Dear Players,

We have wanted to bring back variety for the Vehicle Users of DUST 514 for some time now. I will be honest and admit that I thought it would be easier. After considerable groundwork, I see that there is no easy way to do this and we have to refactor the Enforcers and Marauders completely, with new skills and bonuses where I was hoping to quickly review the slots, eHP and fitting capacity and ship them.

So kind of good news and bad news.

All that said and done, I am sharing an incredibly preliminary spreadsheet on how I see this working.

In short

The Enforcers and Marauders are strictly side-grades and meant to create an interesting vehicle vs vehicle paper/rock/scissors gameplay.

Tank Destroyers - Enforcers - DHAVs
Falchion - slow to react, quick to aim, long range platforms with very low ehp - Main Counter to Marauder - insta pops Vayu
Vayu - flanking brawlers that circle to avoid tracking while blasting - Main counter to Falchion, has a fighting chance against Marauder

Ultra Heavy Tanks (Super) - Marauders - UHAVs
Surya - Armor and rep, low mobility, good turret tracking, stand and deliver
Sagaris - Shield and regen, ok mobility, bad turret tracking, aim through maneuvering and flanking

Main Battle Tank - HAV
Marauder - Same (with tweaks)
Gunnlogi - Same (with tweaks)

I am not a tanker, so will rely on the Vehicle Community to bring everything they have to the table. CPM is also crowdsourcing something so should get interesting.

Here is the spreadsheet, you are seeing this early an unpolished, probably with some errors.

Aaaannnnnnd this is the kind of feedback we don't need. Please go away

I agree the tone is not constructive, but I think the sentiments are valid criticism. It's really about the sequence of additions the vehicle roadmap should take. I think that is an important discussion/debate to have (perhaps not in this thread though).

If it were up to me, I would roll out the vehicle rebalance in the following stages:

1. Capacitors, neuts, webs, bring back the old modules, skills and rebalance the existing vehicles around these. This would be a big deal and could take a few rounds of hot fixing numbers to get right. That buys time for:

2. Introduction of full racial parity in vehicles, turrets and heavy weapons. Again this could take a while to balance the new additions.

3. Finally, release the vehicle variants, and balance them in, using the existing knowledge gleaned from the past balancing efforts.

It seems we're jumping straight to 3 (im guessing because the art assets already exist and it appears to be low-hanging fruit) and this will be much harder to ever get 1 and 2 added later. Instead of balancing being a progressive process and building over time, it would have to keep re-addressing the same issues repeatedly if we do things out-of-order. I think this would be a big mistake.

Look into the fitting of the Madrugar. The primary reason why the Gunnlogi is superior to the Madrugar is the down right terrible fitting. Losing 370 CPU for 370 PG is no where near a good trade. My Gunnlogi is a piece of cake to fit while my Madrugar is pretty much instantly maxed out on CPU no matter what I do.

I will also say that prices should be close. Marauders were previously balanced around cost. I think this is a bad idea as balancing something by putting a high price tag on it hurts poor people and those that have one billion ISK could not care less.

I greatly dislike the "insta pop" mechanic, even if it is meant as a hard counter like pulling in one specific tank to take out one specific tank. Even my cheapo Gunnlogi runs at 315,000 ISK. One thing I didn't like about 1.7 is that tank fights were no longer bruised bare fist bar fights, it a gun fight on whoever shot and hit first won. While TTK was being increased for Dropsuits, it was being heavily decreased for vehicles. I think it is currently decent as is considering the overheat stops you from instant blaping other tanks but I am still dubious on a design that is meant to "insta pop" given the prices of these vehicles. Unlike Drop Suits, I don't get a bonus if I am not using that Tank.

If I am running in my Prototype Scout and I die a lot, I can decide to run around in my Basic Scout. My level 5 Caldari Scout still gives me insane scan range, a very easy to fit Cloak, and makes me harder to see. If I have level 5 UHAV and a Falchion keeps killing me so I drop to my Gunnlogi/Madrugar, those level 5 points are wasted. The difference is that there is NO cheaper option to be a UHAV than to go to a completely different skill set. Possible fix: allow MBT's to get some benefit from those other skills. Possible flaw: completely removes the idea of tieracide for tanks as it was originally designed in 1.7.

I never said I disagreed with your post did I? I just said that the kind of feedback you gave was not the kind we need, so I asked you to go away. You could have posted feedback in a positive way, and I would have completely agreed with you. Instead, you decided to go the 12 year old route and flame the post.

If you had given constructive feedback in the first place, then nobody would have had a problem with it. Sure, the post got my attention, but for all the wrong reasons. If you left out all the crap, then CCP might actually pay attention to it. As well as the other people on the forums. As far as I know, flame posts have NEVER brought any change to the game. Only the good ones have.

And now you seem to be after me because I pointed out your feedback was not needed. Please continue if you wish.

Can we refocus on Rattati's proposal.

Lets not get distracted.

Rattati, in general you have the over arcing concepts correct in my book. I would stress that these key issues need to tackled in order to properly implement this, and preferably in this order.

1. Address disparity between the effectiveness of Shield HAVs vs Armor HAVs
2. Determine what role you want Marauders to have (Enforcer as focused AV is fine)
3. Determine what sort of bonuses you want to see on Marauders and Enforcers without breaking existing combat
4. Determine preferred slot layouts
5. Determine base attributes (HP, mobility, tracking, PG/CPU, ect.)
6. Establish if any additional modules need to be added in order to help these HAVs fulfill their roles

Vehicle locks would solve this issue.

However at one time those turrets were mandatory...... this is a trait bearing of the ONLY TIME EVER tanks were relatively balanced and fair.

Now I'm not saying you HAVE to fit good small turrets but I think that every tank needs to have these modules/weapons fitted. It could also serve as a means of preventing abuse of dual tanks.....

But then again the idea of an HAV rebalance is to get people enjoying customising these tanks and talking shop, swapping and comparing fits, and making their tank a tool they are personally invested in.

Still it irks to be to think that players are rolling around in tanks with modules unfitted to improve their personal abilities and not to benefit the team or tank utility.

@ Commander Bolt the statement

"adding small turrets takes too much away from your fit to actually have them."


Is wholly untrue for Shield HAV. They have more than enough fitting capacity to fit a full racial tank and prototype Large and Small Turrets. The only thing a Shield HAV gives up is its ability to armour tank.