Originally Posted by Malorn
Go back to the roots of the role that HA plays in the game. Heavy Assault. Its for the guys that breach a room or tower or whatever and need to get all Sam Jackson on them.
For that purpose the Jackhammer actually makes the most sense of the 3 because that's precisely what they use combat shotguns for. They're effective close-quarters and quickly degrade outside that. But for that purpose, they are great.
Other than a shotgun, the best thing that comes to mind for heavy assault is a bullpup submachinegun with a large capacity magazine, sort of like the p90. You dont' want something with a long barrel in close quarters fighting it'll just get in the way. I can see an MCG-like thing if it has a short barrel (like forearm length or shorter) since it would essentially function the same way.
But the point is you calibrate these weapons based on the amount of damage you want to do to a target at a specific range, and all of them need to taper off quickly. The Jackhammer tapers off because it has a wide spread and the further you go the fewer pellets hit the target. Can also have pellet damage degradation or a max range. The MCG also has a COF but it would need more bullet damage degradation. You could call it a side-effect of having a shorter barrel and thus less acceleration time and accuracy.
The VS has the most unusual HA. Something that fires somewhat rapidly and uses energy tech. They could go with something like the Maelstrom where you hold the beam on the target and the further the target the less damage the beam does. That would be easy to balance and definitely has a VS-ish feel to it...a plasma death ray beam. It would need a cooler effect of course. Something similar to Unreal Tournament's link gun. It could even have the dual-fire mode of the link gun in UT, thought that might lead to more lasher-like spam, but as long as there's no lashes people could dodge the orbs, but again that might extend the range of the weapon beyond what HA should be.
They dont' fit as medium or long range weapons, and it would be quite easy to calibrate the damage of them all.
Also, the main problem with the Jackhammer in PS1 was not the weapon concept itself - it was the fact that 3rd person existed. 3rd person allowed a jackhammer to completely negate the major drawback of the weapon, which was closing-distance. Clientside hit detection also exacerbated the problem since it was an instant-hit weapon. The triple-shot was also a poor design decision. Cool concept but not good for gameplay.
HA should be the close-range breaching weapons. They're a tradeoff between range and dps...high dps, short range. Its a reasonable tradeoff and won't be good in all situations. MCGs need to not have the range they had in PS1 since that deviated from the concept. Lasher spam down a hallway was also not good. These weapons should only be effective out to 35-40m or so (and that's little damage), with their optimal engagement range between 10-15m.
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I definitely agree with at least part of that change. Heavy Assault as it was implemented in PS was simply too effective at normal combat ranges. Plus the situation was made even worse by Planetsides relegation of infantry combat to being conducted in doors where with the exception of a few long hallways HA had a massive advantage over anything else simply because one or two lucky hits (or fix or six for the MCG) would deal far more damage than a few well-placed bursts from medium assault.
Maybe instead of evening having a "Heavy Assault" category, it should be broken up into two distinctly different classes. A Close Quarters Battle (CQB) set with with weapons designed for such ranges, and another set of weapons intended for what is known as direct fire support (LMGs, SAWs, etc).
I'm hoping a greater emphasis on capturing territory that includes areas not friendly to vehicles, tighter restrictions on who can get access to which vehicles and at real cost to non-vehicular combat (instead of the Reaver/ Mossie + HA & AV and you can take on anything that predominated when I left), and better balancing will make HA an option for some situations and not the "bring this or bend over" must-have it was. Mostly because it stunk seeing a new decent new player (took a support certification instead of all weapons, followed a SLs instructions, etc) get fed up and quit after their 10th death in under an hour to someone whose whole "tactic" was to ignore incoming fire to blindly charge into a mass of players and get a few lucky kills because they just happened to have the "I played longer so I WIN" gun.