Sunderers in the critical mass update are prime targets as spawn points and are way to easy to spot with an expensive cloaking effect. The vehicle needs to be streamlined. It’s bulky, creates a huge bubble when cloaked that in many cases can be easier to spot than a vehicle uncloaked. Harrassers pull into these things at point blank and your toast. Putting down only 3-5 mines is not enough and being a combat engineer seems fruitless. Some better defensive choices and stealth refinements would be nice. Than plopping your Sundy down for 10 seconds deploy and it’s gone. Just my thoughts,
The easiest way I've found to spot Sundies is to follow the trail of freshly spawned infantry. 9/10 times I know where the Sundy is parked before I even see it. Even with your desired changes, I feel that Sundies would still die just as fast.
Define Stream-lined. As regardless of what you do, that thing will be found due to how it works. If you try to build it so small that it's near impractical, even then it will be found. If nothing else, due to repeated positioning of said Sunderers right bloody there. And the clever ones will abuse the sheer small size to make it a needle-in-the-haystack looking for a cloaked sundy.
wrel had talked about moving the cloak to the utility slot, i wish they would! currently my 50 cert deploy shield seems infinitely more powerful than my 2330 cloak. even if you park in a clever spot, it doesn't take the enemy long to see the stream of players coming from one direction... once they've found it, a stock sunderer is easy prey for pretty much EVERTHING. i'd rather park my 50 cert deployshield sundy in a good spot and have solo heroes come and fail to destroy it. it really takes a lot of firepower to take down a shield sundy. unfortunately the devs decided not to move cloak to the utility slot (it was a loooong time ago that it was mentioned by wrel) it would have been nice to have cloak and shield even if we have to sacrifice fire suppression to take it.
What they should do for a cloak sundy instead of making it a bubble is making it cloak just like a infil but with the purple glow that only our faction can see while still giving a radius of like 5 meters or so surrounding the sundy with cloak for other friendlies to be able to stay cloaked around it and when you leave that certain radius then you uncloak. Kinda like a medics shield regen tool.They took away the bubble affect for that and gave a certain radius for it why not a sundy to make it survive longer and make it more viable to actually use it for it's purpose.
AFAIK they were always prime targets and have to be well defended. But has the new update made them more vulnerable since resistances were removed?
cloak sundies are not supposed to be deployed in places that are ok for other sundies. the cloak sundie shines when it's not the primary spawn, placed away from all the normal sundie spots and is behind/in some horizontal cover to help hide the cloak bubble. if your sundie is closest to the battle or the primary spawn, cloaking will not help you anymore then driving and deploying a cloak sundie in a sundie garage. they make excellent back up spawns when placed well, because by the time the enemy finds it allies have mroe then enough time to bring up shield sundies to resecure some attack routes. let's not forget they make excellent troll AA when you don't want to use as a spawnpoint, let an aircraft fly over and when you are out of his LOS fire some walker rounds at him, he'll circle around to look for you, but by that time if you did it right you are cloaked again and can wait for another chance to hit him without being discovered. cloak sundies are terrific at hiding from aircraft and so-so from ground vehicles due to the difference in their speeds and view angles, that's why you try to break up part of the bubble with terrain and cover.
Sunderers have always been relatively easy to spot - but since critical update, they are laughably easy to kill. Unfortunately - it's a combination of things causing the perfect storm; the Sunderer angle nerf pre-update means that any low vehicle can pull up next to the Sunderer and cannot be hit by the Sunderer guns. Since the update, the TTK is short - especially with the close-quarter AV - so Vulcan/Mjolnir/Aphelion Harassers can pull up next to a Sunderer and take them out very quickly (this is NOT restricted to Sunderers, the low TTK means that the CqC AV Harasser is now the number 1 weapon against virtually anything). Mines are not always effective against Harassers and with the Sweeper HUD are easy to avoid. Your best defense is to actually get out the Sunderer and 'do something' but then of course you're likely be run over by said Harasser. Add to all of this the fact that now Harassers are now incredibly numerous due to their utility and it's a very very miserable situation. I honestly hope that DBG are monitoring this and realising there is now a massive problem.
I think they should create a "small-scale" construction system. Small scale construction would allow players to change things up inside bases and around Sunderers. It would allow players to set up defenses like cover but also detection methods like trip alarms, area-denial mines (doesn't kill you unless you run through the entire patch and they are easy to spot, but takes a while to clear), small universal turrets anyone can use etc. Perhaps even an ambush teleporter: If something is detected nearby you get a short period of time to activate your teleporter and you'll be brought back to the area, allowing you to instantaneously return to a Sunderer and defend it without having to sit on the Sunderer constantly. That way you could sandbag your Sunderer and return to the Sunderer quickly if need be, assuming enemies are detected in time and they don't avoid it. It also allows players to change the rest of the base, dig in and prepare for future attackers or try and keep out defenders.
Seems the same as before... All in all. When I set up my stealth sundy I place it as the secondary sundy for the battle. In a place harder to reach but as well hidden as I can. Once deployed I add a random engineer cover shield on the ground (Which thankfully harassers cant drive over and bounce off) and a few anti tank mines next to it. Usually less players will spawn from it and if a harrasser finds it, he'll bump into the cover first and not the guys defending it. More engi deployable cover more power!
If i recall correctly, it was you who suggested the first level of deployshield as one of your best purchases in a post a while back? Because that simple 50 cert investment was brilliant, and even more important, dirt cheap.
good memory! and yep, its sad that 50 certs on deploy shield usually has a greater effect than 2330 certs on cloak. there have been the odd occasions when cloak has been AWESOME (like when parking a sundy on a cliff to make an AA/AV nest it is nice that ESFs and libs can't see it) but in most cases deploy shield is simply the way to roll!
I recall one time that a group of us spawned sundy's, some repair, some ammo, all equipped with both an AA gun and either a bulldog or the lighter and quicker weapon that throws bombs - we stuck together as a pack, probably 25-30 sundy's together and we just rampaged. The repair sundy's kept us all fixed and the ammo sundy's kept us supplied. Add to that effective AA and anti-vehicle gunners and we were almost unstoppable. We did lose a few sundy's here and there but overall, we kicked butt. I'm surprised that isn't a major tactic, or if so, i haven't seen it lately.
I think the problem is a new C-4,easy to spot is not problem. Interruption is near impossible because Ambusher's moving speed and C-4's response are too quick...
I have no issues with vehicles driving up to sunderers that are not being protected by friendly vehicles. Although the C-4 fairies are getting pretty bad. Organized outfits already dumped c-4 fairies on sunderers pretty fast, now with ambusher jump jets, the time you have to react got a lot shorter. Hell, my friend and I suicide run wraith flashes into tanks. It makes me feel sorry for ground vehicles, you're both really strong and so susceptible to cheese at the same time.
Sundies aren't being destroyed any easier now than they were before. So do you park your sundy and go fight - leaving it undefended? When you see your sunders are getting attacked, so you get squadmate help to man the weapons? You might be limited to the number of mines you lay down to protect your sundy, but only population limit and the ability of others co-operation stops other players from deploying a huge AV mine field around your sunder. If your squad or platoon want your sundy to stay up, they have to work to protect it or it is an easy target for destruction. But I can tell you, if you are from another faction, I prefer you park it and leave it unattended so I can get an easy deployed sundy kill ... and thanks for the CERTs and directive progression if you do.
On Steath Sundi in particular: The stealth effect, that mostly gives their position away, is only observalbe at "graphic qualtiy: high or medium". It does not depend on any other setting. In order to hide the cloakbubble from being easy spotted, i suggest just to use the low quality cloakbubble for every settings. Should be easy to fix... Infiltrators use "high" settings even in low mode for balance reasons, so it is technically possible.
