Much like my previous thread (found here) this thread is going to discuss indepth, my thoughts and suggestions for EC. Specifically it is going to tackle the much discussed and heavily debated balance between vehicles and infantry and how best to prevent tank zergs. TL : DR Tank zergs form because players prefer to transport themselves to the next base and to break initial resistance Tank zergs are only a problem when they are allowed (by poor design) to shoot into the base and at spawn rooms/choke points Rather than restrict tank spawns, make bases inaccessible to tank camping and give them a relatively high requisition cost AT weapons should not kill a vehicle in fewer shots than it would take to kill the crew individually ‘Engineers’ should repair at a reduced speed on vehicles that have been damaged in the last X seconds Repair Kits should not be available to certain classes Repair kits should replace grenades (or similar) and not have finite use (but still have an overheat mechanic to stop over-use) Tanks need to survive more than the entire crew individually (at least frontally) Tanks have an option for long range anti-infantry by sacrificing AT power Animations/Delays on entering/exiting vehicles are just asking for problems No AoE blasts when a tank/vehicle dies Vehicle crews should not be vulnerable unless they are explicitly exposed to incoming fire Why do tank zergs form and why are they a problem? For those who don’t know, a tank zerg is a large (atleast 10+) tank group moving from base to base, supporting infantry who try to capture it by destroying the frontline of enemy resistance and pinning them in spawn through sheer weight of firepower. It has been more or less agreed that they are bad but I don’t believe people understand why they are formed. A tank zerg begins in 1 of 2 ways, a predominantly infantry zerg captures a base that allows the spawning of mbt’s (which are used mostly as transport with a big gun) and a large distance between the base and the next one OR a platoon commander tells the troops under his command to grab vehicles (usually in response to an enemy armour zerg). The first method evolved because sunderers (the mass transport and mobile spawn) are heavily armoured but not heavily armed enough to beat back an enemy counter attack or to break through their first line of defence, so naturally players grabbed tanks to break that initial resistance. It was also because players prefer to transport themselves because more often than not, they were at the mercy of the transport driverse skill and map knowledge (which could be lethally inadequate). The problems started when players realised they could park their tank at a point where they could bombard the enemy spawn room but still be in relative cover (allowing them to pull back when damaged). This meant that the defending infantry couldn’t push out of the spawn room without being obliterated by heavy armour. Solutions to tank zergs The main solution that seems to be suggested here (on the EC forums) is to simply make tanks rare, usually by limiting their ability to be spawned. This however is punishing to those who want to specialise in tanks (just as there are those who want to specialise as an assault marine or a dark reaper etc) and I don’t think a player should be punished because other people have abused it in the past. The devs have said that they want players to be able to freely spawn vehicles when they want (assuming they have the requisition required) which means that this method is unlikely to ever be fully implemented. The simple solution (and my preferred one) is to make sections of (or entire) bases inaccessible to tanks, either by walls or unclimbable terrain. It stops tank zergs from spawn camping a defender into submission without crippling the games ability to have massive armour battles between 2 zergs in the fields between bases. Another simple solution (probably in conjunction with previous one) is to have tanks be expensive to summon, players are most likely to have a cap on how much requisition they can save up and this combined with an expensive vehicle will most likely stop most tank spam. Again it doesn’t affect players that pull a vehicle occasionally and it doesn’t stop massive armour battles from occurring but it does mean that you aren’t instantly back in a tank if you didn’t survive long enough to regain the requisition you spent.
‘Engineer’ and Tank Balance The balance between tanks and infantry usually mentions that you can often out-repair the damage a tank is receiving with the help from a few engineers. This is only a serious problem if a dedicated infantry AT weapon cannot out-damage the healing of 1 engineer, which should never be the case. But this means many engineers can out-heal the damage from fewer AT infantry. I personally don’t see a problem with this because if they have more engineers than you have AT, you probably need more AT (or at the very least more organised AT). But I can understand other peoples concern about this and I believe the simplest solution is to reduce repair speed if the vehicle has taken damage in the last X seconds. It means that a tank has to remove itself from combat to repair at a reasonable speed and if there are enough engineers, that even with the heavily reduced repair speed, are able to out repair the incoming damage they probably deserve to keep that tank in play. Since techmarines (and similar tech based classes) are not confirmed for launch, a stop gap of a repair ‘kit’ available to the (confirmed) classes is going to be needed. They should most definitely not be available to devastators (and other classes that have access to powerful AT weapons) because it would cause tank crews just to go with heavy AT and a repair kit nullifying any penalty for losing in a tank on tank battle. Ideally they’d only be available to the ‘jack of all trades’ classes (eg. tactical, shoota, dire avenger) because they lack (relatively) powerful tools/tactics in favour of versatility. This kit should cost a small amount of requisition to equip (and go in the grenade slot or similar) but it shouldn’t be limited other than a overheat/cooldown to slow over-use. Limiting its use will only discourage players from taking the item since it is just a sink for requisition without providing much benefit to the carrier if they survive long enough to expend it, especially if they are sacrificing a combat utility (like grenades) to carry it. Anti-Tank Infantry and Tank survivability Anti-tank infantry should be strong against tanks, but not cripplingly so. A tank crew should be both more survivable and more deadly than an equal number of infantry, otherwise there is very little reason to use a tank. If a full predator (of 5 men) can be destroyed in 4 frontal shots by a lascannon, it is woefully imbalanced, it takes more shots to kill the men individually than it does if they are all in the same vehicle (and that isn’t even including the difficulty of hitting the infantry in the first place). The simplest way to think of this is Per-Player Power; you want the P-PP of a tank to be more than an equal number of infantry because the tank is an expensive purchase and shouldn’t make you worse off than if you were on foot. When fighting against the strongest AT weapons (lascannon etc) you should survive more shots than it would take to kill the crew individually (so 6 shots to frontally kill a predator) making it something 5 players would want to get into. If you don’t take that into consideration don’t expect more than a 3 man crew in vehicles like the predator because any more and you’re risking more lives than the power you bring to bear (because the secondary gunner can jump between the 3 heavy bolters easily). Tanks also need to be able to retaliate against (or at the very least fend off) long range AT, which means giving them the option of an accurate anti-infantry weapon. This can be done either by making them sacrifice AT power to equip a HE loaded main-gun or giving them a slower firing more accurate machine-gun (heavy bolter, shuriken cannon etc etc). This is (again) so that tanks aren’t relegated to transport roles because tanks (even more so than infantry) hate being killed at ranges where they had no hope of retaliating even though they should be able to. Tank: Miscellaneous Crew members of tanks should not be vulnerable to damage while inside the vehicle. It defeats the purpose of getting in one if you can still die inside it before the vehicle itself is destroyed. Only vehicles where the crew is explicitly exposed (bikes for example) should allow the crew to be damaged/killed while operating it. Animations/Delays for entering/exiting a vehicle should not be in the game. Animations will only make the crew vulnerable to snipers while they get in/out of the vehicle, it will have problems if the vehicle is on anything but perfectly flat ground. Delays will only make players bail earlier, snow-balling any tank fight as the slightly losing tank has its crew bail to avoid going up in a fireball. Vehicles should not create an aoe explosion when destroyed. It merely conditions infantry to avoid being near friendly vehicles (whether to repair or to use as moving cover) because of the risk of dying/injury. You want to have vehicles work with the infantry, not as 2 separate forces. It also punishes AT melee weapons for succeeding in getting a kill when getting that close to deal damage is risky enough to the player, so it will only scare players into using ranged AT.
Hmm, interesting points you have there. I have seen these discussed alot, so thanks for putting it all together, but try to be a bit simpler about it next time. No animations replaced with delay sounds good, but only for inside the vehicle, if your on the outside, it would look a bit funny. Engineers should definitely take a while to fix a tank. But overheat seems a bit much, having only say 3 uses seems a bit fairer. The crew of the vehicle repairing it sounds like a good idea too, at the cost of not being able to use that weapon while doing so.
When I'm putting my ideas forward, I don't do it half hearted =P I actually said it was a bad idea for animations or delay on entering/exiting a vehicle. The thing with 'use once' repair kits you have to decide how much it repairs and how quickly, as I said, noone will use them unless they are a viable alternative (in terms of exp or utility) as grenades or other 'equipment slot' items and it will be frustrating for tankers to constantly have to find a place to replenish their repair kits when they are in heavy combat.
The main reason for tank zergs in PS2 is the HE ammo, as long as we don't have it in EC I think we will be fine, also we have a lot of clases that are useful against tanks, a tactical marine with a plasma rifle can damage a tank, even melees equiped with powerfist/hammers should be a real threat against tanks if they get close enough (also meltabombs). Tanks should be useful, but in EC they should be scared of enemy infantry and not the other way around... The main advantage a tank should have is range, make the main weapon powerful and accurate at long range and the other weapons to protect the tank against infantry trying to flank him or get close.
Tanks should be scared of infantry if they are dug in or able to easily get close (inside a base for example) and infantry should be afraid of tanks when in the open or in an exposed position. I agree that HE probably isn't the best solution for tanks wanting to focus on infantry support, but if the bases are designed well enough they won't be able to farm kills with impunity.
No matter how much people want to specialize with a certain vehicle, in 40k vehicles never outnumber footsoldiers and in real life. So if we limit them with regards to the amount of players on the field everything should be a ok. for example, 200 players max 20 tanks, 100 players max 10 tanks (or similar vehicles). Just a random number but you get my point.
Players who want to use vehicles regularly will never outnumber the players who prefer infantry combat. Tanks play quite differently, you don't just rush to get kills because ttk's between vehicles are longer and slow rates of fire mean that it's often a trade of shot for shot making rushers easy prey for those who are patient. Even amongst PS2's famed tank zergs, there is always more players on foot or ready to abandon their vehicle to fight on foot. Arbitrarily restricting the number of vehicles based on player numbers is only going to cause frustration for those who want to 'main' being a tanker because 2 footmen spawned a tank to get across the map in.
The spawning of vehicles will depend on the factions or groups "economy" anyway, so they are going to be limited. I very much doubt hq will spend resources so that two foot soldiers can have a spin in a tank, not if the faction is organised enough.
The devs are against fixed limits, they already say that when people talked about limiting the number of terminators to match the lore, cooldown and requisition cost are limiters btw, also you might need a transport vehicle as mobile spawn point so you will have to choose between that and a tank.
