Very true, but the trick is getting close enough to do that. You generally don't have tanks without either air or ground support for this reason. Plus modern tanks in the real world can drive upwards of 80km/h even over pretty rough terrain, so I'm quite sure those from the distant future should be either much faster than that, or much better armoured. Right now they're slow and terribly armoured.

Map design also has a large part to play. Most maps are designed with some kind of bizarre Moba laning mindset where Vehicles are forced into deliberate narrow paths. Urban areas should naturally be hazardous to any vehicles in any century but the lack of freedom to do a generous u-turn is hurting the transports of other factions more than the Eldar due to worse maneuverability. In my opinion a vehicle should be able to fully circle completely 360 on most of the roads on all maps save for certain predesigned bottleneck areas. Then driving to keep the vehicle alive would be much more fun and rewarding. Right now the laning system is like driving a vehicle on rails. Very little room for creative driving. Even medusa which is arguably the largest 'open map' so far and where vehicles are strong suffers this problem.

You do make an interesting point about the lanes though, @Orkan , because they're rarely used for that purpose.

How about, rather than Meltabombs doing massive instant damage, they are effectively a mine, and if an (enemy) vehicle drives over it, it takes some damage, but also a really long stun? So you would need to predict where the enemy tank will drive and place the meltabomb in advance, then go smoosh it once it's immobilised.

It could have a reasonably wide radius, with bell-curve damage the closer to the epicentre the vehicle is at activation. It would be stunned for the same amount of time no matter where in the radius it hits.

The benefit of this is that you're only going to be able to use a Meltabomb on a moving target and then, only if you were able to spend a few seconds placing it first. If a vehicle is stationary, you'll need to destroy it the old-fashioned way using your gun.

Hmm, melta-mines. Perhaps persistence of the weapon would be a server load problem, in that multiple mines placed by multiple players would have to have a lifetime and be registered as objects within the game world. This would effectively mean that Meltabombs as they are now just cease to exist and force AV work into mostly minework which would be extremely effective given the laning which exists. Do your mines affect friendly vehicles, can skimmers abuse the whole system by skimming over them? - probably not, a proximity trigger would be all that would be required but how well would bEhaviour implement such a mechanic if we are having such a debate at the existing means of point blank AV? : )

I'm not sure, I'm in two minds at this proposal I would like to have meltabombs in but the idea of additional mines sounds appealing. The mechanic would have to be sound however and a minesweeping counter would have to exist. The laning of the maps woud just make AV work incredibly frustrating as vehicle paths are just so predictable in this game. Even in Planetside mining up vehicle spawn points was the norm and very frustrating when, not if, they caught you.

I will admit once an Eldar player gets the meltabomb bundle their fusion gun becomes almost unused and that is an unhealthy meta. Fuegans resolve adds much needed diversity but does not solve the controversy of the meltabomb bundle.

What if, rather than exploding for instant damage, Melta Bombs performed a DoT equivalent to a Melta burst once activated?

I don't think that is a solution as the whole controversy resides in the fact that once both meltabombs are placed the Tank is a definite gonner, even if it has 10 seconds of life left and a few spawns left. Placing said bundles is very quick ergo doomed tank as soon as Fire Dragon touches base. Its about having a counter, an ability to interrupt the destruction.

Here is why I disagree with the setup timer idea. A foiled/shot bomb does not return to your inventory, it means forcing a resupply. This is an unbalanced scenario as engaging a dragon in mid fusion burn means you can kill them and save the tank. The Dragon however has a chance to kill you and resume the burn which kills the tank. That is fair. Forcing a setup time is not fair as it renders the bombs useless if interrupted or blown up by the defender.

If it was a press 'e' to setup the bomb the fire dragon is a sitting duck where their speed and smaller hitbox will not save them as they stand still interacting with said melta bomb to arm it for the time necessary to have it explode. Another unbalanced way. I truly feel that increasing vehicle hitpoints is the solution but am still, as always, open to discussion.

Well, it does in the sense that a regular Fire Dragon can't afford to equip both!

I was thinking about the whole 'mine' angle and I think it would make for some interesting gameplay: If you're an AV class, you could pop the melta-mine right in front of a transport that's parked with its back against a wall, then start shooting. Someone might come and try to move the transport so you don't destroy it, driving it straight into your waiting bomb. Awesome.

I take your point about objects persisting in the map, but surely the performance cost will be minimal for a stationary object of which there would be unlikely to be more than 10 in play at once?
I suppose you could have it so each player can only have one (or two with the bundle) active at any one time, so if you place a second (third), the first disappears and so on?

The other problem with mines that you may be forgetting is GW as there is no normal mine taken by troops they may just not let them exist in EC. Though I see dropping the Melta bundle and increasing the Melta bomb damage so one Melta does more damage but require a full heat or more (1.5 I think at most) to destroy a tank would bring the TTK in line with other races for Eldar and also make it more defendable as you could kill the FD before he gets his full heat off.

Yeah, in some respects it would be nice if the source material the game was working from wasn't so rigid in certain ways.

AV capabilities are all over the place and far from balanced. We need to bring a lot of AV weapons and loadouts "into the fold" and balance the most powerful(some OP) AV weapons and loadouts.

Example:


Iron Bane Axe clearly states this is an AV weapon. It costs 400 LP and takes about 60 seconds to destroy a vehicle using this weapon, the time it takes to deliver 30 to 50 melee attacks.

Meltabomb bundle is clearly and AV weapon. The bundle costs 400 LP and it takes about 2 seconds to destroy a vehicle, the time it takes to place 2 meltabombs.


Massive imbalances like this need to be worked out. Overpowered weapons systems and loadout options need to be reigned in. Under performing AV weapons need to be brought up to par.


In addition to doing a thorough review of all AV capabilities and reigning in the obviously OP(and underpriced) AV weapons we need to probably give vehicles more methods of surviving. "Active Armour" and other passive vehicle loadout options should eventually be looked out. Yes vehicle loadouts.