[Suggestion] The Ultimate Combined Arms Gameplay Thread

They could, but it would be stupid as hell. Imagine having to spend certs every time you pull a Phoenix. Or an ESF. or a Lib. Or a sniper rifle. Or grenades. Or c4. Or mines. Or shotguns. Or maxes. Or the plethora of other powerful weapons in the game. It's a terrible idea to turn certs into something that can spawn vehicles. Or anything.

"Peasants" are players who work by themselves. Who refuse to work with other players. And who want total control. They get no enjoyment from the MBT. No, they have an ENTIRE TANK dedicated to them. The Lightning. Pilots don't whine and cry that they don't get the big gun on the Lib. So why should tankers get the big gun on the MBT? If they don't like sharing control the Lightning is always there. Always ready.

I've been in very large fights and, at most, I've seen like 5-10 libs, all sides included. That is more than acceptable. If I'm in a 200 man fight and there's a mere 10 MBTs in the entire thing, that is perfect. That's the perfect ******* ratio. A handful of powerful tanks supporting the dozens of infantry. I would love to see MBTs with the same kind of numbers as libs. Also I disagree that there is no equivalent for the Lightning. Pre-splash nerf (which was stupid and should be undone) a Lightning's HE cannon could effectively one-shot entire groups of infantry. It was BETTER than rocketpods. It's HEAT turret could kill MBTs quite effectively as well as infantry, since it's overall DPS was pretty close to the MBT's guns. Lightnings are very, very good tanks they just get overshadowed by MBTs.

Even in the days of liberator "spam" you never, -EVER- saw 50 libs in a single battle. The sole exceptions would be when entire outfits did it for giggles. In a normal fight, no matter how large, even when libs reigned supreme, you never saw 50 libs like you do with MBTs. The spam was different because libs were strong. But y'know what, if there's 50 players willing to work together to field a large armor column, why the hell shouldn't they? It hampers zerging, but zerging =/= large numbers.

Also keep in mind that 2-man crews aren't the only limitations we're putting in place. Add onto that the fact that MBTs could only be spawned at tech labs or the warpgate. Would cost 450-500 resources. Have a lengthy cooldown. And it would take some dedicated team effort to field a large number of MBTs. And if we're wrong, if people do still spam them, then we'll just have to find ways to limit them further. It's not like our ideas would be implemented and never touched. We can't see how players would interact with this since the devs refuse to even attempt to fix the game. All we can do is base our theories off how the community acts right now. If we're wrong, we fix it. If we're right, the game gets balanced. No harm done either way.

I've made a suggestion before, based on real life. I'll make it again.

The default dumbfire launcher is a weak, single-use rocket. You fire it once and then have to go back to a terminal to resupply. It costs resources. Pretty worthless on it's own but a squad of HAs could still kill a tank by focus-firing it.

Jack-of-all-trades launchers like the anni, phoenix, lancer, striker, these wouldn't exist. You'd have to specialize into AA or AT. So basically juist the original crow/hawk. They would do significantly more damage but are big and heavy and thus limit what you can carry. If you equip one of these launchers you lose access to large weapons like shotguns or LMGs. You have to suffer reduced AI capabilities in order to run around with these big AV weapons. However they would do significant damage to tanks.

Like the default launchers they'd only fire off 2-3 shots before running out. They can not be resupplied by engis, their rockets cost resources and must be restocked same as grenades or c4.

This would allow dedicated AV HA's to do their role admirably. A single AV HA could do a lot of work against even our buffed MBTs that we want. But they can't do everything. If they want to kill tanks, they can't kill air and are weak against other infantry. So you actually have to choose which is more important, killing infantry, tanks, or air. I think that would be the best approach. Then, just like with our tank idea, the rockets could be buffed. Because there'd be far fewer of them and they'd be more cumbersome to use.

It's true that biolabs are an all-around spam-fest, but when it's all small arms, it can be pretty fun and chaotic. I'm just weary of flinch. As an NC, I still have nightmares about CQC before the fixed flinch. Another idea that has been floated out there is that rockets should have an activation range like grenade launchers i.e. rockets won't do any damage until they've traveled a certain distance (I'm thinking maybe 10-15m and it would only apply when the rocket strikes something that's not vehicle because sometimes close range vehicle shots are necessary.)

In addition to this also give xp for killing esfs that have recently damaged a liberator.

The problem with the galaxy isn't so much its health, it's more that it becomes completely worthless after the drop. It can't provide ground support after a drop, and it can't work as an AMS either, there's no reason not to just jump out and trash it.

Perhaps giving the liberator additional seats allowing it to act as a squad transport, except requiring it to either cert into ejection seat (aka make that cert have a use) to drop players from the sky, or land to deploy troops would be a better solution, since the liberator can stick around and actually provide support (well, not with the aa going around, but you get the idea)

Fully and enthusiastically support all the Tank & Air changes, but disagree completely with the infantry ones. Making rockets cost resources would obsolete the HA class. Infantry balance is quite decent now, except for the pump shotguns. The only thing I would add is a comparable health buff for the Lightning, as it will crumple under 3/3 MBTs with a large health buff.

Air & tanks need serious revision. Tanking means a very quick death these days, and the liberator (which I was so excited to play when I started in beta) is near-useless except in overwhelming numbers, and the rear gunner has literally no purpose. Dalton & Zephyr need to lose the ridiculous drop they were given, and it needs better weapons for the rear gun - or at the very least a tweak to the abysmal Walker - a dedicated anti-air defense that in it's current state can't even kill a single chasing ESF, let alone more than one.

Tank & air battles seen in the trailers haven't happened since the last days of beta. Since then, vehicles & air have become increasingly irrelevant, and it's a real shame.

One of the biggest issues is this:

We need more methods of damaging vehicles, without being one of the 3% of the population who owns C4 (Litterally, 8000 characters own C4... There are 255000 active characters,) and without throwing class variety out of the window.


Something that, instead of working on the principles of mono-e-mono combat, allows anyone to pitch into a AV scenario without seriously disrupting play.

If rockets are to cost resources (which I am in limbo over, just like Pat) they should be replenish-able in bundles of like maybe 3-5 for 10-25 resources. I think charging 10-25 resources for a singular rocket would not go over well with anyone.

Upon rereading your crewed MBT suggestion and garnering a better understanding, I fully agree. And to be honest, option C is probably the best option there is.

First let me ask, am I understanding this right: "The new 3/3 MBT would ideally have to take on damage wise 20 dumb-fire rockets (25 Vanguard) from the front, 15 from the side, and 10 from the rear." You are saying that it should take 20 dumb-fire rockets to kill the MBT, if attacked from the front. 15 from the side, and 10 from the rear. One minute......let me think......give me a second....Okay, we agree on the crewed MBTs, we agree on the need for crewed MBTs to cost more resources, we agree on the fact that MBTs should receive a health buff, even more we agree on ESFs not being able to get behind and instagib a tank. But 20 dumb fire rockets, on top of the fact rockets costing resources.

That's a bit excessive. We must keep in mind, that even though Planetside 2 eschews scale and large battles we are not always caught up in them. If someone where to bring a 3/3 or 2/3 MBT to an outpost with very few defenders, it would take a millennium to kill that MBT, while the MBT has OHK potential on the infantryman. This shouldn't be the case. If anything it should be brought in line with that of the Sunderer, which is like 5-6 rockets.

What you also have to keep in mind is that this new MBT would have 3 players in it. If three players they cannot maintain a good situational awareness, and communication line, then maybe they shouldn't be manning a tank to begin with. And lets also not forget composite armor - which could be a complete suite of front, top, and side armor instead of one over the other, like it is now.

Well my reason for being against the damage buff primarily is do to the purpose of Flak Armor, and the overall One Hit Kill mechanic your damage buff would induce. However, I know what you mean by shooting someone and they are not taking appropriate damage. With that being said I think both HEAT and HE should work off a radius system. The inner being the OHK zone and the outer requiring mutliple shots that scale with the degree of Flak the player is wearing. Also keep in mind - latency/hit detection is getting bad, for some reason.

Be sure to look for my update (in the same thread), some of the things I suggested originally I decided not to go through with.

How would rockets costing resources make HA's obsolete? It's not like there's a better alternative. Enginees have to pay resources AND certs to get mines. Same with C4 on other classes. They're also much harder to use than rockets. Even with a resource cost HA's would be the premier AV class. It just prevents them from sitting on a rock all day spamming infinite rockets. Rockets should work the same as every other infantry explosive. Only supplied at terminals and cost resources. I don't see how anyone can justify rockets being the only infantry explosive that is both limitless and free, and can be supplied in the field by engineers.

If Engineers have to go to terminals and pay for their mines. If LA's have to do that for C4. If people have to do that for grenades. HA's should have to do that for rockets.

I don't see why, really. Gamers now days just hate specialization so much, and I don't know why. If you want to fight tanks, choose HA. If you don't want to be HA then don't complain that you can't kill tanks. I mean if I pick a tank I give up my ability to fight air (**** you walker, get off my tank). If I pick HE shells I give up the ability to fight other vehicles. If I choose a scattermax I give up the ability to fight in the open. If I pick medic I give up the ability to fight air (god bless c4... stupid ****)

You give up one thing for another. If you play medic you give up AV capabilities for the ability to rez and heal. If you play infiltrator you give up AV capabilities for the ability to snipe and be a saboteur (assuming they ever give that class anything decent). If you pick LA you give up AV capabilities for the ability to circumvent fortified positions.

Every class has a pro and a con, that is the point of a class system. If you give every class the ability to do everything, you end up with supersoldiers. If you wanna damage vehicles, if you wanna pitch in, pick engineer or HA. Two classes out of the five (max really aint a class) are dedicated AV classes. That's good enough. Players need to accept that specialization is what makes games like this fun. It's what made PS1 great. Supersoldiers ruin games and that is what you get when every class can fight every threat.

Because, in this case. It isn't hating on specialization, its that one specialization is having a vital capacity for well rounded combat to continue...
The only counter for vehicles is the HARD counter.


And that the fact that less then half of the playerbase can damage tanks.... Makes it so that for the sake of balance, literally everyone who can damage tanks must be so powerful that tankers make endlessly complain about AT units being too strong.


I don't think that the HA shouldn't be the best anti vehicle source of damage, I think that having them being the ONLY anti-vehicle source of damage (Outside of being in the lucky 3% of the population,) is a good idea.

It kills class variety.
By no means should the medic, or light assault class specialize in killing tanks, but that 2% of them can even harm tanks is an absurdity.... The fact that this two percent can kill a tank do so in 5 seconds is insane.

We need something weaker, but available.
You have entirely missed my point, and are dismissed.

Its not modern gamers that hate specialization, but old schoolers like myself too. I don't condemn specialization, but if you look at some older games like Team fortress series, Day of Defeat and Tribes Series, specialization didn't ever mean "ineffective" at something. Specialization in older games usually meant you were less effective at particular things, but never 100% ineffective at anything.

Because PS2 is such a big scale game, it requires players to forum platoons and outfits to be successful. But what some players and DEVs need to realize is that MANY players are solo. They don't have coordinated squads equipped with the right tools to take out air/ground/infantry.

For us solo players, going on a wicked killer spree only to get demolished by air/MBT with ZERO chance to win is why people cry on the forums that MBT/Air is OP to begin with.

I like that fact that we have dedicated classes for dedicated roles. But IMO every infantry class still needs a way to combat AIR/Vechs without spending 700 certs into 100 resource c4s.

So suggestions:

1) Make every Vech in game to take damage from small arms fire. Hell, keep the damage as low as 0.05% per hit. But let me FEEL like I have some way of winning.

2) Every class has some sort of anti-vech weapon

3) NOW YOU CAN BUFF every MBT/Air. Make them stronger, do more damage, have bigger splash. Whatever you want.

Basically, #2, but weaker then the current AV options, and not for lone wolves, for team specialists who have no use for a large portion of the utility gears available to them.


We have "Just as strong, but point blank" in c4 already..... And what a fiasco that is.


We need a "Just as long range, but quite weak," options, like mortars, and a "Just as accessible, but quite risky," option, like a thermal grenade.

And, #3 is in my plan, as well.

1. Why does every class need an AV weapon or do damage to a futuristic several ton metal giant? You can easily go to a terminal and switch weapons or classes if you need to. I really don't think all classes should get AV weapons, and medics certainly don't need AV weapons.

2. Why is it unreasonable to die to a 3/3 MBT, taking 450 resources to pull, 3 people to work it at max potential, and is on a cool down timer? Your only penalty for dying is having that kill streak end for 10 seconds, you lost no resources dying either, and you lost to 2-3 people, not a single person ended your fun. If you took 5 seconds to switch to an AV HA class, you and a few buddies could put that tank and 3 people out of commission up to 30 minutes. That's pretty darn balanced.

Because it is a better solution to the class diversity issue then C4.

C4 spam sucks indeed but it is normally avoidable if I pay attention to my surroundings and don't over extend. What would you implement to take it's place, and what unique weapon would you give to each class to take it's place in a way that would not re-destroy vehicle combat? Because if there are fewer tanks, everyone has an AV weapon now, everyone wants to get 800 XP for killing me and 2 gunners, then I have a massive problem that will stack fast in major battles.

I'm not saying it's not possible Walrus Jones, but I could use some in depth explanations on how this would work.

Well, Of course they would be weak.

The main ideas that I like are:
1. A utility AT mortar/AV grenade launcher.
- Short, medium ranged AT Weapon with a high arc.
-- Long time to kill balanced by an ability to provide indirect fire forcing armor to flush you out to kill you.
- 500 damage, 3 rescources per shell, very high number of reserve grenades to compensate for the rescource cost.
-- 16 grenades to kill from top armor hits (About all you will get from a high arc weapon.)
-- This is less damage then grenade launcher grenades hit for.
- 3.5 moving reloads, 2.25 reloads in a deployed mode that increases velocity but forces you to fire upwards.
-- 56 second time to kill individually, on the move.
-- You loose the launcher if you do not reclaim it after deploying it.
- Overall, the weakness, and medium ranged nature of the grenades allows tanks to escape mortar ambushes quite effectively, and limited degrees of mortar fire would actually help provide feedback to tankers, allowing them to escape/avoid infantry positions. They would be too weak to farm infantry, however, they could be used to flush out infantry and snipers deployed, due to them becoming like an actual mortar.

Available to all classes that can equip Grenade launchers, in the utility slot.

2. A thermal grenade.
- Short, but not point blank range AT weapon.
- Does AV DOT over a small area, AI DOT over an area similar to a frag grenade.
-- Very effective against stationary targets... For obvious reasons. Tanks that move would be able to escape its wrath.
-- TR would hate it.
- It would sit where it landed, but it wouldn't stick.... Sliding off of vehicles that drive off.

Available to Infiltrators, Light assaults, Heavy assaults (Cheap alternative to AV grenade,)

3. One of the PS1 special assault cert weapons......
- Measures would need to be taken to prevent infantry farming. But the nostalgia.

4. A AV magnet.
-Temporarily disables a vehicle entirely after 5 seconds. Placed at point blank by an infiltrator. Can be shot off.
-- Their goal is to force tank crews out of their tank without killing the tank.
-- Overall, this could be used to incredibly scary effect... Forcing a tank crew out into the open, where a large ambush may be planned.
-- My second favorite idea.

Available to... infiltrators.

5. A NS pistol that fires a 250 damage round, and is bolt action. It does HMG damage, making it basically a pocket basilisk with a ROF of 3 rounds every two seconds....
- More an experiment, then a serious contender.
-- Would people use a 250 damage pistol if it meant only being able to fire once in emergency situations?
-- Are people so petty as to be willing to take potshots that only inflict 30-105 damage to a tank at best?

Available to all for 100 certs.

6. I forgot to list the airmine launcher idea for the engy/light assault....
Basically, an air deterrence launcher for the infantry forces.

It fires small airburst grenades that float at 50-125 meters in the air at random, stay at their hovering altitude for about 5 minutes, and have a 5 second arming period.
They naturally, are to be shot up to create small clouds of airmines, that encourage planes to strafe from higher altitudes, and deter them from attacking the zone altogether.
-They wouldn't flat out kill the planes, just damage them quite a bit.

The fact that they are highly visible airmines that one must voluntarily fly through to take damage from, they are litterally the only form of AA that one would have no reason to complain about ever.

I'm truly impressed. A few thing though

1. The mortar would have to be at least a medium if not high skill cap weapon.
If you left the mortar or it got destroyed it would cost 50-100 resources to replace (I think the AV Turret should be this way too).
3 second deploy time and undeploy time for the mortar

2. Really clever and cool, but only if TR get a different special ability than Anchor Mode. This would literally almost not work against magriders

3. This should only temporarily disable the tank and should fissile out after 10-60 seconds
This weapon needs to be point blank, and should only work if placed on the rear of the tank where its weak spot is. I don't want to see infiltrator rushes lol.

4. Who would get the devastating C4?

5. lol, the pistol is sort of a troll device against tanks but who knows.

Otherwise these are really cool ideas, bravo Walrus Jones.

1. It is to be a high skillcap weapon if used beyond jamming it up the tanks tailpipe....
Have you tried firing a mortar in any other video game?

2.Well, It would justify buffing the anchored mode considerably, actually... Given that the TR already hate anchored mode very much, from what I have polled from them.

3. (I'm assuming this is the magnet idea.)
Yeah, The "Rear armor only" limitation is something I had planned, but forgot to mention... And I already said "Point blank...." I think.
The time limit is unessecary.

If you really are that worried about that magnet, just walk out and shoot it off, I mean.... Nothing could go wrong, right? *Places claymores in a circle around your vanguard*

5. It would be like being that Jersy boy, who tears his shirt off yelling "Come at me brah!"
But at a tank.

1. It's been ages since I fired a motar, not sense the really old COD games back when they were good and not a franchise. I'm just worried SOE would implement an auto target system so all shells hit the tank

2. People Hate Buffing anything TR Specific, plus losing mobility in a tank is such a bad tradeoff unless the defensive bonus is huge. That's why many tankers other than Compass hate anchor mode it so much.

3.Lol The time limit perhaps is unnecessary, but it would have to have a 75 resource cost since it's literally stopping a tank in its tracks indefinitely till shot. I would also think it would be more balanced if it shut off the engine, but not the weapons. Thoughts?

4. More like the midget from family guy

1. I was thinking like Far Cry 2's mortar, where you had small, colored smoke shells to practice aiming with...... Because it was so hard.

Don't quote me too much on this, I didn't really use it.

2. Having hard counters too it would bascially force a buff.

3. Maybe you could have access to the top gun, with reduced accuracy+screen blur, and honestly, 75 rescources sounds perfect....

That'll teach them basilisk lovers.


4.
HELL YES.

Hey Eskimo, great post interesting theories.

I havn't read everything yet, skimmed through it all once and read 2/3 parts carefully.

I do think you got good points, however I think some areas like infantry balance and infantry AV capabilities might be easier to solve then you make it out.


Main problem of this game is skill-to-kill ratio has been lowered to a point were the individual solider or vehicle has been too effective in cycles ( until they get nerfed ).

I see lock ons as a big problem in the game, especially the striker.

All lock ons even a2am are bad for over all game balance and battle flow. A single lock on is not a big threat but they grow in power exponentially when you add nummbers to it and it doesn't account for individual skill either since all you do is point and click. It is too effective at what it does, we are after all not playing a real war that we want to win at any cost, we play a game to have fun and to be challenged.

Lock ons are a big issue, imo they should be removed completly from the game and be replaced by wireguided missles of varying dmg, velocity and range.

When we look at the engineer AV turret, I also see that it is too strong - it is not super easy to use effectivly though but once you learned that doing top down attacks makes it easy to hit moving stuff at range you basically mastered the weapon.

I think the AV turret either should become harder to aim with, let the missle be abit unpredictable and or simply lower its range / damage when hitting anything EXCEPT the back of armor.

Another BIG problem especially for tanks is the invisible missles/hits you take constantly were you really have no idea what and from where something is hitting you. Most of the time you can simply get behind cover and wait it out, but it is problemetic for many reasons. Nobody likes to take dmg from someone they have no possibility of seeing, which can be the case for engi AV turrets firing at tanks beyond infantry rendering range were the engi will only sit in the AV turret for a few seconds guiding the missle then jump out and then un render.

Infantry having a shorter rendering range then vehicles is problematic. The devs need to figure out a way around that. It is a performance issue and it is a balance issue - tricky.

When it comes to the air vs ground balance I see two problems.

Rocketpods and exploiting "bugged" tank/armor hitboxes.

The rocketpods still do too much splash damage, this makes them very suitable to farm infantry with. Again as I talked about in the beginning the skill-to-kill for this weaponsystem against infantry is almost zero ( 0 ). Personally I don't approve of this, I have my own selfish reasons that is I don't wan't bad players to be able to inflate their stats and hide that they are bad by, as I see it, abuse a weakness in the system. Another more objective reason is that if ESFs skill-to-kill infantry is very low, then the skill-to-kill as an infantrymen against ESFs have to be equally low, hence lock ons.

It is not good for either side, and it causes unnecessary frustration on both sides. It takes away from the fun, the challenge and the pleasentness of playing.

In my opinion, I think great things could be achieved if:

1) rof of pods were reduced
2) splash dmg was equal to that of MBT APing guns, which is 0.5 m outer splash iirc


Damage seem to sometimes be calculated by from which direction the enemy is relative to yourself, not where his missles/round hits. An ESF will park itself above and BEHIND an armored vehicle and spam pods on the top, but doing "from behind" damage. I admit I abuse this in my reaver with nosegun all the time, sowy.


When it comes to the general infantry balance I don't think it is that bad.

I prefer medic guns over LMGs still. I prefer smgs/carbines at close range or even a shotgun. At longer range or medium range I like the roll the LMG fills. I often get out dpsed by cqb weapons when I use my LMG. I got over 2k kills with the NC6 gauss.

I think the HA should have a stark edge over other infantry though in the pure AI roll. Problem is when vehicles become meaningless for alot of people and they turn to footzerging instead and everyone go HA, further skewing the problem for vehicles. It is a delicate process but I think it all starts with raising the skill-to-kill.

A combined arms game cannot be on the same "easy to pick up easy to master" as an arcade type of game like Call od Duty is. It is a diffrent market and should have diffrent rulesets to the mechanics.


In short:

Vehicle issues derrive from lock ons, infantry not rendering.

Infantry problems derrive from vehicles iniatially and still in some cases beeing extremly powerful with very little skill / risc involved.

Skill-to-kill ratio has dropped every patch.

Letting the game do the killing for people is never a good idea, it is a vicious cycle.


/edit

When I roll in a 2/2 tank with my dedicated gunners I can if I am focused go on 60-0 streaks, but I still get halted in my tracks when I run into multiple lock ons that I cannot see/get close to. I get killed/halted by invisible engi AV turrets firing at me.

Overall though I don't feel that the balance is completly broken it is missmatched in some areas, and could do much better by simple transitions and shifts of focus, from easy to pickup master at noon to more easy to understand not so easy to implement and hard to master.

Need to split this this up for the sake of my attention span.

I din't suggest using certs to pull anything other than armour. Don't exgaggerate so much. The idea of it being a terrible idea to pull armour is relative. The idea is to make people think that it is a bad idea to spam armour so if people think that it is a terrible idea to pull armour then the solution works compared to the idea of just increasing the crew count which only succeeds in making a subset of people not want to play armour because they think it is boring to drive only.

And the idea of using xp to buy powerful consumable items is not new. It's something that can be used in game design, judicously.

If you know you get 30 certs on average from a tank run compared to 15 in the same time from infantry then spending 5 certs to pull a tank is not a bad investment. If you have a buddy to altnernate pulling tanks with then even that cost is split and you will be more effective so teamwork is always favoured.

"Peasants" are players who work by themselves. Who refuse to work with other players. And who want total control. They get no enjoyment from the MBT. No, they have an ENTIRE TANK dedicated to them. The Lightning. Pilots don't whine and cry that they don't get the big gun on the Lib. So why should tankers get the big gun on the MBT? If they don't like sharing control the Lightning is always there. Always ready.

Liberator has a very big gun on the front and it's not practical to fly and use a belly gun at the same time. Not being able to use a cannon when it's perfectly easy to do so since driving is super easy in this game is not appealing. Simply and bluntly put, it's dumbing down gameplay to make the game more appealing to people who want an advantage just by having superior numbers and showing a minimum level of organisation.

I've been in very large fights and, at most, I've seen like 5-10 libs, all sides included. That is more than acceptable. If I'm in a 200 man fight and there's a mere 10 MBTs in the entire thing, that is perfect. That's the perfect ******* ratio. A handful of powerful tanks supporting the dozens of infantry. I would love to see MBTs with the same kind of numbers as libs. Also I disagree that there is no equivalent for the Lightning. Pre-splash nerf (which was stupid and should be undone) a Lightning's HE cannon could effectively one-shot entire groups of infantry. It was BETTER than rocketpods. It's HEAT turret could kill MBTs quite effectively as well as infantry, since it's overall DPS was pretty close to the MBT's guns. Lightnings are very, very good tanks they just get overshadowed by MBTs.

Liberators are still powerful units, more powerful than MBT. One can shut down squads if not kept in check. 10 libs is an insanely large number. Lightnings are quite good but most people don't want something that dies so easily and is so situational. ESF can get away from trouble and rocket pods are useful in many more situations. ESF to Liberator leads to a fall in ability to evade and hunt targets that is not seen with the tanks. In terms of tanks their abilities to do this can be said to be greater. And a lightning cannot destroy a MBT in one "clip," definately not with HE and not with anything else.

Even in the days of liberator "spam" you never, -EVER- saw 50 libs in a single battle. The sole exceptions would be when entire outfits did it for giggles. In a normal fight, no matter how large, even when libs reigned supreme, you never saw 50 libs like you do with MBTs. The spam was different because libs were strong. But y'know what, if there's 50 players willing to work together to field a large armor column, why the hell shouldn't they? It hampers zerging, but zerging =/= large numbers.

Numbers are not as relevent as how effectively and easily they shut down other sorts of play. If anything smaller numbers dominating is worse than a zerg as it worsens the ratio of farmers to chumps and leads to more frustration with the game. At least prowler zergs were somewhat democratic, for tr at least. Lib farming was just a small elite on all sides laughing at the rest of the player base.

Also keep in mind that 2-man crews aren't the only limitations we're putting in place. Add onto that the fact that MBTs could only be spawned at tech labs or the warpgate. Would cost 450-500 resources. Have a lengthy cooldown. And it would take some dedicated team effort to field a large number of MBTs. And if we're wrong, if people do still spam them, then we'll just have to find ways to limit them further. It's not like our ideas would be implemented and never touched. We can't see how players would interact with this since the devs refuse to even attempt to fix the game. All we can do is base our theories off how the community acts right now. If we're wrong, we fix it. If we're right, the game gets balanced. No harm done either way.

Resources and cooldowns are mostly not relevent. If they were then there wouldn't be a need for this discussion.

The default dumbfire launcher is a weak, single-use rocket. You fire it once and then have to go back to a terminal to resupply. It costs resources. Pretty worthless on it's own but a squad of HAs could still kill a tank by focus-firing it.

Jack-of-all-trades launchers like the anni, phoenix, lancer, striker, these wouldn't exist. You'd have to specialize into AA or AT. So basically juist the original crow/hawk. They would do significantly more damage but are big and heavy and thus limit what you can carry. If you equip one of these launchers you lose access to large weapons like shotguns or LMGs. You have to suffer reduced AI capabilities in order to run around with these big AV weapons. However they would do significant damage to tanks.

Like the default launchers they'd only fire off 2-3 shots before running out. They can not be resupplied by engis, their rockets cost resources and must be restocked same as grenades or c4.

This would allow dedicated AV HA's to do their role admirably. A single AV HA could do a lot of work against even our buffed MBTs that we want. But they can't do everything. If they want to kill tanks, they can't kill air and are weak against other infantry. So you actually have to choose which is more important, killing infantry, tanks, or air. I think that would be the best approach. Then, just like with our tank idea, the rockets could be buffed. Because there'd be far fewer of them and they'd be more cumbersome to use.

And you think my idea of tanks costing certs would be so unpopular as to be unworkable? Just making it so that it would take three dumb fires to the back of a MBT to kill it would cause a large ruckus.