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Old 2011-08-01, 03:51 PM   [Ignore Me] #1
Haro
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Anti-air as a larger part of strategy.


I've been perusing the forums lately and have seen a lot of posts concerning the lack of ground transports used in PS1. Quite simply, the Galaxy trumped ground transports in every aspect, with more armor, speed, mobility, and could easily assault bases in spite of AA, which I felt never had much usage in PS when I played. So my suggestion was that the only way we can make ground transports more viable is by buffing AA to discourage Galaxies from always dropping troops. Or at least make it harder.

This got me thinking as to how AA could be better implemented. A stronger AA vehicle than the skyguard is a must, like a kind of AA missile-toting tank. Better AA turrets for bases would also be important for establishing bases as a kind of no-fly zone for the enemy. AA is not just about shooting down aircraft but also creating area denial. Air defenses are made in a way that makes you think twice about going in, something ps1 seemed to lack for me when I flew reavers or galaxies.

How should this be balanced, though? While shifting more focus onto ground transports would be great, we can't make it so that galaxies of PS2 are like deliverers of PS1. But there's a difference in that, without AA, galaxies and aircraft in general once again become a superior force.

So, to get to the meat, I think that introducing stronger AA will create a new incentive for coordination, and add another level of strategic complexity to the game. Make some AA, like the tanks and stationary turrets, strong but rare, a vital resource for the empire controlling them and a vital target for the force opposing them. If an empire manages to destroy enemy AA, they gain a huge advantage in that they can now use their air power freely. Without it, they can still fly, but at far greater risk in certain areas.

A hierarchy of AA units will allow this type of gameplay to extend to different areas of a continent in certain ways. AA zones will be most focused around bases, naturally, followed by towers, hotly contested zones, and then uncontested zones. Trying to gal-drop on a base, where at the very least you will have several powerful anti-air missile turrets, will not be possible unless you destroy the turrets (or possibly their radar?) Towers will have fewer and maybe smaller turrets, and so are more vulnerable, but still fairly potent. During battles in open ground, a smart commander will be sure to include some anti-air tanks in his force, but will need to guard them well if he doesn't want a formation of reavers and liberators to ruin his day. Finally, a group of ground units moving through an uncontested zone to a battle may want to bring a skyguard or keep a few AA infantry handy in case they run into a mosquito or reaver.

There can be other additions to this dynamic, such as skill trees for aircraft raising resistance to radar lock or AA extending their vertical range. My main thought behind this series of ideas is not to weaken aircraft, but to limit them. Ground vehicles are limited by the fact that they have to navigate through different types of terrain and that there are many weapons and vehicles designed to damage them. Air vehicles should similarly be limited in where they can go by improving AA, but these limits can be removed through cooperation and strategy, with the reward of air superiority.
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Old 2011-08-01, 07:02 PM   [Ignore Me] #2
Sentrosi
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There is already some very strong AA in Planetside. They are called Mosquitos, Reavers, Vultures and Wasps. Also an Engineer can upgrade existing base turrets to AA guns. I think with enhanced squad commands and intra-empire alliances, you are going to see better coordinated defense of bases.
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Old 2011-08-01, 09:39 PM   [Ignore Me] #3
Traak
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Re: Anti-air as a larger part of strategy.


Originally Posted by Sentrosi View Post
There is already some very strong AA in Planetside. They are called Mosquitos, Reavers, Vultures and Wasps. Also an Engineer can upgrade existing base turrets to AA guns. I think with enhanced squad commands and intra-empire alliances, you are going to see better coordinated defense of bases.

But, some of us have no use for being a pilot, and no interest in it. If you worship flight so much, go play crimson skies.

Not everyone plays the game to prance around the sky in a plane.

A selection of different AA capabilities that are ground-based would be cool, indeed. So far, it's AAmax and Skyguard, neither of which has much armor. How about AA that is armored, requires three people, gunner, driver, and person to man the radar/paint targets? More survivability traded off for requiring more people, unlike the Prowler, which just had more people for the sake of God knows what.

I want to see maxes that have much more armor and can traverse much more quickly, too. Even if they walk more slowly.

Last edited by Traak; 2011-08-01 at 09:44 PM.
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Old 2011-08-02, 12:37 AM   [Ignore Me] #4
Tapman
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Re: Anti-air as a larger part of strategy.


Originally Posted by Haro View Post
Quite simply, the Galaxy trumped ground transports in every aspect, with more armor, speed, mobility, and could easily assault bases in spite of AA, which I felt never had much usage in PS when I played. So my suggestion was that the only way we can make ground transports more viable is by buffing AA to discourage Galaxies from always dropping troops. Or at least make it harder.
The basis for your idea seems to be drawn out of the current state of Planetside where it takes a large percentage of a decently sized defending force to maintain a no-fly zone against attackers. It can be frustrating to be one of the only people firing at an incoming full Galaxy but you are putting the cart before the horse if you suggest that we solve that by buffing an entire section of gameplay. The truth is that back when Planetside had good pops, it was possible to maintain a no-fly zone because you had enough people to devote to that task alone, even a Gal with full shields doesn't stand a chance against a focused and deliberate defense strategy. With the pops being planned for Planetside 2 that will definitely translate over, I expect that the sky will be a much more dangerous place than it is these days in Planetside.

Now that I have that out of the way, let's talk turkey. We need to be generating specific ideas so that when Higby lurks around here he can copypasta them into his notes for the next discussion and figure out if/how they can implement them. I am definitely for having more options when it comes to controlling the skies, but I think you are not thinking horizontally enough. For example, instead of buffing AA max weapons, I would sooner have variable MAX weapons that work better in certain situations, AA included. This would be somewhat tough to balance, so maybe instead you can accomplish this through skill tree options like:
- Reducing time to lock on and reload
- Reduce CoF
- Give the ability to remain locked on for a small portion of time after losing LoS, (estimated trajectory is in missile technology these days already!)
- Smarter missiles that can avoid obstacles like trees and structures to a certain extent while locked on
- Different types of missiles that can damage vehicles in different ways (plasma that can degrade the armor, weapons, and stability flaps, buckshot flak that can pierce the hull and lightly damage the pilot/passengers, sonic blasts that can create turbulence and throw a pilot off their main course that they would have to recover from)

Structurally, there should be options for more passive AA as well. If a radar base has its system boosted with resources and some hacking and engineer focused players, there could be an early warning detection system for commanders. Instead of upgrading a turret to just AA or AV, you could let hackers/engineers work together to increase the range, CoF, RoF, upgrading the targeting system (let commanders select specific targets and upload their position, speed, estimated flight path, etc. to a HUD in the turret) and increasing the rotation speed of the turrets for when they are or aren't occupied. All of this would make it so that when you see [Interlink] (Turret) [Enemy] then support experience/assists would be handed out. Balancing this has mostly been accomplished by allowing hackers to turn the turrets on friendly units but you could add requiring reloading (at least on AV/AA ammunition) and having your benefits be susceptible to EMPs from a longer range than the overall functionality of the turret. Put a top-tier hacker, engineer, and pilot all in the same vehicle and you could open up options for blocking some/all types of information from enemies depending on their skill levels.

I like your idea of having new AA vehicles, in order to balance it with the skyguard and MAX units you would have to shift it towards the other end of the Mobility/Firepower/Armor triangle, Skyguards are fast, MAX units require only one person to operate, but both are vulnerable when alone. Most vehicles have some sort of makeshift AA defense like a secondary machine gun so I don't think having a mobile AA tank would be the solution. What you need is low/zero mobility, high firepower, but something that all empires have equal access to that fits their weapons' attributes. The solution: deployable towers have been essentially confirmed already, I suggest giving these towers some customization beyond radar/gun/air. Add SAM (Surface to Air Missile) sites. Make them capturable/destructible by and nonthreatening to infantry and ground vehicles but the mortal enemy of any pilot brave enough to enter its range. These would create small battle sites along the terrain which the domination of would shift/dictate the air situation when attacking or defending. Give engineers and hackers the same abilities to upgrade/enhance them and slowing/preventing enemy virus infections, and give enemies the ability to mess with the system in orders of magnitude associated with the skill tree of the attacking engineer/hacker (still firing at enemies but targeting system makes them detonate too early/late for direct hits -> fires at friendly air with limited accuracy -> fires at friendly air with full strength). To prevent it from being an insta-drop air killer you could start it as a gun tower drop and have the commander who dropped it give qualified friendlies missions to upgrade it in specific ways once it lands.

I swear though, if Planetside 2 is released and we don't have countermeasures, expect the hopeful pilots of Auraxis to riot.

Want to post more ideas, sleep more important. Give me some feedback and I'll change/add stuff when I am more coherent.
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Old 2011-08-02, 05:27 PM   [Ignore Me] #5
EASyEightyEight
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Re: Anti-air as a larger part of strategy.


I like the AA tank idea actually, but it should require deployment to work.

However, with customization, one might be able to replacing the Prowlers machine gun with missile pods one can spew into the air as a secondary gunner.

@Prowler comment: The machine gun for the Prowler used to be awesome right up until they reduced it to 15mm rounds for the BFR shields. 15mm is worthless against infantry and vehicles alike. 20mm rounds did something to armor (especially aircraft) at least.
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Old 2011-08-02, 05:57 PM   [Ignore Me] #6
Peacemaker
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Re: Anti-air as a larger part of strategy.


Honestly, if you think AA in PS1 needed a buff your loony. 1 or 2 AA max or Skyguards could completely shut down an area for enemy aircraft. (Except for the Burster MAX) The issue for the galaxies is that for a transport they had way too much armor.
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Old 2011-08-02, 06:31 PM   [Ignore Me] #7
dm Akolyte
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Re: Anti-air as a larger part of strategy.


>Except for the Burster MAX

lolwut. Bursters were easily the best at area denial.
Sparrows were super easy to use and super annoying to pilots, but they were terrible at actually keeping aircraft away.
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Old 2011-08-03, 05:44 PM   [Ignore Me] #8
Peacemaker
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Re: Anti-air as a larger part of strategy.


Bursters? Seriously? I could take bursters on in my reaver with 10 beers in me. All you had to do was not hover, figure out which way they WERE NOT looking, fly over their head, fly back the way you came over their head, turn back again, and nuke them.

Sparrows were by far the best area denial AA weapon in the game. They followed you for so long that unless you caught him by suprise you were going to take some hits. If you wern't at full armor you died. The Starfire was pretty great too, but it was just better at killing than the sparrow. Easier to lose the missiles.
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Old 2011-08-03, 08:09 PM   [Ignore Me] #9
Brusi
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Re: Anti-air as a larger part of strategy.


Nah, Player driven AA is ridiculous at the moment... You have to be hella sneaky to fly into a hot zone and get a kill before buggin out with the afterburners to stay alive.

I do like the idea of certain capturable areas being heavily fortified with AI controlled SAM sites or phalanxes something similar though. Switch things up a bit and make some areas require the Anti-Air network be hacked or power supply inturrupted before Air Support can be used in the area.
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Old 2011-08-04, 10:47 PM   [Ignore Me] #10
SKYeXile
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Re: Anti-air as a larger part of strategy.


incoming aircraft

what to use to kill it?

The skyguard
the wasp
the burster
the sparrow
the stryker
the skillfire
the reaver
the phoenix ...lol
the cerberus turrets
the AA wallturret
the skeeter
the lancer
gold ammo MCG?

....yea not enough options think we need more.
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Old 2011-08-05, 01:03 AM   [Ignore Me] #11
Bags
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Re: Anti-air as a larger part of strategy.


Nerf reaver armor back to what it was and AA vs air is fine, IMO. Even right now I can keep the skies fairly clear as a lone Burster Max until someone wises up and flanks me. At that point I'm dead no matter what I do, but still.

Last edited by Bags; 2011-08-05 at 01:04 AM.
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