[Vehicle] Planetside Battles is looking for players to test a new 24v24 vehicle only competitive format in Nov

Original thread here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/ServerSmash/comments/2juarm/love_the_vehicle_game_planetside_battles_is/

At Public Pickups this past Saturday I pitched the idea to those attending of a 24v24 vehicle only competitive format I have been working on. After talking with the players there and some other members of the Planetside Battles team I made some changes to the rules and objectives I originally proposed.

The basic premise is a 24v24 vehicle only game held over large sections of maps that are rarely used. Teams win by destroying 3rd faction goal sunderers placed at opposite ends of the battlefield, and each team is allowed only a set number and roster of vehicles each match.

If you or your outfit are interested in helping test this format in order to create competitive vehicle only games, please get in touch with me here on Reddit, or twitter @RedolentBastard. I would like to run at least one test game, perhaps two or three sometime in November. Times and dates are open and negotiable, and teams may be made up of whatever 24 players you wish.

Vehicle Only Team Death Match Rules

• Two teams of 24 players each.
• Matches are 20 minutes, game is a best of 3 matches.
• Teams swap sides of the field for each match
• The team that wins the opening coin toss choses which side of the field to start on.
• Each team starts every match with a specific roster of 15 vehicles.

2 - Flashes

3 - Harassers

4 - Lightnings

4 - Main Battle Tanks

2 - Sunderers

• No vehicles other than these 15 may be pulled, and no replacement vehicles may be spawned during the match.
• Vehicles may be equipped with whatever weapons and utilities the team chooses.
• All vehicle terminals and base turrets will be destroyed in the play area.
• Play is restricted to the hexes shown on the map. The hexes will be flipped to the ownership of the neutral faction so players can easily identify the playing field.
• Players may only spawn as Engineer, Medic, or Infiltrator.
• Light Assault, Heavy, and MAX classes are prohibited.
• Engineer AV turrets are not allowed.
• Mines and C4 are allowed (**We want to try this out, but we will be watching closely for balance)
• Implants are allowed.
• Spawn beacons are allowed.
• Each side will have a neutral 3rd party sunderer deployed at the specified location on the map.
• These “goal sunderers” will be equipped with max rank deploy shield and will have a referee inside to prevent the vehicle from despawning.
• The first team to destroy the other teams goal sunderer is the winner.
• All vehicles must start the match behind their friendly goal sunderer in relation to the rest of the field.
• Each team informs the organizers before the match of the primary and secondary choice of faction they wish to play. If both teams choose the same faction, a coin flip will determine which team will play as that faction for the first round. The teams will then swap factions for the second round. If a third tiebreaking round is required, faction choice will be determined by another coin flip.

Maps of three potential battlefields to test out. The yellow dots represent goal sunderer placement locations.

Map option 1: Mao Eastern Battlefield

Map option 2: Saurva Western Battlefield

Map option 3: Heyoka Eastern Battlefield

Magriders. Magriders all the way. Magriders on cliffs. Magriders dodging AV rounds. Magriders running away at boost speed. Magriders moving so erratically they practically have to be AFK to C4 them. Yup. Magriders.

Hah, no one is gonna use prowlers and it's gonna be funny.

I think it's really going to depend on whether terrain favors magriders or not.

So, 15 prowlers with vulcans.

A good way to lose horribly.

Yeah, the best performing tank with the highest dps in game is the best way to lose.

So SOE finally acknowledges their engine can't handle 100 vs 100 people fights without half a seoncd lag and wants to go 24 vs 24?

You shouldn't, wraith flashes as suicide or transport for engis would be too strong to kill a single sunderer.

this is just players setting up their own scrim that ignores combined arms and goes for mostly vehicles in small battle format, but stretch it a bit more if you want.

Not sure where you even came up with this.

Read the format and understand why cramming 100v100 into a small area with all vehicles and such with a goal that IS NOT base capturing is different than 100v100 actual battling combined arms and all.

if people can just decide to go somewhere and NOT fight the big evil zerg, they will do
continents wil be way emptier than at the moment, which can be a good thing,
but also terribad if to many people leave the lagfest and fight 24 random guys
with their 24 organized TS3 squads and pound them into the ground

if you think in a 24 vs 24 fight combined arms tactics do not matter, i think you are in for a suprise

they matter far less when you are ignoring the entire server yes.

There seems to be a lot of confusion here. This is meant to test scrimmages, not live play. These events will be held on the Jaeger server just like ServerSmash, PAL, Farmers League, and Pickups. Only participants in the event will be on Jaeger.

Would have to be a combined attack. Last I checked, it takes something like 3+ C4 to destroy a Sunderer. More than one class can bring at a time.

In small scale vehicle combat, yes. Vanguards and Magriders have more survivability and much better special abilities for it, and better secondary options. Prowler is good artillery where there are lots of targets that aren't directly opposing it, such as zergs on live. Live is very, very different from organized competitive most of the time.

For a 24vs24 though you'd be very foolish to choose the least survivable tank with an ability that locks it into place. You aren't just going to be able to lock down and pour its full DPS into an organized group of experienced/ knowledgeable tankers.

I think you guys are underestimating the Prowler's viability in these kinds of battles.

Having 2x the damage output of the other MBTs with the coordination to focus fire is no joke.

Prowlers become substantially more powerful when in groups because of this.

I think there are better areas you could choose. Areas with nothing but wide open terrain aren't that good for something like this. It plays to the strengths of specific vehicles and styles and leaves you with little options.

There are places you could pick which have a mix between wide open firing lanes and denser flanking routes with more cover. If you don't have that then I predict you're going to end up with a lot of boring long-range stalemates.

An example of a better location IMO: Genuine Holographics <-> Iron Quay <-> Fort Drexler

HAHAHAHAHA Vulcans...no.

On topic, I'm interested to see how these scrims run but allowing wraith flashes with mines is...not going to go well I'd imagine. Having multiple options for which vehicles can be pulled in specific numbers could be interesting too IMO.

No whales? Ya'll are racist.

(more seriously, this interests me.)

Next time I suggest re-working the post title in order to convey the subject more clearly with regards to key format details.

From:
Planetside Battles is looking for players to test a new 24v24 vehicle only competitive format in Nov

To:
Planetside Battles seeks players to test new 24v24 ground vehicle only competitive format in Nov

And for those key details that won't fit in the title (length restriction), Make sure to mention them at the top of the post.

From:
At Public Pickups this past Saturday I pitched the idea to those attending of a 24v24 vehicle only competitive format I have been working on.

To:
At Public Pickups this past Saturday I pitched the idea to those attending of a 24v24 ground vehicle only, fixed-lineup competitive format I have been working on.

I've worked a lot on hosting game tournaments of various formats. In communication to players, It's best to be clear up from about the precise details of the format. When I read your post, I starting thinking about seeing teams of 24 solo piloted Libs or how many ESFs to use. I wasn't until I read all of the 5th bullet point of the rules that I figured out no Air would be allowed (even then it doesn't say it, it only outlines a fixed setup without them).

I'm still all for your tournament and am glad to see this kind of testing happen (at least in this form of limited participation incarnation). But I am a big advocate in clearly setting-up and managing player expectations.

OTOH, a Prowler is the easiest tank to bring down with focus fire. Easiest to hit hitbox, and no escape or survival tools like magburn/shield.

I think Magriders are also potentially the best for focus fire in groups - not for the damage but for their ability to better spread out their tanks to all have angles on targets. This is part of why it often sucks dealing with VS zergs the most, their tanks all have so many odd angles, unlike NC or TR where there are often more predictable spots tanks are all stuck in. Plus Mags are probably the hardest to focus fire with their strafing ability and weird hitbox.

Also, there are only 4 MBTs per side here.