There is a link between the rise of "infantryside" and the downfall of the games popularity

The problem with vehicles is that they're too strong in a zerg. There's also the fact that there is enormous amounts of territory with little cover that allows things like cannons and AV turrets to shoot forever with impunity. They're also extremely powerful in a small battle. I've seen time and time again a single Gal, Lib, or Battle Sundy ruin a nice 12-24 fight at a far flung base. You get those pathetic farmers that avoid the big battles in favor of seeking out easy kills at these bases because they know they'll be completely safe and able to flee if they take any damage.

The ultra long range garbage that happens from Indar excavation to Quartz ridge and Mao southeast gate to Howling Pass is boring and terrible gameplay. 30 guys fighting in a base, and 2 dozen losers too scared to leave their lightning or mbt firing from a hill 90000000 miles away hoping they get lucky and contributing nothing.

People want more powerful vehicles? Then you must significantly lower their range. No more shooting 500m away from a hilltop behind 100 guys in complete safety.

Because I have a foot in both doors. I play a good deal as tanks, and I play a good deal as infantry. Therefore I know better how to create tanks that are balanced enough yet that leaves an ample role for infantry players.

Remember, I am not promoting that the game becomes 100% tanks. I am promoting combined arms. Infantry are not obsolete in combined arms, they have crucial roles as critical eyes and ears, as well as blocking elements.

Let me ask you this. Say you were trying to figure out whether you wanted chocolate or strawberry ice cream. You have two people you can consult. One has mostly eaten chocolate ice cream and only has had a tiny sample of strawberry ice cream. The other has eaten a good amount of both. Which would you assume to give you the least biased opinion?

And that is why I am infinitely more qualified to speak on a matter of balanced combined arms than an infantry player. I speak for both sides, not just the myopic view of one.

But we must attempt to look at the economy of PS2 as it is, unless of course there are widespread changes implemented in the cost of soldiers.

I've done a reasonably accurate look at nanite-cost comparisons here. But the important thing to note is that in reality, the riflemen and crew are more expensive than an MBT. That's sort of always been true, where the cost of training and maintaining a soldier is generally more expensive than a piece of equipment (not to mention the raising and educating of that soldier).

This is why in most militaries (and now Russian thinking is turning this way too), crew survivability of vehicles is paramount. It's more costly to replace crew than vehicles, just as how it is more costly to train new riflemen than buy new tanks.

So if you mean to overhaul the entire economy of PS2, then there is room for discussion and debate. But as PS2 stands out, one cannot say that tanks are too cheap if infantry are completely free.

The Sunderer is actually a great example of a missed opportunity for combined arms. Yes, it would be incredibly lethal to infantry, being able to kill them with a single Basilisk round or a few Kobalt hits. The Sunderer, in my opinion, should also have extremely high resistance to C4, AT Mines, and infantry rockets, being essentially an MRAP. This is a good thing. Because while MRAPs are incredibly resistant to anything that infantry have, they are extremely weak to tank or air weapons.

What this does is that infantry who meet a Sunderer will be slaughtered, but infantry moving as part of a combined arms group will be able to easily walk past the destroyed Sunderer once it has been taken down with a single shell from a friendly tank. So the Sunderer would be buffed against infantry but nerfed against armour and air.

You are joking right? Everyone knows that wow declined because Blizzard started catering hardcore to the casual soccer mom crowd. LFG anyone? One reason, not 100. Try again, this time with gusto.

So, as you played 20% of your time in a tank, and as I played just the 10%, you're INFINITELY more qualified to speak about the subject than me.

I perfectly know making tanks cheaper wont solve any problem. But since he is complaining so hard abobut how much they cost I prefer making then cheaper and shut this guy.

Secondly, do you think getting 50% of the players on tanks is an improvement? then you're as braindead as him.
Pop is controlled by players (that's exactly the problem)
About the map, I didn't make my idea clear. I meant map design. For example, aurora mat. lab. or nanite subterranean analysis, or every single biolab, specially ikanam, or the majority of the towers. all this bases are ridiculously bad designed for me.
Almost in every single base I fight I see catastrophic design failures. Why? Because they're all random copy-pastes, not logical designs.

Edit: also do you remember how in ps1 continents had more logic and realism? wellcome to ps2, where every continent is for some reason squared.(well,the reason is lazy developing)

Firstly, that's not how math works.

Secondly, Chingles has posted a wealth of sourced information in the past about military tactics and composition, including both his more-widely known analyses on armor but also basic soldier paraphenalia. His discussions on the subject are well-detailed in his posting history. If never been in the military before*, he must be that ARMA dev who sat for hours watching a specific round from a specific rifle strike a specific wall to record penetration and force distribution. As far as his opinion carries weight, yes, it carries much more weight than your assertions. He's here with a résumé. He doesn't screwball out of a dream and expound on the completely whimsical and fantastic; the explanations are deliberate and technical and progress from point to point.

That doesn't mean you have to agree with him. I don't even agree with him all the time. That's a difference in proposed game direction and having a different opinion on that between the two of you is fine.

* I honestly don't pay too much attention to people when or if they talk about themselves themselves so he'll pardon me for not knowing if he's mentioned it.

correct me if I'm wrong, but from I've understood that's what he said.

That he is way more qulified to speak beacause he spent just 20% of his time in a tank, I'm just saying his arguement with different words.

Just making tanks cheaper wouldn't change how nonsensical and irrelevant they are right now though. Tanks need to be buffed to change that.

However, we can't just buff tanks into the stratosphere either, because right now they're too cheap and spammable for that.

Making tanks more expensive would give us room to make them more powerful. The current system can't really support more expensive tanks though, so much of the underlying game needs to be overhauled so that it can actually support a wide variety of units in a sensible way.

This is a many-layered problem rooted deep in the game's core design. The core is fundamentally flawed and has given rise to much of the weirdness, nonsense, crazy balance swings, and unit segregation that we've seen. In order to bring air, vehicles, and infantry together, we have to address the underlying foundations that are tearing them apart instead of just demanding buffs to our favorite unit and nerfs to all others.

Whats wrong with groups of infantry standing perfectly motionless using weapons specifically designed to take out aircraft that fly to close and ignore the lock on warning they get, killing aircraft effectively?

Its not like the infantry get get a hud warning they are about to get farmed like aircraft do.

How is this thread not dead yet?

It's interesting?

If they're vigilant and good with cover, they can simply move in and move from there. It's not like ESFs prevent all infantry from ever getting to the point in places like subterranean. And if ESFs are truly a problem in that area, you spawn one base over, use AA options or as a heavy grab 3 friends, coordnate an attack, blam, esf ded, you spent no nanites and the other guy has to regen, but even then you can do it again and again, because heavies are free, the vehicle removal is free and the plane can't fight you at 300 meters.

It's relevant to the game and is not answered in a mere flick on the wrist and is a controversial topic?

Fair enough. Normally these things just devolve into massive arguments, during which everyone gets fed up and bails on the discussion.

I'm just surprised is all.

That would have been a nice view to have before, you know, the HE nerfs.

Once the infantry players have opened the gates for that one, it would seem unfair to have such a reserved view. If the Devs are willing to roll back all the vehicle nerfs and then try to rebuild from the ground up, that would be acceptable. But to allow such terrible and unneeded vehicle AI nerfs in the past and then say "wait let's be rational about this" when it comes to nerfing infantry AV or buffing vehicle AI again seems rather biased.

Infantry AV needs to be hit with the same force with the nerfbat that vehicle AI got hit with.

Is it really nerfs what you want? dont you think the game is too nerfed yet?

Funny, no one thought that way when vehicles got hit with the HE nerf. Then either revert the HE/AI nerfs or hit infantry AV with an equivalent nerf. But to treat vehicles and infantry differently is unfair.

How conveniently you forget that, up to the HE nerfs, vehicles had been buffed way beyond what they were originally. HE was killing the game and that is why it got nerfed. Buffing it again serves no beneficial gameplay purpose. Sherman has a far better understanding of the situation than you do. You can't have powerful force multipliers without any kind of serious control on quantity.

You can't have force multipliers at all without controlling the amount of basic force that's present, ie infantry.

Again, what happens when you kill a HA in PS2? Does the enemy get one less HA to deploy? Is the equipment that HA was carrying completely destroyed?

Or what happens when you manage to splat a C4 toting LA? Do they lose their C4? Is the enemy's manpower reserve depleted?

The answer is no. There are no limits to the amount of heavy weapons or infantry on the battlefield. This makes force multipliers much weaker than they are in real life. IRL it's fine that tanks are limited, because the enemy infantry that they kill are also limited (arguably more limited than a tank). But in PS2, infantry and their heavy weapons are unlimited, meaning that just killing a few of them alone will hardly make a dent.

And people know this, which is why in competitive play tanks are barely used at all. Even if the 450 nanite cost is "low", it is still not worth it. The data shows that people are much more willing to pick MAXes and ESFs than to spend nanites on MBTs.

So long as infantry are free, infantry that can instantly kill MBTs, then there is no reason at all to have MBTs. Heck, it might be more balanced to make all vehicles completely free because the difference between a 450 nanite MBT and completely free infantry is just crazy.

What kind of buffs were those? I've been here since December 2012 and I can't remember anything particularly special going that far back. Biggest thing I can think of off the top of my head is actually giving Lockdown mode something other than a model animation and making the Vanguard Shield actually reliable enough to call it "useful."