Battle Sunderers

I'm not a tanker nor a sundy driver and I find that ridiculous that Sundies actually can overpower MAIN BATTLE tanks, the CORE of the factions armored forces...

As said above, sundies should be vulnerable until they are deployed.
Then, give them more visual cues to show it's reinforced state.
This excludes the shield, which is another layer of defense for a deployed sundie.

Dang, giving a reason to tankers to actually attack sundies is so wacky!!
Must keep them farming only infantry, se we can cry for more nerfs instead!

I am just saying laying tank mines is a very effective method for Infantry to defend themselves from battle sunderers, which have to get very close to be effective vs infantry. I make sure any time I spawn at a sunderer in the open, that I run 20-30m away from the sunderer and drop my tank mines, and I get a ton of kills doing this. If more infantry realized how effective this can be then battle buses would be less of a threat, in areas with high concentrations of infantry. If you get 3-5 engineers to scatter mines 15-30 m away from their spawn point or along the path the infantry are using, it is very effective at defeating battle buses, yes it takes 3 mines for a complete kill, but 1 or 2 do enough damage that 2 or 3 additional rockets are more then enough to finish the bus off...
While I do not have an issue with battle sunderers, because just like the battle bus users, I generally always work in a coordinated group and they have little impact on our group and in general we will just kill them, because we understand the threat and the methods necessary to kill them.

I do have a reasonable suggestion... I wouldn't mind seeing EMP grenades neutralize the weapons & other systems on those vehicles, such as proxy repair and fire suppression. I think that would go a long way in reducing the effectiveness of these battle wagons vs infantry without nerfing them and more importantly it would also be a good counter when they stack up and utilizing the stacking of proximity repair...

Hint Hint SOE!!! New idea for weapons... EMP grenades for the under barrel grenade launchers and EMP mines, which disable all vehicles weapons and other systems for 10-15s...

And it also gives another role for infiltrators out in the field.

Yeah that's why most of the tankers run AP right? to farm infantry. Ofc.

Except none of these "justifications" have anything to do with the fact that Sunderers with a defensive slot upgrade can actually pose a viable threat to an MBT whose primary purpose, with AP shells and an AV secondary, is to kill ground vehicles. I shouldn't need to be forced to play strategically to simply defend myself against a steamroller of a battle sundy that's laughing off damage like it's taking hits from an airsoft gun while firing dinky AI weaponry that magically destroys heavy armor -- and all while driving in reverse. The whole situation is entirely stupid for countless reasons.

Uh, okay. In that case, why don't Sunderers take less damage to the rear without blockade armor? The point still stands; blockade armor arbitrarily favors the Sunderer's rear strictly because of erroneous resistance values, and it gives the Sunderer a stupidly high amount of effective health that can be exploited to give the vehicle a huge advantage in a combat role. And driving backwards in a combat role is painstakingly, unjustifiably stupid, to begin with. Really, it is. I don't know why you can't see that.

Plenty of the terrain features exist -- or can be exploited -- to force tanks into close-range engagements with enemy vehicles, and battle sundies are capable of backing up at least as fast as tanks moving in reverse in tandem. Moreover, if you're caught at a battle sundy's effective engagement range for whatever reason, driving off is often out of the question. Driving past them is only going to get you killed for obvious reasons, reversing only roughly matches the speed of the sundy, and turning around to drive off takes far too much time. Criticizing tankers for failing to "play to their strengths" without taking into consideration the *multitude* of variables that conclude to the ultimate end result of a hostile battle sundy closing in on an MBT is unfair and shallow. It's like arguing that the Prowler should always be "playing to its strengths" at long range when, in many cases, it isn't possible or feasible to engage armor at such distances because of X / Y / Z reason.

And let's be frank -- the elephant in the room is still there. Namely, it's the fact that cheap, spammable battle sundies pose a serious threat to expensive, dedicated AV heavy armor at any range, in the first place. The game simply shouldn't work like that. It does nothing for the game. It's just another arbitrary, gimmicky nuisance to put up with from the tanker's perspective that doesn't have to be there, and it's just one more step toward undermining the role and class of the MBT.

I'm still experimenting with the battle Sundy to see if it's better to go with 3 MBTs (1350 nanites) or 2 Sundies (600 nanites) for a total of 6 operators, but apparently the ability to drive into a base, park on the control point and just hold it is something a Sundy does much better.

For over twice the price, there should be no contest between the tanks and the Sundies, especially when Sundies can do a few things tanks can't even dream of, such as spawning people or driving through gate shields.

The price of C4 to destroy a Sundy with blockade armor exceeds the cost of the Sundy itself, so it's in fact counterproductive in the long run, especially when the Sundy will likely just fix up after the vast majority of attacks.

Battlebuses are fail at range tanks shoot stuff at render range. AV battlebus have 0 chance vs air while the Tanks have small chances.
Battlebus needs 3 persons to operate and tank needs 2. Since the battle bus needs to use blockade it cannot surprise attack tanks in the back using stealth . In general if 3 stealth cloaked fury flashes surprise any tank in the back they have fair change to win, why the sundie should be worse?

In general the current balance is more then fine. Both things have their respective roles. It looks more like " nerf the thing that killed me topic"

Pulled my first dedicated battle bus last night after reading this thread. It has dual Furys, max blockade, Max fire supression, max rival chassis, and a loud *** horn. (Yes it is maxed out even though I don't use it; perks of being BR100 for over a year)

Stomped around SW Indar for about 30 minutes with 2 outfit mates gunning. Neither have sundy gunning experience, proven when one asked why I was driving backwards.

Rear gunner ended with 68 kills, front gunner had 54. We took out 9 MBTs, 7 Sundies, and three harassers. I should have asked them how much xp they made, but I can only imagine it was in the "godly" range.

So essentially what I'm saying is an inexperienced driver and 2 inexperienced gunners were able to dominate for over a half hour before getting taken out by like 5 Magriders focusing Fire from a hilltop. In my two years of dedicated Vanguard and Harasser driving, I have never had such an easy time dominating my enemies.

Totally balanced.....................

Edit: to those saying that it's the MBTs fault for letting them get so close, trust me, if I want to get close to you, unless you are a MLGpro-tier player, I will be all up in your **** whether you like it or not.

MBTs do need a buff -- but not until they are changed to be 3-person vehicles (driver, main gunner, secondary gunner).

The real issue is likely that the Fury (an AI weapon) on the sunderer is too effective against MBTs.

Compared to MBTs, Battle Sundies:
- Are more resistant to damage through health and armour
- Can deal more damage
- Are faster
- Are cheaper
- Can carry up to 12 angry rocket shooting people / angry sundie repairing people
- Can deploy to spawn more angry rocket shooting people / angry sundie repairing people
- Have lower effective range ( Furys / Bulldogs )

Imho, we should simply give them access to empire specific secondarys and do away with the idea that we need any other ground vehicles. Dual Vulcan sundie ftw!

I snuck up on a Battle Bus sunderer, ambushing it from the side with AP/Enforcer. I didn't miss any shots and was absolutely dumbfounded when it killed us. I was fighting in an area that I couldn't stay back because of terrain, but getting the jump on them like that should have made it an easy win for my 2/2 Vanguard.

My Battle Bus:
Gate shield diffuser 1/ Vehicle Stealth 4/ Racer 3
Both Basilisks with Thermal and extended magazines.
I commonly lock my vehicle to reduce the chances of someone alerting the enemy of my position

When solo, I am constantly on the run, in search of hiding spots. I can take out unsuspecting players with ease, but will give competent players a chance to chase me down. With one gunner, I feel handicapped because I am not only not being stealthy but am at 50% firepower unless stationary, I may kick them out if they shoot at random things. With 2 gunners, I feel obliged to bring them many opportunities of destruction, for I cannot keep two people's interest to only just guard my bus.

Not certain that Sundy armor should be less effective against tanks however maybe their weapons should be?

My suggestion to fix issue --> On the Sundy, increase the armor and speed to allow it to have a chance of fleeing from a tank. But make it so that any weapons it can use do significantly less damage to tanks...

Or perhaps just give the tanks more armor and slower speed? IDK, with the proliferation of vehicles due to not many restrictions it's hard to balance....

Ok, battle bus sundies are ridiculous powerful. So are they OP? On their own, as in "will this vehicle completely ruin the game"? Probably not. But is Battle Bus loadout making vehicular balance skewed and unintuitive? Yes, it certainly is. MBTs should not be outclassed in everything but longest range engagements by a 200 nanite vehicles.

So, what can we do abut it. Not we can't buff MBT armour and HP, not by much anyway. But let's say we add an additional cert subtree that is somehow akin to a toned down Sundie's blockade armour(increases armour across all sides, or just front and sides). I even go as far as suggest to put it into performance slot(call it "assault chassis" for example), so that heavily armoured MBTs will not be able to install any other performance upgrades. This might require additional testing but it seems to be what current MBTs need. in terms of survivability.

Not back to Sundie. We can't make it squishy, because S-AMS has to withstand "C4 fairying" and "aggressive AT mine placement"(aka suicide engies) as well as generally be robust enough to not die instantly right after someone discovers it parked near the base. And ts definitely needs to be able to defend itself from infantry as well as air and ground vehicles.

So, here's the deal: current armour levels should only be applied to the deployed Sundie. Call it hull-down, force fields, nanite magic or whatever, but as soon as Sundie undeploys, it should lose a significant portion of it's additional damage resistance. Vanilla Sundie can stay as it is, but all the armour upgrades should act as "full value while deployed, 20% of that otherwise" or something along these lines. This will allow S-AMS to still be hard to kill while preventing the Battle Bus Rampage. And no, it is not realistic as in "armour can't magically disappear" but it makes perfect sense from the gameplay standpoint. You want an explanation? Because nanites.

Or just tone all the armour upgrades down significantly and make the deployment shield much harder, this can probably work even better.

Regarding weapons, well, outside of Fury requiring a nerf of it's anti-armour damage, Sundie armament seems to be in a decent spot.

So yeah, this will give us a more "tanky" tanks and a Sundies that can take a lot of punishments(and probably still eat MBTs for breakfast) while deployed but will be vulnerable on the move.

Edit: To compensate for armour nerfs, Sundie can probably use some speed buffs...

That one....

plus SOE should remove the additional rear armor resistance on the Sundy.. or give my tank a butt cover armor..
Tanks are the only vehicles that have increased vulnerability from the rear.. . no other vehicles have weak spots..

and then the Sundy gets extra armor to the rear ?

And, again, IMHO the Sundy is too cheap... it should cost twice as many nanites to pull one.

Also, are there actually any bases where you can NOT pull a sundy?

I prefer dual G30 walkers for indar, a g30 and a bulldog for amerish/esamir, and dual bulldogs for hossin.

For NC you would be lucky to have someone sit in your sundy while deployed so I find g30s are best at keeping people inside the sundy. They dont get bored as easily if they have something to shoot.

Stats are great but real game play is another thing entirely.

As much as I think my angrybus is ridiculous, let's keep in mind that the furies are strong because there's two of them, not because fury is too strong. Also because of the gigantic HP and ability to crap out infantry on demand, but I just want to make sure we don't nerf the harasser and flash because of blockade sundy overperforming.

I never had any issue with killing sunderers. The tricks are:

• Gunner (a given in a Magrider)
• Keep a distance greater than 50m
• Move

this thread is not about standard supporting sunderers, this thread is about battle sunderer actively hunting and killing, intentionally charging at or sneaking upto other vehicles.

2&3 will not help you against an aggressive battle sunderer, if you reverse they'll pass you and hit your rear even with rival unless they are also reversing, if you accelerate forward your rear will be exposed and you are a goner.

if they are worknig in twos one will be a repair sunderer and you still have no chance of victory unless allies who are sufficiently powerful that can destory them

I actually managed to plop a couple tank mines on a moving lightning and blow them up with a sticky grenade, but I do see your point.

I think that if enough sunderers start farming infantry across the entire game, infantry side will come here and whine. Then the sunderer will be nerfed just like the tanks.

So 6 people in 2 different vehicles have a good chance at killing my MBT manned by 2 people? I'm fine with that. If you pit those 2 sunderers against 2 MBTs, and the crew of the MBTs are experienced enough to shoot the repair sunderer first, you'll probably win the encounter.

In all fairness, a fury wraith flash with a decimator heavy on top has a good chance at catching off guard tanks. Again I would call it well played if it happens.