How balanced was PS1 between factions?

PS1 balanced the game .... differently. The played out far differently in 1v1 than squad v squad, and even empire v empire.

I would say NC had the best of the empire specific infantry weapons, but they really favoured you playing 1v1 ... my experience was that the TR stuff stacked better in a squad: Machine Guns > Shotguns when you had two or more, and a pair of locked down maxes were better than a pair of scatters. Weird - but it seemed to work on the planetary scale. VS were... well, VS were the 3rd empire most of the time. The Lasher just yo-yo'd between being obscenely good and ridiculously bad. Their maxes were pretty cool though, being able to jump up on to buildings gave them a real edge when used well.

Vehicles; main differences were in buggies and tanks. I thought VS had the best of it as they could float (we had real water, and real bridges) and their cannon could snipe from range... much as it does in PS2. TR prowlers were best manned by 2 people, the third seat was just a waste. Buggies were much better balanced than the harasser; being good light assault vehicles but not overly armoured.

Then the BFRs came out and they were all overpowered ... until they got beaten back to being 'tank' level. Not sure any of them were then particularly amazing?

That's because when people allude to the olden days compared to PS2, the empire-specific differences isn't what they're thinking of. Rest assured that throughout PS1's history, there were always "[empire X item Y] OP" cries, just as you'd expect.

PS1 had Harassers, but they never played any role as a combat vehicle. They were a poor man's 2-crew transport vehicle, and just about their only actual use was for running LLUs (a "flag" for the few bases that used a capture-the-flag cap mechanic) or cave modules when a Skyguard buggy wasn't available.

I'm not quite sure what "nonsense" you mean about the PS2 Harry, but when it comes to infantry farming, one thing that PS1 certainly had was door camping with vehicles - tanks mostly, or the Deliverer combat variants. Now that wasn't pretty. But at least we had actual doors in PS1.

Not as much, because it wasn't as OP. It was clearly the best hand-held AA option tho (only for closer ranges did the common pool Rocklet Rifle offer an alternate AA option for infantry). But the VS Lancer was stronger at anti-vehicle duty, and the NC Phoenix had its "I hitz u behind rocks, lol" factor plus being an absolute Max killer.

Hell no. While it took some practice to fly a PS1 Mosquito or Reaver effectively (as it does in PS2), once you were decent with them, there was little else that offered as many KPH and as high K/D as farming with these two. This was compounded by the fact that most dedicated AA (Skyguards and AA Maxes) could be killed fairly quickly with a Reaver (with the exception of the VS Starfire thanks to jumpjets, which is what made the Starfire the best AA Max although the TR offered slightly better killing potential on paper). The Mossie on the other hand featured not only a pinpoint accurate chaingun that could melt infantry as fast as the dreaded Scatmax did at point blank, but it ALSO had a fairly large-range proximity radar with which it could sniff out its victims.

It wasn't until very late in the game, when base turrets could be upgraded to AA turrets with unlimited flak spamming capability, that there was something that could kill aircraft quickly AND didn't die itself in a single Reaver rocket clip.

Liberators weren't so bad btw - very situational. They could sometimes get you insanely many kills, but mostly, they were big, slow buckets of XP for enemy AA and aircraft.

Certainly did. Can't forget the insane AoE spam that happened in those cramped door areas, corridors, and staircases. Green plasma everywhere, 'twas quite horrible.

If anything the AV variant of the heavy NC one (Peregrine) stood out with its Doom Cannon, as did the jumpjet one of the TR when equipped with "kill anything" chainguns. All others were rubbish basically.

Or perhaps they realized what asymmetric balance means. Different weaknesses for different classes and vehicles in each faction and areas where different factions had the edge. Its really sounds no different than what we have in PS2.

Infantry hates being rocket podded and will always hate it, so that's what they cry about.

Pilots hate lock-ons and will complain about lock-ons forever, so that's what they cry about.

SOE really needs to learn how to separate the valid balance concerns from the constant moaning of everyone that doesn't like getting killed by something in the game. Only then can there be some semblance of reasonable balance... but it does not mean that all 3 faction's tanks should be equals, nor all 3 faction's ESFs should be equals. One faction might have then tank edge, another might have an ESF edge... that keeps all factions relevant and interesting.

Unfortunately, most players can't see beyond their tunnel vision, and only their POV counts to them. So thus we keep SOE in this constant negative feedback loop that leads to silly overdone balance changes, broken stuff, etc.

Man i loved the Punisher it was the swiss-army knife of guns plasma nade loadout manual reload on, the gun was gold

Aside from weapon/vehicle stats though, how were the population numbers in PS1?

I fully realize they're working on it and will work on it more after OMFG, but man it gets really unplayable sometimes in PS2.

Were things completely out of whack on PS1 regarding numbers of people in each faction? I know there were timers limiting faction hopping in particular, but in general, was there a fun balance in population sizes?

If one faction got larger than the other two combined, was PS1 still fun to play under those circumstances?
Did they ever implement and consistently enforce population caps? On continents? Server wide?

Did the issue ever come up? Was it successfully fixed? Would be reassuring to know there's a precedent

Some of the things I remember:

Lasher, Lasher 2.0, Final Lasher : Various incarnations between powerful orbs of death to flashy globe thrower.

Pounder - Dual Cycler: Switched the AV/AI weapons on the TR's max

BFR (1) Single pilot, jumping, massive BFR with regenerating shields that could sport AV / AI / AA weapons and change them at an ammo tower. Went from OMG WTF! powerful to nerfed into oblivion


BFR (2) Pilot/Gunner variant: Slow moving but massive, with regenerating shields and powerful weapons systems. Think MBT * 10... Took 3-4 MBTs to take the thing down, also helped to have infantry support (they could run inside the shields and hit a weak spot)

Magmower: a quick, maneuverable tank with the ability to run over people (and actually kill them reliably... unlike PS2), they adjusted that ability a few times

Reaver rocketspam (All ESFs were the same across factions) Adjusted the power of the rockets against AI/AV, major problem to begin (wipe out infantry easily)

MBTs in general (Took a while to buff/nerf/adjust various things.. by the end they were pretty good)
VS) 2 person MBT driver weapon(although weak), lighter armor and a laser accurate railgun, minimal AA ability
NC) 2 person MBT no driver weapon, heavier armor, powerful weapon with ability to switch to chaingun for AA/AI
TR) 3 person MBT, no driver weapon, medium armor, dual shot weapon, 3rd gunner with chainguns for AA/AI


All in all, there were hundreds of things that were being balanced constantly throughout the first 4-5 years of the game. I mean, just the requirement for one factions MBT to require 3 gunners vs 2 gunners on the other factions brought up arguments as to the advantage/disadvantage of that feature. Not to mention the Air vs Ground Vehicles vs Infantry... or Heavy weapons (Lasher, Jackhammer, Chaingun) debates, etc.

With three factions and asymmetrical balancing, you have to expect forumside to be in a constant state of OP this, UP that, Nerf X, Buff Y. Those of us who played the game and watched the forums for those 10 years are not surprised by any of it, maybe sick of it, but not surprised.

PS1 was horribly balanced.
PS2 balance >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>PS1

The first time I entered battle with an Orion, I cried of joy, never again... never... again... The whole your guns are half as good cause they have an AV/AI switch thing... /shudder

There were faction population issues, but in the first few years there usually was a pop-locked continent and then a good spillover to other continents. So you had a few choices of fights. Also... one thing to remember was that a continent could be conquered, thus pushing all those players over to another continent.

Imagine having 70% TR on Indar... they fully lock the continent.... Suddenly all NC/VS are thrown off the continent and have to go elsewhere (usually to different continents depending on links and the like)... what's that 70% TR to do... sit around and twiddle thumbs? nope, they follow the NC/VS to the other continents... there were usually a good 3 to 4 different choices about where to go, which would tend to break up that population into smaller fights (which would consolidate down as some failed and some succeeded) When you had 10 continents with a continental lattice... there was also a chance of having a 2 faction fight on a continent and it would force the third to ghostcap a continent in order to get a link.

This mechanic helped force more even distribution of the higher popped faction. Usually you'd have half the overpop fighting on one cont against faction A, and the other half fighting on another cont against faction B.

Breaking into a continent wasn't easy either. Base caps were 15 minutes long... If a faction was trying to gain a foothold on that continent, it would give the defenders 15 minutes to notice, react and send defenses... even then they only had 1 base of 13-14 on that continent... It was quite common to have a faction push onto a empty continent, have defense show up and push them back off.


I believe the population swings are aggravated by the permanent nature of the continents. PS2 is stuck in a state that the last few years of PS1 were at. Fighting usually only on one cont, with minor skirmishes on others.

Also remember, that in the beginning (before server merges) you were limited to 1 faction per server. Even after the merges, there was timers on how often you could switch factions on the same server. If you started on your TR, and switched to VS.. you'd have to wait like 6 hours before you could play your TR again. Since it was subscription, this impacted about 90%+ of the player base and held true for the majority of PS1s lifespan.

Free to play effectively makes that point moot. Locking really wouldn't do much except punish the paying players (which is the exact opposite of what SOE wants).

The game was rigidly divided between indoors and outdoors combat. This list does not include BFRs or common-pool.

NC
Biggest Strength:

• Killing infantry indoors and outdoors.

Biggest Weakness:

• Extremely weak AA in a game that is dominated by air cav

Indoors Breakdown

• Very Strong indoors
• The easiest to use HA, this means A LOT when 95% of your players are effective at what they do despite skill-level
• Jackhammer / Scatmax chew through infantry, enemies CANNOT run agile against NC indoors
• Scatmax takes 4 decimator shots, easily the best AI MAX
• Their weapons can't be strafed
• Their medium assault was the most lethal in the game and could lock down long halls against MCG's and Lashers

Outdoors Breakdown

• Weak Anti-Air,
• Weakest ESAV, seriously air cav just picks apart NC zergs
• Weakest AA Max
• Weak Armor v Armor engagement, the NC vehicles are best at mowing through infantry
• Strong base proxy (phoenix spam)
• Strong ability to kill infantry (NC don't need techplants to have vehicles that oneshot infantry: Thundy, Enforcer)

TR
Biggest Strength:

• Effectiveness in all game situations. A TR player just has to cert Striker and MCG and they will be useful at all fights.

Biggest Weaknesses:

• TR outdoors is outclassed by VS. TR has to use more players to man its vehicles.
• TR has no auto-win area, it has to have good players to not get pushed around.

Indoors Breakdown

• Skill-dependent strength indoors, bad players do NOT do well indoors with TR
• MCG is the most versatile gun in the game. It's good at pushing and holding, close range and medium range.
• MCG gets outclassed by shotguns in CQC due to CoF bloom, but if you can manage it (not get hit by anything) MCG gets an edge
• Worthless medium assault, everyone just uses the MCG. Though this forces all TR players to invest 4 cert points.
• Indoor MAXes get shredded by decimators, ineffective against good players

Outdoors Breakdown

• Easiest to use ESAV, which means A LOT when 95% of your players are effective at what they do despite skill-level]
• Strong AA proxy with strikes and bursters
• Second best AA MAX, best airpad camp
• MBT has issues with AA, but has the highest dps of any vehicle when fully crewed
• MBT and buggy need 3 people to man, will have no AA while 2manned. Other empires just need 2

VS
Biggest Strength:

• VS is king outdoors on all maps, offense and defense.

Biggest Weakness:

• Lasher is the worst HA, period. Horrible 1v1 and inconsistent accuracy.

Indoors Breakdown

• Strong defense, weak offense due to how the lasher works
• Generally VS use more common-pool and enemy weapons than other empires indoors
• Lasher is the worst 1v1 HA, and it allows the enemy to run agile indoors. It is hard to discuss the lasher due to how many changes it got.
• Best AV max, it can kill infantry and is arguably the best non-vehicle anti-max weapon in the game
• Indoor maxes have jumppacks which can let them avoid decimator shots, potentially the hardest to kill maxes indoors

Outdoors Breakdown

• Godlike outdoors performance
• Lancer is the undisputed best ESAV, with the highest range, damage, and skill ceiling
• Magrider is the undisputed best Anti-armor vehicle in the game, providing AA and AV at great range. Can snipe outdoor MAXes with impunity. Three magriders kill infinity mosquitoes.
• Starfire is the most mobile and lethal AA max, it has jumppacks that allow it to 1v1 aircraft and win 80% of the time
• the VS buggy and MBT can travel over water, can siege bases from water
• VS win bridge battles over water by default if they have tech

I agree with mostly everything. I disagree with the vehicle assessments. All the ground vehicles were pretty well balanced. Raiders as well. The downside with the raider was their absurd crew requirement, as you said. But if you had just 3 raiders (something PG did when we had TR tech) we could completely shred everything, Armor and Air, within range.

The biggest discrepancy with vehicles, I would say, were the ES Buggies. (TR) Marauders (aka Clowncars/***** Jeeps), were very good AI, but mediocre AV. (NC) Enforcers were very good AV, and good AI while holding still. Very hard to hit infantry while on the move with it. But man those things packed punch. (VS) Thresher was very hard to gun, and were at best, ok AV and were only good AI with a good gunner/driver combo. High skill requirement. But they were good too because they floated over water and could run LLUs with decent air support faster than anything. Also hard to hit in general as they were a hover buggy.

In general, I see alot of people putting in their 2 cents who seem to never have played PS1...

With some Exceptions, EVERYTHING PS1 WAS COMMON POOL.

Where things were unique was:

- Transports were all the same (Sunderer and Deliverer variants) except for empire specific weapons.
- MBTs were Unique and balanced.
- Empire Buggies were unique.
- HAs Lasher, JH, MCG, were unique.
- BFRs were unique. (albeit noone wanted them)
- 1 unique MA Rifle per Empire - Pulsar, Cycler, Gauss Rifle...were unique, then were "Normalized for balance" and were suddenly less unique. (Which was BS because each had a flavor. Though I admit, Pulsar's range pre-normalization was poor).
- ESAV - Each had their strengths and weaknesses.
- MAXs unique...also one of the few things that was horribly unbalanced in facets:
Starfire AA - Broken OP. Rounds passed through terrain...sounds familiar eh?
(NCs AA) - Broken UP. They were weak, and while they followed forever...did collide with terrain.
Pounder - Stupidly useful for both AV and AI when locked down. Otherwise every TR MAX I found balanced.

That's it. Everything else was the same.

PS1 had its share of issues. But in my opinion mostly they weren't as bad as PS2s. Each faction was better in some situations than others.

NC weapons were hard hitting, the Jackhammer was a beast in CQB and had 16 rounds in a mag. The Medium Assault weapons was the Gauss Rifle, it had 20 rounds but hit really, really hard. It was fairly accurate, the most accurate of the MA Rifles, but its fire rate was a little low.

The Phoenix was extremely annoying, you could shoot it out of doors and from inside and guide the thing quite accurately. It hid just as hard as a Decimator, and had a dumbfire mode. Its range wasn't too great, but when one was chasing you its range felt like miles.

The NC MAX suits were quite powerful. The Scat-Max could melt groups of infantry, it had a good 30 rounds per magazine and had a switchable choke that could tighten or widen its Cone of Fire. Its fire rate would be reduced when the chokes are tighter.

The Falcon had a good 10 rounds per magazine and shot high veloticy, straight flying rockets. They hit pretty hard and also were pretty good against infantry. It was often said NC had 2 AI MAX suits.

The Sparrow was the NC AA MAX, it fired a 10 round clip of Heat Seeking missiles that fired at a steady rate. Sparrow missiles were weak individually but would track for miles. It was nigh impossible to really outrun Sparrow Missiles without making them hit terrain.

The TR were the FireRate/Fire Superiority empire. The MCG was pretty damn accurate, the most accurate of the HA weapons really. It was better at medium range and fair to poor at in-your-face CQC where the Jackhammer excelled.

The TR rifle was the Cycler, it hit just as hard as the MCG, had the same damage as the MCG, but a tighter initial CoF and worse full-bloom CoF. It was okay at fending off enemies at CQC but was better at range.

The Striker was basically how it is in PS2, 5 round clip and Laser Guided rockets. You had to maintain the lock on your target to get the missiles to track. All 5 missiles together had the same strength as roughly 2 decimator rockets. It also had a dumbfire mode.

The Dual Cycler was the TR AI MAX and was probably the worst AI MAX when it wasn't locked down or in Overdrive mode. It had 200 rounds and was pretty inaccurate.

The Dual Pounder was the TR AV MAX and fired arcing grenades that were weak individually. But in Lockdown mode it could melt any vehicle in the game unfortunate enough to be in its Line of Sight and would out DPS any other AV MAX in a 1v1 fight in Overdrive mode.

The Dual Burster was the AA MAX, it gave no lockon warning so often times pilots would panic or react too late to the stream of Lockdown Burster fire. Overdrive and Unlocked Bursters were mostly worthless.

The Vanu Soverignty was the Versatility and Mobility empire. Their weapons were extremely competent aside from how schizophrenic the Lasher was over the course of the games life.

The Lasher is hard to talk about due to the various buffs and nerfs it received. But overall it was competent, and extreamly powerful In groups.

The Pulsar was the VS MA rifle and it had 40 rounds, the rounds up close hit as hard as a NC Gauss Rifle and fired faster, and at distance hit about as hard as the Cycler, but fired slower. Its accuracy was between the Cycler and the Gauss.

The Lancer didn't have a charge mechanic like it does in PS2, it fired 6 shots quite rapidly with a small fire delay. It was very, very accurate and laid out impressive DPS with no lock or radar warning like the Phoenix and Striker.

All VS weapons could also switch fire modes on the fly to Armor Piercing Ammo, where as NC and TR weapons had to carry and reload the extra AP ammo. Including the VS AI MAX.

The VS AI MAX was the Quasar, it was fairly weak, and just a souped up Pulsar, it was moderately accurate and had an AP mode. Its Jumpjets allowed it to get into ***** locations where it could then Ambush infantry.

The Comet fired perfectly straight orbs at a decent rate, they hit pretty hard, but left a Burning DoT on any target it hit. Further damaging the target between shots. Again, Jump Jets allowed the Comet to get into odd locations that Vehicles couldn't attack easily.

The Starfire was much like the Striker, it had Laser Targeting missiles you had to maintain a lock to hit with. It was easily the most powerful AA MAX in the game, its shots also left burning Damage on any aircraft it hit between shots.

Each Empire also had a pistol, but mostly they were only used by infiltrators. The Repeater was a single fire pistol with a 20 round clip. The Beamer was rather weak but had a AP mode, and the NC Mag-Scatter pistol is the only one really worth discussing. It was point blank with about 6 shots and was a pistol-shotgun.

Generally in Infantry combat, things were quite leveled out. Each empire had a edge in different situations but overall they played well against eachother.

Vehicles also were decently balanced as well, though AirCav has had its issues over the life of the game, the Reaver was in a constant state of flux, but was generally overpowered with its rocketpods and heavy armor.

The TR vehicles required more crew to man than the other vehicles of other empires. But when fully manned could out DPS any empire equivalent in a toe to toe fight and were on-par when only partially manned, except for the Raider, which pretty much required all its gunners to shine.

NC Vehicles were pretty slow, but nearly every single one could 1-shot an infantryman. Something only the Prowler and Aurora can do on the TR and VS sides.

VS Vehicles were versatile and highly mobile, being able to hover and strafe and also cross Water and were pretty stable on Terrain. The Mag Rider had weaker armor, but its Rail Gun was pinpoint accurate and had no shell drop. At distance is where the MagRider shined.

The Harasser itself was a light scout buggy with the same chaingun as the Mosquito, it was accurate and wrecked infantry, but it was no good against Armor. It also didn't show up on Radar, and it also didn't trigger automated turrets. It also had resistance to AV mines. Overall it was outshone by the Empire Specific buggies and the Skyguard buggy.

Its mostly the same story for vehicles, each Empires vehicle excelled in a different way.

Infantry vs Vehicle was a bit sketchy, with many vehicles able to 1 shot infantry. But most vets seem to be forgetting the Jammer Grenade, it was something all Infantry had access to regardless of certs, and were small and easy to pack in your inventory. A Jammer grenade would stun a vehicles firing mechanism, rending it unable to shoot for a good 5+ seconds. Giving you enough time to run, or fight back. Something I think PS2 could use with vehicles now being available to everyone for free, instead of having to cert into them out of a limited cert pool.

Don't forget, If you thought the enemy had OP weapons, You could use them yourselves!

Here is my PS1 locker at some point in the game, I always tried to keep at least one of each weapon and plenty of ammo in it.

Bunch of them, spamming away under the stairs. Always keep one or two in the locker for those occasions.

The short answer is yes, obviously "grass is greener" is universal to any game with multiple factions.

The long answer:

• Pulsar (basic VS rifle) was underpopwered for most of the game
• Lasher was junk for a long time too. (Then ultra-overpowered. Then slightly underpowered)
• VS MAX ability was way better than the others
• Strikers (and Lancers and Phoenixes) were similar to what they are now (although PS2's lancers are even more fun to use). The problem is they're an awkward mix of ease of use vs. effectiveness. Strikers weren't that amazing, but were really easy to use so the average player did better with them which resulted in a lot of complaints (just like now.) Phoenixes made you stationary and were kinda mediocre, but were still easy to use so considered fine (even though they're kinda crappy, just like now.) Lancers allowed you to be mobile, but unlike PS2 you had to shoot each shot individually so you couldn't pack as much damage into a single peak around cover.
• AA MAXes were in a similar boat, with Bursters (TR only) being most effective in the hands of a skilled player, and the lock on weapons of NC and VS were kinda mediocre for much of the game's life (but again, since they were easy players complained about them.) Granted there was also a period where Starfires (VS lockon) were genuinely overpowered (and they always had an advantage due to jumpjets.)
• Jackhammers were always very OP in close quarters, due to corner camping.
• Prowlers were a complete joke, with a terrible ability, weak DPS, and a massive profile. For some reason the devs considered it an advantage that it had 2 gunner seats instead of the typical 1, and made it a weaker tank overall.

Some common pool stuff was unbalanced too. Harassers were never that great, and Galaxies were almost entirely useless (why hotdrop from a defenseless galaxy when your entire squad could pull reavers/mosquitos and beat the base into submission before hotdropping?) Lightnings were always pretty awful, with a main weapon that was worse than the current Lightning's Viper (granted it also had a light machinegun good against air, so it was a little deeper and more flexible to play.)

Thats bad azz

Why are people so obsessed with the word "balance"?

As long as factions aren't perfectly mirrored, there won't be any balance in any MMORPG or MMOFPS. It will constantly shift, buffs and nerfss as well as population fluctuations will always be present.

There is always some sort of FOTM character build, FOTM team composition or FOTM gear.

There isn't however the perfect "zen" state. Yesterday VS, today TR, tomorrow NC...That's how I look at it.

It's nonsense to claim there won't be "any" balance. That would be a game where only one side ever got kills.

Asymmetry makes it harder to achieve perfect balance, but you don't need perfect balance (even though you should strive for it.) Perfect balance doesn't matter, because often in these games player skill is so divergent that skill is the reason (not balance) that one person wins.

If you get the balance close enough, you achieve things like how the last Starcraft 2 tournament I watched had all three races represented. That means they were all viable at the very top level of play. That's pretty flippin' balanced! It's not perfect, but it's close enough to be a fun asymmetric game (if it wasn't balanced at all, it wouldn't be nearly as fun because everyone would play faction X.)

How do you get to a game like Starcraft 2? By listening to feedback. By discussing ("obsessing over " if you will) balance. If Starcraft 2's devs hadn't listened to feedback (both player feedback, and feedback from the various stats associated with the game) then it wouldn't be in the great spot it's in now where most everything is viable.

If SOE continues to approach things in a similar manner, the game will end up in a similar spot. Really the overall balance between factions is there right now (because the most frequently taken weapons are so similar,) and it's just a bunch of outliers which need solving/changing:

• M85 (NC AI turret) is terrible.
• Marauder (TR AI turret) is too strong. It needs to be balanced to be even with the Fury, instead of an outright upgrade.
• Vortek (NC nosegun) seems a bit too strong.
• Saron/Vulcan are too strong against infantry. They should feel specialized, to cement the Basilisk's role (as NC I feel my turret choices are more interesting because I can't just take a Saron/Vulcan and mow down all types of targets; instead I get a middling jack-of-all-trades Basilisk if I want to do that, or specialized weapons against armor (Enforcer) or infantry (Kobalt/Fury)
• NC deserve a non-shotgun MAX weapon. TR/VS deserve a shotgun MAX weapon.
• Striker (TR infantry AV) is too strong. It needs to be balanced even with the Annihilator, instead of an outright upgrade.
  • I'd love for TR and NC to get a weapon higher on the Skill vs. Reward scale for mid-range infantry AV. The Lancer is by far my favorite ESAV, since it allows a skilled user to put damage onto a vehicle from extreme range with almost no risk to self (since you're not immobilized (Phoenix) or forced to stand in line of sight (Striker); instead you poke and duck behind cover to charge your next shot.)
• Damage/Magazine advantages.
  • I feel like TR has a pretty strong carb advantage right now since their carbs deal 5720 total damage per clip compared with most doing 5010 for NC and 4290 for VS. I'm not sure how significant this is for the average player, but it's pretty significant to be able to blow through multiple players per reload at a higher level of skill.
  • This is also a factor of the Gauss SAW's strength, as its 20k damage per clip is well ahead of the curve (the highest non-NC LMG has 14.3k damage per clipl)

There are a ton of non-empire-specific balance issues too, like infantry AV options (especially engie turrets) being too powerful at range or Liberators' anti-air capabilities, but I suppose we'll keep it to empire-specific issues for now.

But its so fun to talk about. Kinda like world peace.

Well we probably shouldn't get sucked into the finer details of PS1, but these two just made me frown:

I played PS1 from 2006 to 2011, in which time the Starfire didn't get changed at all - and it did the same DPS as a locked-down Burster, but with lock-on missiles. Calling that mediocre (assuming you don't mean some pre-2006 Starfire version I'm not aware of), and even putting it in the same sentence as the Sparrow is outrageous!

Weak DPS? The Prowler double cannons had the HIGHEST DPS of all tank guns - even without the second gunner. Hence why the 3rd man wasn't a requirement, but just an addon to give what was already a beastly tank even more teeth. (Granted, that 3rd guy would've often been better off flying a Mossie or whatever, but if you had nothing better to do, why not gun the chaingun.) The downsides of the Prowler compared to the Vanguard (the Mag was its own kind of animal anyway) were its slower speed and weaker armor, but certainly not its armament.
(Not sure what you mean by "ability" btw, as PS1 tanks didn't have lockdown or shields or anything of the sort.)

About PS1 pop: When I started playing, the heyday of PS1 was already over (thx to WoW and BFRs), and each empire would usually have about 200 players on at primetime. That was enough to fill one continent (133 players per empire at the time), and have some squads spare for a "secondary". Those numbers would of course drop further in the following years.

Doesn't sound like much, does it? On the other hand, PS1 had fewer bases per continent (all of which would be considered major facilities in PS2), and the fighting would concentrate much more on smaller areas on the map, with the rest of the cont being virtually deserted for much of the time until the fight moved there. On the upside, that made for pretty epic battles even when there weren't THAT many people on a cont in total. On the other hand, having 133v133 in a single PS1 base (which weren't designed with this many people at once in mind) was one big mess of a cluster ****. xD It was actually one of the design goals of PS2 to involve more of the continents' space with the fighting.

In PS1, the VS MAX units had jump jets and could get to places that no other faction's MAX units or even infantry could get to. Up on the top of unclimbable mountains, up in the tops of trees, on the tops of towers, jumping up in stages. They could blast up onto and over base walls, and the AA MAXes could jump up when they saw a load of rockets headed for them. NC MAXes got a a shield, and TR got the worst MAX special ability, namely increased fire rate with lock-down. In PS2, the VS MAXes have ZOE instead of jump jets, and that's still the best special ability IMO. So I'd say that for MAX units, the balance (or lack thereof) in PS1 is similar to PS2.

In PS2, LA has jump jets, so jumping up onto base walls is no longer the province of only VS MAX units, which evened things out somewhat as regards jumping ability. In that sense, one could argue that PS2 is more balanced. I don't think many people on these forums would buy into the notion that PS2 is more balanced than PS1 though.

My feeling is that in spite of there being a lot of common weapons in PS1, faction differences were something that people not only accepted but liked. There was some complaining about the massive damage dealt by a NC MAX wielding dual scatter-cannons, but by and large, players accepted the notion that TR had high RoF, NC had more damage per round and was better at short range, and VS had bizarre weapons including the only tanks that could travel over water.

NC AA MAXes had lock-on with fire-and-forget, VS AA MAXes had to keep the cross-hairs on the aircraft, which was hard, but their rounds did significantly more damage than NC, and TR AA MAXes were like they are now, just spraying the area with flak. Players just took these characteristics into account in their tactics, instead of forever moaning about stuff not being exactly balanced. The exception being battle frames, which more or less ruined the game.

In PS1 there was a much more interesting game for infiltrators, since snipers and infiltrators were not the same class. A sniper was essentially a LA with a sniper rifle. Infiltrators were a sniper's worst enemies, sneaking up behind them cloaked and leaving them a nice C4 as a surprise. Those two balanced each other out pretty well.

Engineers and infiltrators could also put out many more mines than now, with zero resource cost. The mines in an area could be detonated by jammer grenades and tanks could fire jammer rounds. Engineers could also place automated turrets. The turrets could be countered by stealth implants and moving while crouched.

So in PS1, there were a lot of things which could be countered by other things, balancing things that way, rather than concentrating only on damage per round, fire rate, and TTK. Success was had by not being caught wrong-footed and by being sneaky.

I suspect that part of the reason there are so many complaints about balance in PS2, is that PS1 created high expectations, but in PS2 the faction differences were downplayed, leaving people to mainly complain about TTK of their weapons versus some other weapons, and about the balance between infantry, air, and vehicles in general, as opposed to faction-specific stuff. Notable exceptions are of course complaining about the NC AI MAX and the TR strikers.