The problem is, nothing really survives in those courtyards once the infantry AV comes out. Given that these are stationary turrets, you could quite easily snipe them with dumbfires or MANA trurrets from the many towers that line the wall. The only things that would be worthwhile at stopping would Gate Shield Defuser sunderers. The problem is that 2 turrets would not kill a sunderer before it reached the inside, making it all worthless. You know what does stop GSD sunderers though? Tank mines. Another infantry AV.
They would just use the other entrance then, and I doubt they would allow as many turrets as it takes to blockade the whole gate to be deployed. It also becomes immediately exposed to every outside source should the shield go down, if it hasn't been C4'd by then.
You are focussing too much on the infantry part. Infantry usually does not clear the courtyards with infantry AV. Also, this could be a relatively cheap alternative to having tanks in the courtyard And you haven't even thought of scenario's: Place the ANT behind the center shields, then place 2 AV and 2 AI turrets. The range keeps dumbfires from hitting consitently, and the AI turrets keep it dangerous for the Heavies. Now move the ANT out of the way and place a repair sunderer behind them, now the only way to break these 4 turrets is either overwhelming infantry forces, 3 tanks that focus fire or C4 attacks, and in case of C4 attacks... You can make the turrets cheap enough that it's more efficient to use any other method of destroying turrets. The ANT is still safely behind the shield and can instantly replace destroyed turrets after a strike.
Well it's one less entrance to watch. It's easier to destroy someone when you allow them into a place where they have no hope of escape.
This is assuming that one ANT can place multiple turrets which seems highly unlikely. It seems much more likely that it will be 1 turret per ANT, similar on how engineers can place 1 at a time although this all mere speculation. In this scenario this is still a minimum of 4 people to man all of the turrets. 4 HA will easily out damage a repair sunderer, and should the engineers come out of the turrets to save the one under attack, the turrets are now unmanned and doing nothing. I don't know why people keep bringing up DumbFire range, once you've learned the range you don't have to aim much again since the target is always still. This allows you to take DF shots at ranges that would normally be very hard against at range. A perfect analogy would be shooting deploy'd sunderers. You can easily do this from many ranges with DF. Their price is going to be have to so cheap it might as well be free, since free things are probably going to be able to destroy it.
Let's have a look at how PS2 currently has attack and defense phases: First you have the approach. The attackers try to get close to the enemy base and set up Sunderers so everyone can start attacking. For 90% of the bases this is a vehicle phase where tanks clash to get a Sunderer through and allow it to set up safely. However, the attackers usually have vehicular supremacy from the last base and can easily set up their Sunderers. With the ANT's and placing turrets this means that there is much more to gain in preparing a base. Placing AI turrets in the right locations can easily make a courtyard a no-go area, but outside the base placing AV turrets will keep the attackers at bay for long enough that the defenders of the last base can set up a vehicular defense. This means that vehicle combat becomes more important, because it takes longer for vehicles to pull through. Lack of vehicles in the attack will result in no Sunderers, and no infantry to attack. infantry itself is very open to attack, and with an AI turret or 2 mixed in the bunch most infantry won't be able to pass large distances. Then you have the in-base combat phase: taking of the points. The Defenders again have a lot of advantage here. If they take their time preparing a base beforehand they can easily set up turrets to deal with infantry or tanks that enter, and place a few good AA turrets to boot. The ANT is based off the Sunderer physics from everything I've seen an heard, and will likely be just as capable of entering bases where they actually shouldn't be. Placing an AI turret (or more) in the right place can really mess with entire battleflow and deny attackers acces to key positions. The attackers in the meanwhile can use ANT's to their advantage as well. Rather than leaving an empty tank to be shot down you can place a turret or two near the Sunderer to keep it safe. As a precaution, make sure you can destroy them easily from the Sunderer so you won't have to deal with infiltrators annihilating your Sunderer with your own turrets. Alternatively (and probably more wisely) you can place the turrets so that they don't have an LOS to the Sunderer, but good LOS of approaches to the Sunderer to deal with incoming threats. Then you have the in-base combat phase: holding the points. This is the spawncamp phase. The attackers usually surround the spawn exits and prevent players from exiting, and thus retaking the points. In this phase the defenders can now try to set up a counter-offensive. Drive an ANT and a Sunderer to a nearby overlook or similar and try to deal with in the first place the vehicles of your enemy. WIth any luck you can quickly place a few turrets, this makes it far more useful than having to gather a few tanks at the next base and driving it to the base that's under attack, as players will gladly spawn there and take a few turrets. As an easy alternative, you can already prepare the next base in line for the incoming attack. Place a few turrets and a Sunderer at the bridge they'll need to cross, place a few turrets on a rise overlooking the main road to the next base. Place turrets inside the next base to fortify it and allow a small group of defenders to deal with larger forces etc. And during all this, you have the resource gathering phase. These turrets need to be mightily cheap after the effort you put in: gathering resources in an unarmed vehicle while keeping out of sight, gathering the right resources to build them. Driving to the places you need to place the turrets and opening yourself up to easy OHK's by snipers and others while messing with a terminal to place a turret... But once you've done all that, you should be able to get a ton of advantages out of these turrets. This makes vehiclular combat even more important, as vehicles are the one's that can hunt down and destroy ANT's the best, or defend ANT's since infantry won't be able to keep up. Vehicles will also be the most useful in keeping the resource mines safe. So there's a dozen reasons why tanks will be used more, especially because it becomes tougher to use them to get into the next base as right now it's a walk in the park, if you encounter resistance at all!
The entire system would suck completely if you can place only one at a time. The engineer doesn't pay resources and doesn't have to gather them first to place their turrets. These turrets are even bought through a terminal rather than placed as if you fired your weapon. If they hit 100%, sure! But they won't, and even as pop-up HA they can easily be killed by an AI turret. Have you ever used one of those? They are especially handy at hitting targets that quickly duck behind cover all the time. And if the HA's have to fire across half the courtyard to hit the turrets they won't hit 100%. Actually, my counter might as well be 'but the turrets can handle more hits, and they can OHK them so the turrets always win'. Because we are assuming 100% hit chance right? What usually kills Sunderers? It's not Dumbfires from range. Dumbfires are shot from close quarters if they are used against Sunderers. This is in part because of the limited ammo capacity of HA's and their tendency not to waste ammo trying to determine the range. It's also because vehicles are usually better, or people do an Engineer drop with tank mines. That's the worst argument. Just because a group of 4 HA's can destroy it (well, they probably won't do it as easily as you say, if at all) with free weapons does not mean that the thing itself should be free. MBT's can be killed by 4 HA's, but I'm not hearing you ask for them to be free (and I would simply mark you as not capable of making suggestions in keeping the game fun and balanced if you did). You buy power. With ANT's you will first buy the ANT, then take time collecting resources, and time is also a resource that you need to manage in the game. Is wasting 15 minutes to kill one tank, even if it is with a free weapon, worth it?. Then after collecting the resources you need to drive to your location which could be dangerous and be a waste of your time if you get killed along the way. Then once there, you need to be able to place a bunch of turrets and get an amount of power equivalent to that of the time wasted, along with a boost factor based on the danger you took and your tactical insight of placing them. Vehicles buy you speed, firepower and utilities at the cost of resources. ANT's buy you a way to place stuff, but it needs to be worth the trouble of collecting. One way to do that is making it easy to place a bunch of turrets and utilities that increase the power of a small group. Hopefully you'll be able to place a few shields in the first iteration of the ANT. This helps in making stationary turrets live longer when you place them correctly, and can help in tank and infantry battles just as easily.
These are being based on base turrets, not engineer ones. Have use you used the xiphos (spelling?) anti infantry turret? It's total garbage and is never worth manning it in the few places that have them. They could make them worthwhile by adjusting the stats, but there isn't enough information to determine whether or not these will be useful. The only comparison we have been given is base turrets, the things that only work well when un-molested. As soon as almost anything starts to target them they die. I just don't see anything being stationary permanently living long, something that current base turrets prove all too well.
I meant the Xiphos one's, how would I be talking about engineer turrets? Those aren't even really handy at taking out pop-up Heavies! And yes I've used them, they are placed only in rare locations and usually have bad angles, but they are pretty powerful anyway and perfect for taking down pop-up Heavies if they are around. Problem is that the one's we have now are situated in places where you'll rarely ever find pop-up heavies, and the turret is usually destroyed by a tank, or eventually by a Heavy standing underneath firing his rockets at an empty turret. Hyperbole. Turrets die fast, sure, they can't avoid, sure, but they can cash out a ton of damage. These turrets can go 1v1 with Lightnings and 1/2 AP MBT's due to their great fire-rate and pretty good armor. It's just that SOE/DBG placed them in places where they are highly visible for the most part. It's like saying 'that's a great spot for sniping because you have 360 degree view' completely ignoring the fact that you can just as easily be countersniped from 360 degree's as well. You want a limited view of your surroundings, that the view you have overlooks something that will attract enemies (the road to your base for instance) and to be able to fire at that area. And hey! since we'll be placing these turrets ourselves, we can decide how useful they are. To come back on a previous example: placing 4 turrets near Crossroads overlooking either Broken Arch road or the other base would be a powerhouse in itself. Any tank that wants to be able to fire at one of the turrets has to be visible to the other 3 turrets as well, allwing you to decimate all tanks that come into view. The firerate and relative cheapness of the turrets (as I speculate) make this a useful and powerful addition. The relative small frame of the turrets allows you to place a lot more near eachother, and if you add an AI turret or two you can keep the infantry at bay as well. Another scenario in the same area: Broken Arch to Tawrich. The one that places a bunch of turrets has a massive advantage in keeping the enemy in check. Since your tanks will be in the same area anyway and the aiming angle is known from the start, you might as well use turrets with a smaller frame than Lightnings and a great DPS even compared to a 1/2 AP MBT. Also think of infantry chokepoints, like the hill connecting Tawrich central base to the outskirt base near Broken Arch. Place one AI turret there and you can easily keep great and constant firepower on that little inlet, while tanks have much longer reload times etc. Why should they live long? They either fullfill their role and become useless as the frontline moves on (at which time a deconstruct function on the ANT would be a great tool for retaining resources and keeping server clutter to a minimum). Or they fail and are destroyed. It's no different than the moving targets of vehicles. 90% dies once they fail and maybe 10% is pushed back. With turrets you can have a cheap, powerful tool to keep the enemy at bay, you can prepare a base beforehand without the need for the waiting times between mass-pulling vehicles, create impromptu defenses around a Sunderer so it can finally be placed right in the open because any tank that bombards it will be bombarded back by AV turrets. If they fire at the turrets the Sunderer survives longer and the goal is accomplished anyway. This will be of great stragetic value, if you can place multiple turrets and their value is equal to the effort put in. In this case the effort is collecting resources and the danger in between getting to your desired position, and the value of the turrets is their cost/effectiveness ratio. You say they aren't effective? You've never seen how just 3 AV turrets placed on the badly placed AMP stations can hold back large amounts of tanks. Many towers often have a great aid in their AV turrets in keeping enemies at bay even though usually only 1 or 2 can fire, at most 3 of them. Now you can decide yourself where you place them. It feels partly like the stealth-module for the Sunderer. People think it bad because they place it badly. The defenders rarely ever find a Sunderer through looking at the radar, they find it by following the stream of players comming out of it. So don't place it somewhere where you know it will be found by the stream of players, place it somewhere where it can use it's advantage. Hell, I've infiltrated with it by deploying whenever tanks were nearby, then redeploying and moving on once they've passed. Then you can safely deploy it on a hill somewhere and start using infiltrators and LA to blow up stuff, hack stuff and flank the hell out of your enemy. Same here. You know the weakness of your turret, so don't place it where you know it will get blown up instantly! Place it facing gate-shields, place them behind a hill where AA turrets can safely swat large groups of aircraft, place them in canyons and area's where they can only be shot at when the enemy is exposed by multiple turrets. Place them where people can quickly hop in, defend, then move on when the enemy is pushed back, never thinking of not doing it simply because the turret offers the power and safety you need. Even just placing a few just a feet or two from a Spawnroom would be powerful, there's enough bases that would have a ton more firepower simply because MBT terminals aren't nearby and Lightnings aren't handy in that area or are completely annihilated by enemy MBT's (think entire Esamir when you don't have the middle). Placing a bunch of cheap turrets gives a low threat level to the players using it ("It doesn't cost me resources and I can jump out whenever it gets dangerous") and it offers enough firepower to deal with tons of vehicles. Now invent something to make people use the ANT for it. Such as XP bonuses whenever a turret placed by your ANT destroys something, and it becomes worthwhile for them to use it. Add some nice camo's and directives to unlock them and you've got a set.
Regarding the tawrich area: The turrets at the north gate towards broken arch are pretty much dead 24/7, and if one is repaired it dies shortly after if there is a fight there. The only turrets worthwhile in that area are the ones on the gun-deck of the techplant, because they are far away enough to not be targeted & have good angels towards the northern base area. In both of these scenario's, I could use Lock on or AV mana turrets to achieve the same effect. All while being a free disposable infantryman. Why should I bother going around collecting whatever resource this uses, spend the time putting the ANT where I need it to deploy and then hoping people come and use the turrets I put there. Why should I bother with all that when I can just deploy a sunderer close to where we are going to set up the AV nest? My whole faction can use this sunderer and not just whoever I bring to man the guns. I can also move this sunderer to another position to form a new AV nest or even use it as the main base assault sunderer. All while not having to fart about collecting some resource for a 1 use turret. With all this said I do want them in game, whether or not they are viable enough for me to bother farting about collecting some resource instead of being the harasser that goes around killing these ANT is yet to be seen. Once more details are released about them I'll change my tune based on what I see, but right now they are free certs for me. At least we get to look forward to what someone said on reddit: Who is looking forward to camping the SE indar WG with AA turrets?
I think one potential use is that, if you give them a good vantage point, the AV turrets actually have a pretty impressive range where you can hit reliably. So if you set up an array of turrets in a good spot with a long, clear line of sight, you could almost use them like a Lancer squad. This is definitely a lot less than I would want player construction to be though. I really hope it gets expanded upon to be more useful.
ANT's have two purposes.. Suicide Bombing Infs and Refilling main bases when the power gets low on a long siege.. They can't screw those two things up right?? Also, ANT's had a high explosive radius for those who didn't play PlanetSide 1 (so did Gals), it was good for when the doors were blocked by 100s of enemies trying to get it.. it was epic.. but that epicness doesn't exist on PlanetSide 2 sadly. There is "very" little PlanetSide in PlanetSide 2, and the only resemblance is the colours, names and appearance..
Yeah, I think they hate PS1 for some reason. So many statements from DGC employees saying PS2 isn't PS1 when vets mention mechanics from it.
First off, I often use those turrets and they often survive for extended periods of time, especially if they are occupied before the enemy starts bombarding them. That's the problem with these turrets: they can be destroyed before players arrive to use them. The turrets placed by an ANT would (should) be tactically placed so players will gladly occupy them and use them. Similar to using an MBT secondary gun that people want to use. So no Vulcan while you are anchoring at 500 m distance, but the right secondary gun for the job. And you pick up your guys near a spawnpoint, and the same will count for turrets: don't place them in the middle of nowhere, don't place them right in the danger zone, and these things will be powerful. So again: make sure that if you place a turret, people will want to use it and can use it before the enemy arrives/spots it and blows it up. It would be like buying an MBT free for anyone to use while there's no one around, and praying that players will occupy it before the enemy arrives and kills it. It's completely the same. Also, I already mentioned that turrets in most bases currently are badly placed. They are too easily visible and usually have too little firing angle. The one's north of Tawrich are one of the few that are actually incredibly powerful... if you occupy them before the enemy arrives. But that counts for every turret, or even every tanks if you just leave it out for anyone to grab (buy one, exit game for instance). Why would you bother? Because the DPS of an AV turret is easily 2 to 4x higher than any lock-on or AV turret? Because you are safe from any small-arms fire while using a turret? That you can tank multiple AV shots in a turret rather than a maximum of 1? Because in the right place these turrets have a much higher range than any lock-on? The fact that you can go toe-to-toe with any 1/2 AP MBT with just 1 AV turret, while with a lock-on or AV turret you are much more dependend on the tank opening himself up to you to be destroyed? I already gave idea's on how to handle that, and teamplay is a very important part in using the ANT. If your strategy was so useful it would be used a lot more right now, we will have to see how useful the ANT will be but just the amount of advantages that the turrets will give far outstrips anything a lonesome Sunderer with AV spawning can do. Allright, let's agree to disagree. I'll be the one advocating the advantages that it might have, if they do this right. And you can be the warning. If ANTs can actually place only one turret at a time? Completely worthless. If you can only place below 6 turrets at a time on one full ANT (or 2 min of collecting)? completely worthless or only worth it as a hard defense option/high teamplay option. I would rather ask, who is ready to camp the SE Indar WG with a Stealth Sunderer and some AA MAX's? Sudden Death from an unseen direction! Those turrets would be too obvious I think... But I do think that placing a bunch of AA turrets and/or AI turrets near the spawnroom will be a pretty standard technique of buffing the spawnrooms defense against spawncamping and keeping a route open to attack for longer periods of time.
