Tanks need improvements to primary weapon splash damage, survivability vs RPGs, and slower head buildups on HMGs. I am a skilled armor player and have leveled up my MBT and IFV to over 30. I can routinely get over 20 kills in a life and have invested a lot of time in map strategies. What I am trying to raise attention to is not due to skill issue. The game needs improvement to armor gameplay so it can be a relevant, competitive aspect of the game. Primary Splash Damage -- The problem I've encountered is, after having tried all ammo types (HEMP, HEAT, and CAN), the splash damage of all of these rounds is wildly inconsistent. Sometimes I can lay down effective fire and help push objectives. Sometimes, though, I'll have 4 or more players in the rocks far above the main road on Liberation Peak firing at me, and despite having a perfect spot to fire splash damage into, I struggle to hit infantry at all. Even at closer ranges, it seems like you have to directly hit an enemy player in order to reliably kill them from your tank. I can fire at the ground just behind a truck someone is hiding behind and it'll do no damage (yes they're still there). The HEMP round is advertised for its large splash and anti-infantry effectiveness, but these results just aren't consistent from match to match. Please rework the splash damage mechanic so tank players can actually be relevant and contribute to the game. Tank Survivability vs RPGs -- I feel like the devs are far more concerned about tanks potentially being over-powered than the actuality that it is far too easy to just bombard tanks with constant RPG attacks that force them out of the game before they can even start. A good game should allow both tanks and engineers to fight competitively with each other. I want to suggest two solutions: Slightly reduce rocket damage: real-life tanks can survive a dozen rocket hits. I understand this is a shooter game and we're not striving for that level of exacting realism, but a compromise between 2-4 rockets and 12+ should be plenty easy to achieve. Give engineers an extra rocket so they don't get underpowered, but make it take longer to kill tanks so they actually have reliable chance to affect the game and use skilled performances to counter anti-armor engineers. Right now in a lot of games, tanks just get spammed to death in under a minute. Fixing splash damage (above) would greatly help tank survivability because they can actually take out and suppress rocket launchers, but slightly nerfing RPG damage should be done as well. That or slow down reload speed. Increase tank health: I'm less keen to see this change implemented just because it would be more invasive to BF6 mechanics. But, this would be another way to allow tanks to take more hits and to stay in combat longer, thus enabling them to fight for their own survival and try to help the team. HMG Heat Buildup -- The HMG is really inconvenient to use because you can only kill 1-2 players max before you have to wait for it to cooldown. It should be more usable in mid-range combat; right now, it is more of a DMR. It fires slow (fine) and is best at range, but you can fire so little before you have to "reload" that it's difficult to kill much of anything, especially as the driver. The gunner doesn't need to worry about moving or firing the main gun so it's easier for them. But even still, it can be hard to help keep the tank alive. Please add just 1-2 seconds of firing time for the HMG so it is more competitive with the LMG while still allowing both the LMG and HMG to keep their intended roles.IFV Note: Similarly, please increase IFV gun capacity from 12 to 14-16. It places too much constraint on the driver and makes the vehicle too slow to play for it to really stay relevant against constant rocket attacks in the current game state. Vehicles need improvement to splash damage, armor vs RPGs, and weapon capacity/cooldown in order to stay relevant and competitive within games, lest they just be suppressed and forced to stay back at spawn the whole game (or survive for 20-60 seconds with minimal kills/score). The biggest change I want to see is the splash damage being fixed for HEMP and HEAT ammo because that would allow tank players to fight back. Then consider how to improve rocket damage tables.

So you start by saying your KD can potentially reach 20 In a game, then complain about your tank survivability.

I think all explosives could use a slight radius increase for splash damage.That being said, tanks can survive a bunch of rockets already. Just today, I hit a tank in the back with an RPG, but driver had emergency repairs and refaced while I waited for the RPG to reload. Then sent all 4 of my remaining rockets into the tank; and it shook it off like it was nothing. No engineer repairing it or anything. Just the built in repair module and properly positioning (I gave kudos to the tank driver, many would not have responded so well).I think the big issue is there is no reason not to run RPGs for Engineer. The other gadgets are just not anywhere near as powerful, so most engineers are running with RPGs. Stingers are not really great against air vehicles, so you are better off with RPG for hitting helicopters. Javelin is a joke. First launcher with its "Top Attack" does less damage than an RPG to the back (and since it Top Attacks, it never hits the weak spot). EoD bot is a novelty, some people love it, but honestly, it's not better than RPGs. Weapon Crate is situational. Mines spacing nerf has made them less than stellar.I think part of the problem is having 3 gadgets. Repair tool used to take a gadget slot, but now it is a free be to all Engis; so in the old days, to repair, you only could have one other gadget. This led to fewer people having launchers, because some liked mines, others like EoD Bot, etc. Now, Engineers can get everything, and it leads to too many RPGs on the field.It is over saturated. If Engineers had other gadgets that would maybe thin the herd so to speak. But already RPGs are not powerful enough alone (even getting the drop on a tank), if the tank driver knows what he is doing. I don't think they need a damage nerf, I think DICE needs to come up with something that will encourage some players to not run RPGs.

Yeah, I haven't focused on vehicles as much as previous battlefields; but the times I have been in tanks, there are definitely times where it is like 6 engineers firing rockets at you, which obviously a tank should not be able to survive (unless they have many engineers healing them as well).My concern is, with good play, a single engineer should be able to stop a tank (hitting weak spots, setting up traps with mines and rockets, etc), that is their specialty. So, buffing the tanks or weakening the RPG could take that away and make it a guaranteed failure for a single Engineer (as opposed to the current state where it depends on engineer's ability vs tank's ability). Given how poorly people coordinate in this game, I could see many matches where tanks are just uncounterable, especially if they get any infantry support.I do think the best solution is to give engineers something else to choose for their gadget slots so that every engineer isn't running RPGs and whatever specialty they want to focus on (or reduce gadgets on all classes to 2 again, which would also solve some other issues, like Flashlight, Laser and Fire Mode all being tied to one button and dependent on aiming state to switch the appropriate one for controller users).

Tanks definitely dont need an increase to splash radius. They just need to be more consistent. So many times I've had tanks shoot me through the side of a hill or I've been on top of a cliff prone not near the edge and the tank will shoot the ground at the bottom of the cliff and still damage me. My suspicion is that the splash model is a simple sphere that clips through everything allowing tanks to blow you up without even being able to reach or see you. It's been my biggest gripe as of late actually, but truly so much of this game needs a ton of fine tuning. They should've had more beta tests and actually used them to tune the game.

Yes, so I wanted to explain that it isn't due to skill issue; my skill is a constant but sometimes the splash damage mechanics just don't work at all. So I may be able to compensate for it most of the time, but this likely presents an unreasonable difficulty curve for newer or less skilled players. My reasoning for including the KD bit was that if somebody has spent a lot of time with something and is good at that task themselves, and they still find fault with something, it's probably valid. It's easy to dismiss new, low skill players' opinions or complaints.

Forum Discussion

TriassicStan

New Rookie

2 months ago

Please improve tank gameplay in BF6

Tanks need improvements to primary weapon splash damage, survivability vs RPGs, and slower head buildups on HMGs.

I am a skilled armor player and have leveled up my MBT and IFV to over 30. I can routinely get over 20 kills in a life and have invested a lot of time in map strategies. What I am trying to raise attention to is not due to skill issue. The game needs improvement to armor gameplay so it can be a relevant, competitive aspect of the game.

Primary Splash Damage -- The problem I've encountered is, after having tried all ammo types (HEMP, HEAT, and CAN), the splash damage of all of these rounds is wildly inconsistent. Sometimes I can lay down effective fire and help push objectives. Sometimes, though, I'll have 4 or more players in the rocks far above the main road on Liberation Peak firing at me, and despite having a perfect spot to fire splash damage into, I struggle to hit infantry at all. Even at closer ranges, it seems like you have to directly hit an enemy player in order to reliably kill them from your tank. I can fire at the ground just behind a truck someone is hiding behind and it'll do no damage (yes they're still there). The HEMP round is advertised for its large splash and anti-infantry effectiveness, but these results just aren't consistent from match to match. Please rework the splash damage mechanic so tank players can actually be relevant and contribute to the game.
Tank Survivability vs RPGs -- I feel like the devs are far more concerned about tanks potentially being over-powered than the actuality that it is far too easy to just bombard tanks with constant RPG attacks that force them out of the game before they can even start. A good game should allow both tanks and engineers to fight competitively with each other. I want to suggest two solutions:
1. Slightly reduce rocket damage: real-life tanks can survive a dozen rocket hits. I understand this is a shooter game and we're not striving for that level of exacting realism, but a compromise between 2-4 rockets and 12+ should be plenty easy to achieve. Give engineers an extra rocket so they don't get underpowered, but make it take longer to kill tanks so they actually have reliable chance to affect the game and use skilled performances to counter anti-armor engineers. Right now in a lot of games, tanks just get spammed to death in under a minute. Fixing splash damage (above) would greatly help tank survivability because they can actually take out and suppress rocket launchers, but slightly nerfing RPG damage should be done as well. That or slow down reload speed.
2. Increase tank health: I'm less keen to see this change implemented just because it would be more invasive to BF6 mechanics. But, this would be another way to allow tanks to take more hits and to stay in combat longer, thus enabling them to fight for their own survival and try to help the team.
HMG Heat Buildup -- The HMG is really inconvenient to use because you can only kill 1-2 players max before you have to wait for it to cooldown. It should be more usable in mid-range combat; right now, it is more of a DMR. It fires slow (fine) and is best at range, but you can fire so little before you have to "reload" that it's difficult to kill much of anything, especially as the driver. The gunner doesn't need to worry about moving or firing the main gun so it's easier for them. But even still, it can be hard to help keep the tank alive. Please add just 1-2 seconds of firing time for the HMG so it is more competitive with the LMG while still allowing both the LMG and HMG to keep their intended roles.
1. IFV Note: Similarly, please increase IFV gun capacity from 12 to 14-16. It places too much constraint on the driver and makes the vehicle too slow to play for it to really stay relevant against constant rocket attacks in the current game state.

Vehicles need improvement to splash damage, armor vs RPGs, and weapon capacity/cooldown in order to stay relevant and competitive within games, lest they just be suppressed and forced to stay back at spawn the whole game (or survive for 20-60 seconds with minimal kills/score). The biggest change I want to see is the splash damage being fixed for HEMP and HEAT ammo because that would allow tank players to fight back. Then consider how to improve rocket damage tables.

discussion

feedback

vehicles

13 Replies

ghostflux
Seasoned Ace
2 months ago
Somehow you manage to write an entire post about how tanks need improvements, only to mention in the introduction that you can score just fine with them. Is this just one of those cases where vehicle players want their favourite vehicle to be even more powerful?
I'm not an experienced tank player and because of challenges, I played a couple of rounds as a tank driver these last few days. In each game I got between 25-40 kills and managed to keep the tank alive for 90+% of the entire match on Escalation.
I struggle to understand how you're not able to be competitive? Scores like that already put me at the top of the scoreboard.
TriassicStan
New Rookie
2 months ago
I can score well with them some of the time. I can be competitive with them some of the time. My skill is a constant, in that I've been a tank-focused player for years now, but even with consistent accuracy and focus, the game just doesn't seem to do a great job at registering splash damage. I explained this already. At least one player here mentioned the opposite of my splash problem, where it would be hitting him in places/times when it shouldn't. If some players are experiencing too much splash and some are experiencing too little, that suggests a consistency problem. That's kind of the definition of one.
I understand tanks are easy to say alright they're already so powerful let's just nerf the **** out of them. I would like to argue the same against snipers in BF6, but I'm not tryna deal with that rn. If splash consistency can get improved, I can make the rest of it work. I still stand behind my other suggestions, but splash is easily the biggest one.
TLDR: the issue is not that I can never ever be competitive with tanks. The issue is inconsistency of splash damage.
TriassicStan
New Rookie
2 months ago
Honestly, with 24 players on a team for Breakthrough and more for Escalation/Conquest, I really don't think a single Engineer should be able to just shred a tank all by himself. I know that is probably controversial, but my thinking is that even 3-6 engineers (there can easily be more than that in these larger modes) could spam-suppress tanks from the beginning of games, especially on maps with long sight ranges like Firestorm or Liberation Peak. That has the strong potential to make tanks too counterable. I'm reminded of the Protoss Immortal in StarCraft 2 which started out as a "hard counter" to Terran Thors and Siege Tanks, but which was then nerfed into a "soft counter" so Terran mech players could still exist.
This is what leads me to advocate far more on improving tank's splash damage consistency and your engineer gadget slots idea instead of trying to insist on reducing RPG damage or increasing tank HP. With better splash vs infantry (not necessarily larger splash), tanks don't receive an unnecessary buff that would destabilize game mechanics or counter-class playability but they do get a reasonably increased ability to fight against large or skilled ATGM teams.
Again, I do like your idea about gadget slots; I think that shows promise. Honestly Osc_Binary, even with your engineer-oriented focus and my tank focus, I think we could absolutely try out some great ideas to improve tank/AT gameplay. If we were devs I'd love to work with you. Hopefully they see this exchange and reach some inspiration.