As you know Tanks in Planetside 2 are fairly weak and there's not much cover for tanks in this game. What about a Truck that carries a mobile field generator? It could be used as a force field big enough to cover tanks and sunderers. Nothing can fire through it from either side but enemy tanks and troops can enter it. This would help counter the effect of AV turrets hidden on high cliffs and other weapons that can destroy entire tank columns from safety. The generator could be exposed on the back of the truck and can be blown up to cancel its effect. In effect it would be mobile cover but very weak and easy to blow up from the inside.
It doesn't get used much because you tend to bump into the shields with it active. It's always a gamble to equip it. And then there are the base designs that have vehicle shields that can be bypassed with a sundy anyway.
I can instantly picture trucks all driving around with it on escorting dozens tanks right into te enemy bases with nothing able to shoot through its shield.
There aren't enough places for them to be effective in the first place. It was almost useful before the tech plant changes, but that's it.
I think instead of a new vehicle, they ought to give the Galaxy a deployable shield when it's on the ground. You could hide in it, repair, regroup your soldiers, and launch attacks from it. Perhaps even deploy sunderers (with an upgrade?) under it for a cooperative punch. I would have it be limited in deployment in the same manner as the sunderer, one for a large area. Also enemies and vehicles should be able to pass through it for easy attack, and no weapons from either faction should be able to pass through it. Perhaps make it opaque so soldiers cant pick a target, walk through, fire a rocket and duck back in. This would give a rather useless vehicle a use. Add another tactic to the war aside from zerg or ghost cap, plus give something most attacking armies in the real world have, a field base. This would also give other rather useless devices new meaning, such as emp grenades disrupting the shield. In beta when the sunderer was useless, the Galaxy had terminals and small shields. I don't think the galaxy should be a spawn, or have terminals, but a protective shield when it's on the ground for soldiers and vehicles would be nice, and it prevents those easy ESF kills that are pointless. Plus it would finally give a counter to liberator shelling that is lacking (besides AA, AA is kind of useless when the lib is at 1 K alt) Right now, nobody gives a crap about a 1/12 galaxy, smart ESFs wont even chase them because the chance of being rammed is too great. I think this would give people a lot more reason to be concerned about gals in the air, and less of just a target of exp opportunity on the ground.
It would need a no-deploy radius around cap points or bases .. Or else people will just pull up to the cap point > pop the shield > camp behind it
how about something for infantery as well, give engineers a grenade that creates a small shield dome for 10 seconds, infantery can huddle inside it to survive the next rocketpodding / shelling
It's a decent idea but I see it being a point of TOTAL abuse unless it also created a no-deploy radius MUCH larger (maybe 3-4x) where you couldn't put another shield gen. That way you couldn't get people propping up overlapping shields and just create a highway of invincibility for aircraft and armor. At least with a 3-4x radius, it would mean that you'd have to have a least 1/2 a shield distance in between one shield edge and the next, meaning that vehicles would have to become exposed. Though really it would need to be like 5-6x or it'd turn into a giant obstacle course with dumbfiring HA's everywhere to rip you to shreds the second you entered. Still, it could work as long as the shields were coded to be the same as vehicle gates so that only small arms fire was allowed through and no rockets, HMG's, AV, etc. would penetrate.
I always thought that something like this would be great as a defensive option. More of the same design as the engineer turret shield but stronger. Make it wide enough to fully or partially cover another tank. As it takes damage an energy bar decreases but after 10-15 seconds without taking damage it slowly starts to refill. To balance this it should decrease movement speed and main gun refire rate while it is activated.
