Firstly, lets all be on the same page with the deffinition of proto: the highest level of gear openly avaliable to the player; gear earned reaching max level skills; the highest tier items avaliable on the market; end game status

Additionally, we have to use "the current environment" to prove people wrong.
So, it is apparent in this current environment that vehicals and dropsuits alike receive more slots and fitting when they advance through the tiers. So, it would be logical to give an adv caldari tank 6 highs and 3 lows because the standard caldari tank has 5 highs and 2 lows. Mirrior the same advancements for the armor tanks and give both more fitting and bam! Thats an advanced tank. From there, follow the same procedure for the proto tank, escalating their builds to be a true proto tank.

In this envirnment of progression, skills often give additional benifits in additon to unlocking gear, like mass driver operation unlocks more massdriver variants and gives a 5% increase to explosion radius per level. So, the skill that unlocks the tiers of tanks could give a +5 to 10% shield/armor tottal HP per level, respectfully. Or +5 to 10% PG/cpu bonus, or speed, or additional resist, what have you.

This way, tanks become much, much more powerful throughout the tiers so they can compete with proto AV.
Giving proto tanks 7/5 respectfully would be okay because infantry will still be able to handle them, many AV specialist have proficientcy 5, double/triple damage modded proto AV, the maximum amount of punishment possible in dust and they travel together in squads. They can handle a tank no problem and by the time we actually do get our proto tanks, many dozens of hundreds more players will be doing the absolute maximum amount of damage possible in dust

If thats so then np, just give the proto tanks better stats and some built in perks

The very idea of a traditional proto vehicle revolts me, it would be so unbalanced and would lead to rudiculous levels of qq on the forums, not to mention that it would just turn vehicles into an even more expensive version of that crap called infantry balance. I'd rather see something like halidor proposed, where we get speciluased variants that suffer in other regards, while we get mire generalised variants as the base tanks.

And before that moron takarisho (something like that) blunders in here I would see proto av removed as well (along with everything else proto) and what's left be balanced against the new vehicles.

I'd say change module slots

Std 2/5
Adv 3/6
Pro 4/7


Then boost PG and CPU 20%/tier

Also increase speed 5%/tier

Then double cost per tier



Happiness clacheived.

Tanks need to be designed with the fact that everyone in a battle will have proto AV.

You're using "pay to win" in a sloppy sense. Why? State your agenda.

I think when you say "pay to win" you mean tiericide. And also alignment of DUST with more conventional FPS titles.

Zdub, you've earnt thus thread a place on my lust with your comments, you made some points I hadn't considered before. Also Im off the opinion that tiered modules aren't a bad thing, it promotes fitting choices and speciliasiation in your fit, that's good. I'm after the suits and the weapons to a lesser extent, I'd like to see the tiered variants removed and balaned correctly, say around the advanced level for examples sake, and then a greater emphasis being placed on the varaints of weapons, such as the breach and the burst AR, you get the picture.

That said in prepared to hold off on that area and see how things like the changes to swarm launchers turn out, it may be that im off the Mark in this area, we'll just have to wait and see.