Resource changes - Nanite costs from test

The game has two combat ecosystems:

• Outdoors, where a variety of vehicles are all viable.
• Indoors, where MAXes dominate.

So it just doesn't matter if infantry make the mistake of running around outside -- they're gonna get stomped by just about everything out there. But that's fine, because a variety of vehicles are viable outside. However when you get inside and infantry also get stomped there, that's where it becomes problematic since now infantry aren't really good anywhere.

I'm saying fighting a MAX doesn't happen in a vacuum of 1 vs 1 with the MAX at full strength, and if it does, I'm the one who messed up.

The thing is you don't want everyone pulling Sundies. Some platoons already do that because they can, place AMSs everywhere and overwhelm defenses (which is silly design to allow when they can transport 12). Not to mention they're actually quite powerful and can take on an MBT if they want. This seems to be the most common complaint I'm seeing at the moment.

I'd rather costly Sundies and make pulling them worthwhile by providing enough XP. Also, encourage people to protect them with XP bonuses. If you're interested, I suggested some XP changes here: XP changes - Beacon, Sunderer, Hacking, Squad/Platoon Shared XP

Players are supposed to try to keep their vehicle alive otherwise they get punished for it. 4 minutes on Harasser and Sundy seem crazy as you could play very recklessly. Personally, I wonder if 300 resources / 5 minutes would be enough for a Harasser.

As for ESFs, they can easily stay up for 5 minutes. Experienced pilots could have a bad day and still be completely unaffected at that rate. I'm not surprised SOE put them at 7 mins vs the libs 9 mins. Sounds about right to me.

MAXes are in a horrible state at the moment. I think it'd be nice to try them at a high cost so they're a temporary benefit. Then again, I'd also prefer MAXes to have to pay to accept revives so that they're punished for reckless behavior and I could see the starting cost being reduced to compensate.

C4 can't be much cheaper or it'll barely be more than a grenade. With inventories disappearing it's difficult to say what prices would cause the best gameplay but I think it's a good place to start (not much different than SOE's 90). I just felt they should be differentiated from mines considering you're less likely to miss C4.

Yeah, but battles not happening in a vacuum doesn't change the overpowered relationship. A 10+10 mix of MAXes and Infantry will absolutely destroy a group of 20 Infantry. The only time that doesn't happen is when the 20 infantry have a lot of other advantages stacked in their favor (maybe there are 30 infantry (pop advantage) and includes more experts (skill advantage) on defense (defensive advantage) at a defender-biased base (base advantage), and at that point you have a situation where a MAX crash can be defeated -- but when all those other imbalances are equalized and you just look at unit balance, MAXes are overpowered.)

If it means more AMS Sundies, I'd be more than happy to see the cost get whacked in half and have the guns nerfed to make sure they don't become the default armor option.

I also don't really agree with players having to keep their vehicles alive. I've said before that the best way to cordon off vehicle and infantry gameplay is to make sure there are enough vehicles around that you simply can't afford to break off and farm.

Also, Libs aren't 9 min unless you're soloing. A normal crew will be able to pull at 4.5 with the current costs. Extra seats = cheaper vehicles. Even your pricing on the Harasser puts it at 2.5 min.

Good ESFs can stay up for 5 min. Most ESFs can stay up for ~60 seconds before they are ambushed by Good ESFs.

I didn't mean your C4 cost was out of line. But it is one of the most effective MAX counters, so having the unit at 360 and it's resource counter at 90 might still be too wide a spread.

One HA won't take out a tank. One HA might take out an ESF if he is really lucky. One tank will take out a MAX. That the MAX is a force multiplier is not in question, it is why it costs resources to spawn. Are you wanting a MAX to be on par with infantry but also cost resources?

Also, your stats include farm fodder. The people who just run up and hug the maxes. An equally skilled HA to a MAX isn't going to stand toe-to-toe. You see a MAX, you dodge a corner, drop C4, run away, get distance, and use your tools. If you get caught flat-footed with no escape in the sweet spot range of a MAX.... yeah, you die. Sorry. That's kind of how it works.

So a well placed line can hold them back, otherwise MAXs are good at breaking sieges. Sounds like they are working as intended. You need something to break stalemates, MAXs do this at the cost of resources if you have them. But they have to absorb a lot of damage to break sieges, and then need to be able to dish out enough damage to be threatening enough to draw attention, as there is no "taunt" and that doesn't work outside of NPCs in other games.

I'm also not arguing against the proposed cost of MAXs in this situation, I think making them a costly decision is good. They shouldn't just be pulled on a whim, they should be a tactical decision. It might be better if they were a bit cheaper but non-revivable.

So what this means is players can't spam everything and anything at any time?

Hm, sounds good to me

I wouldn't mind if rockets had a slight cost too, maybe 10-20 each.

Also, once this change is made, let me reload grenades from ammo packs, then the cost comes when I throw them.

Stalemates are caused by overpowered bases, and not fixed by overpowered units. In fact stalemates are worsened by overpowered units (MAXes can be easily revived eternally on defense.)

You fix the problem of overpowered bases by fixing those overpowered bases (either allowing vehicles to suppress the hard spawn (worse), or having the hard spawn be further away from the capture points so the defenders are more reliant on soft spawns like the attackers (much better.)) Once that happens, stalemates will naturally just never happen (at least not in situations where the defenders couldn't end it if they wanted to actually push out...if bad players hole up in that Biolab and never actually push out against the 40%-or-less pop outside, they're obviously going to persist the stalemate to their own detriment.)

One thing I'm interested in (sorry, I'm currently a bit tight on time, haven't seen if anyone else already asked that):
If you can only store as much as you can carry, what if I switch from my engineer with utility pouch to a class with less secondary explosives?
Will they evaporate, does the engineer have a class-specific extra storage only to be accessed from there, or will they refund? And what happens if that exceeds the 900?

I want MAXes to be balanced and also cost no (or little) resources.

Even the player whose second-best class was 0.50 K/D had twice that (0.98 K/D) in MAX, so their being overpowered isn't just a trait that impacts high-end players farming noobs. But even at the high end, all those players end up with the same sort of double K/D, and in organized competitive matches you see very MAX-heavy team comps. So this isn't something that only impacts one group of players, it's just this fundamental trait of MAXes that they have overpowered stats and so achieve overpowered results.

From what I understand, you are only billed a nanite fee upon use of item. So if you use it, you lose your deposit so to speak. And would have to pay a new deposit if you resupply that loadout.

If you go over 900 they cut off your oxygen rations for upaid bills and you die.

A whole half a kill average? Why, I bet that's almost 1/3rd of the KD gain they have on spawns they use grenades on. And it's about 1/30th the gain a good player can get with medkits.

It isn't overpowered, it is how a MAX is intended to work. They are capable to kill more than one player, that is why they cost resources. Well, they cost resources and... you can't get out of them, you can't cap a point, you can't spawn vehicles, your range is limited, you can't use them to quickly get from base to base (in fact, in the open field you might as well just kill yourself to save the planes or tanks the effort), you don't have shields that regenerate, you are loud as crap and show up on everyone's radar....

In short: You are looking at balance from one very narrow perspective. A perspective skewed by players that literally throw themselves into explosions at spawn points.

Yeah, it works again, apparently that was just a bug it took them a long time to get around to fixing.

Narrow perspective? I'm looking at it from literally every perspective, and from every perspective it's overpowered:

• MAXes have basically half the TTK vs. infantry as infantry vs. MAXes.
• ~24 players of objective stats have shown MAXes to be on average double K/D of that player's next-best class with usually the best KPH and SPM as well.
  • True of expert and new players alike.
• Weapon objective stats show MAX weapons at or near the best weapons (and includes most of the highest K/D weapons) for each faction.
• PS2 is about manpower efficiency: doing more with your finite resource (manpower) than your opponents do with theirs. MAXes are the most manpower efficient class in the game (shown by everyone's objective stats.
• If a class is overpowered, then ideal play is going to be dominated by it instead of a balanced mix of classes.
  • ...which is exactly what you see in competitive matches.

My perspective is broad and encompasses all sorts of evidence. Your perspective is "you pay resources for them and they're designed to be overpowered" which makes no sense. I mean...if you're the sort of person who also feels Liberators should just be flat-out overpowered because they're "designed to be overpowered and you pay resources for them" then we can simply agree that you have a poor sense for what proper game balance should be in games.

Keep in mind that was their next-best class. There were worse classes below that.

But hey, everyone starts somewhere and I'm not bashing that guy -- it was very interesting that even at that tier of skill the exact same "MAXes have double the K/D of your next-best class" pattern was true.

They are making grenades 133% more expensive yet C4 is now 10% cheaper? and rez grenades are 200% more expensive

Yay, tanks are now going to be more RARE and C4 is going to be more ABUNDANT

Tank game, goodbye.

Also rez grenades will cost the same as c4
being a medic with grenade bandolier with rez grenades and c4 is going to cost you as much as an MBT. (540 nanites) Yay.
-_-
get used to staying dead people, medic is now a full time job, as its going to suck you dry of all resources just doing your job

C4 being cheaper is the real kick in the teeth. C4 fairy is going to be the most cost effective class now. and with MBT cost increase and this tank nuke nerf coming out. tanks are going to go extinct.