I've always found it funny that while we have the technology to develop small, man-portable shield packs small enough to even fit with a guy wearing nothing but a glorified speedo, the only faction that has actually installed shields on their vehicles is the NC. But, logic aside; how do you think the game would play out if vehicles such as Main Battle Tanks or ESFs had shields? (and maybe grenades such as the EMP could disable them?)
If that the game was built to have much higher TTK's for things? It would be a lot more tactical and equipment based like PS1, something fleshed out but stale since they would basically make pretty new designs for old PS1 things. If they just slapped shields on vehicles as is? TR would dominate in Tank v Tank since taking damage would probably stop shields from recharging and since they have two shots they have a better chance to hit and stop the recharge. Not to mention infantry would be ROFLSTOMPED so hard that players would inexplicably spawn into the 2007 version of Runescape.
Sounds interesting, but given how long we are such a 'simple' thing as vehicle deconstruction fix and a whole slew of other such issues, we are unlikely to see such new features introduced this side of forever.
Tanks with shields? Too much skill in that old school game for today's gamer crowd. That game, Tanarus... to master a Vanguard in that game had a skill ceiling comparable to ESFs in PS2. And it was mainly because of the shields in that game. Perfectly allocating your shields, or even using your own shields to block for wounded teammates so they could use crucial seconds to recharge some of their shields, just required an amount of skill and teamwork that will unfortunately never exist in PS2. I like idea of vehicles with a base level of shields and maybe even a cert line for either recharge speed or total shield capacity, but it would require a ton of readjustment to all weapons, and even some new weapons made specifically to counter shields. I just don't see it on the road map anytime soon.
A shielded tank is fine, provided the shield gives 3000 HP for 8 seconds once per 45 seconds. Otherwise we'd have tanks throwing shells at each other harmlessly, nobody would ever get any kills, and battles between bases would be hour long stalemates, perhaps won and lost by one side running out of ammo quicker. If a tank gets into an advantageous position, that position is only good temporarily - the enemies will ultimately react, no matter how bad their situational awareness is. If they die quickly, their lack of covering all avenues of approach means the maneuvering tank is victorious. If they don't, the maneuvering tank just lost a few minutes to gain nothing. Ultra long TTKs for vehicles would hinder the maneuvering units - they'd be compromised by the enemy's reaction before doing any real damage, so sneaking around for minutes at a time to flank the enemies would become pointless. Thus the skills required to move an 8 foot tall, 60 ton vehicle through rough terrain in a way that it's invisible would also become pointless, and maneuvering is the whole point of tank combat, not sitting there motionless and clicking the mouse button when the gun reloads. Ambushing would also become pointless, as the general idea is to do lots of damage before the enemy knows what's going on. If damage is done slowly, the enemies will have time to react, no matter how bad of a situation they put themselves into. It would all devolve into a game of numbers, ultimately the larger team will kill the smaller one if it has time to react after the initial chaos. Being a leader of a small unit which focuses its battleplans on outsmarting the enemies, I personally would lose a lot of fun here.
Man Tanarus was tons of fun, even if I spent most of my time sneaking behind enemy lines in a prox cham or playing force wars.
The AMP station benefit in PS1 was vehicle shields and it was awesome. However ps2 vehicles have different load outs whilst ps1 they were all fixed this difference would probably make for some overpowered nastyness And emp nades disabled vehicle firing mechanisms in ps1 which worked well.
Planetside 1 had shields on vehicles. Here is how it worked: -Vehicles within range of a friendly Amp Station would slowly sharge up shields similar to what we have on infantry in Planetside 2. Just slower. -Shields charged at a rate of 5 shields per second, up to a maximum of 20% of the vehicles total health. -A Prowler with 4000 total health would have a maximum shield charge of 800 and take 2 minutes 40 seconds to fully charge. A Flash with 1500 would have 300 shields and take 1 minute to charge, etc. -Taking damage caused the shield recharge to stop for a while, same as Planetside 2. -Shields would stay on your vehicle if you left the range of the Amp Station, but would stop recharging. -Shields worked on aircraft aswell as ground vehicles. -Amp Stations with destroyed generators did not provide the shield benefit. -The benefit was shared to lattice linked bases. Now to the thread title question: It felt pretty balanced in Planetside 1, i dont suppose it will feel much different in Planetside 2. People generally didnt feel like waiting several minutes for the shield to fully charge after taking just a few hits, so you never really had "If only the enemy didnt have shields" moments. I personally never relied on shields. It was a nice bonus to have, but thats it.
I'm not sure how higher TTK translates to having more tactical game? For example, when I try to imagine infantry fight with much higher TTK I can only see how element of surprise becomes less important. Hypothetical scenario: you get behind two enemies and start shooting. If the TTK is short you will be able to kill both of them before they have time to react. If the TTK is long then they will have enough time to turn around and return fire.
They could give Infiltrators the ability to hack tanks and remove said shields to even it out a bit, but...this wouldn't really cover aircraft and shields.
If vehicles had personal shields then all the Infiltrators would pretend the shields don't exist and complain they can't one hit a tank
