Originally Posted by QuantumMechanic
For me, it's simply that of all the infantry classes HA has the distinct advantage in this situation (bailing from a vehicle only to further attack your aggressor). Specifically you have your heavy armor and shield (which is meant to protect you from vehicle attacks as has been said).
I agree that the classes overall should be balanced out against each other as you pointed out. But if you want to maximize your effectiveness in vehicles, I see no reason not to go as HA. As long as you have your vehicle's auto armor repair speed certed up, there's no reason to go as Engineer.
I suppose this is by design. And yes, we'll see how it pans out in beta. But I won't be surprised when I see everybody copying what Higby did in the stream today.
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But what is a person giving up for having the auto repair module? It's all about tradeoffs. I'm going as LA as a Scythe pilot for multiple reasons, but one of them is because I want to be able to bail without installing a module for it.
I don't doubt that there will be people copying what Higby did, and maybe sometimes they'll be successful with it, but unless it is consistently used to win tank fights or dogfights, then who cares if it gets used a lot? We already know that we get rewarded for killing vehicles regardless of if the person bails or not.
I think that a good aircav pilot will tend to be LA, and a good tank or Liberator crew will tend to be a mix of engi's and HA. I definitely can't see medics and infiltrators being first choice options for your average vehicle crew, but as long as there are a variety of decent options for classes to pick when driving and flying, it seems balanced enough to me.
But yeah, if I ever see HA bailing tactics suddenly becoming the method of choice for winning a vehicle fight, I'll definitely be in support of it getting fixed. I just see zero evidence that it's a problem at the moment.
Now what could be interesting is if the tactic gets used in a Sunderer. Sunderer rolls up close to an enemy tank with it's enormous amounts of health, 8+ HA guys jump out with AV, unload into the tank and destroy it, then anyone who died gets revived by a medic who was sitting inside manning one of the Sunderers turrets.
But considering how that would be 10 people vs the 1 or 2 in the tank, that seems perfectly fair to me. Besides, that shit would be viable even if HA couldn't drive any vehicles at all.