I stand corrected by the Harasser - Page 7

Figment · 2013-06-19, 05:09 AM

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.

MrMak · 2013-06-19, 05:35 AM

By that logic There are also 20 or so Hrassers at any given time. So they absorm too much damage anyway.

The point of the Harasser's speed is to not get hit in the first place. Not to park get hit by A FRIGIN ANTI TANK CANNON 2 times and just drive away.

Also Harasser's can be pulled fro many base while tanks, especialy MBTs are more restricted.

If it wasnt the fastest ground vehicle in the game you might have a case but as it stands, this "it takes 2 people to use it so its ok" argument is simply bullshit.

If you are a good driver you are going to avoid being hit by heavy munitions and not drive in front of "20 people" if you can help it.

AThreatToYou · 2013-06-19, 05:46 AM

If you make it so AP tank guns 2-shot the Harasser, it will get useless pretty damn quick.
At least provide a certification that will ask drivers to choose between small-arms and explosive protection or armor-piercing protection.

Figment · 2013-06-19, 06:03 AM

Originally Posted by MrMak

By that logic There are also 20 or so Hrassers at any given time. So they absorm too much damage anyway.

Completely wrong conclusion, by that logic there are half to a third of the Harassers compared to individual units.

There would only be 20 Harassers for 40-60 players. Meanwhile, there'd be up to 30-60 tanks under the same circumstances you COULD have 20 Harassers.

The point of the Harasser's speed is to not get hit in the first place. Not to park get hit by A FRIGIN ANTI TANK CANNON 2 times and just drive away.

So you're saying you should never, EVER, get hit when fired upon by 20+ people.

Good one.

No, you should be hit less. That doesn't mean you won't need to be able to take some shell damage. And two shots is not an awfully demanding task and boils down to luck. If skilled play needs to be important to win, you're looking at around 5-6 hits.

If we had a crewed MBT, the MBT should take around 8-10 hits at least, IMO. But IMO it also shouldn't be possible to drive solo, ever. (I'd even prefer to have seat switching removed completely from every unit - which would balance multi-crew units better against solo units).

Also Harasser's can be pulled fro many base while tanks, especialy MBTs are more restricted.

And? Who says Harassers shouldn't have for instance an AMP station requirement to pull?

If it wasnt the fastest ground vehicle in the game you might have a case but as it stands, this "it takes 2 people to use it so its ok" argument is simply bullshit.

If you are a good driver you are going to avoid being hit by heavy munitions and not drive in front of "20 people" if you can help it.

What have you been smoking? Because the argumentation you're pulling out of your arse here contains so many assumptions.

1. You assume you can always dodge every shell fired at you, which is utter bull considering you can't have full situational awareness.

2. According to you being in front of ONE person is bad enough, so basically you should never ever get shot at at all. I'm simply stating you'll be in an area with 20 or more people that MIGHT fire at you, one at a time OR as a group. Which means even engaging them would be death to THREE people for the price of one or two shells.

And I'll remind you again that they're very easy to lead targets, if you ever practiced leading a target, of course. In volume of fire, it's extremely easy to kill a Harasser.

3. It takes 2-3 players to use and that simply changes a lot in the logistics and usage.

The only thing I really take issue with in the current design is the super-swift repairs from an engineer in the rear. But that's an issue I have with engineers in general:

- Unlimited repairs (why no ammo for repairs?)
- Extremely fast repairs: why shouldn't you at least be taken out of the fight for a while? And why repair faster than you can get hit?

And of course that with units like Harassers, the need to create actual minefields (instead of laying 3) became much more important.

The only other thing is that I'm not quite happy with the installable weaponry, but I'm not experienced enough with using those weapons to be able to give full proper critique here.

moosepoop · 2013-06-19, 08:20 AM

Originally Posted by Figment

Completely wrong conclusion, by that logic there are half to a third of the Harassers compared to individual units.

There would only be 20 Harassers for 40-60 players. Meanwhile, there'd be up to 30-60 tanks under the same circumstances you COULD have 20 Harassers.

this just shows how broken solo mbt balance is.

Figment · 2013-06-19, 09:39 AM

Originally Posted by moosepoop

this just shows how broken solo mbt balance is.

Aye, and then they want to take that situation that already exists and then make tanks not just (potentially) more numerous, but also more powerful than Harassers on a 1:1 basis (considering ALL strengths and weaknesses) by stating a Harasser should fear a soloable MBT. :/

Meanwhile, they argue this fully by unit to unit role comparison.

That'd be a great way to do it if the only required resource was money. Like in a RTS game (think C&C):

[TYPE] [Resource cost] [Operated by]
Tricycle bike - 300 (- 1 player)
Dune buggy - 400 (- 2 to 3 players)
Light tank - 600 (- 1 player)
Medium tank - 800 (- 1 or 1 to 2 players)
Heavy tank - 1200 (- 1 to 2 or 2 to 3 players)

In that case, you can easily balance by saying "two light tanks = one heavy tank". Two tricycles = one light tank, etc.

When you start requiring players to operate them, things become more complex. If you keep balancing based on resource cost for instance (which a lot of people always do by comparing investments by players), then two tricycle bikes = two players = one light tanks = one player. Ergo 2 = 1, just because each invested 600.

Three dune buggy = 3x3 players = 2 Light tanks = two players, ergo: 9 = 2, just because each invested 1200.

You heard this same argument with players that certed BFRs: they "invested 8-12 certpoints into BFRs, thus they would have to be 2 to 3 times as strong as a MBT". Ehr no.

At the same time, these players that want solo heavy stuff, argue that the heavy tank is "a different playstyle", "thus they should have access to it" (alone!), "while being at least equal to but based on role should be better even". That makes it a lot worse because then if you just look at the costs above, the RTS resource requirements vs manpower gets skewed even more. Of course you can reduce the cost of the tank in comparison to reduce their power per player, but then you just get more tanks and you still don't solve the situation to where 3=3.

Just no. That's not balanced. In most RTS games (aside from Age of Empires), you don't have a limited player pool you have to distribute over your units. So basing on role and resource cost alone is not sufficient. Manpower is a must.

typhaon · 2013-06-19, 10:46 AM

* nevermind

moosepoop · 2013-06-19, 11:21 AM

Originally Posted by Figment

Aye, and then they want to take that situation that already exists and then make tanks not just (potentially) more numerous, but also more powerful than Harassers on a 1:1 basis (considering ALL strengths and weaknesses) by stating a Harasser should fear a soloable MBT. :/

they really should introduced dedicated driver mbts. the pendulum waves of solo spam is getting stale.