Turn the Harasser into a heavy-weapons platform.

So... the Harasser.

What is this vehicle *actually* used for besides screwing around and trying to leap walls?

Let's look at the basics of it:

- It's pretty quick.
- It's about as durable as a card table.
- It is armed with one weapon, controlled by a gunner.
- It's armament is limited to what are effectively 'secondary' weapons.
- It costs 300 resources - 50 less than an ESF, 50 fewer than a Liberator, same as a Lightning.

While conceivably it could be used to attack, the reality has two problems: the first is that the gunner position isn't stabilized, the second is that the Harasser is so fragile that just about a single hit from anything anti-vehicular forces it out of the fight. A third problem, overshadowed by the first two, is that the weaponry is by-and-large too weak and useless. The Harasser isn't a combat vehicle by any stretch of the imagination any more than a Flash is.

Personally I just use it as a taxi and nothing more. It is harder to flip than a Flash, it's more fun to drive, and I can carry two other dudes. That's about it. I have *never* come across a situation where the solution was 'We need more harassers'. Ever.

What I would like this game to have is a second-line support vehicle. The closest you can get to that is a Skyguard, but the Skyguard is just one weapon for one chassis, a chassis that is still more classically used as armor, albeit weaker armor. Interestingly, the Harasser has the same pricetag as the Lightning, but it has far, far less use. It also is priced more than an ESF and yet lacks the speed and killing power of those, and is slightly cheaper than a Liberator - which is a formidable combat vehicle. But like the Liberator, the Harasser's main weaponry is out of control of the driver.

While the best solution would be to have a dedicated vehicle to this task, I find myself wondering why the Harasser couldn't fill that role. The concept is pretty simple: Instead of these watered-down secondary weapons, equip the Harasser with high-powered support weaponry. Stuff that does a lot of damage, but is difficult to use in a stand-up fight due to your terrible armor. The Harasser would be designed to park at the edge of a battle behind the armor line and provide fire support, or as a flexible platform to fill roles that we currently don't have.

The vehicle will probably merit an increase in acquisition timers. The tradeoff for many of these weapons should be a serious lack of onboard ammunition, and ammunition should refill exceptionally slowly.

Essentially the vehicle should be turned into PS2s' version of the HMMWV - a light weapons platform that can be outfitted to fill a huge variety of roles. Examples:

- An infantry-shredding cannon that does very little against armor. Basically a supercharged shredder minigun with lighter ammo. Example.

- An ATGM. Basically a vehicle-mounted MANA turret, with a bit more power. Highly limited ammunition, slow reload rate, cannot be reloaded until missile in-flight has detonated. Example.

- A SAM launcher, carrying no weapons besides a handful of high-powered anti-aircraft missiles. Extremely limited ammo. Example.

- A mortar launcher. Ammo-limited with a heat gauge, a highly inaccurate but short-ranged indirect fire piece. Only arms the projectile after about 50m of travel is achieved, is limited to aiming upwards, cannot fire if the vehicle is angled too steeply. Example.

Otherwise, there's no justification for the Harasser being designed how it is, at the pricepoint it is.

The Harasser is a transport vehicle, not long range artillery and the devs have already said that they aint going to make/introduce long range artillery into the game, since ppl already are tried of dying to ppl/vehicles sitting +500 meters away.

What the Harasser needs is a resource reduction, i would say to around 150.

Also what I don't like about the harasser is the rumble seat at the back and how it functions. It would be awesome if the rider can stand up and face 360 degrees including the front and shoot their gun at whatever. Also that seat is huge it could probably fit 2 infantry on there side by side. That current rumble seat which you can only face backwards while crouching is very odd to me and is not a very good design for a combat vehicle.

Short-ranged. As in, you can fire it from outside the walls to land shots inside. It's more or less a Bulldog that cannot aim down, but has much more gravity.

Also who cares what the devs think, what do they know about making a game fun? The 'people might be upset about dying!' attitude is why so much **** in this game is so dumbed-down and hypernerfed. Pandering to the lowest common denominator players isn't going to grow interest in this game or bring old players back.

Why don´t the weapons do the same damage as the ones on the other vehicles? I mean they are exact the same thing only the damage is less for some reason.

Yes and the lolpodders and zephyr spam of 2013 was totally skilled based and help the game lose around 50% pop. Just like the near endless range for the AV engi turret was a boon for skill vehicle play

A harasser isn't a transport vehicle. Don't know what the Q says that.

It's a light assault vehicle.

The sunder is a transport vehicle.

The secondary IS stabilized. What are you talking about?

Anyway, there are three problems with Harassers right now:

1.) The recent changes have altered Harasser physics in a way that makes maneuvering more difficult and flip-prone.
2.) The resource cost is too high.

The idea of a fast moving vehicle with solid firepower is a dangerous thing. It can easily be overpowered if it is able to harass (literally) without much fear. This is why the old Harasser was too strong. You could attack anything as much as you want and keep coming back. They couldn't chase you down, and they couldn't kill you in the period of time that you were attacking them. It was insanely broken and anyone with a brain can see why this wasn't fun or good game design. This is the kind of thing people stop playing games over: because it isn't really a game when you can't win and it isn't even fun.

Is it?

That's beyond dumb.

Yep. If they wanted a transport vehicle, give us a Deliverer. A stupid vehicle made of paper mache that can only hold 1/4 of a squad and needs to be abandoned once it gets to its destination in order to even facilitate *that* is not, in any way, a 'transport vehicle'.

Just allow the rumble seat passenger to have 360 view. Or at least face him forward, so he can actually do something useful. Same for Flash.

No offense OP, but you just need to practice with the harasser. You say the harasser has no roles and is not a combat vehicle, but are entirely wrong. I and many others who have put in the time to learn to drive and stay alive would disagree with you.

Is the harasser a tad to squishy? Yes. I think small arms and lock-ons should do a bit less damage(*cough *cough striker OP against harassers cough* cough*)

Are the resources to expensive? Yes. They should be reduced to maybe 200 or so.

Do the harassers need more effective weapons? Maybe. In the AI department, I would say yes. The fury-h and kobalt-h are sad sad sad to use after spending any time with them on a sundy or MBT. The AV weapons seem to be in a pretty good place IMO. The Halbred and ESAV weapons are all effective in their roles, which is not face rolling tanks, but harassing them, hit and running, being a straight up nuisance, and finishing off damaged tanks. Do people even use AA on harassers? If so someone more qualified in that department could speak up about AA weapons.

My problem with providing to many buffs to harassers is that I don't want them to be back where they were prenerf. The devs went a bit overboard on nerfing them, but have slowly starting giving them more utility to put then in a decent place. With a few tweaks, I think the harasser will be right where it was intended to be when released.

Adding deadly new weapons and buffing armor back to pre-nerf levels is not the way to go IMO.

would argue the harasser was at its best when it first came out. It was a fast agile hit and run attack vehicle. Its weapon options were powerful enough and a couple of harrasers could take apart a tank in seconds. Due to it's speed it was almost impossible to hit it. In fact it was to good. So good it got nerfed. Now it doesn't really have a role. If anything it should be buffed back to its hit and run skirmish role.

I will say it again, only those who refuse to learn and practice will say that the harasser has no role.

The harassers current role is hit and run. You guys keep dying because you are forgetting the "run" part.

The harasser is much like an ESF, useless and a quick way to die for newbies, scrubs, and those who refuse to learn to excell, very powerful for those who are experienced, skilled, and openminded to the changes it received.

Go play on Waterson and bring a MBT toe to toe with an [ECUS] harasser and I promise you will change your tune.

Harasser is in a good place from my perspective.
Just ask the guys on the MergerSmash who came out with teams of harassers and decimated the enemy.
It's like a lightning tank with a skyguard in a way, solo you can do deterrence and die easily, as a group you destroy the enemy.

You can be as pro in a harasser as you want but it always relies on your enemy if you survive. You can be pro at dodging but the enemy has to miss you for you to survive. The only way this is not the case if is you play peek a boo and are out of sight before he can turn his turret.

The harasser just needs to be able to survive one more. AP shell and a resource reduction and it will be perfect.

Imho the poor thing needs a slight armor buff against small arms.

I'd love to see it go back to what it was pre-nerf. Man those things were fun as hell. But let's be honest, that'll never happen due to Whinerside.

MOST people quite games because they are either to stupid, or entitled to learn how to deal with something or simply have fun. Just the other day, I was playing with a friend and we ran into a zerg of literally dozens of aircraft, most of them liberators (our force was less than 12). after having a blast by screwing around with them (since K/D doesnt matter ya know?), we decided we would just go ahead and mop them up. We pulled 2 skyguards, positioned ourselves strategically, and between the 2 of us knocked 5 liberators and 6 ESF's out of the sky, only to be displaced by a lighting, and 2 libs attacking us at the same time. Judging by the posts on these forums, and outsider would have no choice but to call me a liar for that story.

Bad mechanics NEVER drive out good players. BAD players leave over trivial issues that they lack the intellect to deal with. Good players leave when the game caters to the lowest form of gameplay.

Harassers problem has always been one, and only one problem; lack of AP vulnerability. Instead of giving the harasser a solid vulnerability to AP types of damage, the devs nerfed their damage output, survivability, and ease of use in one fell swoop. That took the Harasser from borderline OP, to useless in the hands of anyone but dedicated, and experienced drivers. the harasser needs a place, and a low cost transport is already covered. it needs a real place, and evidence of that is how rare they are in ANY part of the map (battlefield or otherwise)

I never had a problem with harassers, but thats because i have a horrible habit of landing my shots, playing intelligently, and accepting the consequences of my screwups, so maybe im just biased.

I'd just drop the price of Harassers to like 150 with the same timer as the Flash (instant to 5 minutes depending on certs).

I'd also drop the price of Flashes to like 50-75