[Malorn]

So in PS1 it was common for the classic footzerg to march from one objective to the nearest hostile objective. The zerg always travels the path of least resistance, so you can use that principle to predict how each empire will typically progress across Indar by a close inspection of the terrain, roads, and positions of the outposts/facilities. Alas I digress...

The most significant change with the one-man tanks is that instead of footzerging I think we'll end up seeing a lot more people roll out tanks because they won't need to wait for a gunner. Additionally a lot of people didn't even have tanks certed unless they ran with a set of people they typically had gun, so the fact that you don't need to spend certs on a tank and that the tank is effective with just a single person I predict the amount of armor on the field will increase substantially in PS2 vs what we saw in PS1.

The ability to instantly switch seats also makes me believe that if someone has a tank and has no intention of running a gunner they will always have an AA secondary gun configuration. Why? Because even if they dont' have a gunner they can easily switch into the gunner seat and deal with any air threat that comes their way. If someone does happen to hop in the gunner seat - great, but if not its no big deal.

Now if we see a significant increase in armor and a significant increase in AA where every tank can effectively go into Skyguard-mode ground forces will be rolling no-fly zones. The only conceivable way to prevent this would be to have the AA gun upgrade prohibitively expensive resource-wise - to the point where you wouldn't want to get the upgrade unless you did in fact have a gunner to man it full-time to justify the expense.

The large number of tanks might also make the re-imagined Liberator gunship actually useful. Similar to the tank situation you have the Liberator - why run a liberator when you could have 2 ES Aircraft specialized for air-to-ground? The only solution I could see to that question is that the Liberator is significantly better at destroying ground targets than a Air-to-Ground specialized ES Aircraft.

Its hard to predict the dynamic, but I have a feeling that the AA upgrade for tanks will be expensive, and that the same upgrade for the Lightning will be cheaper, making the Lightning the effective replacement of the Skygaurd.

I also believe the Liberator exists specifically to control the tank population and I predict it will be very good at its role. I'm speculating that the reason they ditched the bombs and went with the Gunship approach is due to the fact that a gunship design is simply better at taking out tanks than trying to make a dive-bomber. The Dive-bomber role is also roughly what a Reaver/Mosq/Scythe would be with air-to-ground rockets. If the Liberator retained its previous role it would be very similar and likely less effective than a pair of ES aircraft, so they switched it to a more effective tank-busting platform with a dedicated gunner + pilot guns, and like the attack helicopters of the modern day, it's probably going to have camera-guided and lock-on missiles to take out tanks significantly more effectively than the ES Aircraft.

The point I'm trying to make in all this is that i believe the 1-man tank is central to the entire balance of PS2. The end result will be a lot more vehicle combat, less footzerging, and the Lightning & Liberator will have important roles that we haven't much talked about. The Liberator being the best tank-buster and the lightning being the effcient vehicle AA platform. Augmenting both of those you have the configurable ES tanks and aircraft. It's well-balanced IMO, and I think we'll all have a lot more vehicle action and fun. Hopefully the vehicle terminals can handle the volume of hardware that hundreds of players will be requesting at any one time.