Right...RPG's, armor and tanks overal...

Right - RPG's that grens have. They suck, right? I can agree with that bit, thus, a suggestion to fix it which is relatively simple.

I think that the best thing to solve the whole tank issue - tank vs tank and tank vs infantry is to give all weapons a penetration value - with the RPG being an above average in efficiency when it comes to penetrating.

Basically armor does not protect outright but merely absorb some of the damage. Specialization still applies like it does now, but instead of absorbing all damage, it only absorbs some. Number of layers left should play a role as well. Like say, 5% damage reduction per layer left, regardless of state of the outermost layer.

Basically, light tank vs RPG - light tanks can only have 2 layers at the most, right? So an RPG could say penetrate those layers and deal a minimum of 50% damage to the hull. 2 hits regardless will take you down. Only exception is if you manage to take advantage of the armor special features. But that would only buy you an extra hit at most. If you are hit on the same side a second time then you will go down, regardless if you have managed to taken advantage of the armor features, since the total damage output will still far exceed 100%.

As for the armor itself, it will of course still take damage for each hit. But the only purpose that the armor should have is to reduce penetration damage as much as possible - which light tanks will not be able to do too well.

Missile turrets would also become useful again, even mere level 1 turrets.

Shell-based weapons could be geared more towards wearing armor down rather than dealing hull damage, maybe 20 penetration/80 armor. Missile based could be 60 penetration/40 armor wearing. RPG's 75 penetration/25 armor. Or some such.

This would make heavies for instance still tough beasts since they have heavy armor and a rather high hull health, but on the other hand they would only stay tough for a short while under heavy fire because regardless of anything, hull damage would always be applied to some extent.

As for APC's - their strength could be just above that of light tanks and just below that of AFV's. Both the APC/AFV should however take max 3 shots from an RPG regardless of situation due to the hull itself being more or less identical, but apart from that, the AFV will have a slight advantage based on situation.

Command vehicle left - well, big hull strength and thick armor ought to be enough for it. Balancing should be a piece of cake in any case.

Stickies - well...either armor rippers or hull rippers...either works I guess.

And now that grenadiers will have a very nice advantage against armored vehicles and actually be able to do what they are supposed to do, there is now nothing wrong with infantry being mowed down by machinegun fire either. Bit of cover and distraction provided by friendly vehicles (read: teamwork) should be enough for good grenadiers to prevail.

 

I like

 

I think you have to rethink your values. With this settings RPG will be overpowered.

In my opionion the main damage should allways go to armor. Only a small part (~10%) should go directly to hull.

 

Indeed, with these values you make armour worthless. Literally, going out in a tank with no armour would be best because you get the same amount of hits to kill with far less cost. 25% to hull, less 4% per each plate. LT with 2 armours takes 17% to hull. hit it 6 times means death. Heavy with 6 plates takes 1% to hull. Even with something like this, I still kind of feel that it is OP.
Not a necassary game mechanic.

 

You think its overpowered if you need to hit a light tank 6 times? seriously? a light tank?

 

Three for preference, four at the most.

 

It is surprisingly easy to get 3 people to shoot an APC with an RPG, especially if it doesn't matter where they hit. While I welcome the concept of tanks that die in a reasonable time, the current numbers seem a bit over the top. Additionally, heavy tanks would now become relatively powerful in tank combat, even though they would have been nerfed. I do not know how you could adjust the system to make this balanced, but if you managed to do it this would be good.

 

Of course the values should be lowered, and balanced etc but the concept is okay.

This could prevent the sudden danger of having no armor on one side. That is, instead of taking several hits to one side and suddenly being dealt hull damage, it'll be spread over time.

It could prevent good tank drivers from maximizing their tank usage by rotating and using all armor plates before running. After losing 2 sides of armor, the hull would have too much damage to reasonably keep fighting. Also, in a tank battle, the penalty for shooting several sides of a tank, instead of focusing on one side, is lowered. It just makes combat more general and less gimmicky; shooting = damage, but there are still techniques to maximize damage.

But, any suggestion that lowers the abilities of vehicles to destroy bases needs to give an alternative. Right now, vehicles are primarily for raiding bases and preventing the other guys from raiding your base; Bases cannot be taken by foot easily. If you suggest that tanks be moved to a battlefield-only status (not siege status) then you have to replace it; for example by making artillery more accessible and cheap, but maybe less powerful.

 

This (rough) concept has already been under discussion in the team about 3 month ago, so it lies in the "could possibly do that" bin.

 

Values I posted are arbitrary - obviously tweaking would be needed, however Mayama does have a point with the light tanks. 6 hits from missiles (any missiles or rockets) regardless of armor that it has is just ridiculous, as is 20 missiles/rockets for a heavy - this probably being the core issue to begin with to why RPG's (and missile turrets unless massively spammed) are useless lategame.

If 3 grenadiers shoot an APC, then so what? It gets destroyed. Bring a few more vehicles then or cover them with forward infantry. Gameplay wise, it'd just force teams to do what the whole purpose of the mod is anyway - teamwork - and hopefully proper such. And with that said, don't just use 1 vehicle vs X grenadiers counter arguments. Proper games will field several vehicles at once and that's a whole different ballgame than it is with solo vehicles.

 

So make APCs tougher than light tanks but slow them down and nerf their weaponry.

 

APCs are supposed to be vulnerable, I think. If they're not vulnerable, then (once APC spawns are researched) you get people using them like clown cars, rushing into combat to drop infantry right next to the enemy CV.

I mean, lower speed would nerf that a bit, I guess, since it'd be easier to hit. But still, I don't see that APCs have to be too hard to kill... although I think they should still retain some decent anti-infantry capabilities.

I still feel that the way infantry kill tanks should be by setting up ambushes or whatever. (Granted, partially the current levels nerf infantry in this regard, because they tend to be too linear and lack the cover needed to ambush a tank.) So my vision would be tanks and APCs that are fairly deadly, but vulnerable enough to be taken down quickly in an ambush, especially when it's multiple grenadiers attacking.

Way too often now you get tanks riding right up and shooting things point-blank. I don't think that that should be such a major part of the game. Tanks should be vulnerable enough that you have to keep them at at least some distance.

 

1 apc goes around with a scout to sab buildings and an engineer to decon and throw nades in them. With the scouts vehicle stealth skill and engineers repair and you got a mobile instant base death tank. Tell me that shouldn't be easier to kill. It needs to be kept as a support tank not an offensive tank.

 

Low speed high armor would make it stronger when parked up as a spawn, and weaker when driving around, which is kind of how you want an APC to work if you don't want it to be used as an attack vehicle.

High speed lower armor would make light tanks more offensive, they get their defence bonus from being on the move and that means they can rush things.

I would actually like to see a variant of the heavy tank which works like a heavy APC, more expensive and better armed/armored, for the late game.

 

i suggested something like this idea once, and although people didnt like it then i still like thisone, just that the balance in the example is bad :p

also i switched the roles, missiles and explosions take away armor, (do some damage to the hull directly, but far more against armor and basically strip the tank of its armor first before damaging the hull) cannons pierce the hull (do more damage directly but under influence of the armor damage reduction percentages)

switched it makes more sense to me, but ether way i like it
making different armors have different ways to work (damage reduction specialized, high health specialized or a blend) although this plus the damage reduction from different weapons can work confusing

 

Actual armor roles would not really change greatly so there would not be that much confusion. Heck, even composite, which currently is a bit of an underdog could easily be made useful again - simply have it naively absorb more damage per layer compared to the other types.

And I figured that missiles are designed to penetrate anyway (which is why they currently are high damage weapons) whilst shells are more pure blunt force (which armor can easier absorb) :p

 

Generally, NF use missiles and BE use cannons, and it's obvious (if you look at the heavies) that they were designed that way. Thus, it's really a one-sided boost unless you change the rest of the game to make either weapon type viable to either side.

If you made either weapon type generally the same, but differentiated between the specific models of weapons in the missiles or cannons catagories, you could probably have a better result. I.E. Railgun has more penetration than HE, but HE and Upg ML have the same.

Overall, I like the idea, although I do question whether it is really necessary. I mean, you can still just boost RPG damage. Testing this would be sweet.

 

I like the idea any idea it works. But it is more logical if cannons would pierce more then missiles.

Also this would make the stall effect more diversity, some engines last longer while taking hull damage some less.

 

Well, I dunno - I am kinda geared towards that all armor is mainly designed to protect against high velocity impacts and missiles are designed to penetrate armor.

And since cannons have a high speed and high rate of fire, making them geared towards penetrating armor and gearing missiles towards stripping armor would probably just make everyone use cannons.

 

there are other variables that make missiles interesting, for example raw damage guidance or any other fancy stuff