[Suggestion] The Ultimate Combined Arms Gameplay Thread

There is one severed flaw in your concept, Tanks right now are a tool that does no longer properly work, that's why it got abandoned and the number of Tank's has drastically dropped as a result.

If something becomes useless, less and less players will use it, while other tools that are useful will be used more instead. Tanks are supposed to fight other Tanks and clearing the way for Infantry, this no longer really happens, Infantry clears it's own way by deploying Sundy's along the way and spawning from their.

Also PRG's don't kill Tank's they at best disable it, modern Tank's against the average modern handheld light AV weapon will at best get it's optics or tracks destroyed ... and AT mines.. lol? At best a detrack but not a complete blow up.

Tank's already have the killing utility in form of the Kobalt to easily murder Infantry but in open fields you can not get within range to use it and in close range you just get flanked to death. The durability buff has to happen, but not because MBT's directly need it but because Tanks from this suggestion are only really usable with atleast 2 Players in them.(There will also be less Tank's on the fields as a result!)

You seem to be the troll which Video was false evidence? I would like to know.

OP raises some very troubling issues, yes, but the changes porposed sound iffy. Vehicles are way to spammable to make them harder to kill (especially big no goes to Liberator survivability increase).

About the RL debate:

a). It is a game.

b). Infantry don't go anywhere without anti-tank options in modern armies (and quite effective ones, none of that "it only disables tanks" BS). You just don't see that much in documentaries made about more recent armed conflicts because they are all lopsided (i.e. one side doesn't have armor and air at all).

c). All of that "air superiority is king" and "tanks spearhead the frontline" rubbish got millions of people killed during WWII, Vietnam, Afghanistan and so on. Maybe you are gonna bring up cavalry charges next? Get real. Boots on the ground win wars, everything else are just tools to help them do it, not the other way around.

d). If we are gonna bring missile costs into this, then what's about those magical field repair tools that don't run out, ammo towers and sunderers with flat-out unlimited reloads for all weaponry in them?

+1 to 3/3 crewed MBTs.

The number of tanks should not be even nearly as big as we see it in the game at the moment. People spam tanks. Also, they are not useless, if used properly. People use them for farming, dumb farming became harder. When people use them to protect their sunderer or to deny enemy passage to capture points -- they are perfectly useful.

Last time I was with mechanized Infantry, which is 2 years ago... We only had PAR's which are light AV weapons and only 1 per squad, those will at best take out a T-72 from the side, rear or top and if he has ERA we would need HEAT-T(andem) ammo to counter that.

Only every 3-4 Squads was one heavy AV weapon deployed, because they are expensive as hell. And the very latest MBT's actually already have counters for those while there are being new counters being developed to counter the new counters. It's constant back and forth.

Handheld Launchers that can effectively take out an up to date MBT are very very rare and MBT's have now special equipment for Urban Warfare which are not practical for field battle but strongly increase survival rates of MBT's against most forms of handheld Launchers.

All the other thinks you say are more or less correct. Infantry in the end captures the points, but have you seen the new outline for outpost on the testservers? How everything get's sealed of from Vehicle Combat?

Here a small snip of that....

Vehicles are supposed to rule towards the next base and ensure Infantry get's there in one piece but from there Infantry has to do it's job with very limited support from Vehicles.

The concerns raised are there and need to be addressed, those are all suggestions and no "THIS MUST HAPPEN"-demand. You got a better idea to address certain issues? Out with it! We need solutions and feedback to shape a proper request as a community or that SOE atleast takes notice in the issues.

Is it because it's beautiful, regal and spends a lot of money but it's useless at anything other than having babies?

The OP want's to reduce Tank Spam, have you read his MBT section? There should be less Tank's but those should be crewed and be able to lead to charge between bases/outposts.

Vids:
So is the Striker any good?
The Striker is not the problem. The problem is, that the base is heavily defended and that the attackers cant reach it but keep trying. You can make a similar vid with 20 ESF or 20 Tanks defending the base and change the name of the vid just to get blizzering people like it and complain how op they are. You dont see the relation HOW many are attacking and HOW many are defending. Maybe its 80 TR defending vs. 30 attakers. It doesnot matter if you use Striker or not. Btw: Where are the enemy snipers. You cant win with vehicels against Striker, use infantry!

Pandora Project on the rock
Its a funny idea. Nothing more. They cant really keep attakers from taking bases while they stay on the rock. They do annoy people driving around in range of their weapons. Thats it. You can easily counter it with a few Liberators or Light Assaults attacking. Seen is on my server from time to time. Nobody cares.

The Cheese Express
This problem has been addressed by the devs already.

PS2Video_0036
Every Tank can regonize by the hit indicator where the dmg comes from. A single infiltrator with a sniper or an ESF pilot could have solved the situation. Its there fault that they die to the Engi AV turret. The AV turret is clearly not the problem.

Directional armor nonsense
Has been discussed elsewhere already. For performance issues thats how they do it. Show me video under real / live firing situation where you aim for the tank turret (from range) and actually hit it. These situations are so damn rare that you dont need to care about.

RAWKIT PODS
The tank has an AntiTank Turret on the top. He scans for ground targets. He is killed by an air vehicel. With an Anti Air Gun on the top and some battle awereness he would see the enemy ESF earlier. Told the driver to turn the tank or shot at the ESF to scare him away (works very well with AA gun).



So whats left of all the evidence how OP everything and how weak armor is?? NOTHING! Its just an attempt to convince the playerbase that tanks need a buff. They dont!

Furthermore: You check EliteEskimo players stats
https://players.planetside2.com/#!/5428010618040867281/

4k+ kills with prowler
despite the 400 kills with Infantry class MAX and despite the 170 kills with anti tank mines
Less than 200 kills with infantry weapons! (this guy is BR 46)
and one loosy kill with the mosquito!
He is a tank maniac. A sitting duck who wants more easy kills, thats why he wants tank > everything!

Told you. EliteEskimo is a troll. PROVED!

The problem is you can't get 20 Tanks on a single Landing pad, Infantry scales way better in big battles than anything, while Vehicles rule in the small skirmishes. 20 Tanks will run into each other, they have collision, Infantry don't.

Air can stack a little bit higher because they have more room to operate within, but still do not stack as good, Bursters take a lot less place and 1 Bruster = 1 ESF | 2 Brusters = 1 Lib. Menpower wise this would negate each other, would there not be the issue that Air get's seen first and that there are also lock on launchers into this fray.

But what if the base has a natural elevation platform, like Indar excavation or every Biolab? They had Bursters, and those Launchers can also engage Liberators, they are going to see the Lib's first. This can be used to keep Sundy's from a base, thus changing the flow of reinforcements for the attacker.

This was not about the Infantry.. this was about how maneuvering of the Phoenix works and that they now hunt down Tanks, which are several times bigger than Infantry.

It is the problem if you can not see it, but it can see you. There should be either a sound warning in form of the approaching missile, which I do get from a Phoenix by the way. Or a Warning that somebody point's a guiding laser at me, lock on missiles get detected this way, why not the AV Mana turret?

The problem is that the Tank's are the only Vehicles with that issue, a detailed damage model that works(unlike BF3...) would be somewhat nice but is not needed or requested here. What is requested here is that the weakspot get's some increase in Armor Value, meaning instead of taking 120% damage you take 60% damage there as an example.

Good pilots are not scared by a Walker or Ranger, they sill make the pass because this means one less gun on the field firing at them, this ties into the directional damage issue that the rear is to weak.

Everything because I just made your arguments that did not relate to the text in context to the Videos non valid.

What have his stats to do with the suggestion? Didn't higby say that they want people to be dedicated Tankers or Pilots? I see no issue with him being a major Tanker.

And if you look exactly, this MBT changes for option A take away the maingun from him ... why would he suggest this if he want's to farm the kills?

This not my direct issue but I that's how I think ...

Your nitpicking only shows that you are the true troll here.

You are a troll too. One tank maniac supports the other one. Seriously! Why cant people like you not stop trying to unbalance the game?

Aesir player stats:
https://players.planetside2.com/#!/5428010618035059489/

2000 kills as a vanguard
177 as ESF pilot
around 1200 kills as infantry

Stop ruin the game by telling the untruth to everyone about how worse tanks are! Just because you want more and more kills and get them easier and become untouchable!

OP, i a sorry but you just ask for heavily nerfs to infantry play style, and vehicle buffs. Not going to happen, ofc if you lone wolfing with your vehicle you will die fats. But, going with "the crowd" will make sure that lock on enemies are supressed, aircraft is dettered, and you can use your vehicle a bit longer.

I played all 3 facets of the game, how does this make me a Tank maniac, yeah I prefer Tanks but Infantry right now is broken. Those issues exist. I do not know on what low pop sever you seem to play that you see everything balanced, but on the high pop servers Infantry dominates.

In small skirmish sized battles Vehicles are fine, sometimes even to strong if you consider the power a 1/2 MBT gives to a single player.

But the addressed issues are big zerg fights... which we will see more of after the Lattice has been introduced.

Well, a mechanized infantry platoon in Soviet army had about double that AV weapons. In 1970s. They did get to contend with Germany, France and China on their ground borders after all. It didn't get any less in quantity or quality since that time - new anti-tank ammunitions and weapons are developed to fuel the arms race.

I'm not seeing anything 'sealed' from vehicles in those bases, unfortunately. And that's the reason that vehicles get nerfed time and time again - because it is quick and dirty fix to spawnroom - cappoint routes being campable as all hell. And they are still very much open. Those meagre fences may help when the base is on a hill, but when it has overlooking heights (or Vanu forbid, sits in a crater), defenders are very much toast. Turret placements have a bit of cover now though, so there is progress at least.

When that ideal "Vehicles help infantry reach and lockdown the base, then it's all infantry combat only" is actually reached, then that atrocious 240% damage multiplier will be changed, not before.

As for invisble AV turrets rockets, rocketpod ~1 sec MBT kills, lock-on rampage issues, I'm not sure what devs are doing. The solutions seem clear (cut the range until render distance can actually support them, force rocket pods to do non-directional damage; make them anti-armor only but raise the base damage; remove ammocount certs entirely and make the pods' capacity conform to the actual number of rockets on the model; throw out lock-on mechanics and make viable AV options with manual operation instead) but the dev team are silient and don't even seem to acknowledge the problems at hand.

Infantry is not broken! Infantry requires more skill than shelling rounds from far away or piloting your ESF with rocket pods.

You have to understand that tanks cant be OP all the time, in every situation, day and night, attack and defend...

Same situation with all the infantry weapons. Range goes from Short to Long.

You wont win a lot fights with a sniper rifle in CQC. Right?!

So why do people think they should be able to do this with a tank??? Be superior in every situation?

This is just a whine thread by a tank driver.

I still see a lot of tanks and they regularly kill me. Vehicles are still easy to get multiple kills with.
The only time I can single-handedly kill a tank if:
- tank is alone with no infantry support
- driver does not retreat when damaged
- driver comes into a base and wants to farm infantry

Bases are still locked down by tank zerg. Tanks also spam near infinite ammo and can repair at will with their engineer driver.

Guess what, tanks need to use combined arm tactics as well, without supporting infantry they should be bad. They should also use proper tank tactics:
- up to hillside, fire at enemy then retreat
- keyhole shooting, exposing the tank only to have a narrow line of sight towards target

Biggest problem of the game now is that we have 1 or 2 big zerg fights and everything else is practically empty. We need fights that have 12-24 people on 1 side, instead of the current choice 100+ people zerg or 6 people fighting for an outpost.This would also improve FPS and player experience. In a big zerg, if everyone concentrates on 1 target, it is inevitable that vehicles die very easily. Smaller fights in general would improve that.

Where are we requesting to be superior in every situation? Tanks should be a very big counter to Infantry in the open fields, while Infantry should have a very high chance to destroy Tanks at bases.

Bases should also be designed that Infantry has the upper hand there by nature. Which right now is not really the chase, even the changes from the Testserver are not enough but again those are not finished yet, because the new Fortress south of Saurva is impossible for ground Vehicles.

This game, step by step get's closer to being PS1 again, which I might add is good!

The Tank but also the rocket spam has the go down, which is in the OP's suggestion. Making the fights smaller actually is a bad idea, this will only turn the game into BF3 with endless rounds... like it already is.

PlanetSide should be different from all those 16-64 player games... it's major selling point is the scale and the feature of combined arms, look at the official trailers.

There are some things I would do different than OP but still, the issues exist.

While I like most of the Air changes for example... I do not directly like the Liberator defense buff.

The defense of the Liberator should be more "burst"-like, meaning it should allow to Liberator to operate in hot zones for a period of time, but that period should stay the same in smaller scale battles and bigger scale battles.

So my Idea would be instead of higher armor overall, the Liberator should have limited ammo flares with no or very little cooldown, but also only a chance of 30-50% to fool the missile and should not make it immune to further lock ons. Meaning you have 20-30 flares to make 1-2 successful passes on a base.

The other thing would be composite Armor for FLAK, it should strongly increase FLAK resistance but should deplete over the time it's being hit and be destroyed after like 40-50 seconds under fire. And should be slowly replaced on ammo pads.

This way Liberators can fight in the big battles without being broken in the smaller battles, it's just an idea...

Bases should also be more sealed of for Vehicles, making them more defensible against them. But once the main gate has been breached Vehicles should still assist under a very high risk of getting knocked out by Infantry.

Like the current Amp stations are set up, only that the spawn building should be sealed off even more and Vehicles can only assist on the way to build were the SCU is in or were the cap point is.

Yes but those infantry are also far, far more spread out. Infantry secure locations. If you send a couple tanks into a city, for example. Those tanks will be in one spot, wherever they happen to be. If you send three battalions of infantry into a city they will spread out all across the entire city in squads, each squad likely not having much in the way of AT weapons beyond a few disposable rockets at best. That means those tanks rolling down the street will likely only ever encounter one or two squads at most.

It's not like every single unit in the battlefield is condensed in the same location. The only way for those three battalions of infantry to all engage the tanks at the same time is if the tanks were out in an open desert or something. But if that was the case, the tanks would slaughter the infantry from miles away.

If one man per platoon had a one-hit kill rocket launcher like a Javelin, that only had 2-3 rockets, the rockets cost resources and could only be resupplied at terminals. I would not mind that. The other 40 players have no AT weapons whatsoever. And the other 7 have weak disposable rockets that would require them focus-firing in order to kill an MBT. Give me that and I most certainly would not mind in the slightest.

If you want to bring real life into a discussion you can't just pick and choose what parts you bring in. If you bring up "but real life infantry have weapons that can kill tanks!" you then also have to bring up how 99% of infantry on the battlefield don't ******* have those weapons. This is something too many people forget, like Bill over there.

Since you're an idiot going around calling people tank maniacs, check my stats bub. I support Eskimo's ideas. In fact I came up with a fair few of them. Am I just a tank maniac trying to empower myself?

******* imbeciles always try to discredit people just so they don't get their precious toys balanced.