MBT vs C4

This is a thread about C4, so we are talking about C4, however other AV threats are also imbalanced but not to the point you can just forget about them. What does a LA give up in terms of battle effectiveness for C4? What do I give up to "attempt to protect myself" a lot.

1. Never use the developers as your primary reasoning for a point. The developers have allowed the AV turret to be OP all this time, allowed the NC Max to be OP for 6 months straight, allowed rocketpods to be OP for 4+ months straight, allowed liberators to ruin the first 1-2 months of the game, and allowed the Saron and Magrider to be OP for 2 months. C4 can never be destroyed while you hold it, you get unlimited attempts to take out my tank for 0 resources until you're confident enough you got me to pull out your C4. It doesn't matter how many times you die, because you only have to succeed once to put me on cool down and down 450 resources, meanwhile you only lost 200. You still haven't debunked this point as far as I'm concerned.

2. You say is it 100% necessary to run IR smoke, perhaps, but it's not 100% necessary to run Flak armor on LA or Engineer either C4 is anti everything, it's AI and it's AV with the same potency. Tanks lose a vast amount of protection from AV spam without IR smoke, what does the LA lose a lot of to gain such a devastating advantage against all things? C4 is a direct upgrade, not a side grade by any stretch of the imagination. Also lock on spam is a huge problem because on Mattherson we have huge coordinate outfits to go up against all the times. I've used radar a few times, and each time I did I couldn't wait to pull a new tank because of how much I missed IR smoke.

3. MBT's have to sit still to be accurate unless you're in a magrider, this means there will always be a chance for you to C4 a tank. Tanks are most useful on the front lines, because that's where I take out the most Sunderers. Shelling at a distance works when you are aiming at noobs not using cover or that are blinding rushing at you. Have I had times were I sat back and shelled a base, sure, but the most exciting times I had was taking out A sunderer while having multiple LA's and HA's trying to take me down. That's a blast, and honestly I didn't mind losing my tank to C4 then because that LA deserved it and he spent the right amount of resources to do it. He still deserves to get damage on me, but at the current cost of C4 does not deserve to Instagib me. Raise the price of C4, or buff the durability of tanks to make it right again. Choose one, because as of now it's outta wack. I won't change my style when the other one is not only not fun and requires no skill, but because their is no reason that my playstyle should be gone when it previously was balanced. I caught you saying "why are you playing an infantry centric game?" It's not, this has been and hopefully will always be a combined arms game.

4. The problem is all other OHK's are either way easier to avoid than C4 or cost you nothing when it happens to you. AV tank mines are extremely easy to avoid and take way more time and skill to get a kill on a tank, Headshoting infantry takes skill and the infantry being sniped loses nothing of value. The game is full of OHK's for extremely skilled or luck shots against vehicles, but there are way more for infantry since they cost 0 resources. Flying above and C4ing a tank in a huge battle is not a hard thing to do if they are preoccupied, yet it costs me 450 resources and is basically a OHK. This was fine when C4 cost the same as a MBT, now it costs less than half so it is a broken game mechanic. I didn't see you making a thread the past 6 months saying C4 was was to expensive and UP, neither did I see anyone else who wasn't trolling or a bad LA.

5. C4 is more wildly out of balance than AV turrets, because it's a OHK and is much easier to kill a tank with C4 than a AV turret because I can run from an AV turret. I can't run from and repair against C4, only die to it. You are perfectly justified in thinking that you deserved the C4 kill on me when you caught me distracted and spent the right amount of resources to do it. Now you spent the time to wait till I was distracted, but you spent less than half of what you used to comparatively speaking to do it. That is what has gotten all dedicated tankers mad, and multiple LA have come forward in this thread saying that it's not fair to tankers anymore. You aren't paying enough to kill my tank, so either cough up more resources to do it, or have them do less damage for the same cost. Right now the equation is rapidly out of balance. You can solo my tank, for under half my tank's cost, and you get unlimited 0 resource tries till you win. That's a load of crap man.

The questions you had to ask me.

1. Where did I say I wanted to nerf C4? I said I wanted to balance it since currently the price makes it imbalanced. I hate nerfing fun things and fun playstyles, but if you want to play your playstyle the same way so we can both play like before you need to pay more just like I had to. It's like we both agreed to make payments for a shared car, and I paid my half and then you said, "nah man you deserve to pay for the car since you work for a big business but I work for a not for profit. I guess you'll just have to work harder to pay for my half of the rent too."

2. A MBT and C4 are meant for 2 totally different things, C4 is meant to stop vehicles or a Max, not go on kill streaks with. Tanks are meant for team play ideally and are only as good as the person using them. You give LA C4, and they may get lucky enough to sneak up on a preoccupied tanker, but their fails along the way have zero cool down, and don't cost nearly as many resources. Someone trying to learn how to tank, gets one shot by C4 costing less than half of what their tank costs then is on a 10-15 minute cool down and a long resource timer. What sounds easier to master? Frankly have you even considered how unfair C4 is to new tankers trying to learn how to tank, it's the ultimate kill joy right now.

3. I've already complained about AV turrets and HA with no resources on the forums, and made entire threads about it, but the developers are obviously still making plenty of money off of them. SOE is not making money off C4, so they have no reason to keep it in an unbalanced state.

4. 6 C4 is more potent to stop an armor rush on a base then 6 HA's because they'll take out that tank trying to repair or trying to fire behind the rock, they will take that tank trying to be sneaky on the edge of the base, you know who won't do that 6 HA's because they can't react to everything and are less mobile than LA. I refuse to factor in AV turrets because they are broken in every aspect of their existence, but we are talking about C4 in a C4 thread, and all but the lost cause players admit it's OP. C4 isn't OP, it's just to cheap for what it does, it's just imbalanced.

5. C4 wasn't wildly out of control when it came with the same cost of a MBT. However now it costs less than half of what my MBT costs and still amounts to my number one death cause by a mile. The picture below was fine with me when C4 cost the same amount as a tank, now it costs nowhere near as much comparatively and still kills me the most making it require my full effort to get it balanced as soon as possible.

KDR means nothing, there are good players with bad KDs and bad players with good KD. Just because your KD is low doesn't mean you're a teamplayer OR that you're bad. You don't need radar to avoid C4 and you don't need smoke to avoid Strikers. You're a Mag pilot, you're using the most mobile MBT in the game. And no, we're not drivers; our vehicles can fly so that makes us pilots.

You play a little from two sides of a multifaceted issue, that doesn't mean you have the experience/knowledge/whatever to say it's too easy to kill tanks with C4. For example, I have about twice as many kills with my knife as you have with C4. I play from ALL sides and I can tell you there's nothing wrong with C4.



This thread blows my mind. People are complaining that C4 is too easy, and yet the long range AV weapons infantry get are WAY easier to use then C4. To kill with C4 you need to be incredibly close, you're target basically has to be stationary and unaware of their surroundings, and you have to throw/detonate 2 C4 before anyone sees and kills you. If you and a few buddies were sitting 500 meters away with Lancers, you could instakill that same tank just by charging and firing at the same time. You could easily hit a moving target, the enemies will never see you, and there's virtually no chance you'll die. Even if you miss, you're just feeding XP to your local engi bro. If you miss with C4, you just wasted 200 infantry resources.

C4 is one of the least effective ways to kill tanks when you're facing skilled players, and yet here's a 20 page thread of people whining about it. You guys are saying C4 is too good at AV, but you're ignoring all the other AV weapons that are way better.

It's not that it's too good at what it does, it's just currently to cheap for what it does. I've already made massive threads that took entire days to make saying why long range vehicle counters should cost resources and that they shouldn't out range a tank. However the developers never listened to that because that is one of their biggest sources of income in PS2. C4 can't be bought with station cash, is currently imbalanced, and just recently became imbalanced. Guess which one has the best odds of becoming balanced again if I point it out to the developers?

BULL ******* ****.

Vehicle vs Vehicle combat is one thing, Vehicle vs. tiny unit, that is barely capable of being seen unless they stand in front of you like jack *** is another.

For: "use radar"

against: "**** you. that's not the point"


Something that costs over 300 resources should not be able to be killed by one camping ******* throwing c4.

Especially when ******* Anti-vehicle specific weapons do a faction of the damage -- even the **** you are saying is better.


Add to fact every other freaking class has C4 as an option now, it's ridiculous.


Simple solution: make c4 as much as spawning a god damn max, considering you get taken out with a single one if you are a max and ever decide to fire on a light assault in confined quarters. (which I might add is the only god damn option for AI NC maxes, making them fodder.)

Thank you for your post. This thread is starting to drive me crazy because it feels like the MBT players wont listen to the C4 users, and some of the C4 users wont listen to the MBT players. Your thread makes things feel much better to me since it again addresses the issue that they are whining about C4 when there are many other things in the game which kill them much easier, much faster, with much fewer resources spent.

It is really sad to see people like EliteEskimo admit (yes he admitted it) that he tried to get them to change AV weaponry but they didn't. Now he admits that since they won't change that he wants to focus arguments on something else trying to get that changed. WTF? Get a freaking clue! Isn't this a form of trolling? According to what people like him are saying, from what I can tell this has absolutely nothing to do with C4 specifically but instead has to do with their inability to keep their vehicles alive, mostly due to their poor comprehension of the battlefield around them.

Finally thank you again for agreeing that C4 is one of the least effective ways to kill tanks. C4 takes a lot of time, often many tries, and a lot of frustration before it is finally successful. I wish that they would focus on the other AV weaponry which is definitely unbalanced and stop focusing on this one area instead.

Don't make me bust out 10 screen shots to prove my skills to you because I will. Btw if you took time to read my post you would see I'm focusing on C4 because like the other AV sources it too is just as imbalanced as the rest currently. However unlike other AV sources c4 has a chance of becoming balanced since it costs 0 Station cash. Guess which AV source I'm going to argue against since it has the most chance of becoming balanced again?

http://4.bp.************/-hp97yAfP_hM/T3HWqMFo-sI/AAAAAAAAArs/ZfADstSp5JI/s400/willy-wonka-wilder-300x300.jpg

The C4 in games just don't make sense.

They should add shaped charges, that do the same damage to vehicles as C4 currently does, and lower the damage of C4 to vehicles about 50%. This way it would just make more sense since C4 is not shaped and a tank hull easily deflects the blast..

I suppose only enigneers should get shaped charges, since that would too make more sense, they need to walk up to a tank, and place it (preferably with some kind of mechanic). (And remove 3rd person in tanks!)

This will still make light assaults very effective with scaring vehicles and making them leave the area, instead of death machines coming from above, but still just as effective against all infantry.

ROFL You are such a poor person when it comes to trying to make rational good arguments about something like this that I can't help but laugh at you. You admit to trolling C4 because you don't think you can get the developers to fix something that you yourself say is even more broken? Typical TR who quits. Hate to make that slam but I've seen way too much of it lately from that faction. I know it isn't true, but damn sure feels that way.

I was curious about something, I went and looked up your game stats. Gosh I love being able to do that. Lets see....
https://players.planetside2.com/#!/5428010618040867281/weapons
Yeah that's you. Where on that list is C4? HUH? You haven't used it to kill even one person have you? ROFL How in the hell can you talk about the state of something in the game when you haven't used it yourself? What I can see from your profile page is that you either 1) use MBTs, or 2) Use a MAX suit. ROFL I think the truth for you comes out now! You want C4 nerfed because it DOES pose an effective threat to what you chose to use most (I'm guessing like 90% or more) of the time!

Lets see my stats:
https://players.planetside2.com/#!/5428010618038996721/weapons
Definitely shows I play a lot of Light Assault, no argument from me there. Flip to my vehicles page and look at stats for the Magrider. You'll notice that I've spent THREE times as much time in it as you have spent on Light Assault. I'll also be the first to admit that 27 hours isn't a lot, but it is a hell of a lot more than some people on this forum have who are arguing against C4 for the amount of time they have used with C4.

Sorry, I will no longer respond to any of your posts. You have lost all credibility due to your ineptitude of actually experiencing the other side of the coin. I at least have a little knowledge what it is like to be in a MBT.

By your logic all tankers here are trolling C4 in this thread, and you don't have to use a weapon to know it's imbalanced since it's easy enough just being on the receiving end of said weapon enough times which I have. But I'm glad you've reduced yourself to Ad Hominem attacks letting me know you no longer have good points to counter my arguments. Oh well another passionate C4 using LA bites the dust in this thread.

Southern west Indar is where it is at its worst.
LAs will drop pod on top of the mountains and then silently descend on you while you try to fight targets in actual earth surface.
Sunderers have it even worse. Sometimes they do not even need to drop down, they can just throw the C4 off the ledge.

And with this loadout, I understand that the main purpose of MBTs is to be looking for infantry while they rush with C4 and doing nothing else.

Well, contrary to popular belief, people don't pull tanks to play a game of kill the C4 guy before he gets close.

1) That would be wasting nearly half of the DPS of a tank, allowing just about every enemy to dive behind cover and repair. In PS 2 a tank can't instagib a tank (we don't have C4 shells) so it's a game of numbers- more DPS, quicker TTK, larger chance the enemy won't get away.
2) That longer range is still much too short. Tank shootouts often take place in the 400-600 meter ranges.
3) No reticule, no zoom, and also losing sight of the shell on it's way to the target, therefore not knowing which way and how much to compensate when firing the next one.
4) That's equal to losing the shields.

From the perspective of a prowler driver, they really do need to do something about C4, especially due to the new resources cost. Its one of the elements that literally sucks the fun right out of armored warfare or support alongside engineer turrets that don't render.

It's not just a matter of resources either. When a light assault die, it can spawn for free anywhere. When I die in my MBT, you better damn hope that you have a tech plant and a base nearby that can spawn them, otherwise it's back to the warpgate for a 5 min drive back to the battlefield.

Personally I would prefer if they reduced the damage but also reduced its cost, making it easier to resupply so users are not starved in supplies all the time and actually required to play as a team if they wanna instabust armored vehicles with C4, just like everyone else in the game.

It seems to me like a fair tradeoff to reduce damage and cost. Not only that, but it also would give purpose to the engineer extra pouch which allows them to carry 3 C4, i'm perfectly fine with engineers instabusting tanks with C4 if they are specialized to do it. That actually takes some form of skill to pull unlike the light assault usage of C4.

I roll with a 2/2 prowler, maxed out racer frame, AP/Vulcan with proximity radar and C4 still is a problem. For some perspective, me and my gunner are specialized in hunting/brawling with vehicles, we still kill infantry but don't focus on it. We use speed, awareness and high burst damage to clear our targets. We stalk and hit from behind every single time, that's what the proximity radar IS for, that's why I use it over the other options. I don't believe it's a valid counter for C4 because you can't know if that dot is equipped with C4 or not. Should we fear every single infantry dots on the minimap? I mean really?

We have a much more aggressive playstyle than the usual tanker who remains 200 meters away shelling. It's also usually far more rewarding and useful than staying back shelling. We don't just camp the sunderers for free kills, we make it our priority to get rid of them and more often than not, we win the battle over an area by doing so. Armored warfare should be much more than just shelling, I had quite a few very aggressive fight and it makes armored warfare really awesome when people grow a pair and make it happen.

The thing is, those who defend C4 don't see the gigantic ******** that can happen with C4. It literally sends every vehicles running like little girls atm and it's very problematic. When my gunner calls it out, if he has time to, we immediately panic and run fullspeed backward which is very problematic when mobility is limited by terrain/allies presence. Oh, if you happened to be deployed, tough luck, you're done, that's why I don't use it either.

Most of the time I die to C4, I don't even see it coming even if I do use my radar extremely well and am extremely aware of my surroundings. It comes in the form of a gunner/driver hopping out of an harasser/MBT while we are fighting, it comes from nowhere because we are in a hot zone and the render distance is failing hard, it comes from an ejected ESF pilot we just shot down with the vulcan, it comes from a drop pod that landed next to us (they are actually invisible for a few seconds). Those may seem like rare scenarios but they aren't, those happened at least once every single time I played this game as a tanker.

Holy crap it's 20 pages. Well I read page 1.

word.

I spent an asston of certs for my 2 c4 and constantly run out of infantry resources trying to use them. They aren't very effective against groups of infantry; somehow I'm always surprised that most everybody in a tight group survives my 2 c4. If they can't destroy a tank, that tank will get repaired right away; C4 would have no real use.

Of course, you can just change it to make it work differently and not just make it useless. If my c4s can't destroy a tank, they should annihilate groups of infantry.

Pick your poison.

I'm driving Prowler a lot, I don't have any problems with C4. I shell infantry all the time, I still do not have any problems with C4. Maybe this is classic case of "Why are you playing wrong?"
Just try being a distant artillery, you'll do as much or even more damage than when you noobs go in the towers with your tanks.

"Rock is fine, nerf scissors" - paper

what i would like to see is, when you login you have 0 resource points. You fight for a while, to gain those resources and then you can get things like tanks, planes, c4 etc. But not the ones we have now. Make them powerful. Make MBT's a massive threat thats hard to take down. Make it so c4 cant instagib them. But make them hard to acquire.

Especially with how many people log into a different faction for an alert spawn a tank and then proceed to roll the alert that would be cool.

Here is my spin on all this, since Tanks got more expensive without adding any value to them or changing the stuff around it, why not increase the combat value you get out of your Tank?

Add a third weapon to Tanks, let the secondary gunner in an MBT always have access to a Kobalt or other LMG, alongside the other Weapon. Tanks need that added point defense so they actually can more actively push a stalemate instead of sitting 300m out and volley on a door. (I did not say Co-Axial for the 1/2 MBT reason and adding value that would focus on actually getting a gunner)

About the C4 ... well, the lone Tank without situational awareness can get blown up by everybody. You don't need to be LAs to do this, it's just easier and to be honest, I'm ok with those guys getting blown up but to do that you usually also don't need C4 for that, Shrikes, Decis and the likes work to.

But here is the thing, it became a sport that you have one guy drop via squad spawn, jetpack over the threat or just suicide run the few meters from the pods and blow it up with C4. This has to stop because it's getting crazy.

To many classes have C4 ... Not every class should be able to blow up a Vehicle and you should need to specialize to do it.

Medics don't need C4, they should focus healing consumables, like small heal AOE dispensers but also disruptive devices that go with a Medic theme, like poison or gas.

HAs should need to trade their Launcher for C4, they already are the jack of all things that need killing guys. They got Launchers, HA weapons(since they are finally useful), AV grenades and C4, this is flat out to much in my opinion.

LAs are to mobile to have something as powerful as C4. Are you guys not annoyed that C4 has become to general use against anything weapon? LAs jet-packing into rooms to clear it out of 4 MAXes. Jet-pack over a Sundy from a Flank and blow it up. This has to stop. This breaks not only the Armor gameplay but so many other aspects of the game, like MAXes, like Sundy Placement or close pushes.

Give LAs something else instead of C4, something similar to WH40k Assault squads Melta charges or real live magnetic AT charges. Stachel Charges could be thrown by LAs but they are less effective than C4 or magnetic AT charges that also could be thrown and stay sticky to a Tank but again, do not insta gib everything with 2 throws.

Engineers seem somewhat fine since they have to chose between AT Mines or C4 and both would work against a Tank anyway.

C4, Grenades and Medkits were horribly overpriced before.

Still, if you really want the MBTs back to the old resource cost, here is my suggestion. Each MBT gets 8 shots (twice for Prowler) and a similar balanced amount of for the secondary weapon. After that is gone, you can't refill your ammunition and have to abandon the vehicle.

That is fairly generous, don't you think. You'll be able to do 25k or so damage (half from primary, half from secondary) with only 250 resources. That is 100 damage per resource which compares really well to C4 that is only 30 damage per resource. Not bad considering you are sitting in a mobile highly armored vehicle that deals all that damage at range.

That would make sense if the MBTs already gibbed enemy vehicles at range. C4 does the exact same thing that tank shells do (so long as you get a direct hit, or you're not shooting at an enemy MAX)

C4 is fine. If you dont have a thermal vision on your secondary which should be manned by a vigilant guy and overextend into enemy infantry, you're gonna get C4'd. I spend a lot of time in AP/AP vanguard, lately also viper lightning and C4 aint my problem, AV engie turrets are, unlike C4 completely out of whack and cost absolutely nothing. Though C4 is my second best weapon when it comes to kills, I just love to blow oblivious wannabe infantry farmers to hell with my drifterator high altitude LA bomber

Grab a wingman, drop 4x C4 and blow the tank into the sky.
Grab an HA, detonate C4, finish off burning tank with bazooka.
Grab an engineer, drop 3x C4 and blow the tank into the sky.

Edit: Detonate 2x C4, kill the crew as they try to extinguish the fire, and watch it burn...

The only people who would really suffer if it took a 3rd explosion to kill a tank are lone wolf LA's and medics who go tank hunting.
People who use the proper heavy weapons/demolition classes would still destroy tanks on their own- others would need to use teamwork in a team game...