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Harpyja
Legio DXIV
2252
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Posted - 2015.01.11 06:35:00 -
[1] - Quote
This is just going to be a general post, without getting into details and stats, to put my ideas on the forums. Please read through all of it if you're going to reply.
Vehicles currently suffer from a lack of having well defined roles. HAVs are currently best at blowing up other vehicles. That would be an okay role if there was a good reason to need vehicles on the field. LAVs are typically fielded for fast transport but otherwise pose no direct threat to anything other than objectives. Dropships are typically easily dealt with through swarms and MLT dropships are simply a disposable means of getting uplinks on rooftops.
One issue that I see is that LAVs and dropships most of the time are deployed for a single purpose at the beginning of the battle: to get to objectives and rooftops before the other team, after which they are usually recalled or just simply left behind to their own fate.
This is a problem if HAVs are to be anti-vehicle. They are too slow to do anything about intercepting LAVs and dropships at the beginning of the battle and usually become minor annoyances to infantry once the ground (infantry) battle has been established. There's no well defined reason to call out a HAV if there are no vehicles on the field. They can't hack anything and don't get as many kills as an infantryman most of the time.
What I suggest is that HAVs should be as flexible in their roles as infantry can. This means that through sacrifices, a HAV should be able to be anti-infantry. It seems to me that most people forget about having to make certain sacrifices in order to gain certain benefits when it comes to balance. I see nothing wrong with an AI HAV as long as it has very little AV capabilities. I am willing to accept the fact that if I call my AI HAV, I will be surely beaten by an AV HAV (something which I'm already accepting when I call my blaster HAV). Same should go with AV HAVs against infantry, which is also currently happening with railgun HAVs.
Imagine this: Team A wants to capture Team B's objective, but Team B's infantry have set up a good position and stop Team A's infantry. Team A calls in an AI HAV to provide the firepower needed to clear Team B's infantry. Team B calls in an AV HAV to destroy Team A's AI HAV. Team A calls in their own AV HAV to take the attention of Team B's AV HAV. At this point, depending on pilot skill, either Team A destroys Team B's AV HAV and win the offensive or Team B destroys Team A's HAVs and wins the defense.
Now, I don't know what numbers will make this possible and balanced, but that's my general idea. Just like infantry can focus into destroying vehicles while becoming weaker against other infantry, pilots should also be able to focus into killing infantry while becoming weaker against other pilots. It should be about gains and sacrifices for both infantry and pilots.
"By His light, and His will"- The Scriptures, 12:32
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Harpyja
Legio DXIV
2255
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Posted - 2015.01.11 15:35:00 -
[2] - Quote
Indy Strizer wrote:The HAV should not be buffed in speed to chase down an LAV or dropship or adjusted so that it can be configured through modules to accomplish that- no...
Part of the problem with the LAV is that they're worthless beyond being a cheap transport so that's all it's ever used for.
Truth be told, I personally crusaded against the LAV's gradual relegation to being a coffin on wheels long ago, but I gave up after realizing that people were hellbent on believing that the only possible purpose an entire class of vehicles that players could spend millions of SP on in a game as deep as dust- was being used as a transport that could be killed with a few militia grenades.
Buffing a tank to chase down other vehicles that should have an inherent speed advantage is not the way to give tanks a role it in my opinion, if anything it kills the interplay between vehicles and tanks won't have anything to do but kill other tanks because everybody would only fitting and actually using tanks at that point.
That's like letting heavy be as versatile as an assault suit, it'd ruin the interplay between the suits.
Sure, people would run scouts to get to objectives, but after that, everybody would get in their heavy suits.
Nowhere did I say that HAVs should get speed buffs.
Stefan Stahl wrote:Honest question: Is this a topic about large turret stats?
(As in: Could much of your topic be solved by figuring out turrets properly?)
There was a time when all large turrets had a distinct position on the AV-AI scale. Railguns in the mostly AV role, missiles in the middle and blaster as the mostly AI turret.
I don't claim to be a knowledgeable tanker, but even I can see that the current turret design is pretty screwed up. This has severe consequences on the role of HAVs.
Yes, as the way I see it, it's the large turret that mainly helps to define a HAV's position on the field. My opinion on turret roles is the same as yours: blasters for AI, railguns for AV, and missiles are in the middle. Pre 1.7 large blasters were perfect at AI; every infantryman feared getting into the sight of a large blaster. But the problem was not that it was too capable of AI, but it was too capable of AV. There was simply no drawback to using the large blaster because it could slaughter infantry and vehicles, meaning the only counter to the popular blaster Madrugar was another blaster Madrugar.
How I see the "rock paper scissors":
Unit type: primary threat / secondary threat
Regular infantry: AI HAV / regular infantry
AV infantry: regular infantry / AI HAV
AI HAV: AV HAV / AV infantry
AV HAV: AV infantry / AV HAV
I am basing primary threats as threats that pose a smaller risk to themselves than secondary threats when engaging their target (or in other words, how much damage can they deal to you versus how much damage you can deal towards them). For example, let's take AV HAVs. Since they pose little threat to infantry, an AV infantryman would hardly risk getting killed by the AV HAV and without backup, the AV HAV is forced to retreat or get destroyed. However, for an AV HAV to engage another AV HAV, the stakes will be much higher as both are meant to take each other out.
Now go back to the pre 1.7 blaster Madrugar, nerf its AV abilities and it will find itself in the "rock paper scissors" I stated above. Add some shield buffs and some minor AV nerfs and I think 1.6 would have been in a much more balanced state while keeping fitting and vehicle diversity which we currently lack as well.
"By His light, and His will"- The Scriptures, 12:32
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Harpyja
Legio DXIV
2256
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Posted - 2015.01.11 19:33:00 -
[3] - Quote
Lazer Fo Cused wrote:1. You just described Chrome and Uprising
Well I hardly remember anything from Chromosome so I'm not surprised if I did. But for Uprising, the large blaster was simply over performing. It was the turret to go to for killing infantry and destroying other vehicles in CQC, especially when fit on a Madrugar.
"By His light, and His will"- The Scriptures, 12:32
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Harpyja
Legio DXIV
2265
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Posted - 2015.01.14 06:02:00 -
[4] - Quote
Soraya Xel wrote:I am actually not opposed to vehicles being good at anti-infantry. But they need to be able to die to infantry as well.
How would you propose to achieve a balance?
First thought that comes to mind is that I imagine anti-infantry HAVs to be up-close killers, getting into the thick of things. Their weaknesses should thus be an AV engagement at range where they will be ineffective at returning fire (should take perhaps just one AV infantry out in the open) or by simply getting surrounded in close-quarters with more AV than the HAV can handle. In this kind of scenario I imagine several AV soldiers, maybe 2-4 depending on player skill and meta levels; some of them will get killed by the HAV but there will be enough of them to finish the job.
This should also give the incentive for an AV HAV to be called onto the field if there's an experienced enemy AI HAV that's sticking to close quarters in one of the large sockets. Since the AI HAV cannot rival the AV HAV, it will get ripped apart. This makes your team spend only one person to eliminate the AI HAV instead of the several infantry it would take to engage it. I'm only imagining it this way to keep AV HAVs relevant and make AV infantry more desirable in certain situations and AV HAVs in other situations.
I'm also thinking that AV HAVs should have better defense against AV infantry since their AI capabilities are limited and are not as big of a threat to infantry as an AI HAV. You can also think of it this way: an AI HAV's best defense against AV infantry is its offense while an AV HAV's is its tank. I'm thinking that this can be easily achieved by making AI turrets more fitting intensive which causes the HAV to fit a weaker tank than AV HAVs.
"By His light, and His will"- The Scriptures, 12:32
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