[Suggestion] Balance of Vehicles vs Infantry

What do you all think of this idea? Yknow in the Planetside 2 trailer from 5 or 6 years ago, and it showed an NC guy shooting people though the walls of the ESF, even though he couldn't see them? What if that was implemented into the game, shooting people through the windows of a vehicle? How would that go over with the rest of the Planetside 2 community here today? You could shoot through windows of a tank or aircraft, but with reduced damage.

It would mean that every class can deal with the pilots or drivers of vehicles, but not with the actual vehicle? Take Infiltrators for example. They can't deal with vehicles other than the Hunter QCX crossbow. If this was implemented, maybe even along with vehicle hacking, everyone could kill the driver, but not the vehicle. Nothing stops them from getting back into their vehicle, except if the vehicle is surrounded or something like that, but it buys you time for something. As I said in the previous paragraph, it would have reduced damage, so you can't just take a revolver and 2 shot someone, or easily take someone down before the vehicle has a chance to react. That would be so unbalanced and stupid. However, for certain weapons, there wouldn't be a reduction because of how strong the weapons are and should be, such as snipers being able to penetrate a vehicle.

How would this go over with all of you? Please respond.

Tanks... Tanks everywhere. Decrease rear armor already. Reward players that successfully pierce lines and manage to flank oblivious tank zergs locking whole factions in the spawn room with AOE damage from a far while being repaired by sunderers.

As an infiltrator main, I'm forced to use the QCX explosive with bolts as side arm. And it's more of a finisher before they outrun me and repair anyway than a real threat... Even if I unload 2 clips in the back and sides (despite the huge drop, while we are both moving) while remaining exposed to everybody else. And when they're about to explode after dodging every of their one shoting ammo, the 2 of them jump out right before exploding, with shotguns while I have my QCX in hands. So why even bother fighting them?

The armored vehicle zerg meta has to be nerfed. The game lacks diversity because of it. Everything in the game needs a weakness. The tanks weaknesses are mostly weaknesses to the other tanks. It doesn't feel right. Are we playing world of tanks or planetside?

tanks don't have windows, making them so you can kill the driver inside without destorying the tank when tanks already have the biggest weakpoint in the game is a stupid idea.

AV is already prevalent in the game the only difference is some are favored over others due to lack of manpower requirements (c4, tank mines)

if a tank is killing you when you try to destory it, you got outplayed. just like you get outplayed when a sniper kills you at range or an esf or lib kills you, at least as infantry you can hide in buildings to take cover from armor and air, ground vehicles have barely any decent cover against air and the ones they do have make them easy prey to infantry.

there are already enough ways to destory vehicles, time and time again vehicles and ground vehicles in particular have been nerfed harder then infantry or air

1&3) rear armor doesn't need to be decreased it's already weak enough, ANY hit from behind does bonus damage, which points out the flaw in your argument that tanks don't have a weakness to anything but other tanks.

every explosive type deals bonus damage to the rear of a tank, furthermore ONLY tanks have a serious rear armor weakness. infantry, armor and air all take advantage of tanks rear armor weakness, haven't you heard of people flying libs using the tankbuster for the air version of a knife kill from behind on enemy armor? or an ESF attacking a lightning from above and behind at an angle to hit lightning's rear with hornets?

or even a AV grenade + decimator combo attack on an enemy tank from behind?

it sounds more like to me that you have a vehicle victim complex centered on trying to shoehorn infiltrator into a serious AV class like a light assault or heavy assault.

no matter what aspect you play infantry/armor/air people will zerg no nerf will ever change that, unless the nerf is so extreme that nobody pulls that aspect due to complete uselessness

2)you aren't forced to use explosive bolts, you choose to. it's simple logic that explosive bolts on their own with their low damage and drop aren't a serious threat to vehicles, i'd rank the archer higher then the explosive bolts merely because it's easier to hit them due to less drop and having much more range with it only becoming a threat if the driver lets the vehicle keep taking chip damage.

i don't count explosive bolts as a threat to a tank at all unless it's ether severely damaged or distracted, you aren't supposed to solo a vehicle using explosive bolts, it's almost as ineffective as firing a kobalt at a sundie or MBT.

infiltrators are not an AV class, explosive bolts are effectively a joke weapon 1vs1 against vehicles.

"infiltrators are not an AV class",

Which classes are? All of them. I understand that the stealth + AV combo would really be broken, you would see stalkers carrying C4 everywhere, making it useless to spawn tanks. That's not what we want imho.

"explosive bolts are effectively a joke weapon 1vs1 against vehicles."

That's sad, being able to dodge shots by jumping from a cover to another, and landing a fair ammount of bolts on weak parts should be rewarding. Risk/reward is what's making the game interesting. I see a lot of "easy mode" gameplay that focus on grinding from almost risk free situations. Camping vehicle terminals as a stalker for instance, lolpoding open sky base points on infantry, and shorten the fights for bases by locking a faction to its spawn room with armor. Sometimes the fights are not even started that they're already lost because no one wants to deal with 10+ tanks repairing and replacing each other once one of them took damage. So some bases are forsaken by most people just to fight in biolabs and covered ones. If people start picking their fights there's a lack of manpower.

I didn't play for a while, got back to the game 2 months ago. But back then I remember that we didn't see this amount of armored so often. It used to be something surprising, but this is the meta now.

As I understand it, the armour zerg is partly a compensation response to the extremely harsh nerfs that tank cannons received due to the CAI update.


Prior to that update, if you were rolling HE rounds and an AP tank got the drop on you, you were usually dead. If you had HEAT rounds and the enemy tank had AP rounds, you were 'less' screwed, but the odds still favoured the AP tanker. Each ammo type excelled in its defined role and niche, but sucked outside of it:

• HE rounds owned infantry, but sucked against vehicles. Good if you wanted to keep enemy infantry away from your AP tankers.
• HEAT rounds had equal effectiveness against infantry and vehicles, but didn't specialize against either of them. Decent all-rounder ammo type.
• AP rounds melted vehicles, but good luck trying to wipe out infantry squads with them. The ammo of choice for hunting enemy vehicles.

After the CAI update replaced the HE rounds with HESH, that whole balance was utterly disrupted. The armour penalties were changed, which resulted in HESH rounds barely having a penalty against armour, while still having a good splash radius, and dealing more damage per-shot than HEAT rounds.


AP rounds still deal the 'most' damage, but its advantage against vehicles is now 'negligible', compared to pre-CAI update; there's almost no reason to pick it over HESH, unless you're shelling vehicles from very far away, or you're trying to take pot shots at aircraft.


Since the vehicle TTK is so much longer now, individual tanker skill matters less than sheer volume of force. In other words, the CAI update made vehicle numbers matter more than driver skill, and made HESH the 'best' ammo in 'most' situations.


Remember when you could disrupt an enemy zerg with 1-3 well-coordinated Lightning hit-and-run 'skirmisher' groups? That doesn't happen nearly as often anymore, due to the TTK being so much longer now.

Vehicles can either be powerful and expensive, or weak and replaceable. Think about your goal. Since the only objective that matters is an infantry point in a base, make vehicles too weak and there isn't much point to them. None of the best platoons use them as is. The real solution is creating a vehicle game first, a reason for them to fight over open land. Once they have a purpose, you can dial in infantry/tank balance to keep them in their own playgrounds.

The only time vehicles are too OP against infantry...is when people are doing zilch about them. No tank, harasser, ESF, or whatever else is going to be able to sit there and farm infantry with a couple guys doing AV/AA.

I remember way back when vehicle explosions actually had an AOE that was meaningful and could consistently one shot. Now often times you can shell an engineer/heavy directly and it won't even kill them. Im pretty sure phalanx turrets don't one shot anything on a direct hit anymore lol.... This is an infantry focused game now and vehicles (along with every explosive) have been nerfed to the ground many times already.

Is it annoying when vehicle zergs will perch around a base and spend the whole time shooting in, farming infantry? Yes it is, but that is not a problem of vehicles, it is that people are not countering the zerg and spawning into a massively over popped fight where they will get farmed regardless.

Infiltrators of all things, do not need AV in any way, shape, or form. They are most immune to getting killed by vehicles already and the last thing vehicle drivers need is some hill sniper focusing them on top of the plethora of crap they already have to worry about. Sometimes I think people in this game expect to have equal footing as infantry vs. a 450 nanite tank....=/

If anything, vehicles need some semblance of AOE again. Then, it would probably be suitable to give infantry AV weapons actual velocity, rather than, for example, the catapult level of rocket launchers we have right now. If vehicles were restored to even a fraction of their former glory, I'd be open to many infantry AV ideas, including infiltrator.

Speaking of which, how about that engineer AV turret almost no one uses anymore? lol...

no, all classes are not AV classes.

heavy (decimator + lockons) AV grenades, C4 = AV class
light assault C4 + jumpjets, rocklet rifle = AV class
engineer AV mana turret, tank mines and archer = light AV class
MAX, multiple AV weapons = av class

having one weapon that can damage vehicles does not make you an av class, it merely means you can deal damage to vehicles, not that you are intended to be able to kill them on your own.(or even be able to effectively approach and kill them)

any class being able to kill vehicles with the same effectiveness would make the class system pointless, when you change classes you exchange weapon types, equipment choices and class ability for a different configuration.


do you really think they'd make an effective AV weapon for a class that can cloak at will? that would make as much sense as letting infiltrators wield shotguns like in beta.

there's no way they would give a class that can cloak to hide from enemies the ability to deal significant damage to vehicles, that's why they don't have access to C4.

The highest burst damage vehicle in the game turns invisible. So.... Yeah, GG Daybreak.

"Shoot through the windows"
It's the year 20XX+ something something and they still haven't put ballistic bulletproof glass on all military-grade vehicles that require that stuff?

There is actually a weapon that does damage to vehicles as a primary, but folk don't want to buff it. It's called the Archer and should be much scarier against vehicles too. Especially when things get into nonsensical towers of armor with rows upon rows of rep sundies and ammo sundies. Not all of us have friends to pilot our Dalton libs.

;~;

*edit*
Personally though, I can't help but stress what I feel is one of the primary issues of the game. The game feels, on an infantry level, like a tactical shooter. A very fast-paced one where you can die in half a second. The vehicle gameplay flips that on its head and slows down the pace. I'm not sure but I think that's where the major issue feels to stem. Infantry gameplay is very tactical shooter, but the armor gameplay is more like an arcade game. However, I'm not entirely sure what one could do to really mingle the two together.

there are only two objectives in planetside 2: killing and taking control points.

infantry's issue is when one side kills off all the other side's vehicles and then the vehicle users start killing infantry and many of those infantry do not even try to contest the vehicle's presence with counters and then complain when they die to a vehicle.

as long as one side's tank have no vehicles to shoot at they will target infantry.

the vehicle cap points were a good idea, but as they are implemented now they are merely infantry cap points that vehicles can influence, as long as infantry can cap them there is no point using vehicles to cap or defend them.

vehicle cap points could have encouraged long term vehicle battles over them, but right now there aren't many of them to make a difference and as long as infantry can cap them vehicles won't be interested in taking and holding them.

vehicle play is just as tactical as infantry play, positioning, timing attacks, planning all go into vehicle play the only difference worth noting is that vehicles have higher TTK allowing more tactics as meeting an enemy doesn't mean one of you is near instantly dead so you can use movement to lure them to terrain that favors you (or lure them into a tank mine trap).

How bout no. I don't think you should be able to kill everything with skill, an actual wall behind an obstacle inspires more teamplay dynamic, after all, if I could just use a squad of infantry snipers to kill tanks at range, why would I have a tank squad? Why use a tank? Why not just simply get a liberator or counter for said tank instead.

i wouldn't say that not being able to snipe vehicle drivers when they are in their vehicle is a wall.

skill is about getting the best outcome you can with what you have access to, if there's a tank shooting at infantry and a player wants to kill it, if they are skilled enough they will pick the most effective counter and use that counter rather then merely sticking to the class they are currently.

an example would be if a medic wanted to kill a vehicle, skilled players would at least swap to light or heavy assault to counter rather then trying an incredibly risky on foot c4 attack as a medic or they could use a more advanced strategy like flying a stealth valk over the tank and bailing out as a light assault for a quick stealthy c4 kill.

You all keep saying "Infiltrators should not be able to take out vehicles." I haven't said anywhere that they should be able to take out tanks. I suggested being able to take out the driver of the tank. 300+ meters away, and your target would still be the driver. You would have to hit the driver of MOVING or STILL tank, a person who you can't see, and is a target that is sitting down inside the tank. It still requires skill to do, to headshot or bodyshot twice someone who you can't see that is moving faster than a normal infantry unit because they are inside of a vehicle. Can you please comment on THAT PART and not something I didn't say about taking down tanks easily?

No that would be a terrible idea.
The simple reason is infantry are too numerous, are hard to see, and can hide behind invulnerable shields that they can fire out of.
Imagine 12 infiltrators sat in the crown top floor shields.

taking out the driver while he's inside the tank is effectively the same as killing the tank itself, given that unless the tank is set to squad access the tank will sit there and be destroyed before the driver can respawn and reach it again.

in other words being able to kill a driver while they are inside the vehicle is effectively asking for long range C4, it ain't going to happen. being able to snipe drivers inside their vehicles breaks the biggest advantage of vehicles: more survivability, no ranged instant death meaning more reliance on positioning, planning and general accuracy over twitch skills.

skilled peek-a-boo heavies are bad enough, imagine people being able to snipe you while inside your vehicle at long range and use the tops of tall buildings as both cover and a way to keep your gun unable to elevate high enough to target them making it nigh impossible to kill them (like tech plants).

There's plenty of ways to neutralize vehicles. For the foot soldier, the most powerful one is to use their disadvantages against them.

I see your point, but I have to disagree on that first part though. It may be the future, and sure you add bulletproof glass in all your vehicles. The thing is, if you can't shoot through it, you make something that does. When you make stronger and stronger armor, you develop stronger and stronger guns. Then you go back to making better armor to defend against those strong guns, and then you make stronger guns to break that armor, and so on. You had just swords, now you have bows. You had bows and swords, now you have guns and cannons and knives. You had all that, now you have tanks and bigger guns and sharper knives and grenades and everything else. That just continues on.

Also, to everyone else posting, you make it sound easy to shoot someone who you can't see from a small weakness in the front of the tank. The tank has to be staring at you for you to shoot through the window, and it doesn't matter how close they are to you. They can still see you. The closer you are to them, the easier it is for them to kill you. The point I made about sniping is that since snipers are such powerful weapons, there is no damage reduction, so you can still snipe them in the head and they die. For an automatic, there are damage reductions because its easier to shoot through a window up close with an AR than it is to shoot up close with a sniper. There is a level of difficulty to shooting a person you can't see through a small opening who is a moving target and will kill you in 1-3 hits of their weapon.

There are few ways for infantry without AV weapons to deal with a vehicle. They include getting in a vehicle to take them down, changing classes, or getting into an AV turret. If the vehicles are camping you and they are any good, you won't be able to spawn a vehicle and take them down before they you down. You would have to get an aircraft or something to shoot from their blindspot. Changing classes doesn't work sometimes because if they are any good, they can take you down before you get close, unless you use a C4 Light Assault. Then the tank is pretty much dead. The third way can take them down faster, but when they move out of your range of vision or the angle of your turret, you can't get them anymore. Giving a way for all classes to take down a vehicle with a level of skill helps balance out the vehicle gameplay. If you can take out the driver, the tank can't hurt you. To balance that, maybe if you are in a squad, a squadmate can also drive your vehicle, but if you ask to switch seats with them, it will auto-switch you without a confirmation popup. There are ways to balance things in a game. There are probably things in this game that people thought were so unbalanced and stupid that they shouldn't have been added, yet they were balanced. Maybe they thought the Archer was stupid, giving Engineers a sniper to kill MAX's. But things can be balanced out. Maybe you can think of ways for it to work instead of ways that it wouldn't.

Please comment with a grain of salt. That means tactfully.

Honestly I think the solution is simple. The vehicles are too cheap. Make them more expensive and wallah. How do you make them just expensive enough? Gradually.

You could double the nanite pool and halve the nanites you receive per time. Increase the cost of everything by 25% and you have the perfect blend. At least I think anyway.

But shooting down tanks with a sniper is a dream. It isn't realistic and it breaks bounds to where you don't know how to balance anything anymore. Realism is our great guide. We can only stray from it when we absolutely have to and it just makes sense that a tank should decimate infantry. If that's what it should be all along then that needs to come at the right price. End of story.

Edit: In terms of the vehicles that already have windows then people should be able to get shot out of it so long as it's not reducing the game's performance for some odd reason. The hit box would be tiny and only viable at few angles. It doesn't seem like a game changer.

Nanite Costs are one-cost, for the spawning. Repairs are free.
Right now, vehicles survive long enough to refund their entire cost.
Unless chain-pulling the cost, isn't noticeable.

We have nanite-boosts, and typically expanding it like that, even while raising costs, just means we can chain pull still.
So that first tank is rapidly replaced by the second.
it's the chain-pulling that usually does it; But if it was more-so limited, then people couldn't reliably use their vehicles.
Which is quite enjoyable (to use them) for a lot of people.
-- So on that, I suggest a Demigan Idea; Add a secondary AI weapon to vehicles like tanks, and give nanite-AV to infantry.
Then the balance is more... well, skill on how you use your tool, as both are paying in nanites to destroy nanites.

We have an infinitely flying tank with more armor than land vehicles, and a higher caliber cannon bigger than the tank's own cannons, with built-in-booster, for the same nanite cost, while this thing is also faster.
So Realism is kinda laughing, and that's not mentioning the impracticality of: VS's entire weapon technology.

Not a game changer?
ESF, Liberator, Sunderer, Harasser. All have windows.
If it's not limited to high-powered rifles, then Joe-Blow heavy-assault with an LMG is rapid-firing his gun into the front of a Sunderer.
Rather than need his AV launcher, let alone if he's an Infiltrator, this attack straight nails the driver, unless slower than killing it.
By rushing to the front, you erase the ability to use this vehicle near anything with a gun.
Snipers then erase these vehicles if they're approaching. And there is nothing they can do about it.
Hell, could cloak up close, and CQC fire into that window.
These vehicles are key vehicles in objective play, something you're keen about.

Harassers, for example, would be randomly lose their operator as they're not bullet-proof.
So lucky shots would just kill the driver, limiting even further.

ESFs, would be pot-shotted by weapons-fire rather than AA, unless that can trigger it.
Which means, an Archer could one-shot the pilot, unless it's basically the same as firing normally at it -- In which case, anything that fires fast would aim at the cockpit, making even AA worthless in comparison.

Now Liberators.. Imagine being shot out by a rifle.
As I can hit those with an Archer to the face, well enough - let alone if 3 guys with LMGs are unloading bullets into its direction.

That means, each one of these vehicles, has possibly a vastly faster death, to something that wouldn't be a threat.
If it's a sniper-rifle only, then it's still a cloaked shot, possibly from a mile, nailing out an entire vehicle - possibly out of the sky.
That's a vast difference, as that's an easier shot than landing the low velocity missiles.