The Plasma Canon is a AV weapon no "charge up" time there and look what happened.

I've been saying that there needs to be a dumb fire av weapon with no charge up or lock on time. Something single shot, short range and powerful.

That said, we also need a longer ranged av weapon. Right now, there is no effective way to take out a drop ship other than another drop ship or getting lucky with a rail tank. With no aiming, forge guns are hard to use and swarms have a sad joke for range and damage.

I've been saying that there needs to be a dumb fire av weapon with no charge up or lock on time. Something single shot, short range and powerful.

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If Tanks are supposed to be vehicle-to-vehicle combat specialists...

The hull doesn't define the role entirely. The turret defines the role as well. It's like saying all Caldari dropsuits should only engage at range. Wrong. Any dropsuit with a rail rifle or laser rifle should engage at range.

Blasters should remain as anti-infantry for balance reasons. The nature of having their high rate of fire and precision makes them the best turret at hitting infantry, so as a trade-off they should also be the worst at AV.

Missile and railgun tanks are balanced against infantry because it's hard to get kills with them unless you're talented and skilled with them. Unlike a blaster tank, they cannot aim back reliably and eliminate AV infantry that's targeting them. I'm forced in almost all situations to retreat with my missile tank; I spam a bunch of missiles in the general direction and hope out of luck that one of them hits and kills the AVer, if it's a nonheavy suit. Otherwise my chances of killing a heavy AV suit are extremely small.

So again, back to blasters, they should have the weakest AV potential, which currently they are competitive against other vehicles as well.

I think that this is where the whole problem stems from, because you have a tank that's best at killing infantry which can also pose a threat to other tanks that aren't as capable against infantry.

I feel like it should look like this:
AI tank (blaster) > infantry > AV infantry > AV tank (missile/railgun) > AI tank

Like this, you can have Team A that fields blaster tanks and AV infantry. The blaster tanks clear infantry that pose a threat to team A's AV infantry while the AV infantry clear Team B's AV tanks that pose a threat to Team A's blaster tanks.

Similarly, Team B will have infantry and AV tanks. Infantry to counter team A's AV infantry that's meant to counter team B's AV tanks while Team B's AV tanks counter Team A's blaster tanks which counter Team B's infantry.

Edit: and this is how you achieve full cooperation between vehicles and infantry.

One glaring issue I'm seeing with respect to AV balance in general is that both forms of AV require a "charge up" time (locking time with Swarms or Forge charge time).

One glaring issue I'm seeing with respect to AV balance in general is that both forms of AV require a "charge up" time (locking time with Swarms or Forge charge time). This is problematic because a blaster tank or ADS camping a spawn point doesn't require any time to start bringing the pain as soon as the merc spawns. And in the case of an Ambush match, it's not even like you can spawn at the MCC to "regroup" and take out the vehicles.

Solution? Either AV times need to be drastically reduced (near-instant with AV and ~1 sec with Forge) or tanks/vehicles need some counter to their ability to fire quickly (and deadly) on infantry. If Tanks are supposed to be vehicle-to-vehicle combat specialists, then their turrets need to have reduced effect (or better yet, a "heat building" time that ramps up their damage over time).

Otherwise, it's literally impossible to spawn in being spawn camped and be able to get a shot off. Maybe there's a more creative solution--like a bubble shield that blocks damage (as seen in Halo, say) or something similar.

Bubble Shields have already been confirmed SoonGäó.

Large Blasters are decent against other tanks too, tho. Not saying their OP by any stretch, but a decent anti shield AV option.

How would you feel if the turret dynamic looked more like small turrets used for infantry, while large turrets are for AV.

And lest I forget, MAV's and MTAC's are on their way soon which is going to necessitate even more AV options, IMHO.

Aside from the 'powerful' bit, that's exactly what the Plasma Cannon is. It just needs a massive boost in direct damage.

One glaring issue I'm seeing with respect to AV balance in general is that both forms of AV require a "charge up" time (locking time with Swarms or Forge charge time). This is problematic because a blaster tank or ADS camping a spawn point doesn't require any time to start bringing the pain as soon as the merc spawns. And in the case of an Ambush match, it's not even like you can spawn at the MCC to "regroup" and take out the vehicles.

Solution? Either AV times need to be drastically reduced (near-instant with AV and ~1 sec with Forge) or tanks/vehicles need some counter to their ability to fire quickly (and deadly) on infantry. If Tanks are supposed to be vehicle-to-vehicle combat specialists, then their turrets need to have reduced effect (or better yet, a "heat building" time that ramps up their damage over time).

Otherwise, it's literally impossible to spawn in being spawn camped and be able to get a shot off. Maybe there's a more creative solution--like a bubble shield that blocks damage (as seen in Halo, say) or something similar.

Bubble Shields have already been confirmed SoonGäó.

There is an inherent design imbalance between vehicles and infantry. Vehicles do more damage, survive better, fire faster, move faster, and distinctly fewer players can kill them. While a vehicle can easily kill infantry in one shot, infantry can rarely ever kill vehicles in one shot.

Due to the way the game is currently played, vehicle drivers are inherently "better" than infantry. In a game that's 16v16, that should never be the case. One player needs to be as good as one player. This means a single AVer, who's sole purpose is to kill vehicles, should be relatively successful at killing vehicles. Vehicles should expect to have infantry support to help them kill AV.

The solo tanker who can farm kills off infantry is a game design that needs to die.

Indeed. The essential issue is that in a 16v16 game, one player should always equal one player, more or less. It's unfair for one player to play a class that it takes multiple players to effectively combat. I feel there are three avenues to fixing V/AV balance in a responsible way. I am not suggesting CCP implement all of these, just one of them:

1. Ensure that one tank can be easily killed by one AV. - This solution means that an AV player, one who has sacrificed their ability to combat infantry to go after vehicles, should be effective at killing vehicles. Tanks should have a hard time defending themselves against AV without infantry support. AV is the natural counter to vehicles, so vehicles should die to them. Tanks would likely need to be cheaper so that a tank + pilot suit combo wouldn't cost more than an infantry role.

2. Ensure that tanks require multiple players to be effective. - This solution would suggest decoupling the main gun from the driver's seat, so that tanks are most effective with two or three players in them. In that way, it'd be fair for two or three AV to be required to take them out. This prevents solo tankers from being very effective, but maintains the high cost and power of tanks.

3. Remove anti-infantry from the tank's bag of tricks. - This solution is more of a game-changer. Removing tanks ability to effectively take out infantry ensures that even if they remain powerful and hard-to-kill, that they can't abusively slaughter infantry, and can be balanced around anti-vehicle and anti-installation roles. In the current mechanics, this wouldn't give tanks enough to do, often. Ideally, tanks should have more tank-specific things to do in a game, like taking down barricades and shield bubbles.

Number three is a clear cut above the rest. They should be there to support infantry, not the other way around. I think defense, heal, or attack boosting bubbles would give tankers a reason to push forward and keep a presence. I played a PC where an enemy blaster just sat at their home objective. We didn't get time to push that far back as they had 6 tankers to our two, but that defensive tanker was impossible to siege for anything else but another tanker. Sure it's a tactic, but that player really just didn't want to risk death to a better sneakier player. He didn't take the tank to fight another tank, he took it to 1 v 1 infantry. Maybe we just should adopt that tactic too though, but it would change anything.