yurch

What's wrong with that? Ammo is cheap!

This also might help to explain that gunner thing. I figured the front armor was too tough, so I often try to go for the crew slot from the side or rear. Some of these schematics have pretty cluttered turrets, I bet the shots are getting intercepted by all sorts of objects. I'll try going straight in from only the gunner's side, but that's going to be easier said than done, especially after you bounce the first shot off of him. 76mm isn't all that bad, I've been using it a bunch lately. If I can avoid being hurricane-smashed I can get tons of bots to suicide, and it's effective range is just enough to mobility kill and eventually wear out 20mm users. The AP rounds are reasonably accurate. The HE's (on the rare occurance that you want them) are not. The 76mm is not a terribly effective weapon against drop ships though, I keep getting disabled players that decide to ignore me halfway though my whittling and extract. This, and the bot suicides, makes using it rather thankless.

I am finding the Apollo chassis as probably the least survivable in the game. It gets mobility killed VERY frequently. Paladins may have front mounted engines, but at least then there's some armor on it. Not so for the Apollo - any artillery that lands near the thing (hurricanes!@%) has a high chance of damaging or knocking out the engine. 20mm goes through the front of it at even moderate ranges(often, of course, killing the driver), and a player with an ion cannon can burn through the front armor of the Apollo before you can fire the 120mm cannon three times. The 120mm is the only real reason I use the thing. And what a reason! That cannon is perfect right now. It's not stupidly deadly, but in the right hands you can put out some serious pain with it. HEAT rounds can utterly destroy light vehicles and dropships, and the AP is just enough to take out specific subsystems if you know what you're doing. Speaking of which, can we get a schematic of the cutter? Right now they seem tougher than the Apollo, and I suspect that's because there is a bunch of empty space we're hitting. Although, as far as subsystems go, I have extreme difficulty killing gunners. Killing the driver is easy, almost trivial on opposing vehicles like the apollo, but I don't think I've ever intentionally managed to kill the gunner. It seems easier to destroy the whole turret, which doesn't make much sense as the gunner should be the squishier target. I do think this penetration angle limit that other forumers are talking about, should be relaxed or removed. I'm making some (AP) shots at angles that really look like they should be deflecting off the armor, which is kinda a shame as the gunnery is one of the things that makes this game unique. I also think you should be allowed to fire even if the turret hasn't met up with the crosshair yet. The turret has the wierd need to 'focus' on targets, and this causes bizzare lengths of time when you can't fire at very close enemies (or while moving), especially if you are lagging. I had someone completely shut down my ability to fire at him simply by parking his (empty)hurricane over my tank. The turret goes crazy, and while still mostly 'pointing' at him, I don't have the ability to fire.

Visual part of hit effects - they should have a relative velocity to the host vehicle. You can't see what kind of graphic the shot takes if you hit from the front if the vehicle is moving forward - the effect stands still in the same world space and is "swallowed" by the vehicle. It also tends to make it look like you're hitting further back on the vehicle. In short, spark effect should probably take into account victim velocity.

That angle modifier might explain why I always think they're penetrating TOP shots on my apollo from hull down... 20mm at anything lower than a few hundred meters just murders that poor thing.

The two most powerful computers in my home suffer from this as well. AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (64 bit) WinXP pro (NOT 64 bit) 1GB/2GB RAM ATI Radeon x800 Various Cat versions The 'pauses' get more consistant the longer you play. I usually close and reopen the game after about 3 maps, it's far too irritating by then. Texture caching doesn't appear to help, and I have it turned off now, as it drastically cuts the load time. The pauses seem to tend to occur: (but only sometimes, never 100%) -when someone drops -when I drop -The instant before I enter or exit 'zoom' mode (!!!!) I don't know if there are any other causes, and the game is quite smooth playing otherwise. Usually lasts from about 6-12 seconds, and in that time whatever input I was last doing continues... I often find the tank tumbling off a hill or surrounded by enemies by the time I regain control. Often during long pauses the chassis dissapears for a few seconds, but the turret remains. I have a friend I tried to get to play who has a 9600. He reports similar pauses, but he says after about 2 maps they actually tend to make him crash. I could get his specs but it'd take a while before I have the chance to grill him about it.

Okay, I can accept that. Is it reasonable to expect more of an audio cue, though? I often watch in amazement as players sit complacently as multiple rounds position themselves for imminent cratering. These players of course, could in no way be me. Just in case anyone was wondering.

Mortars are kind of odd, in that they have such a long flight time but still always manage to land right on target. You'd think wind (even if the computer compensated for it) would scatter the shells around a bit. Are they supposed to be guided or something? My instinct when I expect shells landing about (especially with wheels) is almost always to try and hide in a crater or in one of my cutter-made "fightin' holes", but the mortars are often more than happy to keep me company...

I'm pretty sure HEAT does do more catastrophic damage. I've switched to using it every time for drop ships and rear shots. AP tends to just damage more (instead of "kill"), you can often hear the guys yelling in the opposing vehicle while spraying it close up with AP. What I'm really afraid of is the ion cannons. Although their primary purpose right now is setting alight Rune's tires, it's an instant hit weapon with seemingly no limit to it's range. (wouldn't ions dissapate in an atmosphere quickly?) It reliably kills a target 100% through persistance, and this I can see being a problem once the game is out a long enough time and players are doing everything they can to win. This is the kind of weapon that multiplies in strength with every person that's using it, rather than a simple linear increase. A group of people working together with IC may sound like a nice teamwork goal, but I can see it (at range at least) consistantly spanking more diversified teams of greater size, simply through "focus fire", a term I'd rather see left in those crappy mainstream RTS games. Yeah, a guy in that nightmare hovercraft could probably trash most attempts to use them in a server today, but there's something like 8 hovercraft and 20-30+ ion vehicles availible. And, a question: how is the BOTTOM armor on the hovercraft? Is firing HE underneath them a viable option?