[Vehicle] Harassers Vs Tanks - Settled with Stats

Before the last update there was seemingly a common view that the Harasser was overpowered.

So below are the key stats from SP2Alerts for the ground combat vehicles compared against each other, collected with the balance before the last update.

The way to read the overall K/D is that each time the average PlanetSide player spawns the vehicle that is the average number of kills they will get before the vehicle is destroyed. The Vehicle K/D is the number of vehicle kills they will get before their vehicle is destroyed.

Prowler

Overall K/D - 5.5

Vehicle K/D - 2.9

Magrider

Overall K/D - 5.6

Vehicle K/D - 2.9

Vanguard

Overall K/D - 4.6

Vehicle K/D - 2.6

Lightning

As the lightning needs 1 person to operate I have shown the results x2 so that is can be compared against the other vehicles that are two mang. Imagining for example, the kills that the driver and gunner of a MBT or Harasser would get if they pulled a Lightning each, rather than get in a two man vehicle together.

Overall K/D - 2.3 x 2 = 4.6

Vehicle K/D - 1.3 x 2 = 2.6

Harasser

Overall K/D - 3.4

Vehicle K/D - 1.6


Source:

https://ps2alerts.com/?utm_source=official-ps2&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=release

Good to know. The harasser & valk need to be given something more, after taking away rumble seat repairs. They should also make the Javelin be able to withstand a 2nd tank shot, because getting 1 shotted is lame, maybe make it cost 150 instead of 100 nanites.

The way you present this is disingenuous though. Overall K/D cannot tell you much.

I bet a lot of the K/D for MBTs and Lightnings comes not from vehicle vs vehicle engagements or CQC vehicle vs Infantry engagements - but from sitting on a hillside half a mile away from the action, farming spawn rooms using HESH.

That's what the vehicle K/D is for. At least try reading the OP.

If you imagine yourself on the battlefield and a random driver asks you to get in their tank, and you are wondering if getting in would result in a good run or a one way ticket. So you ask him on average how many kills he gets each time he pulls that tank, and he responded with: "oh overall K/D cannot tell you much". I should think you would be unlikely to buy that

Sorry I don't really have a dog in this fight but will point out a few things.

Your vehicle KD is a **** statistic. ALL of the vehicles above have a positive KD. How's that happen? Sundies. It's simply a measure of who is out there killing sundies.

The overall KD becomes a measure of how much infantry farming is being done.

You're also leaving out vehicle cost.

And WTF do you mean you're putting the lightning statistics in there multiplied by two?

This isn't settling anything with stats at all man. haha

There are 6 weapons not very suited to AV roles on the Harasser included in those statistics, compared to 4 for the MBT's which will always at minimum have their primary gun which even as HESH is well able to hunt down vehicles like Sunderers and ANT's to pad the stats. I'm counting ES categories as one weapon since the TR can't equip a PPA but only it's ES counterpart the Marauder.
On top of that the strength of the Harasser lies in the combination of its power and capabilities combined with its relative cheapness and ability to chain-pull making it a threat you can't really rid yourself off. If it takes 1 life for the Harasser to take down an MBT, the Harasser still comes out on top.
Otherwise you could claim that the cheapo Flash isn't that powerful either regardless of its cost and capabilities.

So I think that the comparison is off.

Ps: the Lightning was historically the great equalizer without needing to double its stats, using its combination of cost/effectiveness to outperform the other vehicles. That makes me doubt that the numbers displayed are actually fully correct, and since API problems have been going on and off for some time that might have caused the discrepancy.

If I were trying to work out combat vehicle balance, I can't imagine considering how many infantry and vehicle kills a vehicle gets each time it is spawned "a **** statistic".

The K/D ratios in PlanetSide don't show everything, such as recourses as you say, but if the Harasser was simply overpowered, that would show in the number of vehicle and infantry kills it gets on average in each life.

I imagined people have a different opinion on doubling the lightings stats to compare to two man vehicles, so I put the maths working in. I put my view on it in under the lightning heading in the original post.

None of this changes the fact that Harassers were OP. Maybe they still are ,I am not sure, but certainly they are now less OP than before so it's a move in the right direction.

Using Voidwell it seems the lightning AP guns average between 4 to 5 VKPU for each of the factions, with spikes below and above those 2.

The harassers with their faction guns are more varied so I'll just list them seperately and discuss

Halberds: between 4 and 6 VKPU, with the highest spike of 8. The NS halberd is generelly the highest scoring of the AV top guns

Everyones favourite Vulcan: between 3 and 4 VKPU. You'd think this'd be higher given how much everyone complains about it lol.
Gatekeeper: Between 3 and 5 VKPU, it seems to have a somewhat larger difference compared to the more stable/spike relationship the other guns have.

Enforcer: Between 3 and 4, there are enough spikes of 5 VKPU to notice tho.
Meow Meow: Between 3 and 4 again, with some spikes below and above like the halberds

Saron: Between 3 and 4, though there are alot more noticeable spikes down into the 2's here, sometimes it's like that for a whole week.
Apheliomon: Between 2 and 5, it seems to have the largest spikes in both directions of all the guns.

For fun: Lightning HESH VKPU bumbles around 3.

I set the time recorded to 6 months, to rule out/reduce any recent API troubles.
https://voidwell.com/ps2/oracle?sta...,3155&startDate=2021-01-11&endDate=2021-07-10

Voidwell links can be funny so you'll probably have to put in each gun yourselves.

That's an overly simplistic (and arguably incorrect) way to gauge the power of a lightning.

Flip it around and try the logic out for MBTs and even harassers; would you really halve the stats of them and call that a fair comparison? The majority of the power comes from the driver for MBTs, whereas the majority comes from the gunner for harassers.

Not only that, but harassers are also pulled more often as suicide/throw-away vehicles.

I don't have any real stake in the nerfs to harassers and wouldn't care either way if they were kept or reverted, but this logic doesn't hold up.

It's true that a fair percentage of Harassers are AI, which would lower the Harasser's vehicle K/D. It should also increase the Overall K/D of the Harasser as they farm up the infantry if you like - doesn't seem to threaten to overtake the MBT's Overall K/Ds though.

I see that the resource cost of the Harasser isn't taken into account in these stats, but I think when people call the Harasser OP they are usually not talking about it being too cheap (since increase to 300 price) but tend to talk about the Harasser 'out tanking a tank' or being 'an easy way to boost your kills'. These stats get more at those last two ideas. The Harasser in game are statically not farming up vehicles or infantry in the same way the other combat vehicles are.

I think if you halved the stats of the MBTs and Harassers instead of doubling the Lightning's you would be doing the same comparisonas I did, just with lower numbers.

The thinking is; if you stand at the vehicle terminal with your friend, you have the choice of pulling one MBT/Harasser and both getting into it, or you can pull a Lightning each and fight with those two vehicles instead. The general idea is the two lightning drivers should be around as effective as a two man vehicle, these stats show how many kills one Lightning gets each life, so it's x2 for the comparison with the MBT/Harassers. If that makes sense.

Fair point. Don't know how big of an effect it has on these stats though.

I agree with Arkana.
It might not proof it 100% on paper, but you can see a clear tendency.
And that tendency is saying that the Harasser was by all means NOT op.
Which, in conclusion, means that removing the rumble repairs made it up.

I agree with Carl Sagan.

what.

I thought the title said stats

I'm... pretty sure those stats are a bit subjective or haven't been parsed well enough, I don't know enough about statistics to pass judgement. Also the statistics don't take into account which Harassers used rumble repairs and which didn't. I've seen some that didn't bother with it before the update. Further, how many Harassers were pulled compared to the MBTs? Because I certainly saw more MBTs and Lightnings than Harassers, even before the update.

The concept of OP, unless blatantly obvious via statistics, is horribly subjective. I could easily think Heavy Assaults are OP because I keep dying to them, but I don't, because I know I'm just bad. Was the Harasser OP? We may never come to a definitive truth. Evidently either the Devs decided it was OP, or they got lazy and removed rumble repair because the Chimera would have been broken with it available. We will never know, because by Vanu's Tight-*** Spandex they won't tell us their reasons, and they don't seem to care for our opinions unless it costs them money.

This. 100%. Guaranteed.

Their explanation was somewhat hidden away in the forums. Here it is:

High Impact Changes
Rumble Seat Repairs

• Repairing from the rumble seat has been removed for all vehicles.

Dev Note: We've removed rumble seat repairs to create clearer, more predictable vehicle balance. A lack of rumble-seat repairs should weaken the Harasser's ability to escape to a small degree, and slow down the pacing for this vehicle. The vehicle most impacted by this change will likely be the Valkyrie, as it will need to fly closer to the ground instead of being as brazen in the air. We've compensated to a small degree by allowing the Valkyrie to use the Engineer's Aircraft Synergy passive, but we'll be monitoring to see if additional changes are necessary to keep the Valkyrie relevant and fun.


Source:

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/july-01-2021-_integration-pc-update.256910/

Well obviously harassers were unbalanced. That's why they went through 2 changes (nanite cost increase and rumble seat nerf) in vain attempts to bring them back in line. Ofc it can be argued that the nerf was intended primarily for the chimera, but its also clear in the post that harassers and valkeries were also intended to be affected by this nerf, because the devs found them to be overperforming.

The fact is these things are too fast and agile, while at the same time remaining remaining as tanky - or tankier - than a lightning or even mbt due to the fact that it is not affected by resistance multipliers.

On paper the lighting has more health. But it takes much more damage from the rear and sides, whereas the harasser takes the same amount of damage regardless. It also has access to powerful guns which in most cases outperform that of other vehicles. On top of that was the ability to repair on the fly to tank even more shots, or even C4 pursuers while driving away!

Basically it has the best of all worlds. It's hard to hit, it can tank way more damage than it should, and dishes out just as much firepower as a tank.

It's clear the thing is overpowered, at least the term "harasser" doesn't describe it. Destroyer would be more fitting.

While the repair seat change and nanite increase are probably the last changes I would think of to balance these things which had once been balanced properly in the first place, it was done knowing there's an issue with the harasser.

Personally I would reduce the health pool, or add damage multipliers similar to tanks, and/or halve the dps of every gun option. That or make the thing as slow and flipable as a lightning.