So ever wondered why your NSX Masamune has ammo that detonates at about 330m yet a lock on missile only tracks up to about 250m before self detonating? Yet the Enginner Mana Turret's ATGM detonates at 500m? Edit: According to the wiki, Anti-Vehicle Mana Turret Missile detonates at 300m and that's even worse than I realized. Acknowledging that both of which are fundamentally inadequate for being on par with vehicle projectiles like the fact that MBTs have projectiles that render for up to about 800m? And now we have the Colossus which is probably even more capable than the mainline MBTs for projectile rendering distance? Let's talk about standardization of projectile distances. So number one thing I want to get out of the way is that I play Engineer almost all the time, both as a person that enjoys using Anti-Vehicle Mana Turret, and enjoy using vehicles espessially the Prowler for it's long range capabilities. Something about taking out vehicles from 600m+ away just makes me feel like I'm doing my job as a tanker. However, seeing the other side of my tanking often makes me realize just how inept most anti-tank based weapons are and how much distance they have to compensate for that is relatively unfair. I wouldn't have said this maybe three to five years ago when more PCs couldn't simply handle rendering the game but we're almost a decade ahead of when the game came out and I think we're at a point where we can begin discussing this topic healthfully and have new contending platforms to deal with, like the Colossus. Let's start with Guided Weapons: NSX Masamune, Lock-On Weapons, etc. Bonuses they currently enjoy: -Controllability -Moderate Damage Output Drawbacks they have: -Limited Range due to self detonation -Not a lot of diversity in the selection of Anti-Vehicle weapons for extended engagement ranges beyond 300m. -No engagement options beyond 500m. Here is a point I'd like to discuss. The Anti-Vehicle Mana Turret has a unique feature of being able to control a missile and engage up to 500m. Which while is at a distance of more than most anti-vehicle infantry platforms, it's still difficult to use reasonably even with places like Indar, nevermind shoulder launched platforms for the Heavy Assault Class which also need to engage in these high points of access. Albeit, both systems of shoulder launched and turret based system have their drawbacks. I wouldn't think it would be an unwise decision to create an option for the turret to have an "Entrenchment" mechanic which would allow Engineers to deploy a turret with an entrenchment that can be deployed anywhere outdoors and can only be placed in one area but given a sizable healthpool. I wouldn't say to get rid of the current turret option since it can be redeployed and requires the operator to guide the missile to the target for accuracy, but I think an entrenchment mechanic should include either the difficulty of being snipped off the turret and/or making it usable by other teammates as a faction deployable, maybe unlocked using Merit or something to encourage people to mitigate towards outfits. Anyway, the main flaw for guided projectiles is largely their range being at best, somewhere between 300m to 500m against targets like the Lightning, Vanguard, Magrider, Prowler that can engage them at about 600m+ with lethal accuracy that will usually one-shot them. Sure a person spends nanites to get a vehicle, but that shouldn't necessarily make them immune to other threats at certain ranges either and it requires several hits to close distance for what is for a vehicle, a medium range object and for what is for an infantry team; basically standoff distance capability. Even when you engage a vehicle at 300m-500m with an anti-tank guided missile. The vehicle is capable to find some cover, face their frontal armor to you and punish you for attacking them and in my experience as a tanker, I have no problem being able to land one-shots on infantry or their turrets with high accuracy. My AP gun score is 2300+ kills and over 56% average accuracy. Sure infantry can swivel around for a bit, but as a prowler user. Having over 50% accuracy plays well into my favor to make sure that I will likely kill at least one person for every two shots I fire. Which brings me to my next point. Unguided Projectiles: Bonuses they currently enjoy: -High Damage Output. -Low Reload Times. -Unknown rendering distances, Drawbacks they currently face: -Starter RPGs like the ML-7, for the TR, are just flat out weak and give new players an urgent sense of impotentcy of dealing with threats they're supposed to be facing. For new players getting into Heavy Assault. It is a gimmick of not being strong enough to destroy a flash with one hit, nor kill a person with a direct single hit, giving new players a feeling very incapable and impotent to deal with vehicles despite being a class dedicated to killing them. And for a game advertising itself as providing a level playing field between starter players and veterans, the lack of capability of the starting Anti-Vehicle weapon of the Heavy Assault should honestly be a major focus. -if we count the Anti-Material Rifle, I'm gonna dare to say that it just doesn't do enough damage to targets it should be able to damage and in the other hand, it shouldn't be doing any damage to armored sections of vehicles. So let me explain this viewpoint here. Starter RPGs like the ML-7 for TR Heavy Assault, is a gimmick of not being strong enough to destroy a flash with one hit, nor kill a person with a direct single hit. Putting new players in a very incapable place of being impotent to efficidently deal with vehicles in an impactful way despite being a class dedicated to killing them. For a game advertising itself as providing a level playing field between starter players and veterans, the lack of capability of the starting Anti-Vehicle weapon of the Heavy Assault should honestly be a major focus and this is a big complaint I get from people I invite to play this game and begin playing Heavy Assault. Just giving new players another alternative solution to this might be: 1. Giving the Decimator to new players and get rid of the ML-7 altogether. 2. Give the ML-7 Lock-Capabilities when zooming in or a mode for lock-on by pressing [default key B on keyboard]. 3. Buff both the ML-7 and the Decimator for damage. 4. Start Giving the NS Thumper for free to Heavy Assault Classes since it will give anti-vehicle and anti-infantry capability with more rounds for optimal damage for time between reloads and keep the ML-7 in its current state then to just watch the amount of people who use the ML-7 begin to plummet as it fades into absolute obscurity for being the underpowered weapon it truly is, Tank Cannons: Bug Note: Alright so while I'm writing this the first thing I want to address is that the Lightning cannon animation needs to be fixed. If you fire the Lightning's cannon while not looking down the sight, it will miss. You can go ahead and point it right at the chest of an infantry, line up the shot at point blank range, and it will miss. If you check the sighted view, you'll see that despite the animation while un-sighted is lined up with the infantry chest. The fact that the sighted view is inconsistent with the third person or second person perspective is a huge flaw and I don't see why it hasn't been patched yet. Anyway, let's get to the next subject. Tank Projectile Velocity and Rendering Distance. Tank projectiles render out to around something like 780m-800m, which I assume 800m. I tested this out with a friend who sighted my shots at 800m to correct my fire when I missed until I finally got hits. I guess while I don't have any big complaints about this. I don't see why we don't render up to 1000m when we have the Colossus being able to strike at great distances against the Bastion which I admittedly haven't tested what the effective strike range of the Colossus is at, I assume it is much greater than 800m and want to call into question not just Tank Projectile rendering distance, but more so perhaps on this question the muzzle velocity for most undeployed vehicles. I think we will be see major benefits in improving engagements at long range by providing more muzzle velocity to all tanks. The TL;DR Summary: My suggestion summary for improvements: 1. Give Guided Munitions longer distances for engagement, preferably as far as tanks have their shots rendered or at 80% of tank shot render distance and no more since current render distance is much too short. 2. Give Heavy Assaults a better starting Tool and make their RPG shots render as far as all other munitions or at least half as far as guided munitions. 3. Give Tanks the ability to have their shots rendered at up to 1000m and better muzzle velocity overall to allow more long range engagements. If suggestions here become an update. Please name it "Long Range Yeets" Thanks.
The hard cap of rendering distance to see a enemy from what I have seen is roughly 600 meters. Seeing at distance for background is roughly 2200-2500 meters. Particles set to Ultra appear to let you maximize seeing the travel distance of your weapon to impact beyond render range. So for people who have particles dialed down for performance, they won’t see them. It’s a mixed bag with all types of AV weapons, I don’t mind the distance so much, it’s the punching power when the vehicles close the gap and your stuck in spawn tubes or they are controlling a choke point, like a door up close, we are talking within 50 meters. Rendering has always been wonky and inconsistent, but so has sound, you can’t hear the vehicle weapons or vehicles with any consistency either, until after a shell hits or when the vehicle is running it’s absolutely quiet and I doubt they are using the Stealth attachment.
Wanted to note that I went to the VR Training Area. I don't think the Thumper actually does any damage to vehicles except Flashes? My pistol can shoot at a Harasser I spawn and deal damage, but the Thumper cannot? Lmao Despite the Thumper not being in the Tool weapon area. Is the Thumper seriously this nerfed? If someone else can confirm I'd love to make a separate thread about that.
Yeah most weapons in modern warfare travel faster than the speed of sound, anti tank missiles included, let alone the future. So I guess I'm not too partial on hearing the weapons that are coming after me unless it's a 1960s/1970s era anti-tank mssile. Then I'm not so concerned. You won't hear a shotgun shot before someone in your blind spot shoots you, nor will you hear a sniper rifle coming at you before it goes through your head, even in this game, You probably shouldn't expect to hear most shots coming at you in the distance either whether they're tank rounds or anti-tank missiles. But yeah, your typical AV weapons within 50 meters are typically going to be stand off dumb-fire RPGs that pack the biggest bang per shot and it's honestly a balanced and relatively accurate represenation for the weapon sizes in question. For maps like Hossin, being able to close distance is honestly in the favor of infantry and most of your armored battles, if they occur, is largely going to be won by the number of Lightnings packing the 75mm Viper Cannon due to all the small spaces they can navigate in the jungle and sheer fire power they can deliver. I don't think there is anything wrong with this, just that some types of terrain are going to be suited for certain types of weapons. It's maps like Amerish, Indar, Esamir where you will see relatively the most amount of open ground outside of the center of the map and this is where stand-off capabilities or the weapons of the game are put to the test. Or more importantly, where elevation advantages are utilized when you approach the center regions of maps on areas such as Amerish and Indar. But I guess it's a time to ask "when" we can expect standardization of expanding engagement distances to make them more fair for infantry players who take the time to do anti-vehicle roles since they already risk a lot as it is and it's not uncommon for me as a tanker to drop people with one tank round from an AP round and get a killstreak of 20+ on any given night and roll out a new tank when I feel up fo being sweaty and avoiding situations I know that will put me in range of enemy RPGs where I won't be able to recover from if ganked a few players. TL;DR Sure we have threats to deal with as vehicle players as it is even, but any vehicle player worth more than the nanites used to call in a vehicle isn't going to put their vehicle in the way of harm knowing they'll die with their vehicle more than half the time. I don't think it's worth maintaining the nerf on anti-vehicle weapons with stand off capabilities to make it easier for players pulling vehicles at the expense of making the task of those protecting their vehicles from other threats more difficult..
The reason for these distance differences is performance and balance. Infantry render out to 300m, dynamic rendering can sometimes extend that (say when looking down a scope in a certain direction). However it was deemed unfair for a vehicle 600m out to be hit by an infantryman who wasn't going to be hittable until he closed half that distance. Only a few weapons could actually hit that far out, like the AV mana turret that could guide the projectile. One solution they used was to make any infantryman carrying holding an AV weapon render out further. But they also limited the range of many weapons to make it more fair for the vehicles. Unfortunately this is the culture that we face in the developer circles: Buffs and nerfs reign while adding mechanics and features to deal with things is left in the dirt. As infantry AV had it's range nerfed (and other things) the vehicles also had their AOE nerfed and their cheatvision™ was neutered. A better solution than just buffing the range up again is looking at how we can make this interesting. It's not fun for infantry to pop up several times with neutered AV weapons only for the vehicle to be able to drive away and repair up, while the vehicle gets a chance to OHK you with each time you show your face. We need to not allow tank guns to OHK anymore on a direct hit (someone is going to scream "but realism!" well in that case you are going to have to pay more than 450 nanites per shell which is still cheap as all hell compared to real life grenades and over 500.000 nanites just to buy a tank), instead they'll get co-axial guns to deal with infantry. You can introduce other things like giving turrets more abilities. If turrets can use a directional scan-pulse to detect infantry and vehicles behind walls and obstacles, or nerf some component of an enemy vehicle etc they become more useful. Infantry on the other hand need some more tools and gadgets as well. Deployables that make the infantry inside harder to see and target the farther you are, nanite-costing weapons to deal with enemy vehicles in a nanite-destroys-nanite method. Abilities that allow infantry to avoid or dodge vehicle fire etc.
I'd suggest additionally to make lock-on time based on distance. Let's say 1 second needed to lock, for every 100m?
