PlanetSide Universe - View Single Post - The balance issue with multi-gunned vehicles
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Old 2011-07-26, 06:01 PM   [Ignore Me] #9
BorisBlade
First Lieutenant
 
Re: The balance issue with multi-gunned vehicles


Well before the last tank buff the deli was perfectly balanced. A tank should bring the most armor, and most firepower. However at the disadvantage of being the slowest vehicle and having to use lobbed tank shells taht are harder to land on targets the farther they are and faster they are moving. But get near em and you are toast. Its job is to put on the hurt on things in range and be able to hold ground with its armor which also allows it to push battle lines forward.

Before the tank buff, the deli still had decent armor, while less than a tank, it wasnt half that of a tank like it currently is (it was closer to that of a magrider which has the least armor of all tanks). It moved considerably faster than tanks allowing it to use its speed and maneuverabilty as its advantage. Its weapon's dps wasn't even close to that of a tank, but it was able to land these shots from range many times easier than most tanks except the mag. This allowed it to operate from range, staying back and wearing the tanks out with speed/skilled driving. It did require more gunners, but could cross water which unless you were vs you couldnt do in anything else. It also did very well versus aircraft, harder to land shots than flak but still tears em up if you hit em. (the reaver rockets have since been buffed versus armor)

The tank buff buffed tank's armor and buffed their speed to where a magrider moving with the strafe "cheat" goes pretty much the same speed as a deli, has alot more firepower, much more armor, can cross water and needs less people to operate. The deli is junk as VS.

That role needs to come back. Let the deli be a light tank. Much faster than other tanks, still have decent armor, although not as high as the heavy tanks. And with the same type of weapons that are considerably less dps but can be much more consistant in actually hitting the target helpin to balance them out and allowing them to work at range to make use of their faster speeds/less armor. Leave the passenger slots, it would fill a dual role since no one would use a pure transport vehicle despite what we may think or hope.

You dont need to get to crazy with gunners needed. Yeah its gotta be handled well, or you wont waste people on high gunner vehicles when you can get a bunch of low gunner ones instead which is most always better. (aka prowler versus vanguard issue). Empire variants need to be teh same, more overall power should need more gunners. But only as a general rule. Many other factors come into play when balancing.

Take the raider. Each gun is 80% of a deli gun versus ground armor targets. So 2 gunners would do 80% of a deli, 3 =120%, 4=150% . But thats 5 people in one vehicle, thats 2vans/mags and one more for a reaver or whatever. Sounds bad but if you need the transport and have teh manpower but not the pilots available, then its nice to give em all guns. And would of course be better if it had better speed than the MBT's instead of being slower than a magrider which still trounces teh fully manned raider in DPS/armor as well as speed and only needs 1 gunner.

Gotta look at the bigger picture, there are a ton of aspects to look at and hopefully this time they do a better job so we see much more variety on teh battle field instead of "just roll tanks or lose" when it comes to ground vehicles.
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