[Suggestion] Stop balancing every aspect of this game towards infantry.

This community and SOE has a serious issue when it comes to any sort of weapon or vehicle that is actually effective at an anti-infantry role, and thus the inevitable result of an effective AI weapon is that it gets nerfed into the ground. Why? Why shouldn't you be torn to pieces by an armored vehicle specifically designed to kill soft targets? Seriously, this is a combined arms game, and because of the incessant whining whenever something kills you, you have successfully turned every aspect of combat in this game into a compartmentalized mess. Vehicles are now pretty much only effective at engaging other vehicles, the air game is and has pretty much been its own thing for awhile now, really its starting to feel as though vehicles are only left in to give infantry something bigger to shoot at.Hell I even see people complaining that MAX suits need to be easier to kill... ******* ridiculous. I main TR, and I am pissed that the ppa got nerfed. It didn't need it. Technical issues aside this is what will ruin this game. Just because something kills you doesn't mean it's OP. And believe it or not you as an infantry player should die to an AI tank Quickly and harshly. As it stands now HE shells are pathetic and require a near direct hit, splash damage in this game is laughable. I get why its been nerfed, vehicle spam with effective AI weapons lead to a farm.... okay? Fix the root problem then, make it so players cant spam vehicles. There are solutions but this constant nerfing is not one of them!

Wall-of-text aside, even as a frequent vehicle user I approve of reducing the effective range of both sides of infantry vs. vehicle vs. infantry, due to render range. Unless infantry are going to render from a reasonable distance, weapons interacting with them should have effective range that's well inside render range.

But even with the PPA's effective range reduced, vehicles completely stomp infantry outdoors. It's not even a contest.

It's extreme enough that I wish the death screen did a better job helping new players understand that they lost because they were infantry, because I send so many players to that screen that it makes me a little sad to think how many of those players probably quit because they don't understand the mistake they've made (being infantry outdoors.) I want those players to enjoy the game and play competitively, not to simply allow themselves to repeatedly be crushed by me.

The real problem: People's Ego's

This is the one constant I have noticed in this game. Especially in these threads

Well, to be fair, vehicles SHOULD be completely stomping infantry outdoors. They are meant to give an advantage over infantry, but are fewer in numbers when compared to them.

The whole area around Indar X is a great example of this already.

prow ap is op aginst inf. Nerf it ot make it shot both barels same time

nice try, but i heard, that Banshee will be nerfed

I agree that HE shells are pathetic.

Yes, they should stomp infantry. But not really because they're "rare". The rarity of vehicles is mostly just how badly a faction is playing.

Vehicles should stomp infantry because otherwise infantry just footzerg everywhere and there would be no purpose to vehicles. It creates a rhythm to PS2 combat: when indoors you use infantry and when outdoors vehicles.

That's a simplification though since it's actually a bit more nuanced:

• When the last base fight ends, assuming pop is generally equal the team which fields more vehicles is going to win the overland portion of the fight.
• This attacking team will then set up several sunderers at the next base, and will need to field infantry to actually capture the base.
• The defending team shouldn't automatically field infantry to counter. If more than ~4 mins remain on the capture timer, they should actually field more vehicles, because they need to kill attacking sunderers and vehicles are nearly always the best way to achieve that objective. (Once those sundies die, the attack fizzles harmlessly.) Only when capture is imminent (<4 mins) should defending players be infantry to try to clear points to buy more time for their vehicle players to kill sunderers.
• When done right, this actually creates a tricky balance for the attacking team to field the right amount of vehicles (to defend their sunderer and suppress spawns) and infantry (to hold points.) But unfortunately it also means bases tend to be fundamentally defender-biased.

So generally speaking, the rarity of vehicles is just players playing badly. It's not actually a balancing mechanism, but simply players failing to properly use the nanites they're given.

Tell that to a squad or two of people holding Lancers, Phoenix, AV Mana turrets, Ravens, Vortexs, Annihilators, ES-lock-ons, ect. It's also VERY easy to c4 vehicles, even vehicles in the open field, outdoors, if you know what your doing.

Infantry have the ability to EASILY DOMINATE vehicles, and I see it on a daily basis.

The problem you are describing is that a large portion of the playerbase is clueless, lonewolfing, or simply bad and will let themselves get farmed. Good players and organized players don't let this happen to themselves.

Problem is, 1/2 tanks can be pulled by ANYONE, and that means that you can get 50 tanks and 50 infantry: What happens then?

Infantry "need" to be able to defend themsleves against an equal number of vehicles, but there are often enoug hinfanry to roflstomp any opposition: In games like BF, vehicle spawns are limited, which makes vehicles easier to balance; In PS2 it may even be impossible to find the perfect solution.

Yup, HE shells lost all of their power around June/July.. when they were nerfed even more than they were nerfed in April...
This is one HIGH EXPLOSIVE round that has hardly any explosion ..
All because of the whining of infantry players that want to get closer to vehicles, so they an blow up said vehicle with a tiny puny little stick of C-4.. the irony...

One of my 3 biggest problems with this game is the lack of combined arms. Instead of striving to intertwine air, armor, and infantry together, SOE keeps trying to separate and remove any interaction with each other except with infantry killing the other 2 with c4, tank mines, lock ons, etc.

Here I am again to say that all they need to do is buff infantry time to kill.
Then they can stop trying to jack-of-all-trades everything.

Ex. Infantry is infantry it should not be extremely effective versus air or tanks or even moderately effective except in cases where the vehicles get much too close. Meanwhile a heavy tank is an heavy tank it should be anti-ground vehicle and at range it should not fear infantry......meanwhile the lightning is flexible as a light tank it should be AA/AI/Anit-light-armor/WEAK Anti-tank.......Light Armor is mobile transport with SOME defense and resistance to infantry.....MAX units are super infantry like a small lightning......Air is a threat to heavy armor and to some extent crowds of anything(remove hover, you want a fighter get a fighter, you want a bomber get a bomber!)

So we've nerfed infantry's anti-vehicle ability and buffed everything else......and infantry can still be happy because we'll turn up the time to kill on it to prevent the rage we've all experienced by being blapped too easily.

It's easy to claim we need more intertwining of air, armor, and infantry in the abstract, but that's as helpful as saying "SOE needs to make the game better." What specifically would you suggest?

Vehicles are too easy to use and are able to be chain pulled so you can't make them as powerful as you would like. People already try to live in vehicles or use them to perform better when they're doing badly. You shouldn't have the ability to just use some unit and dominate others. You also can't really hide from vehicles when outside and when you add in the spotting mechanics in video games you have a recipe for horrible balancing.

The only thing required to make vehicles work in PS2 is a brain. It is easy to go on nice streaks in ANY vehicle if you try. I see most vehicles dying horribly because people use them like power ups and don't exercise caution or give their opponents the respect they deserve. Know your limitations, meaning if you know players can carry C4 then don't sit on the side of walls, buildings or hills/cliffs and watch the skies for LAs. Vehicles have the advantage of keeping range yet so many fail to do so and complain about infantry. The engineer turret was and always will be the only thing that truly breaks the balance of infantry vs vehicles imo...

Also, the whining comes from BOTH sides. OP this is a whine thread. Try to remember that balancing can also be applied to player's entertainment vs getting rekt non stop.

An equal number of equally-organized vehicles will dominate that position.

The last Lancer nest I encountered killed me once in my slow-moving ground vehicle (the nastiest lancer nest place too: that plateau near Crossroads Watchtower.) Then I pulled Airhammer Reaver and proceeded to pick them apart, and with 3-4 random teammates helping (and the other ~10 in the area not helping, but indirectly helping because the enemy would shoot at them as a distraction) we cleared the peak.

In a more organized outfit/squad such a location of ~8 infantry with beacon is pretty easily smashed by a couple AI ESFs, zephyr lib, and maybe a 2-man galaxy to run in first and distract. In that Crossroads peak fight, a lot of it was actually that we had one badass in an AI MAX drop up there and clear the beacon (we only had like 3 total ESFs pressuring the place including me.)

They weren't exactly the most dangerous outfit, but I definitely feel that it's possible to wipe lancer nests (and their variants) with fewer numbers of players in aircraft.

Take down the walls. Allow vehicles/tanks areas to move through and around in while still allowing places for infantry to take cover from and set traps/fire rockets. Have most bases deceptively open to air attack, vague yes, but I would want something to where air support is something that ground troops love (think the ending of saving private ryan) but that tanks and infantry have cover and can still defend against it.
Just my rough ideas.

Vehicles are made of paper, the only tank that is remotely tanky is the vanguard with its shield up. Vehicles are not easy to use and most have a very high skill ceiling. Vehicles need buffs and more combined arms, right now vehicles are a complete after thought.

ground vehicles are defiantly easy to use and provide you with an instant boost in performance if you dont just try to run into a battle with them. the problem at the moment is ANYONE can just jump into one of these vehicles at moments notice and gain the boost when it comes to more open combat. this results in their power being toned down a little, but they are still a boost.