C4 Broken OP

My bad it looks blue actually, not purple.

Ok discarding that then. Op assumed no one was around and assumed it was safe, all the while stopping still to not even do a 360 to check to see if it was safe.

Video proves that one should not assume anything.

Its a valid kill. That you just assumed it was safe is on your hands.
He could just as well not have been there and you drove 5 more meters over AT mines and the same thing would have happen.

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As for backup, you should look into getting the AP turret for the Lightning, 2x zoom and rival combat 3 (Test it in VR to get why).
You will probably feel less affected by this when you will have access to a Vanguard Light even if you instantly lost your Vanguard.
Its also a good tactic to take a Lightning if you know you are not going to last long OR you know, more or less, that you will not get a secondary gunner and so on. The Lightning is a very underrated vehicle... and if you pulled the Vanguard at 750 (750-450=300)... it will take you less wait time to get back up to 350 for a Lightning (ca 1-2mins).

Just switch to the third person camera as soon as you pull the tank, you'd have seen the C4 and/or the LA coming.

You also stopped right in front of the vehicle bay, to have a look at the sky, which A) is bloody annoying for the next guy who pulls a vehicle behind you and B) is the easiest place for anyone to ambush a vehicle on a tower base.

After having read most of the other posts, and coming from someone who mains Engineer, and uses vehicles very frequently...

I think that infantry-based insta-splosion of tanks is a necessary evil, due to how many of them there are on the battlefield. When any player can walk up to a console and grab a tank, there's very little limiting factors involved. If tanks were a more exclusive, harder to obtain resource (increased cost, greater cert investment, more limited in terms of where / how you can obtain them, etc) Then the lethality of infantry vs tanks could be decreased.

That said, there are a number of ways that infantry can bypass player awareness entirely. Bail assaulting from high altitude is one of them. Simply spawn in a friendly galaxy and bail over armor, and it's entirely possible to drop in, lay 2 C4, and pull the trigger before you've even rendered for the enemy. This is a popular tactic with some due to the complete inability to defend against it, save for never stopping to fire. In the case of the video you uploaded, I loathe that the game allows for this. Vehicle spawn-pads were given a field of tank-mines-instantly-splode for a reason. This should be buffed to have an ECM / Jamming property that blocks any C4 detonation attempt if either the C4, or the LA is within ~30 meters of a vehicle spawn pad. (Manually firing at the bricks would still work, as would grenades... just no remote detonation)

Also, C4 doing 80% damage vs a MBT is way over the top. 60% would be more then sufficient to ensure detonation with 2 bricks, and still have the extra punch to blow most tanks attempting repairs.

Additionally, I want an ECM / Jamming cert option for defensive slots on MBTs. No remote C4 detonation for any bricks within 5 meters of your hull in exchange for auto-spotting yourself on the minimap within ~50-75 meters seems fair. This would also make an excellent Sunderer option for armor support, provided the field is large enough to cover at least a few additional nearby pieces of armor.

Not at all like that, tanks shouldn't be in confined spaces where it can rain C4 from rooftops. So either you're in a field and whomever C4s you earned the kill fair and square.

OR

You're somewhere you shouldn't be in the first place and someone explains exactly why with a brick of high-explosive delight.

The former is just being outmaneuvered. The latter is an L2P issue.

then don't pull tanks if there a spy at base, if you do - check mines, don't stand still. i bet u were able to see c4 drop if were at 3rd person view, and could use shield, or if you were moving - only 1 c4 = still alive

LOL! OP screams: "C4 OP" and brings us a video of him being C4'd after pulling a tank. Then he ignores exactly what that means.

Ok, OP, let's go through this step by step:

1. A player went out of his way to find a secluded spot to blow up a tank. There is NOTHING we can do to stop that from happening. Period.
2. You pull a Vanguard, drive 10 feet and STOP because you think you are safe, without paying attention to the player composition graph on the map. If you HAD you would have KNOWN a hostile player was there.
3. Aforementioned player runs up to--or flies over--your STOPPED tank, takes the time to drop TWO bricks of C4 on it, and blows it up.

OP, this is no different than when I go to a secure hostile base--usually on the next lattice--with a Stalker Infiltrator and a Lumine Edge knife. I'll sit and CAMP the vehicle terminal, and knife anyone who uses it for nothing but the lulz. Of course, something magical happens: After the FIRST kill they kinda know I'm there.

You got TROLLED, but that doesn't mean C4 is overpowered. It means you lost a tank to player who had just enough C4 to take out just ONE tank. You're just made because it happened to be YOUR TANK. Ok, get mad about it. Don't come onto the forums and whine about C4, though.

Your first clue should've been the purple 25% regional population. That means there are FOUR players present, three of them are NC friendlies, but ONE of them is a VS hostile. You ignored that. It's plain as day in your video.

You got C4'd because YOU SCREWED UP! Learn from it. When you pull a vehicle MOVE.

2 bricks of C4 kills a tank if they go off, no matter where they are placed. But, bear in mind, that's TWO bricks. The player must place TWO--or have one on the tank and another in close proximity--for it to be an instant kill. That takes time, an eternity in PlanetSide 2 terms, which is why OP should be thoroughly embarrassed by this video, not mad about it.

For most tanks, seeing the C4 means you're already dead; even for Vanguards, timing the shield isn't absolute.
The perspective for third-person isn't vertically signifcant enough to catch much of anything above twice a tank's own height perpendicular to the direction of the barrel.

On PS4 you can throw the C4 any freaking where. : (

Its literally impossible to get C4d in a MBT if you have situational awareness and dont do anything stupid.

sorry OP but getting C4ed is a learn to play issue in most circumstances. dont start getting all self righteous about what took more skill to do, pull a tank and smell the roses, or drop C4 in close range.

its like that on PC as well, he is just misinformed. 2 C4 on the hitbox in any location will do.

As someone who is frequently on both the giving and receiving end of C4 I feel that its pretty well balanced. Some terrain is simply favorable to the C4 toting light assault and some terrain favors the tanks.

Tanks that are not alone are almost impossible to C4 as someone will usually spot you which results in you getting gunned down by every hostile within 30 meters. Tanks that wander off by themselves or hang out at the base of a cliff deserve what they get.

This is really a Nerf Bail-Assault or Liberator thread. Or am I the only one who is noticing the actual chain of events here?

A VS Liberator flew around to the next base the NC can pull tanks out, in the hopes of daltoning/tankbusting some fools. Unfortunately, said flanking liberator got caught by an NC Liberator, which shot it down. Atleast one of the occupants of the liberator (that could have been, for all the information we have, a 1/3 Tankbuster lib) was a light assault who bailed and happened to see the OPs tank.

It just happened to be the OPs bad timing that he bailed over the base he had just pulled his tank at. The VS Light assault likely C4ed his tank, hid inside from the NC Lib, and redeployed.

The first phrase is about as context sensitive as the situations in which people report being exploded by C4 so you have to excuse people who have no clue how to apply it. As far as my memory of the sum of all these kinds of threads go, "situational awareness" describes a condition that "every situation is irreconcilably bad."

There are a few things it does need nerfing at.
It needs to be attached to the tank rather than on the floor.
It needs it's AI abilities toned down, 1 c4 should no longer kill an infantry, doing say 750 damage to them. Adjust resistances for other targets to make it's damage 50% vs lightnings & MBT, rather than the current 90% for lightnings and 70% for MBTs.

What a shame that vehicle terminals are generally only found in confined spaces.

By that logic infantry shouldn't be anywhere where a tank can see from open places.
I seem to remember that Tank HE is basically a stupid joke because of all the tears that were shed because tanks were able to kill infantry. I am still waiting for my tank to be more dangerous than some guy on foot.
And it is not like Tanks dominate all the battles between bases (if there are any at all). All Infantry needs to dominate a complete tank zerg is a hill to hide behind and suddenly the tanks can't do anything against them aside from driving around and attacking them from the rear.

Also that L2P is ********. It implies using C4 takes skill.
I have C4'd people simply by pulling a wraith flash and having somebody in my backseat who was not an infiltrator.
If a second man is not an option I can still got full ***** and have the C4 directly on my Flash.
I have C4'd people who never stood a chance by dropping from a Valkyrie, Galaxy and rarely my ESF.
Once or twice I ******* dropped on somebody with my pod and 3 seconds later his tank was a wreck.
With the stupid drifters I can sometimes C4 people 50m away simply by hovering over there.
And the so much praised proximity radar helps jack **** against anything of that kind. If it works at all, that is. If I'm hovering 20m above you its too late.
If I want to C4 you I will. And there is NOTHING that can stop me.

C4 should just be adjusted so that it has two firing modes.

1) Anti-Infantry. Simple toss and detonate as it does now.

2) Anti-Vehicle. Instead of tossing it, the explosive is set and converted into a shaped charge that is necessary for defeating armour. Explosive radius is reduced to zero, meaning that it just deals direct damage. It is also affected by directional armour, so placing it on the rear of a vehicle is the most rewarding. And finally it requires one of those "interaction bubbles", like hacking a turret.

Using C4 in anti-infantry mode would still deal damage to anything that takes damage from small arms (Flashes, Harassers), but the indirect explosive would not affect things that are generally protected from indirect explosives. In order to C4 a tank, the assaulting infantry must take time to set and detonate the explosive.

As compensation, C4 would be buffed so that 1 brick to the rear could kill a MBT. 2 bricks to kill a MBT anywhere else.