Source
r/Planetside•
Painwalker

We have so much armor but no mobile cover....why?

One of the thing we are seriously missing among all the possible roles of our vehicles is the fact that none of them are good enough to be mobile cover. You'd have to be insane to put your tank out of cover just to help some infantry get across an open field because it would be instantly focus fired upon and become a giant bomb of killer debris.

I see lots of posts about all kinds of tanks, but the one thing that would really change the face of battle would be some kind of deployable mobile cover. Sunderers can get you into the battle through gunfire, sure, but if they're in the open they're useless for holding any kind of position.

I would just like to see a vehicle made for this purpose that takes directional armor to the next level. Just something slow moving but incredibly tough once deployed and easy to kill if you have height or attack from the back to keep this thing away from towers and buildings.

What do you guys think?

Posted May 28, 2014, 2:30 AM UTC

4761
TaintedPaladin9[OO] •

So siege towers?

15
Ossius•

If it was good enough for smelly peasants its good enough for us.

4
OwariNekoCobalt•

Well, you keep the siege towers.

NC has standards.

5
monkey_dg1[TEST] Emerald. I wish I could fly bett - OH SHIT A TREE•

If it floats, I suppose we can take it.

4
shaqlSTAAAAHP POOOKING MEEEEEEE!!!!!•

no mobile cover? a few composite sundies + rep sundy is nothing? ;]

7
PenguinPerson•

Its a lot of vehicle resources and requires multiple vehicles.

20
Wobberjockey[VULT] Emerald's worst BR100•

all which would get shredded by tank mines...

4
greenleaf121Bonus Check•

and C4 fairies.

4
[deleted]•

[deleted]

-10
PenguinPerson•

More like massive expense on an unlikely and easily countered strategy.

10
SeabhacVS[3GIS] Aegis Initiative / Emerald•

Teamwork OP

-13
PenguinPerson•

I like how you guys assume that the primary complaint here is the number of people needed.

15
christianargMiller•

Made me lol haha

1
YetAnotherRCGTheDestroyerOfHats•

This does not actually work, or at least I have never seen it pulled off successfully. Source - Experience

7
DrunkCommyDAKKA DAKKA DAKKA•

I have seen it work in triple formation (3 sundies).

that open space between quarts ridge and indar excavation. lasted about 15 mins until Dalton libs showed up

1
PainwalkerOPAzure Twilight - Emerald (Mattherson)•

I wish. Against any squad sized force it's pretty easy to wipe out a sunderer like that unless it's hard to reach, and behind cover. Sunderers might transport troops across open areas, but unless they can dig in on the other side before the entire enemy force falls onto them, you can't really hold the position.

2
MiniappolisBriggs-SWOC-Infinity155•

I've seen 4 repair Sundies with an Ammo sundie center in a circle formation. It worked surprisingly well.

2
PenguinPerson•

AV grenades take good care of those groupings.

2
Slyfox00•

Unstoppable sundie repair phalanx

1
the_MadmanWhen's the game coming out of beta?•

I've always found the vehicles and aircraft in this game to be very much lacking.

When you play as infantry, you get 5 classes plus the MAX suit; and each of those classes can be kitted in something like 4-5 different ways to radically change their playstyle.

With vehicles, you have 5 effective combat vehicles, and one of them - the Flash - has essentially one or two loadouts that are actually effective for combat; otherwise, you're just using it to get somewhere, if you're using it at all. The two tanks in the game have effectively the same play style regardless of loadout, the only difference being what you shoot, and especially after the Amp Station changes the Sunderer has effectively 2 "playstyles" - "combat" and "sitting around tanks". No, I don't consider "parking it somewhere and forgetting about it" as a "playstyle".

Aircraft, by comparison, is a joke.

Welp, that's my unpopular comment quota for the day filled.

7
Fairyland_NoirLil B is God- Wizard0fOz (Connery)•

Aircraft, by comparison, is a joke.>

I disagree. You can switch your ESF up to have toons of playstyles. Want to go pure A2A? rotary/default nosegun and coyotes/tomcats. Want pure anti infantry? PPA and lolpods. Pure AV? Hornets/lolpods and whatever nosegun. You can also mix n match (I use PPA and coyotes so I can farm but get reavers that want to ruin my farm to fuck off)

2
pyrosaniacJeagarsonrald - [OHMS]•

I think such a vehicle should be something like this. A slow moving, heavily armoured troop transport with some weaker guns on the side to help with defense. Perfect for a mobile wall.

6
MiniappolisBriggs-SWOC-Infinity155•

I was thinking the trains from Half Life 2 or Wolfenstein TNO.

6
Gwunt•

oh wow what if they replaced all the redeploy nonsense with really fast trains that all originate from the warpgate

0†
[deleted]•

[deleted]

4
MaceMadunusus•

http://images.eurogamer.net/articles//a/7/2/0/3/7/bf2142nspcscrnwwgoliath1_png_jpgcopy.jpg

This describes what he said even better.

7
Corticotropin•

So something that looks like an oversized Sunderer with tracks and 4 Ranger/Walkers? :o

3
mrsmegz[SG] Emerald•

And regenerative armor. You had to destroy those pads on the side before you could out-DPS it's repair speed.

1
trashdiggerAmaracious, SPM whore•

Sunderers are pretty much already oversized.

0
DrunkCommyDAKKA DAKKA DAKKA•

if we give it guns, make them AI only. like only kobalts on it.

2
osba•

i'd like to see some kind of shield weapons for the max, sadly the aegis abillity for the nc max is already in place. perhaps for the heavy inplace of the rocket launcher?

4
Shaken_U[SOLx] zergfit member•

The engineer turret is makeshift cover

3
PainwalkerOPAzure Twilight - Emerald (Mattherson)•

Yeah and I wish we had a better dedicated cover object. The turret isn't really that easy to place in a pinch because of how picky it can be, and the fact that you have to sit perfectly still to get those pixel perfect placements. Until they can reduce how inconvenient it is to place down as cover in a hurry, a vehicle would be less frustrating.

6
Shaken_U[SOLx] zergfit member•

I can agree with that.

Combine a Hawken barricade with a fixed ageis shield.

6
doublrainbow•

I mean isn't that what the sunderer or galaxy are for? It can move friendlies between cover quickly. Unless you want something for Pubbies to hide behind and shepard them slowly somewhere.

3
PainwalkerOPAzure Twilight - Emerald (Mattherson)•

More for holding ground. Moving around isn't too much of a problem as we have many options for that, but unless you can hold a position it doesn't take much to shove an entire encroaching force right back to the spawnlines unless it is big enough to outright overwhelm them but then holding positions becomes moot at that point.

10
NickaNakCeres•

I may have to start doing that :O that's a really good idea

1
D16_Nichevo•

I would just like to see a vehicle made for this purpose that takes directional armor to the next level.

You would've liked the UT2004 Paladin.

3
ScrinrusherEmerald [RITE]Scr1nRusher•

Vehicles need to have a "Crawl" speed(to stay with/keep with infantry like a convoy), and then a "drive speed(Normal driving)"

Think like walking vs sprinting.

3
Infermaus•

Simple throttle / cruise system across all vehicles would be easiest I imagine - can't figure out why this isn't a given thing already though.

1
aigrotiCobalt [TRID]•

have sunderers be super tanky until they deploy.

3
spros•

See: Paladin from UT2k4

2
Leeeeeroooooy[TTRO] (Ceres)•

Maybe not what you're looking for, but consider the possibilities of using smoke grenades as visual cover. At longer ranges, less people will be using IRNV scopes.

2
Vass654•

If you could get people to actually bother going into the smoke and not sitting behind their stupid rock.

And or get more people to actually use smoke. It doesn't give exp or help kill something, so almost no one seems to really use it.

3
PainwalkerOPAzure Twilight - Emerald (Mattherson)•

I love spamming the stuff, and it is great for shutting down any offense from towers since it kills the range. I swear though if people knew it was me I think I'd probably get more TKs than thanks.

3
[deleted]•

It is fantastic for spawn room campers too

4
PainwalkerOPAzure Twilight - Emerald (Mattherson)•

I use it against SRWs too when I think they're being too useless to get them to move or something.

3
PainwalkerOPAzure Twilight - Emerald (Mattherson)•

I use smoke constantly in most of my support builds. I usually use it to cut lines of sight down and blind armor, but it isn't useful as a defensive tool in that sense since you can't take advantage of it by firing into it from a distance, and it doesn't really help hold a position since anyone inside the smoke would be at a disadvantage to keep encroachers from approaching and driving you out.

2
squeaky4allBriggs•

That's if the smoke actually renders, i have had multiple occasions a smoke nade doesn't appear for half the people fighting in an area.

1
RhaxusMiller [NH]•

We could use the Leviathan, Juggernaut or maybe the Vindicator

Maybe as an "lockdown bunker" ?

2
[deleted]•

[deleted]

2
_DX3_[AC] Dopey•

How about giving the sundy a cloaking field utility slot?

If it's equipped, the sundy cannot be used as a deployable spawn or squad spawn, has no weapons, and moves at ~50% speed when activated.

The cloak works in both directions, enemies cannot see what is inside of it, and you cannot see out of it.

You could also make it so that while activated, the sundy no deploy zone is activated.

As an added bonus, less rendered targets means better performance.

1
PainwalkerOPAzure Twilight - Emerald (Mattherson)•

Stealth would help, but unless it's a covert mission it wouldn't take long to find it on the main battlelines.

I would have suggested that they up the defence of directional armor on tanks to help act as cover, but I would have a major problem having that on a platform that also has a great deal of killing power.

2
_DX3_[AC] Dopey•

If it's something that can easily be seen, and its used as cover, it's just going to become a magnet for attack.

2
PainwalkerOPAzure Twilight - Emerald (Mattherson)•

I would fully expect it to be, but unless you are using it to foolishly charge right into enemy territory, it should be tough enough to be able to take it. If the entire enemy force ends up focusing on it, that might even be enough to break the defense if they start opening gaps just to attack it.

1
WarOtter[HONK] Emerald•

Oh to have the glitched cloaking galaxies and sunderers again....

1
BuckyGunts•

Maybe wait for the engineer update and hope they have deployable cover. But they're not going to make a vehicle whose sole purpose is to have infantry hide behind it.

1
Ossius•

Didn't PS1 have mobile shield generators or something?

1
Mortyborty•

Any vehicle made to shrug off focused AT fire in big battles is going to be totally imba in small fights.
Therefore it must be totally unarmed. with so much armour even one basilisk would make it win with any other vehicle.

It should also have no passenger slots, so you can't use it to ferry troops around, and it has to go down to double C4 and double AT mine.

Otherwise people are going to pull those to farm in 1-12 fights.

Instead of huge armour, you could also go with an invulnerability shield, similar to the one Vanguards have. It should last longer and have no health limit. This simple solution basically allows for the vehicle to behave the same way regardless of the size of the battle. No matter how much AT you focus on it, it's going to stay up for the same amount of time.

1
Seukonnen[ECUS] Anti-Spandex Rebel•

Comparatively fragile vehicle with a beefy directional shield projector would work pretty well.

1
Nekryyd•

I would just like to see a vehicle made for this purpose

Why go to the trouble of designing a whole new vehicle when you could very easily repurpose the Sunderer?

You could create a defense slot item that creates 3 invulnerable shield walls around the Sunderer. One above and two to either side. They only work when deployed, so it wouldn't at all be a replacement for Blockade Armor.

The shields wouldn't provide perfect cover, of course, but a definite little alcove that provides a measure of protection against being exposed out in the open.

You could "circle the wagons" so to speak, and line a bunch of them up near each other (or as near as you can within the AMS deploy zone) and create a sort of mini-base on wheels.

1
iben_sbirriahMiller•

I think that the engie should be the guy to deploy "cover stuff" as an option to AI/AV turrets instead of new vehicles. Maybe to a limit of 3 deployable covers (to be certified).

1
OwariNekoCobalt•

What pepole often forget is that armored vehicles are only indestructible when you fight small firearms.

There is no fucking way you could have a vehicle that could park in an open field and hold its ground against the blunt force of a high-end, anti-armor cannon. Indestructium doesn't exist. When two armored vehicles meet one of them has to lose.

You think armor is the secret to being impenetrable? Think again. Location is the key. Who the fuck is stupid enough to leave his cover just to stand with his shield in an open field? Sure, it would look so cool and brave to make a little fort of sundies and fight off MBTs from all sides. Sure, it would be awesome to win that fight. But that will never happen because it's a fucking shitty strategy.

And hell, it's a fucking war! You lose shit in wars! Man up and take one for the fucking team! So what if you lost your precious little sundy? If you did something good with it you should be fucking proud to sacrifice it. If the only thing you want to do is driving around in a battle bus, guess what, you can cert it up so you can spawn a new one basically right away.

I've held tactical points with an armored sundy. It's cool enough and it can be done. But I recognize that when they start spamming Prowlers I should get my sundy out of the fucking way.

1