My personal favourite approach is for tanks to be fairly weak by default, but if there are three players in one then the tank owner can enable "crew mode" at which point the driver gets the front small turret, the gunner gets the large turret (and also a limited field of view) and the top gunner (commander) gets the external view but is the only one who can activate modules.

In "crew mode" the tank gets significant bonuses to EHP and speed, making it worth at least 3, probably 4 or 5, infantry.

R F Gyro: If you look at my version, I think having it dual mode might be a bit unnecessarily complicated. But we have the same general idea. Though my thought is that HAVs should become crew-based vehicles, since MAVs and mechs are both expected, which either/or could fill the solo vehicle role.

Because this is a team-based game.

Attackers need multiple roles to win, tanks can't hack objectives and even with the best tanks, concentrated AV threaten them.

Defender's need of teamwork should be obvious.

Tanks don't win matches (ambush aside), teams win matches. Tanks are just another piece on the chess board.

Just thought I'd pop in real quick to say: Attim, I think this is a very good question to ask. And also, I can't help but notice that no one on the anti tank nerf side has actually answered it yet. I've seen a lot of random ideas given, and some anecdotes here and there, but really no solid logical definitive answer.

I'll add that I feel like most of the AV grief comes from Swarm Launcher users. I only use the FG, and I mean, it's actually not terrible as a tank-deterrent. Of course I'll never finish one off by myself unless the tanker happens to be particularly terrible. Of course this could be somewhat solved by adding points for deterring/damaging vehicles (soon please CCP?), but that's a debate for another time. But anyway, yea I don't really see why multiple people of one role should be required to take out one person of another role. That would seem to make the latter role ostensibly better.

Tanks are meant to be line breakers and highly disruptive to infantry - or to other vehicles - perhaps in some regards they're succeeding a bit too well at it but I believe the problem lies mostly in cost - increase the cost on mlt tanks to 250k and its much easier to go into the red with them, increase the cost on std hulls & large turrets and you don't mess around with lavs or dropships. Now in regards to proto av, I see it as strong area denial for light av (which I feel *should be stronger while hardeners are down*) if you want to punch through hardeners with light av you should need a friend or you should be jumping up to heavy av and if you sincerely want a vehicle to die with or without hardeners you should be calling an anti vehicle hav. Infantries strengths will always be positional - a forge gunner on a tower can be a real nightmare.

The problem with trying to balance tanks is that they're designed to be disruptive and they very much make infantry feel marginalized when the anti infantry tank is slaughtering them and their 3 basic av grenades & 2 mlt swarm shots won't make the mean tank go away... And then there's the other side of the issue - av weapons that are too powerful don't even give vehicles time to react, this was a major problem with av grenades and forge guns in 1.6 and if some people I've talked to get their way it would be an issue going forward too - the problem with this is it leaves vehicle specialists unable to do their 'job' leaving them marginalized and in some builds making their vehicles expensive coffins (an enforcer in 1.6 could cost upwards of 3m each). I'm not saying that the tank that tries to fight 3 breach forgers should meet any more success than the infantry who wants to be able to kill tanks with just his mlt swarm launcher while hardeners are up. What I am trying to say is that in many ways the roles are just extremely antagonistic to each other and its unlikely that players are ever going to be 'happy' with something that affects their game in a 'negative' way... I mean if people are going to complain that every weapon under the sun is OP it only stands to reason that they'll complain harder when they can't fight the big mean tank with their rifles and they'll complain even harder when the big mean tank turns on its hardeners and wanders off when they're on cooldown.

It would be, if you had to spawn into the game with AV and keep it the whole round, BUT since a person can just: die, pick an av suit, pop the tank, swap back, go about their business; it makes being able to solo tanks VERY op. They have no chance in that senario. I dont even pilot tanks and I can see that. So no, no tank solo. Plus to your comment about tank v tank being rediculous, that just shows how rediculous you are. AV should be to support a tank and tip the favor, or if you dont have tanks avail, large numbers to do it yourselves.

TL; DR You are obviously a tank hater so stop QQing and comment on stuff you know.

So by your reasoning, tanks should be as easy to kill as a dropsuit. That is the worst thing I have ever heard and you should feel bad. That sounds like an arguement to just get rid of vehicles. If they are just as easy, why have them. Plus then we need to nerf the heavies according to your statement.