[Suggestion] The Ultimate Combined Arms Gameplay Thread

As a TR vehicle player, I support this thread on every word.

It can not be quick fired, no, the missile is too slow to use in biolabs even if it did OHK, you'd be dead before it reached them. Exiting the rocket makes the projectile vanish, so you can't fire and ditch.

The striker has a longer range, is effective versus ground and air, and is easier to use in groups just due to the mechanics of it. You'll never see a phoenix group camping a warpgate, no matter how much cover you put around it.

The phoenix does not turn on a dime, saying that they are able to hide behind a rock or a tree is a bit of an overstatement, while they can be in cover they can't be buried in it and expect the missile to be able to maneuver to their target, this becomes an increasing issue the closer your target is. The closer you are to the sweet spot of 250 meters, the more danger you're in. If you get closer than 200 meters the phoenix doesn't match up versus the decimator considering the long shot to shot time, less maneuverability room, and how the player has to stand still to fire it.

It was decent for killing infantry entrenched in a base, without air or snipers before the nerf, now it's outclassed.

Thanks for clarifying this , I appreciate having up to date and accurate knowledge so I don't come off as bias. I will say that I think when you're close to the point where infantry are, within 100-200m, that the Phoenix is the biggest infantry based nightmare a tanker could hope to encounter. Often find that I am without a hiding place when trying to assault places like Reagent Rock when there is a heavy NC Phoenix presence.

Cheers I was wondering, do you think it would be a better decision make tanks strong everywhere but simply limit there movement within bases with better base design so they can't interfere heavily with capturing the point or camping the base spawn room itself? I don't think tanks should have any spot they are bad in, but merely limit where can be. That's why Bio Labs were such a good base design. ESF's and Tanks can fight up to the BioLab and defend the areas for infantry to get to the points within the biolab, but they have no access to the points or the spawn rooms themselves. This in my opinion is what most if not all medium-large scale bases should be like. That way people don't get spawn camped, there is always a heavy need for infantry to capture points and get resources, but tanks will always be valuable.

Mmmh, an interesting proposition. There are in essence four ways to prevent or reduce a certain tactic.

1) Make it very dangerous. The tactic can work but leaves you very vulnerable to many different counter attacks (sieging in a base with LA + C4). The tactic becomes high-risk without increasing the reward much.

2) Make it less efficient. The tactic can work but has a reduced effect, this is the classic nerf. For example, they nerfed splash damage, you can still shoot at someone in the exact same way as before but it will not be as effective.

3) Give the defenders a way to circumvent the tactic. Think the tunnels in Amp station as a way to ignore the spawn camp. Or the teleporters in many spawn rooms. The defender gains the option to simply not engage the original tactic.

4) Reduce the opportunity to execute the tactic. It does not reduce the effectivness of the tactic if you do succed, but there are less moments to pull the tactic off. More walls and more cover to prevent tanks from firing or entering inside the base is basically this method. If every base is fully enclosed and has them, it is simply this tactic to the opoint there are no opportunities left.

Now becomes the question; what is the most fun? What creates the most gameplay? What creates the most interesting gameplay?

Honestly I've never really liked the 4th option. While it is very effective, it is also an option reducing method. It doesn't add gameplay, it only substracts it. In addition, the few chances you still have to pull the tactic will be just as efficient to you and just as irritating to the enemy.
Option 2) is hardly ever liked (whether this is justified is an entirely different matter) because as an attacker you cannot avoid this loss in efficiency. It is an arbitrary number and no matter what amount of good plays or tactics can compensate for the fact you simply do less damage. It is frustrating because it feels artifical and arbitrary.
Option 3) is a weird one. It completely nullifies the tactic, but it does force the defenders to adapt. And if the circumvention puts them in a somewhat disadvantageous position, it will actually have an influence. I like this one, as it forces both attackers and defenders to continuosly alter their approach.
Option 1) I think is by far the most fun. Neither side has to sacrifice any power or efficiency and the entire counter stems from an active defence. There is a counter, but it is up to the defenders to actually use it. It creates gameplay.

In reality most problems cannot be solved with simply one option. In this specific case, Option 4) can be used to make option1) much easier to accomplish, so does option 3) in some cases (using the tunnels to flank tanks inside the courtyard).
As such I agree that tanks should indeed not have any place they are bad in, but neither should they be so limited in what they do. Far more interesting is for the defenders to have the option to outdo them in certain locations. Let them drive inside the base, but to do so at their own risk. If they can still succesfully manage to pull it off, it will be because they spent effort and manpower in support of their tactic (guarding their tanks with infantry) and be rewarded for that. If do not make the necessary effort, their tanks will melt by the C4. Suddenly there is now a new gameplay element where the attackers are defending their tanks and the defenders trying to destroy them. Which I find more interesting than the attackers leaving their tanks outside.
Now variaty is the spice of life and as such I love the bio-lab because it is so uniquely different. But only because it is different. To have every base completely tank free would become stale rather fast. Having each base be defended in a new and interesitng way will only be to the benefit of this game.
As a final answer to your question, make them strong everywhere, but give the defenders the option to overcome that strength in specific situations/locations.

My apologies for doubleposting.
A quick addendum on my last post: I did not forget 'cost' or 'cost of opportunity' as possible limiters on the usage of a tactic. But they do not influence the execution of said tactic only how often it can be attempted.

Lightening would be a terrible specialisation choice for a lone wolf player. Without support from friendly forces you are always going to be terribly vulnerable to something or other. What exactly the problem is with main battle tank being like a light tank only better in terms of armour and armaments is beyond me. Oh somebody might use this tank like another tank, those horrible people who only have one person in a tank, and so on. I just don't get it apart from it being a form of looking down on certain types of play as being morally or aesthetically inferior. Not having someone manning your secondary is not an advantage for people playing MBT. Thinking of ways to penalise people for not playing ps2 tanks like they were ps1 tanks is not the way forward in my opinion.

Whatever point he was making about ESF and Libs is for him to come back on. I don't think he had any points that were especially well argued or that convinced me of anything.

When I say lone wolfing, I meant as in soloing a vehicle by yourself, not going alone with no backup. Going with no backup in any vehicle will get you killed fast lol. Cinnamon so tell me, out of option A,B,C for 3/3 MBT's which one do you prefer? We cannot simply keep the current type of MBT unless you want them to be very weak and stay spammable. (Which I really do not want).
It's not so much that me and Colt would look down on those people trying to pull a 1/3 MBT, as we are trying to prevent a pure force multiplier scenario that piss infantry off. We're also trying to reduce gaint MBT zergs, not to be confused with armor columns, so that there aren't these giant congested metal blobs moving around and TK'ing themselves as they go.

I think that if there are any 3/3 tanks created or 2/2 tanks created then they should be totally new vehicles like new harasser.

Current tanks are not weak although there are annoying issues around them due to balance or game engine issues or things that we just have to deal with.

I don't a agree that forcing larger crews is the way to "fix" over use to the point where they can be made significantly more powerful. Eventually your new powerful toy will be something that the "zerg" all know about and will adapt into zerg forcing them to be nerfed once more. Because teaming up with other people is not a scarcity mechanic, it's what the game is already about for almost everyone. Recommend a real scarcity mechanic like how I did with them costing certs to pull and we can talk.

How could tanks possibly not be weak when every major battle I roll up to plays out similarly to this video (Even with Proper Infantry support).




Forcing crews is not that only way it would fix the problem, extending the cool down timer and limiting where they can be spawn would destroy most zergs. Because zergs roll out in mass once, then get destroyed without being able to pull new MBT's at the medium sized type facility they just capped in the process.

A bunch of uncoordinated tankers/zergers will not in mass all redeploy back at the WG or distance uncontested tech plant waiting for the force to build up before they roll out again (That is an outfit). Making tanks cost certs wouldn't work because you can get certs from repairing or even capturing a base, or even playing the game while an Alert is going on (Even if you're not on the same continent) Certs are to easy to get, so this would not be a good limiting factor. Just think of how this wouldn't work on Double XP weekends, there would be buffed MBT zergs everywhere. It also wouldn't be fair to make a high resources, high cool down timer, crewed vehicle, also cost certs when the infantry that killed the tank cost nothing to pull and will be in the battle in 10 seconds.

Just make those changes to the cool down and limiting spawn points by themselves then if they are so effective?

Fact is that what you shown is not what always happens when you pull a tank. In fact I would say that the video shows quite poor tank tactics. Running into a enemy position with ambush locations all around with no infantry screen? It's not good. In reality tanks combat is not a bed of roses. Yes, they have armour that is good against a lot of things but historically the experience of tank combat has been about people riding around in what they come to think of as death traps that can be instantly turned into an incinerator by enemy shells.

But like I said there are some issues where tanks seem a little disproportionately weak against some things more than others and also things like all the infantry missiles that fail to render due to range and the ESF that bring "death form above" with instant lag deaths with barely even any audio cue.

The current problem my good man, is tanks advancing with with an infantry will still get completely obliterated from afar from other infantry, and I've seen it time and time again. What happens when to massive forces go head to head on the battlefield, the MBT's get picked off as they move forward leaving only a infantry zerg in their wake. The video I showed would differ little if their were infantry beside that tank. Making things render is huge problem in the game, I don't think it will be something that will ever be addressed, so tanks must be buffed.

If it's so hard then how come it wasn't hard for me to pull this from my killboard?



It's true that in some circumstances tanks are more of a liability than an asset but that is how tanks should be. This is combined arms.

As for what SOE will get around to fixing, that is up to them not me.

While it is true that this is up to SOE. However...

Combined Arms would suggest that Vehicles support the Infantry to get to an objective or if the Vehicles can't get there that Infantry clears the way for them.

Now if we take this in the current state of the game...

In skirmish sized battles, Tanks are still strong and are a lot of power given to a single player, they still do their job very well in those smaller scale battles. I won't deny that, you can still go on serious kill streaks if you are getting ignored by the enemy Infantry.

Sadly, you can not depend on the enemy being stupid, any plan based on that just has to fail at some point. This point is were organized play in the form of Outfits come into play. Alongside with that come the big scale battles.

In big scale battles Tank's just get one or two volleyed to death by Infantry the second they try to advance. Now this than would suggest that Infantry than needs to clear the path for the Vehicles, which will only happen after the base has been pretty much taken and the Vehicles are just degraded to do spawn suppression by spaming big guns at 2-3 possible routes out of a spawn room... Does anybody actually has fun doing that?

I hope not, the actual role that Vehicles, especially Tanks should have, is to bring the Infantry up to the door that needs to be kicked down. Meaning everything between bases and outposts should be the reign of Vehicles.

While the actual bases should be designed in a way that Vehicles are either under very high risk to get blown up if they enter the Infantry's territory or that they can't get there in the first place.

What I would understand as true combined arms would be that Vehicles push the way from one base to another, start establishing Vehicle supremacy and begin siegeing the closed gates of a base/outpost, without any means to actually enter unless Infantry opens the gate for Vehicles.

And even than, Vehicles should be at a severe disadvantage entering an actual compound of structures that make a base/outpost if they do not have Infantry around them to clear the buildings along the very narrow and limited path within the base/outpost.

Suppressing the spawn should still be possible for Vehicles but only like 1-2 of the possible 10+ ways out of a spawn room. The actual objectives within a base, like cap points or generators should be partially reachable by Vehicles if there are multiple, but atleast one of them should be always only be reachable by Infantry, with a strait path from the defenders spawn room towards that point, uninterrupted by Vehicles(tunnels).

This ideal situation does not happen, Vehicles get blow up trying to push up, but once the way is pushed up they become to strong at suppressing the defenders from getting out of the spawn room.

So unless the solo MBT does vanish and base design alongside some other very needed balance changes for Infantry Classes, Air and Ground Vehicles come into play... you can not call PS2 a combined arms game!

I would even argue that BF3 does this way better than PS2 right now because they have a limited Vehicle spawn system and the actual Vehicles have a consistent role throughout the battle, but comparing PS2 to BF3 is like comparing apples and grapefruits because of the scale and limiters set in place.

I get these type of kill streaks all the time, but not in multiple platoon battles anymore. Try getting these kills against multiple platoons out in the open field with little to no cover. You cannot unless your enemy if extremely dumb, which I don't have the luxury of since there are many large organized outfits in every faction.

It made me chuckle that you got killed by an AV turret, that's one of my most common deaths in a tank these days.

Anyhow, we can't wait for SOE to make a whole new tank, that could be over a year away. That's why I suggested making use of the same MBT's for the new 3/3 MBT so they could implement it within a month.

In skirmish sized battles tanks are currently terrible. They are cleared up by air in next to no time at all.

They are also terrible when terrain is not in their favour. Say when infantry can either get too close and c4/mine/rocket or stay on a cliff a kilometre away firing down.

But when they get in the open they are good. In any large battle the survivability of anything is poor. But tanks can retain more survivability than some other classes. Barring times when they get farmed by engi turrets that nobody can be bothered to deal with or whatever. Which is a lot of the time admittedly.

Combined arms is about using the best traits of different units to cover for each other. To say that tanks are no use in combined arms to say that they have no good traits in this game not that they have crippling deficiencies like being a friendly piñata for half the clever fox experience hunting players in the game.

Tanks can get to a position fairly quickly and deal out a lot of damage at most ranges. They are not good at clearing cliffs of camping infantry. Air is good at that. They are not good at dealing with terrain that is not open with restricted vision. Infantry is good at that. So to say that combined arms means that tanks should be able survive ambushes and they should be able to clear closed terrain so that infantry can follow is not right imo. Combined arms means that tanks clear the way across open terrain and take out AAA. Tanks get into a flanking position and reign death on forces engaging infantry.

Vehicles reigning in terrain between bases depends on the terrain. Infantry and air might even have to take great care to protect tanks between bases just so they can get into a position where they can be useful. If SOE decide they hate open terrain and think that there should be places to ambush tanks everywhere on every map and the weapons to accomplish that are all amazing then yeah, tanks would be useless. Quadruple their armour and give them mandatory 3 man crews and that is the same.

As for spawn camping. I don't care, it annoys me that this is such a big issue that it became the main use for tanks and the main reason for them to be nerfed. Totally change the current spawn mechanic or something, geez.

As a NC, I really like the idea of teamplaying. It will take very many practice to make the perfect tank crew. I really like tanks in PS2, except the Magrider. As a Vanguard driver, I just laugh if i see a Magrider. Maybe that should be changed too.
And that teamplaying, I already can imagine it how it will work. Like in ArmA. The tanks really need more HP and they should be able to take a huge amount of damage. But I know how my tank works, so it is very rare that i get killed by rockets or AV turrets. The only thing is, that if you are alone, you are getting always attacked in the middle of nowhere by a ESF with rocket pods... That's letting me rage. The tanks actually are just a joke. I hope SOE will make it true. Maybe the driver gets like in Liberator a little machine gun. The gunner gets the normal turret(maybe with an additional machine gun) and the second gunner (in my opinion the "commander") should get a machine gun turret.

It's simply a matter of balance. Power is proportionate to how difficult it is to use and obtain. If any player can pick it up on a whim, it -HAS- to be weak because it will be spammed. If it's powerful then you get tank spam from beta, unstoppable. The rarer something is, the more powerful it can be. Lone players get to use the Lightning because it's weaker, if spammed it's no worse than current MBTs. Since it's easily spammed, it has to be balanced around spam.

MBTs would require more teamwork and a lot more effort to use, and as such would be more powerful. Because they'd be balanced around their own spam, which would be far less than Lightnings.

It's not about going "hurr mah guns strongah so i get moar killz". It's about adding dynamic gameplay. Adding things that are actually different and impact the battlefield differently. Do you want 3 Lightnings or a single MBT? That should be a choice to make. Both vehicles should have purpose, and they don't. A single player shouldn't wield the same power as multiple players. It's simply balance. If you can't understand that, then nothing I say will matter. If you think it's fine for lone wolves to possess significant amounts of power then clearly you weren't here when MBTs were three times as strong as they are now. Or when rocketpods annihilated everything in the game. One player can't have power, and many players are sick to death of the paper MBTs caused by them being one-man vehicles. We want a strong, powerful ground vehicle instead of two paper tanks.

Power is not proportionate to how difficult something is to use or obtain... Anyway your main argument for changing the seats is to make it easier to control the tank well. Changing resource cost and cooldown does nothing to stop people picking something up on a whim. It only stops people repeatedly using the vehicle when they deliberately want to use it, not on a whim but because they want to use it often. Even then with a team of people they can just take turns pulling.

2 crew tanks take teamwork. 2 tanks with one crew takes teamwork. Drive another vehicle like a sunderer with two gunners if you want, they are quite good you know, very good survivability and damage output. Petition for a new vehicle between MBT and sunderer or something. Ehh.

How much power should 2 or 3 players be able to have anyway? And what mechanics do we have to stop those super small teams just repeatedly coming back with new vehicles made from steel instead of paper that supposedly Ligtenings must have because they are one man vehicles? Please don't say resources or cooldowns. This has already gone on way too long. If you say nothing I'll just take it as read that you are arguing the same thing and just hope I believe you this time.

1.Petitioning for a new vehicle could take over a year to get implemented, and I don't want to have broken cardboard tank for that long. 2 crew tanks take minimal teamwork, teamwork which many people opt not to take part in since they get the big gun.

2.How do you stop the new tanks from coming back? By working together with a several instantly respawning HA's and maybe 2 instantly respawning, and zero cost LA's. You can do it with much cheaper, quickly spawning lightnings that take one person to man. How did you stop a liberator, you did by have multiple people pull AA Maxes, skyguards, or flying your own ESF up to get them. It sounds to me that you have an issue because you won't be able to solo a small team working as a team all by yourself.

3.Changing cooldowns and resources stops people from picking things up again and again on a whim as they move from base to base, as does restricting MBT's to only TechPlants and the Warpgate.