DUST Search - Tanks and how they should act more like tanks

EnglishSnake wrote:

Skihids wrote:

NovaShadowStorm wrote:

Jax Thrife wrote:

I can agree with the less power and more armor because honestly since people can easily buy militia forge guns and swarm launchers it is ridiculous how fast a shield tank drops like it was a militia. There is another solution which would be to lower power but up the pg and cpu on tanks and maybe and extra slot on the opposite side (For example, surya would have 4 high powered slot instead of 3) that way people can mix and match modules until they feel like their tank doesnt feel like paper rolling around in the battlefield. The only reason why i agree that tanks can be way overpowered is because I was able to take out a sagaris easily with a Standard Scattered Blaster no heat sink on a Gunlogi. The battle lasted about 2-3 min. and honestly he barely dropped my shields and that makes absolutely no sense to me. And if thats not bad I have seen a teammate take out a sagaris with a MILITIA tank and all I have to say is how and why?

Most likely reason is they sank all their SP into the HAV skill just to get into the thing but didn't put any points into the shield side so the moment they got it trained they hopped in thinking they'd be awesome but then realised they actually need to fit it properly if they want it to actually survive.

This is quite true. Fitting a vehicle requires a huge investment in engineering and defensive skills. The hull and weapons are but a fraction of the real cost. First you need to skill up CPU and PG generation so you can power your vehicle, then you need to level at least three shield or armor skills to get access to the best modules for your type. You will probably also need the best PG grid module which means leveling PG Upgrade to level 4. All that requires millions of SP. Good vehicles are huge SP sinks.

Have perfect skills for shield tanks and armor yet it still doesnt feel like a tank, just an extra large dropsuit

Tanks are far from being tanks, at one point they were feared whenever a tank was dropped now its laughter and free points for everyone

Doesnt help that AV is broke and HAVs got another round of nerfs in the latest patch while AV got another powerful basically 'free' weapon


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Skihids Tritan-Industries Legacy Rising 970	Posted - 2013.01.01 15:37:00 - [1] - Quote NovaShadowStorm wrote: Jax Thrife wrote: I can agree with the less power and more armor because honestly since people can easily buy militia forge guns and swarm launchers it is ridiculous how fast a shield tank drops like it was a militia. There is another solution which would be to lower power but up the pg and cpu on tanks and maybe and extra slot on the opposite side (For example, surya would have 4 high powered slot instead of 3) that way people can mix and match modules until they feel like their tank doesnt feel like paper rolling around in the battlefield. The only reason why i agree that tanks can be way overpowered is because I was able to take out a sagaris easily with a Standard Scattered Blaster no heat sink on a Gunlogi. The battle lasted about 2-3 min. and honestly he barely dropped my shields and that makes absolutely no sense to me. And if thats not bad I have seen a teammate take out a sagaris with a MILITIA tank and all I have to say is how and why? Most likely reason is they sank all their SP into the HAV skill just to get into the thing but didn't put any points into the shield side so the moment they got it trained they hopped in thinking they'd be awesome but then realised they actually need to fit it properly if they want it to actually survive. This is quite true. Fitting a vehicle requires a huge investment in engineering and defensive skills. The hull and weapons are but a fraction of the real cost. First you need to skill up CPU and PG generation so you can power your vehicle, then you need to level at least three shield or armor skills to get access to the best modules for your type. You will probably also need the best PG grid module which means leveling PG Upgrade to level 4. All that requires millions of SP. Good vehicles are huge SP sinks.
Skihids Tritan-Industries Legacy Rising 970	Posted - 2013.01.01 16:42:00 - [2] - Quote EnglishSnake wrote: Skihids wrote: NovaShadowStorm wrote: Jax Thrife wrote: I can agree with the less power and more armor because honestly since people can easily buy militia forge guns and swarm launchers it is ridiculous how fast a shield tank drops like it was a militia. There is another solution which would be to lower power but up the pg and cpu on tanks and maybe and extra slot on the opposite side (For example, surya would have 4 high powered slot instead of 3) that way people can mix and match modules until they feel like their tank doesnt feel like paper rolling around in the battlefield. The only reason why i agree that tanks can be way overpowered is because I was able to take out a sagaris easily with a Standard Scattered Blaster no heat sink on a Gunlogi. The battle lasted about 2-3 min. and honestly he barely dropped my shields and that makes absolutely no sense to me. And if thats not bad I have seen a teammate take out a sagaris with a MILITIA tank and all I have to say is how and why? Most likely reason is they sank all their SP into the HAV skill just to get into the thing but didn't put any points into the shield side so the moment they got it trained they hopped in thinking they'd be awesome but then realised they actually need to fit it properly if they want it to actually survive. This is quite true. Fitting a vehicle requires a huge investment in engineering and defensive skills. The hull and weapons are but a fraction of the real cost. First you need to skill up CPU and PG generation so you can power your vehicle, then you need to level at least three shield or armor skills to get access to the best modules for your type. You will probably also need the best PG grid module which means leveling PG Upgrade to level 4. All that requires millions of SP. Good vehicles are huge SP sinks. Have perfect skills for shield tanks and armor yet it still doesnt feel like a tank, just an extra large dropsuit Tanks are far from being tanks, at one point they were feared whenever a tank was dropped now its laughter and free points for everyone Doesnt help that AV is broke and HAVs got another round of nerfs in the latest patch while AV got another powerful basically 'free' weapon I fit a Sagaris with an eHP* of 10,105 shield with an additional 2,082 eHP from a Clarity Ward Shield Booster. Add 1,249 Armor HP and that totals 13,436 eHP. I could increase that by an additional 396 eHP by skilling two more levels of Shield Control. That doesn't reduce my offense by much as I can run two 20GJ Scattered Ion Cannon small blaster turrets and an 80GJ Scattered Neutron Blaster main turret. I don't have any slots left for turret or propulsion mods, but I consider it a pretty tanky tank. How much eHP would you consider to be "tanky"? * Assuming that stacking two 15% Ward Shield Amplifiers yields 27% efficiency
Skihids Tritan-Industries Legacy Rising 970	Posted - 2013.01.01 19:23:00 - [3] - Quote I suppose some of this comes down to play style. I came late into tanking after losing my dropship pilot career in the great missile nerf and needing to find another job to pay the bills. Since I was already heavily skilled into vehicles I allowed my corpmate Exmaple to encourage me to skill into tanks to assist Tritan Industries in corp battles. As such I'm a reluctant tank driver who would just as soon blow one up as drive it, and I'm conflicted about their strengths and weaknesses. How much eHP you require depends upon how aggressive a driver you are. If you always keep moving and never wade too deep into CQC you won't need nearly as much as if you like to wade into CQC without any infantry support. I myself am entirely to aggressive for my own good and I don't keep a sufficient situational awareness. Exmaple is attempting to instill me with a more conservative driving style, and I'm currently running weak BPO Sica fits to encourage that. As an AV user I've killed a few poorly fit tanks, but mostly I've only managed to force them to retreat if I'm soloing it. If the driver is aggressive enough to park close I can strip most of his shields with three flux grenades if I'm in my logi suit, but then I generally get killed trying to MD him the rest of the way. In my SL AV fit I can get off 2-3 sets of missiles off before I'm killed by his blaster or one of his infantry teammates, and that's not enough to kill even a moderately fit tank. I just started playing with the militia forge gun and it's even slower to fire than the SL. Last night I spent most of a match trying to solo a dropship with an advanced SL and he managed to tank 2-3 sets before his gunners took me out with small blasters. A dropship has less tank than an HAV but it seems that was enough for him. An HAV can shrug off one militia grade attacker, but a driver shouldn't sit there and absorb two or three attackers without killing them. You should be able to be more aggressive if you equip decent small turrets and carry good gunners, and even more if you have infantry support. Perhaps you should describe a scenario you think a tank should be able to survive that it can't today. How many enemy red dots how close to you and what sort of support you have in and outside your tank. Something like: Attacking Objective "A" on Manus Peak 3 infantry on the objective with AV or Flux grenades within throwing distance 2 Militia SL's hiding nearby 1 Militia FG on the objective 2 turret gunners using proto blasters No other infantry support
Skihids Tritan-Industries Legacy Rising 970	Posted - 2013.01.01 20:53:00 - [4] - Quote Coming from a dropship background I find maneuverability to be the biggest weakness of an HAV. It takes a full 10.8 seconds to pivot a tank through 360 degrees (and prop mods don't help). That's 5.4 seconds to reverse direction and 2.7 seconds for a right angle turn. A blaster tank can spin its turret and back up for a quick exit, but the rail tank is not so fortunate. Tanks slow to a crawl when turning and even shield tanks are slow to accelerate. Their wide bodies get hung up on all manner of obstacles. Third person view helps, but it has its own issues. When approaching obstacles and at odd times on hilly terrain the view suddenly climbs right up to the main turret, obscuring 80% of your view. One way to make a tank feel less like a bulky dropsuit is to separate driving from main gun. Again, coming from a dropship background I'm not wedded to firing the big gun from the pilot's seat. It would make driving far less distracting and allow the main gun to be much more effective as it wouldn't have to be pointing in the direction of travel. Imagine being able to circle an objective at speed while your main gunner was able to concentrate accurate fire. You could achieve very powerful drive by shootings with two or more gunners. You could give the front gun to the driver, but you could also use both sticks for steering which would make it much more tank like. Use R1 or R3 for backup camera activation. You could give the driver all the defensive module activations and let the main gunner activate any turret modules. MTACs would replace the HAV in the role of "super heavy dropsuit" where the operator is also the main gunner.
Skihids Tritan-Industries Legacy Rising 970	Posted - 2013.01.01 23:31:00 - [5] - Quote Militia tanks aren't serious tanks, but they do serve to train drivers to play very conservatively and be fully aware of their surroundings. They can be fielded once per match without losing ISK and once you can keep one alive for half a match you are probably ready to move up. I view it as driving around a balsa wood model of a tank.
Skihids Tritan-Industries Legacy Rising 970	Posted - 2013.01.02 14:38:00 - [6] - Quote Go Away Putz wrote: Skihids wrote: Militia tanks aren't serious tanks, but they do serve to train drivers to play very conservatively and be fully aware of their surroundings. They can be fielded once per match without losing ISK and once you can keep one alive for half a match you are probably ready to move up. I view it as driving around a balsa wood model of a tank. Well, my first two or three lasted as long as a balsa wood tank would have. I did get a militia HAV to last a match but building SP for my two week old character is slow going. HAVs need a lot of SP to get to activated. One has to kitten a lot of SP down the drain of LAV land to get to HAVs. Not including the effort through both sets of small turrets to put the large turret you actually want on your HAV. Off topic: Skihids, have you posted a HAV driver's manual as well? Your DS version got me flying my DS, versus only crashing it. HAV's require a huge skill investment beyond access to the hull and turrets, somewhere in the neighborhood of 5M SP to level several Engineering skills far enough to fit a decent defense. Until you get that any hull is going to resemble balsa wood because the strength of the upper tiers is more fitting room rather than base HP. My advice is to keep running militia until you have maxed out all it can fit. I'm still learning to make the transition to driving myself so I can't write a definitive guide to tanking, but I can give a few insights that I've picked up so far from those better than I. Start with a blaster tank so you can spin the turret and look around. Getting hung up while trying to back out of an area lost me more tanks, so start by planning routes where you can keep moving forward and break line of sight. Don't park for long or the AV will find you. Hit and run. Be aware of your surroundings. Be most aware of cover that can protect you from SL lock on. Drive conservatively. Don't push forward with low shields and your booster on cool-down. If an enemy is hiding and tough to get, leave them and move on. Your team will get them. Run back to your infantry and let them cover you when you need to repair. You can always return to the fight as long as you have your tank. Never count on spinning 180 to retreat. It takes far too long. I practiced reversing the turret and driving with reversed controls just in case I found myself with the need to back up any distance. Practice drive by shooting where you keep aim on a target as you pass it (the reason for he blaster turret). This will get you in the habit of constant motion. Don't attempt CQC while solo. That just begs for AV and Flux grenades from several red dots at once. Take out installation turrets early, and try to get the drop on them so you don't take any return fire. Mostly know where you can run to to break SL line of sight. Get on coms and have your team kill the SL for you.