Make all skyguards have AP lightning DPS against tanks

"No tank should immediately feel at a severe disadvantage in a tank battle because they chose a different primary weapon."

So obviously skyguards need AP shell dps.

That sentence gave me brain hemorrhage when I first read it. That's just meme material, and I don't understand that level of stupidity in game design.

By that logic, snipers need SMG level effectiveness in CQC, CQC carbines should get long-range assault rifle recoil and LMGs need pistol-fast reloads, "because no one should immediately feel at a severe disadvantage in any battle because they chose a different weapon". Why would I even need teammates and watch out for weaknesses if my gear has none? Would completely remove an entire layer of depth in combat IMO.

8/10 satire, should've given an even more ridiculous example, else it's gud.

Ah like how light assaults should also get a heavy shield?

Maxes with 6 arms? AI noseguns kill libs?

I don't read reddit often but that meme is a gem of satire.

I think med kits should kill at 500m

An engineer with an AV turret should be able to shoot like AI turret and vice versa

Never cuz it so op against air i think nerf air capbilities and increase damage against ground vehicle but not infantry.

Doin it wrong

Doin it right.

I....what?
Just to reiterate, it's a joke on how HESH"" is being changed to be on par DPS wise to AP shells.

Just make each Skyguard shell have the damage of a dalton..BOOM problem solved!

As do the bursters on MAXs

Nah just 6 armed maxes.

• 4 should be sufficient.

He's unintentionally right on one thing though. They're changing HE to HESH and improving its AV capabilities while leaving its pathetic AI AoE (its supposed main job before the change) alone, meanwhile actual AV weapons are getting an AI nerf with no change to their AV capabilities.

It's the same fun stuff that's observed across all the vehicle weapons being changed - underperforming AI weapons get AV buffs, while AV weapons get AI nerf.

AV weapons more specialized, AI weapons more versatile. Sounds unfair but how else would you make AI weapons as attractive as the AV/AV loadout that we see on 95% of tanks? The last thing they would do is to buff AI capabilities because infantry hate farmers.

But then we get a massive grey mush that is vehicle specailization. Take cannister verses mjolner pts, cannister "one shots" on top of a vanguard, the deceptive bit is that it's only within 20 points of damage. Yep. That means all pellets land, within 20 meters, that's a one shot, but it's a shotgun, and nanoweave now resists the HMG damage type, so it's far mor often a 2-3 shot, compared to the 2 burst AoE kill that is mjolner in about the same range. So what's the difference? One is AV and one is AI but one does AV better and dabbles in AI, so far the devs have accomplished pretty much the same thing, tanks running one type of gun in all their builds. AP should at least cut higher in the AV sense, it only does 50 extra damage which is incredibly marginal, but then it goes 50 meters faster, increadible, except tank shells got even slower.

I'll grant, it wasn't a bad idea to make the rounds more useful like heat or even add "some" av to HE, but making AP simply look like bad option was not the route to take. The implementation is poor, the idea isn't bad, it's also contradictory almost everywhere. What about kobalt pecking tanks? Or AA topguns not being useless in an AV fight? If that was the reason behind "rebalancing" the last best AI weapons in the game then why didn't NS weapons get a look at?

It really breaks my heart actually inviting people to play and try vehicles in this game and walk out hating all of it. Some fights you simply can't fight at, some engagements you auto lose, aircraft hunt tanks because it's easy pickings, tanks in turn can't fight back and trade this massive drawback for mediocre AV and AI, I can't blame people for simply leaving after the first day, the day doesn't feel good at all for newbies at that level.

Combined Arms.

AI weapons are attractive because they are better at killing Infantry than AP.

Making HE have a somewhat believable blast radius would be good too.

I think the keyword is "severe". It all depends on how big this disadvantage is supposed to be.

But in general yeah, this logic is completely ridicuolous. According to this my MANA turret should rip infantry to shreds, seriously harm tanks, be a deployable barricade and bleep any time an enemy is in range.
I should be able to destroy vehicles with my Stalker Infiltrator and so on...

Cant they just allow us to change vehicle weapon loadouts at ammo towers?
(Hopefully it would solve more problems than it would create)

Yes.

Entering a lost battle, being outnumbered, out of position, or choosing the wrong weapon for the situation will do this.

Not because it is easy pickings, but because the end result of air supremacy is aircraft attacking the ground.

AP performance cannot be quantified due to it's arbitrary nature. High Explosive could be modeled closer to real life performance.

Did they leave because of flaws in the game, or not having realistic expectations? One of the appeals of PS2 (at least at first) was that it was different. People coming in expecting red v. blue, maps they can memorize, and scripted wins definitely need to re calibrate their expectations.

Tanks have diverse load-outs.

What really ought to happen is that each tank spawns with HE, AP, and HEAT in it's ammo bins.

Thank said, I don't know why HEAT is in the game.

I believe it was that vehicles generally did not feel good. One moment we're in a vanguard that kills a full AP prowler, next minute after full reps, we instantly die because we find a bus that was full of heavies and couldn't do anything about it.

I take them on a lib ride, let them use easier weapons (shredder + hyenas) and tell them we're going for vehicles only, next moment, 6 sources of flak got us over the indar plains bout 350 meters out, couldn't tell what it was but, since we couldn't exactly go up, we died.

I tell them we grab a sturdy battlebus, we stave off infantry well, but then get mobbed by harassers.

You could call it unlucky, call it perfectly fair, call it you were simply outnumbered, but it was a decent squad of 6 people, we all had good setups and I had an experienced friend who knew vehicles with me. One of the newbies expressed he wanted to do the best anti infantry vehicle mostly because he had a hard time clearing them, feeling like they simply never stayed dead, but that was either you do AP and kill their bus or nothin, vehicles aren't good for clearing them at all and will be lessened next update. So that went over well.

Some more important notes I took with it were:
"Well what can I do that isn't following dudes with a asshugger?"
"Play heavy, get better"
"Ok what about vehicles?"
"Too expensive, too little gained back, you'd be better off with throwing ammo at zergs"
"Well is there something that kills well?"
"Uhhh not really, generally more or less the vehicles AI guns are self defense"
"What about aircraft? There's like a cannon with aoe right?"
"That would be zephyr, it's not much but I can show you the AI guns in VR"

*Shows him all the aircraft weapons*

"Ok so these optics make it a lot easier, why weren't we using those?"
"We were, they don't highlight infantry in game"
"Wtf? Ok so how would I see them?"
"Spam Q or have allies spot them for you, though it's pretty inconsistent and allies who spot generally mob the spottie"
"So what you're telling me is don't use vehicles for anything other than killing vehicles"
"Pretty much"
"Yea... think I'm not gonna play this game"

That's pretty much how it went down. He wasn't terrible, he likes FPS, but this game? Not even an hour spent and already had a distaste of it. Unfortunately if they didn't like infantry, there was no place for them elsewhere. I wasn't trying to sugarcoat anything, nor was I doomsaying, I simply told them how it was, how many of this did this how many shots killed that but not that because etc etc, none of it made sense.