[Suggestion] Changes to Main Battle Tanks

All Main Battle Tanks (Prowler, Mag, and Vanguard) Should:

• Have 3 personnel seats instead of 2 (Driver, Gunner, Commander)!. They should require a minimum of 2 occupants to operate (Driver and Gunner) with an optional 3rd seat (Commander) discussed later.

What this would accomplish:

The tanks as they currently are, are a bit hard to operate with nearly all the responsibility and power in the hands of the driver. Splitting the workload into distinct diciplines (Driver/Gunner) would create more opportunity for teamwork and would make any tank more effective.

It Would also provide an opportunity for specialization with additional cert trees for each disipline (Driver/Gunner/Commander).

Importantly, this would reduce the amount of tank spam that currently exists in the game by reducing the number of tanks on the battlefield at any given time. Many tanks on the battlefield are manned by one person and this makes for a lot of ineffective tanks and of course tank spam. By ecouraging more people to operate fewer vehicles you increase effectiveness with teamwork and abilities while reducing spam.

Obviously this would mean that the Driver of the tank would only drive the vehicle. And that the gunner of the tank would only operate the main gun with the commander providing additional benefits.

Commander Seat

The commander Seat would offer a range of enhancements to the effectiveness of the tank with some options being:

1. Target Designation - Would be able to make a selected target briefly blink or become highlighted on the battlefield allowing both the gunner and the driver to concentrate on a given target while the commander can look for additional threats.
2. Vehicle Only Voice Communication channel - Would allow for vehicle only voice communication via commander certification.
3. Vehicle bonuses - Could provide an array of additional vehicle bonuses from reload speed to Multiple vehicle speed ect.. the options here can become very interesting and should be tempting and useful enough to get all 3 seats bein manned. perhaps even providing vehicle XP boost and allow the XP to be shared equally.

Many other options are possible here with regards to skills/bonuses. These are just a few possibilities

Changes to Ammo Types:
Currently I would estimate that 80% of the vehicles in the game are using the Anti-Infantry rounds. This is because they are so effective against infantry and are actually fairly effective against other armor. They don't really have a down-side. I would suggest making Anti-Infantry Rounds to almost NO damage to Armor and the Anti-Armor rounds do almost no damage to infantry.

Together all these changes would have a much more positive effect on the game as it stands today.

What do you think?

Just so you know, the original Planetside had tanks where it was setup like that, but people found it a bit cumbersome as well. You will also not solve the problem with the fact that the driver and gunner will still not notice a person attacking from behind when they are focused on the current vector they are working on either.

The changes proposes won't change the fact that there is no 'shared XP' without doing some sort of damage to the target for both driver and gunner and especially so for the commander.

The 'basic' gun was setup to be equally effective against infantry and armor as a base model, but the thing that would encourage people to use HE (Anti infantry) over AP or vice versa is that the fact that the weapon systems were 'modular' to allow the vehicles to switch weapons at the cost of resources to do so. People will lean to the 'balanced' one as to be more effective to the situation they will be most likely engage and for tanks it will be AI/AV not just purely AI or Purely AV.

You will also not see people favor the 'less damage' over all because again, given the weapon systems will not change short of destroying the vehicle and respawning another vehicle with the configuration, which is a lot of resources and timer delayed.

The MBTs in Planetside 1 was also basically 'You only get these weapons, that's it' While there are more weapon selections for the vehicles to fit different purposes now, it still follows the motiff of this is all you have and can work with until you can pull it again.

Also, vehicles back then had a 5 minute timer, and MAX armors were Specialized, but you could cycle to the different armors.

What is missing is the fact that the MAX armor is now just single, but the armor system is modular. The Vehicles have hard points that can be repurposed, but can't be short of redoing it.

Higby (creative director) answered a bunch of questions about having a separate gunner in the MBTs. One concern is that the Magrider's gunner wouldn't be able to effectively aim the main gun without steering the tank. For the other tanks, he hinted at plans to introduce special tank certifications to unlock a more powerful main gun that requires a dedicated gunner. This potential certification doesn't address the current issue of tank spam though. But I don't think SOE wants to make changes that remove gameplay that the current playerbase may have become accustomed to, such as lone-wolf tanking.

I agree that requiring a bigger tank crew would foster better teamwork. I think the original PS1 tank system would have been a good model to follow, but it might be a tough change to make at this point of the game. The commander role is interesting, but I'm worried that it could become a thankless job if they only provided spotting abilities, which already exist for all players, and passive vehicle buffs. A vehicle chat channel should be provided by default and not require a certification, and it seems like players use the proximity chat channel for vehicle chat anyway.

The original Planetside didn't exactly have the 3-seat system (driver, gunner, commander) being suggested in this post. There was a dedicated driver and gunner. The magrider's driver also controlled a gun, and the prowler had two gunners.

A better 'shared XP' system should be implemented. Right now, I don't think the driver gets a portion of the gunner's kill assists, and the gunner gets no fraction of the driver's kills. I think there should be a uniform XP sharing system for MBTs, especially if you are in a squad.

I don't fully understand what you are saying in relation to the OP's suggestion. Are you referring to potential changes which would allow vehicles to change their loadouts once spawned? I think that would be a nice feature. But that does not address the current issue which is that for the main gun, HE is better than both AP and the default 'balanced' gun. I think you misunderstood the issue as "the default option is used instead of the HE and AP options". It would be nice to see some damage statistics for the different vehicle ammo types.

As for the main gunner's target acquisition based on the Commander's call, he has to switch to cannon first-person view to make effective shots on that. Since that's a special HUD, just marker targets spotted by the commander (or the driver, if he is allowed) by pointing out the closet rotation direction to the targets on the main gun's HUD.

I think vehicles should award XP based on two properties: number of seats and number of passagers. A vehicle with three available seats but only one operator only awards 1/3 XP to the operator. A vehicle with three available seats and only two operators awards 2/3 XP to each operator. One-seated vehicles are 3/4 XP. The exception are mass transport vehicles such as the Sunderers and Galaxies (which only award XP to the individual gunner if shooting, or to the driver/pilot if crushing). AMS, supply, and repair features of the Sunderer still only reward the owner (or does it reward the driver in the case of allowing squad members to switch seats with the driver and deploy?).

The XP baseline is, of course, the normal: person(s) dying as if shot by Infantry plus vehicle being destroyed through any offensive means plus bonus for defending, if applicable, with any boosters factored in. In whatever order they are calculated currently.

@op no to your stuff.

I love the idea, but it's too late now. You'd have to make a whole host of changes as well, just to prevent ragequitting. I imagine people being very upset when trying to wait for a gunner to enter while they're being shot at, or getting a gunner and then immediately running over a pair of tank mines.

Origional PS1 MBT's required two people. One driver, one gunner.

These tanks worked well with a pair of people who were in voice coms with each other (and even more so when packs of people all on voice with each other were together). And worked margionaly well with a random pair of people.

But.. those people who like to lone-wolf things complained because they would spend time sitting at a base or a warpgate begging for some random persone to hop into the gunner spot, rather than joining a squad and/or outfit in a TEAM oriented MMO game.

So.. to placate those few people who refused to actualy work as part of a 'team'.. and to hold out a 'treat' to entice the BF3 crowd into playing PS2... the Dev's decided to go with the 1-man-army machines we now have... copied directly from BF3.

At some later time we might.... might, see a 'cert' unlock that will once again seperate the driver and gunners, makeing the MBT's 2 crewed vehicles again.. but this will be an OPTIONAL cert.. not the default.

I wouldn't mind seeing MBTs be 2-person required. Lightnings should stay 1-person to give lone wolves the ability to tank.

If you make current MBTs three man, then I want all my certs/SC back that I invested in it. Then I could put those points somewhere useful instead. I spent all this cash and certs believing I can drive and shoot my Prowler, changing that is not acceptable unless I am refunded.

I am not going to drive around two other guys so they get all the kills and exp while I get to play chauffer. No thanks. What if one or both leaves, what if there is no one to even man it? So that machine I spent 50+ bucks on and over 7k certs is now worthless? Meh.

Of Course, I would expect in solving some vehicle related issues it may cause others and there may be a few people who feel as you do. I would imagine a large change like this would also come with cert refunds that you could choose to spend on other things or to re-cert into the new trees.

This idea was shot down in Beta. They have said they will never make a dedicated gunner on MBTs default. They gave a lengthy response as to why and pretty much nipped this one straight out.

They mentioned that there will be 3 man MBTs.

-You will have to cert into them.
-The armor of the MBT will not change, neither will anything but the gun options..
-Dedicated gunner MBTs will get a more powerful main gun.
-Mag riders will always be a 2 man MBT due to design, with a better secondary gun to compensate. Vanguards and Prowlers will take 3.

Source or bust!

Sadly I cannot link it since they wiped these forums and we cannot get into our histories. It was a post by Higby himself in the last month of Beta. There is a poster, Patellerite above, in here quoting from that source also.

Anyone know if PSU got a copy of this post for posterity?

I'd love to see this system worked in, with Magriders staying gunner/driver (combined). I've said it a million times, but as long as MBTs are tougher the spammability of Magriders will be fun, flavorful and provide a range of different tactics for VS. (Of all the factions, religious fanatics should be the one coming at their enemies in swarms lol.) Shame it won't happen, but if it did most of the ground game could be fixed in one fell swoop and the zerg's heart cut out. A man can dream.

I actually don't see the tank spam I did during beta. Tanks aren't that difficult to take out, and the changes to the metagame where the tech plants control tank spawning really changed how the battles play out.

If anything right now the amount of vehicles on the field is pretty good. I never have an issue finding a good infantry fight. I also don't expect an infantry fight in every single battle.

A lot of tanks are already 2 manned tanks anyways. They are much more powerful to have on the battlefield than just a bunch of uncoordinated solo tanks. A good 2 man magrider can effectively take on 3 solo enemy tanks. I've seen it done.

Also the lighting has really come into its own and has been a great counter to large amounts of MBTs. The AP cannon on a lightning is something fierce and it's speed allows flanking which can rip apart entire armor lines.

The idea to make separate ammunitions completely separate weapons is kinda weird to begin with.

IRL, most tanks have a combat mix of about 40 APFSDS-Shells, 60 HE-Shells and maybe even a few WP rounds aboard to be loaded individually if needed.

And yes, I will always be an advocate of separate driver/gunner seats, since its just so much more useful and effective.

Thats why you choose your gunners carefully and dont let just anyone hop in. And believe me, being a driver can be equally engaging as being a gunner, since you are in charge of keeping the vehicle alive, get out of combat situations etc.

EDIT:

This is how you do proper Tank gameplay

Other than the BF crowd, there's the World of Tanks crowd, and yes we did both drive and shoot there.
We got used to it, we learned how to move in one direction while looking (and shooting) in a completely different one, and that's the way we like it.

Also- here's a 2 man MBT prototype, circa 2005:


I'd sure add another tank type into the fray, a 3 man Heavy Tank.
These would be the Liberators of the ground war, and would allow to leave MBTs as they are, but have heavier armor, bigger guns at the cost of lower speed.
Similar to the way a Lightning compares to the current MBT's- less crew, armor and firepower, but more speed and a much smaller profile.

Then the Vanu can get a 3 man tank as well, with 2 Supernovas in a turret on an enlarged hovering chassis.

It's not like driving a Liberator is any different. I don't mind losing the ability to gun if the gunner is competent as I am. If they're less competent, they're driving.

I don't think you should restrict MBT to only 2 people, but make the #1 position driver only, like the Liberator.

Magriders though... complicate things. I guess Vanu didn't have game balance in mind.

I once asked T-Ray about this in a Twitch interview. Something to the effect of "Will there be an HBT?".
-I believe he replied that there were no plans at the moment.

We do not need 3 versions. Just one common pool tank would do it. All it has to do is find a place on the field. Maybe something more long range and slow. Or just a huge heavy armored piece with limited short range capabilities. Too many options and it can fill too many aspects on the field and other things get weaker. If it is better than an MBT in all regards, the MBT loses a role. The Lightning becomes useless for anything it can do with the current restrictions that keeps it balanced when compared.