What would you have made the MBTs

With the recent patches and buffs there is a lot of crying from some players and laughing from others. However it got me thinking on the MBT's in general and how... disappointed I am in the differences between them.

Sure we have the fact that:
Prowlers are faster and have a better ROF for their cannons, but have weaker armor.
Vanguards are tougher and have more damage per shot, but are slower.
Magriders are more manuverable and agile, but have fixed cannons

Apart from the Magriders being able to strafe, pre-patch, I never really felt that the bonus has helped me survive any longer.

The guns also are a point of disappointment for me. We have 3 different cannons that have tiny variations between them to make them better at a certain role. Then they are copy pasted onto each of the factions MBT with minor tweaks in stats and a faction specific cannon model that has maybe 1 minor difference between the 3 different types of round.

I feel they should have taken the faction bonuses (Speed, Strength, and Agility) and just ran with them to the point where all 3 tanks don't feel like they have cut and paste guns aside from a minor buff or nerf here and there and different particle effects.

Without further ado, my MBT ideas:

Vanguard

A beast of a vehicle with a ton of armor and far more survivability. They should balance that with having much poorer top speed and acceleration than any vehicle but increased momentum giving them the chance to push other vehicles and do increased ram damage at full speed. Their weapons should be railguns with extremely long range, a flat trajectory, more armor damage, but a smaller projectile and less splash damage than the other factions and really long reload speeds. It should have the anchored mode instead of the prowler with all of the original bonuses to reload speed.

HEAT weapon: A railgun that fires a blunt tipped round. Less accuracy at extreme range but when it impacts it fragments and causes a good amount of collateral damage.
AT weapon: A railgun that fires a thin round. Best accuracy out of the NC tank cannons and the best speed of all tank cannons. No splash damage caused by impact and the round is incredibly hard to hit infantry with.
AP weapon: A railgun round that creates a concussive shockwave along its path and a large one on impact.

These changes and the high tech weapons better support the idea that the NC leaders are the CEO's of large corporations (Freedom Fighters? HAHA! Propaganda I say!) with a lot of money to invest into tech and development.

Prowler

The apex of a hit and run vehicle. Lighter armor but a blistering top speed and acceleration. Turret revolution is fast and the overall turret is stabilized during high speed driving over terrain. Whereas the Vanguard had high damage/range weaponry the Prowler should have a grab bag of High ROF, low damage weapons. Their bonus is the ability to pop up a shield to block or reduce incoming damage but have the nanites drain incredibly fast, causing the shield to only last 2-5 seconds.

HEAT weapon: A 3 barreled rotary cannon that fires low damage, medium splash rounds. Only direct hits do large damage. Can be fired continuously but the ammo pool is a bit too shallow for this tactic to be used often.
AT weapon: A chaingun much like the Vulcan but accurate to the upper end of the medium range and having a much deeper magazine. Its spread however makes it a waste to use against infantry at medium range and is only really accurate against the larger silhouette of a tank. Angle of elevation keeps it from pulping nearby infantry.
AP weapon: A bank of rocket pods. These rockets are dumb fired and follow random trajectories once fired. Used for doing a moderate amount of damage spread over a very wide area. Ammo pool limited to 1 clip. Either trust your turret gunner or find an ammo tower or sunderer.

The changes better support the idea that the TR is a faction that is neither high tech like the vanu or has a lot of resources to pour into the development of high tech weapons. Everything used is based on tried and true weapons, just taken up to 11 in order to deal with the higher tech threats.

Magrider

Gets its normal hover bonus and all that imbues it with as well as the the front facing gun, but a huge disparity between its front and the rest of its armor. They are incredibly armored in the front (between my Prowler and Vanguard) but the weakest from behind. Weapons should be more varied than "plasma blob that is good at taking out X target" Top speed is moderately lower than the TR's and acceleration is moderately above the NC's. Deceleration should be slow and feel floaty. Magburner stays with the Vanu and when activated at the mags top speed they can overtake the Prowler at top speed for a few seconds.

HEAT weapon: A large plasma round similar to the Saron HRB round but with a higher damage and lower velocity. When it impacts anything not armored the plasma creates a blast radius that does moderate damage.
AT weapon: A continuous beam of plasma that pulls from a slowly regenerating pool of ammo. Firing makes the regeneration stop for 20-30 seconds. Damage increases as the target continues to be hit by it. This coupled with the narrow beam means that infantry take minimal damage.
AP weapon: A blob of plasma that gets fired in an arc. Slowest and largest tank round (can not fit through doors) and it explodes on contact with anything.

These changes better highlight the fact that the vanu, while using alien tech that puts them on a level beyond what any the of the TR or NC R&D departments can even dream, they are still figuring out whats possible and effective with the technology.


So, thoughts (remembering that this is mostly my opinion and the changes and weapon ideas were just for fun), anything you want to add or change, or a completely new idea for the MBTs?

I would have them like they are now but instead of turrets for different ammo, have different ammo to load into each turret.

turrets have a damage%, reload speed and optics modifiers in the cert tree, while ammo has it's own cert tree for mag size etc.

I like your ideas. Anything that promotes faction diversity in a balanced way is good in my book.

The core change I would make to ground vehicle game-play would be that they would operate a little more like an arcade simulator, and less like an FPS afterthought. Just some off the very top of my head for the Vanguard, Prowler, and Magrider:

Turret behavior

• The turret on MBTs should be operated by a second player. Period. There is no argument to the contrary when the Lightning fills the role of the solo tank. This would make MBTs rarer and more precious on the battlefield, increasing their value and increasing the quality of play on the ground by making lighter vehicles and infantry more free to do their thing without HE lobbing death machines everywhere they look.

• All tanks are stabilized by default, both in the vertical and the horizontal.

• Turret rotation speed is fixed at a default value rather than controlled by the user's mouse sensitivity. Using the fastest rotating Second World War tank turrets as a guide, we're looking at 15 seconds for a full rotation; 7.5 seconds for a 180°. Flanking will suddenly be a lot more meaningful, and it will increase Infantry ability to out-maneuver tanks at close range. Tanks will require assistance from other, lighter vehicles for cover and will become dependent on infantry in close-range combat.

Guns

• Tanks should be able to cert for a range finder optic that takes up the optical slot for the turret. With the push of a button, the gunner should start a count-down timer for the on-board computer to give a text display estimating the range of the target, which should correspond to range displays on the tank's gunnery optics. Higher certs produce a tighter range variable in the approximation. Pro players may well opt for different optics, but this would make gunning easier for those new to the game.

• Overall increase in HEAT and AP shell velocities to encourage longer-range tank battles.

• Overall decrease in reload speeds to encourage longer range tank battles by making them unable to react as quickly to immediate threats. This will increase the importance of a secondary gunner.

• High Explosive guns remolded into a short, snub-nosed weapon akin to some Second World War pieces. Reduced velocities mirroring the current under barrel grenade launcher (at the appropriate scale, of course) to force infantry farm tanks to get close in order to effectively use their presumably heavier, higher caliber shells with any accuracy beyond lobbing and hoping. Their lethality against infantry is increased, in exchange for putting them in a situation where infantry can potentially fight back with rockets. They will also be easier to identify.

Bump for interest.

Have you seen a line of deployed prowlers with sundy ammo support?

I tell you nothing looks like so much lead... it actually really does fit the TR motto

Personally, I'd have made them much like PS1. Each tank would have 3 seats, a driver, gunner, and commander/top gunner. Each tank would also have drastically different from one another, playing off their faction's strengths and weaknesses.

The Magrider would have a high degree of mobility, abusing it's magnets to get to absurd locations and dancing around incoming enemy fire. The trade-off is they're very fragile and easily destroyed should you manage to actually hit it.

The Vanguard would be a slow and cumbersome tank (relatively speaking) but have a high degree of durability, a lot of armor capable of soaking up a lot of damage. It would also have a much slower RoF, but each individual shot would do a significant amount of damage.

Prowlers would be very fast and have good turn rates, but be relatively weak in the armor department. Not as much as Magriders, but somewhere inbetween maggies and vannies. Their cannon would be more of an auto-cannon type setup. Each barrel would fire and reload independently and this could give it a fairly steady rate of fire, but each individual shot wouldn't be that strong.

I would also remove locational damage, making damage static no matter where you hit the tank. Along with that I would give them turret stabilizers so that we could get more dynamic tank battles, drivers driving around dodging shots and their gunners firing at will.

Everything here sounds good, especially 2-man MBTs. I've been kicking the theory around my head for a while and I'm curious; how would you balance the Magrider's fixed turret within your WW2 inspired system?

I really like your idea for HE, reminds me of the Demolisher

OP, your ideas are all solid, and I've seen variations of these themes kicking around the forums for ages. All for everything you suggest. Bump for great justice

@OP So the Vanguard would be a King Tiger, the Prowler would be a Sherman and the Magrider would be... an Attack Bomber?

You don't seem to have been here in beta, but back then there was a CONSTANT stream of threads discussing two-manned MBTs. Literally every question you could ever think of had been answered. It's a shame those threads are all gone.

But to answer your question, the solution for the Magrider was that it would be the only two-man tank and would work a lot like it's PS1 counterpart, only flipped. In PS1 the driver got an anti-infantry gun that was mounted on the front of the tank, so it moved as the driver moved the tank, same as it works in PS2. The top gun was the main gun that the gunner got. That exact same set-up could be used in PS2. The driver gets the secondary weapon whereas the gunner gets the primary weapon. With the Prowler and Vanguard they each get 3 seats, a driver who has no weapon, a gunner for the main gun, and a gunner for the secondary gun. The magrider's advantage here is that you only need 2 players to get maximum effectiveness while the other two tanks require 3. However that is also balanced out by the fact that the magrider's secondary gun is fixed forward, whereas the Prowler and Vanguard have both guns on turrets operated by players who can look around, spot targets, and attack those targets while the driver focuses on driving.

I also think the ammo idea is good.
But expanding on that different guns should bring different firing characteristics.

High velocity turret to fire very low arc shots. But with a smaller caliber shell. Less damage, higher rate of fire. Then the choice of ammo for tge gurret would be ap or heat.

Heavier calibre turrets could specialise. For instance lower shot speed. More curved arc. Higher damage. Wider choice of ammo.

The choice becomes which turret you prefer. Balancing rate of fire. Damage. Shell velocity. Ammo type choices. Accuracy.
Increasing one stat for aturret decreases another.

Plus bring back gunner using the main gun. The mag with sauron is the only tank which feels this way.

Mags are more tank destroyer styled model. And if thats tge way you go. You ensure they have monstrously good frontal armour. For poor rear.

Gunless driver style MBTs just won't fly with majority of PS2 players. Not to mention all the certs and SC we spent. If we started with them, yeah. With different cert model; like drivers having defence/performance part of cert tree and gunners weapons one. So instead let SOE come up with next tier of tanks that fit the role. Next 6 month plan maybe? At which point they will of course lower current MBTs' HP.

Location damage would be fine if it were location and not based on incoming projectile's vector.

The more diversified you make them the more tear soaked forums you get. I'd rather have fun, balanced fights than wildly different vehicles that follow balance curve of gamma ray wavelength sine. Dude's vehicle is painted in wrong colours. That's enough.

Mortar style AI guns ... won't work. Client-side hit detection. You can't see them you can't hit them. And planting slow firing, high arc thing on an open ground = /suicide.

Personally I would have designed them identically to one another with different graphics. Start with the hitbox being like the Vanguards and a single pivoting turret. Vanguard would be more scrappy than its current version graphically built out of warn steel plates. Prowler would be pristine with slight curves to resemble the PS1 prowler without the bulk. Magrider would be dual hover tread that function identical to tracks low just above the ground. With all of their hitboxes the same and using pivoted turrets and identical handling I'd then allow numerous sidegrades for dual cannons, AP cannons, AI cannons. All with different names and graphics for their shells and effects (purple explosion for VS, shrapnel explosion for NC, fragmentation explosion for TR). Then for abilities shields, large non-IR smoke, IR smoke, lock-down. Then the normal armor plating upgrades.

You might be thinking "oh man he took away the differences". Nah just specialize using sidegrades. 3 round AI burst cannon graphically for the TR is a triple barrel rotating cannon. For VS it's a cool energy cannon, and for NC it's a 3 stage coil gun that loads 3 shells at a time. Same hitboxes. No one's the wiser. (Except the people asking for nerfs for one faction I guess, but that's expected).

This is precisely why we wanted to get the MBTs fixed before launch. Had the game started with crewed MBTs, new players would just go "I wanna go solo, I'll take the Lightning" or "hey this is kind of neat, Battlefield doesn't do this, I'll give it a try" and take an MBT with their friends. But after launch, there's no chance for it. Sony didn't listen. They promised us an alternative method, like a stronger gun you could buy that required a gunner. But sony being sony seems to have forgotten about that.




That being said, if anyone is curious about the whole multi-crew MBT situation and wasn't here during beta, I'd be happy to answer any questions. I loved arguing for crewed MBTs, the idea of me and my friends working together in a tank is VERY appealing. And so I generally love discussing the idea.

Magrider would be Stug4

using its low profile to hide and position itself at advantage point to ambush enemy armor. Generally a great defensive weapon.

Eh..

They were pretty fine.

I'd just have fixed that strafe+forward torque adding together on Magrider, which they did.
I'd have given AP more velocity, which they did for the Prowler and Vanguard.
I'd have made Vanguard shield complete invulnerability for the duration and reduced the falloff on the Vulcan some.

Instead the Vulcan has no falloff at all now, with its damage just reduced 15% up close but doubled at range. Prowler AP rounds go faster than Sniper bullets now. Vanguard shield is even worse with the huge buffs making the Prowler eat through it easier. Prowler HEAT is ridiculous.

No one asked to make Prowler HEAT rounds better than Vanguard AP AND splash. Sane people just wanted more velocity on the AP rounds and didn't ask for more damage, too. And we wanted less falloff on the Vulcan, not none.

Over at PSU we had this debate a thousand times. Crewed MBTs just weren't fun for drivers. In my years of PS1 I always forced my friends to drive the Magrider so I could snipe infantry and planes. The current setup where both the driver and gunner get weapons and the tank is still operable with a single person is just a much more appealing setup. I feel like that's the direction all vehicles should go in. The Liberator in PS1 handled this flawlessly. It could be use solo with the amazing front gun or with a bomber. In PS2 they brought this over nearly perfectly as when my friends aren't on I can easily jump in and fly by myself taking out ESFs and Sunderers, but with a gunner it changes to a different vehicle which is unique in its playstyle.

This is obviously subjective since a lot of people enjoyed the PS1 vehicles. I enjoyed them when gunning so the transition to also driving is easy since driving a lightning while shooting was already second nature.

The problem is crewed MBTs WERE fun for drivers. Does that mean they were fun for everyone? No, But there's a reason thousands of players have asked for crewed MBTs in PS2, and it certainly isn't because they weren't fun.

The thing you have to understand when dealing with something like this, is that you can't please everyone. You can't make one vehicle applicable for all play styles. But that's the glory of it, you don't have to. You don't wanna drive around a gunner? You like being able to work the vehicle yourself? Take the Lightning. You enjoy working as part of a crew? Take the MBT. Both tanks could have catered to both styles of play, thus making everyone happy. The problem with allowing an MBT to be taken solo is it renders the Lightning worthless. Why take a Lightning when I can take a significantly more powerful tank?

You mentioned the Lib, and that's a perfect example of how it should be done. A one-man Lib is quite inferior to an ESF. No skilled ESF pilot will ever lose to a slow and cumbersome Lib. The Lib is at it's best when it has a pilot focusing on flying and a gunner focusing on shooting. But both parties get a vehicle that caters to their taste. Those who enjoy teamwork can grab a Lib, those who just wanna go solo can take an ESF. Tanks need that.

At this point they should just remove the Lightning from the game, replace it with the skyguard and introduce new heavier tanks that work like PS1 tanks. Basically, the current MBTs will be knocked down to the Lightning's level and the newer, crew-oriented tanks will replace MBTs as the top dog. Because there are literally thousands of players who want the ability to take a crew in a tank, there is no good reason why we should be ignored while solo players get two tanks to choose from.

I'm not sure we need much of an MBT overhaul; the cert system already allows for a staggering amount of variation. At most, I'd add three- or four-man vehicles to the mix. However, we could use some more versatility for our IFV (the Sunderer has just the wrong design for that), some ATGM and SAM carriers and a whole lot of combat engineering vehicles like AVLBs, mine clearers and so on.