Why is it that a single infantry can 'solo' a MBT in this game?

It is ridiculously easy to do.

Yeah, I've seen the videos. The C4Fu and some of Shootybob's videos I have in my LA guide actually. But I also know that people who make these videos compile a bunch of best moments together, while the whole gameplay may not necessarily look anything alike.

C4 isn't the culprit, however. It is available to 3 other classes in addition to LA, and even on LA himself C4 seems to be out of place only with Drifters. Drifters are in a weird place right now. C4ing vehicles is pretty much all they are good for, and very few people actually use them. Normal Jump Jets can be used with jump pads too, but the LA will have much less time to maneuver, and will likely have to land and approach the tank on foot, and then he'll be easier to notice.

So C4 + Drifters is an issue, not C4 as a whole. I wish I had a mutually beneficial solution, but right now I'm too tired to think straight.

Flash C4 is also an issue,and individual bricks are more damaging + forgiving than they should be. But yes, it's largely drifters and their 1000m+ range. Proxy radar being a sphere instead of a cylinder doesn't help.

Easiest way to fix it is removing C4 from light assault, seriously buffing drifters and explosive crossbow / underbarrel grenades vs. MAX to compensate, and nerfing C4 AT damage so it takes two bricks directly on the tank to kill. I'm completely okay with a medic/engy/heavy strapping me with two bricks and killing me, I'm not okay with drifters and jj + jump pads insanity.

Dear god, I've moved on from PS2 for so long, I kind of forgot Higby even promised this until I saw this post.

I guess I should get back to moving on instead of remembering the dev lies.

Kobalt with thermals. That will waste any LA that tries to get close.

As for the ones that jump down out of render range from 800m up.. C4 is affected by gravity, it doesn't hit the ground instantly. Don't sit still and those attacks will never hit.

As I've said before, I really don't get C4 LAs. The only real use I see them for is gibbing a careless MAX. I really see no point to send a LA out to the field where the MBT's are playing. Its a waste of their talent. Will they get a kill on a cert farming zergling? Sure, but so will a sniper camping a vehicle spawn two territories back. Both aren't really helping their teams.

The exception is the C4 LA taking out a Sundy. But that's a stationary target, frequently unmanned. That's pretty well balanced IMO. There 'should' be people protecting it. Course same could be said of the MBT. Why isn't the gunner ever held responsible? Why does it have to be the devs? Yell at your gunner for derping.

What I think people are ticked about is they are going half cocked running 1/2 MBTs. They want to bombard a spawn, get some kills. And boom.. they get upset when they sit somewhere and 'out of nowhere' get C4'd and blown up.

Let's try this. Lets see some videos of peeps in MBT's getting blown up without the ability to react. Lets see if they are really doing anything wrong. They claim they aren't. Now lets see it.

Ya we'll see, I still enjoy tanking in this game despite the heavy bias toward infantry. Oh and if you wanted further evidence, Mustarde who is a big and highly respected member of the infantryside community recently made a thread on reddit about seeing a tank fight on Indar, how epic it was, and how he wished planetside 2 would make a return to a combined arms focus. I believe it had over 200 upvotes, over 200 comments, and between a 86-94% approval rating. No dev response, BBurness himself denied that there ever was a phase 2 until myself and other players sent him Higby twitter tweets and the like showing his intentions for phase 2 right before he left, upon which BBurness went silent and we got no response of it since. BBurness who is supposed to be the new lead developer in my opinion is worse than Higby, because while Higby ruined the game's balance for the first two years right as he was about to leave he finally saw the light, it was clear in his responses and the various ways he was planning to buff tank durability. BBurness has none of those intentions and all the best response I got from BBurness to show who he was when I pressed further was "I don't want tanks to become I win buttons" . As if C4, and AV nests aren't I win buttons against tanks.

1. tanks are rewarded for being still with increased accuracy provided they aren't magriders. The don't sit still argument is a weak one, often times to not be gibbed tanks have to rely on cover for a minute here or there even if the C4 misses if it's in close proximity it will still blow up the tank.

2. It doesn't matter if it doesn't help their teams, it activately takes away from the PS2 experience and prevents tanks have tank fights and prevents open field battles from being ruined by infantry cheese.

3. The gunner being responsible for protecting the tank and the one to blame for it blowing up is one of the fastest ways to tell that people don't have a true understanding of tanking. If you're in a tank fight with 2 2/2 tanks you absolutely need your gunner to have full concentration on the enemy tank or they will win. Outside of looking at the minimap if the gunner is spinning their turret around who is going to have the DPS advantage? The enemy tank. Furthermore you gunner also has a fairly limited turret elevation and can also not look directly up where a LA can come from. I have the privilege of having some of the best gunners in the game gun for my tank, excellent situational awareness, great minimap checking, amazing aim. A LA can come from directly above and negate all of that.

4. Ah the classic, "the people who are getting blown up are the 1/2 evil/stupid tunnel tankers who have 0 situational awareness and are shelling spawn room" argument/claim. True tankers hate doing that, it's insanely boring, and hunting down and killing vehicles is way more satisfying and profitable. I've gone tanking with Alarox before and while hunting other tanks both him and I had a very persistent LA player who even though we weren't shelling a base would continuously interrupt our fights to try to C4 us, eventually we couldn't give the sky all of our attention and were both C4'd at least once or twice. Two of the most experienced tankers in the game knew of the threat, had our guard up, and despite our best efforts eventually were we C4'd while fighting vehicles.

5. The videos you wanted to see are in my upper post, there are 3 of them. Have fun.

Very good! Ignoring your sporadic tyrading, that's how you properly have an argument. Now I'll refute your refutations.

1. C4 cannot be repaired, correct. Not sure how this has any relevance since it is a block of one-use explosive. What you should be focusing on is the infantry unit carrying the C4, which can be 'repaired', just like the tank.

2. Tank has a whole ammo compliment to try to hit. Clearly you don't use tanks very often. When someone comes at you, you get one, maybe two shots before they have time to destroy you. And you only have to land both bricks if the tank is at more than 80% health. Otherwise one will suffice. Furthermore, near misses are A-OK with C4, but not with AP shells.

3. C4 is easier to use than it is to avoid. This is YOUR point, when you said that tankers need to 'git gud' to avoid C4, but that the skill of the C4-er has "no effect".

4. I would not call any of HE, HEAT, or AP "extremely effective" at both AI and AV. C4, on the other hand, is one of the most effective AV infantry weapons in the game, and it also functions as a placeable-or-throwable-or-dropable extremely effective AI grenade.

5. True, range is shared by both tanks and C4.

6. Do you know of any bases which lack infantry terminals?

7. (stats) In terms of infantry AV, C4 is ranked only behind Tank Mines, which are dedicated to vehicle kills. C4, on the other hand, is used for a wide range of things other than killing vehicles.
Regardless, whether or not people use something has nothing to do with it being balanced or not. Your hypothesis is predicated on the idea that if something is OP then everyone will use it. But that is an assumption, not "Irrefutable, raw data", as I believe you put it.

Actually...

Just think about this for a moment. C4 costs nanites, 75 nanites per brick. So if Tanks were to shoot nanites to kill stuff it would start costing nanites as well.
Also, killing the entire continent with nanites will probably not happen. Or maybe it actually did happen, but they got defense against it. The more functions you put in your nanites, the more complex and slow they get. A self-replicating eat-everything nanite would probably not eat through your armor very fast. It would function like a virus, infecting armor and people alike and slowly eating away their armor and body until they are dead while reproducing themselves, then moving around until they find something else to eat. And depending on the method for moving around it is going to take even longer to reproduce and eat through something as being wind-born is going to be cheaper and easier than actively being able to seek out targets.
Now a tank or body that is in the field is slowly being eaten away, but something that is alive or not damaged till destruction isn't eaten. So we have some shielding against it, if it isn't just a self-destruct nanite package to reclaim matter after you die, which would explain how redeploying will instantly eat away your body and tanks can be deconstructed if they remain empty too long.

So the more elaborate and functional a nanite is, the more time it will need to complete multiple tasks. Which is why a stick of medkit healing nanites lasts for a tiny period of time, rebuilding your armor and body. To replenish armor and flesh that has been shot off of your body the medkit container is probably consumed and used for the rebuilding. Afterwards the nanites shut down and stop functioning. C4 bricks carry a large amount of highly aggressive nanites that will work for less than a second, similar to the nanites that form entire tanks. To be effective you'll need volume, as a more spread-out nanite cloud will eat away slower. So a C4 brick detonates to spread the nanites about, but they have some kind of method to remain in an exactly defined area.


More questions that need to be answered are 'why can small rockets penetrate vehicle armor'? Ravens for instance are tiny missiles even compared to the rockets a HA carries, and those rockets are tiny and lightweight (you can carry 6 of them!) compared to vehicle shells. These tiny rockets shouldn't be able to penetrate vehicle armor and destroy it, right?
But what if tanks aren't based on penetration anymore? These tanks can eat 2 Vanguard shells and still move and shoot as if it didn't get a scratch! So tanks keep their vital functions repaired, probably through a bunch of nanites, and our 'health' is the amount of nanites we still have in store. Our armor is the cheapest to repair and receives the least damage and nanites, which is why we need less nanites to repair it and lose less health. Shooting the almost unarmored backside will cause damage to vital systems and need much more nanites to repair it, losing more health. The last bit of health is the actual vehicle state, when you run out of nanites you can suddenly start burning and lose speed when driving or turning.
With nanite-build weapons you can create perfect warheads that could be capable of damaging PS2 tank armor, making it lose health. Possibly these tanks are actually not at their maximum 100% best. If you did, they could cost 4000 nanites but be immune to infantry based rockets and receive much less damage from small-caliber AT weapons on tanks, if at all. But now economy starts working, while you can get 1 supertank for 4000 nanites, the enemy can field 8, almost 9 MBTs (or 8 MBT's and 1 Lightning). Even if they won't be able to penetrate, they will be able to outmaneuver it and break the armor with enough firepower (super-b designed warheads). Then there's AT mines and C4. We see that a Lightning and MBT get almost the same damage from it, so we can assume that the nanites from C4 and AT mines are specifically set to the way these are build, which is why they are less capable of eating away an armored 200 nanite Sunderer which is build up differently, giving it some protection against the method these nanites try to dissassemble it. With a special shaped charge build against the supertanks a single infantry man could waste 100 to 150 nanites and destroy a 4000 nanite supertank... which makes using 8 MBT's that are vulnerable to infantry fire a much better option. Less armor, still great firepower.

Rocketlaunchers and AV grenades are complete garbage against tanks. They only way those are dangerous is if there's multiple of them shooting at you. While a single tank is already a threat.
Again, just for good measure: you need multiple infantry to be a threat against a single tank (but you can easily outdistance yourself from them, it's your choice to get close), while a single enemy tank is already a threat.

So you are left with C4 and AT mines. Now this is the first time you mention AT mines... and here's a funny thing, AT mines score almost as much vehicle kills as C4, only difference is the engineer can place them in all safety before the tanks arrive, and can have some bugs helping him prevent mine detection and get a kill.
Again, just for your sake: AT mines require less skill and are less dangerous to place, but get almost the same amount of vehicle kills as C4. Yet you only named them after 6 pages of discussion...?

Let's get back to your decision to use HE. You suddenly name 3 other reasons as to why you use it, Rocket Launchers, AV grenades and AT mines. Before we were discussing C4 fairies, and here is your exact quote:
"However, because of C4 fairies, when going into heavily populated areas, I've felt the need to start running HE to protect myself against the fairies"
You need HE because of C4 fairies... Yet you claim that C4 fairies can kill you before you see them 100% of the time, meaning you'll never be able to use your HE weapon against them. Even if you did see them, the AP shell would have more velocity and make hitting the airborn target easier, and your AOE damage won't be much use as only a direct hit will help against an airborn LA.
As for using HE against Rocketlauncher, AV grenade and AT mine users: AT mine users place their mines before you arrive in more than 90% of the cases, again negating the whole effect of equipping HE as you will never be able to kill the engineer and your awareness of mines will not be better regardless of equipping HE or AT.
So the only thing you can really use HE against, is protecting yourself from Rocketlaunchers and AV grenades.

But it is still more comparable to melee than LMG's. That is all there is too it ^^

I said that C4 fairies can kill you without you seeing. Not that every single one does.
The rest of your enormous post misappropriates things I said in pretty much the same way as that part. So instead of going though it piece-by-piece, I'm just gonna have to say:
Nope. Sorry.

No, no it isn't. C4 can be used outside of melee range, therefore it is not a melee weapon. If you'd like to ignore the definition of 'melee' and call it one, go right ahead. But it's not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melee_weapon
"A melee weapon is a weapon used in hand-to-hand combat such as a bladed weapon or a blunt weapon. Melee weapons contrast with ranged weapons."

Tanks are not fixed artillery. They can fire, then move. No LA will be quick enough to nail you in the split second it takes to fire off a round. Tanks have turrets for a reason.

Teamwork is the essence of the PS2 experience. If you don't like that, I don't know what to tell you. Two will beat one. Three will beat two, and so on. Exponentially increasing with coordination and experience.

See this is where you're going wrong. I don't understand why people think that by choosing MBT they should be invulnerable. And by this statement, you believe you should be invulnerable to other MBTs.

Look this is the facts: Lets say you are a AP tank with a AP gunner, designed to fight other MBTs. You're 2/2 fighting another 2/2 tank. Screw it, lets use YOUR example and Two 2/2 tanks. Then you get blown up by a LA.

You went 5v2 and expect to win? Seriously? Your 450 nanites and 2 people is supposed to take on 1050 nanites and 5 players? I don't understand how you think that is unbalanced. 3 more people, and 600 more resources.

True tankers is a misnomer at best. True tankers, the ones who ideally wish to provide actual support and win alerts and tank bases realize very early on that tanking is mostly not needed. Sure there's a sundy here or there that can be taken out. And occasionally a big tank fight is needed to press in on a control point of a base that is exposed.

But true tankers realize that is not the norm. That their machines of devastation and destruction are for the most part not needed in the majority of fights. Why do people still take tanks? Because tanks are big, they're sexy, and they can rack up kills. They are fun. Don't get me wrong. I love my Vanguard. I love making my enemy crap themselves when I pull up.

But don't try to make us believe for a second you think you're effective in even half of the fights in this game in the way you claim. The majority of time when a tank is present, it is a guy trying to get a few kills before he has to redeploy (if part of a platoon) or sticks around and farms (if running solo).

As for your videos. The tanks are stationary and derping around. Try showing videos of YOU in a tank NOT derping, not farming, and moving in the means that I said above. You'll be a minute before getting C4'd. And when and if you do get C4'd (not saying it won't happen, cause it eventually will). It will be because you let your guard down. And you will let your guard down. It happens to the best of us.

But that's the fact of life in PS2. Everyone deals with it. Air, Infantry, Vehicles, MAXes. When you go get a vehicle from a terminal and get sniped. When you round a corner and get shotguned. When a stalker knifes you (kudos for them pulling that one off). Heck sometimes when you come out of the warpgate and there's a three deployed sundy AA gank squad.

Tankers do NOT get to be the exception.


This isn't to say that Tanks aren't without their problems. C4 is an issue but one that is a symptom of another. Lets take a look at what exactly is going on. And I'm going to use your videos and experiences.

In the videos the tanks were prime targets for C4. Why were they? Why weren't they on the move? Why were they sitting still? In one video I noticed a tank was around the vehicle area of a tech plant. I'm assuming this tank was just pulled from that tech plant. Why did the tanker do that?

You don't pull vehicles from places under heavy attack. You're asking to get mined, AV turreted, Rocketed, or in his case, C4'd.

If he was attacking the base (could very well have been, hard to tell). Why would you bring a tank that close? Screw C4, if I saw a tank in that location I'd drop tank mines on them from my engineer or use an AV MAX to bring him down in seconds. Or if I'm feeling really squirrelly I'd use a decimator.

So why was that guy there? Cause he has nothing better to do with his tank. What he should have done was ditched the tank and joined with the main force to assault or defend on foot wherever it was needed. Obviously with the free reign that LA in the video had, having a tank was a liability.

But that is the real problem tanks have. Once certain conditions happen, they don't serve a purpose. That is the real underlying problem. If that tanker had something to do, he could have been engaged in that, rather than making themselves a target.

Sorry to say, but mid field is NOT a place where C4 is a danger. You can see the LA's coming a mile away. Even from the air, they are likely to be shot down before getting close. Using a ESF costs 350 nanites, plus the 150 for the 2 C4, means 500 resources are needed. Sure one guy can do it. But what happens if they miss?

0 damage, 425-500 nanites spent.

So we know midfield isn't an issue. Tank fights aren't ruined by C4. At least not in midfield.

Its the nitty gritty in base fights where Tanks get wrecked by infantry. But why are tanks getting that close? Because that's where the fight is. Its also when tanks are pretty much useless outside bombarding a spawn room. You might get lucky and happen on a base where your tank can cover spawn to point paths.

Assuming the enemy can't fire on your tank from the spawn.

Tanks need another role. They need to be able to attack the base Directly. This walls, tunnels, ceilings, floors, bridges, ect. They need to be able to stay back out of infantry range and support their friendly infantry pushes by attacking the base itself and causing damage their friendly infantry can take advantage of.

Force the enemy infantry to come to them out of their base. Or to deploy their own vehicles to engage in a fight out of the base. This means less issues from infantry and more vehicle on vehicle fights.

You will still have the option to move into the base with the tank of course. But doing so will open you to infantry threats. Right now that is all you have an option to do. But with my proposal (that I've posted in many other threads on the subject) will allow tankers to instead stay out of danger while still providing support.

It won't mean much in the way of kills (if the enemy doesn't respond, at their own peril) but at least you made your allied pushes easier and helped your team. That is what you stated you wished to do right? Over farming kills?

Sure it sounds a bit off to make such a suggestion that puts tanks 'further' away from the battle. But it does so in a meaningful way. And it encourages defenders to counter with vehicles, not simply pull out the C4, mines, turrets, and other infantry means to deal with the threat. They need long range options, and those options come in their own vehicles.

I'm not talking about 300m, but 400-600m. So Pheonixes, Ravens, AV mana Turrets, ect will not be effective defenses. Vortexes and Lancers 'could' be. But like now, they will suffer against long range moving targets (just because you're at range doesn't mean you need to sit still... Main Battle Tank, not fixed Artillery).

Quit with this sad excuse for an argument already! Every single infantry can look up almost 90 degrees, yet they don't spot you either, almost not a single tank is completely alone and without infantry, so you might as well blame your infantry friends for not spotting them. Stop using lame excuses, I'm tired of it.

Because most infantry are running looking straight up? You kidding me, one of the golden rules of FPS's is that players don't look up for threats. Me relying on others doesn't work either when it comes to infantry around me, particularly when they are coming from very high up.

Golden rule? WTF I've been playing FPS's online since Quake 2...I always look up. Up is where the guy with the railgun is. I run...I look up...I look left..I look right...but generally I don't look down that much. I hit lots of bouncing betties (frown)

There is so much situational crud you mention as weaknesses in your posts you are basically grasping at straws. The problem you are having with C4 is in your playstyle. That is is....drive around more you will be just fine. Moving tanks don't get C4ed....tanks with Radar also don't get c4ed (unless you try to ignore your minimap) Every time you says c4 is like an LMG you have to pull up your pants afterwards. Do me a favor...make us a video of you dropping C4 on tanks and shooting it at them with a 2,000 RPM rate from super far away, or bouncing on jump pads, and from the cliffs that are all over the place that the MBT's hang out at like a herd of cattle. I would like to see you throwing c4 around and getting all these easy kills that are so OP and unbalanced this game is suffering from the fact it exists.

Stats that I posted show VEHICLE kills. We're comparing them only in AV capacity. Tank mine get infantry kills too, btw - when they kill vehicles' passangers, but it doesn't matter, because blowing a sunderer with 12 people will produce only 1 vehicle kill.

That's in human nature. Orion and Betelgeuse on HA are OP, and enjoy the ever growing popularity. So much so that people create VS characters solely for the purpose of playing with Betelgeuse. Everyone was using ZOE while it was OP, everyone was using Striker when it was OP.
Weak things suck, nobody likes using what sucks. Popularity is direct function of strength.

exactly, which is what we've been saying: situational awareness. Even though C4 fairies are a common problem, even though LA have a great advantage by attacking from the air, people don't look for them but decide to complain about them.

Also rather than nerfing C4 we could... you know... add a Co-axial AI canon to all tanks that allows you to look 90 degrees up? I would go for it. The completely ridiculous argument of 'we can't look up' (you can, and you can look up far enough) will be stopped.

I'm not saying it is melee, I'm saying it's closer comparable to melee than your idea of a 0 TTK LMG.

But seeing that you've just said that I 'misappropriate' your arguments, why don't you just list all your arguments again?

I mean, you just said that you use HE for C4 fairies, you just started adding new arguments after I drilled that into the ground. I don't misappropriate things by saying 'hey, but AP is better for that'. I totally do not misappropriate things when I use your own arguments of 'C4 fairies can use your blindspot to insta-kill any tank'. You suddenly now crawl back and say 'they can kill you without seeing anything but not all do'. I think that you are finally realizing that you were wrong (let's assume you used the wrong arguments but can still be right for the moment being, although I give you a slim chance of recovering). Even though you realize you were wrong, you dislike the mechanic, and still don't want to give up. That last part is OK, just make a good case for changing, removing or balancing C4 in any way you can think off, a good way that is balanced for everyone, not just helping tankers along.

It doesn't have to look all the way up to 90 degrees, really. As long as the coaxial is actually competent at killing infantry (unlike most of the ground vehicle AI in this game), it would help a great deal even if the elevation and depression are the same as the main gun like the word "coaxial" would imply.

Of course, there's always the problem with the Magrider because it's more of an assault gun than a tank.

Instead of a co-axial gun you could have a remote-controlled tertriary turret at the front of the turret, just above the main canon. That one could have a much higher elevation just to shut these people up.

Remote controlled? Anyway I think any tertiary weapon should be used by a 2nd gunner.