Certainly feels good to be back in the pandemonium of Planetside, and within minutes it was back to business with my long abandoned BR23 Terran Republic Sniper/Support chap. The very first thing that happened upon my arrival in a wall stairwell in the middle of Solsar, where presumably I'd last logged out in exhaustion, was the award of two medals! A nice welcome back, I was suddenly awarded the Two Year Veteran Award, and the Three Year one too, marking my loyal service for all to see on my shoulderpad.
Of course I'm a total fraud in this regard, since I spend one of those years on an entirely different and free Reserves account, and the other not playing at all. Its definitely a more palatable experience with that many Cert Points to play with though, and many of the certifications that the Reservist has to make tough choices about, I happily have as extras that I don't even think about; Reinforced Exosuit, Medium Assault, Engineering and Medical, to name but a few.
Being a Veteran of such long and *ahem* dedicated standing, I seem to be allowed to play with some the new toys without having to cert points into them first, which is nice. Three new guns are on offer since I last looked in during Reserves:
Dragon: An actual flamethrower, at last. The Core Combat 'Maelstrom' sort of worked like one previously, projecting a lethal arc of lightning in front of the user, but most people just used it for the secondary fire lightning grenades instead. Now there's a proper flamethrower that gouts out particle fire. Extremely short range though, putting it in the Heavy Assault territory that I never do well at. It seems to come with a requisition timer, a lot like the MAX suits, which might explain why I've yet to see anyone using one.
Scorpion: A rather complicated weapon presumably designed to flush out distant camping snipers. You zoom in, get a distance lock from a remote object, and then it remembers that distance. Then firing the thing shoots out a kind of cluster bomb thingey which flies out to the set distance, and the explodes, shooting a bunch of bomblets in a downward cone, like a mini Liberator Bomb. I had a fiddle with it, but it'll probably take more than two weeks to get the hang of the thing.
Stinger/Eraser/Spear: A new 10mm pistol sized gun, which needs Medium Assault to use. Seems a decent allrounder, and quite hard hitting, if a little slow. All three empires get a different coloured version of what seems to be the same gun. A useful backup for my Bolt Driver/Striker loadout. Mostly seems to be useful for the Infiltrators though, who are only allowed to carry pistols. Certainly been assassinated by enough of them since I got back!
There's also the long talked about Phantasm, which seems to be a five-man cloaking air transport, a bit like the Wraith quad-bike. Seen a few about, but like the quad bike, and the cloakers themselves, if you go above a very low speed, the ghost shows up, and I can gleefully report that it doesn't have very much armour at all! Theres also a horrific version of the Galaxy, the Galaxy Gunship which takes, and indeed, gives, one hell of a beating.
My favourite so far has to be the Juggernaut/ Vindicator/ Leviathan, which is a pimped up version of the Sunderer heavy transport truck. The new versions have lots more guns, a very spikey cattlescraper, and can do EMP bursts for mine clearance. Almost sounds useful! The real appeal for most I think, is the airhorn it comes with. Still makes me chuckle, even when I'm on the receiving end of the cattelscraper. BLAAAAAAAARP! - squish! The driver did try and warn me, afterall!
For a dead and /or dying game, there certainly seems to be a lot of work gone into it in the last year, and I'm quite impressed. My personal favourite however is the new Upgraded Wall Turrets, which I got to play about with very briefly on the last day of the Reserves. The standard base wall turrets are pretty much coffins on a swivel axis, but with the application of new super-glue, they can be turned into Anti-Tank or Anti-Air variants, so I've been mostly making myself busy with that since I got back.
The Anti-Tank is quite potent, but then again, so are tanks. In a one on one, it could go either way, which is a great improvement on the normal turrets, and the tank can't just park up and batter you into submission anymore - it has to stay mobile against the fast and heavy hitting turret shells. But its the Anti-Air ones I've fallen in love with.
Me, being vigilant at a supply base. That Reaver is lucky he's friendly, as the big barrel there has a ridiculous range, and fires an infinite supply of air-burst flak rounds which absolutely murder any Mosquitos, Reavers, and Wasps that dawdle in sight of the base, and does a pretty decent number on Liberators and Galaxies too. One reasonably alert wall gunner can now turn any friendly base or tower into quite the no-fly zone. About time too. I have a strong and enduring hatred of Air Cavalry, mostly because they make it look so easy and because I've never got the hang of flying in PS myself. No farming at MY base anymore! Hah!
Mostly due to these new turrets, and my reasonable and remembered competency with the sniper rifle, my K/D hasn't been quite as atrocious as I was expecting. I guess you do remember these useless skills, long after they are necessary, and my personal best in this recent little revisit was 18/3, after a spectacularly ill-advised air assault on a base I happened to be repairing. The NC in particular seem fond of the Agile/Jackhammer/Mosquito Rambo approach, just like in the old days. It does work, provided you can actually make it to the base intact. Once on the roof and inside, it can take dozens of us to flush one of them out. My bad sessions in there have mostly been me remembering that I Should Not Go Indoors. Someone has to, of course, but I'd rather be the chap parked outside with the AMS truck, to be honest!
Populations seem quite low, just as at the end of the Reserves. I doubt many people even knew their old PS accounts had been reactivated, so the people in there are most likely exactly the same people who were there when I logged out of Reserves for the last time. Maybe 70 a side at the big, and often only, fight of the night? Something like that anyway. Mind you - stay close to that fight and it still feels as crazy, hectic and panic fuelled as it ever did. I'm halfway to BR24 already, but the moment-to-moment mayhem is so distracting that you really don't notice the XP bar. Would that all games could say as much...
One of the NC Towers on Hossin, that I Should Not Go Inside. Just over the far hill are about 30 VS taking potshots with fricking huge lazerbeems, obviously come to see what all the noise is, and to the right NC tanks are lobbing hefty shells at our brave TR boys as they try to push inside and capture the thing, aided by Prowler support, and the somewhat misguided and indiscriminate 'help' of a pair of Flail batteries a mile or two behind me - and me, hiding on the hill with a sniper rifle! Shortly after this was taken, I was machine-gunned in the back by an invisible person. Business as usual!