Beef up the Sunderer

Quite a few changes were made that weakened vehicles against infantry. I'm fine with that, imo they could also remove tanks and aircraft from the game since I never use them, no problem for me.
But:
The Sunderer is the one vehicle that keeps fights going. And it suffered the same from the AV buffs as tanks and aircraft.
Atm you need an absolutely perfect position, and an absolutely safe route to get there, else your sundy will be destroyed in a matter of seconds. Sunderers keep fights going, a destroyed sundy means the battle is over and that annoys pretty much everyone, friend or foe.

My suggestion: Let us increase the sunderers defensive capability in exchange for offensive power. Let us remove each of the two top weapon slots for additional armor plating, e.g. +30% HP for every weapon slot removed. This would make us able to spawn a beefed up sundy with +60% HP and no weapons on top. Keeps the fight going without overbuffing the vehicle.

It is not about Sunderer weakness. It is about AV Mana Turret and mainly just about AV Mana Turret. By turning a previously necessary yet not directly contributing engineer into the star of the missile nests, SOE buffed infantry AT capability to ridiculous effectivity. The non-rendering infantry-based AT nests now easily slaughter the vehicles, including sunderers. Another problem is the availability of two different drop pods per five minutes (spawn beacon & squad deploy) which allows for easy death frisbee suicide attacks with a bit of teamwork. Fixing the drop pod timers and the AV Mana Turret would go a long way in fixing the vehicle-related problems. In the short term. In the long term there needs to be a significant vehicle system overhaul.

gunfox. Survivability of a Sunderer is created by the people arround it, and yes they are supposed to protect and cover the valueable vehicle at all costs, because it is there lifeline.
If you have players with at least 5 braincells aviable, they will do everything possible to them to protect a sunderer. Therefor a defensive buff to increase its durability is completly unneeded. If you have difficultys breaking trough the enemy Zerg of Lock-Ons, AV Turrets and tankmines, the issue is not the durability of your vehicle but your incompetence to think about the fact that your vehicle is neither fit nore made for the purpose you want to use it for.
No the developer will NOT change one of the games Core-Vehicles JUST because you have no clue how to use it.

edit: Please also see Squirreli's perfectly described reason your sunderer melts by the ammount of rockets fired at it while you charge it to some place over a giant open field.

I think Squirreli is absolutely right. The AV turret is a big reason so many people are whining about rocket spam and weak vehicles and nerf the heavy and blah blah blah. The AV turret needs a definite range cap and fix the rendering!

Also to the OP, "remove tanks and aircraft from the game since I never use them" uhhh you do know what forum you're in right? Lots of people like vehicles, this game is about massive combined arms. I like vehicles, I want moar vehicles.

I didn't say they have to do that, only that I wouldn't care if they did. This wasn't a serious suggestion and if you can't see that, you should maybe learn to read.

Given that, SOE pretty much did this by now, vehicles aren't viable anymore, and I only stated that I don't care. What bugs me is that the Sunderer has to suffer from the AV buffs that were clearly not meant for it.

SOE strengthened infantry against vehicles AND weakened vehicles. SOE doesn't know who to do anything slowly and in measured steps. Now you get vehicles that die in a few hits. Keep the new found power of infantry instead of nerfing it. Just roll back some of the vehicle nerfs to compensate.

And how was the Sunderer weakened?

It was weakened by all the AV buffs that made it into the game. From what side the nerf comes does not matter. If they wanted to nerf tankspam - fine. But removing the ability to fight battles as infantry is just stupid. Right now the game is a standing around simulator more often than not. This is partly due to the high fixed cap timer, partly due to too weak sunderers.

The only thing i think we need to solve the issues is AV mana turrets to spawn as far as they can shoot. Either that or drastically drop the damage on them, Increase the cooldown period (only one of them needs to be done) then require the engineer to remain on the turret during cooldown.

Sunderers are still probably the toughest vehicle out there but require the most teamwork, 1 Sunderer with blockade armor and AI grenade launchers is incredibly effective at surviving when placed in the right spot.

Terrible idea. OP has already stated he has no interest in playing the game properly, and is very much inferring that he wants a battle to be a meatgrinding XP-fest, instead of a push for territory. Especially with the incoming lattice (which will have this effect anyway), this is more mindless COD ******** mentality.

The priority target is the enemy Sunderer in any battle. If that Sunderer goes down, the battle is not over, unless you're terrible, which the OP clearly is. What happens now is that you fight from your first backup Sunderer, whilst you move another backup in behind your second backup Sunderer. This is how battle lines move. Consider it trench warfare.

TL;DR: Sunderers do not need more health in any way, shape or form, they're probably the most sensibly balanced vehicle in game. The provide the only element of battle flow vital to tactics and strategy, and turning them into armoured fortresses will only make every battle a worthless TDM meatgrinder.

Sunderers now destroyed mostly by single trooper with c4 + UBGL combo dropodding from the sky directly on top of it.

My personal favourites for killing the most dangerous (up close and deployed) sunderers:

1) Spawn beacon drop pod + mines or C4 & UBGL
2) Squad deploy drop pod + mines or C4 & UBGL
3) Landing an ESF on top of sunderer + mines or C4 & UBGL
4) Landing a suicide Liberator on top of sunderer + mines or C4 & UBGL
5) Driving a suicide tank next to the sunderer + mines or C4 & UBGL
6) Wraith Flash loaded with 3 x C4 next to the sunderer + Fury detonation

At range, AT Mana turret rocks. The above-mentioned suicide attacks have better results solo, ranged attacks require more team mates around but also are effective at closing down complete armoured.

Oh, and if the hostile sunderer is relatively unprotected and there are no enemy ESFs around there may be time to actually, you know, take that sunderer down with the cannon. Once you start taking damage it is however usually most reliable to fall back or drive up close and suicide rush it with mines or C4.

EDIT: Should be noted, that 1-2 have separate 5min timers and require teamwork, for 4-5 I have 6-10 min timers or so each (lightning, prowler, mosquito, liberator) and if all else fails, there is the wraith flash which requires 3 C4 engi loadout and switching to infiltrator.

Phazaar, could you stop offending people already? What the hell is going wrong in your brain? Believe me, out of all my vehicle kills a good 80% were AMS sundies. Destroying them is childs play, and they're too vital for the combat flow to be destroyed that easily. I don't even drive sundies regularly, I just destroy them. Mostly without problems.

Who deploys their sundys where they can be AT sniped or jumped down upon by light assault easily?

A lot of people actually.

Give it engineer AV turrets on the top. And give it spiked tracks instead of wheels so it looks cooler.

That I can agree it.
It's insane how many killstreaks I've had with the AV Turret.

While I hate it, especially as a vehicle pilot - I absolutely love it as an Engineer who can go around sniping infantry from afar. c:

Meh, not many people use the top two guns. This will only increase the newbie sunderers, but those who spent 1-2k certs on weapons that not many people use after it's deployed will feel angry.
I will feel angry for them.

So no, this isn't a good idea, IMO.

It already is a nightmare to take down a proper sunderer with crew. Basically impossible for regular infantry on the field. Bad sunderers get blown up in seconds, good ones last an entire battle.
Everyone can spawn one, so i don't understand the point about them beeing so vitally important that they shouldn't be able to die by dedicated defenses. AMS is dirt cheap, basically everyone has it.

NO THANKS....

Today me and my Lightning put 29 HEAT shots into a sundy with one engy repairing and i ran out of ammo. I couldn't even get the sundy down to 70% hp....