If you don't want me to farm, stop punishing me for my job.

Not if I haven't been fighting in a vehicle resource hex.

Tanks are expensive.

Gosh darn it, deggy tries to make a good thread and all the jerks invade...

Back on topic:

Yes, tanks are encouraged to farm infantry by the game mechanics. Their situation is similar to ESFs before gal spawning was implemented, although much less severe.

I'm at a bit of a loss though for solutions.

I guess I could root for physically stronger tanks (increased survivability), and bigger spaces between bases to promote vehicle combat. (Amerish is a good first step, or at least that's what I've heard from the Cav players).

I do not support the ability to swap vehicle loadouts, however, as this should be a downside to pulling a vehicle. (And, with the resource update removing acquisition timers and standardizing resources, it will be one of the only downsides)

It's a catch-22. If we make tanks stronger, they kill more infantry. If we make them weaker vs. infantry, there will BE no tanks for other tanks to fight.

AP vehicles can't really get a tank-only fight these days. Infantry influence is really, really pervasive, especially on Esamir where you simply cannot break LoS. The situation is backwards. Infantry should be making guerrilla rushes against tanks, not the other way round.

Sorry, quoting is broken on my end:

I've noticed this too.

My problem is, my feelings on it are split.

On one hand, I love epic field fights between bases, and running from rock to rock.

On the other, I strongly believe that out in the open vehicles should dominate infantry, with the exception of well stocked well coordinated defenders in hard cover.

I personally wouldn't have an issue with very strong tanks if they weren't so prevalent and had less ability to influence what happens inside bases.


AV tanks should be a necessity because hitching a ride between bases should be a necessity.

All good, I have the thread watched so I don't miss anything.

What if they implemented a stamina bar that sprinting was dependent on? Such that running between bases took a prohibitively long time?

Its an option.

Sorry, not terribly thoughtful right now, too sick.

You make the reward more equal by going the opposite way: Reduce the xp for killing infantry, since we're killing so many of them. All infantry should not be equal xp depending on the weapon used.

I had an idea a while back that you should get a paltry amount of XP (I'm talking like 5% of normal) for killing something that can't damage you. So AV-equipped infantry would be normal XP, but the ones without it would only be worth 5-10 XP.

I like your idea, but your number is too extreme. Start at 75% XP and tweak from there. Even if an infantry can't damage you, killing them is still very important to winning the battle.

Generally, I've found that, when it comes the AI work, you need a direct hit to kill infantry anyway, so by taking out an AV turret, you learn how to nail direct hits better and are more lethal as a result. And if enemy tanks come up, you have a powerful weapon against them.

To balance it out, I generally like to have a PPA on my Magrider, so I guess you'd take your faction specific AI weapon if you played NC or TR. If you run into trouble with tons of infantry, run back to your lines, grab a gunner, and let it roll.

Voila, you have a tank for every situation now.

I'm in a Vanguard which atm is the Master Race Anti-Vehicle so my experience isn't the same. Using AP and blowing up vehicles nets me a very high score/hour, but an extremely low kill/hour. I'm talking like 15-20 kills per hour with 50-70K score / hour.

This is why I don't usually pull AP on Esamir since they changed it. It's the only continent where you can't find decent number of armor targets so it's better to shoot at infantry before the air destroys you.

True. Maybe have a bonus for killing an enemy that damaged you, too.

Yes because there's only 1 spawnroom within 10km around, you can only spawn in the spawnroom that is under siege

Depends on which version of "farming" you mean.

• When most players say "farming" they mean infantry-killing, which is actually a terrible source of farming XP.
• Vehicle-farming is dramatically better XP, and yeah Prowler AP is a beast at that.

Prowler AP is also sort of the best-suited to killing infantry, though my personal stats don't really prove that out:

• Prowler AP: 33.4 KPH ( = 4.8 Infantry KPH + 28.6 Vehicle KPH) --> 805 SPM
• Magrider AP: 20.9 KPH ( = 5.6 IKPH + 15.3 VKPH) --> 312 SPM
• Vanguard AP: 18.4 KPH ( = 1.2 IKPH + 17.2 VKPH) --> 407 SPM

You can see that the real meat of the prowler's strength is its VKPH, which completely drives the (completely ridiculous, arguably overpowered) SPM advantage.

One problem with tanks is that infantry sacrifice nothing for an AV role, thanks to heavy assault. Once heavy assault stops being the best AI and AV class at the same time, then tanks merely existing on the battlefield contributes to the fight, since it forces the other team's infantry to switch to loadouts that are more AV focused than AI focused. Thus by trying to kill the tank, they weaken themselves to the other infantry.

As for rewards for tanks killing tanks, my SPM for infantry vs infantry and my gunner's SPM for tank vs tank is roughly similar. 'course, being the driver you get shafted, so my SPM's a bit lower than my gunner's, but I hear SOE's fixing that. As such, I don't find hunting other tanks to be an unprofitable experience, cert wise.

I don't tank vs infantry, so I don't really know what kind of SPMs you can get there. Presumably it's higher. Perhaps we should disincentivize farming infantry instead?

The idea is that your not supposed to be chain pulling tanks...
You should use it aggressively, lose it, then play infantry, then maybe in 30mins or so pull another one.
You are not supposed to just sit in a tank all day pulling a new one every time you lose it.

They are force multipliers, they were never meant to be a playstyle..
When the new resource system comes, you are going to cry a lot.

I mean really, if you want sit in a tank all day, why not just play world of tanks?
What, then you would have no infantry to farm?

I only have AV loadouts for my Vanguard and I see to do just fine with it. I dunno if you've ever popped a full Sundy or a massively extreme menace HE Prowler before but the cert income is quite nice indeed running AP.

I think you just need to get better at AP loadouts or accept that AI is your thing. My outfit lead earned 500 certs in one hour in a HEAT/Enforcer Vanguard and his gunner earned 350 all versus armor, and for the better tankers in our outfit regularly earn crazy exp focusing solely in vehicles.

AI work is what noobs and KDR lords do. AV is how you make a tank useful.

I run AP almost exclusively. The character in my sig has the Auraxium for the Supernova FPC, and it's his only Auraxium. I'm also very, very good at AP loadouts, but there's a point where there simply isn't armor to kill. The enemy infantry are blobbed up around a Sunderer, there are no tanks to fight, and your loadout is totally worthless.

I have amazing runs, too, I'm not saying they're ALL bad. I'm saying that forcing specialization to combat a limited-quantity unit is broken.

I dunno, barring being able to swap loadouts at major facilities, I find it best to just say, "well that was a good run, I get to leave my tank alive (or drive it into the sea), and let us now move on to killing this new threat" and then grab one of my favorite infantry loadouts.

Well to be fair, even with that advantage infantry get stomped outdoors.

That said, certainly it would make HAs have dramatically more interesting loadout choices to have to choose between an AI or AV focus. It would mostly be good in regards to the indoor MAX game (since by design infantry will always be fodder outdoors), but of course MAXes would have to be balanced first before a change to HA would make sense (currently MAXes break the indoor combat ecosystem and just kill everything, whether it's wielding an anti-MAX weapon or not.)

What do you mean by the driver getting shafted? Both driver and gunner get kills+assists. Really the only awkwardness comes when one of the two is part of an assist kill that doesn't involve the other player (like if your Walker gunner gets assist XP for an aircraft you didn't damage as driver.) If I take a gunner on my Prowler, it's mostly just more SPM layered on top of my 800+ SPM from the main gun.