I posted this over in the beta version on the site and it got some good debates and some fantastic feedback on how we can make the game focus on Infantry and bring the Warhammer world of fighting to life.

I want to first discuss what it means playing Warhammer, I have to hold my hands up and say I haven't really played Table Top (TT from now on) for the last 5 years, I've recently got back into the hobby and discovered some huge changes (One being the Necrons now have personalities of Napoleonic Officers who drink wine and offer terms), which in some ways have made the game more fun.

Having vehicles in TT is good, it shows that you have a good army and can counter players tactics but at the end of the day it’s the infantry units that bring the glory, I’m talking about your Scouts, Marines, Guardsmen etc, these are the units that win battles, these are the units that give you the bragging rights to slander and mock your friends force. Can any TT players really argue that taking out your enemy HQ or wiping a squad from the game with infantry units doesn't make you feel like Creed himself?

This kind of focus, enjoyment and achievement of killing players via infantry needs to be the core of the game; it has to make you feel like you’re the ultimate warrior. Some people may find this post and think I hate vehicles or suck at flying, tanking etc, let me stop you before you post a hate filled response on why my disloyalty to the Emperor should have me cast down into the Eternal fires.

I’m a huge fan of getting a team of tanks, planes, jets etc together and hitting the enemy hard but you have to look at what this game is, this is Warhammer 40K and to have the main focus taken away from infantry would just turn this game into a Planet Side 2 clone, plus in some areas it will abuse the lore so bad it would have Matt Ward giving a thumbs down.

The DEVs have already stated that they are taking inspiration from a few games, one being Planetside 2. Planetside had a rough ride at launch with vehicles but it has improved, it still has some problems but they’re slowly getting there. What I fear the most is that this game will copy the mechanic of Planetside 2, the DEVs stated there will be some kind of resource, but I fear the abuse of this resource and the forming of mass tank/aircraft ‘zergs’ you see in Planetside 2. I have rarely come across open ground where two armies have met in Infantry combat and battled it out to the last man. When I have encountered infantry combat it speedily descended into tank/air rush leaving the infantry to hide in cover, run out and get annihilated or re-spawn and bring back their own tank/air vehicle. This kind of behavior is installed in nearly every facility in Planetside 2, you can’t blame the player because all they’re doing is using the tools they’re given but when you have 30+ tanks camped outside a facility with the infantry unable to step out of the spawn room due to the mass spam of tank rounds it becomes annoying very fast.

In Eternal Crusade this has to change, we need players charging players, mass armies steaming into each other’s ranks, chain swords, flamers, powers fists – all kinds of melee weapons decapitating anything they meet. This is the kind of stuff that makes you feel like a hero, it gives glory for you army. Taking another players life by leaving their body a smoldering wreck from a Melta or taking off their head with the swing of your weapon gives more satisfaction and achievement than sitting in a tank on hill shooting.

I think vehicles should play a vital role in Eternal Crusade, you need to get from Point A to point B but taking the resource points, battling the NPC stuff should be down to the Infantry and the squads of players.

Thanks for the read, I hope other people share the same views as me.

in the TT, many infantry and special melee squads are really good at taking out tanks. just give us some weapon swap that will allow us to obliterate any tank we come in contact with. power fist ftw.

Some heavy hitting melee weapons would be nice. It would really make the player feel like a terminator if he could rip apart a tank with a pair of lightning claws or chain fists!

I agree wholeheartedly. I think the best way to bring out that visceral nature of the IP is by focusing the game on huge infantry battles. I just feel that mass armor tactics that I see across Planetside 2 just make me feel insignificant. Especially when I'm not kitted out to it. In my opinion, our loadouts should help us prioritize how I want to kill my fellow groundsloggers, not make me useless when I'm stuck facing armor. I'm with you in that I believe that vehicles should be primarily for transport but the spirit of this game should be in the individual warrior facing his peers mano to mano. Or bolter to bolter.

Like you said tanks should primarily be in a supporting role. I hated getting stuck in a battle in PS2 where I couldnt do anything against a massive swarm of tanks.

Hopefully EC makes tanks relatively expensive to field that way when they are used they are used carefully and not just thrown about like in PS2. That way the focus would be more on the ground units where it belongs.

I'm gonna take my response from the other thread also

Vehicles when done right can add a sense of scale to battle and contribute towards that heroic feel. The problem Planetside 2 had was that largely they were casualized. First off, their resource cost was a joke. I played PS2 from its beta in September of 2012 to about April or May of 2013. Not once in that period of time was there a point where I could not buy a tank or plane because I lacked resources and this was without resource boosters. Second, the respawn timer for vehicles could be completely negated with a few days of playing. Last and possibly the biggest, the driver of the tank also controlled the main cannon. These problems when mixed with each other led to mass tank zerging. In response to this, SOE gave all classes some form of anti-armor capabilities, which in turn led to tanks being more of an annoyance than a threat.

So if vehicles were to be "done right", make it to where the driver does NOT control the main cannon but instead has maybe some sort of lighter gun or no gun at all and make it to where vehicles have a real cost that would make players think about whether or not they should pull a tank.

Another good idea I saw (it was someone on this forum, I forgot who) was that only companies could pull tanks and the number of tanks they could pull was based on how many players they had. Let's say we have a company of 100 players and they can pull a tank per 20 people they have, giving them a total of 5 tanks. 1 driver and 1 gunner each takes 10 people from the 100 and leaves 90 as ground forces. This puts value on the tanks and makes them something that the company would want to protect and once they're destroyed you could put them on a 1-3 hour cooldown. By doing that, a company would only want to pull tanks when it really mattered, otherwise all their tanks could be on cooldown when they really need them.

Good ideas and I agree about the Planetside zergs. Hated that I became useless once tanks rolled onto the field.

With that said, chapters field very limited amounts of battle tanks. So if we're shooting for lore it would not make sense to have 30 predator tanks roll up the front-lines.

Tanks should be costly to field but devastating when done so. Seeing as how a Predator (for example) has many many options when it comes to dealing with infantry.

Yeah Planetside was a zerg fest many times and i do think tanks shouldn't be spammable in EC, too.

But I think those lone wolves should be able to shoot while driving(just in small and/or medium large vehicles).
Let them have less accuracy and a heavy, heavy reload time if u are alone in ,for example, a predator.
This will make them want to have a gunner, without disabling the option to go solo.

People want to be able to do things...even if the options aren't that good.

Solo players should not be allowed to requisition tanks. Or at least make their requisition income so slow, that they can get a vehicle once a week or something. Last thing anyone wants is some random solo players that have no idea what's going on (because he's not privy to anything beyond what the objective is) coming in on a wave of tanks shooting their own teammates.

This is a game about massive battles... solo doesn't really fit. People should join squads. Besides, its not like they are forced to stay... change squads as often as you do your underwear until you find one you like.

Easiest way to stop that is make the tanks have dedicated slots like Driver and then Main Gunner instead of allowing them to do everything from one position.