Nurf the C4's power or increase it's cost

So no one grabbed an ESF or 2-3 snipers out of 50+ people? I mean, they do have to be below a certain point for the drop and make sure they don't get too low to avoid being killed by the tanks themselves. Jetpacking makes you highly unmanoeuvreable and a prime target for snipers and such. Combined arms is still the game, which one air transport+LA does better than simply fielding 50 tanks.

I remember seeing mossies, ALOT OF THEM, Libs as well and there was a massively annoying line of snipers waiting to kill you over each hill, so I'm guessing the C4 valk had ways around all of that, mind you, I don't know how they stayed up as long as they did, but I do remember seeing prowlers explode for "no reason". I couldn't quite tell how high up each light assault was above each tank because frankly I was getting shot at all I remember is that barely anyone could get near the tanks, I saw the valk, then tanks started dying fast.

Magrider doesn't have that problem. C4 valk vs 50 magriders. An hour later and 10,000 nanites worth of c4. 3 magriders died...maybe.

Blame the nature of the prowler for promoting sit and spam gameplay. Not the c4.

Although a nerf to C4 would be a direct buff to prowler lock down. Hmmm...It's suddenly all making sense.

When long-range armored weapons cry enough, a zero range, zero armor weapon will be nerfed... because of balance.

Now I have a different preference, but thinking on the idea it pretty much hits the primary goal I had in mind: Infantry get a way to combat vehicles and it costs resources to execute. Assuming the weapons have a limited range of +/-200 to 300m same as the future tank weapons I think it could be well balanced.

"Because the devs have done it, it must be right!"
Except ofcourse we have dozens of examples of things that are terribly balanced. How about no effective G2A weapons for newbies? Or no effective G2A weapons at all? How about ability options that are so terrible that practically no one uses them, such as fire suppression for MBT's or that smokescreen? It took more than 5 years before they ever even touched the smokescreen on vehicles, they just changed it! If anything that's the cue to say "there you go, not everything the devs don't touch isn't A-OK right now, time to look at what else they should be changing, like, oh I don't know... infantry AV weapons?"

But let's not forget that the devs actually did try to change this since forever. We know the devs tried to improve the vehicle vs infantry status time and again, only they approached it from the wrong angle as all they did was nerf vehicle capabilities against infantry and segregate vehicles and infantry with walls. Now all I'm doing is proposing they try that different angle: give infantry the tools to actually combat vehicles.

Ofcourse you would instantly point to the long-range weapons, and **** you too because I've time and again pointed out that infantry shouldn't get long-range AV weapons. The longest range AV weapon infantry should be allowed is their own render-range. At the same time vehicles should also have a higher firepower against infantry at short range, rather than what we have now where vehicles are encouraged to stay at range and lob shells for practically free OHK's. (Free as in "it doesn't take much effort", not free as in "it's incredibly easy to do", and yes easy and the amount of effort are two different things).

And lastly, if the devs actually had no problem catering to infantryside, then why did most of those long-range infantry-AV weapons get nerfed and didn't the infantry ever get capable AV weapons?

Balancing Smokes or Fire suppression doesn't completely remove air vehicles from the game in the same way that giving infantry or ground vehicles viable AA does. If everyone had easy ways to kill any aircraft from the ground there would never be any reason at all to pull an A2A vehicle. Why would people waste time trying to learn to fly when they could remove air from fights completely from the ground with far less skill involvement required. You can already lock air out of fights with 3+ sources of flak. Imagine if you could do it with 1. Air would have even less reason to exist that it already does. The same applies to Ground vehicles. If infantry can deal with it easily then there's never any reason to pull vehicles ever again with infantry being the most numerous in the game, although I'm sure infantry-siders would love that.

We all know that the vehicles would never get buffed in infantry's AV power was increased again, you can look at the combined arms update to see that. Or are you still going to try and pretend that 500 splash damage is somehow better than 750? I mean where was the galaxy/lib buff when the masamune rocket launcher was introduced, a weapon that does massive amounts of damage to those vehicles? Nowhere that's where.

We already have fairly strong AI on vehicles at close range in the form of the canister & marauder. That a guess what's getting nerfed in the combined arms update because having strong AI isn't allowed anymore. Even at ranges where the decimator 2 shots harassers this isn't allowed, so your strong close range vehicle AI won't be allowed to exist.

Eh **** it.
Re-read. Not worth it.

And I lost the delete button, so eh.
Viable AA does not delete aircraft.
Or infantry wouldn't exist.

The only reason why "viable AA" would remove aircraft is when we keep the extreme skill-reducing mechanics. If you reduce those the viable AA wouldn't remove aircraft, and it wouldn't necessarily be an easy way to deal with aircraft. Just imagine a Viper designed to deal with aircraft, without flak detonation range they would need high velocity and high accuracy to function, and wouldn't in any way make it impossible for aircraft to be in the neighbourhood.
And the same can be said for infantry AV, especially if we give tanks the upgrades I want along with the infantry AV upgrade, things like co-ax guns, ability to switch to special ammo types within your chosen weapon type, better elevation on anti-infantry weapons like HE and HEAT etc etc.

But ofcourse, rather than awknowledge things like that you have to build up an entire scenario based on statistics that won't make the game any better, supplant that for what I say and then scream "see? SEE? "YOUR" VERSION WON'T WORK!"

Ahw so cute, you fail to see how a higher fire rate means that the total slash damage over time will result in a higher damage potential not to mention the higher OHK potential for direct hits.

Everything is terrible if you cherrypick your statistics and don't look at the big picture.

Oooh, weren't you the one that was screaming that the devs knew best? That if the devs didn't touch it it's all A-OK? But when they do touch something it's suddenly terribad?

And once again get it into your stupid brain, I'm telling you that the current dev direction is wrong. They shouldn't be changing vehicles they should be improving infantry AV. But somehow you think that I'm asking for vehicles to be nerfed to the ground.

You truly are a marvel of idiocy. And yes I'll "swear" to you since you insulting me far more by ignoring and even changing my words to suit your twisted idea's.

Higher velocity pushes the weapon range out more, like the Walker does. The viper-AA would have to have lower velocity to allow aircraft in the neighborhood, otherwise we're just back to long range plinking again but this time with more powerful weapons. You could maybe avoid it in ESF & Valk, but the lib & Galaxy are far far easier to hit at range even with the titan AP and that doesn't have the best velocity at all, doesn't have flak & is a single shot.

The potential splash damage is worse actually, You need 3 shots to match the 2 of the current HEAT, the reload speed was not increased enough to match the 1 round reload.

It does increase the OHK potential, but then you're just back to "Have to direct hit? Use AP instead" which some people don't like. People don't stick around letting you fire tank shells at them, just like people don't stick around letting snipers shoot you. You get 1 chance and AP would still be better at that. Let's not even bring in that buffed flak armour that lets you survive direct hits.

Although now in the Combined Arms you're just far better off using HE anyway cus they made it's AV damage almost equal to AP, so now you get okay splash damage and good AV damage. It doesn't fix the problem that AP was best it just swaps it to HE is best, with HEAT being that crappy middle ground it has been for ages. The velocity difference between AP & HE isn't nearly enough to justify using AP again, being only 50m/s. You can already see what this like if you drive a Vanguard then drive mag-rider on live.

It wasn't ever ok, several things released and been re balanced into awful states, but AA is fine as it is now, weak when solo but stacks super well, enough to lock-out air completely. Should they start messing with it they'll just **** it up like they **** up everything, be it nerfs or buffs.

The problem is that current vehicles are not strong enough to justify giving infantry AV buffs, and future vehicles in the Combined arms update even less so. Maybe when HEAT had 1k splash damage & HE had a larger radius, but that time has long since gone. It'd be nice if we could buff vehicles at the same time, but we all know that won't happen, the entire games history should tell you that. If it means anything I agree that they should've stopped nerfing vehicles and buffed infantry AV, but this isn't the path the devs have gone down and pretending like they would stop is silly.

I look forward to that medic station, where we can finally free ourselves from the need of sunderers and vehicles & vehicle superiority becomes another useless aspect of the game.

I'm just to note this bit.
AA currently needs 3-8X the nanite costs to kill an ESF, and still doesn't kill a Liberator.
And in the mean-time to accumulate the cluster of AA, aircraft usually have killed most of the combatants in that area several times over, while being able to browse the entire map for targets without such a cluster of AA/

HEAT with enough to kill regardless of far of a Miss.
HE where it could hit the entire exit of a spawn.

The Forward Station lasts 5 minutes at best, barely any health and has a limited range for revive.
An incredibly small range.
Sunderers, you'll need them always - and the forward station is vulnerable to any grenade, followed by easily being outdistanced inside a base while it itself sitting in the same base.

Every time i read about C4 being too powerfull and the sundi arguement shows up i think of old times and some math:

Math: (A Chance for 200 Narnites in C4) versus (200 Narnites of Sunderer) --> fair
Problem: Only few sundies in a fight, fight dies
Solution: remove the damn no deploy zone create by sundies, have more sundies at a fight!

Often you do not pull a sundi, cause the base allready has one or two, and you would have to deploy in nonsense positions or far away. Sundies are the backbone of an assault, you shouldnt be punished for bringeng them!

Again, you misunderstand how each G2A weapon works, and instantly go for the worst-case scenario on my idea just to suit your needs.
The Walker works because it's got two skill-reducing components, one is the highest muzzle velocity available in the game, the other is spray&pray mechanics. Gauging distance on ground vehicles can be done by looking at the environment and the relative size of your target on screen, but with aircraft you only have their relative size to go on. The Viper-AA wouldn't have spray&pray so it wouldn't be able to spend bullets to gauge the distance and leading point to hit and would need to be dead-on with it's hits from the first shot. By the time he has reloaded for the second volley the aircraft will have changed direction again. And for a vehicle "high velocity" is already 500m/s. Considering the lack of spray&pray it's absolutely not going to be a problem to have 1000m/s on the weapon, but let's for your sake keep it at 750m/s.

Also if you've ever read any of my G2A proposals, you would have noticed that I make a distinction between anti-big-aircraft weapons and anti-ESF weapons because anything that can reliably hit an ESF can definitely hit the slower and bigger aircraft which would result in the exact same situation we have with deterrents as we have now.

And this is perfect! You just don't realize it. If the HEAT was kept as it was, then it would have almost the same AOE-TTK as the HE gun. Because of this change the HE canon is the best for AOE blasts, HEAT has a decent AOE blast along with the fastest reload so the most chances on a OHK, and AP has the highest velocity so the easiest chance on a direct hit, and yes you do get multiple chances especially if there's multiple infantry around. That's far better specialization than we currently have, and in no way makes HE, HEAT or AP terrible compared to the others.

in the very last paragraph you just complained that 100% of the players would go AP anyway because it was superior, and now you complain that HE would be superior because it has the same DPS vs tanks but an AOE to boot.
HE and HEAT have a slower velocity and higher gravity than AP after the change. So while they have similar DPS against tanks as AP, they also need more leading both horizontally and vertically to achieve a hit. So once again it's a trade-off.

That's not "fine". Hey how about this: We introduce an AV deterrent for infantry and aircraft. Stacks really well in groups and then locks out vehicles completely. Is that an OK situation? Ofcourse not! You are denying 1/3rd of the games playstyles to be used! That is not OK!

Why aren't they strong enough? They can't murder infantry with almost no resistance? Oh wait they can, since they have immunity to small-arms and most infantry AV is laughably weak and/or has a very short range and the only effective AV methods require absolute stealth.

Because the only way a vehicle can kill is by easy-mode splash damage! You've just shown how terrible you are at the game!

You don't even understand how the FS works do you?
It prevents FS's to be placed nearby, it has a 2-minute cooldown and auto-destructs after 2 minutes. It can be destroyed with small-arms weapons. Judging by the giant godbeam they use as a placeholder until they can add radar-icons for it the auto-detect range of the FS will be huge. Only players who died within 100m of the FS can spawn there. It has no terminals to switch classes/resupply/spawn MAX's and the team that will make most use of it is the team without Sunderers, IE the defenders.

I can already hit libs & galaxys with the slow tank cannons at reasonable ranges, with 750m/s it'd be pretty damn easy to hit them. Making it that effective at range would just lock-out half of the air vehicles in the game. The only way to balance a high damage weapon like against those targets would be to put it into a bad resistance table against them so it isn't high damage anymore but then it's just back to the sky-guard problem where it isn't good enough at close range to stop libs from TB-ing them. How do you propose to fix that?

Perhaps I worded it wrong, I mean that there is still little reason to use HEAT and the "Use AP instead" is now just "use HE instead", it still hasn't fixed the problem of HEAT being meh although I guess it makes noob tanks with HEAT a tiny bit stronger, although they still have the basi which is the actual problem with noob tanks, gotta sell vehicle weapons with cash though so they'll always be ****** no matter what.

Gravity was increased on the all AP guns expect the mag-rider (which I think is already Gravity 5?). I suggest you actually read the CA patch notes yet again: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/pts-update-04-18.245553/. The only difference is now a paltry 50m/s. That is not nearly enough on it's own to justify using AP anymore, which used to be more damage & more velocity.

So how is adding more, stronger AV or AA going to make that any better then? It will just be easier to stack and easier to lock-out whatever vehicle. That's exactly what will happen with every weapon you've proposed.

They aren't nearly strong because it's hilariously easy to avoid vehicles & they no longer have the killing power to get you in the few times you are exposed, it is not difficult at all to completely ignore vehicles at fights, some bases go so far as to not allow vehicles at all, and look how meat-grindy those are.

Can you please link the patch note that says it has a 2 minute life-time? I only found 2 minute cooldown which isn't the same thing. It really doesn't matter if it auto-spots when it's going to be deployed right into the point room, a place you're going to have to go anyway as either Attacker or Defender. Remember when defenders could place sunderers on the point in tech plants? Yeah now imagine every medic being able to do that, you don't even need the "skill" (or knowledge to exploit the physx?) to plop a nice spawn point on the point room anymore. Hell we can even extend this to other bases. Imagine having a spawn point on one of the points in a bio-lab, what a fun experience that's going to be. This isn't even mentioning all the wacky places you could put the FS from a valk drop.

I propose to fix that by first taking into account that it isn't super-easy to hit Libs and Galaxies with slow tank canons at "reasonable ranges", whatever that range is. Additionally if you'd read my G2A proposals you would have noticed that I specifically want the HE and HEAT canons to get increased elevation range so they can function as big-aircraft killers, which is great since they won't be able to OHK ESF on a lucky hit (except the Vanguard HEAT which would get a slight target-specific damage reduction). Considering that with an elevation increase they would have reasonable chances to hit and damage Libs&Galaxies (but again, not super-easy).
The Viper-AA would mainly be used against ESF and have lower damage outputs vs Libs and Galaxies. To compensate for this lowered capability in a dedicated G2A weapon the Viper-AA would fulfill another function like long-range anti-infantry. That instantly solves another problem: Current G2A is too dedicated. You only pull G2A against aircraft and they have practically no utility against anything else, meaning all G2A is reactively pulled after the aircraft attack. By giving the G2A other specialization, such as HE&HEAT being able to attack tanks and infantry and the Viper-AA being a specialized AI autocanon to boot, you make sure that aircraft can't pick fights based on the G2A presence. A tank or infantry man will know that there's going to be AV and AI waiting for them in the fight, and that's just par of the course. Aircraft should always encounter some form of G2A wherever they go and have to deal with it just as much.

And I don't know why I have to explain that again, because in the very post you are quoting I'm telling you that there would be a divide in big-anti-aircraft guns (let's call them AAA from now on) and anti-ESF guns (AA).

There's enough of reasons to use HEAT! There's even people who have been complaining that HEAT will be the primary canon everyone will go to! The higher ROF means more chances on a OHK against infantry and lower punishment for misses per shot. That's a solid weapon choice.

I suggest you learn how to read. Gravity has increased, but since the speed was decreased on the HE and HEAT guns it means the gravity effect is greater.
Additionally, 20% speed difference isn't to be scoffed at, especially with the gravity being based on time in the air.

That's exactly not what will happen with any of the weapons I proposed. I've purposefully added limitations in use and capabilities in the proposals just to prevent that. It's exactly why I could make the comparison to adding infantry-AV that acts like a deterrent to make you see where G2A is wrong. And then when I do that you instantly take that comparison, change it in your mind as if I proposed deterrence AV that could prevent vehicles from participating and then try and throw that back in my face. Do you even know how big of a hypocrite you are? You: "G2A is fine!", me: "It's not fine, imagine if we had AV that worked like that". You: "It's terrible that you propose such a thing!".

This is complete ******** and you know it.

There's no patch notes on that, but this is what I timed on the FS and have posted and tested on several occasions already. It's why we have a PTS, so that rather than jump to conclusions on half the facts you can actually try it out. If more people had done that we wouldn't have had the complaints about the stealth implant for example, which was supposed to be game-breaking up until it became live and people realized the thing was one of the worst implants you could get.

And yes, there is also a 2-minute cooldown. This kind of thing is exactly why I often add disclaimers like "unless it's been stealth-changed in the meantime" and such to my statements.

Yeah! Except that a single EMP is supposed to destroy it! I haven't been able to test that, but other than that... I could test out a frag grenade, and a single one can take out the pad (again, due to an 85% FF reduction added later you can't test this on your own FS anymore).

Yeah! I remember it being OP as hell because... Infantry AV was woefully ineffective at taking down a manned Sunderer at the point. Also what you are assuming as that only a single team uses the FS. Just imagine throwing down an FS at the point, while your enemy places one on the balcony and another one at the gravlifts. You are basically already inside the building and have lightning access to approach and assault the points. You have an easy time taking out the FS (even throwing EMP's at the ceiling below the point would work) while the opposing team won't be able to easily take your down... Until they start using other spawn options and infils/LA's to hunt down and destroy these FS's.

So again: It wasn't OP just because people could spawn at the point. It was powerful due to the fact that the opposition didn't have the same at their disposal (and will now), but not OP. What was OP was the immense firepower a vehicle could give and the lack of firepower the infantry had to take it down.

Imagined it, realized the opposing medics being capable of similar feats and that it wouldn't be an issue.

You have to keep in mind that with a 2-minute active life, that Medic would need to be going up there again and again to keep it alive. Additionally a Tower base is 70m tall, that would leave 30m at it's bottom to move around and respawn. From what I know the AMP station spires are higher than the towers (and don't have enough space on them unless you put it on the dish in the middle), meaning practically no space where you can spawn on that FS especially considering that the fight in an AMP station happens mostly on the ground.

God I hate the argument that "because it affects me and I don't like it, it must be nerfed!!!!!"

I main NC.
I have araxium MBT
I have araxium Lightning
I have araxium Harasser

I suck at flying Libs and ESFs and the only vehicles that I can fly half decently are Gals and Valks.

I have araxiumed my Light Assault and my Heavy Assault as well.

My personal opinion:

The are only two surefire effective ways to C4 a vehicle:

• Stealth flash with C4: this one's a bi-atch, but it pretty much requires 1 if not 2 players sacrifice themselves. You're also lite up like a beacon and any half decent player will do everything they can to shoot you to hell.
• Drop out of aircraft as a Light Assault.

Having done the latter successfully many, man hundreds of times, success can be high, but it can also be brutal. All it takes is getting noticed ONCE and you're done. Snipers, other infantry, MTB top guns, spitfire turrets, etc... will all kill you long before you can accurately C4 a vehicle. I would say that my success rate is probably 50% and I would consider myself decently decent at this maneuver.

Secondly, to C4 a vehicle, you pretty much need to pull a vehicle. So the nanite cost is much higher than the 150 nanites for two bricks of C4. If you're doing it solo, it's more like 400 nanites because at the least you need to pull a valk. If you're going to be even remotely consistently succeful at this, you need a max stealth valk (and sensor shield on your LA is not a bad idea either). So, it requires a significant investment of certs to get set up for this attack. If you're working on the Light Assault directive, then it will be worth while: for most other players, it's just way too many certs.

Prowlers are certainly a lot easier than Magriders which are slippery sons of bi-atches...

Conversely, I now main most of my ground vehicles solo, because I get super frustrated with unaware gunners.

If you're running a MBT solo, the absolute best top gun is the Kobalt, followed closely by the Walker. The Kobalt is by far the most effective top gun against Light Assaults trying to C4 your tank.
If you're going to pitch your tank on a hill and farm infantry (and c'mon, this is where most tankers get killed and then complain that they were blown up by "unfair C4" - that's really rich...), then spend the certs on your Engineer and equip the spitfire turret. Deploy the turret near where your tank is going to camp: the spitfire will give you early warning of incoming C4 fairies. Make sure that you have a good SMG or carbine equipped (or the Emissary if you're going to run the Archer as your primary) so that worst case you can jump out of your tank and shoot the C4 fairy before he gets his two bricks of C4 off.

Again, as everyone else has said: situational awareness is the NUMBER ONE game changer in Planetside 2. There is no higher skillset required in this game than having an idea of what's going on around you. If you are routinely getting C4'd in your tank, then you're making yourself an easy target. If you're going to farm a base in a MBT with HEAT or HE, you HAVE to expect to get C4'd: every half decent player will be gunning for you.

The only thing that really needed to be changed is to require a C4 to be actually attached to an armored vehicle for it to deal damage, instead of the current "you drove away? too bad this magical explosion 2 meters away from you will still kill you".

Unless I'm severely out-of-date on the not-so-much changed vehicle-C4 dynamics and this is already done, and if that's the case then yes, don't stick around in one place and don't go to places where even non-LAs can drop them on you.

Imo C4 needs a nerf because while tanks got nerfs to their AI lethality, C4 got an indirect buff, mostly courtesy of: valks raining LAs, LAs gliding from high ground 200m away and the rocklet rifle.
Nowadays most LAs don't even bother throwing 2 bricks. They go with 1 and detonate. If you are not at full health because you were exchanging fire, chances are you are gone right there, because 1 brick takes away like what, 3/4 hp? If you are not gone, instant rocklet followup and you are indeed gone now.

In the past LAs were usually forced to blow their load on 1 vehicle, now they can tackle 2 for the same cost and the power of the singular brick is one of the main reasons for why this is the case.

The CA update will change that already. C4 will deal around 50 to 60% damage to tanks and theres an anti-c4 armor available (although I havent tested it in a while so I dont know its effects).
This also means the rocklet rifle is almost useless from that point on. It doesnt have the damage or range to deal with tanks otherwise. It might be capable of finishing off a c4 armor tank after you threw 2 bricks on it.

And again: as long as no other effective AV weapons for infantry exist, c4 needs to remain capable of murdering vehicles as it does now, otherwise the team with vehicles, IE the attackers, willbe instoppable if the vehicle battle is done.