The Ultimate Thread Dedicated To Making The New Power Carrying Vehicles EPIC!

What I'm Talking About

Well for the new resource system that will be coming out soon it's clear the developers intend to make the power carrying transport vehicles the center of epic battles to help spread them out and cause less lag.

"The power-fetching aspect is intended to be focused around large battles to spread them out. Power-carrying vehicles would show up on the continent map so they would be mobile objectives, primarily for vehicle combat. This isn't intended to be a boring tedious thing so much as a sort of capture-the-flag style gameplay where the power carrier is highly likely to see action." (https://twitter.com/mhigby/status/358408290964750336)

What Needs to Happen For This Vehicle To Be Fun

1. This Vehicle needs to be and feel powerful to drive.
2. This Vehicle must have multiple seats to encourage teamplay to defend itself.
3. This Vehicle needs to be heavy and heavily armored.

Why Each of These Need to Happen To Make This Vehicle Awesome

#1 This Vehicle Needs To Be and Feel Powerful to Drive.

So in other words if MBT's or Sunderers decide to get in the way of this vehicle at full speed they will be plowed through and Instagibbed due to the sheer momentum and weight of the vehicle. This thing needs to be able to push through bad situations much like the United States MRAP's which are used to get through some of the harshest battlefield conditions and survive all out ambush situations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP

(Get in the way of this vehicle going full speed down a road, I dare you! )

#2 This Vehicle Needs To have Multiple Seats To Encourage Team play.

This vehicle will be the target of Galaxies (AKA Sky Wales) trying to ram it, Liberators with Tank Busters kamikaze diving it, MBT's, and every C4 equipped LA/ AT mine equipped engineer on the map doing everything in their power to stop and destroy this vehicle. As such when fully manned (hopefully they make this a 4/4 or 5/5 vehicle) it will have enough firepower to defend itself from Infantry, ESF's, and Lightnings. Make it cost a ton of resources so losing it will hurt, and guarding it will be made worth it. My suggestion is to give it 4 turrets like the PS1 Raider with AI/AA options.

The PS1 Raider Ladies and Gentlemen

#3 This Vehicle Needs To Be Heavy and Heavily Armored

This vehicle is going to be the target of every AV counter in the game! It will have Galaxies dropping 12/12 groups of LA's with C4 at it, it will be attacked by Battle Bus Sunderers , Shield AP Vangaurds, AP Anchored Prowlers, Magburning Saron Magriders, and by God's Great Glory it better be able to take all the abuse and dish it back. I would also recommend it have a low center of gravity so that it doesn't flip easy and cannot be rammed tipped over by galaxies. I personally would recommend the Aliens 2 APC type model because that thing was built like a tank, and it didn't look like it would even be capable of flipping over save tumbling down a cliff.

Conclusion

We as players don't typically get the chance to choose how vehicles will turn out in game, and I see this as a great chance to bring a new very fun, very team oriented vehicle into the game. If this thing is going to be the cause and center of massive battles in the future then lets make this thing an armored beast capable of carrying its valuable payload if protected and well manned. This vehicle can provide Planetside 2 with much needed Meta Game, so lets get the Developer's attention with this thread and give them some great ideas to worth with shall we?

Thanks for taking the time to read this thread, any constructive suggestions or ideas are highly encouraged!

ants cant attack dude else you would spawn 30 of them and turtle zerg to a base

Extreme resource cost would help to prevent that, and the fact that you could prepare an epic defense to counter it. It's meant for carrying resources so if you do something other than that your team will lose resources since you're not using it for it's intended purpose of carrying resources. Also that form off attack could seldom ever be done and be whittled down by the time it got to a base or within a base itself by mines and C4. Try pulling that strategy over the Deserts of Indar, the cramped roads of Amerish, or the vast Tundra's of Esamir and prepare to get destroyed by a counter attack. I mean a squad of AV turrets would easily counter that strategy.

Id rather just see TTK rise

Normally agree with a lot of what you post but can't on this

It should be highly armored with maybe a high resistance to Infantry AV weapons ( to promote vehicle combat rather than lock - on spam )

BUT

It should also come with minimal weaponry ... Zero ground AV/AI capabilities and maybe a small AA option .. It should have to be protected and convoyed rather than being a Battle Tanker ..
Or else people will just be using them in place of MBT's etc

Sorry Esk, I usually agree with what you have to say but I must disagree here. Anti infantry weapons, sure, maybe kobalts or rangers at maximum.

It SHOULD be hard to kill, though.

Well that's fine, I just wanted the vehicle to be manned by several people to help encourage team play. The weapons don't have to be powerful, but you're doing a selfless act by helping transport resources. Much like a Galaxy with Bull Dogs or something like that ya know? I agree it has to be more about armor then weapons though.

It seems to be that the biggest disagreeing part for the thread is the weapons aspect of my idea, I will change that immediately!

To encourage tankers and Air to defend these ANTs, perhaps there should be some incentive to guard it. Something like a 25-50% xp bonus for killing vehicles around it. Although the area in which this bonus affects EXP gain would have to be quite large to let Air in on the bonus.

Maybe if it had to deploy to attack. Maybe.

I switched it up so that it would primarily have AI/AA options so that it would need to be guarded on the ground by tanks if it encounters MBT's. Does it seem more reasonable now?

meh i dont think so but it sounds good ill say that

if the warpgate could only supply the ants with so much power every hour then that would solve the issue of having too many ants

9 times out of 10 an ant is gunna be opposed by mostly infantry rather then mbt's...

another issue is that the the ANT should only be defensive and not offensive.. maybe every weapon it could be equipped with was OP but only at a short distance..

its really tuff trying to get an ANT to be able to attack

Cant have "Extreme resource cost" for the energytrucks or it is sticks and stones time yet again.

Its not ment to be a mobile battle fortress but a transport unit capable of limited self defence. In its very basic essence its a supply truck.

This is not a PSA / Public Service Announcement. this is just another suggestion thread just fyi.

Well I was hoping that it would make it a fun mini-fortress to help defend it and to promote additional teamplay. It also wouldn't even have attack potential unless someone other than the driver was on the guns. That way it would be armor to protect it, but if LA's tried to rush it with C4 it could try and defend itself or take down an ESF trying to hoverspam with it. Thinking back I did think that having AV weapons would make it over the top since MBT's would likely be it's biggest counter. It's balancing factors would be that it has really slow acceleration, cost a ton, be designated for carrying resources rather than taking bases, and would need a crew to even have AI/AA ability.

Well the part that had me thinking it might be more than that is that is was supposed to see "A lot of Action" So wouldn't having some AI/AA capabilities come in handy? From what I read it seemed like this was more of a rare expensive vehicle, but with an important role to play if you get what I'm saying.

Ya you're right, it's a shame I can't change the description after 30 minutes, it was an oversight.

It depends on the reward for moving the power supplies to the base, If you get a HUGE reward it might not be so selfless

the problem with making it a fortress that costs a lot is that the game is too fast paced for that type of gameplay

im guessing they are going to make the ant cost less and do less rather then what you want it to..

True, but the reward part wasn't clarified, and haven't stated what the reward might be. The way it was described made it sound like a slow moving vehicle meant to be the mini center of battles, so I figured having a few weapons on it would make sense and encourage further teamplay. I find vehicles that require multiple people to unlock its full potential to be awesome, and was hoping that something similar could happen with this vehicle.

If it can run over Lightnings, I'd drive one.

I have a feeling that its just going to be a utility for the sunderer/harrasser. I have a feeling that they are not going to actually make a new vehicle sadly.