Nanite Auto-repair and fire suppression: poor game design

In my opinion, the #1 reason why the Harasser is so unbalanced is due to the fact that it can be repaired while still on the move. Nanite Auto-repair (Autorep) and to a lesser extent, Fire Suppression allow for essentially the same game play. Which is to say, unbalanced and poorly thought out.

Now, please understand that I use Autorep and Fire Suppression on almost every vehicle build that allows for it. I do so because it's just that good. Every other option for either slot is simply too situational compared to Autorep/FS, where Autorep/FS is worthwhile in almost every situation.

The key problem here is that once you start taking damage, all you have to do is quickly disengage, continue evading and you'll regain all your armor back, allowing you to rejoin the fight quickly and easily with no risk.

Without Autorep/FS, the user is forced to get out of the vehicle, rendering it immobile and exposing the operator directly to enemy fire. I can't count the times that I've survived simply because I was able to dodge incoming fire long enough to make it back to the friendly zerg while being chased by the enemy.

What ends up happening is that unless an enemy can produce massive alpha damage to the target to destroy it almost instantly, the operator can almost always seek cover and repair before the target can be destroyed and/or followed up on to complete the kill. Between Autorep 5 and FS 5, it's really easy for me to get in way over my head, only to drive around a corner, regain all of my HP back and be back in the fight with zero risk 30 seconds later.

I'd suggest removing Autorep entirely, and changing fire suppression to exactly that: have it put out the fire, and halt any additional damage due to fire, but doesn't add any more HP back to the vehicle.

TL;DR: vehicles should only be able to be repaired/regain HP by Engineers, while they're outside of the vehicles.

Having options that are so versatile and broad like this isn't good game design as it removes the attractiveness of all the other more niche options that between themselves are equally balanced due to each being situational. A perfect example of this is Nanoweave. Autorep/FS is essentially the Nanoweave of vehicles.

Guess it could be argued that needing that Alpha dmg due to AR/FS is some of the reason AV has to be so good.
But then again I do feel the current repair system as a whole has maybe been part of the whole Inf vs Vehicle balance problems .. And even just vehicle balance in itself.

Kinda spammable easily repaired vehicles need spammable strong counters.

No.

Also who the hell runs autorep on Harassers? Composite armour is pretty much mandatory unless you like dieing to the first vanguard you see.

One of the issues with auto-repair is that it removes the "engineer vulnerability".

Maybe changing auto-repair into "faster repair", still forcing you to land/stop somewhere

Lol, noone runs autorepair or firesuppression in a harrasser.

Just to flesh out my response to your OP:

If, going by your stats page and you are indeed FrontTowardEnemy from the Connery server (VS), I don't think you would understand how important it is to have auto repair for air vehicles given your limited time of 3 and a half hours in a Scythe, 2 hours in a Lib. In the air, you are seen my pretty much everyone in the entire hex given the low flight ceiling - It'd be impractical and most assuredly, a frustrating experience for all players who have to constantly land to repair.

Liberators are enough of a glass cannon as is, and I disagree with the suggestion of the removal of nanites/fire suppress.

For someone that has driven the Harrasser for 54 hours, I have never ran with nanites/fire suppress once. The reason why Harrassers are OP is because of the ability to repair on the move, its agility and is compounded more by the fact that I'm a TR that runs with the Vulcan. The Harrasser by default synergises too well with its strengths and not because of the firesuppress/nanites.

Harassers excluded, because you can hot swap seats and rep them without Autorep. I was referring to everything but Harassers.

Love love looooove people who bring play stats into an argument.

1. I have multiple characters that vary widely.

2. I spend a lot of time on the test server, trying out a wide variety of fully certed setups across all three empires in addition to bug hunting/testing. I probably have 10x more hours in a Scythe on a single test server account than I do on my forum posting account.

3. It appears that I need to further edit/clarify my post. So far everyone seems to be latching on to the LEAST important bit of the entire post: Harassers. I don't run Autorep on Harassers. There's no need. I'm simply comparing Autorep on everything else to the Harasser's ability to be repaired while on the move/still in the fight.

TL;DR: ignore Harassers. I'm talking about removing Autorep from the game because it's used on everything else BUT Harassers, as it's redundant for them.

I disagree.

Auto repair isn't going to save you. It takes a minimum of eight seconds to kick in and a minute to fully repair at max rank. In combat, you're screwed if you're relying on it to carry you to fight to fight. Instead, what it does is give you better sustainability. As your defensive ability, you picked the one that would minimize your downtime. No armor, which makes you tougher. No mine guard, which prevents instant death.

Professional drivers pick it up to allow them to keep moving and because they know how to use cover and the like to squeeze the maximum benefit out. But it caters to playstyle. A blazing offensive tank would do great with side armor or front armor. Yeah, okay, I'll give you mine guard being pretty useless on tanks but mostly due to nerfs to mines more then anything.

On aircraft, you don't have to get out to repair, which is incredibly useful, given how aircraft are nearly always threatened. There are no safe lines when an ESF can zoom over and blast you on the pad. But again, relying on it to do more then minimize your downtime will see you dead. If your vehicle is burning, nanite doesn't kick in. And ESF are very, very easy to get to burning.

As for fire suppression, the ability is handy, but you give up smoke/flares. You want to restore some HP or do you want to negate damage in the first place? You gotta pick. Nothing overpowered, not even on libs. You can chase them down as they flee. It's good for squeezing just a little more HP out in an emergency, but not much else.

I agree with your assessments, but in my opinion, everything that you point out only reinforces my argument.

Front/side armor doesn't make that large of a difference when I'm fighting that I notice. Mine guard... I haven't died to a mine in forever... Aircraft- of *course* it's incredibly useful. That's my point, it's too useful in every situation/setup. It's the go-to choice over all others. Fire Suppression- that's not my main issue as much as Auto Repair is. Fire Suppression is less of an issue, but it's still there. I think that on aircraft it's a little more situational due to the effectiveness of flares (vs. for vehicles).

Regarding Auto Repair not kicking in if your vehicle is burning- that's what Fire Suppression is for- to stop it from burning, get that little HP bump and then have Auto Repair kick in.

Players put in a lot of effort to get a target down to 10-15% health, only to watch them go over a hill and return 30 seconds later with full health again. It's bad game design.

If you allow your opponent the time to heal, it's more your mistake then a sign of imbalance. As I said: in active combat, you will not get the benefits of nanite auto repair. It takes a sizable amount of time for it to kick in. They have to take cover to get the passive heal, and by that point they're healing anyways.

Aircraft are so damn fragile that without nanite I suspect some people wouldn't fly. And fire suppression is still rare. I only ever see it on libs, and that's because they have the HP pool to actually get some benefit, besides galaxies. And it's, what, 24% HP over 12 seconds? That still less then a repair tool.

Actually, both nanite auto repair and fire suppression are fine as they are. We just need the other abilities to be better so they become sidegrades. Instead of nerfing vehicles again, those other abilites should just be buffed:

DEFENSE SLOT:
For example (tanks):
- Improve the reinforced armor certlines (25% reduction front, 30% sides, 30% top)
- Make stealth reduce the distance at which lock-ons can lock onto you
- Rework mineguard so it protects you from both C4 and tank-mines

That would cause for an interesting metagame when setting up your tank.
Do i want to have the comfort to automatically repair the vehicle? Or do i just need the raw damage resistance that armor gives me? Or maybe i want to flank and/or avoid lock-ons so i should go with stealth. Or maybe i do expect to go into confined areas so i want that extra protection from explosives?

Also it would make the job for infantry that want to take out vehicles more interesting. They'd have to find out what said vehicle is running to select the best method of dealing with it.

Same goes for the air-vehicles:
- Stealth should reduce the distance at which lock-ons can lock onto you
- Composite armor should be buffed to reduce the damage from flak by 25%-30% instead of 10%

Again, it would make them side-grades. Choose from better comfort in terms of auto-repair, better defense against Flak (composite) or better flanking / dealing with locks (stealth).

UTILITY SLOT:
Not much to do here:
- Flares / Smoke should work 100% of the time
- Radar could use a slight range buff, and should maybe also detect the direction of incoming lock-ons


Just my few cents on how those abilities should be balanced imho.

It's the go-to choice because most other things are rarely worth picking, I don't see how you come up with the conclusion that auto+fire supp is therefore OP when everything else is just UP or extremely niche.

That's like saying TR AI MAXes are OP at range when it's just that NC AI MAXes are UP.

At best, armour slots will help you take an extra default rocket, top armour is especially worthless due to how directional damage is handled ingame, anything that can attack you from above can attack you from any other angle. Mineguard is great against mines but who needs mineguard on a vehicle that's moving when mines are the size of pizza boxes and show on thermal?

Proxy radar is alright if you're going somewhere likely to have dozens of C4 packing LAs flying about but otherwise it's job can be filled by simple situational awareness. Scout radar is a good choice for a supporting A2G ESF so long as they're able to linger, which is rare in any situation your team hasn't already won, on the flash though it's probably only useful now if you have someone willing to sit on their flash in a corner of the base somewhere, likely giving up all kills they could possibly get for absolutely 0 motion assist xp.

Stealth is arguably one of the worst certs to get, all it does is offer a slight boost to lockon timers and remove you from showing on the map by proximity. Assuming everyone had decent situational awareness, stealth would be effectively useless. It doesn't prevent you from being spotted, nor showing up on the map when you are, it doesn't give you better camo coverage so you can hide better, it doesn't muffle your engine or weaponry to complement the radar stealth, it doesn't make lockons easier to dodge, avoid or counter their use in any effective way. It just gives you a couple extra seconds inbetween getting hit by the ever increasing number of lockons in this game.

Which is another thing, turbos and flares are more popular than fire suppression. Because flares help you avoid a potentially massive damage hit, while fire suppression heals barely over a tenth the hp, if you're max rank, heals a little more if you're on fire. The damage healed by fire suppression, even at max rank, is generally a lot less than hard hitting weapons like lockons will do to you, unless you're a larger vehicle, but that'll still only cover one or two lockons at best. Turbos offer the same ability the evade lockons when used right, but also other, and of course has offensive uses. Fire suppression had to get buffed to compete with these other choices, and it's still a hard choice for many.

Nanite auto repair and fire suppression are both fine. The problem is reparing harassers on the move in combination with the AV weapons there were given. They never should have been equipped with AV weapon. They should have been stuck with the same weapons as the Sunderer has. So either remove the weapons which wont happen or remove the repair on the move. The balancing point of auto repair is that you have to chose between that and composite.

I use auto repair on my Skyguard because I count on being able to tank the damage from an ESF of Lib until I can scare them off or blow them up. Then I have time to repair on the move or when I wait for the next aircraft. That also means that I am screwed if I get too much incoming damage at the same time. It's also awesome on aircraft because you don't need to land to repair.

Nanite is simply convenience, it has 0 benefits in active combat, and fire suppression is basically restricted to battle sundys, gals, and libs. Everything else has too little health for it to be of benefit, or has something better to put in its place.

BTW fire suppression used to just put out the fire, it was garbage, you usually would go from green to dead and it did nothing except waste your utility slot.

I can't think of any situation in which auto repair is a good option on a ground vehicle. As another poster said above, it's mostly for aircraft.

OP just doesn't get it, the backseat repair coupled with the crazy speed is the reason harassers are overpowered. No harassers use auto repair and besides, it only turns on 8 seconds after you take damage so you can't use it in combat.

I use auto repair for my Skyguard and it is great. I make sure to sit away from heavy combat and then it's more convenient to be able to keep shooting than having to jump out and repair all the time. If I get to the point where I get so heavily bombarded that I die, I doubt blockade would have helped me.

Nanite is good on lightnings because of how fast and small they are they can run away pretty well and the healing rate is quick, on an MBT its only good if you're solo, otherwise Dual engineers with armor is much better, especially since 1 engineer can heal a lot faster and in combat while the other shoots.

FIre suppression though, thats garbage on ground vehicles other than battle sundies, because sundies are the only ground vehicle with enough health for it to matter, and they don't really have a better options if they intend to fight stuff with it.

How many shots does it take with and without?

I agree with this. Auto repair is just for comfort, just like ASC. AR is 10x better though. FS is useful for vehicles that has a really hard time defending themselves like liberators. I use autorepair on all my vehicles except sunderer where I use proxy repair.

Haven't tested, probably one AP round difference. All I know is killing non-comp Harassers is real easy.

I think it takes 2 hits with titan AP to destroy it or 3 with python AP. Today I shot 3 into a harasser and he survived so I know they can take that but it might require composite armor cert.