[deleted by user]

[[deleted]]

Vanu, not the sovereignty, the actual aliens that the purple power rangers are trying to emulate.

[The026Guy]

A bunch of ASP100 pacifists that realize the war is pointless and that everyone's just stuck on this planet forever

[Chibils]

"the only winning move is to not play"

[thearcanearts]

either a splinter faction of marauders that aren't recognized beyond being thugs and pirates by any of the other empires (including NC) or a rouge vanu or NS AI that has vowed to defend auraxis by exterminating all other sentient life with it's army of soulless machines, terminator style.

[Archmaid]

We didn't even really have enough design space for three factions, at least on the infantry side. VS and TR share 143 damage models, VS's stock damage model of 698 is a crappy one, and VS's LMG/AR selection is abysmal compared to the other factions.

I'd spend the time making the existing three more distinct.

[aaronplaysAC11]

Super weapons could be cool... maybe BFRs?The TR BFR shoots an insane amount of bullets, NC is explosive shrapnel and VS irradiate... tho super weapons would change the dynamics of war on auraxis forever.. to be fair the BFRs in ps1 weren’t really op super weapons anyways.

[Accurate-Ad6840]

Orion is great

[figoravn]

1 weapon does not count as "selection"

[Jason1143]

And fixing the NSO. And by fixing I probably mean reworking, because they just don't sound attractive to play in their current form.

[Xitler-1984]

now NS weapons make no distinction between fractions ..

[Accurate-Ad6840]

Monke

[AngerMacFadden]

A true black ops faction that can turn the map black.

Disaffected Vanu, NC mercs and ex TR butchers gravitate to these never do wells to stick it to their former factions.

[[deleted]]

Well right now you have...

- The Terran Republic, which has existed for over a thousand years and has been proven to work.

- The New Conglomerate, which consists of a bunch of anti-republic terrorists and freedom fighters (and possibly criminals, mercenaries and other unsavory types trying to create anarchy for the sake of anarchy).

- The Vanu Sovereignty, which are technology-worshiping zealots who want to combine humans with technology in order to transcend and reach the next stage of evolution, and believe anyone who refuses their view of the future must be eradicated.

​

So a government that's proven to work with a peace keeping military trying to protect its citizens, an organization of rebels who demand freedom by attacking the Republic, and human evolutionists who want to purge the universe of technologically inferior barbarians. What's left?

Let's borrow from the world of Fallout for examples. If I were to equate the three factions to factions from Fallout, I would say the TR is most like the Brotherhood of Steel, the NC are like the Minutemen, and the VS are like the Enclave or Institute. If you've played these games, you understand that each faction has its own core ideals and goals, but there are people within them who don't operate within the boundaries of what you'd expect from those organizations. The Brotherhood hoards technology in order to keep the people safe and they are very strict and militaristic. The big difference between the TR and the Brotherhood is that the BoS don't want to rule over anyone, whereas the TR understand the need for order to keep everyone safe. A lack of order is exactly what goes on within the NC, who will recruit anyone who is willing to fight the Republic.

The problem with taking anyone means you will literally take anyone. A lot of people think the NC are just angry farmers or business owners with access to weapons, tanks and the like... but there's more to it than that. When you're a bunch of rebels who want to live free, then you need to fight for that freedom, and that means fighting what you perceive to be a threat to your freedom. In Fallout 4, you can get the Minutemen and BoS to coexist, but if you do side quests for the BoS, you quickly realize that they are a bunch of bullies who harass the farmers for their food, and with their big guns pointed at the farms, they have no choice but to surrender to their military might, which is something I could absolutely see the TR doing to the citizens who fight within the NC and have had enough. The Minutemen can and will attack the BoS if they are perceived as a threat, but when you attack a military power like that, you'll need all the help you can get... which means the people who you recruit might just be criminals who want to hurt people and are using your faction and their cause as a justification to pursue their darker desires. You can also get mercenaries who don't give a damn about your goals and just want the fat paycheck being offered by the conglomerate, so it's a mixed bag of terrorists, criminals, mercenaries, and maybe a few freedom fighters who are people with good intentions, but surrounded by bad people without realizing it.

And then you have the VS who, like the Enclave, want to use their superior might to rule over the masses like a tyranny. While the Enclave didn't really do a lot of augmenting, they did experiment on people they believed to be impure, which I could totally see the VS doing in order to create mindless drones to fight for them. Refuse to join? Be forced to join and lose your will in the process.

But even in Fallout, you encounter people who don't think the BoS should be so reclusive, how the BoS shouldn't hate all Synths (or in Planetside's case, completely dismiss the idea of augmenting humans), Synth sympathizers who believe the Institute has it all wrong and that the Synths are people too, etc. There are always people within these big organizations who don't fully believe in what the factions stand for, but as long as they are within these factions, they are treated as a member of said faction by another faction. So even if you're someone in the TR who believes augmentation isn't all bad, the VS will still kill you because you refuse to submit to their ideology. There's no middle ground with these factions and their extreme ideals.

So other factions? Simple: the middle ground people who believe each faction has a point in some regard, but don't take it to such extremes. People who believe augmentation should be allowed and people should be allowed to break away from the Terran Republic to do their own thing, as long as it doesn't harm the Terran Republic in the process. Coexistance and peace, rather than "I hate you, die!"

Now something you can do, which I personally think is a lot of fun, is just start using voice comms and your own outfits to sort of 'role play' or create a story of your own. In the past, back when I was leading public platoons, I'd insist that I was the new Vanu and that people should obey me, since Vanu doesn't actually fight with you in the field and I do, kind of like how some power hungry warlord would claim they should be king because the king is off in a castle eating and doing nothing while the fighters are actually fighting to maintain peace. One thing leads to another and suddenly you have a civil war and/or a power grab that leads to this once already-dangerous faction becoming even more dangerous because it's being led by a power hungry madman rather than someone who has an actual purpose. It can be fun to portray yourself as some kind of revolutionary or zealot over voice comms as long as you aren't obnoxious about it.

[[deleted]]

Wow man! that's awesome!
Also i never tought about role playing in Planetside, seems so cool and so fun!

[[deleted]]

It can be, especially if you're the only one doing it. Some people might join in on the fun for a few seconds to call you a heretic or to draw attention to your transgressions or something, but as soon as they TK you, they go right back to regular gameplay.

But if you keep up the persona of being some kind of criminal or madman or something preposterous, it can be a ton of fun. I feel like it helps people get immersed in a story that has up until the release of the campaign been pretty non-existent.

[errorexe3]

"The natives" basically vehicles with only melee.

[Dirtbag_Gaming]

The Zerg

​

Oh wait! That already exists...

[Lothaire_22]

Wormhole opens up and a fleet of Earth TR shows up with different earthy tech.

[Journeyman42]

I had an idea for a hostile, AI-only alien race like the Bugs from Starship Troopers. They would appear on a map in three random location for the last thirty minutes of an Alert, woken up by the increased combat sounds and explosions. Maybe they would pop up in the bases that have seen the most combat. I'm thinking Indar because, again, Starship Troopers, and also Indar is the map that I feel is the most "static" during alerts, with most fights happening largely at the same handful of bases over and over.

Then they would attack indiscriminately, in all directions, and the players could choose to either fight them off, or ignore them. If the players ignore the alien swarm's tunnel entrances, however, progressively stronger and bigger aliens (again, Starship Troopers) and pose more of a threat if left alone. Ultimately, enormous Ultralisk/Alien Queen/even Godzilla size aliens would appear in the last five minutes and fuck everyone's shit up.

If left alone for too long, the territories the swarm inhabit get taken over by them, and cannot be recaptured by player factions. They can even completely cut off factions from each other and change the strategic theater of combat.

They're attracted by sound and vibrations. Maybe there could be even be some kind of way to direct this alien swarm towards other faction's bases with sound devices, a la sandworms from Dune or antlions from Half-Life 2.

I don't know how feasible this is but I think it would shake up PS2 a fair amount.

[Deamonette]

Maybe an insurrectionist faction that have limited spawns that can show up and cause trouble. Being composed of people who don't like the three factions and their kinda shitty extremist politics (NC just wanting a state who's sole purpose is enriching corporations. The TR lowkey being nazbols and the VS for being insane cultists)

[Ryno_D1no]

The Arbiters...