But what should also come back is the bonus to CPU and PG that come from the vehicle Electronics and Engineering skills.

Look at it this way:

I got the chance to play with some dedicated tankers on Friday and Saturday, and even the ones who would normally fit Small Turrets are taking them off because the current fitting stats of vehicles makes it impossible to fit good equipment without doing so.

I mean, to put it into perspective for people who don't use vehicles, a Python Assault Dropship can only fit STD missile turrets if you want to be able to fit other good modules to it. This used to be balanced out by the fact that you still got 5% bonus to CPU for the Electronics skill in addition to a reduction to CPU cost of powergrid upgrades via the Engineering skill, but now with both of those gone you rapidly run out of CPU and have no way to fix the issue because it only has one low slot.

The extremely low cost of vehicles is a nice change from them being prohibitively expensive, but we've officially gone back to the days of the old Closed Beta builds where you could call in Militia tanks for free in unlimited supply.

That may sound extreme, but consider how much LP it takes to get a Federation Madrugar, for example. If you can keep one of those alive through several FW matches, you can easily make enough LP to keep purchasing more, and if you're reasonably competent you're likely to keep said HAV through several matches because of all the other people doing the same.

While I'm at it, why why WHY do the LP HAVs not require any skills trained? That is the single stupidest thing of this entire patch, and the only part that actually pisses me off. Not only are you going to make them as cheap as they are, but offer a cheaper variant available for LP that requires no SP investment? It's madness.

In my opinion, we could fix many issues we have currently by requiring at least some SP investment to use LP store HAVs, increasing the cost of all of them enough to make them less expensive than they were before but not so cheap that they just get spammed, and replace the skill bonuses for the Engineering and Electronics skills, which are now next to useless thanks to the slot layouts of some vehicles.

Sir, ISK is not and should not ever be a balancing factor.
lmfao I love this, I get to say exactly what AVers say, and now I understand why they did it when they were OP as ****.

And how do you figure cost has no factor in balance or shouldn't have a factor in balance? How do you think Officer weapons work?

In EVE, and as we can already see with the weapons in Dust, Officer gear is head and shoulders above anything else, but is balanced by it's cost in EVE, as it will eventually be in Dust.

Sure, you can make an all Officer-fit ship in EVE that can take on 4-5 ships of the same class and beat them all easily, but the cost would be so prohibitive that the ability to do just that is rarely actually used.

Cost is an excellent balancing factor in a sandbox game like this, and off-handedly discounting it is rather ignorant.

We don't have the industry and economy EVE has.

Not yet anyway.

The whole point, at least as far as I've gathered, is that this game will NEVER have those elements because EVE already does. Who the hell wants to do manufacturing and resource gathering in a shooter?

Leave that to the people in EVE.

The whole point, at least as far as I've gathered, is that this game will NEVER have those elements because EVE already does. Who the hell wants to do manufacturing and resource gathering in a shooter?

Leave that to the people in EVE.

I like tanks being cheap and abundant, the issue is the effectiveness and how easy it is for them to get away.

The only thing that can balance out tank spam is AV spam.

Currently, the plamsa cannon and swarm launchers take up an entire light slot. That's like, if you are playing Battlefield, giving up your primary weapon (AR, SMG, SG, DMR) so that you can equip an RPG. That is a terrible game mechanic.

The tank spam is not fun right now, because not a lot of people have suits equiped with AV. If current light AV weapons fit into the sidearm or equipement slot, then you would see a lot more AV on the field to counter the spam.

Then you'd have just as many vehicles, but now with potentially all infantry switching to trying to counter the vehicles rather than playing to the objectives.

The biggest issue here, and one that you can't solve, is what players want to do.

In Planetside 2 it was easy to find armored columns of 70+ tanks just shelling the crap out of a base, and when no one was spawning anymore to fight them they'd just go somewhere else or all hover around it waiting for an infantry player to show up and actually capture the damn thing.

This problem is made even worse by the way that in Dust a vehicle is an irreplacable asset that you have to earn and pay for yourself. No one is going to get out of a vehicle they called in because it might be destroyed before they get back to it, even if we did have vehicle locks.

Ah, I should clarify that I actually (somewhat) enjoy the amount of tanks that can be deployed at once. It's an interesting dynamic that cannot be found elsewhere in instanced FPS.

Also, clearing an objective (both infantry and vehicles) is part of playing the objective.

Not all matches have 5+ tanks roaming around the field, but since these matches do come by often, AV needs to be accessible for every infantry player. A single plasma cannon is only, at most, a minor threat. But with more players being able to equip the PC into their SIDEARM or EQUIPMENT slot, multiple players can easily switch to a fitting that has a PC without completely ruining their chances of defending themselves against infantry.

This also solves the problem with the plasma cannon being useless as a main weapon. The PC is very subpar against infantry AND vehicles (even with 2 Cmplx DMG mods). Equipping a PC (this also goes for swarm launchers to an extent) means giving up a huge amount of infantry killing power. PC users are essentially defenseless. So, without giving it a huge buff that can potentially ruin infantry gameplay, it should be moved to the Side Arm or Equipment slot in order to make it practical to carry one.

That may sound extreme, but consider how much LP it takes to get a Federation Madrugar, for example. If you can keep one of those alive through several FW matches, you can easily make enough LP to keep purchasing more, and if you're reasonably competent you're likely to keep said HAV through several matches because of all the other people doing the same.