Do you prefer HEAT or HE for AI work?

That depends on the situation.

TITAN HE on average is not fun. It can be exciting when you shell a congested space and get non-stop kill ribbons for a few seconds, but that type of situation is usually very short lived lasting only a few minutes at best. In overall tank gameplay, HE isn't very useful and leaves you at a disadvantage in the field vs other vehicles, infantry or longer ranges.

For a Vanguard driver, it's usually only ideal to pull HE if you have escort and you are providing AI support or if there is a known mass of infantry in a mechanized hex (to replace the tank shortly after you are done).

its not the developers that messed up, its the community that cried for nerfs.

Not my point. When was the last time you saw a tanks pulled to fight other tanks?

Now when was the last time you saw a tank pulled to shell a spawn, ideally 300+ meters away and up on hills so lockons can't get to it and infantry have a hard time getting up there to throw some C4 at it?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against infantry being killed by tanks - they should be if shot by one. But the simple fact is that it's way better to turn your tank into an infantry farming machine than it is to fight other tanks nine times out of ten, and that's a serious problem.

Nonsense. Killing vehicles is substantially better rewarded. So anyone who lets themselves get camped instead of pulling a tank (or ESF/Lib) to fight the enemy tanks is just a bad player.

• My total score/min: 622
• AP Prowler
  • Vehicle KPH: 26
  • Infantry KPH: 3
  • Score/Min: 723
• Viper (my best AI)
• • Vehicle KPH: 12
  • Infantry KPH: 48
  • Score/Min: 588
• HEAT Prowler
• • Vehicle KPH: 6
  • Infantry KPH: 35
  • Score/Min: 351

Really there's no form of infantry-farming in the game that achieves a good score/min. My Hailstorm is ranked S (suspicious) on DA with 83 infantry KPH, yet that weapon only has 435 SPM. My Armistice is ranked S too with 106 KPH, but 463 SPM. Nothing compares to vehicle kills.

If all you care about is raw kill count, then infantry farm and lose fights and get camped and don't complain. But if you care about winning or earning certs, it's far better to fight vehicles.

I run HEAT for AI because aside from that fact that i have good enough aim to not need the splash damage of HE, i tend to live a good while in my tanks, and enemy armor and vehicles always show up at some point. If there was a way to change my tank's loadout without spawning a new tank i might use HE more, but until then, its useless to me.

Going by score, absolutely - you obviously get way more for vehicle kills. Nobody will contest that.

The problem is I rarely see people pulling tanks to fight tanks, I see them doing it to farm infantry. Why? Because when you fight tanks, the other tank can damage you, but when you fight squishies, you only have to worry about rockets, C4, and maybe AV Grenades. I would say tank mines but unless you're incredibly stupid, an Engie is not going to have time to pull those down.

Basically, that's part of why infantry farming is so widespread, both among ground and air. They can't shoot you with guns for the most part, and so the only hard counters are stuff like rockets. For AA, this is literally your only option unless you pull an AA vehicle or have a turret.

To put it another way, yeah you'll get less score from farming infantry, but you know there will always be infantry around to kill. It's basically "More but smaller points" versus less "in-chunks" from doing proper vehicle vs. vehicle fighting.

Tanks can't go indoors. This means they exist outdoors. In the outdoor combat ecosystem. With other vehicles.

You can try to farm just those infantry, but if you don't shoot those vehicles they're going to kill you and end your farming pretty quick. Which is why people can't really avoid pulling vehicles to fight other vehicles. It's unavoidable, regardless of intent. This is why HE sucked last patch (and probably still underperforms this patch,) because you can't really afford to pull an infantry-specific vehicle unless you have a lot of friendlies covering you against vehicles.

(Also it's sort of bizarre to criticize AV Mines in the same post where you praise AV Grenades. I've literally never had a vehicle die due to an AV Grenade (and it feels like trivial damage when I'm hit by them,) yet an engineer using AV Mines can frequently sneak up and one-shot tanks or sunderers.)

And that's a problem, because right now, pretty much every base has outdoor access. Amerish's revamp will hopefully fix that and give at least a few reliable places to fight solely infantry, without having to worry about holding generators to prevent a tank conga line, there just to shell the crap out of the spawn.

Also, I hardly praise the AV Grenade. In fact, I don't even use it - I'd much rather dumbfire a Decimator as it's usually far more effective, assuming I can't get close enough to the tank to lay down some fun. I did throw it out there because I'm sure some people do use them (though I really don't know why), and admittedly it's far less of a risk to chuck a grenade (you can throw it between the refire/reload times) than it is to run out and put down tank mines.

I'll remember to kill infantry less when they stop being a bigger threat to my Prowler than a Vanguard.

For AI I take the default Viper, always. Especially since the flak armor changes, being able to land several rounds in a short time is a huge plus.

They must be quite the threat for you to have 4 times the amount of infantry kill as you have of vehicle kills. I mean using a force multiplier is a very risky play style after all

Well I'm not against more exclusively-infantry spaces (in fact many previous posts of mine have recommended exactly that.)

But let's just not lie and pretend people pull tanks exclusively to farm infantry. People pull tanks to be in a freaking tank, and if infantry offers up their face to be shot, then that happens. When players choose to spawn as infantry against a vehicle zerg, that's what they're doing: offering up their face to be shot. (It's just that most players are pretty bad and don't realize it.)

Which is why the death recap should probably be empowered to tell players when they're making this mistake and give advice to stop making bad decisions. (In addition to the myriad of other ways the death recap could be improved to help players be more aware of their own mistakes, opportunities for improvement, and also add the ability to skip and/or refer back to the recap.)

It's also why more bases need access to heavy vehicles, since often your nearest tank- or air-capable base is 3+ bases away, which makes it even harder to make the right decision (at least it makes it more time-consuming.) Heck, with where the air vehicles are gained in many bases like Tech Plants I will often choose just to spawn at the warpgate to pull one (which shouldn't really be necessary.)

I almost exclusively run tanks with the purpose of targeting other vehicles. So AP most of the time. Direct hits on infantry is still very possible. If I think there won't be a lot of enemy vehicles but a lot of infantry, then I might equip HEAT.

I was using HEAT on my lightning for a while after PU02 because I wanted to finish up the auraxium with it; a couple days ago I swapped over to the viper.

Viper is better imo; the only place it's really at a disadvantage vs. infantry compared to HEAT is at extreme range, and it's a lot better at short range and for killing groups (and MAXes.) You can also really put serious hurt on an enemy MBT if you can sneak in behind them.

Sadly infantry cost 0 resources, are more spammy than tanks, and would rather use C4 and easy mode rocket launchers against me than pull a tank or AP Lightning so its no wonder I have more infantry kills on the front line. It's less risky in terms of resources and has a higher chance of them succeeding then taking me on in a MBT since you know that would require flanking, tanking skill, and whatnot. My playstyle is often to play within 150 meters of infantry while going up against some of the most organized outfits in the game and getting massive kill streaks while doing it is risky. Doing what ESKA does in a Magrider is skillfull, and what Klypto does in a Vanguard is skillful unless you think you can easily match us in what we do best.

I use the Viper for AI.

Lightning:
Viper all the way now. Thing is beast now. However HEAT and AP are still good.

MBT:
AP is generally best. Faster velocity, less drop, OHK's like any other. Just no splash. HEAT doesn't sacrifice as much damage potential in order to add some splash though.


HE: Not usually worth it. It's more of a suppressive/support weapon than anything now. It is good at that roll though, and if you have the AV support to let you sacrifice your AV capacity and if you can get 2-3 of you working in tandmen with HE, it can be pretty nasty though.

Uuuuh the last time I played, the time before that and the time before that(infinitely repeating).

Most tankers WANT to have tank battles.

Fighting infantry is actually a pain. They're tiny targets. They can spam rockets. They cost nothing.

We do it because that's the foe being brought to bear on us.... but as soon as enemy armor is a target, you'll see just about every armor vehicle change priority to engage the enemy armor (or fall back if they'll be forced to take hits from inf while fighting the armor)


The problem is that armor is expensive, and big battles don't last particularly long, and once over, the losing side all rolls Engy/HA and starts spamming free rockets.

If you aren't going for hilarious Titan AP headshot overkill on some dumb tunnel visioned sniper bastard then I just don't know what to tell you.

Any idiot can mindlessly spam spawn rooms, and they tend to go TR/VS because their tanks are better for it. The best is common pool though - the Viper Lightning. So if infantry is your target pull that and keep your Vanguard kitted out for AV work.

This is not to say I don't have a for-fun HE/C85 Canguard setup, but it performs....unimpressively, even in ideal farming situations.