Mammoth Tank's splash radius

[yosh56]

Spoiler

Started noticing it in last PUG, and on XMountain/Reservoir a lot. Vs. halfway decent Arty/Tech/Flame GDI actually has a harder time in the field than Nod (assuming both teams are competent obviously), and the reason is more or less something from OldRen but amplified in RenX: 

The damn arty can RAEP repairs with splash damage even when not bothering to aim for repairs. Some of it stems from just having a ridiculous amount of splash damage, but the other half stems from the fact that even if an Artillery misses by a hair, the shell just lands either right on the back of what they were shooting at, or at some Hotwire's feet. Flak armour helps, but the main issue is how consistently Hotwires can be damaged behind a wall of meds, vs. how difficult it is to damage Technicians behind Arts. 

Short and sweet:  GDI's tanks have to completely pull off of what they're firing at to even threaten repairs, and even then their splash isn't 'that' great considering how much damage they're giving up vs. armoured targets while they get pounded. HOWEVER, I think this situation is 'okay' for Meds (maybe a minor splash buff), but I feel like GDI should be able to counter harder with Mammoths considering they're damn near twice as expensive as a Tech/Arty AND are always taking damage because they're fat. 

Currently GDI is left with suiciding an APC or a Med to even pressure repairs (with vehicles) forcing that annoying over reliance on the sniper class. I think this would be partially nullified if at least the Mammoth had a method of pressuring tank repairs with higher splash. Nod also go the Stank splash buff not too long ago, so it's not like this is a far-fetched idea. I'm only looking to make Mammoths 'slightly' more relevant beyond locking Nod in their base. Damage would be untouched, and I'm just looking for a way to pressure Nod's Art/Tech lines more. Nod already has the infantry advantage (though that changes the moment anyone actually figures out the Patch and Mobius beat literally everything in Nod's arsenal), so they aren't supposed to be THAT strong in the field. ... I'm just going to throw this oddly long rant in a box and ask a simple question, dammit.  

 

TL;DR : Buff it so GDI has a better alternative to 'pressure' (not just outright kill) Arty/Tech/Flamer repairs as opposed to just suicidal runs with APCs, and those god awful, cancerous snipers. 

Also I'm fairly certain the Stank beats infantry easier than the Mammoth right now.

[Luhrian]

The GDI Tanks are already strong enough. If the GDI Tanks focus the fire, they can easily kill an Arty and it doesn't matter if the Arty have a tech or not. With more splash damage, Nod wouldn't have a chance to beat the GDI with tank power.

 

But maybe you can nerf the Arty splesh damage and/or radius, that isn't a bad idea

Edited February 12, 2017 by Luhrian

[Axesor]

GDI maybe have to push, but Nod is not able to hold the line. Also when meds rush in, they will break any defence line, and are able to keep it for a while until hotties catch them up. Technicians always need to camp behind the corner and even through the GDI's tanks splash damage can reach them.

• Light tank is too small to cover technician.
• Arty is too squishy to hold the line - constantly needs to hide behind corner for not being destroyed in next 2 seconds.
• Flame tank needs to push and hope for the best becouse technician cant keep up with them.

 

• Mammys and med tanks are big, and tanky enough to provide a good cover for hotties. If something gets through, hotties can instantly sit in the passanger seet until the threat is gone.
• GDI tanks are able to hold the defence line, but not for too long even with hotties. They are being repaired too slow, so they need to ither push or take cover.

Just try to remember one situation when you last time pushed with ur team. Nod was in total chaos.. maybe stank, 1 light, some damaged artys left, and maybe one damaged flamer, and bunch of hurt techs running around like a crazy trying to save their asses, becouse they cant hide behind Nod tanks.

Summary: When GDI tanks rush, Nod shits his pants. Do not touch splash damage, or radius.

[Xeon Wraith]

Mammoth tanks can apply already incredible amount of pressure on arty-techs, considering a cannon volley deals around 50% of their hp instantly. Carefully poking at a mammoth's repairs while preserving your own is pretty much the only reliably cost/player efficient method of killing one. Nod tanks simply aren't competitive against them in a direct fight. That said, anti-infantry for tanks on the whole is pretty terrible. I wouldn't be against seeing a increase anti-inf/rep somewhere - just not on the massive burst damage tank.

Rather than increasing the splash on mammoths tanks, why not increase it on MRLS? MRLS generally don't do anything in the late game that Meds can't do except on extremely open maps and base siege. Nod would still be able to competitively counter with lights/stanks with sufficient coordination.

A little side idea that might be fun is to give a extra laser-guided fire mode to MRLS/Mammoths so players can manually curve missiles around tanks and cover. But that sounds like work and that is probably unfun. iunno.

[sterps]

I was talking about this yesterday with a friend. 

The Mammoth's tusks (rockets) are supposed to be effective against infantry, and at the moment they're definitely not.

I'd welcome a buff to the splash on their rockets. 

 

At the moment, all of Nod's vehicles are more effective than a mammoth at killing infantry. Arty splash is easily able to damage/kill support, flamers annihilate mammoths with support when they get up close, and constant sbh and stank harrasment on the flanks of mammoths again easily takes out support and can quickly overwhelm you, all it takes is two sbh to c4 it.

 

Remember Nod is not supposed to go toe to toe with GDI armour.. it never has. They rely on speed, ambushes, stealth and gorilla tactics. Which what I have described above mostly fits that.

 

To me a buff to the missiles would be more useful for the infantry that  sneak up on your flank and hug you.

[Jarzey]

If you ask me, I would switch the Mammy's rockets with the big rocket model (MRLS, Orca, Rocket Soldier, Stank...), reduce the clip to 2 (4 when Heroic rank), and make the rocket itself hitting hard and wide as a MRLS one (fire rate, lock on, reload can stay the same, travel speed reduced). They would not be OP against air, since the rocket speed will be slower and thus easier to evade.

Pretty much like original Renegade with the exception that you can still fire both cannons and rockets at the same time.

However, I recognize that there would be visual problems, seeing how the Mammy has a small six-rocket pack launcher on each side of the main turret.

Edited February 12, 2017 by Jarzey

[Sn4ke]

Just fix the double-shot mammoth glitch before you even consider changing anything else on the mammoth

[boxes]

Ever since lock on vs inf was removed GDI took the bigger hit than Nod by far, so I'm not against some sort of buff related to mammoth missiles or MRLS. 

However, if we're talking about more anti-rep options, the best thing to do is to make new armor type (none) which behaves the same way it did before 5.1, and give to hottie/techs so they're more susceptible to explosives in general. 

[Sn4ke]

9 minutes ago, CampinJeff said:

Ever since lock on vs inf was removed GDI took the bigger hit than Nod by far, so I'm not against some sort of buff related to mammoth missiles or MRLS. 

the avg. player may have a problem with that. but skilled players still can handle MRLS n Mammoth against INF

11 minutes ago, CampinJeff said:

However, if we're talking about more anti-rep options, the best thing to do is to make new armor type (none) which behaves the same way it did before 5.1, and give to hottie/techs so they're more susceptible to explosives in general. 

ouch for all dedicated healers

[boxes]

1 minute ago, DarkSn4ke said:

the avg. player may have a problem with that. but skilled players still can handle MRLS n Mammoth against INF

ouch for all dedicated healers

Sadly there's no other real way to take out repairs other than shooting behind a tank or sniping. Add in the fact that repairs can heal each other and you have this situation where the best way to get rid of repairs is to insta-kill them. Could give them 150 armor instead of 125, but the main focus here is that it forces field repairs to put more care in their positioning rather than casually soaking up explosive damage. 

[Sn4ke]

Just now, CampinJeff said:

Sadly there's no other real way to take out repairs other than shooting behind a tank or sniping. Add in the fact that repairs can heal each other and you have this situation where the best way to get rid of repairs is to insta-kill them. Could give them 150 armor instead of 125, but the main focus here is that it forces field repairs to put more care in their positioning rather than casually soaking up explosive damage. 

I get your point jeff, really. But at the moment I just don't think that anything should get changed (again). Airstrikes & Snipers are good to deal with healers. Also MRLSs cann still handle them if they avoid to lock in on the vehicle.

But as this is a general discussion, we (or let's say: the devs ) should definitely consider your point for future changes.

[SvN91]

The mammoth is in my opinion the most useless tank in the game, it's slow, it's clumsy, it shoots slowly and it almost always becomes the priority target by enemy tanks. But I disagree on making it more powerful, nod tanks are too hard to keep alive as it is now I think.

[Madkill40]

Increased Rocket Splash damage for Mammoth's would be nice as this wouldn't over power them but makes them more dangerous to an engineer or tech who isn't paying enough attention. It might be good to switch the rate of fire for the main cannons and the rockets around depending on how much the rockets' splash damage is increased by. 

[yosh56]

This is oddly neck and neck...

 

1 hour ago, SvN91 said:

The mammoth is in my opinion the most useless tank in the game

Map dependent. Most of the maps that are direct ports from OldRen don't support the Mammoth well at all. They kind of take up too much space to be more than a nuisance in narrow passages. Maps like Whiteout though and Arctic are a different story though. When they have space and repairs they easily outclass everything else on the field, especially since they're also an outright damage sponge. They also have the highest damage output out of everything in the game sans Artillery. And if we're using burst damage then they out-do Arts as well. Pretty sure at Elite/Heroic you can delete Artillery in one burst of rockets and cannons. 

 

[Novilan]

I think the cannons of the mammoth tank are fine damage-wise, but the rockets feel kind of lousy in comparison.

So I'm up for an increased splash radius of the rockets!

And like DarkSn4ke mentioned:

13 hours ago, DarkSn4ke said:

Just fix the double-shot mammoth glitch [...]

Sometimes it's also like the cannons don't do any damage at all, despite I'm clearly hitting the target.

[sterps]

19 hours ago, Denuvian said:

 

And like DarkSn4ke mentioned:

Sometimes it's also like the cannons don't do any damage at all, despite I'm clearly hitting the target.

 

This happens to me quite a lot, and it's very frustrating because often I'll lose my mammoth tank to a light tank or stealth tank despite landing several direct hits which would have long blown the opposing vehicle up. 

 

I did report this as a bug last year, but received no reply.

[Sn4ke]

Well, Mammoth -vs- Infantry is.... absolutely okay in my opinion.

Just keep in mind:

- never try to do a headshot with alt_fire (rockets) as the rockets will fly above the infantry unit then (depends on distance though) -> aim for the gound instead to get the splash dmg. body hits are hard to get on a running unit

- you won't outrun any unit with a mammoth. but the double cannon and intelligent driving are effective weapons against close combat infantry (e.g. chems or flametroopers)

And - all in all - the mammoth is an anti structure / vehicle tank. A solo mammoth is useless, you need healers and other support units as Snipers & APCs to effectively use a Mammoth. Every vehicle has it's weakness. The teamplay & mix of units make the difference here.

Edit:

about the double shot & no dmg glitch - can't really say if this just happens randomly or if there is some kind of triggering for that. Also have no clue if it's client or server related

Edited February 14, 2017 by DarkSn4ke

[RoundShades]

I just think, as the most expensive unit in the game, it's sort of lackluster. Mainly because of cost. Stanks are 900, Flamers are 800, 1ks are 1k, Mammys are a 1k and a half.

They honestly make sense to be 1200. You'd definitely see them more. Not sure if that's a good thing, but if it's not, that means they do in fact cripple a team if you use a 1200 more than a 800, which means they could use something to tweak them. I know they've had a speed buff since the old days, but maybe another (of course keep them 1500 if you improve their speed).

[yosh56]

1 hour ago, DarkSn4ke said:

about the double shot & no dmg glitch - can't really say if this just happens randomly or if there is some kind of triggering for that. Also have no clue if it's client or server related

There's no such thing as random. But I literally have only ever gotten it once and it was while testing and I never saw it ever again. 

[Hohndo]

I've gotten double shot a couple times. Never got no damage.

I think the double shot is due to reading extra button clicks, maybe? My mouse has double click issue I need to take it apart for.

I've gotten double vehicles for the price of one more often lately but it's completely random. I can't find a pattern to it. Similar to my mouse click issue.

Edited February 14, 2017 by Hohndo

[Sn4ke]

7 minutes ago, yosh56 said:

There's no such thing as random.

 

1 minute ago, Hohndo said:

...but it's completely random. I can't find a pattern to it...

well, that's what I meant with "random" @yosh56 if you don't know how something really works many people (incl. me) consider it as "random" regarding language use.

but these two quotations 6 minutes apart from each other

[Madkill40]

I've only had the no damage of there was some lag in which case, was it really no damage? Or did the lag just make it look like a hit? 

Was I being accurate? Or inaccurately shit?

[Sn4ke]

@Madkill40 I farmed the harvy for ~ 45 minutes while chatting with Try yesterday. The no-dmg glitch is real. Same with the double shot.

I think enough players can confirm this.

And I don't think it's due to lag. For the no-dmg... maybe it's comparable with the Grenader doing no-dmg (which is still not fixed in my opinion)

[SvN91]

This is not really about the mammoths splash radius but I find the mammoth very frustrating to use. The cannons keep firing if you hold down the left mouse button but then you need to click the right button every time you want to fire the missiles. meanwhile there is a quite long pause (almost a second?) between the shots of the two turrets. Is it possible to make the mammoth fire the two turrets at almost the same time instead of having the pause between? There is so much clicking on the mouse to have the mammoth keep firing right now. I'm not sure if I made my point clear..