Tankers do not want to farm infantry.

Okay, so I've been browsing threads recently and I keep coming across continuous bashing of people who drive tanks.

I took out names because I don't call people out, this post isn't about the authors of the quoted posts.

I'm not sure where the idea that all any tank ever wants to do is farm infantry, but I'm gong to make an effort at combating that idea. I happen to like lists, so I shall list my arguments and reasoning.

1) The majority of dedicated tankers use the AP main cannon on their vehicles. For the unaware, that's the one that has almost no splash. It's not an anti-infantry weapon. Trying to hit a foot soldier with an AP round in the middle of a fight is like trying to hit an ant with a dart. From 50 meters away. While playing dodgeball. It's not my favorite thing to do. If I wanted to farm infantry, I'd use the HE main gun, which has a lot more splash, replacing the dart with a golf ball.

2) Tanks kill a lot of infantry because a lot of infantry can kill tanks. If there were one or two classes in the game that were dedicated AV classes, you wouldn't see tanks firing at infantry. They would ignore infantry in favor of higher-priority targets, like other tanks. I, for one, am very likely to let an Infiltrator live. He can't hurt me. If your Medic didn't have he possibility of insta-gibbing my tank, I'd ignore him, too.

3) Farming infantry is crap certs. Really. Killing a 1/2 tank right off the pad is worth 700 XP for an MBT thanks to the Tank Superiority Bonus. If it's 2/2, that's suddenly 800. Start giving the driver and gunner kills, take them up to Extreme Menace, and you suddenly have a single tank kill worth 1,300 XP. That's 13 infantry kills. It doesn't take 13 shots to kill a tank, meaning the driver is making more certs per hour killing vehicles than he is killing infantry.

So we come to the roots of the problem. Tanks are killing infantry for two easily-correctable reasons.

1) They're bored. There are no tanks around to shoot.

2) Self defense. Any one of those guys could have killed me, I had to make sure every single on of them died.

To correct the "bored" we simply give armor a tactical goal, like a special facility to capture. To correct the "self defense" we tone down infantry-based AV weapons. It's the perfect time for this, infantry now have beautiful new bases to protect them from tanks. Tanks should get some protection from infantry.

Interesting read, but it doesn't explain all of the tanks and other vehicles that position themselves to specifically spawn camp. You might be one of the few tankers that doesn't spawn camp, but then base walls shouldn't bother you then. There were vehicles all over the place outside of Esamir bases tonight. Fight them... please, especially if you're on my team, because I'll have to cross that expanse between vases soon.

Seems legit

I'm afraid that you're only mostly correct. I would say that most players will seek out opportunities to kill other players whenever possible. Your points are very valid, however, and I don't wish to take away from that. I would change the statement to be 'Tankers do not want to be useless and value worth however that may be taken'.

To elucidate: a tank is generally accepted as a force multiplier. That means it gives you more push when it comes to shove. That's what it's for. Ultimately, it's infantry that get the job done, so killing them is an effective means to be useful. Now that K/D has basically been killed, anyone seeking to pad their ****** and ratio is really playing the wrong game. Oh, sure, it's a great feeling when you're soaring on that killstreak, but offer some easier method of gaining certs and it's generally taken instead. Infantry just happen to repawn forever, whereas vehicles don't.

Vehicle spam, as we know it, is not going to be fixed in Planetside 2. How could it possibly? You can't 'fix' it without creating so much depth that it'd hamper the game (fuel, supply lines, maintenance, etc.). There are a large amount of players. There can be as many tanks on a whim, and zergs have a way of gaining momentum.

The better solution is to provide those tools to eliminate the armor in a proper threat ratio, which is slowly being done. ESL, and other AV, is narrowing that gap quite quickly. The next step is to make being a good tanker a choice and style, rather then simply something that can be done on a whim.

We might have to return to vehicles requiring certification to be spawned at all, perhaps. Give some common pools that can always be grabbed and then force more diversity. Otherwise, that disparity will always be there. A tank is hard to kill, infantry isn't. The infantry will always feel 'unfair' because the tank is hard to kill.

#2 is closest to the truth. A lot of tankers want to ignore infantry and god forbid they fit an AI turret instead of an AV turret that'll let them farm other vehicles easier or proximity radar if they plan on driving into close terrain,

I'd be surprised if the majority of tankers in the game are dedicated though, which still means there are an awful lot of HEAT tanks containing drivers more than happy to farm infantry for the certs. I see a lot of tanks firing into towers and spawn rooms. Whether they do this because they are bored is debatable. Part of the reason people spawn camp may be because it's something to do while to base flips, another part is that it's a simple way of cutting off the threat at the source.

I agree with your entire post, but this is the thing that stands out to me. With the vast changes to esamir recently, being a tanker feels significantly more worthless than before. Now that there is a flat separation between infantry and vehicles, why bother pulling a tank? Tanking for the sake of killing other tanks is a worthless job, because at that point you might as well remove the tanks altogether. I want to participate in all aspects of the fight, not just use my tank as an armored taxi to get to the next base, I want to have something to do when I get there, not just stare at the road in case a tank or two happens to come into the area. And no, participating does not mean spawn camping, I'd like to be able to shoot enemies in other parts of the base, actually help my infantry advance like tanks are meant to do. I play tanker to support infantry pushes, especially considering how hesitant most other players are to advance into a base. If I cannot support them and help them push into a base, what good is a tank, other than sundy busting?

Your argument is wrong from the start. The majority of tank drivers use HEAT or HE, actually. In fact, I think AP are actually some of the least used tank weapons in the game.

http://www.planetside-intel.com/data/

But dedicated tankers are far out weighed but other users .. While you are happy to run AP .. The other 90% , the un-dedicated tankers are rolling HE and sat outside spawn rooms.

That's certainly why people unlocked more HE turrets than AP ones.

The majority are not dedicated tankers, though this is partially due to the "everyone can have everything" cert system, instead of requiring people to specialize. That is one of the big things I am looking forward to for the resource revamp, it will truly force people to specialize because you won't have enough resources to constantly pull maxes AND tanks AND air back to back to back.

Yes, yes we do. That said, the recent changes to esamir are fantastic.

Just a random comment, I once got headshotted by a Vanguard AP round. Laughed pretty hard at that and congratulated the driver for the nice shot. (I wasn't moving, but I was pretty damn far away. I saw it coming, too.)

Anyways, as a pilot I can relate to this. I admit, I have rocket pods equipped, but I don't like sitting around a spawn point waiting. Especially due to the damage the dumbfire launchers do. I will fly around, blasting any infantry I see until either we had to fall back, or we surrounded the spawn. Then I would fly, find something else to do, and try to make it back to get the capture bonus.

Hell, tank drivers don't have that liberty of being able to fly off and find something else to do.

I do not doubt there are tank drivers that fit all the characteristics that you mentioned, But then there are the other ones...Who only have an interest in farming infantry. Before the base redesigns they spent their time on a hilltop far away and spammed bases/spawn rooms with little or no interest in enemy tanks, This still occurs even with some of the redesigned bases.
They would find spots where they were out of lock on range and could easily pull back and repair anytime they took damage, The only effective way to take them out was to spend a long time trying to circle round the enemy and take them out with C4 which isn't the easiest thing to do.

I get what you are saying but from my own experiences there are far more tank drivers like that than there are that share your point of view. I wish that wasn't the case but between that and the popularity of tank zergs overwhelming bases you can see where people get the idea that tanks just want to farm infantry for easy kills. I hope SOE can come up with a solution at some point that will keep tanks and infantry viable and happy.

Yeah right, people are playing this game for honor, not for certs and killing people. Every tank driver is like you and you are the mayor of tanktown.

And yeah, tanks shoot infantry because they are totally bored! How could I not see this! It's not the pling pling pling sound after each kill, it's because there are no other challenges! They totally wouldn't shoot at infantry but instead taking them for dinner if there were only bloody tanks around!!!

There's a cool game for you, called World Of Tanks. It's only about tanks... You can't shoot infantry there because you never get bored shooting other tanks!!!! And there isn't even infantry!!! I SAVED YOUR LIFE!!!

This post is so full of... I can't... even....

Speak for yourself. I have a lightning with an upgraded viper cannon specifically built for taking out infantry. Yea, it does ok against other lightnings and harassers (without composite armor), but when I see MBTs, I run.

a lot of us would love more dedicated tank versus tank battles. in reality MBTs are inferior point earners for vehicle kills in general. they're easy targets for harassers, AV turrets, lockons, liberators, C4, etc. not to mention trying to dodge rockets and other enemy vehicles in combat.

sure you can get a nice fat amount of certs for killing an enemy MBT. but only if you're lucky enough to kill it before all your zergmates do.

and god forbid you stray away from your allied zerg and try to hunt for some clever kills on your own. you drive a big, slow vehicle that sticks out like a sore thumb in a game full of hard anti-vehicle counters.

infantry farming with your zerg is boring but much safer and more lucrative in the long run. that's why people do it. and basically, anything an MBT can do, a harasser can do better, faster, and with much less risk.

So why complain about walls at all then? There's no vehicles to kill beyond the wall.

Sure, and lolpod ESFs want to fight other ESFs and tanks.