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Please hear me out before you hit reply and pillory me with insults. I was thinking about IA and it’s balance, and something occurred to me. Newbie weapons are important. Here’s what I mean, everybody looks for the biggest firepower granted in every match (their BFG). Newbie weapons are BFGs at little to no skill. And 90% of players complain about no skill BFGs. But without these no skill BFGs the server would be a tiny group of skilled players and would never grow in number. Let me explain with an example: John a new player joins the game and all the weapons are high skill BFGs. John a new player will die repeatedly and not enjoy the experience, nor take the time to gain the skill to use the high skill BFGs. Now, imagine if all the weapons are no skill BFGs, then John a new player will get bored, feeling he’s mastered the game. Thus there should be some no skill BFGs, but with more high skilled BFGs. I will use my experience as an example: The M202 Flash (delta force flamethrower weapon) was awesome, it became my BFG. Best newbie anti-infantry gun ever. I even killed a few very skilled players a few times (mostly just by suiciding). Yet once I gained more skill I leaned toward the FN 2000 from Patch or the Auto-Assault-12 from Logan. I have yet to gain enough skill to use Havoc or Sydney’s quick draw headshot. But if I didn’t have that newbie weapon that no skill BFG, I might’ve skipped over Interrim Apex completely. Same goes for tanks! I was at first drawn to the mammoths (especially the 36inch), but now I am trying to master the Mirage tank or ADATS. Skill should not equal power at all the times. Instead I think combat is balanced when some weapons/tanks are no skill BFGs while others take 5% extra skill for 15% extra power. And No I didn’t forget Nod; my first BFG was the Blackhand minigunner. Slowly I enjoyed Petrova / blackhand trooper, the Nod fanatic (wink wink), and as my skill goes up the soon the shock trooper, ravashaw, and Sakura’s headshot power. Same with Nod tanks! When I first started it was all about the Stealth tanks (especially the Ezekiel wheel tank) and as of recent I’ve started using the Stingray, Ontos, and the Tunguska. Therefore: Low skill BFGs (Newb weapons) can also lead to fair imbalance. I say fair because for every character (A) that excels (and everyone then spams/uses) there will be a character (B) that will dethrone/excel against character (A). Then character (C) will out perform character (B) and so on. Eventually someone will realize Character (A) crushes character (Z) and the cycle will continue. Thus No character/tank is skilled at everything, and the game becomes unendingly interesting. If fair imbalance is done right everyone will complain and say “character A should get nerfed” until discovering character B will crush character A, and thus keeping a rolling cycle and strategy game alive. Any thoughts?

The complaints typically roll in when they encounter a player with exceptional skill, or encounter an entire team of these guys. Somewhat like no one noticing the misses, but only noticing the hits. I've noticed that some players have a hard time distinguishing between the strength of the weapon vs the skill of the player. A good player can make anything seem OP. A below-average player can make the most OP weapons look mediocre. I never really had a problem with stealth Comanches when I found out how easy it was to kill them. In fact, it's criminally easy to destroy them that quickly. I think part of the issue here is knowledge. If you aren't aware of weakspots, you won't take advantage of them.

number of players who can use it properly: 0

---RU--- также я хочу добавить то что у всего должно быть (counter pick) ну например у мамонта всех уровней это быстрые небольшие танки и пехотинец с metla gun ---EN--google translate--- I also want to add something that everything should have (counter pick), for example, a mammoth of all levels has fast small tanks and an infantryman with a metla gun

+1 Even to utilize the whole "This unit needs to stop to be invisible" nerf, it's nearly impossible to stop to 0 m/s. You have to spend like 15 seconds in the air getting to that exact stopped speed. In addition offsetting it by giving it more armor doesn't make sense either. Not only is it still retarded weak but you're better off buying an Apache for cheaper more ammo. One of the most fun units in the game destroyed because other players couldn't simply shoot at it with anything. It litterly goes down in two hits from a ramjet or one hit from an AA Stinger. (May I also note how AA units were buffed even more so I really don't see why people are complaining.)

tbh i dont like new comanche, its useless for me in current form microwave tank exists only to disable damaged enemy tanks and eject driver (for disruptor rush for example) its not supposed to damage tanks

Agree with these.

In all honesty, I think we may be overthinking the camo pillbox a bit. We're all thinking of it as only being useful if it was 100% unpredictable 100% of the time. Personally, I don't think we need to go that far. It's not like it's instantly useless the second that it's spotted. I honestly think we could get away with giving it a terrain-matching texture, some minor cover, and place it in ambush locations. Sure, people would learn where it is, but they'd still have to hunt down and destroy it. Simple texture change, armor buff, and clever placement would be enough to make it fun to find and fight, without being too powerful. Stuff like randomized locations would probably be a bit too much in practice.