Also if this is too long, just scroll to the end.
My intent here is to discuss their effectiveness in their supposed role, transport and fire support, and the conditions that need to be met in order for them to fulfill that role.
Let's start with their supposed primary purpose: transporting infantry. So far, in my experience (feel free to disagree), I've only ever seen them used for transport in 2 situations and neither of these happen very often:
1. Immediately after a JDAM for short distances, and it often feels like it's done more for show than anything else.
2. When there are no FOBs and transport helos are down. If your team is ever in this situation and not at the beginning of the round, well, you're probably not going to get transport either
. The way I see it, APCs have 2 advantages: speed and firepower. You'd think they make perfect assets for wide flanking maneuvers, as yours will be the only infantry squad close by and the APC can make up for that lack of fire support. But when 1 LAT can score 8 kills and 10 tickets (or whatever value they have now) worth of damage, combined with the fact that they make a TON of noise and you need to cover a distance that much bigger, it's not hard to see why infantry prefer moving on foot. I think Wanda Shan was sort of a lesson in that.
Now onto their second role, fire support.
You'd think they're doing this very well as it stands but they really are acting more like mini-tanks fighting a battle parallel to that of the infantry. Sure if they get enough kills they will make a difference, but you rarely see them consistently covering infantry, which is to say, they aren't very reliable.
This is because no APC driver in their right mind will stand around because that's where the infantry needs them to be. Mobility is their greatest defense, standard "procedure" is to always be on the move, stopping for very short periods of time, all in a not very predictable manner. It's good for harassing the enemy, but not to suppress on command. It's no surprise that infantry don't bother coordinating with APCs since these need to do their own thing to survive.
The reason this happens is that taking a LAT shot virtually anywhere will pretty much kill you (getting tracked is, in most cases, a death sentence). Surviving a LAT without losing mobility is something that happens very rarely and thus hardly inspires any confidence.
So my conclusion is that APCs are too vulnerable to a weapon available to practically all infantry squads in order to accomplish teamwork oriented goals. I understand PRs general idea of promoting caution, but as it is now you're either forced to stay well back with minimal impact on the outcome, or do your own thing without much input from the infantry, or just hope the enemy team is blatantly incompetent.
Having 2 shots to the side completely destroy an APC, with one taking out the turret control, and 1 to the rear to make it burn would give them enough leeway to attempt to get their hands dirty without turning everything with legs into their metaphorical b****, and even get rid of their reputation as metal coffins for whoever is in the back.
I'm not sure how realistic this is, but I feel it would make gameplay much more varied for both infantry and APCs.
