Sunderers are obnoxious

Seems like OP doesn't have AP lock-down prowler. It's hilarious to watch engies desperately trying to outrepair while gunners and heavies putting their everything to kill me and end up just giving me juicy multi kills when sundy isblown up in seconds.

8)

Shield was designed to make life easier for scrubs, who want AMS but dont want to put any efforts to defend it. It's intended work makes game even more shallow.

So we need 2 HAs team to get a fair fight with 0 players unit? How is that not mental?

Sunderers are pretty ridiculous at the moment in terms of combat potential. You see tons of "battle sundies" rolling around now. They need a very serious balance check. I've rolled in one several times and even with only a crew of 3 engineers, we took down many MBTs and AP Lightnings every time we spawned one.

They're cheaper on resources (you can pull them non stop all day at 100 resources with Esamir lock), have access to shield diffusers, act as mobile spawn with squadmates spawning into them, and on top of all that, in many situations, they outperform MBTs. As I see it, the Sunderer is supposed to be a troop transport and mobile spawn station. It should be part of team play and strategy to protect them. But with the deployment shield and the new resource system that allows players to pull sunderer after sunderer, there's hardly a need to. They're just way too strong at the moment.

Something needs to give. Either the resource cost should be jacked up, their weapons should be nerfed a bit (in regards to AV damage), or their "health"/mitigation/damage resistance (overall durability) should be dropped to a fair level with regards to the MBT. Perhaps a combination of these or other changes to a lesser degree.

Right now, the "battle sundie" is a hell of a lot more fun than a MBT or Lightning. Fun is not a bad thing. But they shouldn't get their own unique roles, AND outshine/outperform other vehicles in the roles those vehicles were designed for, as they often do now.

Blockade and repair are long past due a good heavy beating with the nerf bat. They do nothing to help sunderers do their primary job of getting infantry to the front line they are just cheese.

Why is using the most effective weapon ********?
Personaly the guy shooting a pistol at the sundy is ********, he does no damage at all.........

Would you bring a knife to a gun fight? No? Then why would you **** yourself by not using a tank or an AV max to destroy a vehicle.

Please stop making up random personalised rules for the game, if you want to do so then follow them yourself, dont attempt to belittle other players for using their brains and not following your silly unwritten rules.


You also suggested in your previous posts that squads should 'bring 12 sundies and hide leftovers in some hole as backup'. Well that would mean 12 sundies to kill, good luck doing that with anything accept a tank or av max without having to travel back to reload 11 times...

I understand that sunderers need to be able to take some punishment when acting as spawn-point, otherwise they get removed a little too easily (although it also makes them too hard to remove in a small-pop fight).

The problem is that the sunderer is both cheap, powerful, and versatile in its weapon loadouts. It has the best AA in the game, can hold its ground against MBTs pretty easily with the right weapons (though lacking range, which you can work around), and is generally very tough to kill. The fact that you have access to unlimited equipment and supplies in the same vehicle doesn't hurt.

In short - nanite for nanite it now fills the combat roles better than many of the combat vehicles, and it does not give up anything important to do this. A battle sundie can deployed and be a spawn location just fine, and you have a mobile AMS for endless supplies built in as default.

This leads roving clumps of sunderers - all zergs have these, althought sometimes you will see them on their own too. Several of them will have proximity repair so that if they all just stick together they will be immune to anything but very heavy AV focusfire. Had 3 like this spawncamping a base in clear view from the spawn a few days ago (they were just pummeling the spawn with furys). Me and 2 other heavies were putting decimators into it as fast as humanly possible. Didn't even get it to smoke. When a few engineers are on duty to repair on top of the rest in situations like that ... Even a lockdown AP prowler I think would take it's time to kill the damned thing.

That leads me to another quick point:
Repairing and proxy-repairing in this game is getting a bit nuts.

The fact that you can get proxy-repaired while under fire (often outrepairing many lower DPS weapons and thus rendering them useless) is silly. You literally can't kill paired galaxies with most ESF loadouts. Taking damage really need to stop the repairs for a few seconds at least before resuming.

Same with active repairing. It scales linearly from what I can tell - essentially if you have enough repairs you can make stuff invulnerable. The best defense in many cases isn't to evade or shoot back - but to stop, get out, and repair. If you have several engineers then changes are you can repair your vehicle back to full HP while your frustrated opponent empties his ammo into you.

Again, something like reducing repairspeed for a few seconds if the vehicle took damage in the last 2-3 seconds, or at least not linear scaling for repairing so that you get diminishing returns for having a whole sunderer worth of people all pull rep tools would make sense.

-Stigma

Maybe they should split it into 2 vehicles.

The Sunderer would loose most of it's troop carrying capacity, armour and be turned into a more of a utility truck like this:


This vehicle would get abilities like
- Spawn deploy
- Spawn inhibitor
- a utility to turn it into a nanite tanker? *cough* resource revamp *cough*

Meanwhile, the troop-carrying capacity would be given to a proper APC, maybe make these faction specific vehicles?

VS: A hovering ultra versatile version of this:


With the usual secondary turrets
TR: Something like this:


But for the extra firepower, can't carry as many troops

And NC:


Massive bunker on tracks, one main turret in the middle and multiple others, slow, but powerful in very other respect.

Don't take these seriously, I'm not , just throwing them up as they're relevant to the question.

Because piloted tank/max is overkill for empty sundy. What you are suggesting is bringing cheap autoaiming pistol in knife fight then balancing it with expensive manually aimed rocket launcher.

How much brains does using deploying shield require? Lets see, empty sundy with zero players in it works fine with 0.00 milligrams of brain. If thats how much these players have, I have very valid reason to belittle them and game which caters to them.

Bringing 12 sundy already requires a tiny bit of thought and 12 time more resources than 1 sundy, pulling 1 max for 450 nanites is well worth here. You do see difference between 200 nanites and 2400 and efforts of 1 guy vs 12 guys, right? I'm not sure, since you tried to equalize 1 guy with 450 nanites suit and 0 guys with 200 nanites vehi.

This.

It's a mobile spawn point, to enable attackers to continue attacking your base and giving everyone a fight.

They shouldn't be easily solo'able.

Everything else is negotiable I assume, while mobile they're fragile enough (but I don;t have blockade armour soo).

I remember on Hossin a night or two back parking a sundie at a vanu base, with deploy shield.

They made a concerted effort to kill it, I got lots of kills I deserved defending my sundie, they got rewarded for their peserverence by destroying it and securing their base, everyone won in a fashion.

Without deploy shield they'd have just taken it out in a minute flat, no fight, no kills, no-ones satisfied.


Sometimes I think based on forumside complaints that nobody in this game but me actually likes fights and playing.

No that is not at all what im saying.
Where did i mention auto aim and rocket launchers, please quote me....
What you've just done is put words in my mouth to support your own opinion, if you have to do that maybe your opinion has no weight...

Plus you seem to have completely missed my point......what a suprise....
You said:
''Pulling a max or tank to kill UNATTENDED immobile vehicle is rtrded on so many levels I'm not sure how to even start to explain that.''
I simply asked you to explain why, but im guessing you have no 'good' reason as to why i shouldnt do that other than it breaks your unspoken 'Rules of Engagement - PS:2 Edition', and this is why your not sure.
Or put more simply.
Why is it rtrded to use the most effective means of counteracting the enemy?

Your basically asking for the sundy shield to be removed because 'its too ******** to get the correct counter for the sundy' even tho its not ******** at all it just disobeys your unspoken rule set.

What your saying is, 'i cant be botherd to counter properly, i should be able to kill anything and eveything with the current loadout i have without the need to change anything at all'. Is that right?

And besides your argument about brain power isnt well rooted.

Lets go through it shall we:
Your scenario

1. As HA you come accross an undefended sundy, you notice it has NO deploy shield or additional armour.
2. You drop c4 on it then rocket it.
3. Job done, dead sundy.

Conclusion:

• Change to current playstyle = no
• Change to current loadout = no
• Thought required = non

My Scenario

1. As HA you come accross an undefended sundy, you notice it HAS deploy shield.
2. You redeploy and grab an AV tank
3. You drive until you get angle on the sundy, then shoot it with shells.
4. Job done, dead sundy.

Conclusion:

• Changes to current playstyle = Yes (infantry to vehicle)
• Changes to loadout = Yes (HA to engineer, although optional i suppose)
• Thought required = Non

lets not get silly about this, its not hard to counter a sundy, with or without a shield, but with a shield it means performing additional actions that require the time to do, it isnt an instant kill as it is without the shield.

PS: Just because a vehicle isnt manned, doesnt mean that it cannot pose a serious threat.

I feel like there just needs to be a tradeoff with Sundies... they either have lots of armor/health or they have combat ability. Putting both into one vehicle was a mistake that needs to be corrected. I'm not even talking cases, just in general. If the primary utility of the Sunderer is as a troop transport/mobile spawn point it should be allowed defensive armament only.

Troop transports driving backwards everywhere and laying waste with dual GLs is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in this game. A line of 8 repair sundies with dual GLs parked at a gate shield is the second most ridiculous thing I have seen in this game.

Just give us cloakable AMS trucks like in the original planetside fairly weak but cloaked when deployed.


why are they trying to invent the wheel over and over they need to add more stuff from ps1

You call them scrubs, while you won't even get a team mate to help you out. Good one. Or is this magical 0 person sunder shooting back

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/sunderer-cloak-module.224661/

Durability-wise, I think Sunderers are just fine. In most cases I can even damage them faster than they can be repaired with my measly AP Magrider (no gunner). I also can't count the number of times I've spawned at a Sunderer only for it to be blown to smithereens by a LA with C4.

For what it's worth, Sunderers are meant to be pretty tough, otherwise no faction would ever be able to deploy them without them being quickly destroyed by so much as a single foot soldier.

The problem is not Sunderers. They are a 12 men transport vehicle, make them weaker and they will end up like the Valkyrie: no one will even try to board as passenger because no one likes to die inside a rat-trap.

The problem is that ******* resources system that allows to spam vehicles more than ever. Resources mean nothing, vehicles have no value, players are not interested in using them wisely because they can have tons. This is what the unfinished resources system gave us:




This was just not possible when the game came out: we had 3 types of resources and no interest in wasting what we had because it took time to replenish our pools. And we had aquisition timer to prevent spam. 2 years ago a Sunderer was more precious.

But then the tanks kidz cried because they pretended to sit all day in their MBT and farm farm farm. And look what happened. We've been telling this to the devs for a long long time and only recently mr. Smedeley woke up and realized we need the resources system to be completed.

Hmmmm...usually me and another guy take out Sundees pretty quick, both of us using c-4 of course....

The "12 manned transportt" excuse.


Look, Sunderers are kept in check by Tanks, whether that be combat wise or the tank cannon splash killing the engineers repairing it.

The Rise of the Sunderer is due to the other vehicles getting nerfs & the sunderer being abit to durable against certain things.

Also the fact that The Rear bonus of blockade armor still hasn't been brought in line with the other sides of blockade armor.

If you wish to kill deployed sundies the fastest: play TR. Pull out a cheap Vulcan harasser. Profit.

2 active players with 300-400 nanites worth of explosives to kill empty box with 200 nanites price tag? Do you really think its balanced?

With this logic we should just make hard spawns for all 3 factions on every base.

If attackers put efforts, pull few sundies, hide and defend them, clearing such spawn in reasonable time is not easy. Sundies vulnerability balances its availability. Now we get cheap and tough spawn option, which can be pulled by everyone and deployed behind every rock around base.

Sometimes I think based on cheese-defenders's complaints that nobody in this game but me actually likes objective play and just accidentally clicked Register button while looking for CoD server.

If you cant understand metaphors, dont use them. You mentioned knife in gunfight, which was not right example, i provided more accurate one. Shield works automatically and you suggested to balance it out by strong and expensive manually operated tool. If you really needed that extra explanation, you better dont use smartpants phrasing at all, ppl may take you for intelligent person and say something complicated.

Was "Because piloted tank/max is overkill for empty sundy." too hard for you? I'll try to say it simpler: walking steel human-like thingy or big steel box with tracks and barrel is strong and costs lotsa nanites, requires player to work, while empty square box with shiny aura costs less nanites and does not require player to work, so they are not equal. Pulling one to kill another should not be necessary, it is poor balancing. Easy enough for you?

What i'm saying is AMS is super easy and cheap to get, it should be equally easy and cheap to get rid of.

So HA supposed to think of bringing new tool, spend significant amount of time, spend more nanites than sundy costs, while sundy owner can just pay 200 nanites, deploy and forget? We get hard working guy with 350+ nanites to balance out lazy bum with 200 nanites? How is that even remotely sensible?

If vehi is also rigid its poor balance.

1-man-team is supposed to be stronger than 0-men-team. If I need 2 men to beat 0 men, thats totally screwed up.

Thanks for TS password. Dont change it before I learn all your secrets.

So i need vehi with OP weapon just to kill UNATTENDED steel box?