In order to keep this as short as possible I'll get straight to the point... Currently tanks, aircraft and infantry compete for kills than truly assist each other. Can we somehow make combined arms more cooperative rather than competitive? Instead of tanks farming infantry as in the days before HE nerf, what if their only AoE weapon was EMP shell which can only deactivate infantry shields? Tanks would be effective tools but they wouldn't be farm machines and friendly infantry would love them. In order to make combined arms more cooperative, game mechanics need to force two or more different unit types to cooperate. Way to do that is to make tanks and aircraft largely ineffective in killing infantry by themselves but very effective at supporting friendly infantry. EMP tank shell is a good example of this. It would have tremendous splash damage as it would remove shields, EMP effect can go through walls and lets say it also has large AoE which doesn't damage friendlies. It would be very effective for supporting friendly infantry yet ineffective against enemy infantry by itself. We can now take this concept and expand it to fit all unit types: land vehicles, aircraft and infantry. First of, land vehicles and aircraft should get shields just like infantry. Tank shield should be immune to infantry rocket launchers but once breached by either enemy tank fire or aircraft it would be easy pickings for infantry. Aircraft should be able to breach tank shields but shouldn't be able to damage their armor. That way it is possible to destroy tanks only with other tanks or infantry/air cooperation. How can this concept apply to aircraft? Well problem is that aircraft have many weapons that overlap - rocket pods and Hornet missiles, Zepher and Duster... One way to solve this is to make one overlapping weapon effective against infantry shield and other against tanks. Rocket pods can remove infantry shields, Hornets can remove tank shields. It might be a good idea to change shield and health mechanics. If some weapons can only damage armor / health then they should be able to bypass shield. But in return in order to destroy a unit both its health and shield need to be eliminated. For immersion purposes it can be explained that infantry have life support implants keeping them alive and those can only be taken out by EMP or small arms fire. This change would enable tank/aircraft combination to be effective against infantry. Tanks can fire EMP rounds, aircraft fire HE rounds. Both can support friendly infantry. Aircraft remove health HP and leave shield HP to infantry, tanks vice versa. TL;DR : 3 unit types: aircraft, armor, infantry. Armor and aircraft get shields. One unit type can only be killed by combination of other two unit types or the same unit type. For example: aircraft can only damage tank shields and infantry can only damage tank armor. Only tanks can damage other tanks shield and armor.
So as an Infantry player what happens what a shielded vehicle immune to rockets drives circles around my sunderer, squishing everyone?
To address roadkilling: For tanks and Sunderers: make anti-infantry shield function as deploy ability (energy is diverted from engines to shields...) For aircraft: make them vulnerable to dumbfire Question is should shield protect against C4? I think yes but it should destroy tanks armor making it vulnerable to aircraft or other tanks. C4 will still be effective tool against MAXs.
I like some of the ideas. But I don't like the "force" part. It should be natural. Either way some of these do achieve it.
Although I would like combined arms, this isn't the way. Forcing people to cooperate simply because there is no other way is a bad, bad thing. You should be able to attack a column of tanks with infantry and wipe them out. You should be able as tanks to crush infantry by driving over them or shooting them. Combined arms should be done differently. An example would be to increase information passage between infantry, tanks and air units. If infantry can spot a Skyguard, all air units want to know that there's something there that can kill them. Tanks would like to know that there's AA there that they can take out, enabling air to aid them better. This way every single unit can spot and mark things, aiding in greater ability to help eachother. Infantry, tanks and air can all spot a deployed sunderer. The spotter can then use the map or the radial menu to indicate what the vehicle is most vulnerable to. No AA around? Ask for an airstrike. No AV around? Ask for some tanks to roll up. Barely any AI around? request an infantry incursion. It can be used in many other ways. Infantry might need a tank to back them up, but right now there is barely any way to communicate that except join a platoon. Even then it's hit and miss. You want to be able to ask every random person nearby to come help. Just imagine how many times you were attacking a tank, only for that tank to drive back to safety for some repairs and continue firing seconds later. What if you could ask for an airstrike? You keep damaging that tank and soon someone will see 'hey, someone marked that as an important target for an airstrike'. He'll swoop down, see what exactly you marked and blow it up. It could reach farther than simple markings on the map. Right now people often use smoke signals for these purposes, but anyone outside of the platoon doesn't know what they mean, nor is it easy to place them switfly. So instead every air-unit that gets within range of a targeted unit gets a marker arrow similar to the waypoint, showing distance and direction of the target. Guiding them and making airstrikes more likely. Squad/platoonleaders should get a nice role in this. If there's tons and tons of AA around they should be able to mark the entire area as dangerous for airunits. Every air-unit entering the zone will get a warning that lots of AA is around and that flying there isn't advised. The same can be done for tanks or infantry. A platoonleader could mark the area as dangerous for tanks when lots of AV is spotted. Or mark part of an area that there's too much AI around to make it through.
I'm not against better information passage but I don't see why you think this is a bad idea? Infantry can still destroy tanks on the move but not if they deploy shields in which case air strike or other tanks are necessary. Tanks can still roadkill infantry but they can't have shield protection if they are moving. EMP gunner can remove soldier's shield for secondary AV gunner to take him out but main purpose will still be assisting friendly infantry by bombarding enemy positions with EMP rounds. Take Libs for example. When was the last time you saw them in large battle? As a Lib pilot I can tell you they are useless at anything other than tankbusting unguarded tank or Sundy and flying away quickly as possible. (They are also good at ruining smaller fights) But those opportunities are almost non-existent in large battles. Problem is if you simply buff Lib's survivability it will become OP. On the other hand if you buff it's survivability but make it unable to kill tanks and infantry on it's own it will become useful support tool and it will no longer be able to ruin smaller fights. It is like hitting two flies with one swat. See I think there are two problems you have to keep in mind: a)It is hard to balance vehicles (Lib totally underpowered in large fight but tremendously overpowered in smaller fight) b)Even with better information passage problem remains that vehicles are competing for kills with infantry more than they are supporting them.
Teamwork is already strongly rewarded without an extreme hard-counter system. This doesn't mean the game's specialization system is perfect (in fact I sort of feel like the HEAT and HE changes were unnecessary and bad, as I already took AP shells in ~80% of my tank pulls) and I'm definitely open to changes to those systems. A good example is ESF loadouts, where the generalist loadout is still a little too good against everything (but much more balanced with the presence of A2A loadouts, when they added coyotes.) A way to make ESF loadouts more interesting would be: Introduce an armor-piercing nosegun which plays a little like the lib's Tank Buster (low projectile speed, spammy CoF, but noticeably better DPS output against heavily armored targets.) This allows ESFs to either be A2A, A2G, or generalist. A2G means taking both the AP nosegun and rocketpod/hornet. It optimizes for killing power against ground vehicles, but none of its weapons are good against air, which makes it very vulnerable. Rocketpod/hornet damage would be slightly reduced, since your overall A2G AV damage would be too high otherwise. A2A means taking any other nosegun with coyote/tomcat. Optimizes for killing air, but quite weak against ground targets. Generalist means taking some mix of one A2A and one A2G weapon. Most vehicle weapons tend to already feel like this, and it creates a lot of interesting tradeoffs. Air is close, but could be further deepened in terms of loadout variety.
We already cooperate just ifne. When there are 2 tanks shooting at a sunderer being repaired, it goes down compared to when only 1 tank shooting at sunderer not going down that's being repaired.
But how tanks support infantry beyond taking out enemy spawn points? I think they should do so by using splash damage weapons. HE was nerfed because it ruined infantry fights, but maybe EMP version would be more tolerable yet have the same support potency.
Winning the battle (taking out enemy spawns) and preventing your enemy from winning the battle (taking out your spawn) are pretty good reasons to play vehicles currently. There are still plenty of bases where vehicles have vantage on some or all of the base, so it's not like we're lacking in a reason to choose vehicles currently.
Tanks support infantry by: pushing the front line forward towards an enemy facility, suppressing/killing enemy infantry at the facility thus hindering their ability to defend it and preventing them from breaking out and counterattacking, allowing friendly infantry to enter said beseiged facility and destroy/capture facility objectives (i.e. - gens and cap points), and destroying enemy vehicles, preventing them from performing the aforementioned duties against our own troops The combined arms aspect of the game is already working pretty well. Combined arms is about bringing more than one type of unit into play in order to achieve a common goal/objective. In order to be successful in a battle of any size, you need to bring infantry, tanks, troop transports (Gals/Sundys), and aircraft to bear. If you don't, you'll be routed by an enemy force that does (assuming pop differences that aren't too big). However, forcing players to use multiple different units just to kill any enemy forces is a bad idea, especially when the requirements to get a kill are arbitrary and counterintuitive (what? a Tank shell can't kill infantry at all???). I wouldn't mind some of your ideas (like the tank EMP shell) as optional turret/ammo types for players to have available. But to make it a requirement to kill anything? No thanks.
Point is to buff certain aspects of units to make them even more effective and supporting infantry while nerfing other aspects in order not to make them farm machines. It is just rough guiding philosophy. It is not that tanks shouldn't be allowed to roadkill or heavy assault can't take out landed ESF with his dumb fire rocket launcher. Instead it is just a heuristic to create new weapons and abilities ie: EMP shells which are lot like old HE but unable to kill infantry on their own. Tanks can use special shields when deployed to protect them against infantry rocket fire (rocket can still damage the tanks armor and if tank tries to move and deactivates the shield it will get destroyed because full health and full shields are necessary condition to live, if you don't have health and lose shields you die). Or for example: to take down Liberator you either need flak+lockon or ESF. Flak can use static surge rounds which disable Liberator's shields and lockons are needed to damage its armor. That way Lib can do quick flybys in large fights because flares would give it window of invulnerability unless enemy ESFs are present. In turn it would be forced to use only one of two weapon types (lets say shield generator and those two belly guns are Vanu technology and they are only compatible with each other). The two weapon types would be a version of Zepher which only damages infantry health but not shield and hence can't kill them, or version of Dalton which fires EMP rounds which can only take out tank shields. The Liberator shield would only work with those two weapons and not with real Dalton, Zepher or Shredder because then it would be OP. edit: "forcing cooperation" was poor choice of words on my part. By it I meant dev devs should create new weapons which would be powerful but forced to cooperate with other unit types.
Errr... that's not how combined arms works at all. In open terrain, tanks are going to rule the battlespace (except for pesky aircraft with their fancy missiles and bombs). Infantry simply aren't mobile enough to keep up, nor do they have weapons that are heavy or long-ranged enough to effectively deal with enemy armor. Out in the open, infantry are there to support tanks, not the other way around. Even in heavy urban areas, infantry are there to protect tanks. You can even read up on modern military combined arms doctrine in this handy little guide published by the US Army, called "Combined Arms Operations in Urban Terrain". Specifically, Chapter 8 discusses "Light-Heavy Integration", in other words how to let infantry and tanks get along in urban areas. For example: Whereas the job of infantry is to: So yea, in urban operations infantry are there to protect the tank and find the enemy, while the tank's job is to blow the enemy to little itty pieces because it's got a friggin cannon. Or if it can't blow the enemy up, knock them around enough so that infantry can sneak up on the enemy. But cannon fire is always preferable. Combined arms is not where an infantryman is just as important as a tank... air, armor, and infantry aren't always equal in value on the battlefield. Arguably, air seems to be the thing that matters the most, because if you don't have air superiority then unless you brought with you some decent AA options, the air units are just going to decimate your armor and infantry.
People don't like tanks and aircraft bombing spawnroom, control point or the route between them. Is that not the reason why splash damage got nerfed several times? US military doctrine is irrelevant if people don't want vehicles interfering in infantry fights (aside from destroying the Sunderer). So question is would reintroducing the pre-nerf splash damage in form of EMP be acceptable as long as it cannot kill infantry on its own? Do you prefer vehicles in their current state or if they got more infantry support utility? I don't think simple vehicle buff without any drawback is a realistic option.
Hey if you want combined arms, what better authority is there on what combined arms is besides the US military? In a combined arms situation, vehicles "interfering" in infantry fights is not only normal, it is preferential. If you have a bunch of guys with rifles and the enemy has a bunch of guys with rifles, what better way to win the fight then to bring in a hulking, heavily armored and heavily armed vehicle? Arguably if you want combined arms, increasing splash damage and increasing vehicle armor is the way to go. In that way infantry can't do much against enemy armor by themselves, meaning that they have to rely on their own armor or air to deal with the problem. Boom, combined arms. But if those infantry saw the enemy tank, and simply grinned to themselves thinking about the easy cert pinata that they've just found, you're not going to get combined arms. Because the infantry will just deal with the threat themselves.
I don't think majority of players want THAT kind of combined arms in which air>tanks>infantry. We had that at launch and it resulted in vehicle nerfs. That is why I'm proposing alternative implementation.
