no amount of grouping can make me comfortable with putting my millions into the hands of someone else....the main gun is obviously the primary weapon for the tank and only the driver has a 1:1 input on the controls. A secondary gunner for the large turret would be very inefficient as he would never be perfectly able to track targets due to unexpected driving changes. Simply communicating driving over comms would just be terrible since that is for tactics, not saying "turning left!" and people dont typically try as hard when its not their money on the line.

I could see an OPTIONAL copilot setup where you can hand off control of the main gun, but this would be an awful default, or worse mandatory, setup.

Yeah, having it as an option would be fine I think. Having it as mandatory would be a tremendous mistake, especially if that were carried over to every vehicle, where spending the SP and ISK on an expensive piece of hardware meant your reward was to be a taxi driver for other people who're having a good time while you're watching.

What if they could reduce the effectiveness of the large turrets against infantry - if you're going to lone wolf it in a tank you still get the joy of driving around shooting stuff with a big gun but the gamut of targets available to you is limited and you're comparatively easy pickings for infantry without a crew gunning for you.

Even though I am a tank driver and have the most fun with tanks, I think two changes are necessary for the long term viability of the game:
1. The driver should drive only and not control the main gun
2. Since the driver cannot shoot anymore, you are free to implement a decent driving scheme with the controller. Like the old school tank driving with the two sticks, or the standard forward/reverse + direction controls.

To compensate a bit, the driver should have the ability to control who can enter the main gun controls (at the very least. Probably also every position in the tank, but that is another discussion). So if he really wants to do it all, he can restrict the main gun for himself only, and switch position when necessary. Or restrict to his squad mates, corp mates, whatever.

These two changes would balance and equalize all driving where you drive, but cannot shoot at the same time. It would also eliminate the one man army feel of guys in well fitted tanks.

To compensate, the driver could do a lot more. You could zoom, control the shields boosters/armor repairer, remote boosters/repairers and any other coming modules (sensor boosters, cloaking device, target painters, smoke bombs, chaff, etc). There could also be lock detection so a driver can decide to throw chaff, smoke bombs, or EVE style ECM.

Now that the driver can concentrate on the driving, it could become worth it to add modules to improve speed, acceleration and maneuverability. He could control overload for either the main engine (going faster for a bit), or the main gun.

And a small concession could be a small gun fitted in the front of the tank that cannot be moved and shoots only straight ahead.

As it stands I have enough trouble keeping retards without mics out of my vehicle, because whenever I get out to repair my crippled tank INEVITABLY my brain dead turret gunner switches seats and takes my 10% armor vehicle right back into the battle to get blown up...

May I suggest a change of thought direction on this matter?
The discussion right now is all about the driver's options in a tank he owns and how keeping him as just a driver will make the owner unhappy.
But what if the owner wasn't the driver but the commander? Work with me on this...

Think of a real life situation. Say you have a really cool vehicle with a gazillion gadgets and capabilities. These all require you to not be driving as that takes too much distraction. If you'd own such a vehicle you'd get a good driver but stay with your gadgets (or large turret + vehicle command in our example).

So let's change the way we think of tanks. The tank owner should be the tank commander and not the driver. That makes a lot more sense to me and pretty much solves all these disputes.

What do you think?

For better or worse, every FPS I've played which has tanks has the driver controlling the main gun. Changing that notion is of course possible, but whether it's doable is questionable given the reasons I listed in a previous comment.

Dust is changing many things in the FPS world. Dust, for starters, is bringing a hell of a lot teamwork than anyone is used to. It's bringing game support for defined command structures.

So why not also change some fundementals? Tank drivers don't shoot. They drive and they're damn good at driving.

- Have the low level tanks be driver-gunners, but the high level tank separate the driver and gunner. So for newbies and fresh players, they could get in tanks and have fun, but for the serious stomping power, you would need more collaboration.

dunno how your idea would work out in highsec op with people that dont really group up, and people with no coms etc

Not a bad idea at all. Keep the main gun with the driver on the lighter Assault/C&C/ECM/etc tanks, but separate it for Main Battle Tanks. That way those drivers who insist on shooting (me) would still be able to melt faces, but we'd also get heavy MBT which would be a formidable weapons platform.

There would still need to be more to do for the driver than just driving, though, and that's my main concern.

make all the current tanks have slightly less armor and shield and alittle less pg and cpu... then interduce a whole new kind of tank that would be even beter than the ones we have now but be much more expensive and have seperate diver/gunner, make the current ones LAVs and the new ones HAVs then make the jeeps like recon vehicles or (insert clever name here)