Regarding the lazzy behavior of most tank players

Spawncamping is a plague and I am really worried and annoyed to see all those tanks shooting at the spawn rooms while there are ennemies trying to flank or moving to capture the base nearby.

I see most of the time brainless guys who do not even care to look at the ennemy tanks on the minimap and they are too lazy to chase them, to help friendly units, to look at their surroundings.

I feel that this game needs a deep change into the way the tanks are played, I mean their very true purpose.
Actually, the tanks are seen in the game by most of the players like a zerg tool or spawnroom spammers.
Personally i do not have fun like that and I cannot even stay more than 2 minutes near a spawnroom until being totally bored, no matter how much kills i could have done..

The state of the situation is not ready to change until the tanks are given a better purpose to exist and to incite the tank players to leave the spawnrooms for a greater goal.

To chase the other vehicles, to protect an area, are two of their main reasons to exist.
I believe that we could need more reasons to have fun because they are certainly other people here, who play this game because of the tanks (i name here the dedicated players).

Ok i complain, but what could be done then?

For exemple give the tanks new priority targets, some targets to destroy with high Health points:
- ammo tower generator: destroy it and the ammo tower does not work until it is repaired.
- destructable shield generators outside the bases, so tanks can fight for it, instead of waiting stupidly in front of the shield while teammates fight inside.

By extrapolation, we could even discuss about the role of the aircraft, because from what I understood the pilots would love to have something new to do also.

Honestly, this kind of changes would make a much more interesting game update than a golden new gun or to raise high walls everywhere on Esamir.

I can just agree. I like to flank, attack from behind and stuff. There were countless situations where i thought "If there were just one or two more tanks flanking with me, we could've had destroyed that zerg". I was playing on Miller, flanking that good old route to the hill south of Crossroads in an uncerted Vanguard, every prowler showing me it's bubble butt...

Been saying that since Launch that Tanks have nothing to do ... other than vulture over what is being left over.

Spawncamping isn't directly the issue, atleast no longer, because every newer base design pretty much makes it very hard to do or very punishing. It's mainly a issue on Indar were the base design was older. The Tanks themselves are not the issue here.

It's the integration of them into the core of the game. This actually goes for many combat Vehicles and is not limited to Tanks. Because essentially all combat Vehicles do is kill stuff.

And that's the underlying problem ... we need to create a symbiosis between the 4 battle groups, which are Infantry, Armor, Air and Support.

There need to be sections in major base captures were one of them enables the other to go to the next hurdle. But as long as there is no need for Armor or Air to do anything but killing stuff ... well we will never go past the purchasable killstreak.

Speaking of that ... resources and how they handled to "limit" spawning of Vehicles to minimize their spam ... is a failure of a system and will never work, even under the new system, given the so far known information. We need a specialization system to disallow the current freedom and acknowledge Vehicles as their own "classes".

Because people want to be Tankers/Pilots, but the game does everything to kick everybody in the face that actually want's to do anything dedicated in relation to Vehicles.

To sum my opinion up ... we need something that SOE will never do because it should have happened in beta, but it didn't ... a totally new combat system and environment, so basically an entire new game ...

Vehicles are just filling the empty space without any real reason to play them but have fun and kill.

Infantry is the king of the game and most bases are designed to massively favor infantry. Only reason to play a vehicle is to destroy a Sunderer but its easiet to destroy it with C4s/tank mines than with vehicle. About galaxy you need organized squad as randoms cant spawn from it and nearly every base has AA turret so you can shoo them away.

Sadly infantry gameplay has huge problems with latency so its not the best part of the game :/

I've played tanks since the early days and I have to say that right now, I rarely have an enjoyable tank session.

I used to enjoy tank-sniping but it's too risky now against air, so I stay with the zerg - which is boring. Hanging around a base, trying to pick off the odd infantryman while dodging C4 fairies - I wish for an enemy vehicle to take on but they rarely come. They're too busy spawn-camping another base.

Trouble is that only when even numbers of tanks are around does it become real interesting (and fun) - it does happen, just not very often.

A single tank is simply too vulnerable to everything - so they stick together.

I tank with my friend on the Saron, and we function as a zergbreaker. Whenever the everpresent NC tank zerg approaches us, we magburn around and pick them off 1 by 1. If more people pulled tanks, the everpresent tank zergs would not exist.

To be fair most of the tanks doing this using HEAT with a basilisk on top, hell most don't even have the 1 cert zoom, so sitting in a zerg shelling a base is about all they can do, lol.

Every tanker has there own play-style, no need to generalize an entire population.

But at the same time, it is very common to just shell the spawn. Maybe it's not all tankers, but the campers have the largest impact on infantry gameplay.

I love the tanks that just shell spawns, so easy to flank and destroy them with AP.

This pretty much sums it up in a shellnut. Tanks are kind of limited to either anti-vehicle or anti-infantry playstyles, with heat kind of working the in between. I pull tanks much less than I used to, because there are very few places where you'll find a big tank battle, and then after the battle there's nothing for you to do other than follow the infantry hoping beyond hope that some shmuch shows up in a vehicle for you to duke it out with.

This is why tech plants are one of my favorite places to fight. It's heavy infantry fighting, with lots of buildings and cover all around the complex around the main building that have generators worth fighting over, but also has plenty or room for vehicles to maneuver around. It's one of the few places where you find mixed arms combat. Usually the extent of infantry-tank interactions are either shell-farming a base into oblivion waiting for the cap, or a bajillion heavies poking their heads over a ridge at a narrow choke point raining death on any vehicle that tries to approach.

Air and support suffer this to a lesser degree. Things like sunderers are always solid to have nearby, and keep the fight going. So long is there isn't a ton of flack or heavies w/ lockons pointed skyward, air can offer support both with direct fire and logistical if you're working in a platoon.

I think the "tankproof" bases actually encourage the farm-style gameplay more than hinder it, because that is literally the only thing tanks can do in a fight like that.

The only things I can think of are make bases with more open layouts for vehicles to maneuver, and have more tunnels/teleporters out of the spawn to prevent getting camped too easily.

I think the biggest problem for tanks these days is the base design. Only continent were they even have a role is Indar. The walls around Esamir bases are a joke and destroy gameplay a lot even as infantry. This gets worse since Esamir was the tank continent with its wide spaces and open bases. Amersih is no place for tanks since it is the air contient, which is hard to travel and has inaccesible bases. Indar is also very limited since many fights take place in bad spots for tanks. But those guys shelling spawns are normaly not tankers.

I've had some pretty fun tank battles on Amerish, but yeah there's not much to do at those weird bases other than set up a perimeter and stay near a skyguard for protection. I dislike esamir for tank battling not just because of the bases but the wide open areas don't work well with my magrider style of tank-battling (well, I'd say most people's style of mag-tanking since it is the least tankiest of tanks).

I feel the problem stems from tanks having not enough vehicle targets. Most the time my tank is just shooting other tanks. There is no role for tanks other than to kill other tanks. Tanks also being unable to kill sunderers because 1 engineer and negate all the tanks firepower.

There needs to be more objectives and targets for tanks, and then the tank Spam against bases will slow down because the tanks are now engaging their targets.

Most of the time infantry is more of a threat to my tank then other vehicles(not counting libs) So it makes sense tanks use AI load outs given that there is always infantry and that infantry are always a threat.

Thinking about it, the lattice system probably had a negativ impact too. With the old HEX system battles did spread out further which was good for tanks since there was more stuff between bases to kill.

how about base capture points in the open fields of North Indar and Esamir that only ground vehicles can capture? these would finally offer tank players an objective to fight over instead of camping a random tower and shelling its spawn entrances.

the reason tank gameplay is in this miserable state is because right now tanks are supposed to support infantry. but there is hardly any real fighting going on between bases so tanks end up spawn camping. that is why we need a way to let tanks participate in the actual objective-based game.

take a look at Battlefield 3 and its Tank Superiority mode. i think a similar concept that requires tanks to take a capture point in an open field could work out well for PS2

Here is what I would like to see as a system ...

First off, increase the space between bases, remove outposts from the lattice line and reduce their overall number, so that they are mainly placed on "strategic" locations between bases(bridges, canyons, hills, etc.). This is mainly that Infantry is not "useless" in the field.

Than increase the size of current bases by roughly 20-30% and create a layered defense with multiple levels of fighting.

Outer defenses -> Walls/Natural Fortresses -> open courtyard -> urbane terraine -> Inner defenses -> indoors

In each layer you profit from different setups and for example, Tanks should enable Infantry to overcome the outer defenses. Infantry in return opens up the gates so that Tanks can get past the Walls to assist in the open courtyard battle were the next objectives are very open and you would profit from having Tanks around as cover to get to them.

If you ever played RtCW:ET, basically this sort of objective after objective structured battle. Ofcourse we can also integrate the multiple alternative objectives/solutions from that game to, there should not be one singular chain of objectives that works.

There could be weakpoints in bases that can be destroyed by HE/AP/HEAT munitions from Tanks only to open new paths, or interior"bunker/tunnel" battles were Infantry can do the same with C4. We could combine the two ...

It makes capturing a base way more meaningful, because you get all those sub-objectives within one, rushing to destroy or defend them. It definitely will drag out base battles and it should.

This was the last time for me that a capture/defense of a base mattered to me in this game ... and it wasn't even a base, just an outpost.

Also the fact that Esamir only has one Tech Plant, meaning only 1 faction effectively has MBT's to fight against, unless you are pushing their warpgate. That was always the biggest issue I had with Esamir, even before the introduction of the walls

1) Tanks need an actual role other than spawncamping.

2) Fighting enemy Tanks should require pulling your own tanks. The AV capabililties of Infantry and Maxes are just stupidly OP and it's free. There's no reason to pull a Tank atm, except dedicated Tankers whom I suspect to be a bit of masochistic.

3) Tanks are too fragile and too easy to kill. Even a single Infantry Soldier can do it. This needs to change.

4) Tanks have Zero defense against a single ESF. Even dedicated AA Secondaries are a joke and not enough to kill a single ESF. A single ESF can one-clip a MBT. Tanks actually should be "Tanky".

5) You can't play solo away from the Zerg in a 2/2 Tank. Even 50 meters away from a Friendly Zerg might not be safe. It's almost %100 sure that an enemy ESF or Lib will sweep down and kill you in a few seconds.

6) AA weapons are ineffective individually. That's why they stack like crazy and create a no Flying Zone near a Zerg. Anything out of that is a Death Zone for Ground Vehicles. Air is constantly scouting the boundaries of the Zerg. If there were actually very effective AA weapons, less people would use AA Loadouts and only a few people who are specialized in AA would do the AA work. Hence, Aircraft would actually have a chance to participate in big fights because there won't be as much AA as there is atm. Only a few Skyguards probably. A full squad of ESF's could do quick pass on the Ground while a few other ESFs would try to harass and get the attention of Skyguards from a distance.

Lazzy? Is that like Jazzy?