MBT health buff. @MHigby

Lets hope it's that long and not like half a year

Don't like the implications for my Battle Sunderer. I quite enjoy destroying tanks who suspect me to be an easy kill.

Spose I'll grind out the few hundred remaining kills for Auraxium on each Fury and move onto the Harasser.

What, no Lightning love?

People still pull tanks a lot, they just blow up so fast their presence on the battlefield is amazingly short lived. SOE just wants to convince players that whats happens in the following video won't happen anymore with this 20% buff. In actuality it still will, but at least it will give the dedicated tankers, like me and others, more breathing room so our 5-10K cert tanks don't blow up quite as fast as it currently does in the following video.

I've been using the magrider again after the strafe speed was buffed and it was fun to use again -now it doesn't feel like you're dragging the thing with your balls-. I can do reasonably well as long as I'm cautious and don't change headlong into danger, but there are two things that frustrate me: rocketpods and mana AV turrets.

It's not difficult to hit a pankake the size of a magrider with rockets, even if there's friendly AA nearby, and there's no way to hide from that except under a building, which is a C4 death sentence. And AV turrets are incredibly powerful and accurate.

Other than that IMHO vehicle balance is reasonable, with the disclaimer that I con't have an informed opinion on Lancers, but I don't think just increasing tank HP will do anything. It'll make balanced weapons bad, and OP weapons even more needed than they are now.

That 20% health buff won't protect the bad tankers from your battle Sundy. It really doesn't matter if you're using C4, Rocketpods, or a Sunderer bad tankers and zerg tankers will overextend and give you all the opportunities to kill them you will ever want/need. I'm glad it's this way, because zerg tankers often ram TK me or park right behind me so when I need to back up and repair I can't so my tank explodes.

MBT health 20% buff = 4800hp

sunderer health = 4750hp

hmm -_-

What's the damage resistance on a Sunderer though?

I mean, vehicles could have 20HP, but have so much damage resistance that a rocket would do 1HP of damage to it.

from ps2calc.com

the resistance is 45% all sides, fully upgraded blockaded is 57/57/57/70 ---> by far better armored than vanguard

as far, from the calculations go, adding 800HP for MBT will not influence anything other than taking an extra hit or so. The biggest change will be the fact that rear shots require more hits now then before, players like myself will abuse the tank weakness will have some impact in tactics. Running battlebus is a even more risky especially against vulcan prowlers.

increasing damage resistance will be the better choice to buff tanks as it will actively decrease the damage dealt by a large margin.

The Liberator pilot gets a weapon that is either a sniper machine gun, or can kill anything from a fighter to an MBT in a single clip that takes 2 seconds to fire.

If MBTs are to have a dedicated driver, the driver would need an equivalent of the Tankbuster, or the main gun would need the firepower of a Tankbuster and Zepher combined to keep the proportions of people required to firepower available.

As for the battle bus Sundy- doesn't it seem odd that a wheeled vehicle that's pretty big can take more of a beating than a vehicle that's too heavy to put on wheels, which is much smaller and as such can be much thicker walled for a given weight?
It's time tanks became tanks, and MRAPs became MRAPs.

Lightnings should get a 5% bonus to speed, turn rate and acceleration.

Mehhhhh . . .

I don't really care about more HP or resistance. I don't even care about ESF's.

Right now, all I want is Phoenix rockets, MANA AV turrets, and MANA AV rockets to render 100% of the time. Invisible ******** removes much of the opportunity for meaningful counterplay.

Oh, and fix the hitboxes of engi turrets, so all the snipers can do something useful and counter them. They have enormous invisible hitboxes now that basically act as a sniper shield from the front.

That's the real nightmare for competent tankers in today's world. Especially TR/VS tankers. The Phoenix is a nightmare to deal with in platoon-size engagements because it essentially never renders. You just get pounded by invisible damage. The source could be from anywhere, from behind any cover. Though the MANA AV turret is also enough of a nightmare in this regard that I'm sure Van drivers feel the pain too.

Sunderers have no rear armour soft point while tanks take a damage multiplier there. With blockade armour Sunderer rear armour is better than any tanks front armour with the upgrade. Sunderers also have a resistance to c4 which tanks don't have.

IMO there are only a couple of changes needed for tanks, i do not think that a blanket % will do the job.

Ideally i would like to see ESF Rocket Pods require at least one reload to kill a MBT (forcing them to either reload or act in a team (more than one ESF or heavy/av support) to counter tanks).

The mana turret range needs reduced the turret can be in a completely different hex from where your tank is and hit and destroy you, you have no real counter to this even if you have the support of troops and air often you cannot even see the turret because its so far away its not rendered.

I think the damage from libs and infantry AV is mostly fine at the moment.

Long term i would like to see tanks able to cert out of the rear armor weakness, in other words for say 1000+ certs i can equip my tank with rear armor, which would be physically obvious to attackers.

Because it's a 1 man tank.

Ideally, I'd want to see the main tank require a driver & a gunner.

Because charging at a platoon full of heavies as a solo tanker should produce results right?.... BF3 is that way ----> that video is laughable, learn to tank

I love these developers. Good job SOE!!!

"Ideally, I'd want to see the main tank require a driver & a gunner..."

As an option, an OPTION.

Btw, we already have in game MBT's mannable with a driver and a gunner, with very good weapons for the gunner in fact.

It's showing the proliferation of HA and their Launchers. Why go anything else but HA, they're like ESF except on the ground.

Guys... i fail to see where higby hinted at a 20% health buff for MBTs
higby stated “retuning mbts armor, the tweak might change the respective front, side, top and rear damage reduction / multiplier against infantry weapons mostly, as of now a tank vs tank ttk or a sunderer one etc etc won‘t be affected

it‘s too early to debate properly.
Not to mention values will be different for each empire tank.

I suggest you to read his tweets again

Actually it's really -good- game design. If you can't be killed in a single (risky) pass, you have no threat to concern yourself with enough to put some of your platoon (you're with a platoon, right?) in ESFs of their own, and others with AA MAXs.

Air is -only- relevant if it dominates. Otherwise it's just a choice, and a poor one at that. Air superiority IRL matters because a single fighter jet can wreck any building, installation, vehicle, or infantry battalion single-handedly. Whilst normally 'IRL' arguments are pointless, the extrapolation here is obvious. Air has no objectives of its own, cannot project power by locking down a position, and is by far the easiest target to remove from play entirely. Its only power is in deciding the battle below -if- there is no defense against it. If it does not do this, there's no reason to have defense against it (i.e. your own air force).