Please have a gander at the Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AmUavphHXmIxdFhHUzJfN1VYalRnWS0xMnBUdTJpM1E&gid=31 These stats are interesting because base layout in planetside 2 provides very little infantry cover often times, yet infantry strongly outperform vehicles. MBTs and ESFs underperform the least combat effective class, the infiltrator, at all levels until 90+ at which point the ESF and infiltrator are close to equal in terms of performance (sythe slightly overperforms the infiltrator, while the reaver and mossy do worse). The reason for this is two fold, first render distance grants invisible god mode to most infantry units from vehicles, while allowing invulnerable and invisible infantry to inflict damage on vehicles. Secondly infantry weapons have been made uber effective against vehicle threats, particularly ESFs where 5 or more AA MAXes completely shuts down any enemy air activity, and AA MAXes allow for easy camping of warpgates to remove enemy air units. Tanks have it just as bad as ESFs, though they are less likely to get destroyed by invisible god mode AA MAXes and usually fall victim to invisible god mode heavy assaults wielding invisible lock on rockets, and anti armor warpgate camps aren't as common as AA MAX warp gate camping. What's really interesting about these stats is that at the low levels vehicles, particularly ESFs do outright terrible. Usually when you see a high skilled item in a game that has such atrocious score earning and playability at early levels if a player invests time to get good at that item they are rewarded at higher levels. This is not true for tanks and ESFs, they are crap in comparision to infantry and stay crap at all levels, with only the ESF sythe ever getting to even the combat effectiveness of infiltrators at level 90+. The most notworther are the justaxapostions of the score earning of MAX units to MBTs and ESFs. MAX units outperform all options at the lowest levels and continue to do so at the highest levels, nearly double MBT sph at level 90+. Not only are MAX units the best anti infantry option, they are also the best anti air option available - an order of magnitude more effective then A2A ESFs at establishing air supremecy. While being the best options of nearly all tasks MAX units are also easily revivable and cheap and can be combat repaired while taking damage, unlike MBTs and ESFs MAX units can also change loadouts on the fly to optimize their effecivness if the combat situation changes. From a numbers perspective MAX units are the superior option at every task except possibly an anti armor role where they are still very respectable, just probably not the outright superior option as they are in all other roles. MAX SPH: level 1-10: 4,515 NC / 4,470 TR / 4,168 VS level 90-100: 22,482 NC / 20,655 TR / 21,024 VS ESF SPH: level 1-10: 1,561 NC / 1,839 TR / 1,930 VS level 90-100: 13,235 NC / 12,974 TR / 15,220 NC MBT SPH: level 1-10: 3,063 NC / 3,575 TR / 3,682 VS level 90-100: 12,200 NC / 13,870 TR / 12,573 VS Infiltrator SPH: level 1-10: 3,133 NC / 3,061 TR / 3,096 VS level 90-100: 13,072 NC / 14,287 TR / 14,015 VS Heavy Assault SPH: level 1-10: 3,933 NC / 4,093 TR / 4,034 VS level 90-100: 17,515 NC / 16,873 TR / 17,009 VS Conclusion: No reason to use anything but MAXes or support MAXes. From a combat perspective ESFs and MBTs are total crap, you should be moving sunderers with MAX units and their supporting crew only, maybe pull gals if needed. ESFs are also by far the hardest to learn, and low level players struggle to even get over 1,000 SPH with them; if a player invests hundreds of hours getting good with an ESF the best they can hope to achieve is to match their combat effectivness as an infiltrator, which seems counterintuitive. If you tank or fly an ESF you do it because you want to, for roll play or what not. There is no reason in terms of point gain, getting kills or any other FPS scoring mechanic to utilize vehicles, though ESFs are still by far the best way to get around; mobility baby, no matter how bad things get for ESFs they will always be a viable option simply due to their ability to move through 3 dimensions. I have no clue what the purpose of tanks is in this game, except maybe to die to ESFs and inflate their score earning. Tanks don't have any significantly higher mobility then sunderers and they lack the combat effectivness of any infantry class, at least the sythe can outperform infiltrators at level 90, the MBT just simply sucks all around.
