Now here me out!

All the screams of "OP" and "Unfair" leveled at tanks and Drop-ships that have gotten them nerfed into their present state, all of them stem from one source. The battle report at the end of the match that had those tankers and pilots going 30-0. It's jealousy plain and simple and it is completely understandable.

The spirit of Dust 514 does not lie in cooperation. Most players really don't give a toss if their team wins or loses a match, as long as they personally have a good Kill/Death ratio. When infantry looked at the battle report and saw that tankers and pilots were consistently getting kill streaks as long as their arms, they flipped out. Again, completely understandable. So they complained. And what followed next was the nerf hammer as our developer friends tried to compensate.

However! No matter how many times they nerf vehicles, it'll never be enough for some people, because we still have some remarkably good pilots still getting a lot of kills. Because of that relative minority, people are under the mistaken impression that vehicles are overpowered, when in fact they are all but unplayable in their current state. What needs to be addressed is that appeasing infantry players won't happen with more gameplay changes (i.e. vehicle nerfs), but rather with a simple change of philosophy that reinforces vehicles as support units.

Since vehicles are supposed to be support units, simply code it so that all the player kills that pilots and tankers get are assisted kills. Boom! Crisis solved. HAVs and DS can be gradually ratcheted up back to their chromosome levels of fun without people being envious of their performance. Pilots will get zero kills, but a lot of WP. Therefore infantry will care far, far less. After all, Kills are the only things that matter to these guys. If Pilots and tanks aren't topping the kill list, then they aren't a threat, and won't complain. And then we can all get back to having fun.

Psychology!