You know there are 2 other types of vehicles in dust 514. The AV shouldn't be an auto win on vehicles and vehicles shouldn't be an auto win against infantry but all the vehicles should have relatively similar survivability when facing each other or AV.

No ... if you want World of Tanks please close the door behind you.

But also YES ... when a vehicle is being operated by multiple people it should take multiple people to counter it.

You can't simply say "HAVs cost loads so they should take more people to kill" or "I've spent X mil sp so I should be indestructible" ... isk and sp costs are irrelavant when looking at the balancing between 2 equal teams ... if one person calls in a HAV that requires 2 people to counter, you're left with 14 people getting stomped by 15 people and a HAV while 2 people try to survive long enough to co-ordinate an attack ... in this case simply remove AV weapons from the game as the only counter to a HAV is another HAV ... and as I said World of Tanks is that way --->

So as I've said balancing sp costs and isk values is a simple matter of CCP's choice without the player driven market, but balancing the effectiveness of vehicles can be done by giving skills for infantry to train so that when they are gunning in someone elses vehicle they provide bonuses to all sorts of things, from weapon tracking or damage to movement speed or acceleration or defensibility with bonuses to active repairers or resistance modules or even base hp values.

This way you can justify taking more players from the other team to counter it, if it's taking more players to operate it ... AND you're giving operators incentive not to try to solo dominate a battle if they are weak on their own.

For this to work you'd obviously NEED the ability to remove a lower skilled gunner in favour of a higher skilled one.

It could also operate like Fleet bonuses in Eve where the FC decides which person provides bonuses, so the operator selects the higher skilled gunner as the booster, but then you could add in a 50% increase (for example) to the bonus from having the third gunner seat filled.

This could be set up in different ways, but the best way I can figure would be the vehicle itself has the bonus from a gunners skill, so say the Caldari HAV has a shield boost bonus, so you'd need a gunner with the "Gunner shield subsystems" skill at level 5 with a third gunner to get the maximum bonus ... and gallente HAV could have an Armor Resist bonus from the "Gunner Armor subsystems" or Amarr having tracking bonuses from the "Gunner Electronics systems" ... the possibilities are endless (and the skill names need work I know !)

This way your sp and isk investments are secured by using teamwork, which then has the knock on effect that you want, requiring teamwork to counter it, while still leaving a balanced infantry fight going on around you.

[TLDR] = Too Lazy, Don't Reply

Digest / Disect / Discuss / but most important of all AGREE

I genuinely think all of us AVers are downright ignorant jackasses who take our power over tanks for granted. Effin hell mate have you seen how easy it is t take down a tank? WAY TOO EASY, tanks need a rebalancing against us AV and IMO the way that should be done is to increase their base movement speed so they better represent the tenets of tanking, these being Armour, FIrepower, and Mobility.

Oh and also nanohives should not grant us grenades so grenade use is more tactical.

I think we are better off trying to balance around vehicles with the concept of time of engagement window.

Heavier the vehicle the longer the window when it likes it or not. Smaller vehicles have higher dictation of their own engagement window. However dedicated anti-vehicle infantry should always be allowed to FORCE widening the window. Half-arsed AV guys not so much but they can still contribute to the damage.

If the forced window is much longer than the pilot intended for then the vehicle would perish. So engaging and disengaging becomes an art form where the most amount of stressor of the opportunity to fight is going to be imposed by other vehicles.

There are tools in doing this, for example capacitor can be one thing, as long as the capacitor is all happy the HAV operator can keep his armor repper running indefinitely while becoming a slow moving all of death, however soon as he tries to over exert attacking and using speed he starts to overdrain and tax his capacitor to the point that his weapon may stop firing and the overdrive disegages and the armor repair unit offlines as well. The infantry can then throw down webifier grenades or EMP or cap drainers and the tank becomes really screwed. While all said equipment cannot be really carried by one person, one person with a great window of attack can and will still severely damage and kill the vehicle.

Ammo is another tool that can be used for window of engagement, very powerful weapons may have limited ammo so shots have to count. Modules could also be ammoed such as a ninite resistance coater or counter explosive armor or chaff. Without an ammo depot you can purposely exhaust a tank out of its ammo options forcing it to retreat and if caught by another vehicle fully stocked it will be in serious trouble.

The end goal I would like to see is LAV supporting squads and HAVs as well as being the speedy harasser for other vehicles poking the eyes out if you will.

HAVs will be structured and vehicle destroyer basically the battering ram in breaking up hostile squad formations and positions.

Dropships being transport and support.

Under no circumstances should any vehicle be soloist and giving vehicles to invincibly laugh off damage they eat in window far shorter than their engagement time is unacceptable. Vehicle down time should be near 1:1 of engagement time. If a tank is engaged for 3 minutes it should be 3 minutes out of commission a fresh tank should be brought to replace it as the other goes off to restock and recharge.

to counter your argument, Vehicles are NOT dropsuits, they are far bigger and more powerful than any dropsuit that will be created (unless they make dropsuits able to carry large rail gun turrets).

I am not longer against giving more power with a squad than running solo but I do not accept this as the only way to go, because for instance, the few main problems we have with this is that if it requires 3 people to operate then we skilled up into vehicles for nothing because we alone cannot do anything with them which will be bullshit. then I would say that forge gunners should require 2 people to operate them, one player to carry ammunition and the other to use the weapon (not fair you say? you skilled into that weapon and deserve to use it on your own you say? too ******* bad, if he need others to operate a single weapon then so do you).

the other reason is that mostly bluetards are in games and they screw up nearly everything they touch and tanks are no exception, they randomly shoot out of our turrets at nothing for no reason and they expect to get free points from riding in out vehicles, they also use our tanks to AFK and this is a major problem because nearly every time we die its because stupid *** infantry players stay in our small turrets and refuse to leave, thus killing us and making us waste all the ISK we used to get the vehicle in the 1st place, bottom line is no infantry can be trusted with what we put our own SP and ISK into...


other than that I see no problem with it and demand that the infantry inside the small turrets to give me their ISK so they can operate a turret, mainly because I bought the entire damn tank, and if it would require me to have someone else that would be bullshit also and the other guy should be required to pay the ISK to me in order to afford his own turret.

I never said "required"

Edited : I also said

I think we are better off trying to balance around vehicles with the concept of time of engagement window.

Heavier the vehicle the longer the window when it likes it or not. Smaller vehicles have higher dictation of their own engagement window. However dedicated anti-vehicle infantry should always be allowed to FORCE widening the window. Half-arsed AV guys not so much but they can still contribute to the damage.

If the forced window is much longer than the pilot intended for then the vehicle would perish. So engaging and disengaging becomes an art form where the most amount of stressor of the opportunity to fight is going to be imposed by other vehicles.

There are tools in doing this, for example capacitor can be one thing, as long as the capacitor is all happy the HAV operator can keep his armor repper running indefinitely while becoming a slow moving all of death, however soon as he tries to over exert attacking and using speed he starts to overdrain and tax his capacitor to the point that his weapon may stop firing and the overdrive disegages and the armor repair unit offlines as well. The infantry can then throw down webifier grenades or EMP or cap drainers and the tank becomes really screwed. While all said equipment cannot be really carried by one person, one person with a great window of attack can and will still severely damage and kill the vehicle.

Ammo is another tool that can be used for window of engagement, very powerful weapons may have limited ammo so shots have to count. Modules could also be ammoed such as a ninite resistance coater or counter explosive armor or chaff. Without an ammo depot you can purposely exhaust a tank out of its ammo options forcing it to retreat and if caught by another vehicle fully stocked it will be in serious trouble.

The end goal I would like to see is LAV supporting squads and HAVs as well as being the speedy harasser for other vehicles poking the eyes out if you will.

HAVs will be structured and vehicle destroyer basically the battering ram in breaking up hostile squad formations and positions.

Dropships being transport and support.

Under no circumstances should any vehicle be soloist and giving vehicles to invincibly laugh off damage they eat in window far shorter than their engagement time is unacceptable. Vehicle down time should be near 1:1 of engagement time. If a tank is engaged for 3 minutes it should be 3 minutes out of commission a fresh tank should be brought to replace it as the other goes off to restock and recharge.

(...)So as I've said balancing sp costs and isk values is a simple matter of CCP's choice without the player driven market, but balancing the effectiveness of vehicles can be done by giving skills for infantry to train so that when they are gunning in someone elses vehicle they provide bonuses to all sorts of things, from weapon tracking or damage to movement speed or acceleration or defensibility with bonuses to active repairers or resistance modules or even base hp values.(...)

It's taken a while but I think I'm understanding your post ... am I right in thinking the highlighted part means HAVs would not be killing infantry so much but destroying installations and structures and other vehicles ?

Also should this in the last paragraph not be a longer window not a shorter one ... "giving vehicles to invincibly laugh off damage they eat in window far shorter than their engagement time"

Imagine that you are running as infantry, and at the same time someone is playing with you mouse/DS3 sensitive, once you can aim easily, second letter something is broke.
Same goes with vehicle speed, mobility, etc. it's very difficult to 'sense' vehicle when conditions are changing constantly - if we will give pilots that kind of bonuses, it's gone broke game.

your ignoring all my counters to your argument, avoidance. hm...


also do you rely on your team to keep your dropsuit safe? no you don't, you rely on yourself.

Nobody wants to be forced to be an active type player.

Sorry "mate" ... but what do you think my post is about, if it's not about balancing vehicles versus AV ?

Edited ... I've also highlighted a couple parts of the OP for you to read, since you didn't seem to read any of it.

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3vhq8g/
The ISK of vehicles vs ISK of AV...
And you want vehicles to solo'd?
We may kill 15+ of you... But we don't get any special bonus isk.
I lose my tank... I have to play 3-6 matches to get it back.
COD fish.

You know there are 2 other types of vehicles in dust 514. The AV shouldn't be an auto win on vehicles and vehicles shouldn't be an auto win against infantry but all the vehicles should have relatively similar survivability when facing each other or AV.

Sorry didn't do a full pass on my post.

Yes HAVs should be primarily anti-vehicle and anti-structure, anti-infantry and heavy squad support roles should be also possible still but I want it to be more equated to the HMG vs Forge sort of thinking, if they fit for anti-infantry then by no means they should be anywhere good at the other role. While it won't stop a blaster from killing tanks ultimately nor railguns killing infantry the wrong play style can be discouraged in other ways such as limited rail gun ammo that is better spent on real targets of threat. Trade one advantage for a disadvantage if you will. In this case a blaster would be an excellent anti-infantry weapon while the railgun would be more preferable for destroying other HAVs.

Back in the old beta test phases, there was tanks that with minimal 5 second down time allowed for about 2 minutes of undeterred engagement. There was even a time it was perpetually always engaged that there was no way to get the tanks to disengage and they were constantly engaging infantry much longer and harder than any other drop suit could ever do. On average a single drop suit loadout has about... oh 3 minutes total combat endurance about... 30 seconds of engagement time and near portional down time minus all the caveats of suit types and weapon and module selection.

Vehicles nearly simply ignored these time frames once upon a time which made for a bad infantry game (fun vehicle game though)

As you ought to. A tank is supposed to be a powerful force on the battlefield, it shouldn't be cheap, if anything CCP should balance if even more realistically, make each tank cost several million isk. I don't have anything specifically against tanks or tankers, but for the same of realism tanks need to be made into more of a luxury than something that can be bought and used to dominate by the average merc.

Oh you misinterpreted me. Its my habit to quote the OP though the dig is not directed at you but more the general community of AVers that always blindly defend their AV grenades, forges, and Swarms. Im shifting my focus into tanks and I agree. Im not fixing to make tanks all powerful but I agree with you when I say that acceleration and movement speed needs a buff.

Perhaps I should have been more clear.

Dig not at you or your topic, dig at ignorant AV community.

Only if they give us tanks that can be pimped out to 14,000 HP, 2 hardeners, 50% built in resistance, a proto turret, 2 damage mods, etc....i only tank in PC anyway so i wouldnt mind needing to be funded if I had a super tank that only other tanks could kill.

THe AV should be auto-win against vehicles, because that's what they were designed to do. If I lay a down proto-AV mines in one spot, they are useless for any other purpose other than AV, and those mines instantly let the vehicle user know where they are, they should auto-win against tanks and LLAV when they roll over them, not just chip on their shields. Same goes for swarms and AV nades that are working as intended right now, because they are useless for an other purpose.

... then I would say that forge gunners should require 2 people to operate them, one player to carry ammunition and the other to use the weapon (not fair you say? you skilled into that weapon and deserve to use it on your own you say? too f***ing bad, if he need others to operate a single weapon then so do you) ...

THe AV should be auto-win against vehicles, because that's what they were designed to do. If I lay a down proto-AV mines in one spot, they are useless for any other purpose other than AV, and those mines instantly let the vehicle user know where they are, they should auto-win against tanks and LLAV when they roll over them, not just chip on their shields. Same goes for swarms and AV nades that are working as intended right now, because they are useless for an other purpose.

Well signature radius could be a tool as well into the combat endurance and engagement time. Ie activating afterburners or sensors makes you easier to hit/lock by others. Increasing your signature radius to gain an advantage carries the risk of greatly lowering your window as a pilot. This is how it works in the real world most often.

During Gulf War 1, there was only 1 incident of a old world russian tank mission killing an abrams. The only reason why this tank got the lucky hit was it was offline at the time and was not generating any sensory noise whatsoever during a night attack. The gunnery crew loaded the gun, eyeballed the target and fired, striking the abrams to the side forcing the crew to abandon the vehicle. The abrams and crew was later recovered and repaired to full service, the offending tank and mostly every other tank in the division it belonged to got just simply annihilated. This is the only ground to ground vehicle incident and example I can remember. Sub to surface, sub to sub, Air to air and air to ground has far many more examples I could use.

this isn't real life, or earth.

I say, divide tanks between high attack and high defense models. Give unlimited ammo and higher speed to the damage models, and let the slower defensive models have better armor, resistances, and health. Why should I, a defensive oriented player, have to suffer because other players were overpowered in the past? People who want to play a protective role in this game deserve better options.

My point is that the HAVs should have the strongest combat endurance and widest window capabilities, with proper infantry escort the hostile AVs would have a very hard time forcing that window wider. A nearby logi could de-arm the web mines, assault players killing AV armed players. That the only things tanks would be really vulnerable to is getting caught alone or during its cool off period while it recharges and restocks.

My point is that the HAVs should have the strongest combat endurance and widest window capabilities, with proper infantry escort the hostile AVs would have a very hard time forcing that window wider. A nearby logi could de-arm the web mines, assault players killing AV armed players. That the only things tanks would be really vulnerable to is getting caught alone or during its cool off period while it recharges and restocks.