EDIT: Mk.3 design suggestion added to Page 2 of this thread:
http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...877#post774877
EDIT 2:
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Alright, so we had the whole discussion "do we need one or can we stick with the Gal" which usualy ends in bickering and waiting for PS2. That's not what this is about. This is about design lessons learned from PS1.
IF an AMS is implemented in game, what I want to talk about is AMS design. What can we learn from the previous AMS designs (there were two versions) and what needs to be improved for a game like PS2? Note, some of these lessons might be useful for the Galaxy spawnpoint design as well.
THE AMS MK.1
The Advanced Mobile Spawnpoint Mk.1 was the original version of the AMS. It is actually one of the most reworked vehicles of the live game!
The AMS Mk.1 was quite different from the Mk.2, to refresh your memories and go through the history of PS AMS design, here's how it was used:
The Mk.1 had one equipment terminal located at the back and two deconstruction tubes on the side. In order for it to deploy, the player would have to stop the vehicle, get out and make it deploy by pressing a button installed on the front of the vehicle.
This design lead to the discovery of a number of problems. Due to having to get out the Mk.1 created the first two problems:
1. Deployment vulnerability issues
An AMS that is uncloaked is a defenseless target. As long as the AMS is visible, it will be a prime target for everything out there. The time required between stopping and deploying was around 3-4 seconds. It turns out this is a long period of time for a random aircraft to spot you. Once spotted, everyone else on that empire knows your approximate location and will home in on it before it becomes a strongpoint.
Can't people defend it? No, because the moment you set up, people haven't spawned yet, meaning you typically don't have a defensive ring of troops around your location yet and the driver's first job after deploying is after all, setting up protection: minefields etc.
On top of that, getting out to deploy often meant the driver was shot before he could deploy his spawnpoint.
2. Deployment interference annoyances and waste of time
The interference radius for AMSes already existed at this time and having to get in and out of the vehicle in order to attempt to deploy wasted a lot of time and effort and was quite frustrating, let alone extremely dangerous.
3. Congestion at the single equipment terminal
Even though we only had up to 150 friendly players per continent and they were supposed to spread out, people spawning in Standard Armour often found themselves waiting to get near the Equipment Terminal.
At the same time, hardly anyone ever needed to deconstruct. As the spawntubes on the side were mostly aesthetic lore suggestions of why you could spawn in the bubble, two was pretty redundant.
4. Predictable stationary locations
There were people (though not that many) that quickly realised that once the orientation of the AMS was known, you could simply spam shots into a specific area of the AMS (the rear section) to almost guaranteed hit something. Particularly some snipers did that, but the large concentration of freshly spawned troops at the rear made for easy splash damage kills from tanks especially.
5. Lack of control over spawnpoint choice
Due to other AMSes frequently getting closer to where you killed, you often lost the option to spawn at the AMS of your choice.
THE AMS MK.2
The AMS Mk.2 then allowed you to deploy the vehicle from within the driver seat, in one blow eliminating or at least highly reducing problem 1 and 2.
The second change in the AMS Mk.2 was that the equip term and spawn tubes were exchanged. This instantly created twice the capacity of serving players with obtaining gear and also made it easier for players collecting gear to use the AMS as a shield between them and a target, due to the side being a better defense.
The final change in the AMS mk.2 was the addition of a Matrix Panel to the front of the vehicle instead of the deployment button. A panel many players sadly still haven't found or forget to use. Regardless, this created a much greater strategic potential for the AMS, as you could create secret staging grounds for just your outfit or you yourself, away from the zerg that wouldn't be swamped immediately and therefore found immediately and therefore killed immediately.
So were there other problems that wern't solved between the Mk.1 and Mk.2? Yes. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, you had no control over when or who someone could spawn at your AMS. Another problem was that you still had to manually press B time and again to find a spot that wasn't in the interference radius of another AMS. In fact, this got a lot trickier later after the Aegis turret and other deployables also got interference radii!
More general problems were with performance and the spawning locations: it was quite regular to get stuck upon spawning between the AMS and a wall if someone placed it close to it or at an angle to one. While driving, the length of the vehicle and the steep terrain angles in some locations sometimes meant you'd get stuck on the edge of terrain, not being able to move forward or backwards.
Handling and acceleration were poor, but considering you could easily run over infantry due to the weight and despite the narrow shape of the AMS, quite logical.
The AMS' cloak shield was as indicated before vital, but also passed through objects, walls and terrain. Passing through walls could cause some issues at the backdoor, as well as AMS location detection from inside a base.
It would also cloak vehicles who's point of reference for the game lies inside the cloak bubble. This way you could for instance cloak a Lodestar that was 80% out of the cloak shield. This caused some annoyances in finding a way into the shield, some collissions and most importantly... not being able to see the entry point of the Lodestar.
The last issue with the AMS cloak field were bugs that would render it or something else visible against a foggy background at long distance before it was properly rendered and disappeared, on top of some gamma issues that could cause such a rendition and actual cheating that disabled the shield altogether. Motion and Disruption Sensors as well as the Router's rotating blue shield were frequently visible from certain angles outside the AMS, revealing its position and therefore signing its death certificate.
With regards to the Router, the Router has always required a cloaking field as it is an easy target which cannot be defended well once discovered. The good thing about a Router/AMS combo is that it either takes a lot of time to set up by one person who then has to maintain both vehicles to prevent them from deconstructing by taking ownership of either (especially Router who deconstructs faster), or simply teamwork. Hence the AMS and Router often went hand in hand, although the Router could be used in relation to a tower and Aegis field as well.
Often placement of AMS and Router was at a vehicle construction pad to cut traveling times to a vpad. (Of course I'd always kill friendly Router Pads leading inside to friendly bases... Small note on Router design: acquiring pads could have been made a bit easier because often it was not visible where the pad's acquisition term was and the vehicle too far from the ground to leave a use cue on the ground, similarly acquisition rules in the vehicle description was unclear).
Either way, a very important aspect about the AMS is that you need to place it somewhere concealed and still leave room for players to spawn and per chance place another vehicle in the cloak field without the cloak field being too small for people to spawn in. This includes getting it somewhere. The lower profile it has, the easier it is to use hills to your advantage as visual and physical cover. Hence compact size for an AMS is an absolute must and must be balanced with its cover value and rate of detection.
THE AMS MK.3
So now on to PlanetSide 2. Let's call a potential PS2 AMS the Mk.3 for easy reference and see what other lessons in design can be learned from the Mk.2.
The Mk. 3 can and has to be different in several ways, though the most important lesson from either AMSes is that a spawnpoint that's visible and detected is a gigantic "KILL ME ASAP" sign and even if it is highly defended, it will always fall within seconds or minutes tops unless the enemy is not able to get out of a building. This is even more important as there are more players in PS2, making the life expectancy of any detected mobile spawnpoint even shorter. The capacity of avoiding detection is therefore the most important feature of an AMS.
In terms of shape, a lower profile would help people get out of stuck situations, though would also create less cover for infantry to use. On the other hand, this would also allow more positions to place it and would make it easier to reach these positions undetected.
Perhaps a steep, but slightly stepped design ('vehicle shoulderlines') could help a player get out of a sticky situation. To solve the issue of steep angles, it's also possible to increase the amount of wheels in the AMS, do something with gravity or player pushing that pulls an AMS that is "partially airborn" back with its wheels to the ground. Alternatively, the wheels could follow the ground by creating joints in the AMS' structure or by making the suspension follow the terrain more loosely.
The map could have deployment interference radii on it, as suggested by Hayoo a long time ago, to increase deployment efficiency and reduce annoyances.
The first thing to realise in relation to equipment obtaining, is that people will not spawn in Standard Armour. This means the need for equipment terminals to be accessed right after spawning is reduced severely. In fact, it's none as people can instantly run off.
The second realisation is that there are four times the amount of potential spawnees on your AMS (or Galaxy), on top of which people are locked into classes with very specific weaponry, meaning the need to re-equip has increased severely.
I would say that this then on the whole increases the need for equipment terminals. Rather than two, the Mk.3 would require 3 or 4 equipment terminals.
The range from which equipment can be acquired could be slightly increased, but it must be noted that this can influence a combat situation around an AMS. The old equip terms often already had a direct combat role to restore armour by quick switching and I often changed from infil to Sweeper, Rocklet or Flaklet user. Quite handy and IMO in principal fine, but shouldn't be made too easy either. In that sense, it could be fair to not reset shields with change of gear in PS2 either.
The location of the equipment terms could also change in the deployed situation: they wouldn't even have to be situated directly against the vehicle's hull, but could be deployed at a small distance within the cloaking field, allowing 270 to 360 degrees access. This would reduce the amount of equipment terms needed again. As with the Galaxy, the equip terms could also be holographic.
With regards to the cloaking field, several improvements could be made as well.
From the larger pop numbers, the first realisation is that there are more peopl that potentially detect the AMS location. Fast concealment remains therefore pivotal in an effective AMS. Second, the cloaking field might become too small to support a larger spawning populace. Although any cloaking field doesn't have to be higher, it may have to be a slight bit wider and more elliptical in shape to encompass all the spawnees.
This of course has some consequences on gameplay too. The bigger the field (especially higher), the easier it is to detect the AMS as the distortion in the sky is greater and passes along more textures and backgrounds that might reveal it. Shield shape and size then could be a strategic customization feature.
Another improvement would be the ability to access cloaked vehicles by always displaying entry point locations, or only partially cloaking vehicles (which would cause AMS detection issues if bits stick out (!).
Similarly, it would help if the shield would not pass through "high density" objects.
MK.3 CUSTOMIZATION
Lastly, the Mk.3 could have more modifications and customizations possible. For instance, it is possible to not have a cloak field (I would never recommend not having that though) and instead install an anti-air or anti-vehicle turret or something else on top. It would also be possible to create upgrades and sidegrades, like a force field to protect against damage, automatic repairs (after damage has not been taken for a while as seen is already in PS2), various forms of radar interference and detection systems, pain and healing fields, mobile app. drone launch sites, etc.
It is also possible to go even further and go the way of the Red Alert Mobile Construction Vehicle as a variant, where an AMS' capacity for spawns is replaced by entirely different capacities: a capacity for vehicle repair and resupply (instead of the Sunderer which IMO is not suited for that). Meaning it could have either an air pad or a repair silo functionality, or simply having nothing but a very large cloak bubble. Another option would be replacing spawn capacity by Router functionality.
Any other lessons the dev team can learn from PS1's AMSes or ideas about a potential AMS Mk.3? Please share!