[Suggestion] Tank Destroyer Gun Truck?

Yeah I know the Colonel well. He's trying to be reasonable and backs up his arguments with facts and... well, common sense and reason.

I DONT demand absolute adherence to reality and what makes sense.
But what I DO demand is that everything has a place in this game as it should.
AI tank? I have pulled one ONCE this year. For the specific reason of pushing NC MAXes away from the doors they camped.
In all other cases pulling a dual fury sundy would be more effective, cheaper, and safer - if I really have to use an AI vehicle.

A2G fire? Yeah the tears flow in masses, but matter of fact air is irrelevant in any fight exceeding 24vs24. Even the most hardcore "not my problem" players have one or two guys among them who will pull AA eventually.
Abundance of AA in addition to severely nerfed A2G AI weapons, the lolpods to be specific have made certain of that.
And thanks to the render issues that SOE introduced about half a year ago I can't even do strafing runs, because Infantery doesn't render in time for me to actually shoot them with an ESF - which means I have to hover, being an easy target for everything.
And liberators are simply a "6 shots then repair" routine.

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand the argument. But this goes right back to balance. If a Sunderer ALWAYS lost to an MBT, if it was always slower than an MBT, then nobody would use them.

MBT's benefit from this kind of balancing every day but take it for granted. In "real life" an MBT wouldn't stand a chance against a Liberator or an ESF. However in Planertside 2 we know MBT's have AMAZING survivability against air attacks.

Well thanks for standing up and admitting what a piece of **** you are. Now I can dismiss your points in all further discussions.

You actually WANT to groundspam and think it should be buffed....unbelievable. What a tool.

It's actually totally doable with a simple 48-man Planetside platoon. If you can't scrape together 48 people for teamwork then you're really playing the wrong game.

Alpha Squad- HQ & Logistics
Platoon Lead x1
Assistant Platoon Lead x1
Repair/Rearm Sunderers x2 (6)
ANTs x2 (4)

Bravo Squad- Mechanized Infantry
Dismounted Infantry x9
Battle Sunderer x1 (3)

Bravo Squad (Alternative)- Airborne Infantry
Dismounted Infantry x8
Valkyrie x2 (4)

Charlie Squad- Armour
Lightning x2
Skyguard x2
MBTx 3 (6)
Rearm Sunderer x1
ANT x1

Delta Squad- Close Air Support
A2A ESF x4
A2G ESF x2
Liberator x3 (6)

So not only have you recreated the Combined Arms Battalion in miniature, you've also even attached on a dedicated air squad. It's a pretty good combined-arms "platoon". Only thing it's missing is artillery, and that's because the Devs have chickened out on artillery.

But there are a few problems with this setup, which is why Planetside ultimately fails as a combined arms game.

1) Why have an HQ/logistics element? Command tools are primitive. Logistics are currently non-existent (we'll see how the ANT changes things). Currently if you have to pick between 12 more HAs running around or an HQ element, the easy choice is to have more infantry.

2) Why have armour/air elements? Infantry are free and infinite, and are armed with powerful AV weapons. Armour and air weapons, on the other hand, are fairly weak. And not free. And can't actually take bases or seriously influence the outcome of many base fights.

In other words if you throw a Combined Arms Platoon against an all-infantry platoon, the infantry will win the base. And that's because combined arms is not properly rewarded in PS2 and infantry are heavily OP.

To add to that...

120mm HE that has less of an explosive radius than a hand-held frag grenade.
40mm autocannon rounds that do less damage than a .357 revolver.

Pretty much everything in this graph:



These are all great examples of why PS2 feels awful, and probably why it is not as long-lived a game as say, ARMA III.

I still think the idea from one of my previous posts (in a different thread) was solid - if we just gave tanks the capability to switch ammo types on the fly, and define their ammo loadout (lets face it, World of Tanks, Warthunder and Armored Warfare have how to make this UI accessible to ANYONE and not complicated at all down to a science) [as another aside, can even make the different ammo types cost SC/Certs to unlock with only HEAT available by default] we could then add ammo types that cost resources and fired cluster munitions.

Even if HEs splash radius gets rectified and becomes useful again, I could still see times where I might - as a tanker - want to fire an 150mm shell that bursts into 3-4 hand grenades instead of one big boom for 150-200 nanites. Can also be used to motivate people to drive vehicles as anything other than Engineer. Want to fire a cluster munition of 3-4 Revive Grenades for 225-300 nanites? Better be a medic.

I think in my previous post I had written up how it would work for AI/AT mines. Lump that in too.

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On the topic of ARMA III however, while I play and love the game so very much, I feel Planetside 2 is in a position where it can make a game "like that" while being so much more accessible. For the uninitiated vehicle play in the ARMA series can be like rubbing your face against a cheese grater. ARMA III has improved this quite a bit, but, by its very nature it still has a fairly clunky UI and control scheme.

Planetside 2 however should be able to create a massive battlefield that makes sense while still being accessible to the masses in terms of how to interact with it and while still maintaining an "arcade" feel. [Though if we are honest, I think the TTK in ARMA III is alot longer than PS2 in alot of situations].