[Suggestion] Squad Deploy, Instant Action, Redeploy and bringing back the HART

A Sundy drivers perspective on the disruption and long term harm the current deployment system is causing the game.

TL;DR at the bottom!

Speak to any Sunderer driver or Galaxy pilot worth their salt and they'll tell you times are hard. Gunners are few and far between. Passenger seats remain empty. The foot zergs are becoming rarer and rarer. The road/skies are getting more and more lonely.

Why is this happening?
Because in an attempt to please those seeking instant gratification by the devs. Players are now choosing to magically teleport themselves around the game world instead of travelling. This watering down of core gameplay must stop if we want to see PS2 in all its glory.


1) Squad Deploy
Recently Squad Deploy was changed in the patch PU01;

This change was long overdue.
Previously no sooner then you deployed your S-AMS a shower of drop pods of Light Assaults with C4 or Engineers with AT tank mines rained down.
Squads could climb sheer cliffs in seconds.
Infantry pinned back into the spawn room could drop pod themselves down from the sky behind their attackers.

However, grouping up with your squad has become harder then it needs to be. The solution is simple....

Allow Squad Deploy in Squad Sunderer/Galaxy
I feel like we, the PS2 community, have been asking for this since the beginning of time. In PS2 beta we had the Galaxy AMS. Everyone agreed it was godly overpowered and ruined the ground war. A change was needed so we got the Sunderer-AMS instead. A good compromise but missing one important addition - Squad Sunderer/Galaxy deploy!
A certain other game involving virtual battle fields ( ) has had the ability to spawn in a transport vehicle forever. Why this idea hasn't been borrowed for Planetside I have no clue. As long as we restrict spawning in the Galaxy to while its airborne and the Sunderer while its moving. I can't see any negative to allowing this type of Squad Deploy. Squad cohesion will be easier and the thrust of battles maintained.


2) Instant Action
A personal gripe of mine this one. Instant Action didn't work in PS1. It doesn't work in PS2. Yet here it is with all the negatives.
Often you have a really fun fight with 2 even teams. You head to the next base for more only to find it empty. What an anti-climax!
Forces melt away between battles and thats often due to player just hitting Instant Action instead of looking at their maps. What should of been a predictable fight at the next base leaves you scratching your head and looking at the map trying to work out where everyone went. Instant Action completely diminishes the grand strategy element of the game. Remove please!


3) Redeploying
Surrounded with nothing but a medkit and knife. What do you do?
Personally I press Delete, dance around like an idiot for 10 seconds, then make myself re-appear somewhere safe.

Redeploying in PS2 is as cheesy as it gets. Shot down? Press Delete, Outnumbered? Press Delete. Found your match in another player who is mercilessly slaughtering you. Press Delete.
It reminds me so much of Bubble+Hearth in World of Warcraft I just want to exit the game when I see people use it.

If you are going to use it constantly as a get-out-of-jail card its needs a downside or two. Meaning you should be pinned to the spot for 60 seconds before being sent to the Warpgate. No running into a dark corner to cower in. Either man up and fight or go back to the Warpgate you go!

Redeploying is also game breaking when a lot of people use it together. Take last night during a Tech Plant Alert. Defending the 3 Amerish Tech Plants. We, the VS, were just redeploying between whatever Tech Plant was under attack. In seconds we could counter attack in sheer numbers even against the best NC, TR planned attack backed up by tanks and aircraft, simply because of our numbers. This isn't enjoyable for anyone and needs to stop.


4) Bringing back the HART
The High Altitude Rapid Transport was a unique key feature in Planetside 1. Essentially it was the central structure in each Empires Sanctuary (think Warpgate but on its own continent). The HART left at 15 minute intervals for orbit around Auraxis and allowed movement around the game world without frustrating drives or flights across empty continents to the frontline.
Once in orbit you could click were you landed in a drop pod with some limitations.

What the HART can do for Planetside 2
The HART served as the closet thing you could have to what is "spawn waves" in other games. Instead of people arriving as inconsequential numbers. These waves of reinforcement would be sent in force. With people coordinating in chat as the countdown ticked to zero.

For new players the HART offers the chance to be part of something big every 15 minutes without that lonely first spawn inside an outpost surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned.

Of course the HART also brings back the functionality of Squad Deploy. Maybe not as convenient as the old Squad Deploy but just as useful for linking up with your squad without the game-breaking use of constant Squad Deploy that was used by most.


Thanks for reading! (And for everyone else....)

TL;DR

1. Remove Squad Deploy but allow spawning inside Squad Sunderer/Galaxy
2. Remove Instant Action
3. Hitting Redeploy should send you the Warpgate
4. Reintroduce the HART from Planetside 1 to make travel around the world easier.

Sounds good to me. I agree with everything.

Yes!
/comall All aboard the funHART!

Wasn't the HART 5 minutes rather than 15? I agree it would be awesome to get it back but it was bloody annoying when you recalled back to sanc, heard the alarms going off and by the time you've ran over to the building the doors close.
Keep in mind we don't have SOIs in PS2 so you could in theory, drop directly onto the point with hundreds of people (given a coordinated HART drop).
I'm not sure, however, that adding the HART back in will help squad cohesion. Typically when I have problems with my squad being dispersed all over a facility it's because half the squad survived to push into an area we can temporarily hold but the rest of the squad is getting cut to pieces trying to group back up from the AMS.
If we're going to have the HART we need the SOI, if we've got the SOI then it doesn't really help with squad cohesion on a tactical level, since you've got an AMS set up at the periphery anyway. It might allow for flanking maneuvers (Bam! Now we've got a squad of guys to the north when everybody is fighting to the south) but you can simply move the squad in on foot in most instances.

Also, redeploying as you've stated it, seems to me to be akin to matrixing. Matrix the squad to Tech Plant A, matrix the squad to an AMS at Tech Plant B, fight at Tech Plant C.
There's not much that I see could be done about this short of assaulting every base simultaneously and forcing the VS and NC to choose which facility they want to keep (provided you don't get rolled up in short order because you've split your forces).

All in all, good ideas in this here OP.

I really don't understand why people have such a problem with redeploy. I want to get to a different territory and don't feel like driving, simple as that. How on earth did "travelling" make it to the status of "core gameplay" to begin with? Is it of some crucial importance that we spend time admiring the scenery and enjoying the excellent vehicle physics while we try to get to whatever place we want or need to be?

And what's with all the hate against people who redeploy out of a lost battle? Is everyone supposed to just run out of the spawn to their inevitable deaths until the cap timer runs out? How dare they not let me farm them! Don't they know they only exist for the sole purpose of giving me certs?

Seriously though, did it not occur to you that perhaps people would rather prepare to defend the next base instead of continuing a pointless battle? Or that perhaps people don't want to continue the fight at the next base? I myself prefer to defend so excuse me if I don't feel like joining your counterattack when there's another base I could help defend.

So what exactly do you suggest I do when I want to play defense? I can't choose which territory the enemy attacks so I can't exactly anticipate anything. Which leaves me with two options: Either redeploy as needed or use a disposable transport whenever I need to go defend a base. I fail to see how "magically teleporting around" is any worse than using an ESF as an improvised drop pod.

On a side note, how many people actually use Instant Action to begin with? Especially without looking where it's going to drop you. Half of the time it either drops you far from any frontline (it can even drop you on bases that can't be capped!) or in a battle that is so lopsided that even repairing the turrets at the WG will seem like a much more useful way to spend your time. Most of the time you can look at the map and see four to six bases where you could not only be more useful, but have more fun as well.

That being said I think ideas 1 and 4 could have some merit. I feel like removing redeploy would be a big mistake though. Removing Instant Action wouldn't really be a game breaker, but that's mostly because it doesn't work properly to begin with.

Not true.

It's about dealing with the MULTIPLE outposts the game offers compared to PS1.
There's at least 6 times as many bases so a way to actually move from one base to the next is needed.

You need to be able to regroup somewhere in some way. Forcing me to redeploy at warpgate only fly back to a base 500m away from the frontline you were fighting on doesn't make much sense.

Yes

This statement makes no sense.

You assume redeploy is a mean to increase your K/D, to avoid death or deny the enemy kills; it's not.
Do you mean throwing a grenade at your feet or repeatedly jumping out of a window is better ? It's faster than what you suggest. And would make even less sense than pressing delete.

Because there's no mechanic preventing mass redeployments.
Reinforcement needed will incentivize "evening" the pops, but on a 15 sec timer even at the other side of the map.

So you can switch from fight to fight ON A 15 SECONDS TIMER
This is your problem

Yes and no.
Beacons replace the HART. You can't have both.

The HART was nice, but it also downplays against Gal drops.
At least in PS1 you could carry 2 MAXes, a trunk, and a vehicle inside your Gal so it was actually better than a 12-man HART.

Most of the time when I pull a Sundy I dont want passengers; I want to support the Tankers with ammo or repairs. 1 passenger isnt bad but I like to gun my Basilisks when Im posted up, and random gunners are usually terrible. That or they dont know when to hold their fire to avoid detection. Ill give people a ride if they need one but as I said, I dont go looking for passengers.

The HART sounds interesting but there needs to be limits to it

Agreed. The restrictions on the HART in PS1 seemed to work.

• You could only enter it in the Sanctuary
• It had a timer
• You couldn't drop inside a base SOI (Sphere of Influence - think no deploy zone in PS2 but covering a larger area)
• You couldn't drop on lock continents (continents that had been 100% conquered by a faction)

You know, I think you're right. I believe it started at 15 minutes but was reduced.

I believe the plan for Spawn Beacons is to have a "donut" style deployment for drop pods. With defenders dropping on the inner ring and attackers on the outer ring. Maybe that can be used for the HART also.

Wasn't spawn matrix-ing linked to a maximum of one base/AMS in Planetside 1 though? Or my memory might be a bit fuzzy on that specific detail also.

-

For faster travel for longer journey's from A-to-B you could use the HART.

By "core gameplay" I mean those outdoor battle that are unique to Planetside. The legendary foot zergs, bridge battles, armour columns snaking through mountain passes. We miss out on all that fun because there are so little people on the roads to produce them.

It's very similar to the idea of fast travel in RPG's. Jumping around everywhere is certainly convenient, but you miss out on a lot of the gaming experience, and in the case of Planetside where players define the gaming experience, it takes away from everyone. Continents in PS2 are also not that big; in a vehicle, without being stopped by a big fight, you can get from one warpgate to another in minutes. All limiting the ability to jump around would do would be encourage use of transport vehicles and increase inter-base fights.

Honestly I don't think redeploy is responsible for this. I mean, you can't redeploy at an enemy base so if people aren't going to the next base in a vehicle or on foot they're probably not going at all. If anything I'd say the short distance between bases is the cause here. It's also kind of natural that battles are fought at the bases themselves.

Redeploy is a crucial feature when it comes to defense. Just a bit ago I stopped three ghostcaps around Amerish in quick succession with just a few seconds left on the timer and I can assure you it wouldn't have worked without redeploy. (well, in practice it was suicide because that's faster, but you get the idea) I can't possibly predict which base will be the next target of some random individual or squad so I need to be able to relocate immediately. And no, some orbital bus is not going to help me when the next one leaves in four minutes.

And lets be honest there isn't going to be some massive field battle between two allied bases. The only way such a battle could develop is when the front line shifts to somewhere between allied and enemy bases. Probably either because people push forward after a successful attack or because they launch a counterattack after a successful defense. In either case there is no way to redeploy on the next base unless by some incredible coincidence the instant action hot spot is right above it.

So why don't we see these battles more often? My guess is defenders prefer to stand their ground at the actual base instead of somewhere in between, but that's just my theory. The fact that there isn't really much "between bases" to fight in is probably another reason. I don't think redeploy has anything to do with it though, and I would rather keep it so that I don't have to drive/fly when I don't feel like it (almost all the time).

I find it kind of funny that you mention how you have trouble finding gunners/passengers because I frequently have trouble getting a ride in a sunderer. I mean, I get that they want to reserve the gunner seats for squad/outfit members but would it really kill people to let me tag along in a passenger seat?

I applaud the direction the OP wants to go in, but I think the answers are all wrong.

At the moment, deploy-mechanics give us the ability to create decent fights with a minimum of fuss - especially from the perspective of defenders. This is a good thing.

The problem isn't redeploy, the problem is that you can open an offensive by redeploying to a friendly base and walking 100m. This is why transport vehicles see little use. This is why we don't see much inter-base conflict. Because there isn't enough inter-base to conflict over. In a huge number of cases you can engage the base you're attacking from the base you're defending. Which means in pretty much every fight someone will be inside a base.

This is where the problem lies: we have no hinterland.

This post is amazingly prophetic.

This is entirely die to the lattice system. I keep pointing to the hybrid hex because it solves most of these problems. Fights end, start, and bounce around the way they do because all that matters is the all or nothing nature of bases. If territory after and up to the next base mattered, then the fight would roll on. If territory around the base impacted the cap somehow, then you couldn't afford to leave a base alone and unguarded. The end goal should be more persistent fronts.

The HART would be nice. Currently the "best" way to travel around the continent if the redeploy doesn't want you there is by wasting 350 nanites on an esf.


While you are in your esf, you must pray that you don't encounter a tryhard pilot patrolling around to see what easy kills they can score. Really, it's not the best way around the map, especially when you waste 350 nanites just to be downed in 2 seconds by some tryhard before reaching your destination.


I would love to bring back footzergs, but for that we would need to significantly change A2G gameplay. A single esf can wreck a good footzerg, never mind a lib. Also back when people used t footzerg, snipers weren't 1hk with nanoweave. Now that many people care about KDR and there's just way too many things that kill you in the open without you being able to do much about it, footzergs have become a rare occurrence.

I would love to bring back the glory days gameplay from beta, and incorporate the best parts of PS1. The devs have countless shown that's not their plan, and a few members of the community agree. People prefer to ghost cap bases from the safety of their bastion, or snipe people at vast ranges under the cover of their cloak. Good for them, maybe a little less good for the game, but that's just based on player pop charts.



I still remember the days where /suicide was the fastest was to redeploy.