Guys, please don't derail the thread. This isn't about making up new vehicles (MAVs/Fighters/what have you) or new weapons (medium turrets? for reals?)

The thread is about redesigning the vehicles -we already have-. Just saying, if we can't figure out a dedicated role for the vehicles we already have and are removing assets (Marauders/Enforcers/Black Ops/Logistics/Scout) then we have absolutely -NO- room to start conjuring up new stuff.

1: medium turrets are a real thing..........

In Eve, perhaps - not in Dust 514. Back on topic, please.

I still think we need a mobile CRU, you have to depoly it ofc but the abitly to have a mobile uplink could make the maps a lot more fluid, on salave maps it could even end up a primary job role.


...(guess who the ams and loadstar guy was in planetside :-P)

I wouldnt mind seeing HAVs split into a two user operated machine.

It doesn't make a lot of sense in a 16v16 scenario on Dust but in 24v24 - 32v32 I think multiple people makes more sense.

Also, if they redesign the skill tree for vehicles, a two user operated HAV can make more sense than it does currently in Dust. It would certainly help given their overwhelming power.

numbers is not the reason why it is a bad idea. Also, that doesn't solve any of the problems that has been repeatedly been mentioned about it.

The biggest reason why having a split gunner HAV doesn't make sense in Dust is because there are no other alternatives for a ground based vehicular warfare for a solo player.

Otherwise you will have two conflicting views about HAVs. The first being, 'they are tanks! they should be amazing!" vs. "no single player should wield so much power at the cost of only isk" That sums up about 90% of HAV forum posts.

Let's see:

1: Pilot skills for and pays for (most of the time) for the HAV.

2: Pilot calls in the HAV.

3: lore explains why the pilot controls both the turret and the driving

4: It'd be boring just to drive the HAV, and not get to shoot.

Since you couldn't use the search function, I gave them to you.

Let's see:

1: Pilot skills for and pays for (most of the time) for the HAV.

2: Pilot calls in the HAV.

3: lore explains why the pilot controls both the turret and the driving

4: It'd be boring just to drive the HAV, and not get to shoot.

Since you couldn't use the search function, I gave them to you.

However that's not to say a variation of tanks that do require 2 people wouldn't ever happen.
You just shouldn't be forced too.

Cruiser HAV
Driver: Fixed Medium Turret
Gunner: Gyroscopic Large Turret (large elevation angle)
No light gunner slots.

1. Could and should be redone in Legion (skill to operate and not skill to build should have been how it was from the beginning).

2. See 1

3. Lore should never overwrite balancing game mechanics.

4. Opinion... also, like I said.. there are no other options for solo ground vehicle operation which is why HAVs exist in their current state. Add in other types of solo ground vehicles and a lack of solo HAV operation wouldn't be such a problem.

1 medium AND 1 large would be OP.

You fix the Medium Turret so it can only fire directly infront of the tank, it would make the Cruiser HAV a better Anti-Vehicle brawler but the lack of rotation makes it almost Impossible to track infantry, especially in complexs.

But you get my point you should be able to operate HAVs solo, but if you are prepared tomwork with someone and sacrifice your turret to the, then the HAV will recieve other benifits.

1: I want you to think about why having two seperate skill paths for building and actually using it doesn't work

2: read 1

3: No, it doesn't; however, CCP shapes the lore around the mechanics, and the lore has been already placed (it also works out, just isn't balanced right. If blam would had stop changing **** constantly, and Wolfman didn't break the entire system, it would had been balanced a long time ago).

4: LAV's don't need a turret control for the pilot, as it's unneeded, and no other land vehicle is out (other than MAV's will probably have the pilot control the medium turret). And yes it would.

Question, how much have you used vehicles, what have you used for them, and for how long have you used them?

1-2: There shouldn't be a skill path to build vehicles at all, just to operate them. This opens up the option to deploy from corp assets in the future, something that wouldn't really work in our current system on Dust all that well.

4: You are missing my point I think.

What is the difference between an LAV and an HAV? Mechanically, think about what really defines both of those vehicles. At its core a vehicle is just a art asset backed up by a table of predetermined values. Ideally, you would like to have a spectrum of vehicles available which fulfill different functions that improve the game play experience. "Balancing" refers to tweaking that table of values to a point where the game play experience is fun for all parties involved in an engagement involving said vehicle.

You need to think much larger scale for vehicles in legion other than just LAV and HAV. In a lot of ways those vehicles are trying to fulfill too many roles at once because so many parts of that spectrum are missing in Dust. Imagine Legion has Speeders, LAVs, APCs, MTACs, MAVs, HAVs, HTACs, HAPCs, etc etc to fill different niches of that spectrum.

I'm not necessarily saying HAVs MUST have separated driver/gunner layout but more that HAVs may not necessarily have to have a single-player operated mechanic either. atm it fills many roles and imo it has too many strengths and not enough weaknesses, but it has to or it becomes irrelevant as it is literally half of the available land vehicles in Dust.

To echo what Aeon Amadi is saying, vehicles in Dust atm are somewhat lacking in purpose. They are just overpowered death machines mostly and always have been. Even in their darkest hours around 1.3-1.5 with AV being particularly powerful, you still would struggle to win in PC against tank spam. This, imo, is because of two reasons. Tanks fulfill too many roles at once (lack of other options being the reason why) and player count is too low to support a truly meaningful use of tanks other than rolling death machines.

fwiw I've never been a hardcore tanker nor have i ever seriously tanked in PC but I've driven tanks in chromosome, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, 1.7, and 1.8.

1-2: You said that it should yourself, you're making no sense at this point

4: MAV's and APC's are the same thing, and there's no such thing as a Heavy MTAC (nor should there, that's too much.). Anyways, why do you think there's no current roles for vehicles? There's nothing for them to do other than go pew pew at everything they see. Add things for them to do, and that would change.

HAV's need to be what they do naturally: be a force multiplier. Have a large force in front of you? callin a HAV and you become much larger force. Wall in your way, or a hard to destroy installation stalling process? HAV. Vehicles blocking your process, you guessed it, HAV. Now, how to make it from just becoming the ultimate killer? make large turrets turn kinda slow, as well as add a small bit of inaccuracies to the turret so it's hard to hit fast moving and small targets.

Want me to do the rest of them, as I can. I got all day.

armored cars have terrible armament most of the time............

Also, there's ways of encouraging teamwork without breaking the fun system and forcing teamwork upon people.

1-2: read it again, I said skill to operate and not skill to build is how it always should have been.

HAVs should be a force multiplier, agreed but should the game revolve around who has more HAVs? Cause that pretty much sums up Dust atm...

By your solution then, how fast/slow should large turrets move relative to how fast they move now?

What does 'a small bit of inaccuracies' truly mean? You want to add dispersion to the large blaster turret I assume? How much dispersion would be balanced? How hard should it be to kill a dropsuit with a large blaster?

armoured cars have infantry slaying armaments, like a large blaster

also, what you consider fun, i.e. solo play isn't what I consider fun either. What could be more fun than two great tankers like bob and char char working together and on comms?

the suggestion of an armoured car allows solo players to outrival infantry slaying, but with counterable defenses via infantry AV

it then allows HAVs to focus on bunker busting, AA and AT with infantry slaying as a second (small blasters). However, this idea would require a rebalance of the large blaster as a medium turret (possibly?) and a replacement large gallente turret (plasma mortar?).

Clearly godin can't ever be wrong. Im outta here.

Well, if you gave me a actual reason why it makes sense (hint: there is none), then I would agree with you. You haven't yet.

(NOTE: Leaving a debate shows defeat, which means that you agree with the person.)

4: That's a given that will always happen, no matter what. Anyways, lots of critical things that needs to be done should be inside of vehicle unfriendly plexs, so if you have little infantry, you wouldn't get anything done, rather you might lose, as well as lose gear (try to drive in a plex with infantry that has tons of AV ). Basically discourage being a severely vehicle heavy team vs. a balanced team.

For the tracking speed, the only one that needs lowering is the blaster, which should be slightly slower (say 10-20%), which could be bring back by a (this time working) tracking speed skill.

As Far as the blaster dispersion, I'd say making between the difficulty of using the rail and the current blaster for hitting infantry. An alternative would also be to lower the ROF, and boosting the damage (or both tbh). The rail also should get a different sight, as the dot it gets now makes it too good at sniping infantry. The rocket (those aren't missiles, and I refuse to call them missiles ) launcher is fine tbh.

It'd make it to where only the skilled would need to be able to killed infantry, and only if they try, or get lucky (the idiot is standing still, or is way too close).

Okay so then it comes back to the main point. Should large turrets be effective against infantry at all?

If you nerf the blaster so that its relatively ineffective against infantry (similar to the railgun or the 'rocket' turret) then what is the point of the HAV? It literally becomes a vehicle designed to counter itself... not necessarily bad in its own right but, imo, it loses its purpose in the current Dust meta. If the large blaster was reduced in efficacy (like we both believe it should be) what, do you think, people should call in HAVs for?

In that case, given limited vehicle bandwidth and 32v32 sized matches (just theoretically, assuming legion moves up in match size once on the PC) would a team prefer an HAV that has ~2-2.2x the stats with a two man operation scheme vs an HAV with a combined operation scheme?

I can see a strong case for the more powerful, 2 man, variant if you have two people that could work well together.

I could also see, with more vehicle options, a reason to prefer a more agile anti-infantry based MAV... like an APC or an MTAC or even a solo operated 'assault' LAV. With a smaller, more agile, yet lower damage variant of the current HAV meant to hunt down assault LAVs and MTACs with the larger HAV variant designed to protect infantry and lighter vehicles against solo operated HAVs and APCs.

Giving us a rough idea of:

Light Ground Vehicles:
Light Assault Vehicle - small troop transport and rapid anti-infantry vehicle
MTAC - fast moving anti-infantry mech

Medium Ground Vehicles:
APCs - Armored transport for squads with a more bunker-like setup. Small turrets that protect infantry near a point and provides a spawn point for squads to assault objectives. Essentially a mobile bunker, similar to APCs in Mag.
Medium Assault Vehicle - Reworked version of the current HAV. A smaller, more agile tank with a single medium turret. Meant for some anti-infantry capability while also being quite strong against MTACs and LAVs (small turrets). Has some resistance against infantry AV but meant more as a 'hit and run' style where they rely on their relative speed to get out of sticky situations.

Heavy Ground Vehicles:
Heavy Assault Vehicle - A reworked version of the current HAV with far more armor and resistance. Fairly resistant against AV and medium turrets while being essentially immune to small turrets and infantry AI. Separated gunner and vehicle seat, allows two small turrets and one large anti-vehicle based turret. Meant for 'bunker-busting' and taking down medium vehicles. Slow moving but can withstand a great deal of punishment.

while none of this is perfect... I just wish to highlight the idea that 'one-size fits all' with the current HAV isn't the only way to go. Giving each vehicle a specific niche can create a dynamic battlefields where infantry and vehicles coexist to support each other. But this doesn't work in 16v16... just not enough players to really support it imo. I would prefer the dust meta over the one i'm proposing in a 16v16 match lobby probably.

Also, very slow turret rotation is very very painful with a mouse (have you tried tanking with a mouse? I gave up on the Madrugar, its almost impossible to turn a large turret without turn the whole vehicle). Having a separated gunner on a large turret would be a boon as they can focus on moving the turret with A-D while the driver focuses on moving the vehicle with WASD.

Its just a thought at least... its not perfect but if we nerf large blasters I think you'll see HAVs will feel like the counter to themselves with no other real purpose.

I can literally distill HAVs down to two things atm.
1: Kill infantry? Large Blaster
2: Kill HAVs? Large Rail

That... is pretty much it. Nerf the large blaster and it becomes

1: Kill infantry? Don't use a tank
2: Kill HAVs? Pick an appropriate large turret.

It doesn't make sense because you've got your head so far up your own ass.

The point of this thread is to suggest ideas for a redesign. I gave mine, explained them well enough and now that I have you hounding me down and dismissing all my ideas because YOU don't feel they work well with your close minded view of vehicles, I have decided it isn't worth my time to go in depth with someone as deluded as yourself.

How about you learn how to contribute positively like an educated young man instead of shooting down everyone else's ideas like a brat? Clearly, the current system is flawed as explained by Zdub. There's a reason he has stopped replying to you.