A large part of the vehicle balance problem stems from two points:

1) Vehicles compete one on one with infantry for the same mission, killing infantry.
2) Individual pilots have to foot the bill for their vehicles.

Vehicles should have missions that infantry can't handle. They should complement infantry rather than compete directly with infantry. CCP had some sense of this in a very early Fanfest video where they used two HAVs to break through a choke point on the old Skirmish 1.0 map. The idea being you use the expensive stuff when you have a tough problem that infantry can't handle.

As it is there's no need to drop a vehicle to get the job done, it's just a preference. When that is true you find that you have to balance the vehicle against infantry in the same mission. That naturally neuters the vehicle's potential, turning them into very expensive drop suits. You can't make them as powerful as they should be or they take over the only mission in the game and infantry may as well go home.

Modern armed forces don't force soldiers to purchase their own equipment. Fielding an expensive asset is a command decision made to get a particular mission accomplished, and the expense is borne by the organization as a whole. If infantry and vehicles are balanced in the same mission the vehicle will be a huge ISK sink that will bankrupt the pilot.

Combined, these two points generate endless debate between pilots and infantry. Each side is right and the fix cannot be found in a fruitless attempt to balance vehicles and infantry in the same mission. Vehicles need missions that complement infantry, not compete directly with them.

First off, this is a game where players can run their preferred play style. Vehicles and infantry can, and do, coexist in the game. The LAV is only effective as a fast transport and a hit and run vehicle. The HAV runs the gamut of anti infantry blaster, AV rail, and general purpose missile. DS are fast transport (Anti Infantry/DS for the assault variant).

Second, we're not an organized armed force. We're individual mercenaries that can choose to team or squad up with corps, squad up with blueberries, or go squadless. We pick and choose all of our gear and can completely customize our fits. No government or corporate backed army in the world gives this kind of latitude to it's soldiers. This is why we get paid and why we have to buy our own gear.

Consider this. If your character was an armed forces soldier backed by a corp/govt, you'd only be running standardized suits and vehicles with no option to change any fittings and you'd be getting maybe a couple thousand ISK per battle if you were a highly ranked officer.

I'm not suggesting that individual pilots should have to get equipped by a corp, merely that the practice of byov is a problem for balance.

As long as a pilot can solo his vehicle it's the logical equivalent of a super proto suit. It's very capable and very expensive. The problem is that if you make it as capable as the ISK cost suggests it should be it's far too good at slaughtering infantry. So it's either an ISK sink or the source of constant nerf calls.

If we were funded by a government, we would all have standard or mlt gear. lol.