Upcoming Tank and Liberator Changes

Doesn't excuse sub-standard solutions.
What do we have at the moment?
- Aircraft have the highest firepower (going by vehicles).
- Single AA is close to worthless.
- However AA reaches a saturatuion point where 'currently' air gets extremely marginalised in big fights.
This should hardly need to be contested as that's how things are. Even the most staunch air enthusiast should be able to agree.
However...
Tanks, being slower, less mobile and sporting less firepower than air, why do we have tanks? At the moment they exist at the grace of AA, it's main raison d'etre being to fight -itself-.
Libs and ESFs fight eachother, and pretty much everything else in the game.

How did we get here? Air firepower being too strong -> strong AA (when massed) -> broken used to fight broken.
In the end it all hails back to the difference in firepower favouring the highly mobile, rather than the slow and not-as-mobile.

Quote combined arms all you want. If the situation between ground and air was reversed do you think pilots would just be content with being told to accept it? Wouldn't happen.

They do too much.
And I'm still waiting for some sky knights/whales to tell me why air needs the advantage of firepower that doesn't just come back to "because AA is so strong we only have a limited time to do damage".
That's old news, and points to several problems, AA being one of them.

Are you making excuses?
Because to me it seems like you're comparing your average NC zergling in a stock Vanguard to Peter2 (+his gunner), saying they're one and the same.
I'm sure he'd like to debate that point with you.

Is the skill floor higher for air than for tanks? Sure.
Is the skill ceiling higher? No, I don't think so.

As for rewards, let's compare the best MBT Farming gun, the P2-120 HE.
This is the only MBT gun that beats the shredder at -any- scoring metric about kills, meanwhile the same gun (shredder) beats all the AP and HEAT guns for vehicle (and infantry) kills. It also beats the VPC and Titan HE.

Also, the Tankbuster is about even with the prowler Halberd on vehicle kills when I looked them up on DA half a week ago.
I found that interesting.

Uh no? The shredder was already better than the dalton before that change. What it did was to make people aware of how good the shredder actually is.

The shredder alone outperforms all tankguns at all roles except the P2 HE at AI.

If you're going to ignore those metrics, then how can you claim the ground weapons are the thing to go for if you want to farm infantry?

Wouldn't you?
Dying without any chance of fighting back sucks. And if you can avoid having those situations in the game, it will benefit from it.

While more has to be done after these changes comes into play, it's been needed for a long time.
If you want, I can hop on the ps2pickup ts and discuss it at length.

That pretty much nails it in a nutshell.

- Reducing the armor to pre-buff levels means that a low-flying Lib that is trying to tank-bust something is vulnerable to rockets / tank shells. That adds a bit more risk to the risk-reward of trying to TBust something (which is not easy).

- Cutting the ammo in half is a needed change. I think that applies to more then just Libs, but also MBTs/Lightnings/Sunderers. The gap between minimal certs and maximal certs for ammo capacity should not be as large as it currently is. With minimal certs, you should be almost chained to an ammo tower / ammo sunderer, with maximal certs you should be on a looser tether, but you're still going to have to go feed after 2-3 minutes of constant shelling.

- Shredder damage is... eh. Maybe it needs a slightly wider CoF.

- Liberator sound change is definitely needed. Right now, they're almost impossible to hear past 50m. When I do spot a lib by audio, it's because I can hear the Shredder / Dalton / Zephyr / Tank Buster sounds.

When did lockdown add resistance to Anti-tank weapon, cheaper resource cost and harasser speed? Even a fully certed lockdown prowler with a AP cannon can't match a Tankbuster for who gets gibbed first. Plus the main cannon can't aim up high enough to hit most air targets. You have to put yourself on the angle of some hill and even that only gives you a extremely limited angle of fire.

Which doesn't even start to consider the Magrider (or vanguard, I guess) and it's rather lacking gun elevation and velocity.

Lockdown needs to at least maintain its current velocity and gravity to remain viable.
Magriders need a major increase in strafe speed (especially with rival) ideally, it should be able to travel at its maximum speed in any of eight directions.
Liberator weapon changes look good, especially TB. Tank round damage could possibly find a happier middle ground (I think AP should be closer to old values and HEAT/HE closer to current ones).

To clarify, proposed changes means nothing is finalized beyond the fact changes will be happening. The rolling out in stages is to assure folks we aren't going to flip and switch and change up tanks and Liberators all at once.

The "why" really is more a question for the team making specific changes. There is a balance issue, which we can debate I'm sure, however at the end of the day this is what these guys do for a living and they make these decisions in the best interest of the game (which I'm sure could also be debated).

The feedback we are getting is great and being read. Just continue along the path you are on.

We'll provide an update to the changes once the team has come to some type of consensus. E3 threw things off this week.

As for a review, I've read every single post in this thread including a few dozen removed for forum guideline violations. It's super broad and a little hard to quantify but I'm confident I have player sentiment on the changes.

Ya got that right

Nothing you guys do here is going to make "the majority" Happy. So just be consistent instead. (not N.G.E. consistent tho)

You know, there's always that other part of the forum that's only about vehicles.
This is the kind of thing it's there for, no?

Tanks will be to hard to hit by dumbfire rockets thanks to stabilization. Tank berserkers incoming
What about to apply stabilization only for tank moving at half of its max speed . Maybe add some speed control.

Same speed to reverse and forward movement is rather strange and very arcade course.
Buff yes but same speed? Maybe with maxed rival.

That's why we are seeing mergingside 2 with some servers. Too empty.

Ta-daa!



Seriously though... please give Lightnings the "everything buster" gun that the Liberators get. I don't even want their "more HP than MBTs" feature!

Please?

Yep, the predicted "We are rolling head anyway despite all the player feedback being unanimously no to Tank velocity changes." One more nail in the coffin that is PS2 vehicle gameplay and the hilarity is you somehow still think things are improving...


Rather than fix the actual issue of a toothache you are smashing the patient's legs with an aluminum baseball bat. That's essentially how you devs operate when you don't listen to the constructive feedback.

It's happened repeatedly over the life of the game and shows no sign of stopping. So we are now left with entire categories of weapons / gear which actually aren't worth using and will likely never get any attention.

VS tankers complain that their main gun feels like launching a sack of potatoes from a catapult.

NC and TR tankers agree that tank guns in general could use a little more pep to them.

SOE nerfs NC and TR tanks so that they also feel like launching a sack of potatoes from a catapult.

Welcome to PS2 balance.

What's that you say? The only way MBT's actually function is in an armor zerg or behind an infantry zerg? What do you call something that needs to hide because cheap spammable AV is everywhere? Well, you wouldn't call it a tank to be sure...

Actually, the change to the drop is the more substantial change as far as the shells are concerned.
If it's going from 4 to 5 on the Supernova PC (which they're basing the balances on) that's 25% more drop.
For the TitanAP, which lose the most velocity of all tank guns excluding anchor prowler, that's around 35 or so % more drop.
Besides, both the prowler and vanguard will have higher velocities than the Mag has today, so you should be able to manage that if it was only a velocity change.

Oh right, I forgot to add "then they give everyone smaller catapults to screw over the VS even more".

I guess the one bright side for VS is that now they'll be even harder to hit due to slower guns and faster diagonal movement.

Levels 1-5 need to fix bases and drive around with other people in tanks and aircraft and get points for that so they learn. They need to learn how to shoot and what to do. They need points to buy stuff. Levels 1-5 should have a guide me symbol abover there head all the time.

Yes we could discuss this in length at ps2pickup.
This game is combined arms.
If the situation was reversed then air dominance would be pointless and 1/3rd of the game would be out of balance with the concept of combined arms that this game is based around (ww2).
Air dominance / support is universally accepted as the strongest asset.
Air has firepower, mobility and durability because it is supposed to or the whole concept of modern warfare / combined arms falls apart.


Granted the interplay between AA could be better. We need more alternatives to burster, base turrets, lock on launcher and skyguard.

As for making excuses. Yes I will compare the average MBT peasant with the top MBT peasants. IT is merely a point of accessibility. The installed userbase for MBT's is quite a deal larger than Liberators despite the shredder being "so good".

Thanks for outlining parts of your post in red.

Air is the strongest asset in the game. But should it be?
I don't think it should, but rather that it should be one out of many (two to start with).

As far as I'm concerned something being a bit harder to get into doesn't justify it being flat out superior.