Planetside 2 Catch-All

maverickz wrote:

Tamren, I really appreciate how in depth and thorough your posts are. Thanks for putting in the effort.

I'll chime in here. Lots of great feedback from Tamren and others here. It really helps a lot!

You know what? I take that back. Colour me surprised. I got in 2.5 hours of playtime today and it's probably the most fun I have had so far.

The flak mechanics are MUCH different now, let me explain how. Pre-patch when your aircraft would get shot at by flak and you would hear really loud *BANG CRACK THUMP WHAM* sounds. That doesn't happen anymore. Now getting hit by flak has a rhythmic *TUMP TUMP TUMP TUMP* sound to it, rather like a dull drum. The reason for this change is that they removed direct impact damage for flak. It turns out that the majority of flak damage came from that direct impact. Now when my ESF gets hit by one stray flak shell it does barely a third of what it used to. This is why they went and buffed flak damage again, it's much more "smooth" and reliable.

The result of all this was that people were no longer as hesitant to pull out the ground vehicles. I got into several amazing combined arms fights that had my pulse pounding. I did something today I don't usually do which was participate in a lot of infantry combat. I also spent some time driving my skyguard. Here are some things I noticed:

- Air defence is not a glorious job, you will get a lot (a LOT!) of assists, and very very few kills. However by doing so you perform a necessary job which is to chase all the enemy aircraft away. If you don't your friendly vehicles will quickly evapourate and your offensive will collapse. This is probably the main reason why they are scaling vehicle kill xp to damage done.
- No matter how much ground based defences you have, the best air defence is a swarm of friendly ESFs. Flak can chase away enemies, ESFs can run them down and destroy them. They will not be able to return immediately because of the vehicle spawn timers.
- Using flak is a lot harder than you might think, and ground-to-air rocket launchers actually have a slow lockon speed.
- Flak is extremely deadly on stationary targets, the difficulty of hitting a target increases exponentially with it's speed.

- Burster MAXes are actually not all that powerful. A single burster will just annoy an ESF and barely poses a threat to a galaxy or liberator. I would consider two bursters almost mandatory if you want to seriously contribute to a fight (by yourself).
- Dual bursters double your magazine and firing speed, but they ALSO double the recoil. This surprised me when I first started using them.
- Bursters are highly accurate compared to other flak and the projectile travels very fast giving them a short lead time.
- The BIGGEST weakness of bursters is that MAXes have no form of optical magnification. Most ESFs are barely more than little dots at high altitude. You CAN hit them at that distance, the flak will travel far enough. But it's no easy shot. (especially at night)

- Phalanx turrets don't have extremely high damage, but compared to the other types they have several advantages.
- While easy targets to hit Phalanx turrets have a surprising amount of armour, and unlike skyguards or MAXes they can soak up a whole salvo of ESF rockets with health to spare.
- Phalanx turrets also benefit from unlimited ammunition, no recoil and high magnification.
- Since the buff a couple patches ago, Phalanx flak is also very very fast and you barely need to lead targets at all.

- Having used the skyguard for a while I can definitely say it's not the beast most pilots make it out to be. Or rather, it isn't anymore since direct damage no longer has an effect.
- Skyguards have high mobility and a large ammo capacity, but they also have several drawbacks that aren't apparent until you drive one for a while.
- The skyguard flak cannon fires in bursts of 40, this is actually less in total than a dual burster and the damage is spread over a longer period of time
- Skyguards can use any vehicle optics, which makes hitting far away targets easier, however...
- Skyguards are surprisingly inaccurate! So much so you could almost think of it as a flak shotgun. This problem actually gets WORSE when you use higher magnification.
-Skyguard flak is rather slow. Each projectile has a noticeable lag time before hitting a target, and this forces you to lead your shots by a wide margin.

Oh and on a side note, the MAX antivehicle gun is on sale for half off today. It will be up for another 3 hours. If you plan to spend any time at all in a MAX I would suggest getting it. The Vanu version is called the Comet and it's basically half an HA rocket launcher in terms of damage. But it also reloads MUCH MUCH faster and has no projectile drop. Put two of them together and the MAX can dish out a surprising amount of damage quickly.

I just discovered something new today, I love playing as a MAX! The feeling of power is intoxicating.

I logged in today and found the Vanu defending the Crown against TR who were attacking up the valley from Zurvan and across the hills from Crossroads. I started out as a HA firing rockets at mosquitos. It's pretty fun, even if it isn't especially effective. I did get one kill, the rocket is only a deadly when you combine it with a lot of weakening flak. The range on the rocket launcher is fairly long, but still limited. The Crown is probably one of the tallest locations in the game, but even then if a liberator hovers up at the flight ceiling directly above the tower the launcher lacks the range to hit them. Best way to avoid them is to fly high or simply leave the danger zone. Worst case you take a single rocket worth of damage and that isn't enough to down an ESF.

A little while later the TR started attacking up the hill from the south with tanks and sunderers so I switched to my AV MAX and headed down the hill. The AV MAX weapon for Vanu is called the Comet and it fires plasma balls in a straight line with a very innocent sounding *plink* sound. Every player starts with one and it's quite useful. One Comet shot does around half of the damage a plain HA rocket does to vehicles. Against infantry a direct blow will flatline shields and knock off around 20% health. If you get good with it you can hit people with the Comet and immediately gun them down with the Quasar in the other hand.

Put two of them together however and you can deal TONS of damage to vehicles very quickly. Double Comets do equal damage to vehicles as a rocket, but they fire MUCH faster. Each dual comet MAX has around the firepower of 2.5-3 HAs. Since the shots fly in a straight line you don't need to account for drop, just aim at spot markers and plink away. These kill sunderers and tanks very fast and the maximum range is high. If you can see a vehicle odds are you can hit it, this includes hovering liberators.

We pushed the TR back down the hill and started backing them up to their sunderer. Turns out dual comets are pretty good against infantry too! Just aim for the hit markers and spam shots at them. Eventually one of them will take a round to the face. Quasars are no good at all when used at long range, but Comets fill the gap nicely.

Some things I learned:

- MAX nanite auto-repair is very useful. The first rank makes you regenerate .4% every second after a 15 second delay. In the absence of an engineer this helps you to top up your health.
- The other options for that slot are Flak Armour and Kinetic shielding. Shielding reduces small arm bullet damage by 1-5%, not especially useful if you ask me. At max rank that would mean soaking up 1 shot per 20. Flak armour on the other hand reduces explosive damage, this includes liberator shots, grenades, tank HE, rockets and ESF rockets. It's highly useful, arguably more useful than nanite repair when you have engineers around to help you.
- The only other slot can have MAX Charge, or extended ammo capacity. Ammo capacity just gives you extra reloads, 1 magazine per rank. Quasars and Comets have plenty of ammo, but Bursters can benefit from this perk because they burn through ammo in a snap. MAX charge makes you dash forward for a couple seconds, good for attacking and escaping. Dash recharges in 45 seconds, you can reduce this to 30 seconds with added certs.

- The biggest strength of the MAX is that you can poke your head out of cover and not have it immediately sniped off. In fact snipers do pathetic damage to MAXes. It takes 20-30 shots from a bolt action and you can almost ignore them. A MAX with an engineer repairing them can tank 10+ infantry at medium-long range.
- The burster was recently adjusted so that the shots fire straighter and more closer to the centre of the reticule. This allows you to attack infantry with them and dual bursters do decent damage.
- Comets on the other hand suffer a bit from parrallax. Comets don't shoot perfectly straight, they are spaced apart from each other and your aiming point. When firing a comet at close range you have to aim with the bottom corners of the reticule. This isn't a problem with vehicles but if you aim directly at a soldier the shots will miss to the side. If you get attacked at close range and don't have a quasar just aim at people's feet. The splash damage is considerable.
- Comets will destroy another MAX in 6 shots. This happens really fast if you have 2.

Yeah I remember when I was using maxes in the beta they were a whole lot of fun. The differance was back then they gave you both left and right guns per type. So you started with an aa and av max. Really mixing weapons is not the thing to do with maxes, it makes them way to ineffective. That's why I avoid using them til I got some matching weapons. Also it's great that I'll finally be able to hit things with the burster max.

Enemy spotting is now only shared with allies within 150 meters.
Spot duration has been lowered to 10 seconds.
At long distances you have to be closer to the center of the target to successfully spot.
Jump Jets should no longer function intermittently.
MAXes will render at a longer distance for players in aircraft.

The only other two changes are that Dalton and Zepher projectiles are now affected by gravity and they tweaked infrared/thermals for aircraft. I tried them out today and basically what they did was increase the distance at which you can see stuff, but things don't "glow" until you get much closer. Basically a nerf. It doesn't make a huge difference because you can still spot stuff and then attackit.

I finally installed the game and I'm trying it out. Total newb and completely lost, but it looks like a lot of fun.

How do I get into a GWJ outfit? I went to the Quantum Dawn website mentioned in the OP, but it looks like they're not recruiting any more members.

Propagandalf wrote:

I finally installed the game and I'm trying it out. Total newb and completely lost, but it looks like a lot of fun.

How do I get into a GWJ outfit? I went to the Quantum Dawn website mentioned in the OP, but it looks like they're not recruiting any more members.

I think QD is recruiting on an invitation basis.

Also, don't be a f*cking asshole and prevent non-griefers from getting in your Liberator or tank.
I'm thinking about making a couple of AA alts so I can hunt down the Vanu who do that.

You mean when people lock their vehicles so only squad members can get in? People do that all the time. In my experience if people need pug gunners they will ask for them.

Tamren wrote:

You mean when people lock their vehicles so only squad members can get in?

Or just fly off by themselves, yes that's right, a number of people feel a liberator is best suited for just one person or just two people. Seriously, if you want to live a decent amount of time, a tail gunner is not optional-just feel grateful that someone wants to take on the thankless, boring job of protecting you from enemy aircraft.

People do that all the time. In my experience if people need pug gunners they will ask for them.

I know they do that all the time, it's why I'm complaining and calling them assholes. Since when does anyone need an unmanned gun? I have to call out for gunners every time I spawn a lib and sometimes they just don't show up. This is both a war game and an MMO, the whole freaking point is to work together.

To be fair just about every single PUG tailgunner I have played with has jumped into the bomber's seat the instant the driver and gunner get out to repair. Prompting the pilot to kick him out. It's very irritating.

In most cases having only 2 people in a lib isn't a huge deal because the gunner can hop seats if required. Plus the tailgun is so terrible the pilot is better off attempting to ram or flipping over so the main gun can fire at them.

Tamren wrote:

To be fair just about every single PUG tailgunner I have played with has jumped into the bomber's seat the instant the driver and gunner get out to repair. Prompting the pilot to kick him out. It's very irritating.

That's why I said "non-griefers".

I liked how one pilot did it, he just had us switch seats every once in a while (like each time we had to land for repairs).

The Empire showdown event is coming up on the 25th. Only the "faction leaders" are all going to be playing on Connery so it doesn't really interest me much.

Just picked up the vehicle pack, was really glad that game back. The anti infantry lightning tank gun is quite fun. Sure it means any armor just kills me, but that happens normally in a lightning. Also have a fully decked out liberator. The very best bit was getting rockets for my scythe. I can't dog fight for beans, but those rockets make me real dangerous to anything on the ground. I'm loving them, although I still get shot out of the sky pretty fast.

With that 2000 station cash (from triple station cash day) and about 400 certs go puff into smoke.

Edit: It seems like a scythe has two states of being. Roaming the skies as an invincible terror or 30 seconds until flaming wreckage. Starting to get good with the missiles. Wishthey did more damage to armor.

Is there an RSS feed/update page for the Planetside sales/discounts like there is for just about anything else? I'm glad I caught the vehicle bundle, but I'd like to be able to track the dailies without having to log in and check every day.

I usually check every day, I could mention it in the thread if you want. Sometimes I don't have the time and ask someone on my friends list who happens to be playing.

So my outfit did an NC night last night and we had a blast teaching those freedom loving fools how it's done. It was fun to try out another faction with an organized group. The consensus was that NC weapons better than Vanu weapons. The damage buff makes it a breeze to kill people if you can burst fire the guns. If you just drop the hammerthey lose all accuracy, but bursting makes them death machines. Vanguards are secretly the best tank even though they don't float and NC Maxes are actually useful (not just for camping biolab doors). One NC max can lock down a cap point against a small squad, something that is simply not possible with the VS Max. You actually feel more powerful. Only downside is that I have a boost running, and for some reason ($$$$) boosts are character locked.

Actually I would argue that the NC MAX is the only one that is useful with only one anti infantry gun. Dual Quasars and Dual Cyclers rip stuff up just fine and have better accuracy. My preference does run towards high damage, low ROF weapons. So the NC definitely has the advantage there. I'll probably take a break from VS when my alpha squad boost runs out and switch to NC for a while. When I do I'm never going to buy the heavy assault another gun. Gauss SAW all day erry day.

Though I must say that the lack of bullet drop for Vanu weapons is hilarious in some situations. Who needs a sniper rifle when you can pop 3-pixel tall AFK people with single shots?

RolandofGilead wrote:

I know they do that all the time, it's why I'm complaining and calling them assholes. Since when does anyone need an unmanned gun? I have to call out for gunners every time I spawn a lib and sometimes they just don't show up. This is both a war game and an MMO, the whole freaking point is to work together.

Oh, I don't know, maybe you're trying to run a Sunderer up close to a base and some morons always hop in and start shooting "COME AND GET ME" bullets at everything they see.

Granted, that doesn't require an unmanned gun, but it does require someone with some freaking combat sense.

When you create a new character there is a brand spanking new Alpha Squad boost waiting for that character, if you bought Alpha Squad.

Archangel wrote:

Is there an RSS feed/update page for the Planetside sales/discounts like there is for just about anything else? I'm glad I caught the vehicle bundle, but I'd like to be able to track the dailies without having to log in and check every day.

I have found @PS2DailyDeals, a Twitter feed that has exactly what I want. It's unofficial, but it appears to be very timely and thorough. Excellent!

Edit: Here is the corresponding RSS feed.

BadMojo wrote:

Granted, that doesn't require an unmanned gun, but it does require someone with some freaking combat sense.

I still count those as griefers.

RolandofGilead wrote:
BadMojo wrote:

Granted, that doesn't require an unmanned gun, but it does require someone with some freaking combat sense.

I still count those as griefers.

You report them?

I'm absolutely in love with this game. I've had more moments of "holy sh*t, this is a crazy massive battle" that any other game.On the AU server I play on the lag is negligible and I've come to really really enjoy the back and forth.

Really started getting into using the Reaver (NC ESF) a lot. Working up getting the airspeed frame to 3/3 as apparently you can outrun A-A missiles when using the turboboost...

Had a great battle on Amerish the other night as the VS were trying to take the continent. We (NC) managed to hold them with 1 base to go with a pop. difference for us of about -15%...

Tooks us about 4 hours, but we finally got there.

I'm curious to know what the normal map distribution is on the main GWJ server... On Briggs (AU), on Indar the TR usually hold the top 50% of the map, and the VS and NC have about half the remainder. On Amerish or Esamir, either the NC or VS usually have both fully conquered, TR very rarely has any presence there.

BadMojo wrote:
RolandofGilead wrote:
BadMojo wrote:

Granted, that doesn't require an unmanned gun, but it does require someone with some freaking combat sense.

I still count those as griefers.

You report them?

I would if I could, but I don't know who you're talking about. Ride deniers? I would love to. People without combat sense? "Don't blame on malevolence that which can be explained by incompetence" Usually the real griefers will let you know they're griefing you. Although I've several vehicles destroyed by something that is hard to comprehend as stupidity.

'Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs,
and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.' -Rich Cook or Robert Cringley

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
Charles Babbage, "Father of Computing"

AP Erebus wrote:

I'm absolutely in love with this game. I've had more moments of "holy sh*t, this is a crazy massive battle" that any other game.On the AU server I play on the lag is negligible and I've come to really really enjoy the back and forth.

Really started getting into using the Reaver (NC ESF) a lot. Working up getting the airspeed frame to 3/3 as apparently you can outrun A-A missiles when using the turboboost...

You would have loved the sight I saw before I logged out. I was in a Scythe headed toward Tawrich, no less than a dozen, more likely fifteen Reavers jumped into the air at once and started into a canyon, I followed. (spoiler: I got shot down)
One of the outfits was probably having a race. Speaking of jumping up into the air, if you're on the ground, parked and there's a small obstacle directly in front of you, there's no need to slowly hover upward, simply hit your afterburner, when doing so from this position your ESF goes up and then forward at great speed.

AP, I'm primarily NC on Briggs, we should squad up at some point when we're both on.

Perhaps you can translate your Reaver skills into Liberator skills? I haven't had much of a chance to play around in those, and they seem to be powerhouses when you get going.

RolandofGilead wrote:

Speaking of jumping up into the air, if you're on the ground, parked and there's a small obstacle directly in front of you, there's no need to slowly hover upward, simply hit your afterburner, when doing so from this position your ESF goes up and then forward at great speed.

You can also hold down S to hover off the ground. If you are in a scythe this makes you hover higher since you don't have landing gear.

You have to be careful though. It's possible to stall an ESF, in which case hitting afterburner makes you go up at 50kph instead of forward at 300. Especially on takeoff because you don't have any built up forward speed.

Redwing wrote:

AP, I'm primarily NC on Briggs, we should squad up at some point when we're both on.

Perhaps you can translate your Reaver skills into Liberator skills? I haven't had much of a chance to play around in those, and they seem to be powerhouses when you get going.

I can certainly give it a go!