Tank Overhaul

Tanks in Planetside 2 have core issues that make them frustrating to play with and against. Their place in the ecosystem is sketchy with them often being pulled apart by faster moving Harassers and aircraft. Many tank drivers' sole purpose is to spam doorways to rack up infantry kills which has seen their main guns nerfed and bases designed to exclude tanks. The Combined Arms Initiative saw their place on the battlefield shift further in efforts to prolong their lifespan to give new tankers more opportunity to learn, with tanks taking more hits from infantry rockets to kill, flanking rewarded less and more shots required to kill other Main Battle Tanks (MBTs).

Some steps have been taken to support tanks in recent years, with vehicle capture points added and the Construction system giving us more to do away from the traditional bases. Many players dedicate themselves to this role, and as such should be supported.

In my opinion tanks should dominate the open fields of Auraxis, or at least that should be the place they feel safest.

What I propose here is an overhaul of not only tanks, but also the game world to give them more of a role by creating more objectives in the field. Each of these changes could be implemented in isolation, and all values would be subject to balancing once implemented. While some of these ideas are new many of them been suggested by the community over the years.

Core Changes:

Coaxial machine gun: Added to all main turrets, Lightning included, so pilots do not have to bail out to deal with infantry with their small arms. Would behave half way between the Basilisk and the Kobalt.

Rumble seats: Added for infantry to ride on to support combined arms and discourage redeploying after a base cap. They would also help defend the tank from other infantry while travelling through dense terrain. Note: MAXs would not be able to sit in the rumble seats.

MBT weapon switch: Can switch between the secondary weapon controlled by pilot and main gun by dedicated gunner (Magrider changed to allow for this). This will be a major buff to MBTs as the driver can focus on driving, while the gunner engages targets. This is one of the reasons the Harasser is so powerful. Option to switch between old and new control modes on the fly.

Ammo switching: Swapping AP/HE/HESH rounds when near ammo towers, once certed. This would stop drivers having to pull new vehicles if the situation changes in the field. Would take around 5 seconds to switch.

Destroyed debris sticks around for 3 minutes to provide more cover in the field, and open up new tactics (like blocking choke points with destroyed vehicles). Duraation performance dependant.

Projectile speed buff: Each main cannon has its projectile speed increased by 50m/s, pushing out engagement distance and making it easier to hit rapidly moving targets. The flat increase would also bring the empires different weapons more in line with each other proportionally. This would also give tanks an easier time hitting fast moving targets like the Harasser.

Certifications:

Complete cert lines: Given to all players in the Utility, Defense and Performance slots to lower cost of entry to the role, similar to how Nanoweave is complete for the new player's infantry classes. For reference to max out the cheapest of the cert lines for the three slots combined would cost a player 1860 certs so I suggest that all players get granted those three options:
- Utifly Slot: Fire Supression
- Defense Slot: Mine Guard
- Performance Slot: Rival Combat Chassis

These could be given partially, or if more help is thought to be needed the default primary weapon could have an Optics, Utility and Ammo certifications partly or fully completed.

HUD:

Waypoint follows squad member option to make it easier to follow each other.

Numbered tanks on minimap/map to allow for ease of coordination and communication.

Q menu overhaul to set priority targets on enemies to help focus fire (see the image to the right for a preview).

Terrain:

More vehicle cap points added in new territories between existing ones (see image to left for an example). These capture points would have public drop pod spawns for nearby players. They would also act as a nucleus around which construction bases could be built.

Vehicle capture points added as replacements for those remaining three point territories where one point is currently in the tower.

Payload style capture system between outposts to take objectives into the field (see image to the left for an example of how this would look from the map, click the link for all the details).

War Asset MBT facility module added to allow acquisition from more facilities thereby making fairer MBT combat occur more regularly.

Damage:

These changes would make tank combat more interesting and reduce the peek-a-boo gameplay that prevails. Ideally these would involve a change to the damage system to make hits on the sides or rear do extra damage, rather than merely hits from the sides or rear.

Side/bottom hits have a chance to disable the tank rather than destroy it when the tank is below a 1/4 health, instead of doing damage to the tanks health pool. Magriders would fall to the ground as they currently do in the Esamir storm. This condition would be removed after repairing the tank to 1/2 health.

Top hits can stop the turret from turning when the tank is below a 1/4 health, instead of doing damage to the tanks health pool. This condition would be removed after repairing the tank to 1/2 health.

New Certifications:

The defensive ceritifactions available to the MBTs do not offer a huge amount of defense to either aircraft or Light Assaults weilding C4 and the Rocklet Rifle. To give tankers an option to specifically protect them against such threats I propose the following new certifications:

Close In Airburst Munitions: Defensive grenades which project above the tank and then detonate, spreading shrapnel around the vehicle killing any nearby infantry. One shot use (image to the left). Potentially only kills infantry above the vehicle rather than those on the ground, damaging them instead.

Aerial Threat Hard Kill: A defensive laser which shoots down rockets (Dalton, Hornets) fired from aircraft. Acts for a set period of time on a cooldown, similar to aircraft flares (image to the right) providing complete invulnerability, or if possible shooting down 1 rocket per 5 seconds or so.

Counterplay:

To temper the new power of tanks infantry would be given more defensive options when in the field, including a variety of my past concepts:

Tower shields: deployed by Engineers as an alternative fire mode to the existing defensive shield these would only be able to be deployed outdoors and would be wider and taller to better defend areas. See this link for my old concept, although as they would only work outdoors I would make them twice the size.

Atlas support vehicle: A Colossus variant this would replace the cannon with defensive shields, giving a defensive strong point in the field. See this link for my concept.

Drop pod call ins: Infantry could call in supportive drop pods which would give them the ability to rearm and respawn in the field, as a lighter form of the War Asset system (or as part of it potentially). This could also be useful for those in tanks as they could call in repair and rearm terminals. See this link for details.

Protective shields added over many bases, preventing vehicle spam in areas designed for infantry play. See this link for an old image of the official concept. I would have small arms able to pass through it, and vehicles, but not high calibre projectiles.