Factional battles and spawning is why I'm writing this message.
This is the third time the same person has killed me at the beginning of battle while I wait for my tank. I spawned the wrong tank at the start and backed out of the spawn area to hop out and call in the proper tank. While I wait for the drop off I started to recall my the 1st tank I was in and this guy kills me from behind, so now I have 2 tanks sitting on the ground and I have been killed by my own team member to boot. The guy steals one of the tanks and runs into battle with my own tank.

All of the previous matches that he's done this in he's gotten my tank close to the end of battle and driven it into the redline somewhere as I have a missing tank at the end of battle. Knowing this I went about to destroy my own tank, tank down and still in the battle. He spawns on the map not in the redline and goes about to call in a new tank and parks it facing our redline to fire at me then ram my tank to death. I fire back and after a few shots and destroying my own tank I get kicked from battle for doing to much friendly damage. Rightly so.
The first 2 times he did this to me like I said I didn't retaliate. But still lost my assets, this is why I retaliated this time.
Something should be done about this tank stealing behaviour, some kind of punishment should be set up.
The other idea that might work is that during factional battles
1 Being beyond the red line turns friendly fire off so that tank stealing would no longer be an issue.
2 There is a thread about tank spawning that says that we should be able to drop in in the tank in our redline from the start menu instead of spawning then calling in, besides don't the assets and clones come from the mcc?
3 making the vehicles actually have a real working squad lock that your squad leader can switch off and on. In the case that your taking 2 squads in and you know every one on the team or for Planetary Conquest you could turn it off. The default squad setting should be locked doors by default for when people want to solo play.
4 a reporting system that checks battle reports and punishes the players committing these offences, after all there are not too many good tankers out there and even fewer people penniless enough to need steal tanks.

I don't know if its revenge that drives him to steal tanks or just to see what others use in them. A third thieft leads me to believe this person is butt hurt and wants to see what I run to ruin his proto tanks while I.m running a lowly basic tank not a militia, C=I class tank.
Either way tank stealing should be punished and not by me destroying my own stuff and getting kicked from battle.
Being killed at the beginning of battle by my own butt hurt teammate who then proceeds to directly steal my assets sucks and is very unsportsman like.
Maybe after reporting it and battle report confirmation his wallet would get deducted and I'd have my assets back in my inventory, Kind of like a payment he didn't agree to after all I didn't agree to give him a free tank?

Do what I do with people who try to steal my vehicles.

Shoot them in the face with a shotgun or bolt pistol.

What vehicles?

And?