Tank drivers acting as gunners in PS2

[Kalbuth]

I meant, inside 1 empire, as we'll be playing 1 empire only. If we only have tanks and bang bus as ground vecs, that's a serious change from PS1 variety, and yes, in terms on vehicle handling too.
Bangbus, tank, buggies. That is 3 ground vehicles. Excuse me to find that poor compared to PS1, and saying that weapon/armor addons on tanks won't change much of the flavor of the vehicle
I just find that bad for variety

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Kalbuth

I meant, inside 1 empire, as we'll be playing 1 empire only. If we only have tanks and bang bus as ground vecs, that's a serious change from PS1 variety, and yes, in terms on vehicle handling too.
Bangbus, tank, buggies. That is 3 ground vehicles. Excuse me to find that poor compared to PS1, and saying that weapon/armor addons on tanks won't change much of the flavor of the vehicle
I just find that bad for variety

Don't foret ATV's. Higby said he would bring up the idea of a cloak module for ATV's, so I assume that means that they will be in at launch, although that is not at all officially confirmed.

Hopefully buggies will make it in shortly after launch. Maybe we can vote them up in the 3 year plan.

I hope that the new buggies act like miniature sunderers, with more than one passenger slot to get people around in (aside from the TR). Maybe 3 or 4 passengers in addition to the driver. Just make them be really fast, but with light armor and no windows so that the occupants can be shot at.

I wonder if it would be at all possible to balance the ability to shoot standard infantry guns from the passenger positions of a buggy. That could make buggies be very interesting and unique.

How about 1 driver with either no gun or a forward facing light gun, 1 gunner who sits next to him who controls a turret on the top of the buggy and 2 passenger slots behind them who can use their infantry weapons to shoot out the sides of the vehicle.

You could restrict which types of weapons could be used if it helped with the balance concern. Maybe some weapons such as HA are too large and unwieldy to fire from that position.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

I wonder if it would be at all possible to balance the ability to shoot standard infantry guns from the passenger positions of a buggy. That could make buggies be very interesting and unique.

Well, it would be very unique except that Higby mentioned that one of the ideas for the Sunderer under consideration was to allow passengers to fire their infantry weapons from firing ports.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by kaffis

Well, it would be very unique except that Higby mentioned that one of the ideas for the Sunderer under consideration was to allow passengers to fire their infantry weapons from firing ports.

Totally spaced on that. My bad, just forgot.

Still, that would make buggies even more of a mini Sunderer. Give Sunderers a ton of armor but make them slower like a tank. Meanwhile the buggies can't carry as many people and the riders may even be exposed to damage while inside, but they could be zipping around at high speed, maybe faster than in PS1. It could be a great way of moving a lot of troops around if speed is of the essence and the air space isn't safe enough for a Galaxy.

I think buggies should not only be included in Planetside 2, I think they should be even more useful than in PS1. Part of the whole point of this thread is about how 2 people together in 1 tank should be at least as powerful as 1 person each in 2 separate tanks. Buggies deserve this same level of consideration, considering that a buggy driver + gunner took the same amount of coordination and team work to be effective as a MBT took, but were nowhere near as decisive on the battlefield.

I'm not saying a buggy should be as deadly as a tank, just as useful.

[Azren]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

How about 1 driver with either no gun or a forward facing light gun, 1 gunner who sits next to him who controls a turret on the top of the buggy and 2 passenger slots behind them who can use their infantry weapons to shoot out the sides of the vehicle.

Forget this drivergunner idea already, MTBs are already messed up, no need to expand it to buggies. Fireing out of the vehicle? Would be way too powerful (EMP SA guy anyone?).

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Azren

Forget this drivergunner idea already, MTBs are already messed up, no need to expand it to buggies. Fireing out of the vehicle? Would be way too powerful (EMP SA guy anyone?).

That could easily be handled by carefully limiting which weapons can be fire from inside the vehicle.

If you have a HA or any other weapon that can't be fire from within, you could still probably bring along a pistol, to take some pot shots at least.

[Raymac]

Do Lightnings have less that half the armor and less than half the firepower of an MBT in PS1? So, I'm asking are 2 Lightings > 1 MBT.

It's a sincere question, because I don't know the answer to it.

[2coolforu]

In a prowler I could easily kill more than two lightnings, the MBT's had way more dps and even more armor/hp.

A lightning would kill a prowler in 36 shots, so that's 18 shots for two. A prowler killed a lightning in 5 100mm shots. So yeah, I'm pretty certain most MBT's could deal with multiple lightnings fairly easily. The guns on the MBT's also had flatter arcs.

I'll assume that a prowler fires about the same rate as a lightning (from memory it felt about the same), given that value of shots taken to kill a vehicle I reckon a 2-man MBT could kill 3 Lightnings given the advantage the MBT would have with seperate driver/gunners [not driving into trees, can fire behind etc].

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by 2coolforu

In a prowler I could easily kill more than two lightnings, the MBT's had way more dps and even more armor/hp.

Oh yeah. I definitely know they had more, but was it twice as much? Obviously I'm asking because it would be a good frame of reference for the current discussion. I'm guessing they had less than half considering how easy they were to kill with my Reaver, but I'm wondering if anyone crunched the numbers.

EDIT: You ninja'd me there. Thanks for the info. That sounds about right.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Raymac

Oh yeah. I definitely know they had more, but was it twice as much? Obviously I'm asking because it would be a good frame of reference for the current discussion. I'm guessing they had less than half considering how easy they were to kill with my Reaver, but I'm wondering if anyone crunched the numbers.

EDIT: You ninja'd me there. Thanks for the info. That sounds about right.

MMOs are pretty good examples of fostering emergent gameplay and the most effective playstyles floating to the top and being adopted universally.

If it were the case that 2 lightnings were more effective than MBTs, you would have seen the lightning vs. MBT ratio in outfit play reflect that. Since we all remember outfits rolling columns of MBTs instead of bigger columns of Lightnings, it's pretty safe to say that answers our own question.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by kaffis

MMOs are pretty good examples of fostering emergent gameplay and the most effective playstyles floating to the top and being adopted universally.

If it were the case that 2 lightnings were more effective than MBTs, you would have seen the lightning vs. MBT ratio in outfit play reflect that. Since we all remember outfits rolling columns of MBTs instead of bigger columns of Lightnings, it's pretty safe to say that answers our own question.

That's an excellent point. 1 variable I can see in that though is the ease of coordination of 1 MBT versus trying to coordinate 2 Lightnings. That could affect the overall effectiveness of the 2 vehicles in a "real world" situation. For example, I think we all would agree that HA/AV/Med/Eng is the ideal loadout, however Max Crash Teams are used with great results.

[Azren]

PS 1 math is easy regarding tanks. 1 + 1 = 3
That about sums it up. The game rewarded the MBTs with far supirior armor and firepower to single man tanks, while the lightnings still stayed useable (well at the beginning amyway, nowadays everyone has AV, so they do not amount to much anymore).

From the experience I have as a driver and gunner for magriders I can state with certainty that in PS 1 if drivers got the main gun all MBTs would be close to worthless. The biggest weakness the magrider has is it's driver gun. This might not be obvious, but it really is only a newbie trap. Any good driver knows to only use it when we are forced in close combat with other vehicles, and occasionally to fend off AV grunts. If you try to use the vehicle's maximum potential, and get in close enough for that gun to be accurate, you die fast. This is what will probably happen in PS 2; all little Timmys will rush ahead with their main guns blasing, getting blown up by mines and other tanks because they get too caught up in the battle.
The driver needs to be able to keep a clear head and know when to retreat, something that is made much harder if you need to shoot a gun too.

Well the devs will do it this way either way, because they simply mix all of the current vehicles into one, the MBT. Well, it sure is economic; they just need to make one model per empire and add a bunch of weapon models on the turret. Much faster than modelling several different vehicles, as it should have been done. Here's for rushed developement!

[2coolforu]

Originally Posted by Raymac

That's an excellent point. 1 variable I can see in that though is the ease of coordination of 1 MBT versus trying to coordinate 2 Lightnings. That could affect the overall effectiveness of the 2 vehicles in a "real world" situation. For example, I think we all would agree that HA/AV/Med/Eng is the ideal loadout, however Max Crash Teams are used with great results.

There's also the psychological component, even with 4 lightnings you are probably going to lose 2 while taking down an MBT. That's a lot of effort in logistics/regrouping to maintain. With 2 men in one tank you simplify the logistics and gain a benefit from that. Another thing to note is that the weaker tank is gonna take alot of damage, at least almost twice that of which the MBT is taking. That causes people to panic, in the case of the prowler you will lose half your lightning health in 2-3 shots, this causes most drivers to attempt to flee which effectively pisses away DPS and gives the advantage to the MBT.

Anyway I do not see one-man-army tanks working or being Planetside in the slightest, I think a one man tank should be a cert tree of the normal tank which sacrifices damage and armor for speed and convenience. The two man tank should have its main gun operated by the passenger and the secondary weapon operated by the driver or possible the passenger as well. You simply cannot have such a huge game and give people control of everything by themselves, it just doesn't work. The reason Bad Company had 1 man tanks is because you can't afford to have two people in a tank just to get it working.

The reason games like CoD and Battlefield don't generate teamwork is because they don't force players into it, I'm sorry but people just won't work together unless you force them too. Sure individual friendship groups might work together but the zerg as a whole will seek out the easiest, simplest method to do anything. The reason why we have these huge epic guilds and communities in Planetside, EVE, X, Y, Z is because people are pressured into communicating and chatting. This is the reason I'm lucky to get two words out of someone in CoD but I've had plenty of conversations with people in Pside.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Azren

Well the devs will do it this way either way, because they simply mix all of the current vehicles into one, the MBT. Well, it sure is economic; they just need to make one model per empire and add a bunch of weapon models on the turret. Much faster than modelling several different vehicles, as it should have been done. Here's for rushed developement!

I see what you are saying in the rest of your post, but I quoted this part here because I'm not so sure about it. I know Higby has mentioned the Sunderer a few times, but I don't know if that was just as a PS1 example, or if it is going to be in PS2. I do know, however, that T-Ray confirmed that all the buggies from PS1 will return in PS2 "eventually".

Also, I don't think it's really fair to say the devs are rushing the development. They haven't announced a release date, or even a beta date. ("It will be released when it's ready.") Plus, we've basically been begging for some basic VS screenshots, but they've been holding them back presumably because they are still a work in progress. While part of me wants them to rush it, it seems they are taking the far better route of making sure they make the best product they can. So it really doesn't feel like "rushed development" to me.

[Vash02]

It is a bit contradictory that they are forcing team play for infantry but are encouraging solo play (literal one man tanks) for vehicles.