See and this is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. This argument of "Oh well it should need this many people to do this but if the other thing has only this many people then it needs to be this but not too much of that so make the other thing weak and require only one person."

As soon as you lock yourself into a system where elements more or less have a singlular purpose of "Kill A, Be killed by B" the balance conversation will immediate degrade into something like this. We've seen it a million times throughout Dust's life and as you know.....the **** never worked right. When the only metric to measure something is its ability to kill and be killed by other elements (which are also as equally shallow), you're going to end up with a shallow gameplay and a endless balance problems, especially when dealing with something with the potential of being a really interesting support/utility element in the game design.

Having strengths and weaknesses to other elements is absolutely a good thing to have. Dont think I'm saying otherwise. But there needs to be more to it than that. If anything it helps? "Well MTACs are kinda UP against infantry this balance cycle, but they still cover rough terrain nobody's business. We just need to change up our MTAC strategy to deal with it for the time being and focus more on taking advantage of its other strengths." So even if a role seems weak against its predator that patch cycle, you don't feel like you're totally screwed because you still have other useful things you can do.

Balancing with ISK doesnt work. What you described was basically "It's does basically everything but that's OK because it's it's expensive" which is....Something I've heard before and it didn't end well for anyone.

The conversation should never be "We want mechs, let's think of a role for them to fill". It should be the other way around "So the game design requires a role with these functions....What should that element of gameplay look like?"

A while back on Discord we came up with the 'Pokemon Method' in that Fire > Plant > Water > Fire could work for Dust 514 (or Nova). In that case, it was Infantry > Tanks > MTACs > Infantry. MTACs in that design would be very anti-infantry bias with strong resistances toward small arms but highly susceptible to Tanks with their larger guns.

Function before Form.

Give me a mechanic or purpose that needs to be fulfilled that would only make sense if that mechanic or purpose was being fulfilled by a mech/MTAC.

Your going about it the wrong way. You think of a feature for the game first, then think about how it fits into the universe. Otherwise, one could argue about plenty of things in ANY game including eve on "Why would they have X if they have Y?"

Anywho, mecha would be fun to use. They might be sort of a scout vehicle (good mobility, decent attack power, low eHP in comparison to other vehicles). A HAV would be a Sentinel.

Also, I found it kind of dumb to have vehicle repair tools because you can call one in and send the other back, and you can't keep up with a vehicle to actively repair under attack. Give MTACs a support role to both infantry and vehicles. To support infantry, they could be fitted with a HMG with very low heat, but has terrible accuracy. In other words, keep the pressure up on enemies, but not become an unstoppable death machine upon deployment. Alternatively, they could be logistics and have vehicle repair tools similar to the focused where they could only focus on 1 or 2 targets, but repair at a decent rate, while logi vehicles would be the one that has plenty of beams, but poor repair rate.

Sorry for the wall of text.

I think you're misreading my intention. Perhaps my later posts are more clear?

Either way, the mechanic should be determined before it's given a form. I think we are in agreement.

Infantry > Tanks

Haha, yeah. Okay.

I see what you're trying to do, though, and I like the idea, but it would need to be well thought out in order to work.

Infantry > Tanks

Haha, yeah. Okay.

I see what you're trying to do, though, and I like the idea, but it would need to be well thought out in order to work.

you must not have went against an ADS with a good gunner. they could rule the whole battlefield. the only way to shut them down was 3-4 forge gunners but then a great ads gunner would jump out, kill the forge gunner and wait for the ADS to pick him back up. Hav were not as hard to kill as you think , use a plc, jump mods and proto av grenades could kill tanks fast and even faster using kubos plc.