Now that VS no longer has a tank

As a Mag pilot, it's called anticipation. When I engage I know the reload speed of my opponent's tank. I tend to engage at distance to give myself more time. When his reload is about to complete (these are of course experienced guesses but I tend to do it well.) I use my mag boost to head for cover, or fake out their driver by strafing to my right well turning my nose to the 11 or 10 o'clock position then mag boost. It's fairly successful. If stuck at close range I will magboost over an enemy tank and use my combat chassie to spin and hit them in the butt for extra kicks. Typically when I get caught in close range fights I back away fast as possible and seek to keep cover between me and my enemy till I reach friendly lines. Never engage in 1v1 fights unless you have already ambushed them from behind or got an opening salvo with out them retaliating. The mag isn't designed to be a brawler. It's a finesse vehicle.

Edit....I do use noob mag pilots all the time though. When I see one going head on with another enemy tank. I move to the side and save him from death with a flank attack. Of course, in packs mags are very deadly when they use each other as bait. A great tactic, and the only time a mag should ever consider facing off with another empire tank head to head.

This has to be said.

Magrider is op, please nerf.

Ehm ehm,excuse me!
I didn't call for buffs,I was explaining how hard magrider is for average players,the only buff I desire is boosting muzzle or actually make it with no bullit drop,isn't that the nickname you guys keep calling us everytime vanu complain about something?ha?? "No bullit drop faction"

And don't try to tell me me that you NEVER rushed while you didn't see the enemy before,it's a natural issue that happens to any driver

I personally run with front blockade and it somehow helps the magrider in tanking as it helps when you fire while dancing (dodging)

No,the problem isn't about stealth,it's about how many infantry (especially snipers) will be able identify you,it's very easy to Q-spot a tank and I don't think I'm missing something now,yes..vehicle stealth will prevent you from auto spotting ONLY IF we assumed there isn't some sneaky snakes around,not to mention how simple to see a Maggie from air

Can someone enlighten me as to the value of the armour modifier (front/back/side) for all three MBTs? I think they have the same number of actual hitpoints, and then damage calculations are a mass of modifers based on weapon type and armour resistance values...

It just struck me that actually throwing the numbers into this thread might help a little with discussion on whether or not the magrider is "tanky" enough.

They do all have the same HP: 4,000.

The armor values for the Magrider and Prowler are identical:
63% front, 58% side/top, 30% rear.

The Vanguard has a little extra on the sides and front:
68% front (+5%) 65% side/top (+7%) 30% rear.

The Lightning has a little extra front/rear armor but is otherwise the same as the Prowler/Magrider:
65% front, 58% side/top, 32% rear.
The Lightning is not an MBT of course, it only has 3,000 HP.

These values are pretty much what they look like: percentage damage reduction. If you get hit on that facing, you will take that much less damage. To figure out how much damage actually went through, do damage*(1-(armor/100))*|1-(resistance/100)|. Note that the resistance part is an absolute value: this is because resistances can be negative. If you don't take the absolute value, negative resistances will give you negative damage (which is incorrect), but the magnitude will still be right.

It technically doesn't matter what order you multiply these in, because A*B*C=C*B*A (though feel free to try it for yourself if you feel like it shouldn't work). The stuff inside the brackets is important though.

First, dividing the percentage by 100 converts it to a decimal. This allows you to multiply it into a value and get that fraction of it, without also multiplying the value by 100. Second, the armor displays how much damage it blocks. Say D is your damage, and A is your armor expressed as a decimal. D*1=D, D*A=damage blocked. So D*(1-A)=D-D*A=damage NOT blocked.

So for example, a Lightning HE shell does 1000 direct damage. This makes it really convenient to demonstrate numbers with.

So that Lightning shoots the front of a Magrider. The Magrider has 63% armor, and a -10% resistance to HE shells (shared by all tanks).

>63/100=0.63

>1-0.63=0.37

>1000*0.37=370

>-10/100=-0.1

>|1-(-0.1)|=1.1

>370*1.1=407

So the Magrider takes 407 damage.

No. This thread is about how the magrider is essentially fine as a heavy harasser, and VS not having anything that can take on the role of a tank.

If I assume the MBT has resistances that are twice as good as the sundies, then the MBT now has twice the effective health! See how that works? What you are saying is essentially: A regular Sundy don't get killed from full health by 2 bricks of C4. An MBT does. According to you that means the sundy is OP and too tough. Go away.

Also, take note that C4 damage is not affected by armor. Get the **** outta here.

and you're wrong, but keep fighting that good fight I guess.

Thanks, Sherman. I wonder if these numbers will influence the OP's position in any way. Time will tell.

It's just another post by a guy who have ear the hoax mag is more squishy then other mbt.

Another assumption is mag are tk machine, for people who have don't found the crouch button it's true.

Sundy have keep her damage reduction they correct an extra reduction for the back side armor.
I have never seen a wall of sundy who expose only her backside.
Last fact the vehicule with the bigger damage reduction is not the vanguard -> the biggest reduction is for lightening front armor.
Mbt have 5 % bonus armor with reinforced front side armor where lightning have 10 %.
65+10 where vanguard have 68 +5 so if you want to make a front line with repair, ligthening can take more damage with repair.

Snipers are usually focusing on infantry, have nice tunnelvision with absolutely zero awareness most of the time.

There are some youtubers like Vipassassin or Calisai, who have some good stealth magrider videos. You should watch it. Stealth flanking is a viable and funny thing and it is better than frontline fightning.

Frontal blockade armor helps you to survive +1 ap round. I think its nothing compared to the stealth which gives you increased lock on time and invisibility...stealth is good for hiding yourself against liberators and Hornet ESFs ( which i think is a joke OP s**t...it kills you as fast as tankbuster)

It sounds funny except the fact you dont know the reload time of tanks. You dont see the reload time upgrades, and lock down at long range.

It might work against noobs, 1/2 mbts or viper/he lightnings... not against certed 2/2MBTs. Magburning over a tank and show your a** to titan AP + enforcer / full reload certed dual ap cannon is complete suicide.
Good to Know:
Rival Combat chassis does not increase your spin rate. Vanguard turret turning rate is faster than you turn rate, no matter what chassis you have. So if VGdriver is not a complete idiot, you start the fight with 50% hp. good luck.

They are nearly broken. Dual furry, full blockade backwarding sunderer can CQC with an AP magrider and win. Dual furry have better ttk on Magrider than FPC+saron's TTk on the back of blockade sundie... Go try it youself.

I didn't assume anything: I posted the resistance values for all relevant weapons, you refused to read them and declared they were "useless and boring".

Silly me, thinking stats meant anything in a balance discussion. Let's talk about our feelings instead.

The point is that a Blockade Sundy still makes a fine infantry tank. It has MBT side armor on every facing, meaning it cannot be flanked. In addition it has favorable resistances to most anti-tank weapons, particularly the kind it's likely to encounter when being used as a pusher/infantry tank:

A Blockade Sundy is 2.7 times more resistant to C4 than an MBT. Blockade Armor modifies your C4 resistance. This is common knowledge. And, in an extreme rarity for PS2, the exact value it modifies it by is even stated in the tooltip.

It is 2 times as resistant to Vipers, Bulldogs, and Furies (anti-infantry weapons that are likely to be turned on a Battle Bus interrupting someone's farm).

It is 1.2 times as resistant to Dumbfires, Basilisks, and Skyguards, making it better than Prowler front armor against those weapons.

It is 1.6 times as resistant to AP shells.

It is 1.33 times as resistant to HE/HEAT shells.

It is 1.6 times as resistant to Vulcans, Tankbusters, and Shredders.

It is 2.7 times as resistant to rocket pods.

It is 2 times as resistant to the Dalton and Zephyr.

It is 1.33 times as resistant to the AV-MANA turret (and can get away with turning its back on an AV-MANA because of its uniform all-around armor).

It is 1.34 times as resistant to the Phoenix.

It is 1.39 times as resistant to an uncharged Vortex, 1.16 times as resistant to a fully charged one (so charge your Vortexes, VS).

For each weapon where the resistance ratio is 1.33 or higher, a Blockade Sundy has at least the EHP of a Vanguard's front armor.

(I've left out the Walker and ESF noseguns because those don't really work well as anti-tank weapons to begin with)

For each weapon where the resistance ratio is 1.6 or higher, the Blockade Sundy is roughly equal to the side of a Vanguard carrying Reinforced Side Armor. Note that this category includes Vulcans, Tankbusters, Shredders, and AP shells, which are also some of the biggest threats to tanks behind C4.

For each weapon where the resistance ratio is 2 or higher, the Blockade Sunderer is the toughest ground vehicle in the game bar none. Considering that includes Rocket Pods, the Dalton, and the Zephyr, that's nothing to sneeze at.

When you combine that with a complete lack of rear/side armor vulnerability, what you have is one tough battle brick. The main thing you have to watch out for is knowing which weapons you have the least resistance to, so you can avoid them or kill them first. Think of it as your equivalent of rear armor, except your "rear armor" is 57% instead of 30%.

A quick aside to DBG though:

These discussions would be a lot easier if these stats were more readily accessible in-game. There should be somewhere in the game where we can pull up a vehicle and view its HP, armor values, and resistances (either in a table or a drop-down menu that lets us select damage types).

On the opposite side of the equation, when previewing a weapon it would be nice if we could see what its effective damage would be against MAXes and each vehicle that it can damage. We've pretty much already reverse-engineered all this stuff and put it on the wiki anyway, so I don't see any reason not to save all of us some effort and put it in a place where everyone can see and understand it, where the game can do the math for us.

Remember when you represented all weapon stats as colored bars that had very little relationship to the real performance? Yeah, that sucked. Knowing exactly how a vehicle, attachment, ability, or whatever will affect us or our weapons is always better than not knowing. People like me are going to find out anyway, so you might as well save us both the effort by just making the stats available.

I don't know why this always seems to be something devs have to learn the hard way. It seems like stats always start off as colored bars or letter ratings (A-F being common... *glares at Elite: Dangerous*) that have only the most tenuous relationship to the numbers underneath, and then either development on the game dies or after months to years of reverse-engineering and wiki-fu the devs give up and put the real numbers in-game.

Just make the numbers available to begin with. People are going to find out one way or another, might as well make it easy for all the players. After all, knowing is half the battle.

Dude, Sunderers were driving everywhere backwards.

It looked ******* ridiculous.

It needed the nerf so people stopped driving it around like a ******* clown car.

Also Magriders are not under-powered, the amount of **** they avoid by constantly strafing is immeasurable. Tanks are just plain weak in this game which is why players have long started using them as field artillery instead of actual tanks.

Now since you're still not getting it, I've contracted it to the relevant figures, as not to overhwhelm your obviously limited mind:

These are the main threats that a "Tanking" Sunderer is going to face. All other weapons are irrelevant. Honestly, I'm surprised to learn they changed the value of the AV turret, It used to be that the sunderer was much more vulnerable to it than MBTs.

Ok. Now check the relevant numbers. The blockade sunderer is not the toughest vehicle to any relevant threat in an armor zerg to any relevant threat other than C4. Are we done now?

I mean, sure you can argue that the Blockade Sunderer is super tough against vipers or furies, but then the blockade sunderer is likely the only vehicle running furies ever. And I don't think vipers ever have killed an armored vehicle in the history of Planetside. Aircraft weapon resistance is relevant to its function as a spawner, not as a tank in a zerg.

Considering that the SA Vanguard doesn't have that armor on all four facings, a Sunderer with equivalent armor ends up actually being the tougher vehicle.

Therefore, the Blockade Sunderer is in fact the toughest ground vehicle in the game against most relevant threats. It's just not the juggernaut that it was when it had those same resistances and 70% armor (which honestly I still consider that a bug, since it was a holdover from when the Sundy *did* have a rear armor weakness, and blockade was supposed to negate it). If what you want is to absorb damage, a Blockade Sunderer is still the superior choice even for the NC.

You're acting like it's been nerfed into uselessness, when in fact it has only been balanced while still holding on to the same role. Even better, for only 200 resources it's practically expendable and easy to pull in large volumes. Excellent traits for something you want to be a damage sponge.

If my mind is so limited, what does that make you when you're the one getting schooled?

Certainly, the fact that the Sunderer doesn't have the "Tank Weak Spot" made it for a tough vehicle. With Tanks you can bypass half the armor by just shooting at the back. But what made the Sundy excessively tough was that it achieved 70% resistance in the back and thus, facing a threat with its rear (rearing it?) it took a 2/2 AV MBT to kill this 3/3 vehicle. Balance! Now, blockade armor is good for... uhm... Yeah... Nothing. Deployment shield is much tougher for AA or spawning, stealth is more useful for bare survival, and since you can't kill vehicles (that aren't stupid) proximity radar is the choice for a battlebus that goes infantry farming.

Also, remember how you said the Sunderer was 1.6x as resistant to AV Mana turrets? I just tested it. 5x mana AV turret = Ded sundy. Compared to 5x firing of the same into a Maggies side armor for dead maggie. Your figures are wrong. Meanwhile, the Sunderer has roughly 3x the silhouette, and a blind drunk man can hit it with the mana AV turret from outside render range.

Meth. Not even once!

I didn't say tanking, I said absorbing damage. There's a difference. The sundy will successfully absorb more damage, from more sources, from more directions, at a lower cost. It won't hunt down and destroy enemy tanks quite as effectively, because it lacks the range of the AP cannon and Enforcer.

When it comes to tank roles, it depends on what you want it to do. Do you want it to push forward with friendly infantry while killing enemy infantry? Dual Furies>>>>Vanguard HE, plus the all-around armor makes it great for pushing.

Do you want to destroy enemy tanks? The AP Cannon makes the Vanguard a better Tank Destroyer, because of its superior range.

If you're VS it's pretty much the same deal, except the Magrider's faster-firing HE cannon and the PPA (which is still pretty close to a Fury or Marauder in AI effectiveness despite VS crying about the nerf) means the Magrider is a little more capable of pulling some weight in the AI role, while for acting as a Tank Destroyer you're going to want a Saron.

Also, did you make sure to pull a blockade sunderer or did you fire at one of the VR sunderers? Because remember, the stock Sunderer (without Blockade Armor) only has 45% armor, and that cancels out the extra resistance to MANA turrets. If it did have max rank blockade, that just means the wiki needs to be updated again. Considering how poor your reading comprehension is though, I wouldn't be surprised if you forgot about blockade armor.

Screw troll!

umm, Marauder has 100% more KPU and 100% higher KPH than PPA... They are not even close.
http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=kph&weapon1=3404&weapon2=4007&weapon3=4007