[Suggestion] The Ultimate Combined Arms Gameplay Thread

That's really just to bad and not a real excuse. If people want to fix this game and learn more about it they should take the time and invest 10 minutes to read this detailed, colorful, and well put together thread. If I can spend a month to create the thread with the help of numerous people then people should be willing to spend at least 10 minutes to read, and perhaps 5 minutes to post a thorough response. There is literally no TLDR, it's a matter of growing up and using the God given brain that most people are to lazy to activate to critically think and come up with proper responses . SOE is watching this thread, they've complimented it, and I'm maintaining it so it gets noticed by the community and more SOE staff. So people who want balance fixes in the game really need to speak up here because it's one of their best shots to do so.

I really think this is good idea overall, however I wouldn't be a fan of increasing the COF on Burster Maxes, making things in the game more inaccurate is just plain frustrating. I will say a range decrease on the Burster MAX would be very reasonable if the Skyguard would be made into less of a piece of junk though.
Great Suggestions SNAFUS

My issue isn't that it's tl;dr, but when people make these huge mega compilation posts I can't thumbs up ideas that I like. I only thumbed up the OP cause I agreed with or wouldn't mind all of those changes. I didn't like a few of the tank or air ones so I didn't like either. It'de be nice if they addressed that or allowed better modding tools. (Thumbing up of individual bullets or allowing us to temporarily close people from posting while we submit each idea as a seperate post)

Well you could thumb up every post that contains something you like, and then highlight which specific parts you disagree with so I could maturely discuss them with you or whoever it is. I made such a big compilation thread partially because maintaining 3 smaller threads split between the vehicle and gameplay subsections would be a major hassle for me to deal with at once.

It's still an issue. Look at the Roadmap. There are Plenty of ideas in the galaxy roadmap that are good but they're bunch with other silly things like "Galaxy Nukes" so I have to thumb it down. If it gets 200 thumbs up SOE's gonna think people also want that even if they make a comment that's buried 20 pages later saying "I dont like the nuke idea"

SPEAKING OF WHICH, gotta go do my bi-weekly thumbing down of any comment on the Galaxy Roadmap that has the word "bombs" or "bomber" in it brb!

Lol, I see your point now, sorry to hear about that.

Lol, yeah, if more people engaged their brains, then we wouldnt see 80% of the threads we do. Tanks most likely wouldnt have been nerfed in the first place because people would have been like: "hmm, maybe I should'nt stick my human face in front of that 70 ton monster that can turn me into dust particles".

TLDR, yeah, people call that on far to many posts...

Funny how you couldn't find a video of NC outfit killing air and tanks with our Empire specific launchers . The vs was by far the funniest one it made me LOL a lot. But no if they do this EVERYONE will use tanks and air which will cause a major fuken problem sorry I have to disagree with you.

I thought it was pretty obvious why I couldn't find a NC outfit recording them massacring armor. Why? Because all there would be to watch is a bunch of motionless NC HA's inside a room, behind a wall, or behind a hill while little kill messages appeared at the top of the screen. That's pretty darn boring to record since you can't easily record where each missile is going, or watch everyone outfit members rocket tv screens. At least the Striker and Lancer have to expose themselves so they might as well record as they camp at high outside vantage points to make use of the insane range they have. If NC players tried to do that it would dumb, because they wouldn't be using the most valuable part of the weapon, which is hiding behind cover while you shoot.

You're worried about Tanks and Air having a presence in big battles besides to be farmed for certs by infantry? Well that's unfortunate, because that can't continue if this game is going to be called a combine arms game. Secondly, my ideas for MBT's cuts down if not destroys the ability to zerg without minor coordination and teamwork since the MBT's will require at least 2/3 to operate effectively. Galaxies need to be brought back because they used to be a really cool thing to see on the front lines of the battle field and they are majorly a transport role vehicle. Liberators need a minor armor/health buff so at least the higher skilled users can enter a big battle for a few minutes before needing to repair. A major overhaul needs to be done on the Liberator, but a minor health/armor buff will have to do for the time being.

This is quite a monster of a thread. Saw lots of really good things on the last few/first few pages—skipped the rest

So ... I'll try to keep it short.

First off … what I miss most about how tanks used to be is being effective. I’m in a pretty active outfit, and we used to regularly pull amour to do whatever it was that we needed to do. This isn’t happening anymore. Tanks aren’t good at killing infantry, and they’re food for long range AV options and air more often than not. So, when the choice is to drive 1k with tanks to the next and bombard it, or get galaxies, it’ll always be the latter as tanks don’t provide much of a tangible benefit to whatever the goal is we’re trying to achieve. This, I think, is the main problem right now. The squishiness combined with infantry being better at almost every task leads to an ‘identity crisis’.

In terms of design, I do think that tanks shouldn’t have too much of a place inside actual bases (amp stations, etc.), but should dominate on the open field, in smaller bases and at tasks like hunting sunderers down and locking down chokepoints, etc.

Anyway, on to the details!

Air v Tank balance
Only thing that should change is the instant death by rocket-pods to the rear. Increase to 1.5-2 mags. Alternatively, change the required angle to make a rear hit to 20 degrees or less, making it very risky for pod users to do a strafing run (with 20 degrees, they shouldn't be more than 5-10m above the ground). Alternatively, the bum shot multiplier could be played around with.

Three man MBTs:
I want a gun. I've spent 10k certs on my magrider, and I don't want to be a taxi driver. I also don't care for infantry hunting at all, so a kobalt wouldn't be useful at all for me. I feel quite strongly about this and wouldn't be happy with losing the ability to actively hunt and shoot.

I quite liked Compass' suggestion on modifying tank effectiveness based on the number of people that are in the tank. I already regard my mag as a pure team-vehicle to the extent that I won't leave the base/vehicle bay until I have a gunner. Thankfully, that happens pretty quickly most of the time. From the mined data we know that Magriders apparently do have an easier time getting gunners, so this is something that should be fixed, which leads into the next point.

MBT survivability:
Major issue. The proliferation of long range AV weaponry increased the number of unpreventable (surprise) instagibs massively, which is horrible in terms of gameplay. We can tackle the issue in a couple of ways: increase the HP and/or resistances of tanks, add more defensive features, nerf the offending weapons (AV Mana needs a nerf, apart from that ... not sure yet).
The second option could synergize with promoting fully crewed MBTs. The current defensive options are smoke and single armor plates. As a VS, I have no choice but to have maxed smoke on my tank when fighting TR (they've adopted the lock-ons en masse due to our mobility, I guess), so I’d love to see this become a separate slot. Further options like energy diffusers (anti lancer), or an ECM field (anti mana and phoenix) could be added, with the caveat being that the slots associated with these defensive measures only become available when a second or third gunner is present. Ideally, the gunners should also trigger the measures.

Someone suggested to add rechargeable shields to tanks to allow absorbing a number of hits without an immediate need for repairs/give the driver the ability to adjust the facing more reliably and deal with the threat. The idea could have potential.

Overall, a combined approach might be best. The random instagibs are the single biggest grievance with the current tanks, and things need to change for MBTs to have a role on the battlefield. Your outlined proposal might be a bit too singular and extreme (20 dumbfires .. heh), but I do think that large-scale changes are needed.

Tank v Infantry balance:
This one’s tricky. As I said, I think that tanks should dominate the open field and chokepoints and such. However .. it currently takes me 2 - 3 splash hits to kill a trooper. The massive protection flak provides make it really hard to kill infantry with anything but a direct hit. A miss is punished with a 4 second reload on all tanks but the prowler (which is incidentally still the best AI tank by quite a margin). I largely agree with your suggestions, but a balance must be struck. Tanks should never return to the level of the pre-nerf prowler, but infantry should also never feel encouraged to run head-on toward a tank to place c4 or mines on it.
Suggestions:
Revert the reload increase on HE primaries. It made the magrider and vanguard HEs beyond useless.
Outer splash needs a slight increase, and inner splash needs to be 1-2m (slightly more than now, not as high as it used to be).

Goal: It should never take 12 seconds to kill a single infantry trooper due to him jumping up and repeatedly evading direct hits (but taking inner splash hits). In my opinion, two inner splash hits should kill reliably. For the prowler, that’d be 3 shots (1 reload).

Tank guns:
AP is only really worth it for Vanguards, and HE isn't worth it for any tank. AP needs to become more useful across the board as the trade-off for equipping it is absolutely massive. Problem is, within the current system there isn't much room for further buffing vanguard or prowler AP. With increased health or resists, a damage buff could work, however.
HEAT is generally in the good place, except maybe with the prowler. It does absolutely massive amounts of damage, which makes AP completely useless on the prowler (in lockdown, it outdamages a 2/2 magrider by a bit ... which is silly). Also, the Magrider now has the worst drop of all tanks on its primaries. This should be addressed, I think.

Well, so much for that. As you see, I mostly agree with the things being said here. The two main issues are infantry running toward tanks per default atm, and tanks dying almost instantly to long-range weaponry they can’t do anything about.

Good analysis from the OP, and a lot.of the next 6 pages were solid too. Didn't have the patience to get to page 17, I'm afraid. My thoughts:

I have a pretty tricked out lightning that I rarely pull anymore because of the HEAT nerf and the massive amount of HA lock on spam. I do believe that range limitations might help, but active armor upgrades as suggested here and in other threads are probably almost critical. I'm not sure if y'all are familiar with reactive armor, but it's bolted over regular armor and blows on impact. Perhaps a cert option for ERA that is directional and defeats 4-5 rockets? I'm not sure, but that fact of the matter is that I hardly ever pull my lightning anymore. I do not believe the current level of tank balance is as intended.

I will say this: ESF balance isn't as bad as you perceive. With the amount of AA that exists, it is tremendously hard to line up the shot on a back of a tank. If the devs do decide that ESFs are too effective at ground attack - a decision I would disagree with - a reasonable solution would be to change the "rear zone" of the tank. The center 30 degrees of the rear retain the current damage model, and the 30 degrees on either side of that are somewhat diminished to allow survival of tanks when hit at that angle.

All this js symptom related. The overbuff of HAs was a direct result of tanks farming infantry ... which brings us to the root cause: base design. I'm not sure why the devs didn't expand base defense further after the spawn room redesign. Everybody loved it. LOVED. They should continue that trend and make the bases more infantry friendly and you don't have to overbuff HA rocket spam.

This was a really detailed response Qaz, I love posts such as these. Regarding what you posted.

Air vs Tank- I believe you're saying that the new and improved tanks should require 1.5-2 full salvos to the rear to be destroyed? This will workout fine if tanks are much less common on the battlefield since ESF's who continue to try to rocketpod MBT's will have fewer targets to focus on and thus will likely double or triple team a single MBT. I like your idea of reducing the angle ESF's have to be to get the critical hit will be good, it will reward good pilots who are willing to take risks while at the same time reduce the amount of lolpodders who just throw their ESF's at MBT's for a quick kill.

Three Man MBT's: I also liked Compass's ideas and regard it to be the best idea to replace option B with. As long as the reload time is significantly increased for a person 1/3 manning their MBT this would balance it out greatly. I understand where current drivers are coming from who have invested 5-10K in their MBT.

MBT Surviveability: I completely agree with all of this, and your suggestions for additional utilty slots is also something I agree with greatly. The Tanker Aesir has a super indepth and very colorful amount of ideas for new MBT utilities, but I believe he's going to wait until MBT's are fixed till he posts about it. I don't believe my proposed changes of 20 dumbfires is to extreme in any way, shape, or form. These new MBT's will cost much more resources, have a bigger cooldown now, are strictly team vehicles, and will only spawn at tech plants and the warp gate. In addition there will be fewer MBT's on the battlefield so in bigger battles guess how many striker rockets will be going at your Magrider now?

Tank v Infantry balance: Increased based defense for infantry are a definite must. Most infantry are already wearing high levels of Flak armor so we must take this into consideration when designing overall splash damage. I agree that outer splash radius on HEAT needs to be 2m larger and the inner splash radius circle needs to about 1.5m instead of what it is now. A shell landing immediately next to an infantry, such as at their feet, needs to kill them regardless of faction of tank it is. I do think the outer splash radius splash damage needs to differ between the Prowler and other MBT's. Outer splash should kill an infantry in 2 hits for the Magrider or Vanguard, and in 3 hits for the Prowler. This still promotes aiming, and doesn't allow people with crap aim to dominate as it was with the pre-nerf Prowler.

AP gun damage: Once tank health is buffed it will be reasonable to buff AP turret damage. As of now MBT's are too weak to implement this change.

Overall this was a really great post Qaz, I really appreciated the amount of detail you put into it, and feel free to continue discussing your ideas if you have more to share.

Thanks for taking the time for the detailed response Marlboro Man, and you even read 6 additional pages into the thread!

1. I'm pretty familiar with reactive armor, but I think it should come as a defense or special utility on top of the already 20 base dumbfire rockets to the front of the MBT as I suggested. I actually find pulling a Lightning nets you a longer life than a MBT. I don't know if it's just Mattherson but people seem to ignore my Lightning, where as infantry run at my Prowler with tank mines and C4.

2. I honestly don't think it's that hard for an ESF to do, when I'm rolling in a platoon I reguallrily see level 60-100 pilots swooping it, popping a tank in under two seconds before flying off smoking to repair and then they try to rinse and repeat from different angles. All an ESF has to do is get below 45 degrees behind an occupied tank, not hard to do, and then any rocket that hits any part of the tank become a critical hit. The AA rocketspam scenario is out of hand against ESF's sure, and AA Max stats should be replaced with the Skyguard as well.

3. Farming infantry in a spawn of a lost battle hasn't really changed, what has changed is infantry can now out snipe tanks, and can deal more damage to tanks than tanks can do to each other. Further improvements in base designs would be greatly appreciated, and many ideas have been posted on the forums. Truth be told though, infantry running out in the open with no cover to fire a rocket at my tank die the exact same as they did prenerf splash

Thanks again for your cool reactive armor suggestion and detailed feedback Marlboro Man, feel free to discuss any other cool ideas you might have to share in this thread too.

For Planetside 2 to have a future, SOE really needs to take this thread to heart.

I don't think MBT's should get 3 guns. A 3/3 mbt should have one main turret gunner, one secondary gunner. The driver should just drive, the way it was in PS1.

Another suggestion, one that would make vehicles vastly less spammed IMHO: the timer cooldown for pulling one should start when the vehicles dies, not when it's first pulled.

I also disagree with your suggestion for an armor buff to the lib. A skilled 3/3 liberator with the tank buster and a decent gunner can easily take on ESFs. Giving them an additional buff would reduce or even make impossible the ESFs anti-air role.

Similarly, buffing galaxy armor would turn them into untouchable flying fortresses, especially given the deadly anti-air guns you can stack on the galaxy. Your suggestions would completely obsolete the ESF as a threat in the air (I fully agree that the ESFs anti-ground role should be nerfed by giving penalties to AB for rocket podders btw).

So what's the solution?

For the galaxy; I think the problem with galaxies isn't the health, or armor per se. It's that, usually if I want to get to a fight when I'm solo, I can often deploy hop over to where I need to go. In large outfits, galaxies aren't underutilized at all. You frequently see large organized outfits use them to bring their platoons over. Galaxies are fine as they are.

For the liberator; they need to be completely reworked. Survivability buffs would see them turn into the shredding everything skygods they were at launch. That SOE made them into gunship instead of a bomber (like PS1) was a huge mistake. In order to find a middle ground between uselessness and overpoweredness, the way it functions should be changed. Turn it back into the bomber it was in PS1; buff its health, give it a high damaging payload; BUT, it can only dump its payload once and then has to run back to base to refuel. An actual bomber that makes bombing runs instead of a wrecking ball that hovers over a fight and ruins it for infantry by gunning over and over and over with huge ammo.

Well you're definitely entitled to that opinion, but I think that would be incredibly boring for most people to do. If there isn't at least a flash grade weapon on the tank like a Cobalt or a Coaxial gun for the driver it would turn a ton of people away from MBT's including myself.

This would mean that cool down timers would have to be dramatically reduced for people that cert into the acquisition timer, but yes this is very possible.

The Galaxy is definitely not okay, you have to look no further than the Galaxy V2 Thread then to see a massive amount of unhappy galaxy pilots. It needs to be able to be used by pubs who want to take other giant groups of pubs to the big battles, as was done in Beta.

I completely agree that the liberator needs to be completely reworked, but it needs to be given a flak resistance buff at the minimum in the meantime so they can enter large battles again ya know?

It'll be impossible to relate to all points of all 17 pages, so I apologize if I miss anything.

1. Combined Arms, the definition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_arms

In other words, it's using Rock to kill enemy Scissors while friendly Scissors defend Rock against enemy Paper.

In reality this works because laws of physics force different units to have different strengths and weaknesses:

If it's light enough to fly, it ain't going to fly after getting blown up (yes, planes are generally fragile).

If it's heavy enough to get blown up repeatedly and keep going and going (anything that doesn't penetrate a tank's armor will not impress it much) it ain't going to move around the battlefield at Mach 2.5, delivering a bomb or 10 where it's needed ASAP.

If it's too big to enter a building, it won't take a building. If it's too heavy to go climbing mountains, it won't climb them. If it won't fit in a tunnel, it ain't entering, end of story- leaving lots of room for infantry to play around.

In PS 2, to reflect this:

Airplanes need to be fragile, relying on not getting hit at all to survive (as such at least some forms of AA need to kill a fighter in 4 seconds flat- I'm looking at the SG here, the MAX is fine at 6-7 sec TTK).

If it was up to me, the A2A missiles would have a turn rate of a stock Liberator, and it would be up to the pilot to lock on and then launch already leading the missile in the right direction to compensate for its limited maneuverability. They'd become totally useless in dogfights.

Then they could get a nice @$$ damage buff and become nearly 1 hit killers against pilots who choose to hover, or 3-4 hit killers vs Liberators- provided they hit. They should also be able to get dumbfired and the user should select firing mode- dumb or guided.

That way the Tomcats are useful against air targets, avoidable by just about anyone but a Galaxy, and airplanes who select the "lolpodding" modus operandi get spanked by AA quickly.
Breaker Rockets are accurate to 500+ meters, and it's possible to make a strafing run at 150 km/h in a Reaver provided one can aim, so pilots would either learn to fly or would need to stay away from AA completely.

Tanks need to be immune to much more than just small arms.
This should be based on the side it's getting hit from as well, so frontally only a few select weapons should touch a tank, and all the so called "general purpose" designed to counter a multitude of vehicles would pretty much burn the paint off a tank's frontal armor and that's it.
All anti infantry explosives should fare the same way vs side armor, so farewell HE spamming a tank in the side with a Bulldog.

Anti vehicle rounds, other than AP shells, should also get a bonus penalty when hitting frontal armor (so Decimators, stock bazookas, HEAT rounds, AV turret missiles and other weapons determined to be anti-tank would do reduced damage, could be as much as 33-50% less).
General duty weapons such as Annihilators, ESRL's, fighter nose cannons, Zephers or Basilisks would get the same bonus penalty for side hits.

Setting the rear hit zone from 120% damage multiplier to 100% would help a bit against lolpodders, but such an attack should still kill if the aircraft lands nearly each rocket on target (with the SG killing ESFs a bit quicker, they'd be limited to a high speed strafing/diving run or sniping, so if they manage to do it right, they deserve the kill).

Top armor should be unchanged- same threats do same damage, no bonus resistance to anything.

These changes allow tankers who know how to play to have staying power, but the ones that allow an attack from behind to still get killed easily- or even very easily, considering what I think could help infantry...

Infantry needs more places where vehicles cannot enter (or can but become targets unsupported). PS 2 needs more cities, complete with sewer/subway systems, buildings tall as Tech Plants, basements and other areas only MAX units or smaller could access.
These built up areas should be designed so that it's possible to move around without getting up to the surface, to give immunity to vehicles, while allowing to set up AA nests in skyscrapers or tank traps on the streets- forcing infantry to take building after building and tunnel after tunnel while vehicles can only follow along.

There's also a lack of forests, jungles and other infantry friendly areas.

Current facilities would also benefit from having 3 control points- 2 of which would be somewhere underground.
Shield generators could also be moved underground in some cases, and the outside generators could protect the underground from attacks giving defenders a bit of time to organize.


With these changes, tanks become more suited for being used over longer ranges in open terrain, and they gain the ability to do overrun attacks, but are unable to determine the battle over a large base on their own (and in fact a force of mostly vehicles would be at a disadvantage).

Air will be the high speed, high firepower but low durability style unit.
Liberators can still bomb tanks into bits, ESFs can still dive bomb or strafe effectively (except frontally), so air retains the high killing power that it is meant to have. Both still farm infantry. Both need to either hunt down AA as top priority, or even have ground units take it out for them.

Infantry, on the other hand, have to choose if they want to damage tanks frontally or damage just about everything else.
They'd need very serious firepower to stop tanks out in the open (unless they ambush/maneuver and hit armor that is not in the front), but enjoy either great advantages or simply total immunity vs vehicles in many areas that must be conquered to take a base.

And finally- rarity and others:

Repair tools need to work at half their current rate and overheat 2x quicker, a vehicle should have to fall back to repair and be out of action for quite some time rather than ducking behind the nearest hill for 15 seconds.

The next thing is: How to keep vehicles out of the hands of the zerglings, while allowing the dedicated pilots and tankers to still spawn their own?

I suggest giving a timer for terminals.
It spawned a Flash? Next vehicle in 10 seconds.
Spawned a Lightning? Next vehicle in 30 seconds.
Sundy? Next vehicle in 30 seconds.
MBT? Well, the nanites are out for lunch. They'll get back to work in 2 minutes though.

Vehicles should also spawn in a priority list, so if a person that's 40th in line wants a Flash, he or she gets it right after the next vehicle gets spawned, all Lightnings are behind Flashes and all Sundies are behind Lightnings, with MBTs being moved to the end of the line.

Similar rules should apply for planes:

1 ESF per 45 seconds, 1 Liberator per 2.5 minutes (air gets into combat much quicker, so this longer wait would be compensated for).

How does this introduce scarcity?
Who would want to wait a full half hour (plus whatever time needed to spawn Flashes, Lightnings and Sundies) to form a zerg of 30 MBTs in a base with 2 tank terminals?

The dedicated tankers will go to another base and drive, but the ones who want quick transportation can get on a bus or spawn a Flash much quicker.

Those who choose to spawn tanks at the base and move on will arrive in combat at a rate of 1 per minute- which is not overwhelming at all, but is a steady and sustained flow to keep the action going.

That's quite the post, I like most of your very well thought out approaches to the issues.

The only problem I see are the cities ... they won't happen anytime soon. Sure they are improving base designs right now on the testservers to count as small villages(they are adding more and more exterior buildings connected via catwalks or teleporters), but it sadly won't be enough to justify the huge defense boost on Tanks you suggested.

Everything else.. well I like it. The vehicle spawn system is a very unique approach and would work if the base design supports the idea. What I mainly mean is bases with 3 outposts around it.

They all got upgraded the mini bases of their own on the testservers, sometimes even with gates towards the main facility! And thus they all also got Vehicle terminals, which also means those would need to go. Which is a Idea I like because this supports the defender and increases the value of Vehicles that are being brought up to the base from the outside.

Also, the way they extend the current bases patch by patch with their now always 3 surrounding mini outposts on the testserver almost creates mini cities. It must not be directly tunnels, the new walls segments and screening between all the buildings, if placed correctly could be used to cover Infantry movement between those buildings, only leaving one, possible three paths inside the base for Tanks to pass through. And those paths should be very narrow so you only get 2 Prowlers besides each other... and that's it.

It would create ambush points in the lot's! And if you set the entire complex so up that the 3 outpost bases are the only gates to enter for anyone on the ground, except LA's and Gal drops... it would actually make drops viable again to take certain generators or other high value objectives inside the complex.

One can only dream ...