The Skyguard is in. I rode around in Ben's last night. It seems like a pretty cool car, but the weapons suffer from the same problem that the Galaxy's do--it's really hard to aim accurately. I'm not sure what is up with that. Someone on the PS boards said that the crosshairs lag the actual turret, so they show where your shot would land. I don't know whether that's true or not, but whatever the situation, aiming is very counter-intuitive--the crosshairs seem to slide around all on their own. If that were fixed, I think the Skyguard would be a majorly cool vehicle. AA is already very important, and will become more so once the Liberator and Lodestar are out. I think you'll see a lot of people driving this buggy.
The cool thing is that the gunner can switch to an anti-personnel chaingun, so unlike current AA platforms (the AA MAXes), the Skyguard will actually be useful even when there's no enemy aircraft around.
Although the current status seems to be that the SG is only available at the Sanctuary, the plan is for it to be Tech Plant-limited, like the Vanguard and Sunderer. Word to the wise.
On a totally unrelated note, I hit BR11 last night. I think I am going to ditch my Harasser cert--I just don't get that much use out of it. That will leave me with a magical 3 certs free. I currently have Reinforced, Medium, Heavy, and AMS. I have three potential ideas for how to go next:
1) Special Weapons. Then I could go Rocket Rifle/Jackhammer for outdoor battles, and Thumper/Jackhammer for indoors; plus I could set up a Decimator AV kit. As long as I had an EQ terminal nearby, I would be able to suit almost any infantry role at least decently, and I would be the ultimate CQB guy (imagine doing a tower assault with Thumper/JH!).
2) Anti-Vehicle. Phoenix/JH outdoors, Gauss/JH indoors. That would be pretty sweet too, and I think our outfit is still a little light on AV. Having Ben and Lokust on last night (both with Phoenixes) was pretty cool.
3) Engineer. Then I could repair my armor, and everyone else's armor, during downtime. (I probably wouldn't carry the Engineer vehicle-repair rifle, if that's even possible with the basic cert.) Handy now that we have more people with MAX suits.
4) Falcon MAX. We're still a little MAX-light, especially considering we have a couple MAX-transport drivers (Grisha and Robbo, and I think Xemu or someone picked up Galaxy as well).
Any advice?
I toyed with the idea of a combat vehicle, but it's too difficult because I almost always wear reinforced (AMS is fine since I can park the AMS, get out, and change armor right there; but other vehicles would be a pain for me to deal with).
I grabbed phoenix this morning. having a ball so far, though it could do more damage... typically you won't get a kill on an undamaged vehicle, because they can close before you can finish em. But nondirect flight during an assault on a base is nice :).
You get both repair types with basic eng.
AV/JH/ENG/AMS here atm I think.
I can chew through MAXes like mad with my phoenix. Three hits tops.
Can the SG fit in a Gal?
The Skyguard is incredibly fast it tops out at 80 kph but six hits from an armored tricycle will destroy it.
It could do with a little less speed and slightly more armor.
Argh, talk about interface goof. If this is really the case (and I don't know that it is), they should have included this as an additional targetting aid instead of replacing the dead-reckoning crosshairs. Besides which, this would help you drag the line of fire along an enemy's path, as you would have two points of reference.Originally Posted by Rywill
Simulated turret lag is fine, as long as you let the player know explicitly what's going on. I don't suppose there's an accompanying turret-traverse whirring noise to clue you in, is there? Input feedback = good.
- Alan
I have seen lag such as that, but when I've seen it it's generally been related to the vidcard, and it, as noted, happens most noticeably in the gunner seat. If you see mouse-lag like that when looking through crosshairs, turn your AA/aniso setting down a notch, re-check it, and repeat until fixed. This is a heckuva lot easier to do with Nvidia drivers, since you can minimize the game and change settings and see the results immediately, rather than shut down the game as you'll have to do to get the change to take effect with ATI drivers, but you should eventually be able to eliminate all of that crosshair lag. Note that even when your framerates seem fine you can still get this lag in some vehicles.
Alright, fired the game up today.
Teamspeak didn't seem to like my Push-To-Talk selections (Caps lock or middle mouse button) so all I could do was listen to people. Any ideas? It works when I'm not in PS.
I also had very little clue what was going on, but that's to be expected. After going through the training and running around, I'm now at BR5. I think I'll try out the MAXes for a little while. The reaver seemed like a good idea but it just seems to be a completely solo effort when you're in one of those.
I have PTT mapped to my middle mouse button (wheel) and it works fine. The server was very choppy today because we had lots of people on. A higher-bandwidth server would be better, if we could get one.
I swapped Harasser for Special Weapons, and am much happier. Even outdoors, I do way better with JH/Thumper than I ever did with JH/Gauss. And indoors, I'm a terror (although I'm racking up the grief). I set myself up an AV kit (JH/Devastator) as well.
I use CAPSLOCK for my push-to-talk button and it works fine.
--Dave
i miss playing with you guys. all these new updates and i don't get to play for 2 weeks. stupid out of date computer. i never got to explain why to you guys, my roomate left for 2 weeks for the million man lan fest, and took his good computer with him, so now no planetside for that time, no new updated features for me to play with, but i guess i'll see you all in 2 weeks, till then i'll be in PS withdrawal, lol
I wondered where you'd gone. Someone else--I think it's Xaroc--is taking like a two-week vacation starting tomorrow. We'll be there when you folks get back.
It is actually only a week (much to the dismay of the outfit people who I drive crazy ;)). I will be back to hunt more AMSs with you guys after vacation. That one last night was build out of adamantium I think. I know we put 18 phoenix missles into it at one point and it wouldn't go down. I have heard that if you hit them in the spawn tubes shots will pass right through but I know hit it squarely in the equipment buying portion with all 10 of mine.
-- Xaroc
Yeah, I was so disappointed by our inability to destroy that AMS that I recalled to Sanctuary to un-cert Phoenix and learn Skyguard instead. Very cool vehicle, but I ended up driving from Sanct across two continents to get back to the battle, couldn't get a gunner, and got killed by a Reaver moments from rejoining the area where the squad was operating. Then I logged for the night.
Typically the Phoenix is pretty effective against AMSes my only thought was that maybe I hit one of the dozens of people near the AMS rather than the AMS itself or maybe it was being repaired constantly by 2 or more people.
-- Xaroc
Yup. Repairers can keep up with Phoenix damage, due in part to the NC Antivehicular having the slowest refire rate in the game, and that delay is directly exacerbated by range. If you run head on into an engineer or two, you can pretty much stalemate each other, so it's sometimes helpful to stop hitting that target until he moves on.
I think I was there also pumping Phoenixes into that AMS at the same time. They must have had two engineers on it.
Then our outfit leader called down the orbital strike. 8)
Phoenixes are good against MAXs and Spitfires. You can sometimes take out Reavers and Mosquitos, though pilots tend to be really good at jinking to avoid missiles (and the best pilots make sudden unexpected strafing manuevers constantly, just in case an unseen missile might be incoming). My biggest beef with them is that they are almost completely ineffective against most of the vehicles in the game, which is odd, since they are supposed to be an anti-vehicular weapon. I can't carry enough ammo to take out a Prowler, for instance, even assuming I could survive long enough to get off ten shots against one. Lightnings and Magriders are tough, too, unless you have multiple AV characters shooting at them.
I think the Phoenix is a very useful weapon (for fighting MAXs alone, if nothing else), but it's a strangely ineffective anti-vehicular weapon. Ideally, it should do more damage. As much as the Decimator, I think.
I think the designers deliberately gimped the Phoenix damage, because the Phoenix has by far the best targeting system. Maybe they gimped it too much, I don't know (I don't use it), but that's the reason for the weak damage. It may be that their intention is that our empire needs massed Phoenixes to take out heavy enemy vehicles quickly; the tradeoff is that we can do SOME damage to enemy vehicles a lot more easily than the other two empires can.
I think I'd still give a slight edge to TR in terms of AV weaponry effectiveness. Being able to guide the Phoenix is a blessing and a curse. I miss a fair number of shots due entirely to lag. I think it is balanced against MAX units (3 hits for a healthy MAX), but it would be nice to get an extra 15-20% damage against the heavy vehicles.
Magriders, hate them so much! *shake fist*
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