If you search back through the forums you'll see that people have been asking this question for at least 6 months. And no, there has never been a decent answer.

I am grateful to Atiim for keeping at it, and taking on all the hate and rage that resulted. I pretty much gave up months ago. He has stuck with it and it looks like he just might be finally getting somewhere.

"It's a tank, you cannot solo a tank IRL" -Go look up the word "Javelin" on wikipedia. See also: T.O.W. Missiles.

Then what about the very expensive AV suits with high SP investments and highly skilled and seasoned AVers? Should they be able to demolish tanks left and right?

Lets not use the ISK argument here. A half decent AV suit can range from 150-215k with the guarantee to die at least 2-4 times. 600-860k > 500k.

I firmly believe that if a seasoned pilot should be "un-stoppable" then a seasoned AVer should also be able to become "un-stoppable" Yes? No? Maybe So?

Though you would need to be real careful when buffing AV. It could do some serious harm to Dropships if over-done even slightly. And we all know how CCP is always reasonable with their nerfs

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.

One more quick thing on this subject, as I believe Attim already mentioned, this is a video game. It's not real life. Real life warfare isn't dictated by balance or very specific roles with strengths and weaknesses designed purposefully. Real life warfare is about doing whatever gets the job done in the most efficient way. But I don't want that here, and I don't think anyone else really does either. If this were to be more "realistic", shouldn't we just have a handful of guns that are designed to be way better than everything else? There's no diversity in this kind of realism, so honestly it really has no place in Dust. That's my opinion, anyway.

IMHO, the counter to swarm launchers should be an active module, such as flares or chaff. Vehicles should get a notification of some sort when swarms lock on to them, and then they fire off the countermeasures which destroy the swarms. In order to take a vehicle out with swarms you'd need to overwhelm the countermeasures.

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.

well, an 80k isk sica should be soloed, yes, but my half million isk tank should be right about where it is bc i invested half my Sp in it.

So, to answer your question, a very expensive, very well planned tank piloted by a high SP and highly skilled and seasoned pilot should be nigh invincible.

A mlt tank piloted by a noob should get soloed every single time someone tries.

The quickest fix would be to nerf mlt tank fitting power AND buff AV so that AV can actually punch through tanks when their hardeners are off. It usually takes 3 shots from a swarm or forge, but a bad tanker is gone by the time the second shot lands, and a good tanker will only let one hit.

And I stomp on proto squads

With basic commando and melee only

Sure why not.

My setup:
Basic scout
Biotic mods
RE's
AV / flux nades

Place RE's, stand back, lob nades to remove shields, set off RE's - tank down

Personally, I think that vehicle kills are far too limited in Dust currently. Taking a look at tanks, you can only get a "catastrophic kill" currently. Introducing other ways of eliminating tanks and other vehicles as threats on the battlefield opens up more options for game balance around features. Other kills include Mobility Kill (Disable tank/vehicle propulsion, but the vehicle retains full use of its weapons), Firepower Kill (Disable offensive capabilities of a vehicle, even if one turret at a time), and maybe a visual kill? (Knocking out the Camera Drones that give vehicles their magic 3rd person view, forcing the operator into first person)

Use a mobility kill to keep a tank in one place, and either run it out of ammo, or disable its main gun, do the actual killing with demolition charges...

Should an infantry be able to solo a tank? Absolutely, provided the infantry is outfit to do basically just that...and as a tanker and true logi, infantry EHP needs buffed...Also, tanks are used as more than just mobile killing machines, they should also be looked at as potential mobile cover...and all the other applications tanks where designed for...I want to be able to deploy an HAV Frame with ONLY DEFENSIVE/SUPPORT MODS ON IT

Because it's stupid? So your saying that I should be able to pull 3-6 people out of combat just by driving a tank? isn't that buying a WIN button if I field enough of them then?

And how many times are you likely to die in your AV fit? 2-4 times. And at 150-215k a pop, an AVer can easily match the price of a good tank. ~ Lets not go there.

This isn't real life, this is a video game. And in real life a solo infantry man can OHK a tank ~ Lets not go there.

Look up the Javelin on YouTube and get back to me on that one. ~ Mkay?

And while we are bringing up real life facts, 1 = 1. Just saying.

It boils down to "No, I wanna be the biggest badass around."

Bluntly most of the reasons given by tankers are countered by AV players.

"I spent X ISK so I should be invulnerable to Infantry weapons." -AV players spend lots of ISK on the dropsuit fits that effectively blow the crap out of tanks.

"It's a tank, you cannot solo a tank IRL" -Go look up the word "Javelin" on wikipedia. See also: T.O.W. Missiles.

"I spent 10 million SP into tanks, I've earned the right to be the terror of the battlefield." -I have spent 15 million SP optimizing my forge gun suits for killing tanks. I should be the terror of YOU.

"I don't want to be killed by infantry, I want to be killed by tanks." -It's an Infantry game. suck it up.

"I'm here to fight other tanks." -World of Tanks is That way. ----->

"If you buff AV dropships will be worthless again." -Here's an idea... BUFF DROPSHIPS TOO!

"You just want to one-shot tanks..." -Actually no, I like the new tanks, I don't like the neutered AV to go with the newer, beefier tanks.

This is pretty much the list.

Jesus, I managed to be (mostly) not snide.

I must be getting sick.

Irony of it is is that most people seem to want to go back to 1.6 Tanks and AV. Hmm.

*sigh*

This is obvious bait, yet I know other people will not recognize it as so, and this thread will blow up into a full-blown troll thread.

For what it's worth, tanks should be solo'd because only one person is needed to drive it. If one person by himself can take two or three infantry out of the fight, then that is on OP role. Just throw out four tanks and you've got half the enemy team running AV and unable to properly defend themselves against full-AI enemies, while the tanker team is only short a few people.
Saying that using a tank is the best counter is only admitting how ridiculous your role is, this game is meant to have choices, and no one choice is meant to be obviously superior to any other. Each should have its own benefits and downfalls.

TL;DR: Because balance.

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.

You haven't actually made any argument at all there.

Any one player in the game can generally solo kill any other player. Why should it be different with tanks?

Erm, you're not in any position to school me about tanks buddy.

I know about the javelin. I also happen to know that the Javelin relies on a thermal signatures to guide the payload, which is fine... When you use it against old, outdated and obsolete WW2-era tanks (the kind most 3rd world countries use, which are the expected enemies for most industrial nations).

However, when you look at MODERN tanks (like the more recent version of the Leopard 2), equipped with Saab Barracuda camouflage system, smoke launchers, tungsten/ceramic alloy turret with slatted armor (that covers pretty much the entire top of the tank, usually considered to be a tanks weakest point besides the tank treads, designed SPECIFICALLY to counter anti-tank missiles like the javelins top attack angle function) it's a veeeery different story, because it's rarely even a question if your puny, man portable javelin missile will be able to destroy the tank, but more a question if you'll even be able to get it to lock on target due to the tank having a ****** up heat signature that your little javelin won't be able to recognize.

Most serious, modern tanks of today have these kinds or countermeasures making it pretty much impossible for a singular man-portable anti-tank system to destroy them. And then we haven't even begun to cover prototype systems in development that features anti-missile capabilities (they shoot down the missile before it hits).

So yeah, I went there...

As to your other questions, no I don't think it should take 3-6 people, but 2-3 would be reasonable. And no, it's not a "win button" because tanks still can't enter buildings, climb stairs or hack objectives (you know that little detail required to WIN the match?)

And no, your good AV-fit will not match a GOOD tank fit. Do you even know what prototype large turrets cost?