All this would break AV and vehicle balance.

I don't see this as breaking anything, if anything this sounds more balanced to me than the current VvAV balance. Could you please explain why you find this less balanced?

I believe Judge is looking at it from the standpoint of the Dropship Pilot. Bye increasing the damage all around to combat HAVs and LAVs this puts Dropships at a significant disadvantage due to having less health and being a less stable platform.

By pulling on one thread you mess with the current web. While the Web is currently lopsided this dose not mean that we wish to make it lopsided in the opposite direction. We want the web centered. For this when we buff AV we also need changes to ALL vehicles to make sure the AV Buff dose not mess with their effectiveness if it is already close to Balanced.

Judge instead of saying it would break AV and Vehicle Balance why not suggest some counter Vehicle changes so the AV buff dose not unravel our fragile Web? Is it not better to help fix the problem then simply say what the other person is suggesting won't work?

For example increasing the Dropships CPU and PG to help with fitting cost so higher tank can be fit to counteract the AV buff?

P.S a fully specked out Wyirkome Breach forge gun will one shot a BPO unfit saga I've made a lot of LAV heavies mad this way

You seriously think the janitor has time to do all that? Give the guy a break.

All this would break AV and vehicle balance.

Increasing then AV Grenade damage by 33.33% wouldn't make AV grenades any less overpowered than they were in the Uprising 1.7 patch.

I've said it before but I'll say it again. Buff the hell out of turret installations.

Change neutral turrets to fire at reds and blues until hacked, increase their Ehp by 500% (not joking, they should be as hard to kill as a CRU) and voila, tanks have something to do in the game that actually has risk involved for them.

Wanna kill that turret quickly before it dominates your tank? "Use teamwork scrubs!"

Worried some infantry AV might combine forces with the turrets to create an effective roadblock? Welcome to the rest of the game, you are no longer a lion chasing after mice.

I'm telling ya man, turret installations need to be added into the equation to balance the power structure.

While buffing installations would help in some ways, making them better to use for AV than the stuff we spec into for AV purposes makes speccing into AV a waste of SP.

.....this was interesting until I read that you seriously want to make the plasma cannon have the damage of a breach fg. You lost me there pal. Honestly most of these suggestions are to just make av super awesome like it was before vehicle pilots were so fed up and CCP changed it to this. Its actually been really funny to see av players in the exact situation vehicle pilots were in pre 1.7 Sucks doesn't it? Let's not repeat the same mistakes that got us here.

It seems the main issue is with tanks, there are ways to Nerf the tank without over buffing av. For instance, slow them down, seriously they are too fast. I can understand buffing the swarm a bit but defiantly not to the extent you are suggesting op. If you want to down my dropship with swarms you need at least two people because my dropship needs 2-4 people to operate. Fgs are at a really good balance with dropships no buff needed or it will be tower camping days all over again.
Yes the plasma cannon could use a buff but not make it a breach, that's just rediculous, it already hits my dropship pretty hard, buffing the damage that much would probably instant kill it, nothing should be able to just one shot my dropship.

Nerf tanks, not lavs and dropships!

.....this was interesting until I read that you seriously want to make the plasma cannon have the damage of a breach fg. You lost me there pal. Honestly most of these suggestions are to just make av super awesome like it was before vehicle pilots were so fed up and CCP changed it to this. Its actually been really funny to see av players in the exact situation vehicle pilots were in pre 1.7 Sucks doesn't it? Let's not repeat the same mistakes that got us here.

It seems the main issue is with tanks, there are ways to Nerf the tank without over buffing av. For instance, slow them down, seriously they are too fast. I can understand buffing the swarm a bit but defiantly not to the extent you are suggesting op. If you want to down my dropship with swarms you need at least two people because my dropship needs 2-4 people to operate. Fgs are at a really good balance with dropships no buff needed or it will be tower camping days all over again.
Yes the plasma cannon could use a buff but not make it a breach, that's just rediculous, it already hits my dropship pretty hard, buffing the damage that much would probably instant kill it, nothing should be able to just one shot my dropship.

Nerf tanks, not lavs and dropships!

Only problem with your pre 1.7 comment is that only people under 15 mil SP got dominated by infantry AV. 15mil+ with the right fittings and you were looking at 8 ishukone FG shots with prof 5 and 2 complex damage mods to take em out.

Properly fit HAVS could take a beating like a champ, just ask True Adamance.

If you want to down my dropship with swarms you need at least two people because my dropship needs 2-4 people to operate.

I takes but one person to do well with an assault dropship. Now of you are referring to a transport dropship (ie standard), I might agree that requiring teamwork to take it down would be good. I feel the best way to play the whole thing would be to say "F*** logic" and make it to where anyone on a turret in your vehicle adds a set amount of EHP to your vehicle as long as they are manning a small turret, scaling up the amount added based on SP put into small turrets (thus making speccing into a class for running small turrets a "thing"). Then if there is one person in the vehicle, one person can take it out, 2 for 2 people, 3 for 3.

Barring that, I don't see any reason that if a vehicle sticks around long enough single AV player shouldn't be able to kill it. Also, pre 1.7 I had plenty of epic battles 1v1 with some of Dust's top tankers. Some I won some I lost, but they were great. It's the fact that my maxed swarm skills against anything but the absolute best of tanks and tankers was far too much. I knew they needed to be nerfed, as did anyone else. However in addition to nerfing all AV, they buffed all vehicles.

If you undid most of the nerfs on swarms (barring the range nerf, range was far too good before) we'd still not be back to 1.6 levels because the vehicle buff is still in place. The difference being that we would actually be able to break the rep cycle. Hardner stacking would be viable again, rep stacking would be less viable but still viable, running a combo setup would be a thing finally, and vehicles wouldn't even have to be touched.

As for the PLC, tell me how it would be OP with more damage considering it's snail-like pace flying through the air, it's tiny splash radius, it's single shot clip and it's ungodly long reload. Because I don't see it.

The huge problem is that real tanks aren't used primarily for anti-infantry, they're used to breach enemy strongholds using higher ordinance than infantry can handle.

I remember someone mentioned this months ago and it didn't catch enough attention as I think it should have.

I mean let's be real here. Turret installations are useless and just WP sinks for tanks.

From what I understand, basically Dust is a full-time beta again like in 2012 except now it's a beta for a game on another platform. Which doesn't bother me as much as it did (now that I've calmed down from fanfest) because I remembered something. I remembered the reason I joined this Beta back in 2012 was because I wanted to help build the greatest persistent shooter ever made.

So, in the spirit of beta testing, here are my thoughts on moving forward with AV versus Vehicles:



We reduce the price of all vehicles and vehicle modules down to dropsuit equivalent ISK values and buff the hell out of all AV weapons. Then spend a week testing it. If AV is too much, take AV down a touch and try another week of testing. Test Tuesday day through Friday, collect feedback Saturday through Monday, make adjustments on Monday, test Tuesday through Friday, etc.

Then once AV v V gets mostly good feedback on the forums, you have gotten close to balance. You can crank tank prices back up AND have good data to send over to the balancing team in the PC port. Then you can make minor tweaks to AV or vehicles to fine-tune the balance. The idea is to get things close first, and right now they are FAR from close.

Balance = Any one player when running AV gear should have a chance against any one person driving a vehicle. A MLT AR can kill a protosuit in the right hands, the same should be said about MLT AV and fully specced tanks. There is one person driving the tank, so it should take one person to kill the tank. Period.

As it stands now - A proto prof. 5 swarm cannot break the rep cycle of vehicles, so a MLT swarm has no chance. Swarms need their projectile speed jacked way up, their original clip size returned, and their original damage back. AV grenades are completely useless unless they are packed, and even then there's only 2 now so our AV grenade damage has been dropped by 33.333_%. Make the packed damage the basic AV nade damage, then bump it up from there. Forge guns are mostly good right now, but they seem to still misfire occasionally and the lower tiers could use a slight damage bump. There is no reason why Plasma Cannons shouldn't do as much damage as a forge gun. The projectile is easily avoided, you have far less ammo, and your clip size is one. You already OHK 99% of all suits with it anyway, so I say make the PLC do equal damage to the breach forge gun.

All this would break AV and vehicle balance.

You're right, its usually 2-3 tanks that are using for protostomping the infantry and destroying your own installations just for points....but seriously you see more tanks involved in the stomping on infantry because they can and its easier to do.

Also the worse thing in Dust is that even when vehicles can tip the balance of power, K:D ratio is > winning the match and it's a mentality that tends to sacrifice newer players and add to their disparage of this game.

Any one player when running AV gear should have a chance against any one person driving a vehicle. A MLT AR can kill a protosuit in the right hands, the same should be said about MLT AV and fully specced tanks.

"It shot me, nerf it."

I notice you didn't say anything about vehicle - vehicle balance. Like how I easily destroyed your Python last week using my tank, and you left the game right after.

Why do you keep running away from me and Taka?

So, you're saying a 'good' person in a free AV suit should be able to solo a fully specced proto tank?