skip to "Proposal" without quotes if you want to get straight to the idea... From observing and experiencing different elements of the game, I have come to the conclusion that one of the major issues with the game is the lack of true "combined arms". I would argue that currently the power of redeployment renders the value of both Air and Armor to be mostly worthless. Fights that really matter, do not take place in the open field or the high skies, They take place inside both player-made and normal bases which seem to be made to keep Air and Armor out. This design is understandable, but because of the way redeployment works, it results in Air and Armor from having a literal famine when it comes to targets to fight, so they wind up just farming infantry. Needless to say, this results in angry infantrymen which leads to raging forum posts and uncalled for nerfs. It is one thing to introduce a feature to improve the overall experience the game, but its quite another to add a feature that effectively renders 2/3 of the game obsolete with the feature's introduction. The idea of the current redeployment boggles the mind: On one hand why are we fighting with primitive projectile weapons when we have the power to teleport across vast distances in a matter of seconds? On the other hand why hasn't a faction attempted something like a continent-wide EMP to prevent the enemy from moving huge numbers of troops across the battlefield quickly? In the real-world or fake one, teleportation has always been very difficult; just look at Star Trek, it breaks all the time and requires obscene amount of power. The fact it works so well on Auraxis really doesn't make much sense. Redeployment needs to be nerfed if Air and Armor are to have a meaningful purpose to serve once again. Concepts like convoys and troop movement should be a big part of the game. Fighting tooth and nail across a battlefield with a convoy to the next base is a lot more fun than staring at a loading screen as you teleport to the next base. Proposal: Redeployment would be changed to only be usable inside Warpgates and Spawn Rooms. Additionally, the range of Redeployment would be limited to adjacent hexes owned by your faction as well as Sunderers, and player-made Spawn Tubes in adjacent hexes; Player-made bases with the Reinforcements Module would have a 2 hex radius rather than 1. Warpgates would be an exception to the above stated rule, as they would allow to teleport to all owned large bases, regardless of distance, like Tech Plants, Bio Labs, Amp Stations, and certain large outposts like The Crown on Indar. To compensate for the more limited spawn options, Instant Action would be reworked to prioritize fights with a number of Attack or Defense Icons that players may place. In each player's option menus, one could change the bias on Instant Action to choose Defense Icon or Attack Icons more often than the other; This would allow freshly logged in players to get into battles right away if the fight is not being fought at a large base. As far as Respawning after death, the game would measure your activity, if you spent 50% or more time of your last life in a vehicle, one of your 3 respawn options would be the Warpgate. If 50% or more of your last life was spent as infantry you would not be able to respawn at the Warpgate. If you last spawned in a Sunderer it would attempt to give you the respawn option as a priority. The idea is you would always have atleast 3 respawn options nearby, and you would not have to travel miles if you died near a large fight. Comments: The proposed changes would increase the value of having Armor and Air Convoys for troop movement, and as a result would increase the tactical options for all Armor and Air units. Also it would create more possibilities for underpopped factions to win fights. This is because troops may be moved in convoys, a coordinated but small strike force could cripple another faction's ability to move around the map; also known as Guerrilla Warfare. This would mean having more players would not always mean you win, it would place value in smarter play and reward those that employ such tactics. Just remember, Redeployment is not a bad idea, the issue is it renders the value of Armor and Air irrelevant, and thus hurts the idea of "Combined Arms" and leaves less room for underpopulated factions to succeed.
more limitations will only hurt the game, when i log in i want to be in a big fight ASAP, if that fight is too onesided or goes stale then i'll want to get to another one ASAP, i doubt this is unique, and if you prevent people from travelling around (without wasting resources) then the game will become pretty boring pretty fast. every time the devs add a new limitation, the game gets worse and a small number of people stop playing.
One-sided battles are partially because of overpopped factions teleporting across the map, by making it harder to do this, troop movement will become a bit more choreographed This will make it easier to avoid one-sided fights because you'll see the general movement of the enemy on the map. It will also mean the "fronts" of battles are well defined and won't move as much. Planetside is not just a pure FPS, it has Armor and Air in it, thus its more a Battlefield-esque game. If you honestly find it boring to travel between bases, maybe you're playing the wrong game. I would argue the best part is not the base fights but fighting your way to the next base; the sheer thrill of combining your Armor, Infantry, and Air together and fighting for every inch brings a very specific kind of joy to me.
Re-deploy does not render vehicles let alone bloody aircraft any less effective or valuable... What kills infantry best? Any vehicle. The reason why there is shields from ground vehicles, is due to the sheer power of these vehicles, and their ability to literally dominate the fights - If there wasn't any protective barriers (shields) from vehicles, every base would be even more simple to take by virtue of having the first tank. I'm so sorry that you can't have infantry forced to always come into your gun-sights on roads, since that's the only way they can get from allied base to allied base - And it's a literal ease of killing, unless they come in a zerg. Vehicles themselves are pulled - They aren't pulled however simply to travel to the besieged base for travel alone. If the base is swarmed by infantry, why in **** waste nanites in the first place? Aircraft & vehicles obsolete due to ability to travel between allied bases without being pray to every single possible aircraft in the area? I guess wanting to farm every sod not just those vehicles traveling from allied to hostile land (or warpgate to battlefield)..... Oh wait, that's a lot of bloody vehicles. You want any vehicles, you spawn them & drive them. You shouldn't need to have an entire convoy just to travel to an allied base from an allied base without being easy prey to every aircraft, harasser or flash. Aircraft & Vehicles have power - They need not be the literal only sane way to travel the ******* map. Let alone mean every single death which takes less than a second, heaven forbid you get stuck in the bloody map, stranded in no-where or similar. Hell, with Map wide teleport from warp-gate, You enable zergs to start massing at tech-plants from the bloody warp gate. Any reinforcements - Instantly at the tech plant, rather than jumping or driving. Zergs do not teleport across the bloody map... with your idea, it would. Redeploy has limited range, and doesn't include the power of vehicles - It also takes time more time than flying or driving. If I have to spend half my time driving between allied bases, just to die in .3 of a second, since someone wanted Vehicles to have even more value by gutting re-deploy at the same time as making rapid zerging easy (Mass teleport from warpgate to any large facility... That's how you teleport across the map for real) You ever battle at all? Vehicles are present always. Unless the base is basically lost, vehicles are always in the fights to take down the defenders , until its a matter of infantry swarming inside. Every single battle is like this - Place sunderers, they'll be vehicles as well, to either kill it or defend it. Re-deploy doesn't mystically make a tank any less effective given it's much more powerful than moving between allied bases at a slow pace without being slaughtered by random aircraft.
Skilled Tanker and Airmen have a priority target system when they fight: other Tanks/Aircraft, Sunderers, Infantry. Infantry are lowest priority because they are not an immediate threat, you're right about that. But when armor start focusing on infantry it happens because of one of two reasons: lack of other targets, or they just want easy kills. The first reason is a symptom of the game being over-focused on infantry battles, to the point where certain features mentioned drastically diminish the value of Armor and Air. The second reason is on infantry to gear up correctly, using Flak Armor and lock-ons to make themselves more resilient. Are they present in battles? yes but they are generally farming infantry, not usually engaging their fellow Armor or Air, because either the priority targets aren't there or because its easy to kill infantry. Having a convoy would protect your Sunderers or Galaxies from attack, you may not need one but it would improve your chances of living. The only way Zergs would teleport across the map with my idea is if they are at Warpgate when they redeploy; which would only really happen once, which afterward would be choreographed. As I state when it comes to respawning the only people who could go back to Warpgate easily would be pilots and gunners. So maybe, if they use Galaxies all the time the Zerg could move rapidly but it would NOT be teleportation, as you put it. The ironic and sad truth is there are so many infantry nowadays because of how Infantryside this game has become, which makes changes like this a hard sell. Even if it needs it for overall health.
Consider that Tanks & aircraft hard-countered any infantry all the way to spawn room doors, if they didn't have the barriers. Then realize you literally said re-deploy starved these vehicles of targets, while saying they target vehicles - which aren't re-deploying. Infantry re-deploy, vehicles do not. Scrambling re-deploy, and making it a instant TP to tech-plants from the warpgate will not make there be more vehicles engaging in AV work. Not in the slightest. They either will be doing the same work, or have even less targets. Aircraft already can dominate any target, and deliberately engage infantry rather than vehicles if possible. Making it harder to not die to random aircraft won't make them change. Some bases already have vehicle-capture points, and more are to come. Making re-deploy better off as a zerging tool, is not bloody helpful. Sherlock, the zerg would form at warp-gate, and instantly teleport from there to whatever large facility is available moving the zerg instantly from the shielded warp-gate to those distant bases. If it's not even their tech-plant originally, that means they travel even further - also means any large facility is the easiest to defend with sheer numbers due to instant access to it from the warp-gate with no delay. At present, Zergs if they use re-deploy have a delay between each allied base, IE hex to hex. If they aren't using any vehicles - which makes them fodder for basically everything. If they are using vehicles, they have to travel with them anyway. However they can't have their vehicle operators teleport to the Tech plant from the warp-gate gaining massive distance.. Aka , your idea makes it simpler for zergs to mobilize, and given it's from the warp-gate, any forces logging in can engage anything at any allied large-type facility without delay... On the bases which for sure, can be moved to rapidly, with the present delays caused by the hex system.
