what happened to combined arms?

It seems to me like the three branches of the game: air, infantry, and ground vehicles are being separated. Infantry complain nonstop about vehicle AI weapons, causing them to be nerfed. Ground vehicle drivers complain about air weapons causing them to be nerfed. The general mentality seems to be that the three branches should be separated from each other and not able to interact. But where does that leave the game? Infantry are the only ones who can actually capture territory, making vehicles irrelevant.

On that note, can all of us infantry players so complaining about vehicles? Take the recent PPA nerf- just pull an AV (or any) tank. Don't just sit there and complain when an AI weapon does its job. Or the upcoming Banshee nerf- I don't see a reason for it. Buff the PPA and AH instead. I almost never die to a Banshee mosquito and when a base is getting farmed by them just redoploy and pull AA. Its not that hard.

I'm mainly an infantry player on the VS on Connery, feel free to look me up. I don't have the best stats but I do see where this game is heading, and its not a good path.

Any ideas or comments?

Probably because most people don't want to drop their own thing and go pull AV/AA whenever enemy decides to use air/tanks.

Combined arms is not "enemy has X, pull Y, because Y > X." In practice, it can look like that, but only because you had not already had Y out, at least in the case of the simplified example. Combined arms means the enemy has X and Y and you have X and Y working alongside each other against each other.

What you see people complaining about is when an element appears to offer a substantially superior role before the combination of arms.

I agree.

The air game is dominated by the air gods, with little room for mortal pilots. However, they do have a hard counter with anti-air flak weapons from the ground. Although maybe not enough? I feel the ground-based anti-air lock-on weapons are OK.

The vehicle came currently dominates infantry, so there's little need to not pull a vehicle. Low vehicle costs exacerbate this.

You were never on the receiving end of long range PPA spam were you?

I once fell back to pull an AV tank to try and counter Magrider PPA-spam. I lost my own tank after four minutes, and spent the next ten trying to figure out how I was supposed to navigate to where that Magrider had been parked in the first place.

Coming from you? What is this Opposite Day?

What do you mean? The guy asked what's the reason for the hate towards vehicles, I gave him my opinion.

Hello? What game are you playing? Forumside? Or Planetside? Because in Planetside combined arms is happening all the time. On Cobalt at least. I had some of the most epic battles on Amerish last weekend. Fighting from base to base giant armies clashed with each other to have massive tank battles accompanied by insane infantry fights on the surrounding hills. And the skies were filled with Galaxies, Libs and ESFs. It was combined ******* arms at its finest and it was gorgeous!

Agree, main cobalt and spandex flotilla is glorious. That's also the main reason why we fight against it, jealousy.


On a serious note: maybe (MAYBE), if rockets got damage buff and speed buff BUT did less damage on longer ranges (starting to drop off from 10 - 15m?) could give an interesting spin on the problem. Vehicles would still be superior firepower on the ground but would require infantry support to deal with all those pesky rocket wielding scum that wants to get close and personal to deal maximal amount of damage.
Right now realistically the only real danger is fairy c4. Rarely does one feel threatened by rockets unless super overextended or faced by a swarm of lock-ons.

You presented the PPA nerf as an example of something we, the TR and NC, forced from the devs. Maybe so, but with good reason, that abomination of a weapon was used to kill people from a great distance with ease. Somehow it goes against the combined arms doctrine as it encourages solo play. Now hear me, I don't play VS a lot, my VS alt is at BR 13, but I was lucky enough to get to use the new PPA on a maggie today, it still obliterates groups of enemies clustered behind cover, but yes, it's more risky getting that close.

For an effective combined arms game, Planetside 2 needs more command tools at the hand of the experienced players (let's say BR90+). Let's take the air game for example. A squad/platoon leader marks a place on the map that needs to be hit with an air strike. When he confirms the fire mission, every pilot in the area (let's say 750m radius) will get a new mission notification on the HUD that they need to bomb the **** out of that area. Same goes for tanks, they need someone to direct them, at least the solo tankers/pilots. Sure, we have smoke and attack/defense markers, they are good for directing large masses of people to an area of interest, but it's not precise.

Bottom line, we need an evolution of the mission system, allowing the squad/platoon leads to micro manage the battlefield outside of their respective squads/platoons.

Infantry are only as strong as their spawn point, and as soon as the first liberator leisurely flies over it's gone.

Too bad we don't have the PS1 AMS, eh eh eh.

On the topic of rockets

• No drop (it's a ******* rocket, it flies until it has fuel in the motor)
• Velocity buff
• Maximum range of 100m
• Maybe a damage adjustment (I'm leaning towards a slight nerf because of the accuracy increase)

Imo, why not let it be ammo for rockets (heck make it 1k certs)? The current one stays the same, the new ammo is AP ammo that has damage drop (this ammo should be separately balanced for infrantry/aircraft), but has crap damage against light armored targets.
Main point being to make it more dangerous up close, but crap at long range (at long range it works more as a more precise deterrent and the "i pew pew at you but know i wont kill you" type of damage)

Not all rockets are the same. Dumbfire rockets probably would have drop over time. Take for example the RPG-7 sight:



You can see that the "boresight mark" indicates where the RPG-7 would shoot if there was no drop, and obviously that's not the same point at which you're supposed to aim. If your target is 200m out, you have to aim significantly higher than where your bore is pointing. This is because the RPG-7 rocket motor only lasts for a few seconds after firing. To my understanding the US SMAW works the same way... it's just not cheap or efficient to have a large rocket motor with a large fuel reserve that can sustain indefinite propulsion.

Everything needs a velocity buff. Infantry small arms, tank shells, and of course rockets.

While range compression is a thing in PS2, I'm not exactly sure about the ratios.

Increase lethality of dumbfire launchers against infantry (Thermobaric HE warheads aren't meant for tanks after all) and decrease lethality against heavy armor.

I suggested something like this a while ago, having different ammo types for dumb fire launchers. Most of the people were not as enthusiastic about the idea like I was. Main argument was that there is already too much HE spam in the game, and having a dedicated AI rocket payload would only make the HE spam even worse. Though I am all up for having different ammo types for dumb fires.

As far as the projectile drop goes, you are right, RPG's do have projectile drop as the initial burst last only up to a second or so. But I must say, projectile drop on rockets and tank shells in this game is ******* ridiculous. When i'm gunning in my prowler I feel like i'm lobbing shells at the enemy instead of using a high velocity AP cannon...

AA is pretty strong TBQH.

Try maingunning the Magrider...

It's HE canon is literally like a Mortar round. (which actually has some benefit TBQH)

I apologize, the PPA was a bad example. I meant the general ineffectiveness of AI weapons, including the canister and marauder. The PPA was just the most recent example of a nerfed AI weapon.

Because combined arms in Planetside 2 wasn't some ************ fantasy of tanks, air, and infantry coordinating together in glorious fashion it was just a mass of tanks farming the losing side after a brief battle.

Where are those times when one good ESF stopped entire column of MBTs by rockepodding them to little pieces.
Don't miss it though

Also nowadays I see lots of Lightings around, probably it was not clever to make them spawn on every vehicle spawn point.

Mbts health was buffed, before it took one HA to catch it of guard and get behind it...

Reverting health of MBTs and reducing range of hit scan weapon like lancer to render distance of infantry.