WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT THE PPA ?

No it doesn't.
None of the MBT-carried ESAI guns do heavy AV damage.

my mistake, but the saron is still super specialized (3 direct hits to kill infantry on a 6 shot clip) making it a horrible AI weapon where the other tanks can reliably defend themselves with either volume of fire or OHKs with their anti armor weaponry.

i just thought i remembered my lightning taking damage from one recently, i may be imagining it or i was being hit by multiple enemies.

This is really getting old. PPA has been in the game forever and was actually nerfed recently. The canister and marauder need buffs. I think we should have learned by now that nerfing **** is almost always a bad idea in PS2. The game just gets more and more dull. Canister probably needs to be deleted and remade and the marauder is not actually that bad. Just needs a small buff here or there.

It can only shoot through vehicle shields and its not a bug. Any weapon should be able to pass through vehicle shields though as long as no vehicle damage can be dealt. They should fix that. Unless you mean the spawnshield render bug, but any weapon can shoot through a spawnshield if they are 300 meters away.

Nope! PPA is perfectly capable of shooting through spawnroom shields - maybe not all and maybe with some preparatory work required - but I've seen it happen with my own eyes and well within 300m either.

PPA is great. Marauder and canister should be buffed like a mad man though. Anyone that willingly pulls a AI secondary on a MBT should benefit a lot from having it not be annoyed that they wasted their resources.

Doublepost.

The only way to do this is to fire at roughly 300 meters. But like I said, any weapon can do this. Now it MAY be possible to have some splash damage leak in through the shield at various angles, but any explosive AOE weapon can also do that.

And I tell you I've seen some Harassers doing it from much closer distance at a Tech Plant just the other week. And it wasn't 'just splash damage' - orbs were going through the shields and exploding inside like they weren't there.

that is a bug that needs to be fixed then, and has nothing to do with the overall balance debate.

Well of course! Did you read anything I've posted?

To be honest, the way you've been describing it made it look like a feature rather than a bug/exploit.

"WE SHOULD BUFF THE **** OUT OF MARAUDER AND CANISTER!!!

And fix that bug with PPA's projectiles passing through spawn shields."

You people should stop posting while sleep deprived.

Most Vehicle users say that the PPA is not the problem ... it's the other NS and ES AI secondaries available to MBTs ...

The PPA is basically the last bastion of a viable AI weapon for Tanks ... Viper is gone, partially justified, horribly executed by SOE, all HE guns ... pff, Marauder? Died with the Fury nerf. Kobalt? Usable, though nerfed below a NC6 Gauss SAW in terms of range ...

C85 Modified/Canister ... how they manage to screw the intended "buff" about a year ago so up to make the gun even more useless is still beyond me. I once asked a good RL friend of mine what his opinion was about such a change (He never played PS2 and is essentially neutral) ... half a year ago he already said "Why do you still care if the game will never become what you want to play?"

Major negativity ahead ... since I no longer care ...

Mark my words, SOE gives a **** about Tankers and Tanks in general, they never cared about them, never will. The PPA will be nerfed, not because it deserves a nerf, but because the stream of income is speaking ... I don't care what the devs want, because they seem to have no say in anything anyway, so any provided feedback on these forums is useless nor will it probably reach any dev(no matter what RadarX and co say, it's the truth and I liked to be proofed otherwise)

It took them two years to realize that Tank combat is to stationary ... how many more will it take them to realize that Tanks are useless in the big picture, they are more burden on your team than gain, the skill cap is far above the Air Game's, while the entry is as low as it can get.

Infantry still outranges Tanks ... after the "buff" that I don't need, I've been shooting on the drive since over 9 months accurately, I used gearskip and other "work arounds" in this glitched game that those "buff" will no longer affect me, but the nerf to velocity will ...

Nothing will be done to change the fact that Tanks will need to get closer now ... all the reverse speed in the world will not save you if you need to get into knife fighting distance with Infantry.

Most "true" Tankers left or swapped to Infantry or Air. The few that keep the fort are either frantically devoted or flat out crazy or just blind. And SOE keeps taking one dump after another on them. Instead of actually listening to any of them why they "enjoy" Tank combat.

Sit a KlyptoK or any other tanker in a 5 minute interview with the guy responsible for Vehicle warfare ... to tell them why ... it isn't really that hard to collect "good" feedback if there are people that have been active and well respected for a long time on these forums ... but I forgot, SOE doesn't care about their own Forums ...

There once was a time were I actually cared ... and without a doubt would have and literally did throw money at the game ... I don't care about the one I already spent, it was time good invested and I met some awesome people ... but I feel really disappointed about SOE ...

Sorry I had to vent this ... but like I said ... I just no longer care.

Edit.

SOE however seemed to now get the message ... partially ... one many have been repeatedly been saying since "years"(If you include the beta forums). Take a look at http://www.ps2tracker.net/

The usual 95% Reddit/Twitter/anywhere but here post count is shifting to actually use the forums ... for once ... But I think it's to little, just to late ...

the saron is an AV weapon and it's still really poweful against infantry because it's really accurate and has explosion damage (not that much though) you should start using the vulcan it's a beast agasnt vehicles (more powerful thn the saron at closer ranges but way weaker at <40m) but you can hardly killt infantry if they're no standing still and under 15m

Nothing should be done about the PPA. The other AI secondaries need buffs.

C85 Canister:
Increase pellet count by at least 50% and change the damage values so you can reliably 2 shot people in ranges 10-25m and ohk <10m, keep the spread as it is, at least double magazine size, make it able to aim upwards like a ranger/walker/kobalt.

Marauder: Feels like it is just a bad fury. Change it so its different.
Fires 3 grenades as burst with very little spread. Reduce direct damage, increase indirect damage. Adjust rof until TTK with indirect damage only is similar to PPA (direct hits will be faster, but the gun will have less range compared to the PPA). Increase magazine size to 45ish. Make it able to aim upwards like a ranger/walker/kobalt. Slightly increase velocity.

Kobalt:
Increase effective range (again).

Not the case since they nerfed it last time.
Atm it's 3 shots to kill a naked infantry with it. 5 if they sport flak5. That does not qualify as "Really Powerfull".

Pull an AV vehicle from an adjacent base and blow the crap out of the PPA vehicle?

Its not the PPA, all guns do that. You just need to stay at a distance. ESF's do it all the time when i hide under biolab. They get some distance and then shoot my ESF thru the sheild. They just cant let a kill get away, they rather glitch/exploit.

It is settled.

Dev Post

"After a lot of feedback from our players, we've decided to buff the C85 Canister (and the H variant) slightly so it performs better at it's designated range.

Damage: 300x15 @ all ranges. This is to balance out the overall power of the Canister and make it more useful at it's target range.
RoF: 857 RPM. We saw that 180 RPM really did make the cannon less comparable to weapons such as the Sweeper and Thanatos, so an increase to this level brings it in line with top-DPS weapons such as the Lynx and TORQ-9.
Magazine Size: 75/300. The magazine was edited to more closely compare to that of the PPA's.
Pellet Spread: .001. We saw that most projectiles of this shotgun were missing their mark, so we made the accuracy of the projectiles to that of a tank cannon.
Armor Resistance Change: -50%. Our data shows that only .000452% of all canister shots deal damage to armor, so lowering the resistance that armor has against these cannons will hopefully increase the canister armor killing margin by 150%.
New Weapon Mechanic: Homing Pellets. When the canister locks onto targets, it will automatically correct it's aim towards the target and release salvos of perfectly accurate shotgun pellets until it's target has died. The lock sequence takes around .00069 seconds to complete.
__________________________________________________________

Thoughts for our changes?"

Since PPA had it's armor damage removed and nerfed in other ways, it's no longer OP. But alternatives like C85 Canister are just too weak. Frankly, pretty much everything has been nerfed so much that it feels weak and boring to play. And yet there are still people crying for more nerfs. It's a race to the bottom