Dude think about it with a base of +20% and 2 local power upgrades you gould fit 2 heavy shield boosters and 1 heavy extender allong with hardiners ohh yea. Or even 2 heavy extenders and a good heavy booster with hardners boom.

thats what we used to do back in the day

either that or
heavy extender
heavy extender/booster
3 resist

2x/3x damage mods

Dead link, but while you're here, would you mind helping me settle a point with the OP? If you logged in today after downtime and found out that the vehicle engineering skill got buffed from 1% per level to 5% per level, how would that change how you fit your tank?

I run laser rifles and am usally in high places so blaster tanks usally don't pick on me rail tanks make me paranoid :) but any ways
What I want tank gameplay to be like:
I will list how well all tier tanks should do against av in general from my point of view.

Militia - at max be able to attain 3-5 infantry kills maybe 1 other tank

Standard madragars/gunlogi's - 10-15 infantry kills 1-2 enemy tanks (depending on how built)

advanced enforcer class - 15-20 infantry kills 3-4 enemy tanks(to be honest I think Soma's are more scary then enforcers.

Proto tanks - 20-30 infantry kills 5 enemy tank take downs I miss being scared but to make proto tanks not be abused like 5 in 1 ambush have it so you can only bring maybe one or two into the field have it cost about a flat 3.5 million isk 4 just the tank

I miss the old days of holy crap enemy tank! now when someone brings out an enforcer I hear my whole squad go who can blow it up fastest wins! I want to be scared again but I think have 4 or 5 , 5 million dollar tanks on the field never being destroyed was a bit over kill.

I have no idea

It might not change much because i use a 15% mod as it is now so 5% might not change much overall except for a few fits

You'd essentially have the same PG you had back in Chrome if that helps.

that may balance them against infantry in general or rather justify their increased effectivness against infantry.

but where do you stand on Anti vehicle

should the ultimate anti tank power reside in tanks or infantry? would you strive to achieve a balance between the two?

Ahem.....even the Battlefield Series (And many others.....) have Tank Operators control both Mobility & Weaponry. This is completely ILLOGICAL as nobody in their right mind would PAY to Gimp their Gameplay Experience. Sure....sounds delightful to pay 10-18x the ISK in order to hope 3 Friends are on, who are both Spec'd into Tank themselves, & are willing to spend time attached @ the hip..... And it's just SUPER to want to invest excessive amounts of SP in order to Chauffeur your buddies around (Should they be on....) while they have all the FUN shooting @ S**T.

You Dead-Set CoDboitards need to get the hell back where you belong.....on CoD. F**K.....even CoD: W@W had Tanks, & guess what??? Driver SHOOTS!!!! *GASP* You are even Irrelevant in your own Element

I'd share my Unbiased Alternatives.....but a Logical Discussion may not be had as long as these CoDboitards lurk about, shooting everything down @ every opportunity so as to further Skew the Demographic until ALL Vehicles & Non-AR Weapon Systems are Deleted from Tranquility (LOL @ Irony of Server Name.....)

I'd like to strike a balance. I'd like to see dedicated tank killer vehicles, for example: like a HAV but with a big railgun damage bonus, but really weak defenses. But I also like the idea that infantry can hold their own against tanks, as well as tank vs tank combat.

balance between the two would be a good direction, offers the most flexability in overall stratagy and makes HAVs non manditory for anti - HAV duity.

i do think it should take more than 1 invisable guy sitting on a nanohive on a tower though...

back in the day a solo AVer surprised you can caused retreat.

2 avers meant trouble if you diddnt have someone in your tank to gun them down

3 meant death in most cases

all of this of course was dependant on the skill of the player.

1 good aver could absolutly mess up the tank, 2 good avers meant certain death, only the best driver would survive.


as for the driver not controlling the main turret, thats probably a stretch beyond what most tankers are willing to tolerate. BUT redusing large turret effectivness against infantry and increasing small turrets effectivness against infantry would largly acomplish the same thing

that way a solo tanker could deal with other tanks, and provide some anti -infantry support but wouldnt really be ideal for the job

but a tanker with a full tank (3 man) would be quite effective against infantry and acomplish the notion of having 3 people in tanks to fully operate them


what do you think? a nerf to large turrets anti infantry abilitys and a buff to small turret Anti infantry in exchange for some extra survivability?

would that change be enough to encourage people to fill a tank rather then kick blueberrys out as a liability?

woudl that change be enough to justify an increase in survivability and increase the amount of tank on tank AV action?

most importantly would it match the idea of balance you wanted to achieve?

alot of angry discussion has been going around about tank vs AV balance and alot of flame wars have been started as a result.

Balance

the core of it seems to stem from everyones definition of "Balance"

they try to use metrics like 1v1, and justify things with ISK cost or SP cost or other factors that really dont belong in the discussion.
You are disregarding major flaw in AV vs HAVs by saying it doesn't belong in any discussions.

let me explain something about balance in a video game, or any game for that matter.


something is balanced when it creates the type of gameplay you want to see in the game. thats it, thats all there is to it.
so something that completly dominates absolutly everything would be perfectly balanced in a game where that was the intended result.

imbalance is when gameplay isnt happening how you want it to and its creating circumstances that invalidate other areas of the game.

in terms of tank vs AV in Dust 514 we have to ask ourselves what we cant tank gameplay to be like and how do we get there.


The gameplay we want to see?

Naturally this means that any discussion about balancing these two things HAS to include discussion about what you want tank VS AV gameplay to look like and how you want that to interact with Infantry VS Infantry gameplay and every other interaction.


this isnt happening in any tank VS AV disscussion on the forum so lets bring it here

well what DO we want it to look like

well its a givin that we want vehicles to have a place in the game we want them to have a reason to be on the field and we want them to be useful.

currently they dont, infantry hold ALL the power and it renders tanks without a role. infantry are better at killing other infantry, and infantry are better at killing tanks, with a few exceptions.

the only advantage to a tank is that it takes specific AV weaponry to do damage to you making it easyer for you to engage infantry while remaining safe from their fire.
4 of 5 weapons do major damage to it. SLs, FGs, AVnades and Flux nades. The 5th is the PC however no where in the weapons description does talk about anything remotely AV.


The Current Problem

the current problem is the AV dominance is in the hands of infantry, which means infantry are more effective at the anti tank role than tanks are.

this creates a situation where tanks are in a role where they are slightly more effective against infantry in exchange for infantry being able to wipe them off the face of the each on a whim.
AV grenades man.

how can we fix this?

that depends on what kind of gameplay you want to see?

currently theres no reason in competitive play to bring out a tank, it serves no function in any battle plans other than you really want to use one.

IF we want to see vehicle combat then obviously we need to change some things.

one way to do this would be to make tanks better at taking out tanks then infantry are.
They already are. Madrugars murder every other HAV out there.

this would change it so that the best way to take out a tank would be to use another tank, without a tank you would have to group up a number of infantry and come at the tank in numbers to take it out


this is what most tankers refer to when they say you shouldn't be able to solo a tank as infantry

they arn't trying to make themselves invulnerable, they are just trying to make it so that they fight tanks for vehicle dominance while not rendering infantry AV obsolete.

this change would make infantry AV an AV support role, working WITH the tanks to take out other tanks rather then replacing them as they currently do. this would also change it so that tanks would carry around gunner specfed into AV to give them an edge in tank VS tank wars, creating tank oriented squad gameplay rather then the solo warrior gameplay we see now.



AVers seem to think tankers want to nerf them so that they become invincible, and thats not true, they want to nerf you so that they have a place in the game, and most importantly they want to play with you, be in squads with you, and co-operate with you instead of you not needing tanks at all.

Closing

In short tankers who argue for nerfs to av are doing it to create a place for tanks in he game, they are currently replaced by a single infantry wielding AV and its creating boring/ stale/ and not engaging gameplay.

what tankers want is a role in he game, and most importantly they want a reason to exist, as currently they roll in tanks because they want to rather then it being viable.

TLDR - tankers just want to love AV players and squad with them so stop hating them
What we want are features that have been left out and not being soloed by things we cost in every way 8x more. AV grenades solo tanks so that would make HAV costs 20x more.

before posting answer 2 questions

1:what kind of tank/av/infantry gameplay do you want to see
1:one suggestion on how to achieve that vision of balance

Your idea of balance is correct, but your view of the current problem in-game is not.

My militia HAV (standard railgun) destroys enemy vehicles much more quickly than my advanced infantry AV fits.

vehicles vs AV is indeed broken, but it's not broken the way tankers say.
The main problems:
Broken AV WP mechanics (WP gain is too slow, and it's too easy for an AVer to lose an assist)

Terrible turrets- small turrets are worthless, while large missiles rely on luck to hit infantry.

ISK cost- vehicles are far more expensive than they should be.

Map design- it's nearly impossible for counter-AVers to remove AVers from certain positions

Redline abuse- this is something for both vehicles and AVers. AVers can safely AV from the redline (sometimes shooting dropships with railgun installations). HAVs can snipe even more safely from the redline than infantry snipers. All vehicles can retreat to the redline to safely repair.

Recall abuse- getting shot at by AVers? You can now make your HAV vanish, then call it in on the redline!

Hit marker issues- they're pretty buggy and usually don't show where the vehicle is really coming from.


I'm not going to mention invisible swarms, because it never happened to me- I always see them before they hit, or as least hear them behind me.

Until it takes multiple people to operate a HAV, I believe it shouldn't take multiple people to take down an HAV.

They should however lower the cost of the tanks.

Tanker......swap the T for a W and you have found the core of the issue.

it takes 3 people to operate an HAV fully

theres just no incentive to do so, and usually is a liability more than an advantage.

so you probably mean "some way to force tankers to have gunners"? or at least enough incentive for them to have gunners?

Yes if tanks need multiple people to take down then they should be forced to have multiple people operating it. As it is now I find many tankers complaining about the ISK loss and how because they spent so much ISK they should not be taken down by AV.

You cannot justify wanting to have supremacy over the battlefield just because you paid to do so. That is the very definition of P2W.

Yes I understand that tanks cost a lot (so they should reduce the price). However by making it so that multiple people are required to take down a tank the opposing side loses players to PTFO or to handle the enemy infantry. It becomes on 1-3, where one team now has 13 players facing 15 and has no become disadvantaged through no fault of their own.

I want tanks to completely dominate open battlefields with incredible tank, firepower, and range; their purpose should be anti-infantry support, the main AV method, and destruction of hard targets. However, we should allow tanks a major weakness in their design:

Tankers should be allowed to change where they want their resistance to be strongest over six faces: top, bottom, left, right, front, rear. Let's assume a tank at full proto level has 200dmg pts which equates to a total of 200% damage resistance that can be spread over the six surfaces. This way, a tank could never take damage from the top of front, but would take immediate hull (just like in eve) damage if hit anywhere else. This means that a single landmine could kill a tank, while a 5000 DPS railgun wouldn't scratch it from the front. This created a fun game of guessing what a tank's weak point is based on his behavior and also allows customization and proxy mines.would make a comeback.

That being said, a tank would need huge amounts of armor/ shields to evenly distribute evenly over his tank like a blanket. Even if a tank had 10000 shields, without resistance covering it, a forge gun could rip it off, quite easily, meaning that if a forge gun hits a part of the tank with 10% shield resistance, and tears it all off, then the shield buffer is lost EVERYWHERE, and getting jit by even a small grenade on a resistance-less face would result in a penetration of the hull and destruction.

This means that in an open environment where tanks can position themselves with their strong faces toward the enemy, they are invulnerable, but if they were to come into a city where they can be hit from all 6 angles, the would be almost instantly destroyed by a few guys with AV grenades BC they can't control the flow of battle in such a confined space.

This would also require removal of the redline, though.


I'd also appreciate a skill that allowed scout suits a 10% chance to hijack a vehicle of they got onto the turret so even in the open, infantry have a chance of hijacking vehicles if their own infantry doesn't support them.

This thread also brings up a very very good point- there can be no such thing as balance between vehicles and infantry AV, simply because vehicles aren't infantry AV.

Balance refers to things being equally effective at a given role.
Swarm launcher vs Plasma cannon, or Madrugar vs Gunnlogi would be a balance issue, not Swarm Launcher vs Madrugar.