There is a link between the rise of "infantryside" and the downfall of the games popularity

I think it is a reasonable and interesting assumption Scr1n.
I don't think it is 'the one thing' that is causing the slow contraction of the PS2 population but could easily be a factor. Many times when I pull a vehicle, I am dead before I kill anyone because of the huge assortment of dangerous things flying/driving/running around Auraxis.

I would love to see some weekend where they revert many of the vehicle weapon damages back to when they were terror inducing. Heck, aren't we all pretty much 'veterans' at this point? We could handle it for a weekend!

The third reason is that vehicles in PS2 are not lethal enough. This is because their weapons are too weak and infantry are too durable.

I think I can illustrate this first point by a simple example.

This is a 12.7mm HMG, the equivalent of a PS2 Kobalt. It deals 200 damage in 10m.


This is a 20mm autocannon, the equivalent of a PS2 Basilisk. It deals 250 damage in 10m.


This is a .44/11mm revolver, the equivalent a PS2 NS-44. It deals 450 damage in 8m.


Why does a tiny revolver deal more damage than a 20mm cannon or a 12.7mm MG? Because PS2 heavily favours infantry combat and the balancing is horrible.

Here's how much damage weapons should do in PS2:



So you have the .44 revolver doing about 10 damage, the 12.7mm Kobalt doing 110 damage, and the 20mm Basilisk doing 250 damage. That is a much more balanced approach.

The second point is that infantry are too durable. Sure, maybe infantry armour has improved. That probably explains why 12.7mm is now just a general-purpose machinegun round, like our 7.62x51 MMGs. And 20mm Basilisk has been demoted to take the place of our 12.7mm HMGs.

On the other hand, I don't know of any infantryman, no matter how well-armoured, who can take a 12.7mm round to the head or chest and survive. Likewise, today's 7.62x51 is fairly lethal to infantry, and most infantry armour can only take a few hits at most.

This leads into the second issue is that infantry are too durable. Currently it takes at least 4 hits to kill an infantryman using the 20mm Basilisk, and that is if the infantry is almost standing right in front of the weapon. For a more balanced option, the Basilisk should kill within a single shot. This is fair given that the Basilisk is supposed to be a HMG.

Instead of having 1,000HP as they do now (technically 500 shields and 500 HP), infantry should be reduced to ~200HP (100 shields and 100 HP). This means that any weapon 20mm and above will OHK infantry, making it more valuable to bring along heavier anti-infantry vehicles.

The Kobalt will 2HK infantry. In my personal opinion that's a little high and I would be happier with a 3HK to be balanced. But it is tolerable.

A .44 revolver, on the other hand, will require 20 hits to kill infantry. And that is balanced as well, because even today modern infantry armour can easily resist .44 revolver shots (only Type IIIA is required for .44, which is a police-grade "soft armour"). A .44 revolver should have no place on a 21st century battlefield, much less a 29th century one.

It's also one of the least forgiving, most confusing and hardest to actually get a decent fight in, not to mention all the weird stuff clientside etc causes.

Case in point in a MAX earlier. Losing chunks of health to goodness knows what. No indicators to show WTF is going on. Only experience tells me I'm probably getting splashed by a vehicle I can't see by shells and explosions that aren't rendering.

I agree with Scr1n for once (albeit he is likely weighing Ground Vehicles).

Also, I'd say the new VP system and Construction System has created a different feel to game. Perhaps continents are locking too quickly or there is less emphasis on territory push (forced everyone into massive Tank battles instead of Minecraft)?

FIFY

If it was balanced like real life, no one would play. War sucks.

I mean.... we are spawning randomly into vans in the middle of a deserted field. Not more unrealistic than that.

It wouldn't encourage more combined arms, it would just encourage vehicle zergs to advance and lay waste to everything. There would be no infantry vs infantry combat left. It would be unnecessary and pointless.

I've been there and seen it, even with invulnerable walls. I've followed the vehicle zerg attacking bases that were far more open than they are now. They can suppress infantry from distances AV is weak at. My job as attacking infantry was basically to just mop up the stragglers stuck inside buildings and avoid getting fragged by my own team lobbing shells through every doorway and window available. It was a pretty dull game.

Here's the thing about infantry AV that some tankers simply fail to comprehend or like to ignore. It's boring. It's dull. It's tedious. It's not what infantry primarily pull infantry to do. "There's nothing like the rush of hunting people down and killing them". There is no rush in plinking away with low DPS weapons at tanks who can often back off for a few seconds to repair to full or send a shell your way and gib you. I do it out of spite, nothing more.

There shouldn't be much infantry v infantry combat to begin with. That's the beautiful thing about combined arms. You can destroy an enemy rifleman from a much longer distance than anything he can carry while being neigh invulnerable to any of his weapons.

Why would anyone get out of a tank to fight enemy infantry with a rifle if they can stay in a tank and shell them from safety?

This is why historically infantry small arms accounted for very few casualties on the battlefield. In WWII, for instance, British casualties from small arms was only 10% of the total... and that was combined with deaths from AT mines! It's also why only a small minority of an armed force carries out the majority of the killing.

The role of infantry is to find, fix, and report the enemy position. That's when the heavier guns take over and do the talking. The role of infantry is to only close with and destroy if there are no safer options available.

Medics are specialists with various medical grenades and a healing tool. They can also carry C4.

The Medium Assault, on the other hand, would only be armed with an assault rifle, pistol, and knife. They would have no special tools of any sort, and simply resemble a typical rifleman.

Medium Assaults should make up the majority of any force, while the specialist classes should be relatively rare.

I somehow feel like this thread went from balance, to essentially wanting PS2 to become a completely new game. I mean for those who wants realism, ArmA does exist just fyi.

So hey, you'd be perfectly okay with one anti-tank rocket scoring a permanent mobility kill on your tank if it hits your tracks/maglev spire, right? I mean, considering they've got enough anti-armor capability to reduce a 29th-century main battle tank's health by so much with merely a direct hit to rear armor.

I think this topic(much like C4) has become Taboo to talk about & call out.


Which is why I brought it up.

You might be interested in a post I've made in a different thread about how I think armour should work in PS2:

So most rocket hits to most parts of an MBT would do zero, which is as you point out a more logical consequence. Only hits that do more damage than a tank's armour threshold would actually do damage.

As for "permanent" kills, only if infantry also feature locational damage. For instance, an infantryman would be permanently crippled if they were caught in a non-lethal HE explosion. If an Engineer could not repair a tank's tracks, then a Medic would not be able to fix a man's leg.

Sure it is a taboo to talk about, that would fit the narrative of oppressed poor vehicles pilots. What wouldn't fit is that the topic doesn't come up, because vehicles are strong enough, and only those who stands to gain from it without any concern for actual balance would bring it up.
You know, like skyknights with the highest KDs, SPM and KPM telling us that AA is completely balanced or too strong.

"Also, the biggest killer of infantry is Infantry(who would have guessed right?) not Vehicles/Aircraft."

Makes this comment, but mocks other peoples theory's/intelligence ... Alright then. You realize how any factors there are that you aren't mentioning right?, you make it sound like there are 100 infantry vs 100 vehicles and the infantry would die less.

I grabbed a lightning tank(Second time in 3 years using one) completely stock with no upgrades in bright yellow drove into a fight and killed 10 people and a 2 vehicles and I had no idea what I was doing after mostly dying about 5-7 times to the same tank as a heavy trying to solo it while the idiot just sat there spamming HE rounds.

Please stop.

See your making things personal & bringing in your own bias.

Is the SJW upset now? Boo Hoo.

Notice the triggering.

Yeah. I have spend almost 80 hours in my Prowler, at no point did I think that infantry was even the slightest bit advantageous against me. Not to mention my harasser marauder, I have a 2.66 KPM with that thing. I can't agree from a personal, theoretical or even speculative perspective.

You talk as if there is this objective truth, that people left because vehicles are "under performing", people leave games for a variation of things, I left PS2 for 6 months, because harassers were too strong against MBTs (even though that barely had any truth behind it).

Correlation doesn't equal causation.

Do some research, and come back to me.