I am skilled deeply into small turrets. If small turrets will no longer needed in order to fit a tank, I don't want them anymore. Can I have an SP refund?

It doesn't matter. As long as the mission of the dropship is to slay infantry it will always be a more complicated and risky tool than just running in a suit. It's more expensive, it's far more visible, and it can't be any better than a suit or it will be declared OP (compared to the suit which will be a valid point).

The dropship needs missions that infantry can't perform or it will be forever balanced against a single dropsuit.

there is truth to this.

CCP, please dont just do a rehashed version of what we already have....

Yeah it primarily needs wp for troop transport ... it's main purpose !

In it's simplest form x wp for each passenger carried over x distance ... but it would need restraints to avoid farming.

Some of the time they can be more powerful than suits, but most of the time they will be weaker.

Time spent stronger + Time spent more vulnerable = Capability and survivability of a dropsuit.


Vehicle pilots are already complaining about the significant downtime required by this balancing act because it's no fun to sit out the majority of the match.

CCP Wolfman,

You mentioned limited Ammunition and Ammunition Cache's, and also refereed to Supply Depots. How do tanks recover ammunition? Is it self-regenerating, but regenerates faster while around Supply Depot? As an Infantry player, if I remove all the Supply Depots from the map(or the tankers themselves do this), how(if at all) will it impact the Tank drivers?

Passive ammo regen would defeat the purpose of limiting ammo, it's ment to put vehicles into the same situation as dropsuits where they can run out of ammo and be "in a position were they can no longer be of use within a match" until they find resupply from a logistics or hive or that supply depot that survived being HAV raped in the first 30 seconds of a battle.

Edit ... maybe you could have an active module as I think someone else suggested ... that resupplies ammo but at some expense, likely inactive turrets or other modules or putting all other modules into cooldown or some or all of the above. But this would obviously be at a fitting cost and reduce your resistance options ... just like hives do on a dropsuit.

Since this is pretty much the post they gave us internally, I'm pasting my posts from there (Snipped a bit due to NDA stuff though)

Regarding Vehicle power level:

My own view is that the prohibitive cost makes them way too unattractive.

One of the reasons vehicles are not 'fun' is because unlike a dropsuit... You can't really die in them without it being a huge deal and taking up several matches of earnings to even pay for it. In a game where the whole point is basically chaos and lots of things dying, saying "No, you can't die if you want to use this effectively" seems a bit dumb. I think that all vehicles should be relatively cheap and disposable, so that dying in them is no bigger deal than dying in a dropsuit.

I don't feel that vehicles should drastically change the battlefield simply by being there. The battlefield should be drastically changed by the knowledge and skill of the people playing. This tends to come into play when the question "How powerful should turrets be?" comes up. Personally, I'd like to see small turrets be doing around the same damage as their relative infantry weapon equivalents, or as much as possible. Large turrets would be a bit higher in the damage range. I had Tiel Syysch (One of the most level-headed, knowledgeable dudes I know) crunch the numbers for a few days on where to put turret damages. Now, I don't expect you guys to use these numbers, but this is the sort of range/area that they'd be great in, IMO. Linky.


As far as what you guys actually posted;

One thing that I'm super super cautious about is what you mean when you say "Long Cooldowns" on active modules. As a vehicle dude, nothing would irk me more than to have the game pretty much tell me "Here, be useless for a couple minutes as you need to go hide for all your stuff to recharge." I can almost promise the common tactic would be to simple drive/fly around until your stuff went on cooldown, flee to a safe place, and then recall the vehicle and call a new one to shorten the cooldown, if it was anywhere near that long.

IMO, a "long cooldown" should never be anything more than 30-40s. The way I'd personally approach making active modules more situationally useful is making their affects more powerful, but active for only a shorter time, with a mediocre cooldown compared to making them active for a decent time with a mediocre effect, with a super long cooldown


Turrets having ammo is a wonderful thing as it prevents senseless spamming and makes accuracy more important. Awesome change here guys! I think there to be a way for ships to 'restock' their ammo without having to recall it and call another of the same vehicle. Maybe a built-in nanohive that is very slow, and disables turrets while refilling them, or something? I'm not sold on a "Bigger ammo bay module" or needing to hang out at a supply depot (Especially with dropships)

On the topic of roles and such, We've bugged Wolfman about this to no end, but I'll throw it here anyways : Logistics modules simply need to be turrets, instead of pilot controlled modules. The use of these modules currently ranges from simply impractical to use, to downright impossible to use, as you look at them on each vehicle. The only vehicle that can even use them with good practicality is an HAV, because they are the only vehicle where the aiming/LOS is not dictated by movement controls. You could spend weeks/months reworking these module systems and making their aiming & locking functionality much more practical, or you could transfer this function to a series of turrets, and eliminate all of the 'ease of use' concerns pretty much by the sheer viture of how turrets work compared to vehicle controls. The only concern not addressed here is the seriously lacking range of these modules, which could honestly use a pretty big buff.

Now... Art becomes a concern. It is my honest belief that you guys could just rotate the 'turret' part of a blaster turret 90 degrees in each direction and then just slap two of them together side-by-side. You guys have done stuff like that before (*wink* MCC turrets *wink*) and I think this would look cool enough to pass until a real art asset could be drawn up. This only becomes a problem with the 'large' variants of remote-assist modules, because there's really no way I can think of to combine existing turrets to make them look different/cool enough to pass. I don't think this is an issue, if the current logistics vehicles were given proper bonuses (Oh god, PLEASE give them a range bonus)

Something to consider would even be changing up how these modules function entirely, so that they repair a flat amount that is percentage based on total buffer (Making completely passive tanks a possibility, with help) or possibly based from modifying/boosting a vehicle's native regen ability rather than a flat rate. This would eliminate the need for multiple modules to perform the same function, but could come at the risk of making some stuff extremely powerful. (If this happens, some sort of stacking penalty would need to be enacted so that multiple repair modules can't make a buffer fit completely invincible)

The part they don't seem to understand is that right now they have the 'stonger than infantry' part but are ALWAYS weak against AV (mostly due to lack of proto) ... what this rebalance is trying to achieve is during their 'stronger' window they will be practically invulnerable to equal level AV, but they won't be able to sustain that for long periods without having to retreat during their more vulnerable cooldowns.

They will still likely have matches with lower skilled AV or none at all where they can even survive through their cooldowns, or other matches where they are up against stronger AV or more AV numbers and won't be able to survive a heavy onslaught even during their 'stronger' period. But that's how balance works, so long as it's equally possible to sway in both directions.

How do hives reduce your resistance or survivability? They are equipment slots not you high or low slots they only stand to improve your survivability why should it harm a tanks? You don't have a cool down in your nano hive nor does placing one stop you from firing one placed.

How do hives reduce your resistance or survivability? They are equipment slots not you high or low slots they only stand to improve your survivability why should it harm a tanks? You don't have a cool down in your nano hive nor does placing one stop you from firing one placed.

I am skilled deeply into small turrets. If small turrets will no longer needed in order to fit a tank, I don't want them anymore. Can I have an SP refund?

I might have missed something, but... where's the buff?

Dropships and HAV's are currently terribad and you talk about "make base vehicles weak" (aren't they? lol), increase shield delay and make ammo depletable? What? Seriously?

The only positive thing is that small turrets will be removed by the 95% of HAV pilots.

The plan isn't even clear, passive and active modules are exactly as you describe them. Are you giving more power to the active modules? And not to the passive ones? I don't understand.

HP are staying the same?

Shield and Armor %resistance are staying the same?

The number of module slots is staying the same?

PG/CPU are staying the same?

So we've been waiting all this time... for nothing?

I might have missed something, but... where's the buff?

Dropships and HAV's are currently terribad and you talk about "make base vehicles weak" (aren't they? lol), increase shield delay and make ammo depletable? What? Seriously?

The only positive thing is that small turrets will be removed by the 95% of HAV pilots.

The plan isn't even clear, passive and active modules are exactly as you describe them. Are you giving more power to the active modules? And not to the passive ones? I don't understand.

HP are staying the same?

Shield and Armor %resistance are staying the same?

The number of module slots is staying the same?

PG/CPU are staying the same?

So we've been waiting all this time... for nothing?

Hi guys,

What we didnGÇÖt want to do was take every element, hurriedly try to rebalance them all in 4 weeks, and then stuff them back in. So, this will be a staged process, one that we will continue to work on over the releases following 1.5.

CCP Wolfman

Does that mean in 1.5 we wont have all the modules we currently have in the game right now? I know you want to take this slow and get it right so that all us vehicle users can finally have fun, but with just basic hulls and basic modules how will things even out in 1.5? cuz proto av vs basic stuff just makes things harder, no?

Ie. active hardeners drop movement by 80% whenever they are active but allow them to work indefinitely.

Why did you skill deeply into small turrets if you only wanted them "in order to fit a tank"?

CCP Wolfman,

You mentioned limited Ammunition and Ammunition Cache's, and also refereed to Supply Depots. How do tanks recover ammunition? Is it self-regenerating, but regenerates faster while around Supply Depot? As an Infantry player, if I remove all the Supply Depots from the map(or the tankers themselves do this), how(if at all) will it impact the Tank drivers?