Random guys stealing your gunner seat

It's immensely frustrating. The logic basically goes "If I can't gun for you, than no one can... C4 for you! WAhhhhrfdjgjfgjhfghjfg" *Boom*

I recently had one guy I kicked out to make room for a outfit mate, and then not that long later in the middle of me repairing my Prowler he tracks down my tank and unloads his chain gun into me TKing me.

To be completely honest, In the rare times I'm actually 1/2, i don't mind random gunners jumping in and it doesn't bother me that much. I'll just adjust my playstyle to suit. My irritation isn't so much with people jumping in... its with the fact that I have to manually lock it right after pulling the vehicle, while waiting for my squad gunner to arrive, then unlock it again to stop the gunner taking over driver seat issue. I hate having to kick people... I feel bad and would rather be able to set my default settings on the gunner seat to squad-only by default, with the option to unlock for everyone.

It's an irritation I've been living with since release.

I'm lucky i'm not on NC... I don't have the C4 issue as much. Mostly its just the fact that I feel bad kicking them out and the irritation of even having to mess with it at all.... I have other things to think about... it should be an easy thing to add.. and should have been done 2+ yrs ago.

Heh... I'm lucky... I'm surrounded by an impenetrable force field of TK'ness that will wipe out any friendly near the Mag. VS have been conditioned to stay away.

That said... I generally stay away or to the edges of larger collections of friendlies. I swear I started flanking just for the peace of mind of not having to deal with the normal c#$p that comes along with random players.

Even worse is the 360-spin issue where the person gunning hops in first accidentally, becomes the driver/gunner, the vehicle re-orients to match the new pilot's clientside, spinning the vehicle in a 360 and crushing you as you're trying to get back in, WITH YOUR OWN DAMN VEHICLE...

It was funny the first week or two, or when I thought it was just ground vehicles. Having died to this several dozen times while team-repping a Liberator, it's not funny anymore. Our usual practice now is to have the gunner pull the vehicle, squad lock it, then have the driver/pilot hop in. When you stop for reps, the driver/pilot just re-enters at ~90% healed, the gunner (who owns the vehicle) has the HUD display of seating and knows it's safe for them to get in. Works great with Libs, the pilot&gunner both get to scream at the tail-gunner to quit ******** around and get their *** back in the plane, lol.

ONTOPIC: The lock options are a joke. Still waiting for that 'eject these meatbags' keybind option for my Galaxy, too...

Way too slow IMO, there should be a quick, easy system for this kind of thing.

i also wish we could flag ourselves has looking for a gunner. when i play with out my friends it can be a pain finding a gunner. tought i think his suggestion of a 10 second reservation is a valid solution if it allows squad members to overwrite it (squad members can jump in even if it reserved to someone) wish they be a check mark on the spawn vehicle panel that says "squad gunner only default" and "public gunner default" so we don't have to go trough the process of squad locking it every time (and to add a squad gunner only option so they don't jump in the drivers seat )

I have no idea how this game has made it this long without having a squad option that locks your squad mates out of the driver seat, this is why i almost always leave my tank open even with squad mates because the sudden role change at a bad time is death.

As soon as I pull a vehicle, I lock the gunner seat, particularly if I'm solo tanking (because then I put either a Kobalt or AA on it).

A guy got mad asked me why my tank was locked and I said, "I can't risk having a bad gunner in my 2nd seat."

His response was, "It's better to have a bad gunner than no gunner at all!"

To which I said, "No, it's not, I can switch seats and take care of a secondary threat I'm aware of faster than any bad gunner could."

If I leave my gunner seat open and someone hops in, the first question I ask, "How capable are you with that gun?" If they don't live up to how good they say they are, I will eject them, even if its in the middle of combat. War is hard, and I won't risk my resources on someone who is more of a liability than an asset. If a gunner is honest and tells me they're not too good, then I'll go into battle knowing not to rely on my second gunner to take care of smaller threats and let them gain some experience with the weapon.

I'm probably one of those guys who occasionally steal gunner seats as i see the opportunity to jump into the seat i would. But there are some criteria for this.

If i see an engineer repairing a turret and there's someone else shooting. I leave it alone. Its going to be occupied by the engineer in a few moments after repairing it.

The only times i jump into the seat are:

1. There's only the driver and theres no engineer around or second occupant around. I'll use the turret to provide additional cover/slash support. Not sure if the driver likes me splurging ammo trying to hit viable targets like infantry, ESFs or keeping harassers off their backs.

2. The sunderer is in a perfect position to provide some support or there are ESFs around. If you're parked, chances are no one is using it and i'm sure the original occupant and my team would appreciate someone keeping it alive whilst you do the dirty work of keeping it alive.

3.I need transport. I should jump into a sunderer but or get my flash out. But frankly i'm being lazy.

Most of the time i run up to a tank its locked anyway and thats perfectly understandable. I get ejected from the seat after getting in. Also acceptable. I don't see a problem with people doing this to me. Partly because i rarely get into tanks at all now. They're deathtraps in most cases.

^this and its flip side, sometimes i have picked up a 'good' random gunner and we have a nice run or two before dying, i've wanted to invite them to the squad etc but have no idea what the name was, or sometimes the spelling is a bit weird etc. Adding 'XX has joined/left your gunner seat' messages to the chat/log would help.

Yep. I believe Planetside 1 actually had a system like that..