2012-05-10 21:03

A Comprehensive Suggestion list for Vehicles



Introduction:



Good evening my fellow battlefield fans! Today I want to talk about vehicle balance. Now calm down! This is not a “OMG NERF THAT NERF THIS” thread. Rather I’d like to see an patch similar to the last one, but instead of tweaking weapons, it tweaks vehicles. I would like to see the individual roles of the various planes, tanks, and helicopters be emphasized. Now this would involve weakening some current strategies and weapons and strengthening others, and I fully expect some people to not get past this sentence before they post a reply explaining my nature as a scrub.



I ask that those of you left keep an open mind, think about my suggestions, give feedback, and critique them and my reasoning. I like honest feedback; I don’t like flaming, so keep it civil. So let’s get started.





Ground Vehicles and Weapons:



Tanks:

The tanks have been much maligned recently. It feels like they just can’t get a break. The general feeling has been that they are simply too fragile to use. From my experience however, the majority of deaths come down to being in too close to infantry, or by aircraft. Both of which are legitimate weaknesses of tanks in real life.



Most of my suggestions for tank survivability to will be raised in the aircraft section, but there’s a few suggestions I can put here.



1. Make the Co-Ax standard- Leaving base without my Co-ax feels like leaving without my pants; it’s just an awful feeling of vulnerability. Your machine gunner should be your primary point defense, I get that, but two sets of eyes can cover a lot more area then one, and your gunner should be watching flanks and rear at all times.



2. Give smoke a wider dispersal area- Infantry advancing alongside tanks can be scary, even scarier would be tanks laying down smoke screens to advance through. This also promotes team play.



Stingers:



Supposedly the Stinger and the Strela are the end all be all of man portable air defense, but from my experience, I’m better off using a DART to shoot the pilot out. The main problem is the arbitrary and/or glitchly locking mechanism. When a helicopter is hovering a dozen meters in front of me there should be no reason I can’t get a lock.



I propose that, inside of the launcher’s effective range, nothing should keep you from locking a target you have line of sight on. Most likely you’ll get flares, but it forces the chopper to back off from your area less you get another shot into them.



SOFLAMS:



Nothing really to say here, a SOFLAM and Javelin team is a legitimate tactic. My only suggestion is to fix/enlarge the SOFLAM’s hit box. Its ridiculously hard to hit unless you’re standing on it. I’ve had a sniper and soflam on the office crane on Firestorm, I took a shot with my cannon, I killed the sniper but not the soflam.



AA Vehicle:



This poor girl just can’t seem to catch a break. Patch after patch she gets weaker and weaker. My suggestions fly somewhat counter to the patch trends but as it is this vehicle is a joke.



1. Cannon Power- The cannons should decimate any aircraft they hit. Especially up close. A jet can one run destroy a AA but an equivalent time of fire from the AA cannon most likely won’t even disable. So the power against air based targets need to be increased. If needed to balance I like the concept of having a cone of fire based around fire time. This helps keep the weapon skill oriented and means it’s an effective area denial for aircraft that don’t want to tango with it.



2. Missiles- Same suggestions as the stingers.



3. Add a MG gunner station- It’s dangerous to go alone, take this. Also angry squad mates might convince those useless drivers to leave the base. This also allows for the same kind of team play that tanks have. Like the gunner getting out and repairing while under fire.



Jeep:



Lock warning tone. Seriously.



Air Vehicles



Attack Choppers



I actually feel that the attack chopper is in a pretty good place right now. Attack choppers are meant to take down enemy armored columns and provide close air support for ground troops which is mostly what they do.



Jets:



My problem with jets is they overlap with the attack chopper way too much, because most of the time they fill generally similar roles, which is strafing targets with a cannon and rocket pods. My suggestion for this is most likely my most controversial one here. Remove the rocket pod, and replace it with 500lb dumb bombs.

My opinion on jets is they should be focused on the macro battlefield. The movement of individual troops isn’t an issue for them. They care mostly about enemy air and enemy vehicles. By removing rocket pods you cement the attack helicopter as the aircraft of choice for getting down and dirty and instead make the jet an instrument of precision.



The bombs need to be large. Like, biggest explosion possible. I’m thinking the scripted scene from metro. Give them a thirty second reload, but they need to make a statement when dropped. They should level buildings with near misses, and suppress anything they didn’t kill. That said, tanks and APC’s should be fairly hardy against these to keep bomb drops from becoming one hit kills again. I would make one bomb direct hit a disable, two a kill, and two within 5 meters a disable.

G3A3 is smexy