Tanks were already quite expensive and making them even more vulnerable to weapons that are on the still-too-tanky harassers is not fair or balanced. Tanks are already very easy to kill with other tanks with their 50% tank shell vulnerability, and yet lighter vehicles continue to become more and more powerful and cost effective in comparison to the already slightly overpriced tanks. Reasonable ideas with balanced solutions: 1) Now if people/devs want vehicle based AV weapons to be more effective in comparison to tank shells, that's fine and dandy, but doing so in a balanced way would mean decreasing the tank shell vulnerability somewhat or else the currently expensive and slightly overpriced nanite cost for what durability tanks have skyrockets to the point where tanks aren't worth half their nanite cost, which by itself would scream for balance. Option 1A) So removing the new light AV vulnerability from tanks would a simple, effective, and balanced solution. Option 1B) A complex solution would be decreasing the tank shell vulnerability that tanks have by a decent amount (50% to 25-30%), although that would mean tank battles become a bit longer at the cost of being more vulnerable to MBT and harsser top guns (a bit more than I'm comfortable with to be honest as MBT's already stick out like sore thumbs for halberd harasser snipers), but would require harassers to to just as vulnerable to tank shells before the Everquest Anniversary update (+50% damage taken) in order to make sure ALL tanks have the advantage in durability to weaponized combat buggys in a one vehicle versus one vehicle due to their far greater cost than harassers, or tanks become nowhere near worth their nanite cost. Personal opinion with solution on the AV damage changes: While AV MAX weapons and AV grenades did need a bit of a buff against vehicles without increasing their lethality against MAXes, harasser top guns did not at all. What I believe should have been done is MAX AV weapons given their own damage type with the same resistances except with for vehicles having slightly lower resistances toward them, rather than having everything with light AV damage a buff. Not personal opinion: Harassers have become simply too effective for their cost against more expensive vehicles due to "recent" changes to not just their durability, but also damage output, and this isn't something you can dispute or dismiss due to solid numbers and many hours of my own experience in both tanks and harassers, but also plenty of other people's too, both here on the forums and PS2 reddit. Needing a second person to have a harasser function as intended and/or for balanced vehicle combat simply isn't enough of a downside against a much more expensive vehicle when the cost of a harasser is effectively halfed or shared between two people's nanite pools while still being a menace when only having one person means that they're clearly not balanced. Necessary changes for vehicle balance: Option 1: Harassers are more vulnerable to tank shells as the where in the past Option 2: Harassers cost must be increased and tanks cost must be decreased to at achieve some rough level of vehicle combat balance Without the more expensive vehicles having the advantage against cheaper vehicles, changes HAVE be made to rectify the imbalance so that the more expensive vehicles are actually worth their cost and show that on the battlefield when it comes to fighting a less expensive vehicle. Otherwise, changes to the costs of the vehicles MUST be made, be it increasing the cost of the cheaper vehicle or decreasing the cost of the expensive vehicle to compensate for the inequality of effectiveness and dominance to achieve a rough level of balance until more effective and balanced changes can be made. For more information on why harassers are very clearly in need of these changes please visit: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps...nk-shell-vulnerability-needs-adjusted.251929/ This thread goes over the actual math and logic of why such changes are needed and even explains it for you in more terms.
It does not matter as much for balance how easily a certain class/vehicle can destroy itself. If it can destroy itself fast than it can destroy the opponent equally fast and there isnt a balance issue, at best a gameplay issue. Only how easily other classes and vehicles matter to balance. Harassers are way too tanky. With composite and fire suppression it can already tank 5 hits, while it is much harder to hit. With the upgraded backseat repairs the moment you get damaged enough to be threatened this can easily rise to 8+hits, making it tankier on the move than the tanks it fights. Harassers are too cheap and powerful. There was a time that Harassers took +/-3 to 4 hits period, and the complaints of Harassers and Tankers was minor. In other words then most people seemed OK with that balance. Harasser players dont want to lose their OPness now ofcourse but reverting their resiliance to that strength would do the world for balancing them.
I hit a moving 3 man H' yesterday with 7 lightning AP rounds, max reload, and assumed I had miss counted! Adopted a Ram+Shoot style with far better results. Front of tank more effective than gun, ok....
thats how i handle them. i got racer and heat on my lighting for doing just this. works well on other lightnings too. just dont ram mag riders or ants and you will be surprised how useful raming actually is
Well, when tank pilots complained over C4 fairies being a bit overpowered against ground forces (the vehicle killer #1) they responded quickly with lots of nerfs. First it got the drifters (ah, those bio-lab jump pad drifters!), and later ambush. Implants provided additional nerfs (e.G. sensor shield). But they didn't stop there. The LA also had to endure a rocket launcher secondary to finish off burning targets. So we surely can look forward to harasser nerfs in the near future. But serious, the problem i see here is that tanks are basically removed from the game. Bigger tank battles have become very rare and easily dealt with without the need for an opposing tank force. And new players will never get into it, because first they have to learn to stay the hell away from bases or other infantry spawn points, and if they do they will face the small to medium harasser groups (Hello TR!) that are always present to pick of tanks that are staying away from infantry. As stated above, harassers tank more, are faster, more agile and much cheaper than tanks, and can transport passengers to either do repairs or additional damage (LA and HA especially, although that's a risky job). Also a dedicated driver and gunner seat puts much less stress on the crew in battles. And an important note here, its not that the driver is getting any less kills (#road kill) than the basically outdated tank pilot who has to aim and drive. I admit that tanks were pretty strong against infantry, but the "take that suckers, see how you feel at the receiving end of the stick" attitude is the worst (and probably biased) example of balance you could think of. Not talking about the latest update but the general trend. Well, no one to blame but myself. I came back after a longer break and it was clear where the road leads to. So i am not gonna complain, on the contrary: Bring it on, harassers! (They should rename them tho since what they do goes way beyond harassment)
Consider this: How much force does a moving vehicle have compared to a moving shell? An ISU-152 tankshell (152,4mm gun firing 35 to 50kg shells 2160km/h or 600m/s) has a kinetic energy of 1*10^7 J according to the orders of magnitude page (no idea which shell they used and too lazy to calculate). A 60 ton vehicle moving at +/-90km/h has about 3*10^7 J of energy... And then there's the energy of the Harasser itself as it gets rammed. Additionally the vehicle has an engine to keep it accelerating into the Harasser, the shell can only lose energy as it penetrates.
I had the same thing with a different game and dev team. Infantry AV wanted vehicles to be destroyed by guns (they partially succeeded), require more than one person to operate them, and make them quite expensive and skill-intensive. Infantry always won out in the end because us vehicle users were "a huge minority."
