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1: NC

2: NC and TR

3: NC, TR and Vanu

[Thexor]

The faction rocket launchers are identical, save for the name. G2A launchers rarely get kills, but they're great at forcing an ESF to run away. You can't fire rocket barrages while dodging/outrunning missiles, and once your flares wear off you can't risk absorbing many missile hits.

Fundamentally, it's a lot like using anti-tank rockets. Unless the driver is an idiot, you will lose a 1v1 versus a tank. Even if he doesn't kill you, he'll be able to drive away before you can launch the killshot, repair, and return to attack again. The only way to kill a tank is with multiple HAs, or even better, a tank of your own.

[GreatJustice]

The one I'm using presently claims to be effective against air and armor, whereas the other apparently specializes against air.

[Flying Dice]

Again, probably the best G2A weapon is the Lightning's AA cannon, not least because it gives you a highly mobile, armored platform to fire from (as well as deep reserves of ammunition). A rocket barrage doesn't do much when you can just back up twenty meters and keep firing. Speaking of which, at some point this afternoon I found myself driving halfway across Esamir heading for a fight, when I found myself singing a certain song. A few minutes later, I was driving around one of those frozen lakes trying to get my gun depressed low enough to ping one of the Vanguards that was trying to kill me, and I kept singing it as I ran out of ammo and left for the warpgate to rearm. Because driving in a straight line is enough to completely confound NC gunners. 

I've had moments like that before, and that's why I'm going to keep playing. Not certs, not kills, but those times where you completely pull one over on or humiliate some else, or do something that belongs in a cutscene or action film.

And now for something completely different:

Spoiler: This is what happens when you've got a bunch of VS pilots waiting for a base to flip. (click to show/hide)

What, were you expecting stupidity instead of a display of our ability to hover? 

Oh, and for yet another different thing, I finally saw an example of G2A missiles doing what they do properly, in that same session. Because when you've got eight AA heavies on a rock (coated in ammo packs) all shooting at the same swarm of aircraft, it's going to come apart pretty darned quickly.

[GreatJustice]

Oh hey, that reminds me, I'm noticing a distinct pattern emerging in the servers I play that seems to be incentivized by the present game design, and it's not really a good one. Big battles or heroic defensive fights are rare because you get a pile of XP for capping points, yet practically none for defending them barring that which you get from kills. The bulk of the "battles" consist of small groups in Galaxies playing ring around the rosie with abandoned bases and planes playing rocketspam with tank/infantry columns. The general attitude of semi-serious platoon leaders barring the exceptionally stubborn is distinctly against defensive manuevers and in favour of gigantic tank columns with air support seizing undefended bases. Sometimes the gigantic tank columns bump into each other and you get an awesome battle, but most of the time you get the gigantic tank columns bumping into tiny groups of enemies, slowly getting whittled down, and eventually dissolving as another tank column gets going. Alternatively, they just get planerocketed en-route.

There really ought to be some sort of change in mechanics to reward fighting for strategic points and defeating the enemy as opposed to capping empty points and flying away at the first sight of "Enemy squad in sector". If one guy dies twenty times fighting in a huge battle for a strategic position, he should damn well get more XP for the cap than the guy who fucked about in a Galaxy and capped two or three empty positions that were just as quickly retaken.

[Flying Dice]

You get extra exp for every action while defending, IIRC.

And frankly I hardly ever see anything but massive battles, save for the joyful occasions when some asshole is running around in a tech plant far behind your lines repeatedly destabilizing the generators and avoiding fights. Which server(s) do you play on? On the more crowded ones, you're going to run into a good-sized battle as long as you head in the general direction of enemy lines, provided you're not on an empty (warpgated) continent in the dead of night. Even on warpgated Esamir at 3 am server time I still found fights of 30+ people without too much trouble, and on Matterson Indar in mid-afternoon you can't go over a hill without seeing a good-sized armor or air battle, or a zerg swarming on a biolab.

[alway]

The faction rocket launchers are identical, save for the name. G2A launchers rarely get kills, but they're great at forcing an ESF to run away. You can't fire rocket barrages while dodging/outrunning missiles, and once your flares wear off you can't risk absorbing many missile hits.

Fundamentally, it's a lot like using anti-tank rockets. Unless the driver is an idiot, you will lose a 1v1 versus a tank. Even if he doesn't kill you, he'll be able to drive away before you can launch the killshot, repair, and return to attack again. The only way to kill a tank is with multiple HAs, or even better, a tank of your own.

This is actually the problem. Using the default rockets, going one on one against a tank is usually about 50/50 for me, as someone who plays solely HA. Unless I'm an idiot and run out into the open or similar, they're easy to outflank, rear hit, and destroy as a HA. Why the hell should I use an "Anti-Tank" rocket launcher if all it does is reduce my ability to destroy tanks? Destroying tanks is all about getting behind them, then taking them out before they can turn their armor towards you. If you need a lock-on for this, you're doing it wrong. The tank's strength is its armor; infantry's strength is agility. If you decide to run out into the open to engage tanks head on, no shit you will die. But if you aren't completely stupid, you use their lack of agility and awareness of their surroundings to destroy them from behind.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah.  As I've remarked on here before, I tend to see the opposite problem.  There's one or two massive zerg groups per faction, and they do nothing but clash with each other endlessly for no good reason.  I mean, sure, the game would be boring without epic battles going on... but it's also strategic stupidity.  The problem is, capping doesn't give enough points.  Dying over and over in a big meat grinder battle and picking up a kill or two a minute earns nets you many times faster exp gain than capping points.  Capping a minor territory earns you 250 exp and takes a few minutes, even if it's undefended.  Three infantry kills gets you more exp than that, and you can easily get that in a minute or two by rushing to a big battle and charging in.

My first week playing the game, my favorite thing to do was go infiltrator, find undefended areas, and capture them.  There were a couple times that I captured 5 territories in the time it took a zerg clash to grind out to resolution on a single lab.  I found unpredictable awareness-based encounters to be much more gripping and fun than massive battlefields where I just get randomly shot and die and there's little I can do about it, and I was doing more than anyone to further my faction's map control.  But after doing this for a while, I stopped to look at how the rewards worked, and realized that I would absolutely never unlock some of the more advanced stuff playing that way.  The most exp I've ever earned in one night so far was because I found a valley chokepoint near a lab that was under constant onslaught by hostile infantry, and I think I got over 100 snipe kills in about an hour.

[Knight of Fools]

With the current double experience fest, the problem's even worse. The only thing that doesn't get double experience is capping points, so it's even less rewarding.

[Ahra]

I Just got this... and noticed that i hate Vanu, I spent like 1 hour with 30-40 others trying to dislodge a small Vanu force from a place called
"The Crown", probably only 15-20 Vanu and to make matters even stranger they survived Terran assaults from the air from the back the whole time,
I think the only reason we won was some annoyed guy that smashed an Sunderer up in their faces and covered everyone, still took
a good 20 minutes, funny as hell when eveyone bought a Vanguard and took the closest 2 terran outposts before we got pounded to hell.

[Thexor]

That's less to do with the Vanu, more to do with the Crown being a bitch to assault. 

[miauw62]

That's less to do with the Vanu, more to do with the Crown being a bitch to assault. 

This. The crown has only one enterance for vehicles, and about 3 for infantry (trough the cliffs). It is surrounded by cliffs on all other sides.

[Flying Dice]

And also because the Vanu are awesome. No bias at all there. 


But yes, it's sort of amusing watching a stream of lemmings endlessly run into the meatgrinder. Sort of like WWI, except nobody needs to encourage the grunts to charge into certain death. In fact, most of the command chat I see is rage over people continuing to zerg when things are being backcapped behind them.


Incidentally, the double-exp means this is the best time to play medic if you haven't done so yet. One rez and heal up to full will nearly give you a cert all by itself, and if you decide to enable the zergers and repeatedly rez them...

[Neyvn]

So on Thursday I hosted a Christmas Party for my Outfit members...
Here are some of the Highlights...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iH4h0nrMckQ

[GreatJustice]

You already have an outfit? I'm in Digirev myself, and it's quite a decent outfit when enough people get online.

Besides that, I created my first platoon today on Indar. At first, it was just myself and one of my friends since no one joins 2 person squads. So then I recruited every chump standing on the ledge we were at attacking the Barney scum base below us. Once we got to the ground, I recruited even more random people, and actually accidentally created a platoon by inviting two squad leaders in (bringing in full squads). Before I knew it, I had a full platoon attacking the Vanu at the Stronghold.

On the plus side, our platoon was all in the same general area because it was largely composed of people who happened to be loafing about nearby. On the down side, maybe three of forty-eight of us had microphones and after we took the first point our organization broke down as people went all over the place. Still, it was a magical moment when I placed down a platoon waypoint and it actually caused a serious attack alongside some friendly air support. It then all broke down when multiple TR tank platoons came by and broke our defensive line, but still.

[adwarf]

Once again I saw stupidity work out, was on Waterson playing as TR and we were trying to hold the Crown while it was surrounded, around ten magriders on the ridge across from us and what do my faction members do? they grab eight galaxies and ram them into the magriders >.> I'm not even sure they managed to damage any of them, but I can say for sure it actually turned out well. In the time it took the debris o clear so the gunners could see we managed to charge up most of the hill and ended up pushing em back

I guess idiocy actually works sometimes.