I think most of us can agree that the valkyrie is in a pretty weird spot right now. Though, I want to feel that it has potential. The first day a new vehicle is released is always exciting due to all the experimentation going on. When I was playing on Amerish earlier today, I saw some very good stuff from the Valkyrie; when a battle ended, Valkyries would land and pick up randoms, load up, and carry us straight into the next fight. The first thing that came to my mind was "What the hell is going on! Transportation, in my Planetside 2?!". It's more likely than you think! I'd like to put forward the idea of repurposing the valkyrie around this idea; the end of redeployside in a positive, (preferably) unobstructive, and immersive way. First things first, we should rework the Squad Logistics cert. Make Logistics a passive cert like AMS, and make the function available to anyone within the immediate hex or 500~600 meter radius. In other words, allow randoms to spawn in your valkyrie, provided it's unlocked.Think to Battlefield Bad Company 2; there were helicopters flying around the map that any player could spawn in. They weren't that different from the valkyrie either! Most of PS2 takes from the recent BF series, so I don't think anyone would mind this too much. Next up is availability and clarity. There's plenty of other ideas about this out there, but we should make it more clear which bases have air terminals. There's been a few other threads about this recently, so I won't go too in-depth on this. This way, we might see more aircraft flying around, which is good for the air game especially. A major point that needs to be discussed is transportation as a game mechanic. It's just not rewarding enough to ferry people around. A simple idea I've got; give direct experience gain for transportation based on two things: Distance (where between the points a player enters and exits your vehicle) and travel time (the less time it takes you to get to a certain place, the more XP you get). This would directly reward people for the role of transportation, and make it a viable playstyle. Lastly, killing redeployside. This is definitely going to be a tough point. First things first, "reinforcements needed" needs to go. Spawn options should be changed a bit. Keep it to adjacent bases, AMSes in a certain radius, and the nearest major facilities. Cross-lattice redeployment should restrict front line deployment. You should only be able to spawn at a base or two behind the contested one. Spawning directly into an ongoing fight from across the map is simply too powerful. The whole thing also needs to be made more consistent. I should be able to redeploy wherever whenever, not wherever and whenever the game mystically deems me able to. TL;DR, repurpose the valkyrie to be the means of redeployment
Exactly. There's been a lot of complaints about it being a giant cert pinata. It already fits the criteria for an AMS! Of course, it wouldn't be like AMS quite exactly. They would spawn directly into the valkyrie, so, if it was filled with gunners, it wouldn't be a spawn option.
I think that the attack and defense requests should be far more obvious on the map, but not give a spawnpoint. It should alert people that they need to get their *** over there using a transport vehicle, not just redeploy to the other side of the map. A few things that would help with redeployside is only allowing you to redeploy 2 hexes away at most / redeploy, and put a short cooldown on redeploying. (A minute or two should do it). If you find yourself redeploying every 30 seconds then you're doing it wrong anyway... This way there's no more hopping around the map using redeploy and on the tactical side of things, you won't have entire platoons suddenly spawn in from the other side of the map. Either they were close to begin with (which means that you can see them coming if you just look at adjecant hexes., or they would then have to come in with galaxies/valkyries. It would really make for a better experience if you ask me, and transport vehicles would have a purpose beyond being a mobile spawnpoint at flight ceiling or a drop&ditch vehicle, you'd actually have to keep them alive.
