Good news, everyone! The top boffins in the Planetside equivalent of Q's Workshop have been hard at work coming up with new, innovative, and hopefully very comical, ways for Combat Engineers to blow up other people, and the fruits of these labours are soon to be unleashed:

OGRank: Planetside: Deployables are coming!

The new toys come in the form of two new certifications, which presumably will tack on the end of the existing Combat Engineering Certification:

Engineering (3) -> Combat Engineering (2) -> Fortification Engineering (3)

Engineering (3) -> Combat Engineering (2) -> Assault Engineering (3)

Looks like you'll be able to buy both Assault and Fortification together for 5 instead of 6 though.

Can't wait, personally, as I'm rarely without Combat Engineering on any of my characters. The five additional points for the lot, ten in total, is quite steep though, making a true specialisation, rather than the usual extra few points you can't think of anything more useful to buy with, and as a Reservist, that's likely to be most of my lot used up right there. The two certifications divide into offensive and defensive engineering, and if push comes to shove, I'd probably get more use out of the defensive stuff, given my usual play style.

Let's look at the gadgets!

Fortification:

Increase Deployable Limits: Not a new toy as such, this is just an increase on the amount of old-style CE you can have in play, which is always handy; at present, you have to be very careful how you lay out the stuff if it's just you trying to add any kind of security to a whole base, and there's usually critical gaps in the cover. This gives five extra of each type from standard.

Shadow Turrets: Good grief - cloaking Spitfires. This sounds pretty horrific, although to be fair, most regular Spitfires don't last long enough to kill the average full-health, full-armour assault trooper carrying anything bigger than Medium Assault weaponry, and most career cloakers have implants to make the Spitfire not detect them at all. The best placement of normal Spitfires then, is behind trees, and rocks, so they shoot people in the back as they pass, and are protected from long-range Snipers or AV weapons. Shadow Turrets on the other hand, seem like they can be placed in the middle of fields without any of this difficulty. It'll be interesting to see if the 'locking' weapons, like the TR 'Striker' can detect them, the same way they can spot a cloaked AMS from some distance. Very impressive though!

Cerberus Turrets: Crikey! AA Flak Spitfires! Very handy. I've often thought that the game could do with barrage balloons of some sort - airborne 'hover-mines' perhaps. Probably quite impractical to implement though, but this does look like a powerful compromise - spitfires that open up on enemy air units, and use the wide-burst proximity flak as ammo. (All deployable turrets have infinite ammo) This ought to help against the typical Mosquito and Reaver wall-sweeping runs and make the Air Chavs a bit more wary of going near enemy bases with their customary impunity! *shakes fist at the sky* No idea if they'll be able to deal with Liberator bombing runs at the flight ceiling though - probably not, most likely still need Skyguards or defending aircraft for those.

FDU: Looks like a Rifle-sized version of the current pistol sized ACE, used for laying out the really big deployables. Going to be a bit of an inventory headache, but on the plus side, the rifle-holster requirement makes them unusable by cloakers.

TRAPS: The good old Normandy Beach style star of welded girders, nanotech style. Seems like this does significant damage if rammed by a tank, and can take a goodly number of shots from the main gun of one. Should slow down some of the faster buggy charges too. Deployment of these is going to be very haphazard though, and I expect we'll seem them dropped in the path of our own Vehicle Ramp exits, for pure comedy greifing potential - unless of course they are only physical to the enemy, not our own team, which would be a bit odd. Designed to slow, rather than kill, by the look of it and you'll still need a bunch of AV guys nearby to take advantage of the carefully and slowly manuvering tanks. The existing mines do little to actually slow or divert tanks though - most tank crews will still charge into the fray, only stopping after the damage has been done - with these, they can be visibly dissuaded from trying the assault in the first place.

Wall Turret Upgrade: About time. The existing wall turrets are basically coffins, armed with a high-ROF, high falloff general purpose machine gun, which isn't that great at anything, to be honest, and most targets can find cover, or move out of range, well before being threatened by it. Only useful for drilling away at parked, and often unattended, vehicles. Also, they're the number one target for any AV outside the walls, and even using the gun at all is to invite swift multiple bazooka-death. Now we can refit them on the fly to fire tank shells, or airburst flak - both of which are generally far more useful in the typical base defence. I'd expect the air-flak in particular to be a potent Liberator countermeasure, as the Phalanx Wall Turret is one of the few things that can reliably hit a bombing Liberator at the flight ceiling, although just not for very much damage at present. Normally, the best defence is if someone parks and unlocks two or more Skyguards in the courtyard and then runs around hopping between their driver seat to refresh ownership the whole time - not often practical. I expect the turrets will be as vulnerable as ever, but can now fight back with fair potency, at least. Interesting to note that the AV or AA modes are added in addition to the basic machine gun mode, rather than replacing it. Handy.

Shield Generator Upgrade: Adds an energy shield to the Aegis Shield thingey (below). Seems to function much like the one across the main gates of a base with the Shield Mod benefit - stops gunfire and vehicles, but can still be walked through on foot.

Assault:

Deploy Spitfires in Enemy SOI: Very handy ability, as the Spitfire is perhaps the best weapon a CE has, for straight kills. The Boomer is a very skilled art, and slow work even if you are good with it, and the mines are more a scare weapon for vehicles than an outright killer. Now you'll be able to set up the Spitfires to camp enemy doorways and the like, although I  imagine you still can't use them indoors, friendly or otherwise. As with much of the rest of the Assault category, this will be very useful for cloakers in particular, who tend drop spitfires to confuse the enemy upon detection - now possible in an enemy courtyard as well as the wilds, or home bases.

Aegis Shield Generator: The basic device seems to function like a deployed AMS, only without the AMS itself, offering a dome shaped cloaking bubble that's only visible when you get quite close. Similar 'can't see out' effects would apply I'd imagine, but still, a great place to hide, particularly for outdoors foot types - snipers, AV and small buggies and tanks. It's also upgradable to an extent, but I do wonder if it wouldn't just be more helpful to bring an AMS instead - more spawn points is always important.

One Manned Field Turrets: Hmm...not sure about these. They seem to be slightly beefier versions of the AI MAX suit, but which can't run for cover when the AV guys spot them. We'll have to see how powerful the actual guns are, but mobility is life in Planetside, and while I'd be happy to deploy them, I think I'd prefer it if someone else actually did the Manning, thankyouverymuch! Still, with dedicated repair crews tending them, these might prove to be pretty decent yet.

Disrupter Mines: Basically, EMP versions of the normal HE Mines, which will not damage the tanks, but stop their guns working for a spell, like the EMP grenades, already available to all. Not sure how potent these will be, but already thoughts of using them to trigger huge piles of Boomers have been quashed on the forums. No Ubermines - these EMP won't trigger any other explosives or mines. Pretty much every player beyond a few weeks old learns the inherent utility of a stack of handheld EMP grenades in the favourite loadout, so we'll see how useful, or used these turn out to be.

Ammo Upgrade: Adds ammo resupply to the Aegis Shield thingey, although only ammo (not guns or support items), and only for infantry or MAX suits. Again, I suspect an AMS, which has a proper equipment terminal, a cloak dome, and spawning, would be more useful. The only benefit an Aegis Shield has, as far as I can see, is the ability to have a projectile shield added to it. A lot will depend on what kind of size the thing actually covers though. According to the thread, further upgrades to these shields will be coming in future development - things like healing/repairing fields, pain fields against enemy intruders, etc.


It's all scheduled for March 6th, and I expect everyone is going to rush off loaded up with the new toys for the first month or so, which will make for a very different game of Planetside for a little while, and a good time to dust off that old Reserves install you might have knocking about. I know I'll be all over these new toys, as they all sound just like my cup of tea!

Speaking of Reserves, the current year-long free-play offer ends soon - around March 24th. I'm confident we'll see it extended for another year - removing that many targets from the game at once, would probably kill it outright, at this point -  but just in case, do try to get a look at these new toys in the next month or so, if you can!