Interesting screen from Chinaside2

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Erendil

Gotta say tho that if those graphs are right I'm a little irritated about the Mag's armour. We were told earlier this year that the Prowler was the fastets tank but that the Mag had more armour to make up for it. Now that doesn't appear to be the case.

IMO the fastest tank should have the weakest armour. Unless the Mag significantly outdamages the Prowler up close, all the Prowler would need to do is run straight for any Mag it sees, since the Mag can't outrun it and can't take as much punishment.

I think we need to consider what "armor" means in PS2. Armor in PS1 meant raw HP. In PS2 I think all tanks have the same health but their "armor" reduces the damage they take per shot, but depending on location.

So when it shows the Prowler having more armor than the Magrider, you must also consider that armor has different values on different parts of the tank. We know front armor is the strongest, and rear armor is the weakest.

Consider a tank vs tank standoff. The Magrider is essentially always going to be facing its target (it has to due to the fixed cannon). This means its a lot easier for the mag to protect itself while maneuvering around against the other tank.

The prowler & mag have to move & turn to keep their backside protected which leaves their side armor a lot more exposed. You are less likely to be shooting a prowler in the front armor as you are a Mag, and while overall the Prowler might have more armor, the effective armor of the Mag and prowler may be the same when you factor in the advantages that maneuverability gets you with respect to different armor positions.

Further, the mag can enhance this benefit even more by adding front armor as a defensive upgrade.

Long-range unless moving tangental speed has little value compared to maneuverability. The mags can do the old side-strafe trick and moving backwards while keeping front armor and maximizing their accuracy advantage. Snipe snipe snipe, while the only thing the prowler can do is close distance and take the hits.

I think in that respect maneuverability forces it to have the lowest base armor because maneuverability increases effective armor.

[Tachyr]

I'm surprised they haven't included suspension/dampers as a metric for tanks as it is imperative to have a stable platform to shoot from.

Buzzing around like a hornet in the Prowler is going to be pretty pointless unless you can actually hit something. Speed means nothing without control.

The Magrider already has a benefit from being a hover type vehicle but I think there should be ways to improve the dampening/suspension for all type of vehicles.

[LostAlgorithm]

I just have to say, the colors on that Vanguard look incredibly sexy. Needs to be a more consistent color scheme across the rest of the NC stuff. Need to see some more black and slightly darker yellows!

[Kran De Loy]

I can see where the Vanguard and the Prowler would have equal maneuverability because they both use track systems, Vanguard being slower can pull tighter turns while the Prowler being fast can also turn at a faster rate, but at maximum speed it would still kind of makes those turns a bit wide.

Magriders on the other hand will still 'drift' like they did in the first game that will annoy the living crap out of people I think and probably making tight turns a pain in the ass. But as was shown in the GDC videos those Magriders can get pretty high up in the air and just flat out ignore a lot of terrain problems that Vanguards and Prowlers will have to drive around.

Also being able to drive behind a boulder then slowly rise up so only the gun turret is peaking out over the top would be pretty broken so they went ahead and are keeping it on the main body of the Magrider so people don't do broken stuff like that.

Not that I like the fact that Mags won't be able to use cover like any sane person would want to when they have the least amount of armor among the three of them, but I can understand why they would do it that way.

[Shogun]

Originally Posted by Kran De Loy

But as was shown in the GDC videos those Magriders can get pretty high up in the air and just flat out ignore a lot of terrain problems that Vanguards and Prowlers will have to drive around.

you realized that the flying magrider was a bug? it was confirmed by the devs already. and i guess it was no coincidence, that the display-cable disconnected a few seconds after this silly ufo bug showed up on the demo

[Xyntech]

Hopefully the tanks are well balanced enough that none of them ever have such an excessive advantage that the other sides tanks can't do anything to stop them, but clearly the three tanks will be advantaged/disadvantaged in certain terrain.

The Magrider will be the best long range tank when there is cover to hide behind, due to it's direct fire weapon and ability to easily strafe in and out of cover while keeping it's strongest armor facing it's target.

The Vanguard will be the best tank in the open plains due to the fact that it can dish out the most damage and absorb the most damage in a straight up brawl.

The Prowler will be the best ambush tank in large numbers if they can sneak up behind dense cover, being able to have large swarms quickly outflank the enemy and then get away before reinforcements can do anything about it.

We'll just have to playtest to see how they stack in in a real world scenario with more complex and varied conditions.

[moosepoop]

i cant wait to take the wanu tank for a drive.