackers.

If you disagree with these vehicles being parallels, that is fine, we can discuss the subject privately. This discussion was made on the premise that they are parallels, and so the discussion shall continue as such. Thank you for your input, though!

Then have it moved to Off-Topic to indicate you're discussing an alternative universe where the vehicles were designed as such. Every parallel you mentioned can be applied to all sorts of crap that obviously isn't intended to be a parallel. To match up the Galaxy and Sunderer you had to ignore like 2/3rds of the Sunderer's capabilities - that alone should tell you you're off base.

Like I said, it's an interesting read, and I did enjoy reading it, but you're basing it on a flawed premise. Anyway, I'll leave you to happily discuss now.

Great post, thank you for all your detailed feedback! I can see that you are pretty experienced with a Flash, so I'm glad that you posted your feedback here!

1 - Knowing that the Phantasm is guaranteed to make its way in eventually, I think I can agree with you there. The point of a quick, light, covert transportation vehicle, does pretty well to fill the need I had detailed.

2 - Defenses instead of weaponry isn't a bad idea. It seems like it wouldn't be too bad to have both to some extent (basically an engineer turret on wheels is what I think of) because at the end of the day, a HA rocket will still explode a Flash, and so will around 100 rounds of small arms fire. Either way, shield and weapons or shield and no weapons, I'm glad that we can agree that some sort of shield systems for the Flash would be a worthwhile ability.

3 - Cloaking for the Flash would be nice to bring back from PS1, but I think that just letting classes use their class abilities while on a Flash would be worthwhile. I agree that cloaking wouldn't be used with weapons attached, basically like the Wraith from PS1, though I don't know if it would stay cloaked indefinitely. Maybe for Enginners it should instead be the ability to lay their normal deployables - ammo packs, infantry mines, and tank mines - while riding the Flash.

4 - So much agreement. I haven't spent much time with Thermal / IRNV equipment, but what I tried right before the end of beta showed underwhelming ranges, and since then I tried the NV infantry scope and was satisfied with the ability to spot enemies up to 125 meters. I can see how there is room for adjustment and balancing with IRNV scopes. As for the rest of it:
- Walker is just wrong. As my brother puts it, it doesn't feel like they made an AA gun that feels like an AA gun, that what we see now is a direct translation of the on-paper concept without the fine tuning it needs for its role.
- Directional damage aside, the Liberator is pretty well balanced, though I think it may do a bit too much damage to ground targets relative to what ground forces can do to respond. Most Libs I've been in went down to friendly collisions or being pursued by ESF, not AA weaponry.
- Skyguard definitely needs to be like a shotgun to the face of a nearby hovering ESF. The RoF and damage output now are such that the ESF can just zip away when damage begins, and usually escape with around 1/4 armor even if they were in a position where they should have been dead in the air. It is easy to overdo it with Skyguard re-balancing, but considering that all ability to fight ground-based threats goes away, it should be WAY more powerful against the things it CAN hit.

5 - Maybe it will have to wait til outfit features are improved. I could see the Galaxy Gunship being a flying air fortress that is restricted to one per outfit per continent at a time. While it would deal out heavy damage, it would also be a very obvious target that would likely draw a lot of attention.

Follow the link in my signature "Divine Intervention", if you want to understand what the Liberators IRNV is like. I haven't used the Therm yet, but the description says the range is much shorter than IRNV, which would make it useless for a Liberator bomber.

Also forgot to mention that punching a Sundy in the butt does indeed hurt it more than in the front. I have killed about 20 of them in the last 3 days with my HE light tank.

Weird... I guess some weapons just don't inflict directional damage, then!

That video definitely shows the range of vehicle IRNV quite well! Man is that effective....

Flash and ESF have scout radars as utilities, when maxed out, they go respectively to 100m and 200m.

Quite a nice range, other vehicule have proximity radar, going to max 50m.

A well placed stealth/radar flash was a big bonus in firefight in beta.

________

The sunderer is quite good atm, like you said, it can compete at close range vs lightning/MBT.

A ground vehicule with multiple gun sounds alot like the fabled heavy tank the dev said could one day appear. It doesn't make alot of sense to do it with the sunderer, since the sunderer is above all a transport/utility.

On the description, the Radar for most vehicles is just for the vehicle occupants. Flash and ESF both get radars that are projected to friendles?

I hope we see a real MBT some day.... 3 machineguns, 2 midsize cannons, 1 primary sized cannon, and capacity for a crew of 6 to 8 that can pile out and join the battle instantly.

Maybe it is only for scout radar, but in beta, the detected ennemy were shared with everyone.

I haven't verified it since then.

Yes. I am not exactly sure what dictates who gets the radar data, it seems like any friendly within a certain distance of the radar equipped vehicle. I do know that when I pull my 75m radar flash up to an area with a "hidden" enemy, the local friendlies instantly swarm the red dot.

Do not underestimate the power of a radar equipped stealth Flash. I have turned many small outpost defenses into slaughter houses with them. TBH, I wouldn't mind if infantry could equip a "suit" sidegrade specifically for scout radar immunity (they would still show on the map based on sound and spotting).

Good to know. Though I still wonder if the radar broadcasts to the same distance that it detects, or how far it broadcasts to friendlies.

The caveat of the Flash in a group is that friendly tanks (especially Magriders) have an easy time finding themselves taking grief points for a Flash they didn't see. Maybe if the Lightning had a radar like that, it would help bring the role of the Lightning up as a scouting vehicle, slightly closing the imbalance gap with air.

At this point, I'd say this in terms of the current state of ground vs air balance in PS2: Smaller aircraft fight better against larger aircraft, and aircraft do less damage to each other as they do to ground forces. MBTs generally beat Lightnings and Sunderers, and ground forces put out way less damage to aircraft than they do to each other. Air to air damage is fine, except the A30 Walker needs to be a serious threat to ESF rather than a waste of a third seat. Air to ground damage is overwhelming, especially ESF rockets and machineguns. Without the ability for ground forces to hit air as hard as air can hit ground forces, an imbalance is created that forces players to throw an overwhelming amount of squad resources into AA just to fend of solo vehicular combatants from near-instantly taking out tanks or troops.

Great write up Neurotoxin! Where is the against each other section?

Flak NEEDS to be rebalanced.

Also I think any defensive upgrade for any land vehicle should slightly buff the rear defense of a vehicle. The other option would be to increase the rear armor across the board, it needs it. I would even take a rear spoiler that prevents ESFs from obliterating me with 1 rocket pod clip.

nice write up btw.

imho ESFs should have only have 1 weapon -- so if you choose A2G or A2A missiles you give up the gun, etc. then both 1 man vehicles would have 1 weapon system while multicrew vehicles would still have several weapon systems.

A suggestion I though of last night.... No ESF may have secondary weapons without ownership of a tech plant unless pulled from the warpgate. Basically I'm looking at PS1 again - Mosquito had a nosegun, radar, afterburners, and no access limitations. Reavers had a stronger gun, rockets, and no radar but still afterburners, and required a tech plant.

It seems like this would be a good way to reduce the flow of ESF to the battlefield. It still wouldn't rebalance the insane damage output against ground vehicles.

Would this give the empires w/ tech plants too much of an advantage?

Good point. Warpgate ESF would still be accessible with full armaments.... honestly they are so fast that I don't even think it would be a serious limit for them to have to come from the warpgate. Just a slight slow-down in the supply line of enemy ESF getting to a battle, I guess...

The more I think about this, the more I think of players throwing their screaming crying faces at the forums because they keep pulling ESF without weapons, spending the resources and having a timer for it. It could be better just to limit ESF acquisition, period. Warpgate or access to a linked Tech Plant would probably be more suitable. Eventually we'll have the Phantasm, which would be the non-Liberator that someone could obtain without a tech plant (maybe).