Currently my tests indicate that the Harrier buggy that was introduced is almost always preferable to a Lightning tank. Both vehicles don't take small-arms fire, are quite fast, and have heavy weapons attachable. The durability of the buggy is slightly less than that of a tank at no upgrades, but the addition of upgrades tips the balance generally in the buggy's favor. While the tank needs to choose between front, side, top, and bottom (mine) armor, the buggy trades specificity for a general durability upgrade that includes back armor at the highest rank. The buggy is slightly faster and more maneuvarable than the tank, and, while both get speed/maneuvering upgrades, the buggy also gets a turbo boost. This means that the buggy cares less about maneuverability and also about where it gets hit, allowing it free reign to zip in and out of combat. The tank is much less maneuverable, and needs to rely on that poor maneuvering to make sure it is well defended as it engages. These stats punish tank drivers for poor combat positioning, but leave the buggies without any such concerns while having access to comparable weapons, and an additional seat, turbo, and better speed/maneuverability. The one obvious case you would want a lightning is when you don't have an additional person to man your turret, but this is an odd case, because a lone lightning is often a sitting duck, and if you need heavy weapons on your own, you are probably attacking a force larger than you should, and your lightning will be spotted immediately. A player in this position would be more effective in the cheaper, less noticable, flash, making use of infantry weapons.
There are a number of ways this choice could be made more interesting: -Make the buggy "lighter": This could be done any number of ways, but starting with one of either allowing small-arms damage OR reducing overall durability from certs would be good places to start. -Increase action economy on light tanks: Add 2 rumble seats to the outside of light-tanks. This would make a lone tank much less of a sitting duck. The addtional sight and weapons provided by riders would make them significantly less vulnerable as the driver maneuvers into position. -Expand light-tank durability: make the positional armor on light tanks heavier, and add another armor option that increases overall durability the same way buggy durability is increased. I feel that the resource costs and timers on light-tanks and buggies at this time are fine as is.
I like the 2 rumble seats on the Lightning Idea, let MAX's sit on your tank. Or let anchored mode of MAX stick you to the top of tanks...
One must also account for the fact harrasers need 2 people to operate correctly barring shinanagins, while a lightning only takes one. removing the argument of resources since they dont matter unless ur being WGated, 2 lightnings >>> 1 harraser with any weapon. the Viper default is painful to infantry and still does decent against armor, while the tank still has the option to go AP rounds that Im under the impression 1 shot the harraser.
Really? Have you nothing better to do? Is this just a small sample of all the BS threads we will see once the buggy goes live? Is this some sort of game y'all play on the forums. FYI.... That buggy is not a tank. Will people prefer it over a Lightning? Sure they will if it suits the needs at the time. Does that make tanks obsolete? Not at all. Different tool for different tasks. So why would you come on here discussing changes to the buggy. The one thing you blew off quickly is the need for a 2 man crew. How man MBT's do you see with only 1 person in them. Nuff said right there.
This thread is the result of my 2 hours+ testing on the VR with regard to how weapons(infantry and vehicle) damage lightnings and buggies, and specifically combating buggies in a fully upgraded lightning on Indar in and out of an alert. The reason I didn't discuss the 2 man crew vs. one man crew is because I feel its too difficult to properly discuss on the forums. However while you bring it up, The advantage of the one man crew is that you can drive and shoot at the same time, at the cost of having a higher skill baseline for properly using both the speed/positioning of the tank AND shooting at the same time. The advantage of having a 2-man crew is that you get to focus exclusively on driving OR shooting, which dramatically improves the ability to which both of these tasks can be done. The cost here is that you need 2 people for one, and lose some coordination for two. However there's also the secret benefit of being able to split into a stationary turret, and a mobile infantry. and that's only with a crew of two. The drawbacks of "needs two people" and "requires coordination to maximize aim" are rather easily mitigated by playing in a squad, which is the recommended method of play (though I do realize not the only method). As I mentioned before, in solo play, its cheaper, less inhibitive, and more tactically sound to just use a flash. As tools the lightning and buggy have exactly two situations where the lightning is preferrable. 1. you are the only person attacking(to which I have already said it would probably be more effective to use a flash) 2. You are a REALLY good at using the lightning from the past few months of playing it and know it inside and out.
Im sorry no matter what math or statistics you put infront of me, 12 lightnings with a mix of HEAT/AP/Vipers will decimate 6 harrasers no problem, possibly with 0 losses. In squads lightnings make fantastic blitz assaulters if you can take advantage of its strengths, namely small low profile and extreme speeds on open terrain. You just cant assault anything on your own in this game no matter what vehicle you use.
I'm not saying you are wrong, but in my experience, groups of buggies can take out groups of lightnings pretty handily via outmaneuvering the aiming abilities of lightnings, regardless of how advantageous the terrain is to lightnings. I merely put forth my experience, and how my experience could be made better.
I say we wait till a month or so on live and see how it plays out. Gonna be buggys everywhere till the new wears off and lots of crying cause buggys are killing everyone. Least shotguns will get a break with the new maxes and buggys.
Addtional testing shows that the two person crew IS more of a limitation than I initially felt it was. It still leaves buggies with a crew of 2 about as effective as MBTs with a crew of 1. At this point the primary reason I would like to see some small downgrade in buggy durability is to allow them to be deployed from sunderer terminals. I retract my suggestion that the durability be reduced through vulnerability to small-arms fire. Cert-based durability reduction might be the way to do this, but its such a touchy thing that I'm not sure it would work without making the buggy into crap.
I think the Buggy should be vulnerable to small arms, just like Flashes are, it just doesn't look armoured enough. If you set the resistance to something like 95%, with max level composite armour making you immune, it would make much of a difference, and I don't have enough experience to tell whether it should, but it just feels wrong, both fighting it and fighting with it. Unless you can shoot out the driver, which I haven't actually tried yet. If that's the case I retract my statement. I can't test today, though.
