A 30 million interdictor bubbled my 60 billion titan and then his friends killed me. Clearly this is a bad design choice.

Except that 60 B titan takes an assload of effort to take down beyond the initial tackle. Clearly avoiding reality so you can make catchy snubs for like farming.

fify

Ccp intended tanks to be the most dangerous enemy that's the hardest to kill, they intended it to be a TEAM EFFORT to kill a tank, NOT SOLO but with the av stats right now, its completely opposite.

It's like chess. A pawn can take a queen if its positioned right. For the queen to be in that position though, the player must have made that decision.

To bring greater power to the table, you take greater risks.

In the end, the better players win. Gear does matter to some extent, but that's why upgrades don't give significant boosts. Not enough to turn a game around just because you have better gear, at any rate.

Once again, this can be related to chess. If all your pieces were kings, you'd obviously have an advantage over the person who has the normal pieces, but if you don't know how kings work, you're going to have a bad time.

I'm personally horrible at chess but I find it fascinating, to see the risks laid out in every move, to watch the pros and see their next dozen moves laid out in their head. The same applies to calling in tanks. You have to predict what the battlefield will look like once you call in the HAV, by assessing what's happening currently.

Swarm launchers force tank drivers to work with a team of infantry, thus preventing tanks from dominating. If the enemy is using a lot of swarm launchers, they will be vulnerable to your infantry, the balance is right.

I often use swarm launchers against tanks, but often find my clone is quickly shot down by infantry. Swarm launcher clones are vulnerable and have slow movement.

Swarms are fine. Although, if a signature radius lock time was given, then I'd want my dumb fire back. Sitting around for 3+ seconds with your $#@ cheeks flopping in the wind is too long when you have to do it more than a dozen times. Actually, I want my dumb fire back right now, but I've learned to live without my spazzoidial suicide runs.

Okay so I want to talk here mainly about swarm launchers and how easily they can drop or harass a tank. Now I am going to start with militia tanks and militia swarm launchers, swarm launcher cost 0 isk and no skills for a standard assault suit with a militia swarm launcher admintingly it is a bit less then average but maybe with a squad or team of swarm launchers you can harass any tank back or destroy the tank/vehicle. Standard militia tank 100,000 to 200,000 isk minimum and this tank will be destroyed by a standard assault swarm launcher class mainly because the militia tanks have no real armor or shield, anything can burn right through them. Obviously already a problem if I am going into battle with a free suit equipped with a free swarm launcher why should a paper thin tank cost me 100 to 200 thousand isk? This brings me back earlier in the beta when anyone could call in a tank or dropship. This old system obviously needs to be reinstalled if you can get a free anti tank fit why cant you get a free tank? Why should I pay for a militia tank that will get ownt by some noob who got his suit for free?

This makes it important to get an even better tank and upgrade it to the best of your cpu pg and skill requirements. Tank modules actually aren't that hard to get if I have the best tank in a week or two I actually didn't put in much time all though that is what it looks like it is coming to. So I am at this point of buying a better tank I soon will have 4,700 shield on my tank with shield tank and shield rep and this for me is pretty good. However the cost of this tank is very high around 600,000 isk a tank which can make loosing it very sad and infuriate a player who maybe looses it in a trolls situation. So a somewhat good tank would cost you around 600k it would perform some what decent on the battle field you would think? However it is not true the same player in the standard assault suit with his militia swarm launcher decided he liked blowing up your tank and watching your cry so he became proficient in it. In what only took a few days he got a more powerful swarm launcher from the market, ATV grenades, and any modules that would give him the strategic edge over you. Now in an average battle I mainly get noobs I dominate with my average tank but if I ever get a game with even close to decent players i will be swarm launched, forged gunned, and hit by players on installations my tank will be destroyed and I could loose easily over a mill in one game. Obviously you might be thinking you are a noob your not doing it right, but I am and I am using every module, taking every retreat, and using offensive strike as a defensive means for my tank at every point in a match. However the forge gun and swarm launcher especially a advanced one is simply to powerful and the swarm launcher to accurate.

So why is the swarm launcher actually so powerful? One a powerful swarm launcher does a lot of damage my tank has only 2850 shield right now i was loosing all my shield in two to three hits this made me have to retreat use my hardeners and use all my shield rep. I tried to put my vehicle behind a wall but guess what the missile curved up and around the wall and easy destroyed me. I was of course driven mad in the game knowing that so much health could easily be beaten down by a few people camped on a roof harassing me to the edge of the map. So I am getting at this swarm launchers accuracy, damage, locking time, and how far they can shoot are all far to great. The accuracy needs to be nerfed, the damage slightly downed, locking time majorly increased, and their range downed. Or else you will have players with 2 mill tanks going up against a squad of 4 swarm launchers and being blown to **** in seconds it has happened and will continue to happen. The most a suit with a well equipped anti vehicle fit is ever going to cost is around 200,000 - 300,000 isk why should i be loosing 2 mill tanks to these players? Would you ask them to die over 5 times to match the cost especially if my vehicle is not better then his suit. I will never understand how a high grade piece of military equipment called a tank came down to the level of a noob with a swarm launcher fit.

Here is my ultimate representation

Tank Level 5 - Swarm Launcher Level 2(5)
Cost 2,000,000 Cost 200,000

As you can see the tanks level is higher but cost considerably more, the swarm launcher players level is actually quite low but is boosted to a 5 because he is proficient in anti vehicles. Thus making a swarm launcher player and a tank an equal match however if the tank dies he looses a huge amount of money the swarm launcher guy can call in 10 suits before he looses the amount of the tank player. Tanks are also the largest enemy on the battle field so the swarm launcher player who already matches a tank will have back up putting him at an advantage over the tank. As you can see the tank has no chance

LOL this guys just pissed he cant drive he was calling NERF to the FG vs Dropships to

Alright man, as a fellow HAV operator, I feel your pain. TRUST ME. Ive bitched about this in my own fair number of threads. Just listen up.

Militia Swarm Launchers aren't obnoxiously overpowered as you may think. I used to drive Militia Tanks all the time, so much even that I know I lost at least 5 mil worth of them before moving on to REAL tanks, AKA Gunloggi or Madrugar. The way you wrote your post gave me the impression you want to go on an infantry obliterating joyride in your tank of choice.

Even the most lowly noob needs some method of getting rid of a public enemy, especially one in the form of an HAV. Just because you paid 500k for a fully fit Gunloggi does not entitle you to a 40/0 K/D per game.

Lets look at this on a real world scenario. Infantry are in possession of Anti-Tank weapons for a reason: to kill tanks. The average LAW costs like a tiny $5k or so (my numbers may be off) but they are designed to kill tanks that cost on the magnitude of millions of dollars to produce.

Why? Tanks are a relic of older times. The times when we needed to cross trenches and attack fortifications have long since passed, but have not disappeared entirely. Basically its like if the man who invented the catapult tried to keep his invention alive long past its era, there would simply be too many ways to kill it as time progressed. Same with tanks. There are Helicopters, Ground Attack Planes, Missiles, and yes, Rocket Launchers, all meant to kill tanks as they became a problem over the years.

Most of these modern weaknesses carried over into DUST. Even though you can pimp out your tank with some insane HP, there will still be a means to kill it. Since noobs cant be forced to train Swarm Launchers as their first skill, they have to be given some cheap way to kill tanks. And Forge Guns? Hypersonic pieces of metal being shot from a rather sizable weapon? Hell I don't mind those at all. This is EVE, the technology makes sense.

But screw AV Grenades. For real. I want to backhand the idiot who conceived that idea.

I laugh at militia swarms.. just sayin

why SHOULD it take a team effort to destroy, if it does NOT take a team effort to operate? come back when HAVs operate with gunner, driver, and loader seats.

Did you try Teamwork? Did you try using a Methana with Remote Repairers? No?

Did you try Teamwork? Did you try using a Methana with Remote Repairers? No?

2 militia swarm launchers are enough to make any vehicle run for cover no matter how well tanked.

I'm not sure what i'm doing wrong then. I've skilled to L4 with swarms and I've fitted 3 complex damage modifiers. I had a good spot and hit a magruder 6 or 7 times before he ran off for 10 seconds to charge back up. It didn't put a dent in him.

I think it's complete BS. At one point there were 3 other guys with swarms near me. We didn't pop one tank.

Sometimes it starts glitching and you can't get the thing to lock.

If they don't get more powerful I may not play any longer. The math doesn't add up. They should pop sooner.

I feel like I've wasted a ton of SP of a POS weapon.

I'm not sure what i'm doing wrong then. I've skilled to L4 with swarms and I've fitted 3 complex damage modifiers. I had a good spot and hit a magruder 6 or 7 times before he ran off for 10 seconds to charge back up. It didn't put a dent in him.

I think it's complete BS. At one point there were 3 other guys with swarms near me. We didn't pop one tank.

Sometimes it starts glitching and you can't get the thing to lock.

If they don't get more powerful I may not play any longer. The math doesn't add up. They should pop sooner.

I feel like I've wasted a ton of SP of a POS weapon.

I'm guessing they were running multiple armor hardeners at the same time.

My ideal balance to the most powerful tanks in the game should be countered with the most powerful av weapons and skills in the game. Meaning a group of 3 ppl (since the tank is 3 ppl), all with 5 in swarms, 5 in specialized swarms, along with 5 in light sharpshooting and 5 in specialized sharpshooting. All using proto swarms and dmg modifiers. However, if your grp of 3 ppl doesn't have this, then you can make it up with adding more ppl to a full squad. Then there is wether its a sheild tank or armor tank because it matters wether your swarms or forge.

I have as of yet to run into a tank where I thought that even with a full squad, just using standard weapons, would not pop a tank, but boy i'd love it if I was wrong because in time, they will be everywhere and I can complain about giving me back my dumbfire, greater range for forges, gripe about the first swarm skill being virtually pointless, and lots of things.

I was prepared to skill into Swarm Launcher proficiency, but the results I've got so far make me believe I'll just get pissed and quit a battle if a few decent tanks come into the fold.

I do understand that some of my issue is that half the blue dots on my team were probably in a corner waiting for someone to round it so they could get an easy kill.

I consider the first swarm skill to be pointless because it deals with blast radius, something that was left over from many many builds ago. The current blast radius is 1m, at skill 5 it should be 1.25m. Thats so small, you wont even notice, and the splash dmg you get from that is 15dmg per missile. The only time you may ever see anything from this skill is when you kill a lav and the driver jumps out just before it. Although, I say it's the lav expoding that kills the running driver and not the splash dmg, but others say otherwise. This skill doesn't directly effect how well you use your swarms. The only thing it does is allow you to use a better swarm launcher. Only the proficiency skill will increase how well you use a swarm launcher. However, its only a 15% dmg increase, so if you don't like the role, then you've already done enough skilling into it to be useful to other av ppl when a tank comes around.

If it's possible to run multiple armor hardeners at the same time so that you can sit in the middle of the battlefield while people fire volleys of AV at you, why is the OP complaining?

Are tanks limited the way ships in eve are with capacitors? I don't believe so. To me it seems extremely out of balance in favor of tanks. Although I'd probably not bring out a tank until it was beast mode. They are expensive and require a ton of training, but you should still be able to pop them.

Tanks should have to stay at a distance. If they choose to stick their noses in the middle of the fight it should be risky.