I would certainly support a infantry only gamemode. Give people the options. How can it hurt? Don't take anything away, just add an infantry only ambush mode or something like that.

Frankly, no. Vehicles should be allowed in Ambush. But vehicles shouldn't be the ultimate anti-personnel weapon, either. You should be able to call in a tank - but you should be taking a serious risk by doing so, not pressing the "Win" button.

Ambush could be cured by limiting HAVs to 1-2 per side.

It's always been this way, though - if you disagree, I will just point you to duna. Him and his tank spamming buddies made EU Amb basically unplayable. Even with the overpowering nature of AV. I'd start taking shots at one of them, and then suddenly my infantry screen evaporates and I get ARed. Or Ion Cannon'ed. Or whatever.

I agree with this. Removing them completely would be silly. Six tanks per team when there's only 16 mercs per side is a bit extreme. Especially in a game made based solely on killing.

An STB member tired of tank spam? The irony.

I appreciate what you're trying to do, and you do explain quite clearly the zero-sum game that is caused by the tank/infantry AV imbalance (tanks kill other tanks better than infantry AV, so take out a tank)... and even though I would like to see ambush without vehicles, I think it wouldn't address the underlying problem of tanks in general, so wouldn't provide a complete solution to the problem.

Having said that - if they DID do it, then I imagine ambush would suddenly become very popular as people could use it as a haven from the tank spam that occurs in other game modes.

We have over 400 members with maybe 5 who are actually PC tankers, non of us not even our directors or CEO have control over what what our members run in pub matches. I don't know why marston brought up Nyan san they are just using the FoTM and everyone is guilty of it except those of us who refuse to use tanks because we prefer fighting with a gun in hand. So go ahead generalize our members but with as many tank users as STB has we also have at least 5 times that number who refuse to get in them.

Should ambush finally have decent spawnpoints before you can call it a viable gamemode?

Should AV be removed from skirmish?

*long moan and rant about how it effects my playstyle and its OP*

Answer = lolyes did you expect me to say no? lolno its a yes

The only way they should remain is with an expanded map and fortified turret installations.

I would certainly support a infantry only gamemode. Give people the options. How can it hurt? Don't take anything away, just add an infantry only ambush mode or something like that.

I agree with this. Removing them completely would be silly. Six tanks per team when there's only 16 mercs per side is a bit extreme. Especially in a game made based solely on killing.

I know. And I've been dedicated tanker/AV since the early bit of the second round of closed beta. The point still stands though - rather than removing tanks because they kill Infantry too easily, thereby ruining the game, they need to change the system and create a viable reason for tanks to exist other than...well, just wiping the floor with absolutely everything with a single large turret and a hardener or two. It's broken. Especially in ambush where the likelihood of good cooperative AV approaches 0%. And it might actually be less than that in pubs.

Remove dropships from Ambush and you'll give us pilots no where to go to get away from redline railgun campers, that's why dropship squads like ones i roll with go into Ambush, because only in there is it fair for tanks vs dropships (or any other vehicle) because they have no redline to hide behind.

And it's harder to take down dropships? I call complete bull **** on that one counting that we've lost 1 high and 1 low module now making our shield or armor even lower than it used to be. It doesn't take 3-4 shots from a railgun to take us out, it takes 1-2, believe me, I know this. Dropships help immensely if their on your own team in ambush as well, and forge guns are perfectly strong enough to cause us to flee from the situation, preventing our ability to stomp players.

Ambush should be infantry only.

Ambush should also have a spawn system that isn't entirely ridiculous.

Neither of these things are very likely to happen.

Because CCP.

I see ambush basically as TDM.

Vehicles have no place in TDM.

I thought this was obvious.

Remove dropships from Ambush and you'll give us pilots no where to go to get away from the broken mechanic of redline railgun campers, that's why dropship squads like ones i roll with go into Ambush, because only in there is it fair for tanks vs dropships (or any other vehicle) because they have no redline to hide behind.

And it's harder to take down dropships? I call complete bull **** on that one counting that we've lost 1 high and 1 low module now making our shield or armor even lower than it used to be. It doesn't take 3-4 shots from a railgun to take us out, it takes 1-2, believe me, I know this. Dropships help immensely if their on your own team in ambush as well, and forge guns are perfectly strong enough to cause us to flee from the situation, preventing our ability to stomp players.

Uber long OP

Make a separate game mode for vehicles only.
1 tank 1 try. If you die, that's if for the match.

Ambush without tanks would be sort of fun when not getting proto stomped.

For this im going to refer to what I said in the original post.

"90% of the time if a DS dies its because the pilot was either A.) incompetent in either skill or skill points, OR B.) because they got unlucky when I pegged them and clipped a wall."

You don't have tank? Are you mad? Your tank is in the sheer mobility of the vehicle coupled with the sheer inadequacy of anti-air weaponry right now. Do you want the damn thing to be invulnerable? When ive got 5 guys with the sole purpose of taking down one DS, three with swarms with 5 damage mods, and two with proto forge guns. And were unable to take down ONE ADS theres something wrong.

Past 100 M its really hard to hit DS with Forge guns, and if they get hit by swarms they need only fly out of range which takes all of three seconds if you consider how bad the SL range is now.

You don't want to get shot down by rail guns? Those are literally the only weapons in the game that can reliably kill DSs right now. Im sorry, but nobody likes to die regardless of what it is. Unfortunately you cant have god mode forever. You want a safe haven from them? Well I want a safe haven from them AND DS pilots like you.

Hold up, after further inspection of your post. Your upset because you cant camp the redline? How terrible of CCP to stop you from stomping a team further into the ground after they're clearly beat anyway. If you getting pegged by rail gun at distance 200M + then your doing something wrong.

Tanks make this game not any fun to play anymore. Ambush mode yesterday, first time I've played in a couple weeks and I saw 4 tanks on the enemy side and 3 tanks on our side.

Guess which side won? That's right...the side with 4 tanks. I got to blow one of those piece of sh!t SICA tanks up...but in doing so, I was killed 14 times. Nearly almost as I spawned.

Oh yeah and Assault Dropships....they basically just sit and camp CRU's and missle you to death when you spawn. You spawn with a swarm launcher and break away from the pack before they kill you?

HERE COMES THE TANK. So basically you either spawn, waste all your fittings or just spawn MCC and sit there.

You could try to drop out and carve a path around except OH WAIT...THERE ARE 3 MORE GODDAMN TANKS POLICING THE AREAS AROUND THE MCC SO YOU'RE F!CKING DEAD AS SOON AS YOU SHOW YOUR FACE.

Ambush could be cured by limiting HAVs to 1-2 per side.

That's not even what I was saying.... dear god. I was asserting that it's only fair in Ambush because WE BOTH don't have redlines to hide behind. And you think getting hit by a railgun from over 200M is uncommon? You really have no idea what the relationship between tanks and dropships is then, because dropships are hit from over 500M all of the time from redline camping tanks that are able to 1-2 shot them. People like you who are pure infantry shouldn't try to make false assumptions about vehicles, when they clearly know nothing about how they work on the field.

Tl;dr "lets deny a whole gamemode to a specific subset of people because I'm too much of a baby to actually skill into av".

Tanks & dropships aren't much if a problem - the mlt 80k tourist tanks are. Assault & breach forge guns still do awful things to vehicles.

no supply depots in tactical positions need to be added. maybe make them indestructable. maybe.

Here's the problem I have with this opinion, you say how tanks are spamming so bad, and yet also complain about dropships, when they could be the exact answer to those tanks giving your team grief. When i go into ambush with a squad of DS pilots, tanks no longer rule the field and we end up saving our entire team from being gang-banged by tanks, thanks to assault dropships.

STB suggesting that (gasp) tanks should not be in ambush?
good golly gosh what an upset

Ambush is admittedly broken.

I think the only vehicles allowed should be
Dropships
LAV

Tanks don't really have a viable spot because there is NO VIABLE COVER... and that is a real irritation.
The LAV could be harrassment, while the Dropships provide a relatively safe space to spawn in..

Tanks just don't have a viable role without some decent cover for infantry to "dance with them".

I don't see any MCCs. How's the RDV getting there?

RDVs are from the warbarge, dumbass.

[quote=Sirys Lyons]
That reason exists in domination and skirmish. In those game modes they can support the team by pushing/defending objectives as they were intended to do. In ambush the only thing to do is kill enemy mercs. Therefore they have no purpose OR business being ambush. Unless you count "breaking the game" as a purpose. vehicles should be removed from ambush period. No compromise, no "rebalance". CCP just spent three-four months rebalancing these things. I don't want to grind through another three months of them rebalancing infantry combat when all they need to do is use some common sense and get rid of the problem entirely. Remove vehicles from ambush. If there not there to be abused, then they cant be abused. Simple as that.

I don't see any MCCs. How's the RDV getting there?

And I guess my thought is that the "infantry support" role should be where the MAVs shine (in addition to making HAVs think very hard in groups of 2+). Harder to kill than an LAV, but without the Large turret of the HAV.

And the Large turret of the HAV should be primarily for LAV/MAV/HAV removal, doing little damage and generally being more difficult to use against infantry.

Boom. Vehicles fixed.

That would be "highly mobile armor" for scouting / light infantry support - LAV.
Then "mobile armor" for infantry support / general purpose AV - MAV.
And "heavy armor" for AV / infantry suppression (not total wipe-the-floor destruction) - HAV.

Two LAVs would be fast enough to kill an MAV, two MAVs an HAV, and HAVs would be a serious threat to LAVs, or MAVs, while posing a clear defense of an area to infantry (if the smaller turrets are in use...as is not the case on 80+% of the tanks currently).

Unless you run a tank, Ambush is no fun, and that's a problem.

One way to solve the problem with Ambush today would be to take the OPs advice and remove vehicles from Ambush.

Another way would be to make infantry-bound AV a bit more effective against vehicles.

A third way would be to make vehicles more expensive.

I'm not sure which makes the most sense, but I'd like to see some experimentation with one or the other.

Seriously people. Has anyone considered that perhaps vehicles should only be allowed in FW,skirm,dom, and PC's? Many of you will likely click on this thread and downplay it before they even read the damn thing so this goes out to the few of you who actually like reading about new ideas. Please leave your constructive criticism down below. If you've read this far I labled each section so you can skip to the solution/explanation towards the bottom if you would like.

Explanation/Rant

Tanks.... Tanks is whats creating this thread. It would be a lie to say its just tanks, but tanks are the biggest problem out of the three vehicles currently in Dust 514. So heres the jist of things in Dust right now. You load up an ambush. A 16 v 16 man ambush. One team WILL call in a tank. Most of the times the response to that is someone else bringing in a tank. Then more people bring in tanks. Before you know it theres between 4 and 8 tanks on the field and a dropship because theres always one of those assault DS pilots flying around in one of those killing machines.

What does this mean to the average infantry man? We get absolutely suffocated. Use AV? Ive had a full squad use AV before and it didn't work. Why? Because the enemy had a whole squad of tanks on their side. Use a tank? Im sorry but if tanks only showed up once or twice every other match then I would happily load up my Sica Railgun fit. But they show up EVERY SINGLE MATCH, and there almost always in numbers exceeding three. Have any of you ever played against Nyain San in ambush? Let me guess what they used. TANKS.

Infantry don't have any room to breath in ambush because no matter who they're playing they have to use AV at some point and while they use AV they have to get pumbled into small confined buildings because the AV isn't good enough to effectively put down a group of Four enemy tanks.

Dropships are no exception to this either. Assault dropships, although less used, are just as hard to kill if not even more hard to kill then tanks. In fact, the only reliable way I've found to taking down a dropship to date is to load up a sica and hope to god I can hit him four times in a row to take him down. (which is hard considering hardners/afterburners/...... FLYING. 90% of the time if a DS dies its because the pilot was either A.) incompetent in either skill or skill points, OR B.) because they got unlucky when I pegged them and clipped a wall. This amazing survivability they have now, coupled with the flexibility of being an aircraft vehicle and having the capability of running a missile launcher that can TWO SHOT an 800 HP proto suit makes DS just as suffocating to infantry as tanks. The only difference is that once you get enough swarm launchers out the DS has to keep his distance. Tanks don't care regardless though cuz swarms cant faze them anyway.

Hell even LAV's have made something of a comeback. Blaster turrets are ridiculous now! and its not unusual to find a couple guys LAVing around just derping people with a gun that has the same stats as a balac assault rifle.

Solution

God this turned into a rant. But basically heres my solution. Take vehicles out of ambush. And make the map no bigger then a single complex. Maybe keep the usual road complex's have looping around just outside to allow for organized mercs to flank and/or get some breathing space if they need to. Increase the player cap in ambush to 18 V 18 (or if possible 24 v 24 like what was promised half a year ago). Which I would imagine would be possible if you consider that the map size would have been cut into a fraction of what it was, and the game wouldn't have to worry about processing vehicle physics.

Solution Explanation

Currently ambush takes place on maps the same size used in MAG. Keep in mind...... MAG allowed vehicles too but to compensate for the vehicles and map size, MAG also had, oh I don't know..... 256 players to actually fill all of this space.....

Like I said above Dust only has 32 people in each match..... 32 plp + up to 10 vehicles + massive map =/= 256 plp + up to 10 vehicles + massive map. The math just doesn't add up.

Conclusion

Mag Was very fun because there was a LOT of intense action all of the time. If you saw a vehicle you could normally avoid it, unless it was blocking the only way towards an objective. In which case you would just pull out your rocket launchers and kill it because in that game AV actually worked.

Dust is either Infuriating, or boring. Sometimes its fun and when it is its glorious! But most times its either infuriating or boring. Its infuriating when I get bent over by a squad or two of tank spammers match after match, and its boring when I get onto the tank spammers team over and over again and play "Hide and Seek 514" with me having to be proficient at both hiding and seeking in order to get any sort of a decent score by the end of it all. Even when there isn't tanks (which is rare these days) the game just switches name cards to "Marathon 514" because a marathon is the distance you'll have to run to actually find someone 50% of the time.

But anyway. What do you guys think? Do you agree that vehicles should be removed from ambush? (keep in mind I say vehicles in totality because without tanks the games "vehicle balance" would be broken, meaning all of them should be removed). Or do you disagree because your one of the tank spammers? I'm a close beta veteran going back as far as June of 2012 in this game. I have 32 Million SP and over a hundred million isk in my wallet. I have over 3 million WP and a K/d of 4.7. In my opinion vehicle spam in ambush is killing the experience for anyone who, I don't know, doesn't want to drive a vehicle. To fix this I think vehicles should be removed from ambush. Clean and simple. What do you think?

I love all the guys (falsely) accusing STB of tank spamming in the past.

Ambush isn't the problem. Vehicle vs. infantry balance is the problem. Tanks in ambush weren't a big problem before 1.7, because AV could effectively remove them, and the lack of cover in Ambush matches prevents them from diving for cover a lot of the time.

I could see a tighter vehicle limit on Ambush, but I wouldn't go for outright removal.

Um, yes and no. Maybe take em out for now until the tank thing is sorted out and then bring em back at a later time.

Indeed...... Falsely

Agreed. The SVER players, if I recall, did not spam tanks back then. All they have was their gun and their skills.

Should AV be removed from skirmish?

*long moan and rant about how it effects my playstyle and its OP*

Answer = lolyes did you expect me to say no? lolno its a yes

Or, we can make a vehicle only Ambush.

Done.

I remember way back when I 1st got into Dust and Ambush/OMS were seperated game modes back then, thinking that Ambush was only for infantry and OMS was where you could face vehicals too. A couple of times I thought I'd joined the wrong game until it clicked lol, at that time though I hadn't seen any vehicals being called into Ambush untill I'd played a few games and was still pretty much a fresh faced newbie.

+1 in support of the OP.

I agree! Its meant to be a normal TDM gamemode and i think it should be infantry focused

God no to MAVs right now. We need to figure how to balance the current game. Throwing a whole other subset of vehicles would be crazy. Everyone would get a mav and the game would turn into MAV 514!

Rather than remove, create different types of ambush which are mixed with all other ambush types.

At OP: The addition of all-vehicle and no-vehicle game modes would alleviate a great deal of pain.

I think there should be a delay of maybe 30 secs from match start that neither team can call in HAVs or Dropships. I think half the problem with Ambush right now, is the poor deploy and beginning of the match lag. When the opposing team has 4 tanks LANDED and rolling across the field before I could even deploy in, let alone call in a counter-vehicle, that can seal the match right there. None of the tankers on my team can call any in at that point and now it's my team of 16 infantry, 4 or so of whom are spec'ed into nothing but vehicles, versus 5 tanks and 2 dropships + Infantry.

If there were a delay, both teams would have an equal chance at being completely deployed and be required to take up strategic positions to call in vehicles. I understand that I likely gain this advantage as much as I am defeated by it, but that kind of game winning advantage should not be left to chance. This is of great importance in Ambush, but I think all game modes could benefit. This would also increase the importance and proper use of LAVs.

Ideally, Scotty would be able to identify the roles that players could fill on a team and ensure each team has a balanced number of potential tankers, and everything else for that matter, but that is wishful thinking.