Threatening: Deals enough damage to threaten the vehicle. Not enough to kill outright, but you will be dead or severely damaged if you stick around for too long.

Deadly: Deals significant damage. Activate your hardeners or leaving are your only two options. (Once hardened, damage drops to Threatening Levels)

Lethal: You messed up big time. Barring user error, you WILL lose your Vehicle.


Okay, now that we have that out of the way, onto my Idea of vehicle balance.

Swarm Launchers
Swarm launchers need to have more range. They are Light AV weapons, made to take down light vehicles from a distance, and to deal enough damage to HAV's to make them think twice about engaging you.

Damage Level: Against LAV's, it should be Deadly. Missiles need to have better tracking/speed to make this a reality. LAV's should be forced to harden or retreat when faced with Swarms.

Against HAV's: Threatening. A hardened tank will be able to survive the onslaught easily, but unhardened tanks will be threatened by Swarms. Two or Three swarms against an unhardened tank is Lethal, two or three against a hardened tank will be deadly.

AV Grenades

I personally want these things to have the ability to bypass a certain percentage of Hardening.

Damage Levels:

Against LAV's: Lethal. You get too close, you will die. One will seriously wound you, two will kill you. Hardened LAV's will take three to kill.

Against: HAV's: Threatening. One is a nuisance. Two would get your attention. Three would have you activating hardeners or deciding to go elsewhere. If you get hit by Six (two ground guys spamming grenades at you), Unhardened tanks are dead, Hardened ones are GTFO'ing.

Forge Guns

Damage Levels:

Against LAV's: Lethal. Goodnight Gracie. One shot's Unhardened. Two shots Hardened. GTFO with those light vehicles, I've brought the thunder.

Against HAV's: Deadly. This is a Heavy Anti-Vehicle weapon. It's made to take down Tanks, at the cost of mobility and Infantry Protection. Getting hit by a forge should have tankers going "UH OH" and Hardening or GTFO'ing. Hardened Tanks can withstand the onslaught (especially with good passive rep), but they will be FORCED to leave once Hardeners are done. Unhardened tanks pop like candy against this thing.

Shield Tanks:

These are supposed to be "Burst Tanks". Made to maneuver around the battlefield and fight at a distance, the main goal of these tanks is to safely eliminate installations and Vehicles (for rails) and to suppress infantry from a distance (for Missles).

eHP is much lower for these tanks, and they can't survive repeated abuse. Against AV, retreat is the best option, even when hardened.

Shield Hardeners:1 Hardener per tank. Their active time needs to be reduced, but their recharge time would also be lowered. (I'm thinking about a 30 second active, and a 1 minute cooldown). This is to encourage the "Burst" style gameplay. Resist, Suppress, retreat.

Passive shield modules should greatly reduce recovery time. A good Passive shield module tank will be able to tank some damage and then fall back and quickly regen.

Armor Tanks

These are your "Bunker Busters". Made to roll up to hot fire zones and lay down some heavy aggro, they are the ultimate infantry support vehicle. Their Blasters might not be great at taking down other Tanks, but their blasters will make infantry think twice about engaging them. They are much tougher than Shield tanks, but suffer from long regen times.

Armor hardeners are fine where they are, but they need to have Longer active times, and Longer Recharge times (in suit with the above, they will have a 45 second long active time, but a 1m 30s cooldown (this is a 50% increase to both).)

This will work well, because a good tank will have enough eHP to be active in the fight until AV comes out, and then be able to tank a few hits, activate hardeners, and then buy itself some more time to push the other team out. 1m 30s cooldown will mean that after being unhardened, you will have 1 minute and 30 seconds to destroy the tank. This is more than enough time if you have the infantry ready to do it. Couple this with slow passive repair, and you will have "Waves" of tank attacks, that can be fended off with enough AV on the field (Even though this puts a disadvantage on the infantry in regards to anti-infantry capabilities)

Passive Module armor tankers are supposed to be tougher, yet more "Present" tankers. They can't take as much raw damage as a hardened tanker, but they aren't limited to their window's of opportunity. A smart tanker will be able to fall back once the heat comes down, and to push into a different objective. They regen slowly (compared to shield tanks), but much faster when compared to hardened armor tanks.

Once again, 1 HARDENER PER TANK.

Now, for vehicle quota's.

It's simple. (This is per side)

Ambush: 2 HAV. 3 LAV's. 1 Dropship. That is it. If you have 2 LAV's out, you can't call in another, but you can call in a tank.

Skirmish: 3 HAV's. 3 LAV's. 3 Dropships.

Domination: 3 HAV's. 3 LAV's. 3 Dropships.

This is done to encourage diversity, yet also to prevent spamming.

This means that Tanks are limited to 3 per team in skirmish, and two in ambush. 3 good tanks are more than enough for a team, and I see no reason to have more than that.

I honestly wanted ambush to only have 1 tank per team, but that would be death to the tanker with my changes. 2 Tanks should be able to survive in ambush (due to split aggro), and still have enough presence to support infantry. No more is needed.




Okay, feel free to offer feedback on this.

Please tell me if you like my ideas, or feel free to elaborate on how deluded I am. Either one works for me.

And you just want dropships to be ******, right?

Im not going to go into the semantics of it now, but as I have said time and again, in numerous threads across the forums.

I want Tanks to have an equal FORCE STRENGTH to the equivalent amount of infantry.
Tanks (so long as they are piloted by 1 person -and rightly so-) should be considered a niche weapon, like the Mass Driver or LR.

So you're saying that they shouldn't be force multipliers?



To quote a great man:

Whaaaaaaa?

That would completely defeat the entire purpose of vehicles.

So you're saying that they shouldn't be force multipliers?



To quote a great man:

Whaaaaaaa?

That would completely defeat the entire purpose of vehicles.

To the contrary, as a niche weapon it has somewhere it excels, where its personal force strength beyond 1 so long as it is in that kind of engagement. But will also have alot of places where it will not benifit.

You realise force multipliers don't have more forcestrength, they increase the forcestrength of those around them.

1Tank = 1Infantry
1Tank + 5Infantry > 6Infantry

Well, I would still call it a force multiplier since 1 HAV > 1 Infantry. I would go so far as to say that 1 HAV is potentially worth an entire squad of Infantry. Using that as a basis, one squad with 5 Infantry and 1 HAV would be equal to nearly 2 squads of Infantry. One squad with 5 HAVs and 1 Infantry could easily outmatch the entire enemy team with the small match numbers we have currently.

They are far from a niche weapon and I seriously believe that you are attempting to downplay the efficacy and value of having HAVs on the field. If they were a niche weapon, they'd be little used and generally overlooked aside from 1-2% of situations in the game. They're not, they are the go to currently since they are so effective at being Force Multipliers. As it stands now, they allow 1 guy to do the work of many, which is the definition of force multiplier. The guy who calls in the HAV has his "force strength" increased by virtue of being in the HAV.

For example, I was in a match earlier this evening where we were dominating from the gate, both sides were primarily infantry too. About 2/3's of the way through their shields they brought out a full allotment of HAVs and immediately the tide turned. We lost the letter and never recovered. They didn't get more guys in on their side, there was no change to either side except for the addition of 3 80GJ MLT Blasters, 1 80GJ MLT Rail and 1 80GJ PRO Rail to their side.

If HAVs can allow one person to easily do the job of many, they are a force multiplier. If 1 HAV can do the job of nearly an entire squad, then I see no reason that they shouldn't be considered a force multiplier and required to have Crew Service. I am not saying that the entire squad needs to be in it, just that it should require more than 1 person to effectively handle.

It's not really fair to force multiple people to pilot a tank. Who pay's for it? Who needs the Skills to use it?
You can't fairly make a tank that requires multiple people, therfore you should not make a tank more powerful than 1 person.

I still don't understand people saying a tank should need 3-4 specialized pilot guys to run at all. does your suit need 4 other people to be effective? The most "needs a spare guy" suit in the game is the heavy and they don't technically need the other guy if they have ready access to a supply depot.

if my tank requires a quarter of my team to be entirely specialized for it, then how powerful is it? I can tell you. it's steam rolling your entire team. Right now, you're being hurt by tanks. You make them require a quarter of the team then they damn well better perform like it, which means having basically a squad that you can't kill and will mow your entire team down with heavy weaponry in seconds. the only vulnerable time will be when one of them hops out to hack. and even then, you still have 3 guns looking for anyone within 300 meters to rip in half.

I have only seen "wahwah dat tank iz op" (I know some people said the same about AV but that's not the point here). So, here is your oportunity to tell me: what do YOU want tanks to actually be like?

Please let's not start a flame war or debate, this is a purely informative thread. Oh, and let's keep it about tanks because that's where the problems are at (except for the people who SOMEHOW manage to find lavs/derpships op)

I agree. However, I think tanks should be geared to take out other vehicles (if ccp f****** released them)

real AV. Not the strapons little girls use to pretend....

Are you talking DUST or Legion?

In Legion they should be muthaf*ckin, sista killin mofos. Big maps, large teams. No reason they shouldn't keep the speed and be hard to take down.

With the supposed no limits notion about Legion being on the PC there would be several counters to tanks including ewar, possible blockade mechanics and MTACs.