What would you have made the MBTs

what I want on my vanguard are :

1) attach 2 AA Max's on the rear
2) fix the damage bug ( i shot a MAX at point blank range and it did no damage at all )
3) fix the blank ammo bug
4) anti- hacker cannons with lock-on missiles ( hackers, I hate hackers )
5) range finder

That's all Folks

That's the thing though. In their current implementation they are fun for everyone. If two people want to jump in a tank they can. It's extremely effective. I'd argue that it's more effective than two tanks for Vanu at least since we have the Saron allowing the driver to use their AI gun and let the AV gun on top make quick work of tanks. If someone is playing casually and just wants to pull one quickly they can do that also. The implementation doesn't favor one choice or the other.

Also you mention people that want crewed MBTs being a large following. Even at PSU, where it was mostly PS1 Vets, the debate was always hotly divided and went for pages every single time it was brought up in an endless debate.

That said I've always been in favor of giving a driver the ability to relinquish the main gun for no gun letting the gunner switch between the primary and secondary. As my previous post said I don't like faction specific vehicles so giving Vanu a non-fixed turret would allow that feature. It's one we brought up to Higby as an option a few times, but the Magrider issue kept popping up and T-Ray was pretty confident back then that they'd never change it. (I have a few tweets and pictures that we talked about on the subject).

They're not fun for everyone, though. Not by a long-shot. Me and my friends would love to crew a tank, however the top gun just does not cut it. It's not the same. It's a secondary weapon and will always be a secondary weapon.Furthermore, the driver is still responsible for the main gun. I want to drive the tank, not gun it. Too many times I've lost a battle because my FPS tanked and I couldn't aim. I could still drive well enough, but I couldn't aim. Had my friend been on the main gun and not the secondary, we would have won. Beyond that, there's no benefit to taking one tank. My friend could grab his own Vanguard, and instead of spending certs on a top gun I could spend certs on armor or a chassis. All in all, the current setup couldn't be further from ideal. It benefits the battlefield crowd but nobody else.

And it's not even just those who want to roll as a crew. There are those who dislike how weak the tanks are. How fragile and generally how.... common they are. This can't be changed as long as a single player uses them, we can't end up with BFRs after all. So for as long as MBTs remain solo-man machines, they will forever be fragile and far weaker than they could be.

Back during beta, we had tallies that numbered well over a thousand players, approaching or even surpassing two thousand sometimes. That's a pretty hefty amount, and that's JUST people who took the time to post/vote, imagine all the players who never even look at the forums yet would still enjoy this change. ALL those players are being shafted while the more lonewolf players get to choose between an MBT or Lightning, that's not exactly fair.

And yeah, that seemed to be the more common solution since a lot of players were entirely unreasonable and adamantly refused to use the Lightning. The devs, namely Higby, said they would do something. He said on streams multiple times that they would include some way for us to have crewed tanks. Yet here we are, two months after launch and a 6 month roadmap laid out and not even the slightest hint that we'll ever get a crewed tank of any shape. It's for that reason that I'm so bitter and don't trust the devs. Since the crewed MBT topic was one of the most prominant issues all through-out beta, and the devs completely dismissed it.

The result of that dismissal being MBTs that are endless fluctuating between trash and broken and a vehicle (The Lightning) that serves literally no purpose beyond the skyguard turret, or being a throw-away tank if your MBT is on cooldown.

Also, the Magrider was NEVER an issue, we came up with dozens of ways to resolve that. So the devs claiming that as a reason for inaction just makes me even more bitter.

Overall, I like what they did with the Prowler with the latest patch. It's a big, swift box that becomes a firebase of death once it's deployed. Behind a screen of TR footzerg and with sunderer ammo support it becomes a truly fearsome support platform that projects a large area of denial. That said, it's a big target with some awkward accessibility issues in certain places.

I'm not as keen on the changes to the Magrider. It's nearly twice the size of most other tanks, yet has less armor, fire power, and a far more restricted main cannon. Agility and a strong secondary weapon(Saron) are its saving graces.. the former of which has been hit rather harshly. It's probably the tank that most closely represents its PS1 counterpart in that the Saron actually functions more like a main cannon while the forward cannon is more complimentary(and is useless in a hull-down position).

Vanguard.. Really, I'd just like to see them get a high velocity rail/coil-cannon that can pierce through multiple targets.. and a deployable 'cover shield' to mitigate incoming damage from a specific direction(a bit like a mana turret).

MBTs could be operated by one person, but they're far more effective when set up so their weapons counter different threats (I have the AP main gun and the Kobalt for secondary), or when they're set up to specialize (such as AP main gun and Enforcer rocket launcher).

TR users may say "why need a Lightning when there's a bigger and more powerful tank available that does the same stuff, only better".
The Mag is also quite different than the Lightning, but other than keeping up with Sundies, it's more useful in nearly every possible situation (with a Saron that includes finding a hull down position and holding the line).

I, being NC will reply:
The small tank drives off road 2-3 times as fast, it's also only 1/2 the target compared to the big tank, and accelerates much better. Lightnings can keep up with Sundies and Flashes to some degree, a stock Vanguard definitely cannot.
A hill that slows the Lightning down to 40-45 km/h will slow a Vanguard to 17 (top speed in 1-st gear).
Thus the two are significantly different and complement each other.

A stock chassis Lightning only becomes redundant to the Vanguard when the V gets Racer 3 and becomes quite speedy. When I get the L upgraded with Racer 3, it'll have unique abilities once again.

Anyone who has played the game for more than 5 minutes know that the driver and gunner both do not actually get weapons. The gunners "weapon" is just a plastic toy stuck on the top of the tank in the shape of a gun, there for lols and when your bored. Nothing else. This is why you see so many tanks driving around with only a driver and no gunner.

I don't agree with that logic primarily because speed ultimately doesn't do much in this game. So your Lightning can reach the fight 30 seconds faster. In exchange for that you also die three times faster. A Vanguard isn't so slow as to be a liability, the infantry and sundys may arrive first, but the Vanguards will be rolling up 30 seconds later to lay down support. It's not a big enough difference to actually change anything in the overall grand scheme of things. There's simply no solid legitimate advantage for taking the Lightning over any other tank. Anything a Lightning can do, an MBT can do. It may take a little longer for the MBT to arrive to do whatever it is it needs to do, but ultimately it still does everything better.

If getting somewhere fast actually played a significant role, I might agree. But since it doesn't, I don't think going fast is enough to warrant sacrificing survivability and offensive capability.

In general I would have made it so that they required a full crew to operate, increased the resource cost, doubled the hit points and removed the HE and HEAT turret. Tanks should be hunting other tanks or vehicles with there primary, not shooting at infanty as that is dumb. This would also allow infantry to not have stupid Lock On weapons as a requirement.

The game is so screwed up right now.

I would also remove the HE turret from lightning to leave it only AP or HEAT.

Personally I think that should be altered. Keep HEAT, since in real life tanks do go anti-infantry. But remove HE. Instead give a HE-type secondary gun. So you have three options, you can roll a full crew and your top-gunner can be your anti-infantry and protect you against HAs, the driver can swap to the top gun, but then you're immobile, or the gunner can swap to the top gun but then you lack the main gun. I think if the vehicle requires a crew you can justify it being able to fight infantry.

I would be happy with that. Still be an improvement on what we have now.

Well then, here's getting somewhere fast, undetected thanks to taking a path the Vanguard would struggle with:









After that he noticed me, so I was busy shooting straight and couldn't take more screenshots.

And here's a screenshot a couple minutes later:



Mobility is very important.

That's still not an advantage to the lightning, and if that enemy wasn't completely braindead he'd just turn around and axe you because you have half the health he does and half the firepower he does. A vanguard or prowler probably could have gotten up there as well and done even more since they can last longer and do more damage. There still isn't any reason to choose a Lightning over an MBT. I mean maybe if you can predict the future and know an enemy is going to be somewhere at a specific time and the only way to make it is to use a Lightning. But since you can't do that, it's better to roll with superior fighting power and arrive a few seconds late.

I had the advantage of a few more free shots, compare the size of the L's turret to the whole Mag, that's how a hull down Lightning compares to a Mag in the open in terms of target size:



And even if the Mag is a sniper and hits no later than with the second shot, I could disengage and drive behind the mountain quickly (just driving 5 meters backwards would do the job in the spot I was in the previous post), repair, come back from any other direction.
If I get lucky, it's 2 shots in the rear and victory (at close range the L moves quick enough to fire 2 shots in the rear of a Mag, no matter what the Mag does).
If not, I just pull back again and try a different approach, preferably from another hill I could easily use for cover.

Edit:

In fact a Python HEAT Lightning has more firepower than a HEAT Mag:
http://www.ps2calc.com/#weapon1=Lightning HEAT&weapon2=Magskater HEAT

Lightning- 1400 HP/3 seconds= DPS of 466.7
Mag- 1550/3.75 = 413.3

Hitpoints are 4000 for Mag vs 3000 for L.

Had you been in a vanguard you could have done everything the same, except been even better off since your shots would do more damage and you'd have more durability in case he wasn't a terrible tanker and actually shot you. Really I can't help but pit that sequence of screens on the enemies own incompetence. As a dedicated Vanguard driver I'd never let a Lightning engage me and take no damage. In my months of play during beta I had never once been killed by a Lightning in my Vanguard, and indeed killed them all fairly easily. Lightning's just aren't worth it. You can do everything it can do, but better with an MBT.

Regardless, if you think the Lightning is good, by all means. It's certainly not useless, it's merely redundant. I would much rather see the Lightning be the ground analog of the ESF while the MBT is the ground analog of the Lib. I.E., Lightning for solo players MBT for team players. But that wont happen at this point so if nothing else I'd just like the ability to take my Vanguard with a crew.

Where's my crew'd turret, Higby? You said I'd get a crew'd turret.

Prowler:


Vanguard:


Magrider: