Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

1: NC

2: NC and TR

3: NC, TR and Vanu

[Knight of Fools]

I get inordinately pleased with AA. A proper AA rocket launcher will probably be my next investment for when I don't want to/can't afford my AA MAX.

The only major problem with the game right now, as I see it, is the disproportionate strength of armor against infantry. AA options evened the playing field a lot with Infantry versus Air (Though I wouldn't mind seeing the option for a Heavy to carry a single burster), but Infantry versus Armor needs something similar to the burster for Anti-Armor (That the Heavy can also carry). Rockets are just too slow to be effective against armor, and that's all infantry have for ranged engagements with armor.

You're forgetting about MAX AV weapons, lock-on launchers, the engi AV turret, mines, and C4.

Infantry have plenty of options against armor. They have more options against armor than armor does against infantry.

Yes, but armor is hardly helpless against infantry if it happens to have a particular build. Whether a tank has AI, AV, or AA, it's going to tear through Infantry with abandon. How much abandon depends on the exact situation, but you'll very rarely see a tank helpless against infantry just because it has a particular turret.

MAX AV weapons are typically rockets or slow moving projectiles, and all of them but the VS varients have a ton of drop. The only exception that are effective are the Ravens and the TR MAX lock-ons, but those cost 2000 certs to unlock both arms. Hardly something every infantryman will have. The VS MAX have the most effective long-range AV weapons among all the MAXes (And AI weapons, for that matter...), with the Vortex and Comet being actual projectiles instead of rockets.

C4 is useful mainly against small groups of tanks that don't have any radar or are too focused to check for people sneaking up on them. The larger the group gets, the higher your chances of getting caught are. You have to be right on top of the tank in order to use it, so it's hardly a viable long-range option (Which is mostly what I'm talking about). Since this is the only AV weapon for Light Assault and Medics, it makes their AV options extremely limited. Tank mines have the same limitations of C4, but are more "fire, forget, and hope something drives over it". It can be used like C4 against stationary targets, but it utility is very limited. C4 is more useful against MAXes and infantry than it is against vehicles.

Engineers have guided rockets that are very viable at the cost of 1000 certs, and heavies have lock-on launchers, but again, both of those are slow moving, with the additional warning for vehicles that have a lock-on. Any vehicle that sees it coming and has enough cover can easily avoid it.


And I meant something for infantry with an effective range and speed similar to the Burster. I just want a fast projectile weapon similar to the Burster, except with armor piercing. It should have the ability to a harasser similar to the Burster's ability to kill a fighter jet (Two non-extended clips of continuous hits) and similar accuracy, but without the near-hit flak damage that Bursters get. Nothing special, but powerful enough to make infantry more effective against armor that's more than a few feet away. These will be given to MAXes for both arms, and if they ever decide to let Heavies hold a single Burster Heavy Infantry would be able to use one.

Additionally, a new ammunition type "Armor Piercing" should be introduced, which is little more than a tool for harassing armor and making combat against lightly armored vehicles with small arms more viable. This will give all infantry something to hit armor with if they find themselves unable or unwilling to switch to a dedicated AV class (Like the Heavy). Its downside is that it is significantly weaker against infantry and doesn't do a whole lot of damage to armored vehicles.

[Flying Dice]

One possibility would be an anti-material rifle for Infiltrators. Give it a low magazine size, slow RoF, and long reload, along with limited ammunition. Say, 4-round magazines, and 8 shots to kill a MBT or 6ish to kill a Lightning. Obviously something would need to be done to make it largely ineffective against infantry, but that might be an interesting way of handling it. It'd give Infs an AV option (that would be an actual tradeoff), allowing them to harass and kill vehicles but preventing them from engaging soft targets or being sneaky bastards as effectively.

Basically the idea would be that it would be nearly impossible for tanks to pinpoint them, especially if they cloaked between shots, but their damage output would be low enough to allow vehicles to retreat safely if they weren't already at low health. Make them nearly hitscan and you also have an effective counter to Harassers.

[Toaster]

So... the Lancer for infils?

[BurnedToast]

One possibility would be an anti-material rifle for Infiltrators. Give it a low magazine size, slow RoF, and long reload, along with limited ammunition. Say, 4-round magazines, and 8 shots to kill a MBT or 6ish to kill a Lightning. Obviously something would need to be done to make it largely ineffective against infantry, but that might be an interesting way of handling it. It'd give Infs an AV option (that would be an actual tradeoff), allowing them to harass and kill vehicles but preventing them from engaging soft targets or being sneaky bastards as effectively.

Basically the idea would be that it would be nearly impossible for tanks to pinpoint them, especially if they cloaked between shots, but their damage output would be low enough to allow vehicles to retreat safely if they weren't already at low health. Make them nearly hitscan and you also have an effective counter to Harassers.

No, just... no. No.

We don't need tanks being killed from 1000m away by someone who's literally invisible (and even if you somehow magically knew where he was, immune to your shots) because he's out of rendering range. It was bad enough when it was engineer turrets, now you want a sniper version?

Tanks are actually mostly fine (imo). In small to mid scale battles it's easy enough to kill them. HA have various rockets, LA has c4, engineers have AV turret, the base AV turrets are really powerful, etc.

The problem is once they hit a critical mass it's very hard to kill enough of them to matter, and everyone runs away instead of trying to fight them, so they just plod along in a huge blob largely unimpeded. The problem is not the tanks... it's the insane amount of zerging and fight avoidance behavior of the community (something soe won't, and probably can't ever fix).

Allthough I would be happy if MBTs were changed to require a gunner for the main gun, and the driver got to shoot the top gun instead. More teamwork = good thing. It's why I like harassers being as strong as they are... each harasser is 2 - 3 people, it should be strong compared to a 1 man vehicle. If you nerf it, might as well pull 2 MBTs instead and the harasser turns into another overpriced transport that nobody ever uses (like the flash is right now)

[Flying Dice]

See, here's the thing. There are precisely two effective infantry AV weapons: the AV turret, and lockon launchers. Both are effective because they're nearly impossible to avoid, virtually impossible to detect (literally so if fired from beyond render range, at least currently), and able to kill faster than tanks can get to cover. In other words, cheese. So either you've got tanks splatting infantry with impunity because C4 and mines do fuck-all to a tank that keeps a healthy distance, or you've got infantry cheesing tanks that can't retaliate. Why, exactly, is a weapon with higher TTK and less damage per shot a worse thing than the AV turret, especially when you'd actually need to AIM and LEAD if the tank isn't stationary? If something that takes 8 shots to kill you starts pinging you, you've got time to scram and get out of range/to cover. If an AV turret round/lockon rocket hits you and you aren't already at long range and right beside cover, you're almost certainly dead.

I'll reiterate: C4 is fucking useless against tanks. It takes two bricks to kill a Lightning, which requires a) 700 certs, b) lots of infantry resources to keep your stock up, c) you to get into melee range with them without being killed, which is pretty much only possible in bases and certain parts of the mountainous regions of Indar and Amerish. And if it's a MBT, oh joy, you just wasted a bunch of resources because they're just going to drive off and repair.

Mines are even worse, being roughly the size of an ESF, and requiring the enemy to somehow not manage to see the giant warning signs on the road before driving over them. That's assuming you can a) find a choke point where mines won't be inadvertently avoided and b) do so in a place and time where enemy vehicles actually might come that way. Otherwise they're just a shittier sort of C4 for Sundie-killing.

As for the blindfire launchers? Heh, sure. Good luck landing enough shots to kill on a tank that isn't braindead even at close range, much less sniping you from 800m away.

[TolyK]

If you really want to main AA, invest heavily in the Skyguard. Nothing says "FUCK YOU" like a Lightning with thousands of rounds of ammo. Once you learn how to lead targets you can easily down an ESF in <3 seconds. More importantly and more amusingly is seeing libs and gals spaz out when the pinging starts. I've gotten more than one gal kill when the pilot panicked and flipped over completely while trying to land.

On the topic of lockon launchers, I actually get pretty many kills with them. A lot of that has to do with ESF pilots being arcade scrubs, though. So often I'll launch my first and they'll only start running after it hits, by which point I've gotten a lock again.

Even other ESF's.
Lock on, wait a few seconds for flares to pop up, wait several seconds, lock on again, then fire.

[NullForceOmega]

I think you're kind of missing the real problem here, tanks shouldn't be effective against infantry at all, the point of a tank is to be a huge mobile wall with a big gun for shooting other mobile walls, the counter to infantry is infantry (and air or light vehicles)  but conversely infantry have very few viable options against a tank, mostly placement charges and mobility.  If you want to point fingers at SOE for anything it should be that they inexplicably decided that armor is a hard counter to infantry.

[Knight of Fools]

I think the Battlefield series, for as far as it's gone into BroShooterLand the past few years, did a wonderful job of balancing Infantry, Armor, and Air. Quite a bit of that had to do with their level design, but just looking back at Battlefield 2 makes me miss how... pleasant the whole experience was compared to Planetside 2's haphazard, and often blind, approach to balance.

[NullForceOmega]

I could scream for hours about SOEs non-balance and total lack of anything approaching military knowledge, but it would be time wasted, they don't read this board, and they don't care what I have to say.  I just enjoy the game for flavor at this point, it looks very good, it plays smooth (most of the time) and while my NC heavy assault/MAX can't really kill anything without luck it's very enjoyable to play (until some lag-shielding scumbag shows up)

[Duuvian]

In my opinion infantry are fine against tanks. I use radar on both my Vanguard and Lightning out of fear of C4, and keep a Kobalt as my Vanguard secondary unless the squad I'm with is going tank destroying. Both the Lancer and the Striker are very good at stopping NC tank zergs if a half dozen or more people start using them from a decent spot. Phoenix could be good too, but I hardly ever see people using them in comparison to Strikers especially, and occasionally Lancer squads. Tank main guns, even HE, are really bad against people peeking over a hill looking down on you as you have to direct hit them as there is no hill behind them to splash them. You have to switch to Kobalt when they do that. I'd use the C85 modified Enforcer instead but it's just bad right now compared to the Kobalt with some zoom. If it had a 'choke toggle' to tighten the spread on it for long range use, I'd consider it. The AV turret can fire on tanks farther than an infiltrator with a 12x scope can have a reasonable hope of hitting the engineer (I think the AV turret should have less range). Tank mines are still pretty good even though they are now spottable, though I wish friendlies could not detonate them with gunfire or explosions.

Spoiler: Why tank mines shouldn't be destroyable by friendlies (click to show/hide)

 For example, there are outfits on Mattherson that drive shield penetrating Fury Sunderers into the center base of tech and amp stations loaded with Max suits, support and one infiltrator, and the only way to stop it and the subsequent terminal hacks and anti-infantry vehicle spawns from happening at low server population times is to tank mine the vehicle spawn ramps and the other shielded doors. However, nothing except constant vigilance from four people who would otherwise be defending can stop someone from logging on an NC alt and exploding those mines until you run out of infantry resources. Since you aren't killed by them, you don't get the Last Killer option on the report menu. It's only a big issue during alerts but when that happens it's very disappointing and a reminder along with people from other realms TKing tanks in a tank zerg with their alts why cross realming shouldn't have been allowed on the same server.

I think tanks should be good against infantry at long range if they are specialized into that. Also, as an NC, 2 bricks of C4 will destroy enemy MBTs. I'm not sure if it's the same with the Vanguard but I think so. It might be Sunderers you are thinking of; those will take two C4 and only be set on fire. Two tank mines will explode it immediately without some number of mineguard, though you will have to shoot the mines or throw a sticky mine at them if the Sundy is parked.

EDIT:
Balance Pass Post 1: Vehicle Weapons and the Harasser

[Satarus]

Harrassers require a minimum of 2 people to be effective.  MBTs and Lightnings require 1 person to be effective.  I think they are fine how they are.  They lack a good AA option other than what you could put on a MBT secondary. 

[Knight of Fools]

I think you underestimate how easy it is to find a second person in a game with hundreds of people playing at any given moment.

[DJ]

A moderately trained monkey could make for a passable gunner. Driving takes some skill, though. But driving and gunning at the same time is a real test of one's skill.

[Flying Dice]

Speaking of MBTs, it's sort of sad how I never play my Magrider any more. The nerfs to strafe speed apparently also fucked up turn speed and it's nearly impossible to aim the main gun now, especially against moving targets.

[zombat]

Cross factions would work fine if there was a cool down between changing factions.

Y'know... like in planetside 1