Ideas on Tanks and AV

[SleightOfHand]

I've been thinking about how vehicular and anti-vehicular warfare could be so much more fun...so I'm going to post about it.

Vehicles

1. Weaponry

The biggest problem with tanks, in the general opinion of the forums, is that they either use A. The instagib main gun or B. The hull to kill infantry. The instagib gun part could be solved easily while also adding depth to tank combat in an incredibly easy way: changing the ammo tanks use. Ammo types would be switched using 'X', just like they are now. To allow tankers better distribution of ammo types, the boxes should be shrunk so that a Vanguard, for example, can carry 150 tank rounds in 30-round boxes.

1a. HEAT
Real world example of a HEAT round:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m830a1.htm

The general principle behind a HEAT round is that a shaped charge in the front of the shell that uses the blast pressure and overpressure from the explosion to punch through armor. (In other words, it blows up.) Even at this point in time, HEAT rounds are no longer effective against hard targets (other battle tanks, basically), because of advances in ceramics. Ceramics, when hit by a HEAT round, "flow" around the explosive jet and break it down into many smaller jets.

HEAT rounds would be approximately as effective as the standard tank rounds today, but against armored vehicles (Sunderer, Deliverer, Lightning, other battle tanks) its damage would be severely reduced. Slightly less effective against MAXs then they are now.

1b. APFSDS rounds (Armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot, commonly known as sabot rounds)
Example: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m829a1.htm

Sabots, unlike HEAT rounds, fire a long, thin armor piercing dart. The sabot is not the dart; it is the hunk of metal attached to the back of the dart that holds the propellant. Sabots penetrate armor by sheer kinetic energy. If it does penetrate, it does damage by hitting stuff on the inside of the vehicle. If it doesn't penetrate, it does its damage by knocking things loose inside the tank as well as sometimes knocking fragments of armor into the area where the tank crew sits, having the same general effect as a fragmentation grenade.

Sabot rounds would be most useful against armored targets and would require a direct hit to do any damage against infantry or MAXs. The best damage figure for a sabot would be something that makes it dangerous to let another tank get the first hit on you, say, around the damage of four or five decimator rockets. As sabots are kinetic energy penetrators, they should be modelled with a much higher muzzle velocity and a much flatter arc. The MagRider would be able to switch shell types in the manner that most VS weapons can switch firing modes.

1c. Coaxial weapons

The 12mm's on the Prowler eat ammo a bit too fast, the 20mm's on the Vanguard don't fire fast enough,
and the PPA on the MagRider is almost useless. Put the PPA on the Mag's turret, double the size of all the ammo boxes for the coaxial weapons, and increase their rate of fire. Voila, tanks use their machine guns to kill infantry instead of their hulls/main guns.

AV

2. Rockets
PlanetSide's rockets can't seem to decide whether they're dedicated tank killers (like the Javelin http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/javelin.htm ) or weapons (like the M203 40mm grenade launcher http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m203.htm )
that could be used against lightly armored targets, but is most effective against troops. The biggest offender of 'I don't know what I am' syndrome is the rocket launcher on the back of the Enforcer, which does quite a bit of damage against vehicles as well as one-hit killing infantry. I don't know how this would best be fixed.

2a. Rockets' efficiency against armored vehicles

A Javelin can penetrate in the neighborhood of 600mm of tank armor. It was specifically designed to be a one-shot kill on any known tank if it hits. In wargames, tanks operating in areas where Javelins are are supported by infantry.
Likewise, PlanetSide's vehicles should require anti-infantry support if AV grunts are around. Speeds on the missiles should be increased, and damage should be increased across the board to compensate for the overdone armor buffs to vehicles.

Whatever I haven't covered yet.

3. All other weapons...

...should not do anything against anything armored better than ANTs. If an infantryman sees a tank, he ought to holster his medium assault weapon and hope that the AV guy standing next to him is a good shot with that Phoenix...

Vehicle changes
Vanguard changes

Increase the speed up to 65kph. Nerf the armor by 500 or so (current Prowler level), buff the gun's damage 250-350

The idea is to make it a bit more like the Enforcer: it can give but it can't take quite so much.

Prowler changes

Big....hulking....slow....behemoth. Slow it down to ~40kph, make it maneuver like an oil tanker doing three-point turns in the English Channel (bonus points for which Douglas Adams book that comes from...) increase the torque so it climbs hills better, possibly a very slight gun buff. Buff the armor by 1k or so, putting it 500 over the current Vanguard.


Magrider changes

Give it the 'bouncy' handling the Thresher has. Right now it feels like it's on invisible wheels. Maybe increase strafing acceleration 1kph per second. It doesn't need anything else.

This is just a set of ideas to make tank combat and AV a bit more fun. Comments, constructive criticism welcome. Flames are not.