Squad Deploy nerf exposes the horrible base design

The SL drop was a way to get out of a camped spawn...ie the entire reason for the post...a way to get out of a camped spawn to defend the base...

We usually do our crying while killing a bunch of bad guys, so it doesn't really affect us. Unless you mean real crying, in which case TS gets a little awkward because Ender is a horrible crier.

At this point if you're trolling you aren't doing a very good job because you just seem MR.

I'm baaaaack...

The goal for me with combined-arms is that if you lack one of the branches (which the enemy has), the fight gets harder. No armor? Good luck on those walls. No aircraft? Those enemy tanks and air are gonna f*** you up. No infantry? Have fun staring at the control points you don't own and can't take.

With that in mind, there are several base design changes I'd make that are pretty simple stuff. Bases are designed to fend off vehicles, and they're okay at it, especially Amp Stations and Tech Plants with the turrets manned.

Xiphos = AI Phalanx, Spear = AV Phalanx, Aspis = AA Phalanx, by the way.

But bases are actually really, really bad against infantry. Xiphos Phalanx Turrets suck, like badly. And there aren't many of them. I've got one measly kill with the Xiphos turret. Buff the thing, make it a dual Kobalt. Hell, just mount a Kobalt on the base wall and you'd be better off than the POS that's up there now.

• So just swap the turrets and resistances of bases around a bit. Add more Xiphos turrets, make them highly vulnerable to AP damage and HMG fire but really hard to kill with anything else. Infantry rocket launchers shouldn't really be an option. Spear turrets should be the opposite, with a high resistance to tank guns and low resistance to infantry and air weapons. No tank should ever be able to 1v1 a Spear turret in a hit-trade. Aspis turrets should work in a similar way, with a high resistance to everything aircraft (that includes the Tank Buster and the Dalton) and low resistance to ground-based weapons.
• Nerf the range of guided/lock-on infantry AV, as well as the Lancer, to 300 meters. If you hit a tank with a non-Lancer dumbfire at 300 meters, either you deserved the kill or the tank deserved the death. I think this is a pretty universal thing we can agree on: If you can't see or hit your opponent, he has no right to kill you.
• At the same time, the Nanoweave changes are going to make HE somewhat viable again by preventing Nanoweave users from surviving HE rounds at their feet. This is excellent. MOAR TRADEOFFS PLEASE!
• Reduce the amount of "surround" cover available to infantry in open fields. Cover is fine, but those rocks with pits in them that you can duck down into and conveniently avoid a tank shell while your Striker reloads aren't fine. If the tank is running HE, you should be running Flak or dying from splash. Basically, reduce the number of open-field places where you can take cover and be protected from 3 sides or more.
• Allow tanks into base courtyards, but add anti-ordinance fields to most windows. Anti-ordinance fields would actually just be the current Gate Shields, which allow bullet weapons to pass through, but not explosives. That means no rockets, tank shells, or any of that stuff. From either side. These fields would possibly be dependent on a generator, which would be protected by them.
• Two C4 variants, HE and AP. HE has the current effective radius, current infantry pwnage, but less armor damage. AP has much less radius, much less infantry pwnage, but current armor damage. Reduce the cost of C4 (both types) to 75 instead of 100. Instead of being 200 and 500 certs, these new C4 types are 100 and 250 certs, so the cert cost to max C4 doesn't change, but it's less of an anti-everything super-sticky-grenade. Again, more tradeoffs. Loadout specialization isn't a bad thing.
• Give Instant Action the Squad Deploy treatment. Instant Action should only put you into a fight where you have a valid spawn.
• With Tank Mines no longer appearing on Thermal Optics after this upcoming balance patch (which is great), decrease their size and make them immune to explosive splash. This would have two benefits. First off, it would make taking out tank Mines much harder for someone in a tank, since they rely heavily on splash damage. Secondly, tank mines could no longer be used to kamikaze a Sunderer. Shooting one of two mines you laid down would set it off, killing you, but the other mine wouldn't detonate.

Now, for base design:

• Not all bases should be defensive strongpoints. There's gotta be the occasional Abandoned NS Offices out there, but there should also be the occasional Howling Pass and Stronghold.
• Some bases should have air landing and resupply pads that cover a part of the base from above, making it safe from bombardment.
• Some bases should have walls. I don't mean Esamir sheet-metal walls. I mean STRONGHOLD walls. AMP STATION walls. With catwalks, and turrets, and stuff. Good walls. The kind of walls you dreamed about when you were a kid. Makes them safe from armor bombardment, and a little more challenging for infantry to enter.
• Some bases should have anti-vehicle walls. Walls with tunnels under them, or small holes in them. There's an Amp Station on Esamir that has this kind of thing, but I can't remember which one.
• A few bases should have both pads and walls. Not many. Just a few.
• A few bases should be buildings. Like, with walls and a roof and rooms and those things that normal buildings have. Preferably large buildings, but I understand polygon and rendering limitations. Maybe make the base a cave or something.

Spawn room design:

• The Elevated Spawn. The spawn room is on stilts, and there's a balcony that prevents explosive rounds from splashing over the doorway. Owner-only jump pads to various locations around the base would probably be appropriate.
• The Lobby Spawn. The spawn room is completely cut off from the world around it, buried somewhere. There are teleporters to points around the map.
• The Airborne Spawn. For no apparent reason, you spawn on a platform above the flight ceiling and jump down, either with an elevator or jump pad. Probably the worst of the three ideas.

Bottom line, not ALL bases should be ultra-defensible. Not all bases should be irritatingly easy to take, either.

My only regret is that I have but a single +1 to give the OP.

I'm a horrible crier myself, people can't even hear themselves when i start crying in TS

Unsupported infantry in the open die now. You won't be changing anything.

Ok, you're not opposed to vehicles "having some influence".

Sorry, "some influence" by your definition is exclusive, not inclusive. Exclusion is not good for the people being excluded, nor for the people that see the excluded as a part of the game that makes it all the much more fun.

"vehicle spam" is known as suppressive fire to people that face challenges head-on.

Yes, the changes were made. Were they needed more than players that don't freak out when things go bad? No.

Well, your idea that tanks are barred from entering bases sounds pretty rigid to me. It takes away variability that ultimately leads to a very repetitive experience. therefore, replayability is affected.

And this is the crux of it. Unfortunately, they'll go with people that pay the most, which is apparently the lowest common denominator.

It wasn't presented that way. It was presented as a concession, which only leads to more concessions. If the suggestion were vehicle centric, then I would have opposed that too.

I think that when the devs made the game, they intended it to be a combined arms game. I wonder what they thought when it was pretty clear that some folks couldn't hack it.

You still haven't told us why you can't kill tanks that enter a base.

I mean, me MR? I can kill tanks that can't move freely- why can't you?

Me MR? I recognize a camp when it happens and take my medicine- why can't you?

I know this isn't the point of your post, but your idea of what combined arms is is pretty much why people laugh at the idea of "combined arms" in PS2. The real beauty of combined arms is that it doesn't provide cookie cutter solutions to attack and defense like you claim.

On another note, PS2 base design allows for camped spawn rooms, which is actually a benefit for NC. Usually when that happens it means it's ESF sniping time with the Phoenix.

I don't try to provide cookie-cutter solutions.

I'm about to lapse into a Pokemon analogy, here we go...

You can take on a Fire-type with a Grass-type and win. Yes, it works. There's gotta be a level or skill differential (or, in the case of PS2, a number or skill differential). However, you can take on a Fire-type with a Water-type and win as well. You can win OVER a level or skill differential.

The goal here is that if you don't attack the enemy with a unit that's meant to destroy the unit you're attacking, the fight gets harder. If you brought a squad of infantry and an equally-skilled, equally-certed 2/2 HE tank shows up, you should be the ones dying. You met a Fire-type and you had a party of Grass-types.

The root of my complaint, however, is a level 99 venausaur getting owned by a level 1 charmander just because "fire type".

Gen 1, ride or die.

same, but everything reddit. Still, the PS2 subreddit is good for news + unofficial patchnotes. And Higby said before there'd be a redesign.

Before OMFG, Amp stations ran like crap for me - FPS jumping 40-60, and looking around was incredibly jittery. Others had/have problems as well. My guess is that they will make them more compartmentalized, to get more people better framerates.

I'm ok with their general design, with the glaring exception that the shields often benefit the attackers. Hopefully that will see changes. And no harassers on point, please.

Well put jak. Well put

False. Currently, infantry pose a far greater threat to vehicles than most vehicles do. The aim of mine was to change that dynamic so that vehicles pose the prime threat to vehicles and infantry pose a minor threat that is drastically reduced if they don't have vehicle support (ahem...combined arms...).

The only exclusion is that vehicles aren't able to spam (sorry, tactically suppress) the control points. They're still necessary for base assaults and necessary to support the objective. They're not excluded, they're necessary.

Sorry, I'll use tactical suppression from now on if "spam" hurts your feelings.

Earlier in this thread, you defended against the assertion that this game is dying. The continual trend by the designers of the game has been to rework base design to make them more infantry-centric. If the players that freak out about ... tactical suppression are needed less than the players that don't, you're implying SOE is making changes counter to the overall health of the game. Which would support the game is dying assertion...do you even read your own continued argument?

False again. I've stated numerous times that I supported Eskimo's alternative to my plan where vehicles are allowed in bases, but not able to camp spawn rooms. I'm not going to continue to argue the replayability thing. If you can't understand how many different variations are enabled every time you log in, there's nothing more to say.

Thank you for overtly showing yourself to be a hypocrite.

It's not a concession, it's a rework of the dynamic in response to altering a related dynamic. These systems are intertwined, so changing one of them will ultimately require changes in others. That's not concession, that's redesign.

Personally, I think the devs released mechanics that people used in ways they didn't ultimately desire. They're fixing this as time progresses. You see it as them making concessions to people that can't hack it. That's an odd statement you're giving to multiple BR100s that have posted in this thread. Here's a secret - if we couldn't hack it, we'd be playing BF4.

If you have a competent team on defense they should never lose an amp station against anything less than 30/70 pop. The shield mechanic, where you can hop back and forth, heavily favors defenders initially. Once they lose the point though it takes a very strong rush to get it back.

Please show me your character's vehicle kill count.

It doesn't matter what he can do, or has done. Or hasn't done, or can't do.

It matters what he says, because reasons. You wouldn't understand because you're young and don't know what a computer is.

The only major change I would make to amp stations would be rework a way for the tunnel system to get to the SCU so that those areas aren't easily campable. The current way they're set up is pretty much a death trap. I would have prefered them just making a huge open tunnel (sort of the style that the interlink has) to the SCU area so both sides can actually shoot at each other.

I'll help you out it looks like this:






.

The degree to which "type" influences victory shouldn't be that great.

Another issue is, again, explainable with Pokemon. Have we found the ultimate Planetside analogy? Infantry are Infantry-type, and they have Infantry-type's Ability (call it "Go-Anywhere"), but they can use Vehicle-type moves (C4, rockets, AV Turrets, etc.). Vehicles can use Vehicle-Type weapons, which are super-effective against Infantry, and they're Immune to Infantry-Type weapons.

Infantry-type = small-arms, Vehicle-type = heavy ordinance.

I'm gonna leave Aircraft out of this one for now.

So we have Infantry units with all the advantages Infantry have to offer, and more and more of them can learn Vehicle-type moves. Infiltrators are the only pure-Infantry-type Infantry units.

How many vehicle kills do I need to be counted as someone who can kill vehicles in bases... Deep problems.