[Rothnang]

My giant problem with Hamma's assessment of the situation is that he seems to think vehicles need to be restricted, which I think isn't the right approach.

A lot of people enjoy playing with vehicles, and want to use them as much as possible, so any change that deprives them of the ability to use vehicles isn't an improvement, but just pushes the pendulum in the other direction towards people who like infantry combat.

I also don't believe in making the resource system more important, because I really dislike the idea of giving the faction that's already winning all the advantages. The more land you control the more difficult it should become to hold on to it, it shouldn't become easier and easier because your opponents can't mobilize powerful units anymore.


What really needs to be addressed is population imbalance, spawncamping, defense, XP distribution and combined arms

There needs to be a really substantial XP bonus for going to a continent where you're outnumbered, so people WANT to fight there, and the population balances back out. The 2-3% you get for server wide imbalances is laughable, and meaningless since population per continent is what really matters.

Spawncamping is IMO the biggest problem with vehicles vs. infantry. When a vehicle gets destroyed it isn't back in 10 seconds, it takes much longer than that. Even just damaging a vehicle sends it packing for longer than infantry takes to recover from death. This whole advantage that infantry should have is unfortunately much too easily shut down by spawncamping and knocking down Sunderers. Infantries ability to spawn back into a fight is unfortunately easily shut down by vehicles, so they can rarely capitalize on their strength.

Defending bases isn't rewarded enough, and they flip much too quickly. The whole domination system doesn't work, because there isn't ever time to mobilize a meaningful defense. The defensive structures in the base are always constructed like swiss cheese, contain none of the vital parts, and aren't adequately protected. Like in an amp station, nobody wants to stand on the wall, you're just an easy target for enemies moving around the very same walls, and you're not even helping to defend, since what you really need to protect are generators housed in small buildings, the walls are just for show.

XP distribution is just off in this game. Infantry dies in one hit from a vehicle, respawns and is back maybe 20 seconds later. A vehicle gets hit and goes to repair, that often takes longer than 20 seconds. However, killing the infantry gets you 100+ XP, shooting the vehicle gets you absolutely nothing, the driver of the vehicle gets XP for repairing though! I think that every time you damage a vehicle for 20% of its HP you should get 50 XP or so, and if you kill an infantryman in a vehicle you should only get 50 XP instead of the full amount. That little change alone would already make a huge difference in how people perceive the competition between vehicles and infantry - because right now it's all about kills, and vehicles kill more and die less.
If you look at the survival scheme for the two different units Infantry is meant to die and respawn until their respawn point is destroyed or captured, vehicles are meant to run and repair until an enemy manages to destroy them before they can do so. There is a reward for killing, there is a reward for taking out spawn capabilities, but there is no reward for making the vehicle run and repair, which is why vehicles rack up such absurdly huge XP themselves, and give very little back to all the people who fight them.

The Combined arms concept currently is a mess, because the only vehicle that effectively bridges the gap between vehicles and infantry is the Sunderer, and it's mostly just used as a spawn point. The Galaxy is too big to be worthwhile as just a taxi and requires too many gunners to be usable once the passengers disembark. The Sunderer isn't really much of an infantry fighting vehicle, but more of a support unit that happens to have a lot of seats too. It's too big and unwieldy to really be good in a fight, despite massive armor and solid firepower, and it simply isn't fun to drive. Also only MAX units really rely on transport vehicles to get around, regular infantry can redeploy/suicide to move from one viable spawn to the next.
I want to see vehicles that really emphasize the combined arms concept, where a tank driver or gunship pilot can have a vehicle he can have fun with when its empty while at the same time providing support and transportation to an infantry squad when they need it. We're just lacking units that really bring the two together.