Move that Sundy up!

So you pulled a Sunderer for your team. Awesome.

Then you drive up next to the enemy's base, and park the Sunderer. Then you leave it and go have some fun trying to kill stuff.
5 minutes later, an enemy spot the Sunderer and starts to damage it. You saw that, but ignore it because some other engineer is fixing it.
10 minutes after that, the enemies mob your Sunderer, and your team loses the momentum of the push. Congratulations.


Seriously--I know this is a game, and we all just want to have fun. But trust me, the game is much more fun when you perform your role properly. If you pull a Sunderer, stay and guard it. Move it when it gets attacked. There's nothing more awesome than surviving a raid to setup at a new place, and takeover the enemy's base.

If you're going to be taking one of the "good" sundy spots:

• Blockade armour is a must. The hardest thing to stop is light assaults either coming from the high ground, or bailing from aircraft, and many classes run with C4. Blockade armour will help your sundy survive the inevitable C4 spam .
• Try to have at least one upgraded Basilisk as your weapons. Ideally you want a combination of weapons that are effective against typical threats, like; flying LAs, hovering ESFs, SMG infi campers, and engineers rushing with tank mines on foot. Basilisks can even take on non-AV tanks, so are most recommended.
• A high level motion spotter near the sunderer is so helpful to spot incoming threats. While many players are utterly oblivious and won't notice an engineer sauntering up to drop two mines and a sticky grenades no matter what, improving the odds is good.
• Even if you aren't staying on the sunderer, at least stay close. Most poeple spawning on it won't notice it's damaged unless it is on fire. You need to be ready to rush back if it takes a couple of bricks of C4 to secure it (the C4 fairy may be spawn camping) and repair it.

Thanks for the great tips, Mongychops.

If you want complain about what people do with their sunderers, maybe you should just be the one providing them...
The you can sit in it bored waiting for the random 1 engineer to come blow it.

Bottom line, if I park an AMS sunderer, I am not going to sit and babysit.
I don't really care if they blow it up.. you should just be happy I put it there in the first place so you had a spawn point till it was blown.

I am that guy that parks his sunderer 200m, away from any entrance to a base, I don't mind the 10sec sprint to the base..
You want a closer one, one that is easily found and blown up, pull it your damn self.

Last time someone complained my sunderer was too far, I undeployed it.
Then asked them how they enjoyed the 450m walk from the last base.

My sunderer is their for me, I don't care about you at all really...
Most of you are not worth the +2XP I get for you spawning on it anyways.

Yeah, the game is all about you...


The level of commitment of Planetside players can impress me still.

I agree...
Everyone can spawn a sunderer at any base.. yet players still complain about what other players do with their sunderers.

Want to say something about a sunderer placement/defense, bring your own damn sunderer. /thread

Don't deploy in bad locations. Not for the safety of the sunderer but for the convenience of the spawnees.
Especially at walled bases. If a sunderer is in a better position than you, undeploy so everyone has a better spawn.
And if somebody is in a bad location, don't be one of those guys who mines it.
If you're a battle sundy you really have no reason to deploy in the first place.

I do pull the sunderers myself. I also babysit mine, and have a lot of fun doing it. However, it is a problem when the nearby (and risky) spots are taken over by inattentive sunderers, which more often than not costs the team the push.
Because the front side is taken, I always flank with my Sundy. Being behind the enemy line means my Sundy cant be used as the main strike force spawn point, and I am too far off to move into main position. This is incredibly vexing for me because I AM willing to go the extra mile to see the team succeed, while others just end up wasting my effort because of their selfishness.

A sunderer staying deployed for 10 minutes really isn't so bad. Between engineers with mines and liberators firing death down from above sometimes getting destroyed is basically inevitable, especially without allied support.

Another funny thing is that the engineer who deployed the sunderer is actually the person in the hardest position to properly defend it. He can't cover it in a lib, he can't spawn a skyguard lightning or a MBT to guard it from up close. At best he can repair it a bit or man one of the turrets, and if he has to move the sunderer he doesn't even get to do those. Even not counting using other vehicles 3-4 people are needed to give even a basic level of defense, as without that many you can't use both turrets and repair it at the same time.

If you're using a random sunderer that somebody has spawned, check to see if it's part of an outfit. If it's not maybe you should take the time to defend it yourself, as it'll only be getting defended by volunteers, in much the same way that the person who spawned it did it entirely on their own initiative.

If it's in a terrible spot for defense then ignore it... it'll most likely die soon anyways, regardless of how valiantlyyou work to keep it alive. A good option would be to go spawn yourself a new sunderer and come back to the base with it. By the time you get there the old one will probably be gone and you can put the next one in a better location.

Another option would be to join a good outfit and stick with it. If random sunderer drivers aren't consistant enough for you, then having a group of people who you know will be consistent and thoughtful in their tactics might be exactly what you need. (note: this isn't coming from someone who thinks that planetside 2 is all about playing with outfits. 95%+ of my time is spent playing "solo". By solo I mean with no outfit, I'm still a team player who does my best to contribute to my factionmate's needs as much as possible. I just don't like the constriction of an outfit, and don't feel that my hardware is good enough to guarantee good FPS in all situations, so I can't bring my best consistently, which would make me feel bad if I had outfit-mates directly relying on me to fulfil a specific role)

I have been in platoons like this.. "alpha take the points, bravo defend the sunderer"..
What happens?
50% of bravo just leaves the platoon, people don't play this so stand around on guard duty..
30% of bravo doesn't listen and just goes and takes points and shoots dudes.
20% listen and stand around bored making 0 XP for the next 4-7mins...

Ha ha, yeah. I'm sure that happens a lot. That's why I made sure I said "good outfit", and not just "outfit".

if i pull a sundy, most of the time i only think ITS FOR MY SELF, many infil chose flash as their vehicle, me i grab an infil with a sundy and used it for many pourpose, placing it on a hill will make a great sniper nest,no engy needed and no worry about dead, same for stalker cloaking use, hell i even set up my own SAM site with a sundy and me using a lockon launcher, imo my cow is the best strategic tool for any pourpose needed, reasoning: best tool in the battlefield is infantry, they can do almost anything and they could be used for any pourpose needed.

I think the biggest tip for sunderers is just to bring lots of sunderers. You lose one? Deploy another immediately and sustain the assault. Sure you can arm 'em, but if one sunderer is your only lifeline for an attack, well...You could have problems.

Mine lasts well over 15 minutes on average--and this is flanking position, where my Sundy is literally on the opponent's side of the base nearly 100% of the time.
Sometimes I just let the Sunderer die. But that generally means that offensive is dead. The inattentive Sunderer is almost always parked very close to the enemy base, meaning no other Sunderer can deploy within a good distance. It requires a whole lot of moving before we can set up another offense, and by that time the battle is usually lost.

I wish the Outfit thing could work out, but I'm on Aussie server, and there is very little in the way of good outfit.

I don't mind an out of the way Sundy being undefended. If you're out in the middle of nowhere, then you're not blocking another Sundy's deployment. It's when you're near the enemy's base that it's a big problem.

As long as the last one is not deployed stupidly, then multiple Sundies is workable. But when the bad one just blocks the way...then that wrecks it for everyone.

I just say that because inevitably they will get blown up. They don't all have to be deployed, but close to each other works just as good.

Wouldn't that get them all blown up together? A good Liberator team will basically take them all out at the same time.
Or when you get mobbed by a bunch of MBT too.

I guess having the Sunderers spread out still wouldn't give it much more chance, but it still wouldn't be as bad, as you won't have to reset the offensive from the beginning.

play with squad or platoon, team always has another sundy or spawn beacon, or infiltrators to hack enemy terminal, and pull another one.

Determined attackers will always kill sunderers, just multiple ones makes it harder for suicide engineers and C4 faeries to deal with. An MBT setting up 300 meters away is much harder to stop unless they're spotted, same with a liberator. But once the ordinance starts flying, they often can't blow up more than just a sunderer before people force them out.

Moving the Sundy out of the way after a little while can help lengthen its life span a lot though.

I guess what I'm saying is that when there are plenty of Sunderers, I don't care if you're sloppy with it quite as much. I would still prefer people taking more pride in what they do, and actually performing the role well if it is for the good of the team.

Wait--am I asking people to make personal sacrifice for the goods (fun) of others? Um...I think I see the problem now.

the ironic thing is his sundy it the one that is the most underused. the ones that stand almost right on top of point and get blown up in 2 seconds if enemy gets at least a slight momentum going. but everyone puts them only there most likely because they love certs so much or think 65 meters more to run will kill you. so he is the most team player of them all

i am always happy when i see a proper back up sundies set up around the base, their absence is what actually breaks the attackers most of the time, not c4 fairies :3