Anti-materiel rifle and AV ramblings

Right off I want to see Infiltrators getting the anti-materiel rifle.
They're entitled to it more than Engies or Heavies simply because at present they have zero anti-vehicle or anti-MAX capabilities.

I feel bad as a MAX killing Infils because they are zero threat to me; it borders on bullying.

That said, I think I'm not alone in saying AV in this game needs looking at.

I'm coming from a perspective feeling that, currently:

-Infantry anti-vehicle capabilities could stand to be a little more potent and prevalent among the classes. Potent in that MAXs, HAs, Engies and to a lesser extent LAs and Medics have tools for dealing with vehicles, but they could use more punch. Prevalent in that Infils have no tools at all.

-Some of the tools for anti-vehicles are a little too good against MAXs and other infantry. Rocket primary, C4 spam, Mana AV, all of these work better against infantry than vehicles often.


What I'd like to see:

-Launchers, especially dumbfire ones, do increased direct damage to heavy vehicles, less to infantry and MAXs.

-C4 to have a 2 arming delay, but can be thrown like a sticky grenade. If thrown into a crowd of infantry or by a MAX it gives them a chance to run. If thrown onto a vehicle, or being laid as a trap, it makes no difference.

-Anti-materiel rifle given to Infiltrators alone. Then you can balance it around both their cloak, lack of other AV ability, lack of anti-infantry capability (if they take the AM-rifle over a sniper or SMG) and lower HP.

-Some form of anti-vehicle AoE added to the game to smash/thin out mass vehicle zergs. I thought this was the aim of Orbital Strikes, but their implementation seems dead in the water. In lieu of them, see my MIRV idea here:
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/mirv-launcher.215899/

Sniper rifle headshots on a MAX. Watch them scurry about in panic.
Sniper rifle headshots to the drivers as they get out to repair. Watch them die.

Infiltrators do not need direct anti-vehicle weapons. Not all classes have to be able to do everything. The fact that they currently have this much cross-capability is the real problem.

Av is fine at the moment. Unless you are already losing and your population has thinned out enough for the enemy to camp your spawn, the current dumb fires and C4 can do a lot of damage. The only buff dumbfires need is a volocity increase. And we sure as hell don't need C4 being whipped around.

When it comes to fighting hords of tanks you should be thinking about organizing some of your own armor support, (with the current vechile mechanocs that means a wave of defensive lishtnings is a base away) not rushing them with all manner of infantry. Asking for further AV for infantry is just lazy game play.

As for the orbital strike, no... Just no.

1.) Oh great. RLs that smash armour but not flesh and bones... As if RLs aren't already weak enough against infantry. You can't even kill yourself when you shoot the ground you are standing on with it.

2.)No difference? So it takes longer than two seconds for a horde of angry infantry to shoot you down while you are desperately pressing the button?

3.)Why not? A single shot 20mm anti material rifle (AKA single shot Basilisk with scope) won't be harmful fight?

I would rather infiltrators had jammer grenades that worked like ps1 jammers, no one needs invisible AV units and i do not feel that the inclusion of AV for infiltrators is at all justified given the amount of difficulty getting what AV there is already to render in the first place.

As for mass AOE AV this is completely impossible to fairly balance when all vehicles cost resources, it worked in ps1 because everything was free.

Infils shouldnt have AV ability......this game needs less AV, not more.

My god...Do you people not remember what armor used to be like? Low Defense bases with constant HE spam engulfing them in fire killing anyone stupid enough to go outside the spawn room. This was also true for towers. Not so much an issue for the larger facilities but the outposts and towers just...It was hell. Right now the armor I feel is too weak. Infantry laughs at most armor in the game right now and that is not focused to one faction. Giving infiltrators an AV weapon like that is just not a good move. If you want to attack armor swap over to something that can attack it.

Give me PS1s vehicle hacking!
For those of you who dont know in PS1 infiltrators could hack vehicles.

Balancing criteria:
Cannot hack DEPLOYED sundies.
Hacking a vehicle with an occupant plays an alarm of some kind to say HEY ******* MOVE YOURE BEING HACKED

other than that give us one tank mine less than needed to kill an MBT. Why one tank mine less than needed?
>Infiltrators are support. If they are destroying already damaged tanks or damaging them for their HA/Engy teammates this ties into it nicely.
>Unless youre leetproskillzhaxzoraimbootcommie, they cannot be used against infantry at all unless you set them off whe nthey hop out to repair or by a sundy
>Since it would be admittedly a bit overpowered for invisible man to be incredible how he can blow your mbt, having one less than needed to set off your deployed prowler, best he can do is hope you jump out and he kills you and watches it burn.

Or we can just stick to infiltrators doing what they do now and leave the AV stuff to Heavys and Engineers. I just don't get this all classes do all things. Isn't that the point of having classes? lol The hacking thing would be neat but I can see that going to hell pretty quickly. Guess it depends how you balance it.

Hi, I just auraxiumed my (Wraith) Flash on my Cobalt char, and I must state, that I feel exactly the other way around.
Half of my final 300 roadkills where actually Maxes, because they were easy to get and most satisfying kills (aside from tanks, ofc).

I think that is an amazing idea. Just some compromises needs to be made. This infiltrator spec would cost 800 nanites, it would delete the game of your hard drive if you die, it would make a large beam into the sky and spell out "********* that couldn't hit a barn if he was inside it, so go kill him, he is useless at this game", and it also would retract one BR every time you hit a vehicle.

I mean, what the **** are people smoking? "Yeah let's give the class that already beats every single class in range capabilities and can go into stealth, the capability to plink the armor of vehicle".

Infiltrators already have an exclusive vehicle ability that they can use to annoy vehicles and skip away unhurt (if they at least have half a brain). No more are needed, thank you.

honestly i dont see hacking going bad if they do like in ps1 where it played an alarm for occupied vehicles

"****, my prowlers getting hacked. Time to just back up."

dumbfire increased dmg vs "heavy vehicles".. like mbt's? -> Not bloody likely.
If anything, the harasser & sundy (and most air) air far too survivable, far too tanky, relative to mbt's.
Less to infantry: sure.
Less to maxes: hmm.. no, unless maxes start taking more dmg from bullets.

C4 thrown like a sticky: hell no.

AV rifle: let heavy have it; premier AV class.
I think it could also be accessible by other classes if it goes into the tool slot; maybe we will see less classes bringing C4.
I would also be absolutely fine with the rifle being ineffective vs mbt's, but damaging things like maxes, harassers, aircraft, sundy's.

Crossbow. And yes, it does Work. I've taken out many Air and armor who though they'd be able to get me just because I'm a Infil. You just have to be smart about what you do.

I'm not surprised at the reaction to these suggestions in the least.

Fortunately, I'm unconcerned with what vehicle farmers think of AV viability.
It's like wanting the Cartel's thumbs up on anti-drug enforcement policy.

Thanks for letting me know I'm on the right track.

Which means the question is whose replies are you going to acknowledge?

agreed. snipers/boltactions should be EXCLUSIVE to the infiltrator class anyway, regardless of the gun's ability to damage armor or not.

then again, who else should get it? a sniper wouldnt fit the engineer and the heavy already has too many AV options (dumfire, ground/air lockon, empire-specific launchers).

This game is slowly turning into an infantry and air deal with infantry having the bigger hand. Tanks are slowly losing their role in the game. At least the MBTs. The bases are inclosed. I get that and I am fine with it. Personally I wish they were setup more like in ps1 with the tunnels. But the bases are too close to each other. Kind of wish we had more open fields and a lot less redeploy capability so we actually had to travel. What bothers me is...and I know a lot of people are okay with this and a lot of reasons have been brought up to "justify" it but I personally think you should have to have a few people to take a crack at a MBT. Now I also think a lot of systems need to be changed around because right now you can just keep pulling MBTs due to the half ***** resource system. Also it would be nice to have a multi manned tank. driver, main gun operator and so on.

Indeed, the developers have said it is probably going to Heavy Assault and Engineer with MAYBE Infiltrators as an afterthought. They don't need it, nor should they intrude on the Infiltrators forte with a rifle.

But their concern is how many they can sell. Equipment that's only for one class sells worse because of perceived value.

Bases are enclosed now because tanks would rather farm infantry than fight other tanks.

They get away with that because air to ground was nerfed to Hell. Air was intended to counter ground vehicles, instead they farmed infantry.

Air did that because the A2G weapon options they were given were more effective against infantry, and vehicles were too effective at anti-air.

Rock, Paper Scissors.
Air was intended to counter ground vehicles.
Ground vehicles to counter infantry.
Infantry to counter air.

Once the balance is upset, it all falls apart.

Now the situation is: infantry is really good at point defense against air, provided ground vehicles aren't hammering them, which is unfortunate because ground vehicles in a group are in little danger from air or infantry.

Instead of a circle of life, everyone preying on someone else and in turn being preyed on by another, it's a little hierarchy with ground vehicles on top of infantry and air off in another biosphere doing its own thing but scavenging on lone weak infantry if no ground vehicles are around.

And don't even get me started on the sub-species of transport vehicles are have been made pointless by Redeployside.