1681

‘Low’ number of kills? Vehicles account for ~27% of kills but in battles I’d be surprised if they account for more than 5% of players.

1682

I’d be shocked if the percentage it’d anywhere near that low!

1683

The interplay between air and ground operations would be so much more interesting if they made aircraft-to-ground attacks reliant on spotting by ground units. For a game that is so focused on teamwork and coordination, I’m surprised they don’t have this type of mechanism.

1684


If you have some solid idea about the metagame, this could be a good way to share it with the devs.

1685

Wow, the NV ranges on the ESFs are ridiculously short now. Not to mention that MAXes are now cloaked. :P

maxcloak.png959×541

1686

Damn. That’s going to cause some screaming. I don’t know what the answer is, the other day I gunned in a Lib for the first time and yeah, it’s shooting fish in a barrel. They need to quit all this crap and put in the fixes for spawn buildings, or perhaps make Libs susceptible to small arms fire.

1687

Looks like the cloaking MAXes are a bug and will be fixed.

They really do need better spawn buildings, they’re ridiculously easy to camp by… everything. Air has a free shot, tanks have a free shot, light assaults can sit on the roof above the door, etc. I’m looking forward to the spawn room changes they mentioned but I do wish bases were more defensible overall.

1688

Yeah, it’s the far future, mankind is capable of virtual immortality and space travel…and we’ve forgotten even basic military engineering.

1689

Maybe it’s cheaper to resurrect than to build even a basic fort.

1690

Will be interesting to see if the liberators changes are enough. I don’t think there is anything to stop being from being near invulnerable flying super tanks, nor was their damage really lowered. They just need to actually be semi accurate now. In exchange they will have longer view distance on that poor fool in a max who is plunking away at them while the pilot is getting a sandwich.

The problem with air has always been the following:

What is the best way to kill infantry? A liberator or a reaver.
What is the best way to kill ground vehicles? A liberator or a reaver
What is the best way to kill liberators? A reaver

The liberator is a great example of this balance logic. It has top level defense, top level offense and near top level mobility. In effect it has almost no weakness compared to every other weapon on the battlefield. I doubt anyone really expected this to last.

1691

Well, that might work, if you weren’t actually interested in doing anything. But then again, Planetside isn’t about actually doing anything, so, yeah.

1692

It really sucks that your version of Planetside plays like that. In my version that’s not the case at all but I guess the tradeoff is I don’t get uber engineer turrets, so maybe it’s a wash?

1693

I’ll keep my uber engineer turrets.

1694

I stopped playing until they figure out how to implement some of that basic military engineering stuff you mentioned.

1695

Haha. :) In all honesty, are you really still having a big problem with air currently? I switched from TR | Connery to Vanu | Matherson and due to that I have none of my game purchases and so I haven’t piloted a Liberator in about a month or so. I spend all my time as infantry/MAX or running a magrider with the occasional stock Scythe run to get from A to B. The only times I have any issues with air is when the opposing side has overwhelming force and are camping the spawn. This can happen especially since The Enclave rarely rolls with fewer than 2-3 full platoons.

1696

I think is planned for a future patch. Anyway you are supposed to spawn in a different base if the current one is lost and the spawn is camped.

1697

This is true. And it’s so weird that no one does this. People keep spawning into meat grinders. I think part of it is that, often, there’s only one or two really active areas on the map, and people feel it’s better to be farmed but occasionally get a point or two of experience, than to spend the time backcapping empty bases. Dunno.

1698

When OVanucare passed without any accompanying tax increases it cost so much to implement the nanotechnology of the regeneration matrixes that there wasn’t any budget left for the Department of the Interior. This is why all the roads are dirt and all the bases poorly designed. For over 200 years the political machine decayed as Terran Republicans and Vanucrats spent more time sniping at each other than actually serving the interests of the people, meanwhile the New Conglomerate got wealthy off fat government contracts building substandard compounds all over Auraxis. Their deep pockets and government connections kept them hugely profitable despite dozens of lawsuits by individuals who spawned into walls and hillsides or were killed due to pedestrian walkways that crossed directly in front of vehicle spawn pads.

Auraxis is what you get when you allow governement to have it’s way for two centuries…

1699

Its a colony that has ben a warzone for most the last 200 years. All infrastructures are modular buildings drop from orbit, and the wheater system is soo extreme that have destroyed a few of the original structures (even a whole biolab in Esamir).

Nanite Systems is probably the one faction that is profiting from all of this, and help all the factions at war in a effort to continue with the war. NS are the real bad guys.

Building stuff with nanites limit what you can build to simple designs.

1700

I don’t have a huge problem with air.

On my server as vanu, the enemy does generally have air superiority in most battles.

At first i tried to do something about this from the ground, but this just made me angry because i felt like i wasn’t doing anything most of the time. Reavers would get hit a little and then just speed off. Ground to air missiles would miss half the time, taking all of my ammo to kill one reaver, assuming they actually stay in the area for you to shoot them with the slow reloading missile launcher that many times. The double burster max is powerful enough to make reavers leave the direct area, but it has very bad mobility and is very vulnerable to ground targets. Recent changes will likely make them even more vulnerable to air as well by the sounds of it.

The problem came in the form of liberators. The defining battle was when an idiotic pilot the game should have punished was “flying” a liberator and attacking a small based with about 6-8 people at it. I say “flying” because he was just hovering in one spot while his gunner bombarded/spammed the base. This wasn’t quite so stupid as it sounds however because the liberator had a buddy on the ground who kept driving up in a flash and trying to rush the control point. We killed the flash guy MANY times but it was extremely hard to even get out of the spawn room with the liberator spam.

Eventually i switched to AA max to attempt to drive the liberator away. I managed to sneak out of the spawn room and opened fire with near 100% accuracy at the stationary, medium range liberator (a huge target obviously). 2/3 of my clips (as in my total ammo) later the liberator finally noticed i was shooting him and started firing back (still stationary). I managed to dodge most of his attacks through being extremely crafty (and being in a base where i could somewhat hide behind stuff) and finally, we were both about dead when… he just flew away.

A minute later he was back at full health starting the process over again. I haven’t used an AA max since in absolute disgust. Yes, a vx6-7 isn’t effective against air, but dedicated ground to air weapons aren’t much more effective either, so why should i waste my time with them?

So now when a liberator attacks some small outpost, i just do what everyone else does and leave. I mainly like attack battles and that helps since liberators can’t just spam their friendlies with area effect fire. Also hard to fit a liberator in a biodome or other base. I also don’t fire on liberators anymore when i equip a G2A missile on my heavy assault as it is a waste of ammo. At least i can scare a reaver off with a missile.

Personally i don’t think that is balanced, and, in my opinion, the fact that people recommend a medium sized number of players to just abandon an outpost when some idiot in a liberator (i’m not saying everyone who flies one is an idiot, but if you’re hovering stationary, not far above ground level, you deserve to die and fast) comes by and decides to spam explosives, just proves that.