last time(s) apc were viable as anti tank it turned into apc wars. you get du when you only have lt/afv and then meds. so if it can do something against heavies it makes meds obsolete since they would only drain money. but it actually doesn't get that far, since when you have tons of apcs everywhere on the map its close to impossible to keep a ref up. and it turns into run apc into enemy base. die rinse repeat till one team can afford nuks.
Last time APCwars happened DU was imbalanced towards any tank, meds and heavies were paper + privilege and research took ages Im not in favour of anti tank APC's either, but a group of 2 or 3 apc's should be able to take out a heavy if they were built to do so. Make DU weigh more requiring more tactical Armour distribution and slow down heavies and meds but keep their general strengths...
this 3:1 doesnt reslly work out since you only have an equal amount of players. and i wouldnt be sure, that given enough space to maneuver you cant kill a heavy in a 3:1 currently
You cant, not with apc's, meds can do it ofc, but they cost far more then an apc does. lights cant kill a heavy either, but 3 lights can kill a med, and outmaneuver a heavy (add an engineer repairing them behind a bush where the lights retreat to get repairs and the heavy dies ofc)
To be fair I think you can take out heavies with 3 du apcs now. Duhmg does like 70 damage a second or something, it bypassing all armor abilities means 3 apcs should melt other tanks. You don't have much armor though so heavy can still kinda defend itself, but a surprise attack and proper coordination could do a lot of damage. At the very least I know a full clip of it will kill a heavy, I had to test this with security before patches were made.
problem is that heavies are still too mobile to not just run away if 3 apcs drive at it with du, and then the heavy can take potshots in reverse and always hit the forward plate while it dodges the apcs fire... its a reverse world really, heavies are far to fast and manoeuvrable on most maps. So yea, you can kill a heavy with 1 clip, but in any real life scenario the heavy wil win due to the chaos of games being in favour of the heavy.
I dunno, I remember trying this with security and got like half the plates off. This was by myself taking extra time to dodge, though I think security was playing like the average player. I still think it could work, it's just getting people to actually do these things and no one will. On that notion I doubt people will use things like a dedicated tank destroyer correctly. Commander not being able to limit chassis types at all is a huge detriment to ideas like this.
My main point is that it must be a great counter to heavy tanks, and super weak against lights / infantry / APCs. How exactly remains to be seen I think making heavies really slow and making all vehicles take the same amount of hits from a TD would work. Dunno how much armour or cost it would need to have, I think we have to iterate on that. varbles suggested making it toggleable with a svar, to make it easier to test this; it wouldn't need beta branch switching for all players involved, just a simple vote during a game and a willing server admin.
My reply #53 and #57. I think we can make it weak against infantry and we are good to go. Heavy tanks will still tear through light vehicles and that leaves no reason to get light vehicles. Also, there are turrets/mines, I don't think it's worthy to try to make light vehicles(except for APC) useful in late game.
Light tanks would make more sense late game if maps were 5 times bigger and there was worry about logistics. Having a huge offensive force doesn't help you when you can't defend any place due to being too slow or something. Current empire maps are small enough for this to not be a problem
light tanks would make more sense if other tanks were half as fast, could even nerf light tanks and they would keep their use
Well, then we need to give them more hitpoints or something. You seem to be stating it will not be possible to implement what I'm suggesting, but I don't any reason that's the case. We can make lights a good counter to TD, and I think if we do, it will create a much more varied late-game.
EDIT: I think it's best for us to focus on TD for now, "LT in late game" can wait. It's not impossible, it's just a lot to do and there are downsides, I really don't think it's worthy. "A lot to do" means we'll certainly miss a lot of problems and we'll spend 10 extra patches to fix them. First, LT/AFV have only 2~3 plates of armor on each side, 50~100 extra hitpoints are not going to help them survive in late game. If we are giving LT/AFV enough hitpoints to survive properly in late game, we'll have to buff RPG/mine and mortar and maybe sticky grenade too, and that means we'll have to give infantry/building a lot of mine/mortar resist. Too much hit points for LT would close the gap between medium and LT. Also, it would make early-game vehicle combat like 20 times slower and it would probably tamper with our current AFV-LT balance. I am not sure if you want to add a few researches or anything to deal with that, but then again, is that really worthy? Finally, LT is cheap and it's absolutely terrible at closing a game, that's gonna cause more stalemate. We will have Heavy tank, TD, APC&medium(occasionally) and maybe arty in late game, I feel that's kinda enough.
You know there is a parameter in the armor scripts so each chassis can have it's own resists and what not. It's completely possible to balance tanks correctly against each other without changing how they work against buildings and infantry. That is a metric ass load of work though, so it's easy to see why they stopped doing that in ... 2.26, wow that's old. Also I'm sad, once epic goes that probably means the svn goes too, that's been a rather handy repository of info.
It's also completely possible to break RSA 8192, you know, it just takes a lot of time. It's not just inter-chassis balance, like I said there's stalemate and stuff. I typed the whole reply within 20 mins, I definitely missed a lot of issues. We can fuck things up, it's very easy for us to fuck things up. EDIT: Can we put this "LT in late game" idea away until we are done with TD? TD balance is already a lot of work.
Light tanks would make more sense if there was some kind of flying threat. Like Iron-Man. Oh or helicopters. You know, anti air vehicles. Double HEMGs, homing missiles, fun. Just saying how lights would be more useful. We're not getting aircrafts obviously. But. If we could have MK2 back, maybe mediums could have a 3-slot cannon. HE and RC are what we usually use anyway, so why not give the possibility for a plasma medium or rail? I think it's fun. Also what if lights are made fit for late game though research? ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;))))))))))))))))))))
afaik originally there was a special anti-air vehicle planned with aircrafts. and mk2s killed* mediums i doubt a 3slot cn would change much about that, especially since that would mean even less armor on meds (or if you add weight to compensate, tougher meds) and since mk2 afv stand no ground against them whatsoever it also puts nf in a serious advantage. did you only play nf at that time? i mean lt mk2s were indeed aweseom, but thats all there was to it. the other implications on the game were a lot worse. mk2s are no guess game anymore. *in the meaning that it made no sense to even research them.
