My biggest concern is simply how are they going to balance vehicles?

I was around for some pretty heavy AV/Vehicle thread wars here, and both sides had some pretty valid points. How can it be acceptable that a single suit can near single handedly take on a vehicle, and on the flip side how can it be acceptable that a vehicle can just become a very large suit and demolish infantry unchecked?

Overall I never really felt good with any of the builds I played, as they seemed to swing wildly between vehicles enjoying near dominance and infantry having near dominance. Add to that the proto factor, which (as has been previously feared) could create a "it's simply not feasible to run anything but proto" situation in the AV/V game.
.

I personally think the ideal situation is maps that are sectioned in a way to cut down on forced infantry/vehicle interaction. My (super rough) example would be a map in which your team must cross a large swath of "no man's land", areas that are wide open and give vehicles the edge on maneuverability/line of sight, and thus an overall edge in general in said area. Once your force reached any fortifications/objectives/building clusters the edge would switch to infantry due to vehicles being ackward to maneuver in tight spaces and the amount of cover available to infantry.

I know we don't like to drag rl into theoretical discussions on how game play mechanics should work, but obviously in rl mechanized forces fair much better in open spaces, though we have to go back to WW2 to get an honest assessment of proper armor tactics/infantry interaction (that's my opinion at least, hasn't been a fair/real clash of armor since WW2). To this day taking an Abrams into a city is a risky proposition simply because a tanks job is to kill tanks, and if your armor has pushed into a city more than likely it has already pushed through enemy armor, or enemy armor is non existant. Once in the city some of a tanks greatest attributes are completely nullified: firing on the move/long range. Targets switch from lumbering hunks of metal to single soldiers that disappear just as fast as they appear, yet pack almost as much firepower as a tank.

In my mind (keeping the thought of an old thread involving Medium Attack Vehicles being armored troop transports in mind) the thing to do is have mechanics set where when you start a match, vehicles are called in, infantry is loaded up, and a single mechanized force advances to a point where the infantry can disembark their vehicle under cover fire from vehicles, and from there the vehicle/infantry fighting somewhat seperates, with vehicles duking it out in the open areas around a city/objective, and infantry doing the fighting and hacking inside the city/objective. A lone tank wandering into a city would be nearly a sitting duck, even with infantry support (column of tanks rolling through the middle of a city? Hit the first and last then rain the pain on the rest of the now trapped convoy), and a lone merc or 3 wandering into the open land outside a city/objective would be wiped out.
.

Unfortunately there is still some heavy issues, because after everything I just said, what if the people of 1 team all pull out tanks? Or if they are loaded down with dropships and infantry? What if you have situations where one team consists of mainly lone wolf players? Do you limit vehicles? Force teamplay? I haven't even touched AV/V balance in all my babbling, how does that change the scheme of things? There are so many variables, so many people looking for that quirky little edge or trick that totally destroys balance. I do not envy CCP in regards to giving us what we want, but still balancing everything they give us.

Another example I like to use is the supposed fighters. In 1 thread a while back, fears of fighters targeting infantry and questions of small arms effectiveness vs fighters came to light. This, to me was an immediate wrong step. It's not even fumbling right out of the gate, it's fumbling on the way to getting into the gate. Fighters should have no business targeting ground anything, and if the maps are big enough this could be counteracted simply by the speed of a fighter, it should go too fast to target ground. And if you do that, the fighters need a reason to exist, which would be bombers.

My point is that so many things in Dust have been able to be geared towards fighting so many other things, it's made balance near impossible. I can almost guarantee with 100% certainty that had fighters been introduced to our Dust, dropship kills would not be the only victims of fighter attack. Pretty much anything other than tanks would have been fair game.

So I guess the issue becomes do you force a general balance onto everything in game across all professions/allow for casual and or lone wolf as well as hardcore and teamplay, or do you force people to remain in a role/play tightly as a team? I'm personally down for hardcore team play, as well as imbalance when it makes sense (1 dude vs 1 tank on open ground/1 tank vs 1 dude in a tight city street).

On top of all of that stuff, what's the general idea/vision of what CCP wants, overall and mechanics wise? And what kind of limitations do they have due to technology?
.

My ideal for AV / V interplay was always based around the idea of slower tanks, that were significantly harder to kill. It would be balanced around far higher TTK where Tank v Tank has the lowest TTK. This would be matched however by making it more difficult for a tank to easily escape should things turn against it, where the tanks heavy defense and lack of mobility is the key points of it.

AV then could do comparably less damage, but then have additional toolkit options to create kill zones or trapped areas that would effectively trap a tank. The larger TTK though could mean that were the tank supported by infantry, the Infantry have a reasonable chance of saving the tank from the AV before it died.

To this end, I see AV being given all sorts of active equipment such as trip-wires (only via tanks), deployable statis zones, and capacitor-draining grenades that could effectively stop a tank dead in it's tracks. So when a tank moved into a certain area a large radius statis field could be generated slowing the tank speed by a massive amount, then various AV weapon types could have additional effects such as capacitor drain, movement penalty, and target painters that all make squad based AV far more effective in combination.

There are and I think in any future product people are going to have to accept certain conditions when it comes to tanks.

They'll be hard to destroy and be able to take multiple hits.

But they'll hit hard like nothing else with main guns.

They'll move accelerate and turn slowly.

But their top speeds will be nothing to sneeze at.

They won't offer pilots significant rates of fire or anti-infantry capabilities in their main turret.

But they will offer range and AoE effects.

They aren't going to have the same regenerative powers as they have in the past.

But they will have heavy armour that must be managed.

They don't test their patches, what makes you think they'll open up a test server for us to test changes?

So basically you want the pilots of tomorrow to have copy and paste tanks from this iteration?

While that is all good what about other ground based vehicles such as APCs, Logi LAV, Triage vehicles, LAV etc.

Would the traps that are powerful enough to technically cripple a tank/HAV just outright immobilise and disable any other vehicles thus leading to a quick death with no chance to escape?

Just say if that was the case then what would vehicles get to counter the effects or would we have specalist modules that other vehicles could use to 'cut the wires' so to speak and help out the vehicle.

Also would some of these new equipment be thrown and have a homing mechanism such as the AV nade (which i do disagree with because normal mades do not have a homing mechanism against infantry and plus it means you do not have to aim, why cant you be forced to at least hit the hull with your aim?), would some be handheld and require LOS like the repair tool or be placed down like mines which could also be destroyed.

There are other vehicles than just tanks (i hope)

[quote=Takahiro Kashuken][quote=Avallo Kantor] Pokey Grade Optimism.

How would capacitors work with a passive module style of play? My favorite DS build was always armor stacked, no active modules (aside from 1 build that carried a scanner).

Would a vehicle focused on passive mods have an advantage, maybe be considered OP? Or would it be underpowered, or simply not possible (if nearly all mods were active)?

Obviously we don't know the answer, but what would be the ideal situation? I've been informed that active is the way to go currently in Dust, at least for dropships, but sometime around jan/feb of 2014 all passive mods on a dropship was very possible and very effective (affective? I always screw those up), and I still get much more enjoyment from flying a passive 4800-6k+ armor block than I ever did flying lighter craft and managing cooldowns.

I've played a bit of EVE so I have somewhat of a grasp on capacitors, and I'm not against having to go all active for an aircraft in the next Dust. But I do enjoy the simple elegance (in any game) of relying on passive skills and a clear understanding of the role you are geared for, and I'd like to see that option available in the next Dust.

Are you serious? A new game would quickly become unbalanced if bpo/SP/ISK were to be transferred. Nobody wants that. I undsrstand that people earned their SP and everything else. For the sake of balance, I hope they wipe our slates clean.

Just more stomps.

Also, let the damn myo-scrubs stay with Dust 514...

Since it's now very likely that the Eve-to-FPS link will be the last thing they work on since obviously doing that link first didn't turn out so well for them on Dust for the PS3, I will put my idea related to that at the bottom of my list.

I wouldn't mind traps effecting all vehicles the same, under certain conditions. Say traps (mines/trip wires/stasis fields, whatever) were fairly easy to detect and fairly hard to negate, require a sapper role to disarm (possibly place) traps, give a passive scan ability to a vehicle such as (assuming we get one) an APC (MAV)((LAVs/HAVs would require a Scanning Mod to detect traps independent of MAVs)), and traps take on an Area Denial vibe creating a situation where traps can become effective even without doing direct damage. Also this would (hopefully) reinforce teamplay as cohesive thrusts of forces would fair much better than random waves of troops/vehicles. Therefore equal trap damage to all vehicles would be less of an issue as the most viable counter would be avoidance as opposed to survival/HP.

I also feel like damage to different parts of a vehicle is a must. Let, at the very least, damage to treads/axels/so on be independent of overall HP. For example a tank can take damage to its treads, and as damage increases movement performance decreases, up until zero health on the treads at which point the tank is immobilized. This opens possibilities for actual mechanic roles. Frenzied fight around an immobilized tank whIle the mechanics get movement ability back up and running? Yes please.

Obviously zero HP on the movement section would not destroy a vehicle, this would require zero HP on a body section.

This could be taken some steps further (seeing Front Mission 2 HP displays in my head) by letting, for example, a body section, high slot section, low slot section, turret section and movement section be allowed to take damage separately from each other.

I feel like this would blow the AV/V game wide open, as you are no longer relying simply on raw damage to effect (affect?) vehicles. AV could do serious damage without a vehicles overall HP taking a massive hit, giving infantry a good chance of almost entirely negating a vehicle threat, but still requiring friendly vehicles to handle enemy vehicles properly. The risk/reward on vehicles going after infantry would also become a bit less appealing, I feel, if risking your vehicle going after infantry did not necessarily eliminate your main damage dealing/kill shot threat, and instead put you at risk of being immobilized when your main concern (enemy vehicles) does show up.

Just brainstorming, haven't put too much thought into this stuff.

If CCP doesn't do the link right at the start I think it's highly unlikely they would ever get to that point. The link, were it to occur would be far too integral with EvE for it to be added after the fact.

If by "right at the start" you mean at the day of the official release of the New Eden FPS for PC, then I agree with you. CCP should have the link ready by then.

But what I meant in my last post is in regards to early development. The link should be included but it should not be the prime focus for CCP. I'm just going by experience here. You and I personally experienced what happened when CCP focused too much resources on the Eve-Dust link back then before giving stability any sense of priority. It was not until CCP Rattati and CCP Rouge took over that stability was given priority but it was already too late for Dust 514.

All I'm asking for is that CCP should focus primarily on stability and gameplay. The link to Eve Online should come later down the line before the new game's official release.

I think it depends on what the finished product is going to look like, or perhaps it's the other way around.

If the finished product is to be fully integrated into the EvE Universe, then the link has to be there right from the start of development. If they don't do that, and develop a game that's fundamentally DISconnected from the rest of EvE and only add the connection later on, we will end up with another disaster.

What exactly do you mean by "gameplay"? This sounds to me like allusions to the same old lobby shooter. If Dust 2.0 were fully integrated into the EvE Universe, "gameplay" would become subservient to the general warfare of New Eden. Suits and weapons need to be developed well, of course, but how you use them is going to make all the difference.

#1-So the question becomes will my repair kit also repair my tracks of lets just say 1000 damage even if the hull is undamaged?

#2-If the hull is also damaged along with my tracks what will take priority? could i choose what to repair?

#3-Could the tracks soak up damage even if they are destroyed which would otherwise hit the hull?

#4-Could AV weapons lock on to parts of the vehicle such as tracks/gun etc?

#5-Could infantry repair tools target damage areas and repair?

#6-Do my resistance modules extend to the tracks?

The thing with having numbers attached to modules means that you could target the main gun or wheels all day long and effectively make it useless, with WOT there is a hint of RNG and chance, yes you can aim at the gun but does not mean you will always damage it.

How do you know they don't test their patches? Have you worked for CCP before? Do you know someone that works for CCP?

It's pretty obvious when a hotfix that is supposed to "fix" stuff just creates different bugs.

That doesn't mean they don't test it. I know from personal experience that even if you test something a thousand times and it goes perfectly, something can still go wrong.