I stand corrected by the Harasser

[Figment]

Originally Posted by typhaon

I have to agree with the comment about adjusting the Harasser's armor values vs. different weapons.

I've hit a harasser before with 2 AP rounds from a Vanguard main gun... and had it keep on rolling.

Two shots is nothing. There's 2000 players on a map, which means 20-200 in the same area is absolutely normal. If one player like you can drop a team vehicle with two shots, then there's no point even showing yourself in battle with one. You won't live long enough to fire off a shell and no it's not exactly hard to hit a Harasser. It's only doing around 90, you can hit ESFs as well at greater speeds and you have no ground and size reference or splash damage for those (!).

That will mean small teams would be completely obliterated by zergs, where volume of fire will trump any form of skill. No amount of speed will save you then.


Example, we once ran with 9 Thunderers in PS1 during an event. That's 18 gunners and 9 drivers. A single Thunderer would normally never hit a Reaver sufficiently to kill it because it's so inaccurate. But with 18 shells being fired at the same target, the chances of four hitting in one or two volleys of fire are much greater than if two try to hit them. The longivety of the unit fired upon drops significantly then. To indicate how long a small team would last: even BFRs dropped in two salvos of that group. And Thunderers are medium health vehicles in PS1, heavier than buggies/Lightnings, but lighter than tanks.

Now, if you had all these units be single player vehicles, like Lightnings, you'd have had 27 guns instead of 18 and not 9x medium armour, but 27x light armour. Both have pretty much the same speed, but the Thundies have the benefit of a slightly more powerful, slower rate of fire gun and a dedicated driver. The Lightnings would have strength in numbers: more shells, more targets to fire at, more chance of circling their targets.

If those don't have equal weight in combat (for instance by giving the Lightning medium armour, or worse, heavy armour like MBTs), then pitching these 27 players in these two configurations with much the same role (AV and AI) against one another would be completely unfair.

Given that the weaponry on these tanks in PS2 is already pretty heavy, and yes, they are given the numbers in game, you can't justify both endurance and that firepower to the solo player. To deal with these numbers, the devs thought to make the firepower even greater in comparison, but that only benefits volume of fire (ie. zerg).

There's too little focus on skilled gameplay in the form of combat prowess in a dogfight and thankfully the Harasser is an exemption to that right now.