Imagine, you are driving along in your Predator. Nothing serious, just purging some heretics and xenos left and right, like every Tuesday. And then you see your greatest enemy and your blood freezes in your veins: SPEED-BUMPS! 1. Difficult Terrain: Make tanks in a way that they can only drive up small inclinations. And then cover the area in tiny bumps. Infantry can step right over it, but a tank can't drive over that pebble because it has an inclination of more than (arbitrary number) 45°. So, bring all the tanks you want. But remember that you cannot steamroll the enemy with them, because your tanks cannot follow your infantry everywhere. Imagine, you are rolling your army of Predators, Rhinos, Vindicators, Whirlwinds and Land Raiders to an enemy fortress, only to find out that the only terrain where your tanks can drive is no wider than a road. One long column of tanks... No room for mistakes or miscommunication. AND a good reason to send Scouts first and to make a good map and a good plan. 2. Problems with shooting: No matter how much firepower your tank has, if you can't hit, it's all for nothing. * Make the turn-speed of the turrets so low (abritrary number: 360°/10s) that they can only hit slow enemies. Good luck taking out a Jumper, or a Tactical running from cover to cover or a bunch of Banshees running zig-zag across the battlefield. * Give the gunner a screenshake after each shot, so he has to readjust the crosshairs. * Large cadence for the main-gun. Arbitrary number: 5-10 seconds per shot. So, bring all the tanks you want. But remember that the only thing you have a good chance of hitting is another tank. I think, I wanted to write more, but I forgot.
Watching the twitchs the accuracy seems to already be a challenge. And the purpose of having treads is to avoid getting pixel screwed.
I may be in the minority, but I have no problem with tanks roving the battlefield as long as infantry can take them out in various ways. If you roll up to an enemy fortress and just sit, you probably won't last long. I expect tanks to be more of the 'in between bases' platform. In open field armor should be plentiful. Give us the tank battles there, with the infantry battles at the bases (not that infantry won't be in the field too). With melta bombs, meltaguns, lascannons, bright lances etc I think infantry will do just fine against tanks as long as they have some cover. I expect tanks to be a great tool in helping get to the base, and then be much less useful what with all the cover, walkways, bunkers and that would assume you can even get one in which I doubt in most cases.
A) Your suggestion boils down to "make tanks not tanks at all". Tracked vehicles are specifically designed to cope better with that sort of terrain than wheeled ones. B) Eldar tanks can fly.
Even though we haven't seen one fully crewed in a proper battle or all of the level design of terrain covering Arkhona. I think tanks are fine the way they are going. Devs say they intend to make them a rare strategic choice. They will have that slow turret rotation for gunner. They can look in any direction but have to wait for their turret to catch up like in World of Tanks. I wonder though if tanks will have perches on mountains to fire away at targets inside a base like Planetside 2 has, I would like to avoid that. And I wonder what their weapon range is. And I wonder what their choices for armaments/modifications. There's also that saying which I did not make up just now... "Tank shoot good, then you shoot better! Also teamwork." There are a number of ways to counter tanks already and in the future of EC. Tanks are also only as good as the infantry supporting them.
It seems the best way to deal with tanks should (and probably will) be to out manoeuvre them and hit them in the side/rear armour or get up close with grenades/powerfists, just like in the TT. This should see tanks rule the open fields (when they have the right support) but get bogged down in dense terrain areas where an infantryman could be hiding behind any corner to stick a meltabomb in the exhaust pipe. I suspect the actual balancing of them in terms of requisition will be a trial and error process, it's obviously way to early to put an actual value on them. One thing I'd like to see though from the TT is some random damage results - instead of the tank just being destroyed, there is a chance a powerful hit will blow off one of the weapons or stun the crew for a few seconds, then when it's destroyed, there is a chance it will explode instantly, killing the crew, or a chance it will just become a wreck that provides cover for a while.
I think tanks should play out just like they do in real life. Tanks and mechanized infantry would rule the open fields, but when it comes to forests, urban areas, and other zones of rough-going, infantry should be the best option. They also need to make sure anti-tank equipment is readily available, and one cool thing they could add is an ability for normal infantry to assault a tank, prying open hatches and exposed areas and throwing frag grenades in them, just like in real life during desperate situations. That would make tankers think twice before going into a town without infantry support, and some anti-tank mine type things would be good.
the current tanks look more underpowered to me 2-3 las cannon shots kill them that will be real hard for tanks since las cannon is such an accurate long range weapon with rays which travel by the speed of light I like the idea of the crew does not get always killed there should be something like a 10% chance the tank explodes and kills all crew +AoE dmg this would be super rewarding but rare (maybe you can increase this chance with weapon upgrades ) tanks should be overpowered a predator needs 5 players to be fully effective! that's a lot when we compare it with PS2 the balance should come buy making them expensive let a squad safe up to 2 hours looting reqs for a tank give it 1 h cool down for the whole squad when the leader has chosen to spawn it a good tank team should be able to change the result of a combat so also a good antitank team can do this
I'm picturing a flying Veteran with a Power Fist doing the "ground slam" attack with it, hitting a Predator on the way down... That's a good point though - What regular classes are most geared towards taking out tanks? I picture Devastors using heavy weapons like Krak Missile Launchers or Lascannons, Tacticals being so damn versatile that they can use, say Krak Grenades, Melta Bombs and all sorts of stuff, depending on the outfit and Assaults being rather boned, unless they have a heavy weapon like a Hammer or Fist to pound it with.
I do believe the maximum incline a vehicle can scale was listed in IA publications (IA 1 and 2 if I remember right), so it could even be varied by vehicle.
