Comparing Harrasser to MBT

In this thread I'm going to attempt to compare the two very popular harasser and MBT vehicles. Feel free to keep flaming to a minimum and rather provide constructive criticism as to why you think it's not like I described below.


"The Harasser is a vehicle that takes TEAMWORK to utilize properly"

The harrasser has 3 seats, a driver, a main-gunner and passenger which can repair and also spot targets or shoot nearby targets with the weapons he carries.

The MBT has 2 seats, a driver which is also the main-gunner and a second gunner.

So yes the harrasser has a potential of 1 more person so you could say it has the potential of being more teamwork oriented. Also the harrasser require 2 people in order to both drive and shoot. The MBT can shoot and drive with just 1.

However the MBT is at a great disadvantage in firepower without the secondary-gunner especially if it tries to shoot at a small fast moving target at the same time as driving. Also the harasser seems to do fine with just 2.


"The Harasser is a 3 person vehicle that has the right to outperform a 2 person vehicle"

Is the harrasser really a "3 person vehicle" though? Most harrasser I see drive around with just 2 because the 3rd person is so exposed he usually die and switching from gunner to repair/passenger is almost instant so the two roles can be filled by just 1 person.

So in effect is the harrasser not a vehicle that can operate at full firepower with just 2 and has the potential to bring a third person for convenience? The MBT on the other hand is at a great disadvantage if it goes out with just 1, the MBT must be manned by 2 people to operate at full firepower.

In effect isn't the MBT and Harrasser both 2-manned vehicles since switching seats is instant?


"it's a "harasser". It's supposed to harass"

The term "Harasser" in war context means "To impede and exhaust (an enemy) by repeated attacks or raids." and the planetside 2 version lives up to that name to great extent.

Repair while moving is however not required to fill this role and that is the feature most complain about. The harasser could still do its job even if it was required to seek proper shelter while repairing.

Considering that it is a light armoured vehicle you would think that seeking cover far away was the logical thing to do, not just duck behind a rock repair for 2-3 seconds and pop back into the battle.


"A harasser driver must be insanely skilled and they need to be in sync with the gunner"

In the Harasser:

• Driver - focus on driving, the overal tactical situation and especially escape routes. Also pays attention to any information relayed by the gunner as to what is chasing them.
• Gunner - focus on timing the shots and orients the driver of the current tactical situation.
• Passenger - (if present) focus on repairing and fends of any nearby infantry

Then the MBT:

• Driver - focus on driving, shooting and staying oriented of the overall tactical situation at the same time, pays also attention to any information relayed by the gunner such as no line of sight, guy behind us, what vehicle is chasing etc.
• Gunner - focus on timing the shots and tries to inform the driver of things out of his sight.

I don't really see how the two vehicles has to be more or less in synced than the other. Both vehicles needs 2 men to be at optimal firepower and the roles are split pretty similar except that the MBT has a driver that can shoot, but at the same time he also has to drive thus requireing a lot of the driver.


"the harasser require more skill to drive"

If the kills you get and amount of times you survive define how skilled you are, then the speed actually helps to make it easier not harder. Not only can you position the harasser faster and fire a couple of shots, but you can also escape faster and reposition your self faster. In fact it is so easy to outrun incoming damage that you are almost guaranteed to survive as long as you aim any other direction than into a thick forest.

Since I mentioned a thick forest being a negative thing for speedy vehicles, this is also the case for a large bulky MBT which require a lot of skill to even be able to manouver through a forest. Even more so if you are trying to escape incoming damage at maximum MBT speed.

What I'm saying is that speed doesn't make it more difficult to kill and survive, it makes it easier to position your self and escape.

I think this wall of text is long enough atm. Il edit later if I come up with more.

When you're comparing an MBT, a vehicle that is supposed to dominate ground-to-ground vehicle combat, to a dune buggy that is Q-spotted as a "transport", something is already wrong.

If you mean that this shouldn't have be a topic to compare, then I agree.

If you mean that the situation today doesn't call for a comparison / disussion, then I disagree with you.

If crew capacity is what determines a vehicle's power then the Galaxy should be king of the battlefield.

Fair points.

Now for a moment let's drop preconceptions about what a Harasser should be able to do versus what an MBT should be able to do and consider the opportunity costs for selecting them.

You're right, the Harasser is an effectively 2/2 vehicle, and MBTs are of course 2/2. So to operate at maximum potential they both require the time of two players. That puts them on even ground, cost-wise, here.

MBTs can be effective as a 1/2 vehicle, whereas a Harasser really can't. So Harassers should get a slight edge to compensate.

Harasser is of course 300 resources while MBTs cost 450. 150 extra vehicle resources is significant, but it's not an extreme difference. You would only notice it over several consecutive vehicle pulls. So, this should give MBTs a slight edge due to their extra cost.

Harassers can be pulled anywhere, but MBTs require your faction to own a Tech Plant. Holding a Tech Plant is trivial on two of the three continents (if you've been pushed off your Tech Plants on Indar or Amerish, you are basically lock, but on Esamir it's a big deal. So this should give a slight edge to MBTs in terms of performance.

A quick note on the Harasser's speed and ability to repair: right now we are only considering opportunity cost and availability. We would consider speed and repairing as part of the Harasser's overall combat value that you receive for that cost. Let's not double-count them on the cost side for the purposes of balancing, those go on the other side of this consideration.

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Okay, I'm sure you could bring up some additional points on opportunity cost / availability, but I think these are the major ones. So, the idea is that based on opportunity cost and availability, players should consider pulling an MBT versus a Harasser more or less equal choices. Most of the factors cancel each other out on the list above, but MBTs have a slightly higher opportunity cost / lower availability, so they should be a little more effective overall.

This is, if you think about it, pretty much how it is right now. In terms of overall combat effectiveness, an MBT is superior to a Harasser but only slightly (2/2 to 2/2 crews of equal skill level of course). The main reasons for that are the Harasser's speed, ability to dodge, and ability to repair on the move, which even though they have less health and damage lets them stay almost equally competitive in combat. At higher skill levels this difference gets larger, since a good driver who can aim well with an MBT main gun makes the dodging ability of the Harasser less relevant.

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A quick note on 1/2 MBTs. 1/2 MBTs should not be competitive with 2/2 Harassers. A 150 resource difference is simply not enough to justify cutting the human requirement in half, all else being equal. And 1/2 MBTs can still seriously threaten Harassers that get within mid-range (especially if you have good aim and seat switch to an AV turret for the final volley to get a quick burst of damage). If 1/2 MBTs were competitive with 2/2 Harassers, why would you ever want to pull a Harasser?

Now, I think that a big part of what irks people is that they believe that an MBT should be significantly more combat effective than a Harasser. It's more about expectations and realism than anything else. That's fine, but that's a separate issue from balance, and if you want to satisfy that expectation then you need to compensate on the opportunity cost / availability side. If we really wanted MBTs to be significantly more combat effective than Harassers, then they need to pay for it in terms of opportunity cost and availability. For instance, we make MBTs more powerful but you can only pull them from the Warpgate and Tech Plants. Or, alternately, we make MBTs more powerful than the Harasser option but they require a dedicated driver and 2 gunners. We could also make MBTs more powerful and then just up their cost to 500 or 550 since those other two things might be harder to pull off.

Since that would throw off balance between MBTs and Sunderers, you could go the opposite direction. Make Harassers less powerful (e.x. remove repair or lower their health or some combination, maybe partially mitigated by buffing their guns) but reduce their cost to 200.

One thing that is just as relevant: resource cost

300 vs 450

It's hard to compare the two due to the cost, HOWEVER:

A lightning costs the same and has roughly the same (ignoring the reload time) damage along with a smaller ammo pool, FAR less mobility with less damage absorb from the rear as well.

If you assume that the gunner has less to do as well, this also makes the expected damage somewhat higher, since the innate skill required to shoot and drive vs. merely shoot should be higher pretty much making the disparity in damage output negligible, if not favoring the harasser.

Now the most relevant question is: Does the susceptibility to small arms fire along with the disparity in front damage mitigation make up for the harassers insane mobility in comparison to the lightning? I would say not, because lock-ons are trivial to evade on a harasser, yet devastating to the lightning, of course the situation is worse for the dumb fire rockets that are really not an issue to a skilled harasser, along with aircraft, etc.

What really puts the harasser over the top is the third passenger that can even repair the damn thing. Who thought that was a good idea?

The health difference is only 500 as well....


So, I would tend to agree that the harasser is too powerful in its current state. It should have its mitigation and/or health strongly reduced. I think the harasser was made intentionally OP to boost its sales and it will inevitably be nerfed once people have bought enough of them.

Rough Harasser stats:
50% less armor than MBT
50% less firepower than MBT(fully manned)
50% more speed than MBT

On top of this add its two special features:
1.Turbo which allows almost instant acceleration to full speed.
2.Rumble seat for quick repair.

I think that Harasser has fair tradeoff between firepower/armor and speed attributes. Things that make it slightly overpowered relative to MBTs are the turbo and the rumble seat. Remove one of those and Harasser will become more balanced relative to MBTs. But alternative which I would prefer would be not to nerf the Harasser but to rework MBT empire specific abilities so they play more into their tanks strengths or give tanks 3rd seat for repairs.

All valid points so far, Booface's summation of other pros and cons I didn't take into consideration are all valid and true.

I completely agree that a 1/2 MBT shouldn't have an easy time against a 2/2 harasser. The 2/2 harasser should hold the upper hand and that is how it is today.

My problem is however that if a 1/2 MBT manage to fend of the harasser, but not kill him, then he is doomed. Because the MBT cannot repair up before the harasser comes back and finish him off. So the tactic while in a 1/2 MBT is that if you don't think you can kill it on the first run the only viable option is to run.

The harasser should've stayed a Light vehicle with AI duty, putting a halberd and ESMBTAV's on it is what pretty much broke the balance and removed some of the niche MBTs and Lightnings have, poor lightnings no one uses you anymore besides AA duty

And if it didn't then it wouldn't be OP too add few more rumble seats to Harasser.

Please do not simplify things too much to make your point. A fully certed composite armor Harrasser (most of the harrassers you meet on the battlefield) can take up to 4 Vanguard AP shells to get destroyed (go to VR training). As a reminder, a MBT needs only 3 shells from the back.

Do you find normal that the "weak" (I would rather say "less strong") point of a 50 ton MBT is weaker than a non-directional damage 100kph buggy with such an agility ?

I could add that Harrassers are fully resistant to splash damage... Crazy

"but it can have more people sitting in it so it should be more powerful!"
flash=2 seats, lightning=1 seat.
lets make flashes outgun and outlast lightnings!
because ya know, theres more people sitting on it so it should obviously be OP!

If you give tanks a 3rd seat for repairs, the whining will never stop. Ever.

"MBTs are too armored to have that ability!"
"That was the Harasser's thing!"
"Magrider OP, it can shoot while moving and repairing!"

Give the Harasser a rear weakness and make AP rounds ignore Composite Armor. There, I fixed it.

Harassers should have the option to sacrifice armor for speed & vice versa

If you want a strong harasser it should be slow
If you want a fast harasser it should be weak

Right now we just have a strong & fast vehicle running around killing lightnings + infantry.
The main issue with the harasser is that it controls the tide of the battle, allow me to explain:

Imagine a harasser engaging a tank and the harasser finds itself losing. It can either:
1- Repair whilst continuing the battle
2- Turbo away

The tank is simply not fast enough to keep up with the harasser. It also takes a certain level of skill to shoot a vehicle going at those speeds

Yeah I think this is the likely reaction. But then again many people are complaining that tanks are currently underwhelming. 3rd seat for repairing could be a nice buff to survivability and it would require 3rd person to do it so it has slight tradeoff.

Agree that AP rounds should ignore Composite armor, but giving it a rear weakness might be an overnerf.

I like the Harasser because it has well defined role. Tanks don't have this. Hell I'm not sure what tanks are even supposed to do. Area suppression? Nope, splash damage got nerfed. Serve as sort of mobile cover for infantry? Nope, every heavy can carry a rocket launcher without any tradeoffs.

I find the Harasser to be OP only relative to MBTs and thats because MBTs don't have well defined role. So I would prefer if devs would make MBTs more specialized for something than to make Harasser worse at its own role which is hit and run.

in my mind tanks role has always been the destruction of enemy infrastructure (base turrets, sunderers, skyguards) and the protection of your own.

The Galxy is crewed by 5 (passengers not counted as crew). So it means...

Because it's fun and challenging...it's also a different toy to play with, because harassers aren't made just to take on tanks....because they have completely different handling physics...because you can carry 3 people.....etc. How many do you want?

Let's say we pull vehicles, player H pulls a Harasser and player T a tank.
Let's assume they both live long enough that they make 150 mechanised RU when they lose the vehicle.

When the H is pulled, the player goes down from 750 to 450.
When the tank is pulled, the player goes down from 750 to 300.

Add 150 to both, player H has 600, player T has 450 when the vehicle gets destroyed.

When they pull the second vehicle, player H has 300 left (enough to spawn #3 instantly), while player T has 0.

That's 2 tanks, not several consecutive ones, to run the tanker's resource pool dry.

MBTs and Lightnings also need tank terminals, Harassers can be spawned at transport terminals, along with the Flash and Sundy.

Then there's the fact that if the Harasser gets spawned 2 km away from the frontline, it'll reach it most likely before the tank spawned 1 km away from it.
Speed goes a long way to mitigate the lack of terminals- and it's the tank that suffers from it, not the buggy.

P.S. Name a 4 wheel vehicle with turbo and a rumble seat in PS 2. There's 2 such vehicles.

The Harasser is easily the best tank in the game even though its not supposed to be a tank. With the vulcan it can take out an MBT or lightning quickly and usually without taking more than a hit or two. They also take a lot of damage which makes them extremely difficult to destroy because of the speed and maneuverability. If you're in an MBT or lightning and you're going up against a harasser with a vulcan, you should probably just get ready to bail out. LOL And then there is the fact that yo can put an engi in the backseat and repair constantly, which can keep the harasser going indefinitely.

Even though the Harasser is clearly better than the tanks, I'll be sticking with my lightning and magrider. I prefer being able to fire the weapon myself.