[BeatCrazed]

Very interesting, I had thought the mini players were some ability that granted extra firepower. I do have a question about them: What happens if the transport is killed? Do the riding players eject (perhaps at high velocity if there were lots of them) or are they killed too?

In Planetside 1 rendering distance was handled by an obscuring fog at 400m. Anything inside this distnace was rendered without fail, and anything outside was partially or fully concealed, depending on how much further outside 400m they were. It made sense, and since the only weapon that could fire further than 400m was an indirect fire weapon by design, it worked.

In Planetside 2 rendering distance is split. There is an obscuring fog that is at a distance the player sets, to be used for performance reasons. The player rendering distance, however, is determined based on how many people are in the area, and whether the player is infantry, vehicle or aircraft. In an intense infantry battle, the player render distance can get as bad as 20m. Naturally that's a big problem. This variability effects weapon balance, since longer range weapons are useless when you can't see enemies more than 20m away, and it effects vehicle balance. There was a time when infantry could see aircraft from quite a distance, but aircraft had to get quite close to see the infantry. This made it easy for infantry based AA to reach out and touch aircraft with no fear of retribution from the aircraft who couldn't see or retaliate.

I am interested, and I've signed up for the newsletter. Put out a wave of invitations? :P