HESH spam

So the other day was on a 34 killstreak with NS15MB HA on esamir in watersons redemption. Now after my engie friend left the fight I decided to go back and resupply. Then BOOM! My bounty was taken by a tank sitting on a hill with HESH rounds. Does anyone else think it’s just stupid, especially on esamir? You honestly can’t have a solid infantry fight anymore becuase the tanks will come and ruin the fight. Now I’m all for the combined arms part of this game but I mean come on! Do you guys have any suggestions to prevent HESH spam and give infantry a fighting chance (since they nerfed C4)

The solution is simple: create a variety of new utility weapons costing nanites that can effectively combat vehicles, both lethally and non-lethally. It evens the battlefield (nanites destroy nanites) and would allow the ridiculoua segregating walls to be removed. If these weapons are made strong enough vehicles can also finally be outfitted with things like co-ax Guns.

Edit: the main focus of such weapons would be the ability to kill a vehicle before it moves out of effective range or move behind cover once damaged. This could be achieved not with ultra-high damage, but by slowly stacking debuffs on vehicles. A vehicle would have a very short active time if it would constantly repair up and wait out the debuffs, forcing it into a more risk vs reward combat style against infantry. Additionally, combined arms will be possible as infantry alongside vehicles will give far more advantages than "some more DPS".

The only problem with HESH is that it's a one-size-fits-all munition that does good damage to both infantry AND vehicles alike. You literally don't need any other Lightning weapon rather than the Skyguard. This is what needs to fix firstly. Secondly, I think it would be much better to have a wider range, but lower damage output. HESH should feel like a heavy impact explosion that displaces damage over a broad area to counteract infantry swarms.

Right now the damage is just too easy. You find a nice vantage, you look at an area, receive certs and exp in a crowded area via point and click adventure. Infantry aiming your way? You got radar. MBT on the rampage? You move faster than it and can escape, not to mention the HESH grenades do plenty of damage for their specialization against armor. Enemy armor column? Just aim at the center for free engineer slaughter. There's no losing unless you are against truly hard counters (like striker ESF's and AA harassers). Worse still, some MBT's run this nonsense.

The HESH should be reworked to fit a role, not be an end-all. The current balance for HESH was designed around reload speed and ammo pool, which ammo pool means literally nothing near an ammo sundy and reload spead means very little when you one-shot the opponent in an armored vehicle. Not to mention HEAT is basically unused now.

PythonHE
Reload Speed 3.0 to 3.25
Minimum damage 575 to 250
Indirect damage 1050 to 800 at 1
Indirect damage 50 to 150 at 5

MBT HESH should also be reworked in a similar nature, dealing very little direct damage to armor but being more of an infantry killer. If possible, maybe adjusting the number of shots per load to make it even more of a focused AI utility rather than a "boom **** my face" smasher. I could see it becoming a three shot per load with lower damage per shot but more successive shots allowing one to cover more area and pelt more ground, prowlers being Prowlers would get six but of course about half the strength of the Vanguard or Magrider which would also play more into their rework as more of a mobile artillery rather than a brawler, either way with more shots per load it would cause the MBT HESH to act more like a heavy impact grenade launcher designed to cover as much area as possible per salvo to deny territory and locations to embed and entrench.

AP and very close C75 Viper. Harassers can be terrors too.

I have an idea.
Engineer or HA grenade slot: Electronic Counter Measures Grenade.
50 nanites each
A specially designed grenade that interferes with the basic, fundamental computerized parts of any vehicle. It causes screen distortion, even when tabbed out, and slows the vehicle by about 20% (maybe more or less depending on balance), causes ammo and repair sundies to stop working for the duration, if needed by balance it could also stop vehicles active abilities from using (but tI think what I listed before would be plenty, plenty enough).

ASP trait for LA unlocks the ECM grenade.
Light assaults are just too mobile and such mobility with this grenade could honestly kill a column if done right.

Back in the day...

When HESH was called HE. It also had thermal scopes that revealed infantry crystal clear through cover and explosions and smoke and battle.

The HE would *massacre* infantry. Mow them like a combine through wheat.

Know what we did?
We stopped whining and we f'n KILLED HIM.

Try that.

My main grudge with the filthy HESH cannons is that they do too much damage against armor while being the weapon of choice against infantry. Tune them all down against armor, or reduce their splash damage as was done with the Magrider's "HESH" equivalent. I don't see the need for new and elaborate countermeasures, I see the need for a simple but harsh nerf.

50 certs for a cloak flash with starfall... abuse it before VS get the regular nerf...
I hope they never nerf it... xD~

I agree, HE is too good and is too good against everything.

Vehicle spam always kills good fights.

This part is key. PS2 has terrible bases, and Esamir has the worst of all. Vehicles need to be powerful in a combined arms game, but these awful bases make it too easy to farm. At least for the style of game that PS2 is, where vehicles are infinite and plentiful.

But..... If you think this is bad...... I was playing Arma 3 last night and got this rage tell from a guy I dominated for about an hour in my Apache. We were hovering a kilometer up and 4 kilometers away using thermals and absolutely wrecking anything that stepped outside. The enemy had helos and jets to balance things out, but they just couldn't shoot us down, so their infantry was completely helpless.

I have also said this. Bases in PS2 are basically kill boxes designed to allow infantry farming.

Most are overlooked by hillsides that vehicles and snipers can get to, and what defences they do have (turrets etc) can be easily taken out and often can't see or reach the vantage points anyway.

Sounds like great fun

The other problem with PS2 is that kills carry far too much weight in terms of rewards compared to pushing objectives. You can sit on a hillside farming a spawn room using HESH for hour after hour and absolutely coin it in - despite the fact that your farming may do nothing towards an objective. Given infantry can simply respawn immediately - killing them means very little in actuality.

I think the whole reward system needs to be overhauled to make objectives far more important. Killing should be recognised as a means to and end in gaining an objective - it should not be an end in itself. Farming (especially using vehicles fitted with instagib area effect weapons like HESH) should not be rewarded in the way it currently is.

infantry cried and cried about direct hits from AP, so they nerfed AP and made HESH king, us tanker mains warned you guys, nobody listened, we told you it would get worse and it has.

and now tankers are stuck not being able to direct OHK infantry with certain tank guns.

i think it's a fair tradeoff considering how many other whines and nerf cries have hurt tanks (august tank cannon nerfs as an example, not needed, but infantryside2 tears get drank by the devs)

if reverting HESH restored direct OHK on all tank guns it'd be worth it.

The kid had basically the same argument that they have here, that vehicles get in the way of good infantry fights. But the bottom line is that these are combined arms games and shouldn't cater to armor, air, or infantry. The difference is that Arma does combined arms right. Infantry can decimate vehicles if they get too ballsy, and that destroyed vehicle will be out of the fight for quite a long time. Meanwhile in PS2, infantry have to resort to cheezy tactics such as suicide C4 rushes or cloaked Deci/Fury Flashes, and vehicles can be endlessly chain pulled. I just wish Arma ran half as smoothly as PS2 with even a 1/4 of the players without lagging the server. But, PS2 performance is leagues ahead, at least until the recent latency problems. Mostly I just wish these two games would have a baby.

5 years of this mindless meat grinder has sifted out most tactical players. This game has the playerbase it has, and they're not changing. I support the new spawn system because it'll hopefully make some competitive fights start happening, which is something that this game has always lacked.

If hesh spam was actually a problem, then kobalts wouldn't have better stats across the board in almost every single aspect besides AV.

I don't agree with what they did with hesh, but calling it spam at this point would be saying that kobalts are also spammed and therefore more overpowered than hesh.

You're making it sound like HA doesn't have access to HESH in addition to their arsenal of the most lethal weapons in the game. It's a common occurrence seeing HAs hopping out of their HESH tanks to land a killing Deci shot or a HA in the back of a Wraith Flash with their Deci.

Inflation of the numbers due to the large difference in users is artificially lowering the stats of HE cannons, as many fewer players use a Kobalt in its place.

Afterall, one is a SAW-like AI gun and the other has massive splash with OHKs and strong vehicle damage to boot.

Ah that's complete and utter bullcrap.

The tankers shouted hell and high water about the changes. "Oh noes we'll get nerfed for sure!" while few people, practically none, commented with "you'll get more AI capabilities if you pick the HESH weapons and you don't really get reduced firepower".

As for "oh noes we can't OHK on a direct hit anymore", this is only true for some edge-cases.

Seriously for all your moaning about how infantry cry, the tankers can't seem to quit crying about everything. You have so much firepower that bases require segregation of tanks vs infantry. And historically every. single. base. that had vehicles capable of firing into them was absolutely dominated by vehicles, making infantry almost worthless in many occasions. Additionally for all the crying about "we want combined arms" the tankers have always always vouched for "combined arms" by making infantry completely and utterly defenseless against vehicles, which is in all practicality the opposite of combined arms both in-game and in real-life.

Bullcrap. The devs might have gone the wrong way by nerfing tanks, but it was better than letting tanks get away with the immense power they had despite requiring less skill to perform. A better way would have been upgrading infantry in AV roles, both lethal and non-lethal, with the highly lethal weapons all being nanite-based to stop the incessant whining of "oh noes we cost nanites and they don't so we are infinitely more valuable!" and other stupid, moronic, backwards self-indulgent crap.

I'm sick and tired of tankers warping the situation just because they lost a teeny tiny portion of their E-dicks and lying through their teeth to justify having themselves buffed. At least infantry has a point when they complain about vehicles as long as vehicles are so ridiculously powerful that every single base in the game requires completely segregated area's where infantry isn't bothered by tanks just to perform.

Been here since launch and the only reason we did that was becuase it was much easier. C4 didn’t have a delay most importantly. Love too see you try and fly up a mountain and C4 a HESH spammer with a delay and because he has such a good position he can see you coming from anywhere. It’s virtually impossible

Precisely

Oh my god! This man is sitting at the top of hill with his other 24-48 HESH Zerg. I just gonna roll up on him without getting shot, hit him a couple times then finish him with my decimator? Probably not.