1841

I gave the engineer AV turret a try last night, and I’ve put it into my long-range setup for now. It’ll kill a Lightning in three shots or so. It’s very accurate against vehicles at range, and has enough turning capacity that you can hit things hiding behind small rocks and in dead ground that used to be safe. It’s significantly less useful against infantry, though; it doesn’t have much splash, and aiming at infantry is hard because the missile’s trail tends to get in the way right as you’re bringing it on target.

I haven’t seen someone use the turret from the side, but I have to imagine it looks awesome, seeing the missile correct its course in true SACLOS fashion. I also have to imagine it makes every sniper within a thousand yards grin gleefully.

1842

I tried it, too. And I find the smoke trail obscure the target. For sunders deployed or moving slowly is great. Seems difficult to use for lightnings.

It turns every engine in a potential extra heavy soldier, … a tactic I think will be very common soon, will be for a engineer to deploy his sunder, and deploy a AT turret towards the direction enemy armour can come, so don’t have to swap from engineer/heavy to defend/repair the sunder from vehicles.

Is probably specially interesting for NC, since we lack a weapon without bullet drop, that can damage magriders. Having something to counter-snipe the saron will be just good.

With this a engine is more than one man army, … a heavy depend on a engineer to fire more rockets, and a engine depend on a heavy to have somebody shot at armours. This thing has infinite ammo, so the enginer no more need a friendly heavy around to destroy things.

Is hard to tell how this thing will be nerfed. Just now feel too good, but maybe is because fill a whole niche that was empty before.

1843

Why NC specifically, isn’t the Saron the only exception to the no bullet drop (if you disregard all annihilator and AV missiles)? I can’t think of anything on the TR side that doesn’t have drop.

1844

The TR don’t have anything that need to be countered that way. Is specifically the Saron, that allow the magriders to prey on other tanks with impunity.

1845

Right, but since TR have to face off against Magriders surely this weapon would be equally of interest to them as it is for the NC, right? That’s what I was asking about, why it would especially be important to the NC (as opposed to basically everybody). Not important, I just wanted to understand your POV.

1846

I tried the AV missile and was less impressed than y’all I think. Then again, I previewed it in a pitched battle for some outpost where every time I set the damn thing up it drew so much fire I died instantly or had to bail fast and then the launcher blew up. The lack of zoom also meant I had a hell of a time actually seeing what I was shooting at. I think in some situations it’ll be very useful but for now I think I’ll pass.

1847

Exactly. Even the normal turret is a death trap. Without the shield I can’t see how you would survive. You’re basically asking anyone with more than a 1x scope to kill you.

A stationary target getting off 3 slow firing missiles against a tank likely isn’t going to be as easy as some people think either.

I will probably play with it for a bit, but the general utility of the gun turret us too much better.

1848

It has an entirely different range than the AI turret, roughly the same as a lock-on launcher. You should be able to get two shots before anyone even cares about you, and sniping at that range is extremely hard.

1849

With the range on the turret and the guided-by-wire rocket you should also not be setting it up in the same manner you would the normal AP turret. You only need LOS for figuring out where the armor you’re attacking is coming from. After that, setup behind some cover and use the guidance system to bring your shots home.

This thing reminds me a lot of the old NC Phoenix. If you stood on top of a wall or next to some rocks and shot the Phoenix you were as good as dead because you were an immobile target for a good 3-5 seconds. The secret to the Phoenix was to figure out where you wanted your shots to go approximately, then setup behind cover and let the guidance do the work. Same deal here.

1850

Speaking of which, did you guys see these screenshots of the empire-specific launchers?

Vanu

TR

NC

Interesting ammo counts, eh? It seems to be that the NC would be the guided missile, TR the swarm missile, and Vanu a charged shot or something?

1851

It will be very interesting. This is the type of thing that will add a lot of flavour to the game.

I am already looking forward for these.

1852

Hmm. I may be missing something, but I thought the AV turret’s “guidance” was you? You keep the reticle on the target and it flies to where you aim? How can I do that from behind a rock or something?

In the battle I was able to try it out in, we had swarms of infantry attacking the installation, backed up by armor. Setting up where you could see the armor (and with no zoom I couldn’t see the tanks very well against the backgrounds sometimes), the infantry had clear shots at you, and sometimes were within grenade range; snipers were very much in range.

I can see how in some situations it’ll be great, but that just wasn’t one of them I don’t think.

1853

I’ll be glad when the weather improves, I’ve been playing way too much P2. It’s really night and day when you have a full platoon doing things, it’s so satisfying to do a big galaxy drop on The Crown and snatch it away from the NC. I don’t love the slow grind when everything is getting coordinated, but once it’s in action it’s hard to beat.

1854

I just put in my first good play session since the big patch dropped a while back. I’m really liking the partial XP for damaging an enemy aircraft. The new spawn points are cool, but I didn’t do a whole heck of a lot of time around those. They’re still fairly easy to camp, but it keeps base defense a little more fluid, even after the defenders have been pushed back into one.

1855

The big improvement there is in the Tech Stations where you have fast-travel tunnels to take you to the perimeter of the base from the spawn building. Those are actually effective against any but an extremely large coordinated zerg/outfit.

For the small bases I guess it’s just too much trouble to actually build a complex tunnel network and exit points. I was think that one solution would be a set of bounce pads or a bounce pad that randomizes destination and puts you 150m away. Ten guys could hit that quickly and give an attacking group some serious trouble.

1856

Anyone playing Vanu notice a decrease in accuracy and/or damage with your weapons since the last patch? It seems like both my Solstice SF and my Orion are harder to hit with and that more shots are needed to kill since the big patch. Maybe I’m just getting old…

1857

It doesn’t look like there were any changes, according to the weapon data spreadsheet.

1858

So, according to RPS Planetside 2 has been hacked - or rather, Prosieben has been hacked and players are advised to change their passwords.

If this doesnt give SOE the heads-up soon that Prosieben are amateur hacks, with all the other stuff going on, nothing will… Hell, the mere fact that Prosieben uses volunteers to handle credit card information should give them a pretty good idea just how screwed up the damn company is.

THANK GOD I avoided becoming a prosieben costumer by screaming at SOE for 5 months…

1859

Pro7 is a goddamn tv channel.
It’s as if FOX would run World of Warcraft (at least do the billing)

Everyone should see that this is a bad idea!

1860

Volunteers handling CC info? Wow.