I think it's a little over optimistic to be expecting that level of incredibly detailed damage model. The games that have it are specifically focused on (vehicle) realism (WoT, ArmA etc) and aren't built to have 200+ people in a battle. The last thing people are going to want is to get caught in the open due to being hit in the treads/engine and given that tanks are looking to have a relatively short ttk, it's only going to lead to player frustration. The simplified version (front of vehicle takes least damage, rear most) is probably going to be the most advanced it gets, because it doesn't require huge amounts of work to implement and allows players to exploit ambush opportunities.

Lancer and pre-nerf anni were great for camping on a hill and obliterating air/vehicle zergs lol. I totally agree the dev's need to make sure early on they plan on how the weapon will work when coordinated in mass numbers because all vehicles are going to feel like glorified taxis if they can be near instantly destroyed by a 'small' number of players wielding high accuracy+power+velocity AT weapons. And before people point out that players should attack that group as infantry, remember this is (generally) going to be alongside a major battle and there is going to be plenty of others to get through before you reach the vehicle sniping nest.

Or not even! We used to set up what we called "no fly zones" during off time back on PS2 Jeager, where we had 3o dudes all camping on some forsaken hill by an enemy warpgate all armed with annihilators. No guild was going to waste time on us, and no bunch of pubs could possibly be coordinated enough to get enough people to trek out there at once and kill us, so we'd just farm vehicles to our hearts content. Vehicles are big targets - you don't need to be in the same battle, hell, even the same map zone, to fire at them. And again, this was with a rocket launcher so weak it took 3 clips to kill one tank by yourself - it only shone when you had a dozen people firing at once.

Imagine what could be done with a 2 shot kill, sniper-accuracy hitscan gun with no requisition cost. The devs are gonna need to be hella careful.

Haha yeah, we did that on Briggs. The rock column between xenotech and crossroads was our favourite spot, especially if there was a zerg in the area, the close second was camping the SE Indar warpgate just to piss-off the NC.

I think the entire vehicle-infantry balance in EC is going to be an incredibly fine balance because of the sheer power of many of the AT weapons infantry get access to. The lascannon I'm a little concerned with, because it's mostly going to be balanced around its refire/reload time to stop it being an effective infantry sniper and not around it's range which is going to control it's effectiveness against vehicles (how the reduced the AT mana's effectiveness). The lack of aircraft is going to make the vehicle-infantry balance much easier (although, still fine) than it is in PS2 because the devs don't have to worry about how aircraft will be effected by the changes in vehicle/infantryAT weapons.

4 shots to kill a tank could be problematic as well, since the Predator Annihilator has 4 lascannons (two on the sponsons, a twin-linked pair on the turret).

This means currently, if we have a Predator Annihilator it would be able to insta-gib any opposition with an alpha strike. This is on top of the fact that any Predator potentially has 5 Lascannon-toting Devastators inside it.

I really hope it takes a long time to bail out of a crew slot in a vehicle, nothing worse than finally wearing one down only to have the crew instantly bail out as the HP gets down to the last sliver.

If they reward the vehicle kill and the player kill I don't see it to much as a problem. You either have people complain about vehicle bailers (which is almost non-existant, an exception for aircraft pilots though) or people complain it takes them way to long to get of their vehicle.

That's kinda the point, it does take a long time to get out of a vehicle. So make them choose-- do you ride it out and hope to kill whatever it is that's pounding your tank or do you bail out early and try your luck on foot?

or do you choose to stay the hells out of the big rolling metal coffin with the glowing neon target painted on its side in the first place lol

My point was is that complaints about people bailing from (land) vehicles is near non-existant, if you've forced them to bail (and you don't feel the need to bail) you can probably take the 1 lascannon shot before you use the maingun to turn them into pink-mist. Adding a delay to enter/exit is a haphazard fix to a non-problem, it effects every single player who is going to use a vehicle, whereas it'll only stop the bailer winning in the closest of tank on tank battles.

Well, part of the issue is the fact that currently you need 4 Lascannon hits to kill a Predator (which is currently the most heavily armored vehicle revealed, unless the Orks get a Battlewagon) but said Predator can carry 5 Devastators who, currently, could each have a repair kit and a lascannon.

So let's say you roll up on a Predator with a pure anti-infantry loadout (autocannon+heavy bolters). They know they're not likely to win a tank duel, so they just all five hop out of their tank (possibly setting it rolling first so it'll keep going and draw your fire away from them, since bailing isn't always initially obvious) and fire their lascannons at the same time.

Your vehicle gets instagibbed (even if one misses or you manage to eke out some repairs between shots), they repair any damage done to their tank and get back in.

Of course, one very easy way to avoid this would be to simply make it so that you can't take a lascannon (or similar heavy weapon) inside a Predator. Same goes for assault marines due to melta bomb cheese.

In a more general sense, reasonable restrictions on what tank crews can bring with them would help avoid situations where you blow up a tank only to find that you are now facing a group of infantry that is far more dangerous than the tank they were riding in.