[Update]: The Escalation update has now arrived alongside Fleet Carriers, Outfit improvements, and a whole bunch of other changes.

If there is one thing that separates Planetside 2 from all of the other shooters, it would be the sheer scale of its battles. During a particularly active night, it's not uncommon to see over a hundred players from all three factions fighting it out on foot, in mech suits, vehicles and even airships. However, despite this being Planetside 2's most unique and exciting feature, the game does a surprisingly poor job of pushing players into these absolutely massive battles.

In order to correct this, as well as spice up the gameplay even further, Planetside 2 will be adding gigantic, player-controlled fleet carriers as a part of the upcoming Escalation update. These floating battle-stations will require a significant investment to field, and each empire can only have one active at any given time, but wherever they appear they will most certainly change the tide of battle.

Each one comes with a variety of controllabe turrets that can attack enemies from long range, while also serving as a mobile respawn point, as well as an air vehicle recruitment point. So if you don't deal with the fleet carriers quickly, you're going to have to deal with a constant rain of explosions and players landing right on top of your head instead!

Naturally, destroying these fleet carriers is entirely possible, though it will be a bit of a monumental task. Each one has multiple weak points that will need to be destroyed in order to bring it down, which means you'll need to coordinate with your fellow players and actually focus fire in order to avoid simply wasting shots while your defenses crumble all around you.

The Escalation update also brings with it a variety of new and powerful deployables for Outfit leaders, a monthly competition where Outfits will go head to head against each other, as well as a loyalty reward system to help convince players to join and stick with an Outfit. In order to help players find these like-minded groups to play with, as well as simply chat after a couple of bloodbaths, the update will also add Sanctuary as a neutral social hub for all three empires.

To learn more about these features, as well as what else the Escalation update brings, you should hop over to the official website. As for the release date, you can expect the Escalation update to arrive this Wednesday, March 11th.