Some days later than advertised, the Advanced Combat Engineering toys are finally here in Planetside. I was particularly enthusiastic about these, as to be honest, I'm not terribly good at pointing guns at people and pulling the trigger in a manner that results in someone other than me getting shot to death. Mine-laying on the other hand...now you're talking!
I'm also quite conscientious about keeping our teams vehicles and base turrets in a good state of repair, although mostly this has been a rather dogged exercise, mostly with the aim of stopping the base using up all it's NTU trying to keep auto-repair the wretched things. I'll be there with my big blue glue-gun, humming away and watching the damage bar going up and down, as I play a kind of ADHD Tennis with some enemy chap outside the base walls somewhere, with a rocket launcher, and we wrestle for the operational status of the one lone turret. He usually wins.
Sometimes it occurs to me to actually jump in the turret and shoot him down, but I'm often reminded of why that's a bad idea. Now and then another more optimistic friendly trooper will jump in the turret while I'm still repairing it and have a go. Invariably he'll try machine-gunning the AV foot trooper outside, who just ducks behind a tree or similar, popping out only to fire more rockets at the huge, stationary AV target. I sidle backward at this point, still pumping glue at it, knowing that my repair rate isn't nearly fast enough to cover the incoming rockets and sure enough, BOOM! Another new guy that much nearer to understanding why We Don't Use Wall Turrets.
Only, now, we have a new type of nano-glue, which when used on a fully repaired wall turret, adds one of two horrifically useful alternate fire modes.
The Air Burst Flak mode is a godsend, and should be applied to the wall turrets furthest from the direction of enemy attack. This gun functions much the same as the Skyguard main gun, filling the sky with proximity triggered flak explosions that tear up Mosquitoes and Reavers like tin foil and even give Liberators a good seeing to, at the flight ceiling. Unlike the Skyguard, the turrets have infinite ammo, allowing, say, the disgruntled support-based light infantry person who is usually farmed extensively by hovering machinegundeath, to just hold down the button and go crazy, and with both of the back two turrets set up like this, the air over the base is definitely a no-fly zone.
I must confess to going a bit mad with these. I guess many pilots hadn't seen them yet, so were caught quite by surprise when I casually scurried along the wall with the can of new Super-Glue and suddenly converted the usually ignored standard wallgun into a nightmare of exploding skies. Giggling away, stirring Russian Opera going in my head, I managed to bring down five or six planes single-handedly during one base defence, including two Liberators - normally untouchable.
The other wall turret upgrade is some kind of anti-tank shells, that look and feel a lot like the ones fired from the Lightning 75mm Cannon, only with a stunning rate of fire, (about the same as the Sweeper shotgun), and again, infinite ammo, meaning you can really go to town with suppression fire. The shells themselves burst on impact for decent splash damage, helping with those pesky 'hiding behind the trees' types. It has a pretty steep firing arc, which can cause problems, but with the infinite ammo and shocking ROF, it's easy enough to 'walk' the shots up to the target. As I predicted, the supposed 'AV' upgrade is FAR more effective at getting rid of foot-zergers too, than the un-enhanced machine-gun option. These upgrades should be added to the base wall nearest the enemy advance, it seems.
Other toys included the near-indestructible TRAPS - just big girders dropped in roads. Didn't see those slow down vehicular advance too much mind you, although placing one near an enemy Spitfire sets it off, and it has enough HP to survive being shot at for some minutes continuously, which must really annoy anyone nearby with the racket! I had a go with the new deployable turrets, which didn't seem that useful really. They're basically the weapons of your Empire's AI Max, in turret form, i.e. Cannot dodge incoming tank-shells, or significantly damage tanks. Also, they can't be deployed inside a SOI of any type. Since this is where 90% of the Planetside action takes place, I don't see these being used much.
The Invisi-bubbles were being used here and there, but I couldn't really see that they were helping much, if at all. Perhaps they weren't being upgraded properly before being found and destroyed. I couldn't get the advanced Spitfires or Mines going. Probably me, but I couldn't work out how to make the standard ACE deployable switch to the advanced mode, and for me, it was only doing the usual four modes. Annoying, as the other ones I saw in the field seemed quite potent, massively slowing down our one big overland push, with invisible sentry guns behind every third tree.
The big winner for me though, (aside from the glee of the new wall turret modes), was the ability to place regular Spitfires inside the enemy's courtyard as we were charging in. Usually that kind of assault is too hectic and laggy for me, so I find I'm most useful on repair detail as the troops move in. This time, i was charging about the courtyard, dodging bullets and dropping Spitfire as I swerved about. The turrets auto-aim, so all I need to do is stay alive long enough for them to form, (ideally with a clear view of the base door), and try and make it to some cover. Caught a number of people in this manner, and already the boards are aflame with nerf calls. Not specifically aimed as me, you understand, but I find a good rule of thumb is that if I'M doing well at something in Planetside, it's probably overpowered and needs a nerf.
A lot of fun, and I even finished positive on K/D 18/14 I think...not bad considering I've not played in a few months.
Of course, the big question is, are these new toys worth an extra $2 a month? The subscription has recently been increased, but these new CE toys are about the only major content addition since the Big Stoopid Robots went in. (One of which, I drove off, solo, using one of the new Anti-Tank Wall Turrets!)
I'd say not. CE is not for everyone, and most people playing Planetside, are there for the machineguns and grenade launchers, and the farming from the sky. Not much new stuff for them lately. Of course, that's not to say that prices should stay the same forever - inflation, increased costs and the like are facts of life, so it's probably a bit childish to get cross about a price hike like this. Mind you, I speak as a Reservist, and am not paying anything at all.
The stated Reserves span comes to an end, well, about now actually, so the question for me becomes, is Planetside worth $14.99 a month for a number of months? On the basis of Friday evening peak population (~60 or so free places on the only continent with fighting on, making a total server pop of about 200 players), I'd say probably not, and I've no idea how to make it moreso - they're already letting people play for free, and have only just added cool new stuff, and yet it seems on the whole, PS remains, a Sometimes Game. Personally though, much as I enjoy the odd fling in there, I could certainly live without it...