Honest question " Why was vehicle debri taken away? " Was it too devastating verse new players? Was it a lag issue? Just too random? I miss vehicle debri. I've heard another streamer saying he misses debri too. Well someone who was reviewing the best ps2 yt videos and ranking them. He's like " Why'd they take that away, was visually better " Vehicle debri, as when the vehicle dies, the vehicles dark shell lunges debri at whoever & dmg's them. Then when I see old videos from when ps2 started, they didn't have the lunge debri, yet they had stalled debri where tanks would show themselves retired and on flames sitting after destroyed. Which would maybe offer some field cover for infantry? I don't know I didn't play ps2 then. I'd prefer both version, where sunderers and harassers lunge debri to dmg 20 yards front of them, tanks just stall out on flames & stay there destroyed for field infantry to hide around for 2 mins. Yet now vehicles just get destroyed, nothing happens, they just pop like a balloon. It's the safer option, too safe. However if it was a lag issue, that makes sense. " If " .
I do miss the hilarity of these death machines. They were made out of nanite 'death juice'. The debris would roll to a stop at the impact site killing everyone nearby. It was like a big Indiana Jones boulder but worse. If you even touched one of the chunks it would insta kill you. It was a game mechanic so rage inducing that you could only laugh at what dev came up with it.
JibbaJabba gave the sarcastic version of the correct answer. The reason debris were removed is DBG's technical ineptitude (or perhaps that of the then SOE). Essentially, collision damage is applied as a function of some inertial model (my guess is that it is proportional to how a vehicle's CG moves away from its rest position during impact). For some reason, at least on tanks, the CG is connected directly to the turret and the turret has "zero" stiffness. This is why one can drop an ammo pack on a tank's raised barrel and cause it to drop. This is also why one can place an ammo pack near where the turret meets the chassis and cause the turret to wobble as it bumps into the ammo pack. This is also how sometimes one, as the tanker, one can tell that they are getting c4'd because the c4 brick is hitting the turret causing it to wobble (Maggie pilots would be the exception, yet, they are not real tankers). In the case of debris, one, as the tanker, would only die to them if the debris hit the turret. The debris had substantially greater mass (viz. inertia) than ammo packs or c4, thus, when they impacted the turrets of comparatively no stiffness, the CG got pushed soo far away during a technical collision that the game went: "that's a lot of damage." This was infuriating to me because as a Vanguard main I rely heavily on ramming to win 1 vs. many against lightnings (sometimes against prowlers). A good head on ram against a lightning can be worth ~2.25 AP shells. As I charged the tanks, sometimes they were damaged and my shots would kill them prior to the collision. I would run my turret into the newly spawned debris and thus trigger the glitch and get rekt. However, sometimes I would get lucky and the debris would not hit the turret, in which case I would take zero collision damage. Sometimes, the debris would hit the turret, just barely missing the threshold for my Vanguard's complete annihilation and instead leaving it burning. *Maggie pilots, please let me know if you also died to debris back in the day in a similar fashion. If so, did you notice a predictable way to determine whether debris would or would not kill you?* This is also the reason as to why back in the day, sunderers, ants, and harassers never died to debris in this seemingly glitchy way. I mean, they would be damaged by the debris in the same way when they get rammed today (i.e., a proper collision as opposed to the BS zero-inertia turrets).
I see. Yet Vanguards ramming Lightnings seems very niche, most vanguards I see are sniper range. However I suppose that's useful with the shield to ram lightnings. I don't really play lightning. Still I don't ram anything with Magrider, not really. Theirs videos of a magrider pro ramming sometimes, yet whenever I try to I just float over the enemies. & prowler doesn't have enough defense to stay at medium range. Prowler would just shoot a lightning rather than ram. Without debri Harasser is less entertaining and I main harasser. Without debri battle Sunderer is less entertaining. Kamikazee Sunderer too. I'd also be more keen to play a Lightning with debri, without? yawn. & then visually for infantry, debri is more entertaining to see & try to dodge when it's flying over a hill at you or you see some debri wreck some teamates. The solution would be to toss what I suggested, where tanks just have the pre 2015 debri where it's stationary that way, you may ram Lightnings still. & the debri for all tanks is just stationary and provides cover for soldiers for 2 min burning debri. & then Harassers and Battle busses get the post 2015 debri where you see flying debri hitting the fields. Harassers aren't nearly going on killstreaks as often as MBT's are, so may as well toss them something. TBH Vanguards killed 10 of my sunderers yesterday, near the Rink vehicle term, when I tried to drive to Saerro and park there, I have no sympathy for vanguards. If anything I would have preffered flying debri at them, I would have at least had a method to destroy them, other than relying on the freaking starter machine guns for sunderers. My BR 64 tr alt has basi turrets still. Those starter basi's won't help & not even if I had a bulldog solo would help either. The shield soaks the first few bulldogs if I was on my vs main's sundy. Why should LA with 2 c4 on a flash duel Vanguards better for 150 nanites than a sunderer does for 200. Solo wise. Least with debri I'd be able to ram their troll sunderer killer behavior. So over sunderer not able to outrun enemy MBT's too. Just some vanguard shooting my tail, following with ease. Esp for Esamir. Yet not even driving around a Hossin tree helps enough. That's why I wish for a humvee hummer type vehicle, as the sunderer sure wasn't made for driving. Has horrible steering not even able to swerve around trees at times when driving downhill. Isn't able to drive most hills without enough traction. & isn't able to outrun tanks. Isn't able to solo tanks. Then you have harasser where I rarely ever see harassers with killstreaks verse vehicles for the past 2 years, ever since rumble seat repairs got taken away. & most people are better at shooting harassers since outfit wars. So really most vehicle fights are limited to tanks verse tanks & nothing else. & if you do see a Harasser with a bounty, it's from killing infantry 99% of the time and not from dueling tanks. Till the harasser hits a mine from the infantry getting revenge soon after. Unlike 2019 era when harassers actually got killstreaks verse tanks, now that happens x10 less. From tank's having better aim skills over the years and no rumble repairs. Then more 2nd gun options. All equals paper hp harassers. & more players using mines than ever before. & more people using HA launchers since outfit wars. Battle bus? Battle bus only worked for Koltyr when you rid MBTs & Harassers from the equations so battle bus is only good for dueling enemy lightnings.
Lot to unpack here, however, I will only entertain the comments that pertain to debris (we can have a discussion of Vanguard vs. Sunderer vs. Harasser balance in a separate thread). My suggested technical solution for tank debris is for their models to not despawn upon death. In the last iteration of debris, the mechanism was clearly to de-spawn the vehicle model and spawn-in debris models. This is why I have memories of landing kill shots on a stationary lightning or prowler and suddenly seeing their debris launch into the sky. Why? My guess is that the game must have rendered both models simultaneously for a short time causing janky collision physics to go on. Anyhow, instead of immediately de-spawning the vehicle model, just re-skin it with the debris textures and render a flame, and play a few explosions. If the vehicle dies while players are still in them, just kill/eject the players. You could even have a newly destroyed vehicle keep whatever momentum it had immediately before death and do the re-skin + explosions shortly after. Since you hate Vanguard soo much, we could make its turret explode and get launched into the air. Give the turret debris the same mass/inertia as a flash. Honestly, It would be hilarious if I were to duke it out with whomever and if I lose, I would get a random roadkill from the turret hitting a random stalker infiltrator. But yeah, I'm for something along the lines of your "pre-2015 and post-2015 debris" comments. For Sunderers, Flashes, and Harassers, It would be cool to separate their chassis from their wheels upon destruction. I guess the Magrider and Javelin could just stop floating and hit the floor after being killed. Whatever monkey programming went into the turrets driving insane collision damage though must be patched. This bug is still on going and will kill tanks once in a blue moon seemingly out of nowhere.
IIRC it was removed for being infuriating and nowadays having an esf genuinely instakilling a colossus or bastion hardpoint seems very bad.
