[Vehicle] What do you think about the current Tank Meta?

I'm just gunna start this with a disclaimer; I'm mostly just going to ramble in this post, so take it with a grain of salt. I know you boys love salt

I generally find tanks to be boring. There's almost no diversity in what happens on the battlefield, its basically always just the same few loadouts slugging it out with AP rounds, and the mag is really the only tank that can take advantage of interesting terrain effectively. I personally think the tanks need a complete overhaul, or at least more viable options.

First and foremost, more diversity in the main cannons would be neat. Obviously they all have their own little quirks, but each tank gets to choose between anti infantry, anti tank, or being sub par in both criteria. Maybe something like the lancer for a magrider, make it charge up but have fast bullet velocity, or maybe a big version of the lasher, I guess not totally dissimilar from the A2G scythe gun. The prowler would be pretty badass if you could get a grown up version of the vulcan, and it has to brrrrrt like nothing has before, for fun of course, maybe a flamethrower for the gunner would be cool too. Hell maybe even a flamethrower for the primary. The vanguard is probably the blandest tank of all three in my opinion. Maybe something like an artillery shell would be cool for the vanguard, or an obligatory giant shotgun, or something that functions similarly to the railjack where it has a delay but has high velocity.

I would love to see the hover aspect explored further for the magrider, things like hovering over water, maybe an option for vertical thrusters, or MAYBE even a cloak with some major tradeoff. I know how people feel about cloaks.

The prowler I think needs to double down on the whole hunker down thing. I could be wrong but I feel like I never see people use that ability, and it seems like such a cool ability. I can't think of any specific changes though.

The vanguard.... I frown when I drive the vanguard. I don't know what would make the vanguard fun to drive. Maybe a second gunner seat that's limited to an hmg? I dunno but in my opinion driving the vanguard is boring.

Once again, these are just passing thoughts. Obviously the entire games balance would be altered if any of these changes were made, I just wish the tanks were more interesting.

Ok so while I like some of the idea's, you do have to equalize it between factions. You don't want players to say "there's a Vulcan+VULCAN Prowler hiding behind that rock, even with Vanguard shield you get melted before you can turn so we can't advance". Even worse is when the VULCAN Prowler activates its barrage ability... Better call it something like the Ripper as it will rip your enemies apart. That's why the VS and NC would need a CQC variant on their MBT's as well able to go up against this Ripper canon.

Ah, ok. I can get why you don't find Vanguards that threatening. And as for Liberator/Peacemaker, I can also see that due to its flying capacity, the lack of "potent" AA on a Sunderer, and the sheer damage output of the belly gun.

No, I was directly responding to you, and I did so (and am doing so) for most of the posts here. I'm pretty sure I misinterpreted part of your post, was some of it sarcasm then?
Also, I don't hear much complaining about Magriders. Heck, if there was any time it was gonna come up this thread would draw them in. So I don't see that sarcasm/metaphor/whatever it was being true at all.
Lastly, we've been over this. I don't agree with you that the Vanguard is the best MBT, I feel the stats support that, but if you think the Vanguard is best, that's fine and dandy.

Hmm. I'm down for more main cannons, as I've said, but a complete overhaul would probably be a bit much. Giving more main gun diversity would probably be enough to avoid having to perform major changes to abilities. I know a cloaked magrider of any kind would immediately be too powerful (see - the damn Wraith Flash).

I definitely agree. It would certainly need more thought than what I'd given my post, I was mostly just spouting off "top of my head" ideas to provide a sense of what I meant by variety and diversity. Balance should always come first, of course.

Fair enough, a complete overhaul might be overkill, but I do feel like the current meta needs more excitement. As I said in my reply to Demigan above, a lot of what I was rambling on about was mostly to illustrate the direction I'd like things to go, and less about pushing specific changes. I think some new unique main cannons would be a great place to start, and could very well be all that is needed to spice up tanking. As far as cloaking a magrider goes- forget I said that, putting the words together in my first post felt wrong to begin with.

I would be very happy if the gameplay of tanks was more varied: for example, the armor in the front withstands 90% damage, on the side -25% and in the back - 90%, so that the battles will become something of a maneuver. I'd love to see a rocket tank and rocket tower for Sander and others. Or you can have a large telemetry rocket like a phoenix (there are interesting mechanics). Incendiary ammunition can be added. In games specializing in tank battles, one of the foundations of the game mechanics is ricochets and non-penetration. You can give heavy tanks turrets that are impenetrable for lightning and machine guns. Reduce turret rotation speed for all heavy tanks. There are many things you can do to make the game deeper and more interesting. The main thing is to give all tanks clear roles, not versatility. It's like a tank holding a bridge or a road, but the tank is on the flank, and the tank is on the third line, etc. I would generally remove anti-personnel weapons from tanks, because there is a buggy, an ant, a sunder, a motorcycle, for which this role is more suitable. This will partially solve the problem when a crowd of tanks throw mines into the spawn room. And this will add to the tanks the need to bring support vehicles.

You make a thread about wanting peoples opinion on what tanks are over/under performing but you feel you have to make it clear that you dont agree that the Vanguard is the best MBT because the one statistic you do use puts it as under performing, while you dont seem to care about the number of unique user stats nearly as much even though imo they are far more indicative of if something is wrong or not as a high/low number of users often goes hand in hand with Overpowered/Underpowered.

Last Saturday, 17 Jul.
Combined there were(HEAT/AP/HESH):
770 unique Magrider main gun users
1209 unique Vanguard main gun users
1289 unique Prowler main gun users

Thats 36.3% less Magrider users than Vanguard users and 40.2% less Magrider users than Prowler users. This is not a special day, this is more or less how the stats are every day with around 30% less unique Magrider users. Perhaps thats why you dont see that many people complaining? Not that many of them around.

Looking at other stats the only thing the Vanguard seems to be behind the Magrider on are the KPU/Vehicle KPU stats while everything else the Vanguard looks to be performing better than the Magrider so what are the stats you are using? I see this argument being thrown around alot in these discussions but its usually a vague "its not performing as well as the others" but I cant really find any stats to support it so im curious what they are.

Though in comparison the Prowler stats blows away both the Vanguard and Magrider but I dont think thats surprising since its very well suited to the current tank meta of 'everyone for themselves' and is by far the best solo MBT pushing all the solo tanks much higher than the VS/NC equivalents. Their insane DPS is obviously also useful against everything, like Sunderers or whatever that isnt a fight to the death, while both Magriders and Vanguards 'abilities' are defensive and only really useful in the hard fights and does nothing for cutting through defenceless targets faster so them killing much more is as expected.

And how many players were on each faction at that time? Thats pretty important. If there were 30% less VS players online at the time then it would still mean about the same number of pulls per player.

Come on, finish what you started and check it.

As for why the other stats are higher on the vanguard: the KPH for example is cumulative for all uniques. So if 10 people make 1 kill each hour on the TR and 4 people make 2 kills each hour on the VS, the KPH of the TR would be 10 and the VS would be 8, despite the VS doing twice as good as the TR.

That is why it is important to have the full picture of the data, and not assume "THIS NUMBER IS BIGGER!".

1.
So personally, and as a TR main it's always bugged me a little, I'm not a fan of the Prowler. Don't get me wrong, I understand that it's stats are not bad but there's something in me that really dislikes having to fire (and hit) two shots before dealing at least as much as the Lightning can from one. I know he second shot is way more than equal but it's a psychological thing for me. I'd actually rather it had some sort of giant version of the Vulcan possibly with a burst fire effect like the Jackal SMG.
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Since the introduction of NSO as a wide scale faction I've been grinding up that character and sinking a quite a few certs into the Chimera I'm not super impressed at the moment but I understand it's not fully certed yet. one thing that gets me is the bullet drop, am I imagining it or do the chimeras anti-tank shells have a very pronounced drop? I've not tested this explicitly but I'm a Lightning main on my TR account ad it feels like it just doesn't go where I'm aiming.
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My preferred MBT has always been the Vanguard, its single shot damage profile makes me smile but my NC alt simply isn't up to scratch so I don't play it much.

2.
None of the tanks feels totally unbalanced, although I feel like the Viper on the Lightning could use a buff. Its effective range is listed as "close" on the wiki and for good reason, it is super inaccurate with its bloom. I'd not trust the Viper past 50m and preferably I'd use it at around 25m. The problem is it doesn't have the teeth to make using it worthwhile, you can just take AP Python and have virtually the same close range DPS while actually doing something useful at mid to long range. If it's Max/Min damage was upped from 250 to say 350 it'd become very dangerous in close in fights and marginally useful plinking single shots at medium range while still leaving room to be out classed at medium and longer ranges.
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Glad you mention the Nimitz Reactor I've written on this before. So, it has a 10 second delay after being broken before 12s to rebuild. Also, taking it comes at the cost of not taking Nanite Auto Repair System (6.25% of 6000 is 375 health regained per second for only 2 extra seconds without taking damage) or Vehicle Stealth (not being detected means greater chance of getting the first shot/disengaging).
Based on the above I've done some maths on the current set up here.
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As you can see the Nimitz is only really useful against very light damage such as scrapes and bumps, situations that are not time sensitive such that you couldn't still use NAR. Additionally, the crew could jump out and help repair if using NAR while for recovering Nimitz Shield they cannot.
My suggested change is to increase the percentage of the Vanguards health converted to shields to 25% and increase the Nimitz shield recovery rate to 200 per second. The maths on that is visible here.
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Of course a NAR equipped Vanguard could use other repairing methods for that top 25% health so it's still a niche use case but at least it would be a viable niche case.

3.
The Colossus and Bastion were mistakes. For a start making them locked behind being a top member of an outfit (that NSO can't even join without membership) is an awful idea but they're also too powerful to be allowed as general use units. I tried using a C4 flash to kill a Colossus several times, 8 bricks of C4 on that thing and each time the Colossus just drove off seemingly startled but not remotely dead. It's removed the ability for a single player making a great play (that cost me 650 Nanites each try to do btw.) to make a difference.
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Otherwise virtually every other vehicle is reasonably closely balanced, at least within a margin that a skillful player can use most vehicles to destroy most other vehicles if they are able to out maneuver them. Heck, I once killed a Vanguard with a Skyguard (okay, and one landmine).

4.
I like NSO generally, as stated above the Chimera seems a little underwhelming but I think in larger teamplay it could excel. Crew are medics, rumble seats are heavies and engineers. Driver has logistics specialist. You roll up to a fight and everyone does their thing, used as a mobile squad spawn I can see it being quite impressive.
Otherwise the NSO update seems alright, personally a big fan of the NSO MANA infantry turret but that's a tangent since it's not tank related.

5.
Mostly covered above but I also believe that no single shot tank gun should fail to kill infantry on a direct hit (looking at you Lightning HEAT). Possible exceptions include a flak armour heavy with his overshield active.

6.
Rocket launchers always seem too weak when I'm using the but too powerful when they're being used against me. The issue is that in larger numbers and hitting side or rear armour they're suddenly quite dangerous but underwhelming in solo play. C4 or AT mines are the most reliable way to clear vehicles but they're expensive to cert into and you need to get close.

I asked for peoples opinions. Never said I wouldn't comment back with my own. Its a discussion thread, for the sharing of opinions and ideas. Didn't exactly state my opinions in the first post, so why not engage in the debate?

Regarding the stats, thats fair enough. I don't profess to be a statistician, and I formed my opinions based on the stat that gets brought up the most - KPU. I also acknowledged I felt Magriders were less frequent than the others. I feel Vanguard is in a perfectly fine place, but I'm willing to consider others ideas and opinions. I do think all MBTs could use more main gun options, and I do think the Vanguard could use a little more uniqueness, especially given the other two have their signature abilities automatically now (well, half of it for the prowler, as passive anchor only affects velocity). We do get more than a few people arguing about which MBT is stronger and which is weaker.

Lastly, to make this clear - I believe the Prowler is the best MBT, the Vanguard is very solid but I see more than a few negatives in it, and I generally feel the Magrider sits either next to or just below the Prowler. This opinion is heavily biased, mind - I haven't done much Magrider as the learning curve is a bit wack, nor have I done much Vanguard as I prefer the faster base speed and cheapness of the Lightning, or to just be a gunner for a Vanguard instead. I'm a TR main, so I've mostly used the Prowler.

See, this is why I made an opinion thread. Statistics are great, as you've shown, but Planetside's trackers are missing a fair amount of data we would need to make a complete, undeniable judgement call on things. Besides actually being curious after that disaster thread argument about the Prowler, I wanted to know what people thought about it, since currently I feel their hasn't been much discussion on the tanks, particularly the Magrider never seems to get talked about.

1. Perfectly fine. You are allowed to not like the Prowler, so long as you don't try to justify your dislike with arguments and "facts" like some people try to do. I can't really get into the Magrider atm, so I understand. Having to turn to aim just feels off to me.
2. Could not comment on Chimera bullet drop as I have yet to roll up an NSO alt. Mainly because I can't settle on a name.
3. Again, fair enough. I'm busy going through basic stuff for my alts before I go back to my TR main, so if I want to I can go straight into battle fairly comfortably on NC/VS.
4. I do agree with the Viper thing. Lord knows it confused me a lot as a new player, and I still can't use it at range. It's particularly egregious as the "new player" gun on the Lightning when every other tank gets the serviceable HEAT option as default, and the Lightning HAS A HEAT GUN. I say make HEAT the default, THEN tune the Viper. Would certainly confuse newer players a lot less.
5. I think your idea is pretty solid, as far as ideas for Numbnutz go. It would make it stand out more, and give it a viable niche over NAR. You get my thumbs up.
6. I like the Bastion and Colossus personally, but I just like new toys. I don't see either frequently enough on Miller to be broken utterly. Colossus is a little more common, but it does cost a fair few outfit resources and requires a fair amount of merit to be fully invested. Its clearly designed for larger non-solo fights. Though 8 C4 on a flash sounds like it should've killed it. Anyone capable of explaining that one?
7. No comment on this one, not sure what I can say. Cool Opinion, bro.
8. I too, like the NSO update. As a F2P, having a bunch of new content and the ability to finally be a robot without shelling out for a voice pack is great. Also the VS robots sound like Galactic Rangers from Ratchet and Clank 3 and I love it.
9. Fair enough. Not sure everyone would agree with you, but I can see why you think that.
10. I can definitely see this, and it also hits on something I feel. RLs locked onto me do enough that I feel I need to fall back and Repair, because I could easily eat a storm of attacks and explode if I don't. But when I use them I can't kill anything and the ESFs just laugh and evade my rockets entirely. It's a conundrum, for sure, but tweaking resistances while changing them to feel better would probably help that issue.

1. Yeah, I would like to see an additional gun option that allowed me to use it without to two barrels but I'm not going to undermine existing weapons because they're not my taste.
2. Keep it simple I use Luicanus, LuicanusNC, LuicanusVS and LuicanusNSO
3. Yeah, I'm working on that it just takes forever.
4. Agreed, default HEAT would make more sense for rookies and get them killed less. #rookielivesmatter
5. Thank you.
6. Perhaps I'd like them more If I could use them, my main is in a tiny outfit that never earns outfit resources and my NSO can't join an outfit without paying membership. Even then I'd have to be senior enough in the outfit to get access which as a soon to be dad and working full time I simply don't have the time to invest that kind of effort. I've only ever been on the receiving end and especially the Bastion hits way too hard. Only the Colossus can face it no other tank I've shot at it with has been able to reliably hit it's weak points let alone do substantial damage. Since I don't fly I'm left with the options to either move somewhere else on the map or get shelled from the sky and just keep dying. You're right that they're not super common but if I can only play for an hour and half of that time is taken up with an enemy bastion rolling over me it's kinda a buzz kill.
9. By all means flak armour should be able to seriously reduce the effectiveness of HESH and HEAT spams AOE, but getting a direct hit at least involves some skill and should be rewarded appropriately IMO.
10. Honestly, I suspect it's impossible to balance. The reason being that if you give a solo RL the hitting power to feel like they're doing substantial damage to a tank then as soon as you get 2-4 RLs together they'll be able to instagib virtually any vehicle. If anything I'd say increase the lock on range off the RLs so that they're a little more effective at area denial but keep the damage about the same. If you get a coordinated nest of lockon RLs they can hold off armour or aircraft but they should only be able to deal support level damage if they're accurate over that kind of range.

If you are sitting on a site that can show the total faction populations in the past then feel free to share it with me and I will do that for you.

Until then, I will assume that VS does not in fact have 30% less population every single day since that goes against what I am experiencing when playing. Its a big number so I think people would notice if VS was constantly under popped and getting shafted every day, dont really see anyone complaining about it which they would be if what you are implying was true.

Anyway, that could be said for all stats so lets throw them out the window, Vanguard is performing better than the Prowler because I think so now and any stats showing different is just because at the time there were very few Vanguards so they got swarmed and thus performed badly, prove me wrong etc..

Introducing the Heavy Rocket Launcher class. When equipping them, block all weapons except the knife, as it physically weighs a lot. It is possible to add a debuff on the acceleration-deceleration of movement. Limit your ammo. All these weapons can be crafted with target blocking - and they won't even be able to kill 2a Sander: they will castle, dropping the block.
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and there is also a harpoon cannon in the crossout: A real harpoon with a coil, to remove the grip you need to shoot along the chain. A very funny weapon, however, without damage. Light cars fly on a cable with heavy ones.

And the Aoe flamethrower: a catapult that throws a barrel of napalm, it turns out a puddle of fire that burns for a couple of minutes. A very funny thing from a tactical point of view.

We used to have a site that showed us exactly that.

Now you again say "well my subjective experience says otherwise". Prove it, just prove it. The VS has historically always been the lowest pop which gave rise to the ridiculous "but we got them skilled players definitely!" Crap. So for you to deny it is strange and needs proof beyond "but I saw it". Especially since there are differences on servers, there are actually servers that historically had the most players on the VS. but overall they didn't.

Not sure why you think I should have to disprove your claims of VS having a 30-40% under pop in total with all servers when you cant give any evidence for that being true in the first place. I could make similarly stupid requirements for why the Vanguard or whatever is performing bad.
"That faction is just under popped so they get swarmed, thats why they are not performing as well as other stuff, prove me wrong."

Because you cant, we dont have those statistics but this is not some niche infantry weapon we are talking about seeing less use, this is a factions MBT having 30-40% less unique users on a daily basis compared to the other MBTs, clearly something is not right when that is happening.

Because you assume that the VS populations has somehow shifted away from what it historically has always been. During the last time we did the numbers we could still see the populations, and back then the VS population was lower and drew the same amount of MBT's per population.

You have to prove that this has shifted. On top of that I'm not going to bother, because last time we proved it was true the VS zealots basically went "well that's just like, your opinion man".

I never said they weren't performing as well as other stuff? Where'd you get that from? Do you even realize why I told you about it? I spelled it out already so you should know right?

Do we have any statistics on the acceleration of the tanks? The ability to move rapidly from a dead stop is more important to a tank's survival than its top cruise speed.

With gear skipping, they are all about the same with very little difference. The only noticeable one is of course magburning.

Yeah I dunno where I got the outlandish idea that you thought the Vanguard was not performing as well as the other MBTs when all you said was that its the worst performing MBT and some other not so positive things, clearly you meant something else, silly me.

I was talking about the Magrider. I thought you were making a strange leap when you went from the Vanguard, which is on the NC and has historically been one of the more populated factions, to the VS since that has always been the least populated faction.

Again, you are going off the norm thay has been true for most of PS2's lifetime. Prove to us that you are right and the VS has similar population numbers.
Withouy counting NSO's who can't pull Magriders ofcourse.

As for the number of factions, you are very mistaken. On average, I play every day and an average of 13 hours. I started in purple, now I play in blue. And all this time, each fraction in the minority, and every fight against the Union of the other two. (B) These are all populist demagogy. In fact, the collision balance is very different during the day. In the morning there is no red, and later the RU region wakes up, and they become enough. Yesterday they played against the violet majority.

In fact, there is another problem: imagine a fraction that the week wins no more than three times. If this is a long time, children beginners migrate to another fraction. Thus, blue on Cobalde is now: 5-35 levels that are struggling for 100 almost without middle class. Blue can have the protection of the fortress, where 100+ blue infantry and enemy 25 sits in tanks. This is a complex demography. For 2 hours one open landing. I exaggerate for clarity.

Blue and red from time to time to collect an army of idiots: tanks are collected on 50+ cars and move to the rear behind the enemy 4-8 hexes. They earn there as about the same as 1-2 buggy, but their all allies are sitting without tanks.

Starting to play blue, I earned about three times less than when I was violet, although I play a little better. Purple amounted to 100500% easier.
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I wanted to say that online does not matter, the quality online is much more important. You can meet 25 cars in a row and no with binoculars and 2 out of 3 without chassis.