SOE needs to evaulate/balance AI weapons in terms of sustained fire/supressive capabilities.

Planetside 2 is a unique game in terms of mechanics. Other games like Battlefield and Red Orchestra have created arbitrary mechanics to deal with concepts like "supression" usually by muting the game color, bluring parts of the screen, etc. Ultimately, its not that big of a deal. Supressions is little more than a graphical trick. And even though BF and RO may be larger than your average shooter the numbers aren't so much that you need to keep large masses of pinned down (exception may be a meatgrinder map like BF3's Metro).

But Planetside 2 is different. Being able to keep an enemy from advancing may be one of the most important tactics in the game. Keeping an enemy from coming out of spawn, keeping an enemy from being able to push through the airpad or doors in a Biolab, holding a capturing point from a zerg, etc. Being able to kill 1 dude really fast becomes irrelevent when there's 20, 50, or 100 of his teammates right behind him. Too long weapon balance has been focused on DPS or TTK which is stat that is entirely too focused on the results of 1v1 engagements. There is an oft-repeated myth that Scattermaxes are "the Gods of Biolabs." This really doesn't make sense. Yes, the lone Scattermax would be the best picking off a lone infantry, but this is an irrelevant ability. One Scattermax does not defend a whole Biolab, nor does one infantry attack a Biolab alone. Yes, that Scattermax may instagib the one infantry, but when you have 20 players all watching a single door that one infantry is going to be instagibed anyhow.

So really, when dealing with large groups of infantry it becomes important to understand how long you can shoot and how many people you could kill before reloading. When that zerg pushes through a door you want a large volume of fire and the ability to keep that fire for a long time.

I've put together a little table showing off the heavy special weapons, MAX AI weapons, and vehicle AI weapons. And I think its pretty clear that, among the three factions, one faction is devoid of any sort of supressive/sustained fire.

A couple of assumptions when looking at this data; for one, all weapons are certed for Ext. Mags/Max Mag size. For weapons with splash, it assumes one person being hit directly, the actual potential kills per mag would approach infinity given that splash would hurt anyone caught in its radius.

Link to the spreadsheet below:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?res...069&authkey=!AHuk44gc6gaJiKE&ithint=file,xlsx



So, I really believe SOE needs to take a look at AI weapons. Small mags and high damage to one target may be good in 1v1 situations, but as populations increase the overall impact of those weapons decreases. Whereas weapons with high sustained fire and splash damage become increasingly effective as population increases. The Jackhammer and NC AI MAXes would all need magazine size increases to bring them up to the same level as other factions. Tripling the magazine size would bring the raw numbers up to TR/VS levels, but given their higher TTK I think maybe only doubling them would be appropriate.

The vehicle weapons are a little different since they generally deal with splash damage. I don't want to comment on the Marauder since splash would make its potential kills/mag much higher than 7, but I understand SOE is already reevaluating the Vulcan/Marauder roles. However, the Canister's maximum potential is still far, far from what the Proton PPA is capable of, and even after the recent number tweaking SOE has done, they're still a ways off from bringing those two weapons in line. More work needs to be done there.

At the end of they day, Unless its being held by an infantrymen, AI weapons will be completely useless against Infantry.


I feel the weapons (The Banshee may need to be revised) with AI are mostly fine now. This statement includes the newly nerfed PPA.

Accuracy and TTK cannot just be ignored. From these stats you wouldn't figure the Blueshift to be the best AI weapon for VS or the Mercy best for TR, but they are - not for their kills per mag potential, but for the accuracy that lets you actually frickin hit targets and aim for headshots(often means lower practical TTK) unlike most of the other options. I will almost always do better pulling dual Blushifts than dual Cosmos.

Even against a zerg, being accurate and taking your targets out quickly is a significant advantage that will always retain some value. If kill per mag were so important NC would have the most overpowered LMG, but in reality that's VS's Orion which has less than half the damage per mag of the SAW.

The problem is the high accuracy guns often have TTKs that are only marginally less, sometimes by only .01-.02 seconds. There really is very little debate over which guns are better most of the time. Accuracy is always going to win if the DPS isn't actually different enough to matter.

In all seriousness, TTK is still important because everyone is using weapons that take time to kill their targets. In every engagement, whoever kills the fastest (TTK, accuracy, etc) wins and that applies to all engagements. The suppression effect of the Lasher isn't that strong and since the buff to Flak Armor its even worse.

The Banshee also kills extremely fast compared to the Light PPA. Not only that but its extremely obvious so everyone can see when you're using it. The Light PPA requires more prolonged firing to kill its target, which, in turn, allows more opportunities to counter it. The Banshee can fly in, get a kill or two and fly away more effectively. At least the Airhammer requires you to get fairly close to the target.

The reason NC MAXes are so effective is because you can take out a target very fast, often times before they can even react. That's one less person that can influence the battle right off the bat and that's not something to scoff at. There have been many situations where I have attempted to C4 a Scatmax and failed where I would have succeeded against others.

We can't really call this out as a general issue, because for many weapons it's not a balance issue but simply a playstyle variation. Certainly I dislike most VS carbines due to their weak damage/magazine, but looking through KPH stats on Oracle seems to indicate there isn't a lot of difference in terms of performance (among same-role weapons; obviously if you compare a CQC carbine with a long-ranged carbine, that's not going to be useful.)

But we can call out specific underperforming things:

• Air Hammer (34) underperforms compared with Light PPA (44) and Banshee (50). Surprisingly it's also exactly equal with them in VKPH. As expected it's better at Air KPH.
• The Harasser C85-H (90) underperforms compared with the Marauder-H (106) and PPA-H (113).

All the other NC weapons mentioned in the OP are competitive. The Grinder is best in class, and the regular C85 is probably weakest in class but by a very small margin (the clumping is pretty tight, and this means even the somewhat-criticized Marauder is still a solid choice next to the PPA; though personally I still consider the PPA overpowered in terms of being too pinpoint accurate at range, and would rather see it reduced at range and improved up close to balance.)

I don't think that the scenario you are trying to tackle is realistic. If you bump into a group of 5 enemies, it doesn't matter how many bullets your bullet hose weapon has, you will go down, because you will get overwhelmed. The only exception would be shotguns in very specific situations, but you are talking about making an already exceptional and overperforming weapon insanely good.

In my opinion, the weapon that has the potential to perform insanely good would be the Betelgeuse. It has the potential to kill multiple enemies that come at a relatively fast pace, but it is unsuited for situations where you get overwhelmed. So basically the exact opposite of what you propose.

Some more to think about:



Orion with 50 bullets, Betelgeuse with 40 and SAW with 100.

Does that take into consideration, that Betelgeuse is used by veteran players with hundreds of gameplay hours, while the other two are starter weapons? Those are not the same user pools for them three, so how you can really compare ANY stats that Orion\Saw produce against auraxium weapon?

You used the SAW S instead of the SAW. I am not sure if it was relevant to your point. Corrected Data.

You are right. Here's the correct chart:

You are partially right. Yes, those other LMGs are starter weapons, but I'm merely want to point out that just because a weapon has enough bullets to be a bullet hose, doesn't mean that it will produce outstanding results (which is what the OP seems to think).

The 50 extra bullets of the SAW does not make it better than the Orion, at least in killing potential. Also, the Betelgeuse is the LMG with the smallest clip in the game, yet it outperforms other weapons with much higher magazines.

Also, unless I'm interpreting the Q4 wrong, the veteran crowd doesn't produce that much different results.

I get your point, but still there are hundreds of percents increase in difference of stats that are produced by Bet. against Orion and SAW - from value 24 for max Orion to 38 MINIMUM of Bet. You have all things figured right and I agree, you just shouldn't use elite-only weapon in comparsio for supporting your argument. The difference does not come from weapon stats in that case, invalidating the proof.

I think it is time we give TR maxes Banshee arms, I am tired of hearing how shotgun maxes are not OP...

ALL MAX by design are OP

With the NC max, I normally use Raven x 2 while alternating arms to suppress a location. Once you find the tempo, you can hold a door forever, and there is a very short window of opportunity between shots so most people will try to find another way.

I think the universal tool for suppression though is the engi turrets (infinite ammo, no reload), which is available to every faction, so I really don't see the whole thing as an issue. Drop an ammo pack nearby, and use your normal engi gun while the turret cools down.

Your conclusions are largely correct (in terms of sustained fire), however I don't think it is possible to actually do that with weapons like the JH or the NC AI MAX shotgun arms, because it would just give so much sustained close range power.

At least not without nerfing their damage per shot down massively (and if you do that you're just better off making them Gauss based weapons I think).

That was basically the orginal Fracture! (only the Fracture had better AV)

Well, I'd agree that buffing NC's kills/mag straight up to TR/VS levels would probably be excessive, some degree of buff is absolutely necessary. As it stands, NC have ZERO tools available to them to combat a zerg. Vanguard can't do it, MAXes can't do it, Reaver can't do it.

When you are in a situation where there are 50 dudes on one side of a door and 50 dudes on the other its not about skill, tactics, or weapon TTK. Its about who can keep up the pressure the longest. NC will lose a battle of attrition every single time.

I completely agree about the lack of supressive options for the NC, it is plain silly that the NC lack so much, I just don't think it's possible to change those weapons to do it, without basically changing the entire weapon, effectively.