Infantry is Strong vs Vehicles, but few have realized it.

War... War never changes.....

Seriously. Even though technology is dramatically diminishing the advantage of numerical superiority, it still matters. Infantry have plenty of ways of dealing with both air and ground. I will list a few here:

ARMOR
-Rocket Launchers
-Tank Mines (Can be combo'd with Wraith Cloak Flash)
-C4
-Long Range AV MAX Weapons (Fractures, Ravens, Vortex)
-Phalanx Turrets
-AV MANA Turrets
AIR
-Burster MAXs
-Flak Towers
-Lock ons

These counters are effective by themselves, but the sheer volume of infantry multiplies their power insanely.

I will describe a relatively common scenario:
48-96 vs 48-96 fight (We'll say 60 a side as an example)
A MBT will take 7-8 shots to the front to destroy.
This means a single squad of HAs with supporting Engies and Medics, approximately 1/5 of their side's forces, can insta gib an MBT. Best case scenario, they can find good cover can wipe/force to retreat most of the enemies armor. Even if they are wiped after killing even one MBT (approximately %10 of the enemies' armor), they can respawn in <10 seconds to try again, while the Tank will have to drive at least a minute or 2 to reach the front line, even assuming that the driver has the necessary Nanites. This scenario could also be accomplished with MAXs relatively easily.

Now comes the rant part:

Armor should not be even close to a problem for infantry in its current state. There are simply too many of them vs the armor and air. Just pull a HA and shoot a rocket once. Chances are, enough of you will do it, and the tank will, at the very least, be forced to pull off. Then, you can go back to sniping, OK? Yes, I know that getting farmed is annoying, but you can just respawn in <10 seconds, while the Vehicle can choose between a charge of glory, gaining it many kills, but forcing it to stay out of the battle for a couple of minutes as it has a 90% chance of dying, or playing extremely safe, thus lowering both the chance of dying and getting KSs.

Infantry is already king, but it could be so much more dominant than it currently is. Players somewhat rationally whined about being farmed by vehicles, so SOE simply buffed the infantryman versus vehicles without considering the effect it would have on infantrymen versus vehicles.


(Me predicting objections) Now, you could say that Armor and Air are great at suppressing spawn rooms, but that is mostly because the infantry pushed you back their in the first place.

Most people DO realize how powerful infantry are against EVERYTHING but the majority of players are infantry-only,they may have tried vehicles once discovered how tedious it was to keep them in one piece with all the odds stacked against them and then resigned themselves to a quiet infantry based lifestyle with the occasional bellow of nerf calls on a huge segment of the game they've barely experienced first hand unless they are currently being mopped across the various locales of Auraxis by said big,mean overpowered bully. (Who by the way have access to the same tools as they do.)

Vehicles are strong enough to do what they're meant to do; get to the base/ support your team getting to the base. However, people are afraid to lose their vehicles or want an easy way to kill infantry, and that leads to current balance and the complaints that come with it. Players should embrace the idea that vehicles are disposable. (Introducing a vehicle deconstruction to refund resources could help with this.)

Team Work in this game is OP as hell.

The fact that most of SOEs balance practices (backed by the players of course) is to balance things on a 1v1 basis.
That's a terrible idea for a game of this scale where yes, a single Co-ordinated Squad whos ONLY Co-ordinated effort is pulling Mass HA or MAX for AA or AV wreck everything and can stop a whole Armor Zerg in it's tracks and bring down a entire Sky Fleet.

I've done this too many times to count where 12 men only (my squad) were commanded by the SL to hold a hill as Heavies with a few engies with MANA Turrets and Ammo drops. Everytime, the enemy's pushed would stop and it'd succeed so fast at countering the opposition that they would STILL be Zerging the base thinking they've still got it won until their numbers would thin out so drastically that the Zerg were fizzle into nothing.

Any role in this game breaks the game if you use Team Work. Even said Armor will crush infantry assaults like above if tactically used correctly.

That's what this game is about.

Sadly, most of us are playing it wrong.

Teamwork is OP but why can one person C4 anything to death with little that can be done about it other than try to play keepaway.

1 tank can kill and destroy far more than 2 bricks of C4.

C4 is a pretty ******** weapon IMO. It overlaps too much with RLs and in no way is used as a DetPack of some sort. However, the game doesn't have targets to USE Detpacks on so... yeah. C4 gets used like a remotely triggered grenade all the time.

TBH, C4 is'nt that terrible. I think it's design premise is bad, but it's not that bad. 7 HAs, 3 Engies and 2 medics though using "RANGED" AV, however, is the real strength of infantry. C4 be damned when ever a Mana AV turret can blast you from beyond render range. HAs can lob explosives 300m away with the RLs AND, the Ammo refills their shots. This doesn't happen with C4.

C4 is only good because the face of Auraxis is more wrinkled than an 85 yr old beach goer with a life long smoking habit. If most of the smaller needless bases were removed and the maps made with more open fields, C4 ambushes would only happen where it makes the most sense; purposely design terrain choke points and inside urban areas.

Infantry TTKs with those weapons are very weak, while TTKs of vehicles against infantry are very fast. So any force that's too infantry-heavy will die to a mixed force of vehicles.

Infantry are capable of dealing damage to vehicles. That doesn't mean they're "strong" against vehicles. They're weak. They're the easiest-killed, weakest-hitting thing in an outdoor battle.

I'd honestly rather be taken down by 7 HAs and some engies. The vast majority of my skyguards, prowlers, etc and even MAXes recently, have been taken out by lone c4 ambushes.

Tell that to my AT mines that instagib anything, and my bricks of C4 that they never see coming. No wait, don't - they don't want to hear BS.

Also, I don't see how being easy to kill matters when your rocket hits the tank two seconds after you're already behind cover.

I once saw a half squad of Heavies run a tank column all the way back to Crimson Bluff from Palisade and was like 'why does this happen, they should be pulling tanks to counter tanks not foot zerging with suicide tactics'

I dont think tanks are too weak, or that Infantry is too strong - just Infantry is too adaptable. Taking out vehicles shouldnt be something all but one class can do effectively. You should have to choose a RL for your primary weapon instead of an LMG if you want to charge across a field firing rockets at a tank column. Thats balance. If a HA wants to be able to kill a vehicle AND fight other infantry effectively, he or she should have to rely on C4 and stealth just like Medic and Engineer (and Medics shouldnt have C4 anyway)

I dont think either should be nerfed or buffed; just that classes should be more distinct and specialized in their purpose on the battlefield.

People complain that tanks are OP and can farm infantry and spawn rooms
People complain air is OP and can fight air while also lolpod farming
Now people complain that infantry are OP and too adaptable

= balance

They are too adapatable.

If they arent then we should revert Viper and HE damage as well as all the Lib changes that were done over the last few months. Those changes were made because vehicles needed to be more specialized. Infantry needs to follow suit.

Just as you dont take a shotgun to a long range open field fight, or you equip SMGs and Shotguns for CqC - Infantry should select an anti vehicle loadout if they want to be anti vehicle.

unless infantries are in tactical/smart located place, 10 guys in vehicles are much more effective than 10 guys with infantry weapons (including AV weapons but not ESRL):

Infantries dies in 1 rockets and needs few bullets to kill anything.
Vehicles kills anything in few shots and can resist in a decent numbers of rockets.

There is a reason why vehicles and maxes are called force multipliers.

The only bad thing is when the overpopulated faction spam it: it increase even more the imbalance.

I combined C4 with stealth flashes but never tank mines? Even slapped C4 on infiltrators that goes behind tanks... how do you get tankmines to stick to a flash?

Pretty much.

It's people playing the game wrong.
Team Work is the only thing truly OP.

..good points a-koo-chee-moya , very well written. now let's nerf that ppa.

I've yet to see vehicles swing a large battle in over half a year. People see a large zerg and lo behold they're driving up to the base so, "OMG TANKS OP NEED NERF." Ditto for MAXes.

Motion Blurred almost got it.

Vehicles are support. Pure and simple.
They are not necessary for capturing a point, and in fact cannot capture one on their own.
Thus infantry is the most important aspect of the Infantry/Armor/Aircraft.

Vehicles support infantry by providing spawn points, transportation, and covering fire, and by removing these benefits from the opposing forces, but they cannot take bases on their own.

If a tank collum let themselves get torn a part by half a squad of infantry, I say good job to each and every one in that infantry squad.