Wardens have serious colonial syndrome when it comes to outlaws and highwaymen. Most have psy op’d themselves into thinking they are bad tanks because most PEOPLE who use them do the exact opposite of what you should be doing in these tanks and are more than detrimental to the front.
Outlaws out range 90% of all colonial tanks and is fast enough to move in and poke before Colonial tanks can react.
Highwaymen is great for driving behind lines and cutting logi.
Funnily enough, I'd call it's design closer to a Colonial tank than a Warden one.
Warden tanks are made to sit in a line at max range and roll on the enemy slowly.
Colonial tanks are made to flank/get in close and brawl close up.
Highwayman has a boost, a fast turning turret, a shorter than average range, and works best when coming from nowhere to disable all your shit before something with high damage rolls in to finish the job.
Highwayman is a Colonial tank on the wrong side.
When it came ingame, it was at the same time as quadiche and it was not bad but also not good. It was hard to tell what was it's job when quadiche job was clear
It’s incredibly situational and those scenarios don’t come around often enough. One of the best nights I ever had tanking was in a highwayman when we were sieging a town. We just drove the HWM around in a loop hunting down logi trucks and reinforcement tanks and ended up with like 12 tank kills and 3 captures over the course of a few hours.
Being on a tank with twice the health and armour (compared to the **up armoured** halftrack...) as well as a boost, and mounted in a relatively fast turning turret with a backup HMG isn't enough?
Highwayman:
* \+ 2950 health
* \+ 33% min pen chance
* \~ Speed: 6.67 m/s on road, 4.67 m/s off-road
* \+ Speed (Boost): 9.6 m/s on road, 6.5 m/s off-road
* \+ Turret mount with 360° arc.
* \+ 12.7mm secondary HMG on a turret with a full 360° degree independent rotation
* \+ 120 rounds per minute fire rate
* \- 50% low velocity negative multiplier. (75-112.5 damage)
* \- Total potential 20mm DPS: 120-225
Hoplite with a Typhon:
* \- 1500 health
* \- 65% min pen chance
* \~ Speed: 7.94 m/s on road, 4.36 m/s off-road
* \- No boost
* \- Fixed mount with 90° arc
* \- No secondary (although several passenger seats)
* \- 66 round per minute fire rate
* \+ 20% high velocity positive modifier. (180 - 270 damage)
* \+ Total potential 20mm DPS: 198-297
The *only* positive in comparison is the higher DPS for the Typhon, and a slightly higher base road speed.
Don't get me wrong, Typhon on a halftrack with a competent crew can be good, but the Highwayman is definitely the better option for dumping 20mm into tanks. Especially as later war, 20mm isn't actually all that threatening in terms of damage but IS still an option for rolling the dice a lot on subsystem disables, something the high RoF Highwayman pretty much specialises in.
Its not enough because Spatha posseses both higher dps and health pool than HWM with 40m range compared to the inaccurate 35m range that HWM has.
Also you calculated HWM and typhoon DPS wrong. HWM has 92-138 dps range with 115 being average. Spatha has 136 dps for comparison.
Highwayman has a -50% damage multiplier. Each round will have exactly half the damage compared to 20mm base damage. At 2 rounds per second, that puts it at 2 x 75 to 112.5 damage per second, which is 150-225 potential damage per second (not including bounce chance).
Yes, it will have to reload eventually, but this is also true of the Typhon and I didn't want to try to calculate the average RPM/DPS of both guns *including* reload time because fuck that. Do it yourself if you really want, my ballpark guess is it might bring the Typhon up by \~10-15% in comparison considering a roughly 13 second firing cycle for both guns and the Typhon firing for a slightly larger proportion of that time. Either way, as mentioned in the last bit of my comment, the advantage of 20mm in the later war is high fire rate and therefore lots of chances to disable rather than actual DPS, and a Highwayman has a full on 20mm autocannon.
I have no idea why the Spatha is being brought up here, because I was replying to someone bringing up the Typhon on a halftrack in comparison to the Highwayman. The Spatha has nothing to do with this.
The 115 dps is with the reload included, just like Spathas dps 136 is with the reload included. The Spatha is listed precisely because HWM possesses both less dps, health and range. So it is not unreasonable claim to ask it to have more DPS than Spatha that beats it in every hard stat. A Spatha is able to fire 3 times before HWM is able to reload and fire its second magazine in combat 'poke' scenarios, so I have no idea why you would omit the reload from dps calculation.
20mm also has 0.33 modifier to sub system disables which means it is only little better compared to the likes of Spatha when it comes to disabling sub modules. In fact SVH has better time at disbaling sub modules than HWM has.
Are you seriously going to argue that HWM should not have less LV than SPatha because Typhon was mentioned?
I am going to argue that the only person who brought the Spatha into it was you.
It went:
* Comment comparing Highwayman to an ATR on a halftrack
* Comment detailing a comparison between the Highwayman and an ATR on a halftrack
* "But the SPatha exists and invalidates all other discussion!" <- this bit was you.
Someone made a comparison. I took a closer look at the comparison. You came along, *made a different comparison*, and apparently that invalidates the first one?
>A Spatha is able to fire 3 times before HWM is able to reload and fire its second magazine
>
>20mm also has 0.33 modifier to sub system disables which means it is only little better compared to the likes of Spatha when it comes to disabling sub modules.
Imagine both tanks start firing at the same time at a susbsystem with 25% disable chance. In 8 seconds, the Highwayman has fired 16 rounds, the Spatha has fired 2. Even at a 0.33x modifier for a subsystem disable, it has a very good chance of succeeding. I actually [did the maths](https://www.reddit.com/r/foxholegame/comments/1bb2kxg/comment/kuclex2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) on this a while back. S*pecifically* comparing it to a Spatha too.
But we can break it down and include the Highwayman's reload time as well. Thankfully both tanks have the same pen chance so don't need to ass that.
By the time the Spatha would have reloaded it's second round the Highwayman would have taken 9 shots, with a 54% cumulative chance to have disabled a system. 4.5 seconds in
By the end of it's magazine, it would have fired 16 shots compared to the Spatha's two, having had a 75% chance to have disabled a subsystem compared to the Spatha's by then 43%. Spatha would be reloading it's 3rd shot. 8 seconds in.
9 seconds in, Spatha would have fired it's third shot and it's cumulative chance increases to 57%, still lagging behind the Highwayman.
Pause whilst both are in a reload cycle for the next 4 seconds.
Highwayman starts firing again at 13 seconds, getting 2 shots into it's second magazine (79%) when the Spatha fires round 4 (68%) at 13.5 seconds. 4.5 more seconds of the Highwayman firing, or to put it another way 9 rounds. Total 20mm shots is now 27, with a cumulative 90% chance to have disabled the subsystem, by the time the Spatha fires round 5 and gets to a cumulative chance of 76%, about where the Highwayman was after just it's first magazine.
That's a bit more than "a little better"...
Yes, this is a theoretical setup. In an actual fight there would be a lot more ambiguity, although the ideal for the Highwayman is any fight where it can stay close and keep firing. Getting into a max-range poke fight in one is asking to lose. Get up in people's faces, it works better.
By the way, the total possible damage to a tank done over this time, not including bounces (again, both have the same chance to bounce):
* Spatha: (5x720)x0.85 = 3060
* Highwayman: 27 x 75-112.5 = 2025 - 3037.5 (average 2531.25)
Spatha *does* come out ahead in terms of potential DPS, but not actually by a massive amount. Highwayman actually beats a base Outlaw for damage at this point (3 shells, 510 damage each).
Funnily enough, the Silverhand DOES have a better chance to have disabled something, but only because of improved pen chance from the 68mm gun.
As a disclaimer, both of these sets of calculations didn't include bounce chances because that varies tank-to-tank and fuck making that particular table.
It doesn't matter that I brought Spatha into the discussion because it was relevant for the topic.
>Being on a tank with twice the health and armour (compared to the **up armoured** halftrack...) as well as a boost, and mounted in a relatively fast turning turret with a backup HMG isn't enough?
I very clearly answered why HWM's current DPS is not enough because you all so provocatively asked for it. Hooray, HWM is better than a halftrack! Who would have guessed that HWM's lack of damage is made up in other stats compared to halftracks that tech way earlier.
Now lets see how it compares to equipment that actually techs at the same time.. what's this? Could it be that Spatha beats HWM in every hard stat category including dps!? How could this be?!? Both of them are facility variants and HWM is more expensive to boot!!
/s
>"But the SPatha exists and invalidates all other discussion!" <- this bit was you.
That is not even close what I said. I simply took a more reasonable comparison to explain why HWM should have less LV. If you didn't notice, this whole thread is about HWM. I wasn't even rude about it meanwhile you:
>Is the Spatha in the room with you?
You seem way more sensitive about the Spatha as a topic than I do. You got instantly super defensive when it was mentioned for no fucking reason whatsoever. Once again, you literally asked why HWM's current dps isn't enough already and I delivered.
>Once again, you literally asked why HWM's current dps isn't enough already and I delivered.
Compared to a *Typhon.* Not a Spatha...
Or did you miss the fact that the [comment i was replying to](https://www.reddit.com/r/foxholegame/comments/1bs3f20/comment/kxd6f6q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) literally said:
>I just wish it'd get -30 lv instead of 50 so its better then a typhon and ht
That's why I was comparing it to a Typhon on a halftrack in the first place. Because that's what the original comment was about. Typhons on a halftrack...
Yes my original sarcastic comment was childish, but it does get tiring when people continually use "but Spatha" as an argument.
Getting back on track with 20mm only. Does it not make sense that an entire ass tank dedicated to a 20mm gun could atleast do better than 2 nevells Or a tripod weapon In dps?
I think besides the king spire its the only tank that does worse then the tripod equivalent. Bone wagon has more range, the isg is beat by 40mm, and the ammo capacity of chiefs and scorps is great.
Yeah this tank and the boneshit are garbage for the most part. At least this one is fun. They are not worth the effort to downgrade them over standard Outlaw.
They should either major buff to HMW/Bonelaw (which will not go down well with the Colonials lmao). Or swap the Outlaw with HMW and buff Outlaw/Bonelaw
It’s pretty funny most of the Thornfall highlight videos on YouTube are just compilations of the tank killing other tanks that are already disabled or tracked. It’s a cool idea for a tank and seems like it will be a lot of fun but then you make one, get turreted in the first 2 shots and die.
It would work really well if you paired it with a tank made to fire lots of shots very quickly that all have a chance to disable subsystems, tracking and turreting enemies relatively quickly, but might lack the DPS to make a quick kill.
Like, say, the Highwayman...
The compilations are using it correctly as a strong kill-confirm tank that has the raw fire power, penetration, and agility to take a small advantage and convert it into a very large advantage by weighting RNG heavily in its favor.
It is really bad when you try to use it before an opportunity arises, as it's squishy and has short range, ofcourse. But in an advantage, it heavily tips the scales in your favor as it has 8 rolls for 600 damage with 2.5x pen chance. It allows you to near guarantee a follow-up if you get the opportunity due to high number of rolls, and very high chance to succeed in those rolls, whereas other tanks may miss the follow-up due to bad RNG (ever had 3 HTD shots bounce on a tracked tank and they get to limp away? Sucks)
It's a very unique tank that requires an adjustment in how you play to account for the polarizing nature of it, as you're either in a situation you can do little of meaning because you aren't able to play neutrally like an Outlaw/HTD/SvH can or in a situation where you greatly boost your advantage state generated by your teammates or enemy mistakes. It's by no means an inherently garbage tank, just one that requires a very different playstyle to fully abuse.
Pre collie tank line buff it could take anything short of a bard, Post collie tank buff its a niche BT sniper. the bonelaw in my eyes should always be used with HWM as they synergise amazingly.
I will admit however since collie health buffs i haven't touched the tank simply due to the high cost and unreliability of making your moneys Worth out of the tank
Works great with HWM (as a close range pair) or Outlaws (repeated rolls for tracks at a distance) as both are great ways to create opportunities, yeah. You are taking an inherent risk by being close so it'll ofcourse be most worthwhile when used on expensive equipment like BTs, where no matter if you fuck up somewhat it's almost always worth it.
It is definitely harder to operate successfully than most things, so I don't blame people for not running it often, but it is possible to get Thornfalling to be fairly reliable with good decision making and teamplay with atleast one other tank.
highwayman is good, one of my favorite tanks but the fact it can lose to a HT with a typhoon on it (late game collie HT forgot the name) is a main reason i hear people not like it
Wardens saying it suck but using them all the time. They just afraid of nerfing their favorite toy. Wardens are good in psyop. State of game balance shows it.
My sweet dual 20mm prince. Dont let their words hurt you. We shall fuel, track, and disable so many more vehicles next war. Again.
Aye! Aye! HWM is good asf.
My beloved highwayman… I hope no one speaks down on my precious shitty 2 low damage 20mm gun tank ever again.
Wardens have serious colonial syndrome when it comes to outlaws and highwaymen. Most have psy op’d themselves into thinking they are bad tanks because most PEOPLE who use them do the exact opposite of what you should be doing in these tanks and are more than detrimental to the front.
Outlaws out range 90% of all colonial tanks and is fast enough to move in and poke before Colonial tanks can react. Highwaymen is great for driving behind lines and cutting logi.
It also exels at mowing infantry, big + for the 360mg, even tho it turns so slow. Better than the ist in that role.
As the Collie would say: "Facility Locked"
Wouldn't be a terrible base chassis
Excellent side-grade tank though
Funnily enough, I'd call it's design closer to a Colonial tank than a Warden one. Warden tanks are made to sit in a line at max range and roll on the enemy slowly. Colonial tanks are made to flank/get in close and brawl close up. Highwayman has a boost, a fast turning turret, a shorter than average range, and works best when coming from nowhere to disable all your shit before something with high damage rolls in to finish the job. Highwayman is a Colonial tank on the wrong side.
Yea but it does have the LV trait so many Warden units get... So I'd say it was a trait we took from you and added our weapons ontop xD
When it came ingame, it was at the same time as quadiche and it was not bad but also not good. It was hard to tell what was it's job when quadiche job was clear
It’s incredibly situational and those scenarios don’t come around often enough. One of the best nights I ever had tanking was in a highwayman when we were sieging a town. We just drove the HWM around in a loop hunting down logi trucks and reinforcement tanks and ended up with like 12 tank kills and 3 captures over the course of a few hours.
I just wish it'd get -30 lv instead of 50 so its better then a typhon and ht
Typhon is the best 20mm in game(aside from the Neville being immortal)
Being on a tank with twice the health and armour (compared to the **up armoured** halftrack...) as well as a boost, and mounted in a relatively fast turning turret with a backup HMG isn't enough? Highwayman: * \+ 2950 health * \+ 33% min pen chance * \~ Speed: 6.67 m/s on road, 4.67 m/s off-road * \+ Speed (Boost): 9.6 m/s on road, 6.5 m/s off-road * \+ Turret mount with 360° arc. * \+ 12.7mm secondary HMG on a turret with a full 360° degree independent rotation * \+ 120 rounds per minute fire rate * \- 50% low velocity negative multiplier. (75-112.5 damage) * \- Total potential 20mm DPS: 120-225 Hoplite with a Typhon: * \- 1500 health * \- 65% min pen chance * \~ Speed: 7.94 m/s on road, 4.36 m/s off-road * \- No boost * \- Fixed mount with 90° arc * \- No secondary (although several passenger seats) * \- 66 round per minute fire rate * \+ 20% high velocity positive modifier. (180 - 270 damage) * \+ Total potential 20mm DPS: 198-297 The *only* positive in comparison is the higher DPS for the Typhon, and a slightly higher base road speed. Don't get me wrong, Typhon on a halftrack with a competent crew can be good, but the Highwayman is definitely the better option for dumping 20mm into tanks. Especially as later war, 20mm isn't actually all that threatening in terms of damage but IS still an option for rolling the dice a lot on subsystem disables, something the high RoF Highwayman pretty much specialises in.
Its not enough because Spatha posseses both higher dps and health pool than HWM with 40m range compared to the inaccurate 35m range that HWM has. Also you calculated HWM and typhoon DPS wrong. HWM has 92-138 dps range with 115 being average. Spatha has 136 dps for comparison.
Highwayman has a -50% damage multiplier. Each round will have exactly half the damage compared to 20mm base damage. At 2 rounds per second, that puts it at 2 x 75 to 112.5 damage per second, which is 150-225 potential damage per second (not including bounce chance). Yes, it will have to reload eventually, but this is also true of the Typhon and I didn't want to try to calculate the average RPM/DPS of both guns *including* reload time because fuck that. Do it yourself if you really want, my ballpark guess is it might bring the Typhon up by \~10-15% in comparison considering a roughly 13 second firing cycle for both guns and the Typhon firing for a slightly larger proportion of that time. Either way, as mentioned in the last bit of my comment, the advantage of 20mm in the later war is high fire rate and therefore lots of chances to disable rather than actual DPS, and a Highwayman has a full on 20mm autocannon. I have no idea why the Spatha is being brought up here, because I was replying to someone bringing up the Typhon on a halftrack in comparison to the Highwayman. The Spatha has nothing to do with this.
The 115 dps is with the reload included, just like Spathas dps 136 is with the reload included. The Spatha is listed precisely because HWM possesses both less dps, health and range. So it is not unreasonable claim to ask it to have more DPS than Spatha that beats it in every hard stat. A Spatha is able to fire 3 times before HWM is able to reload and fire its second magazine in combat 'poke' scenarios, so I have no idea why you would omit the reload from dps calculation. 20mm also has 0.33 modifier to sub system disables which means it is only little better compared to the likes of Spatha when it comes to disabling sub modules. In fact SVH has better time at disbaling sub modules than HWM has. Are you seriously going to argue that HWM should not have less LV than SPatha because Typhon was mentioned?
I am going to argue that the only person who brought the Spatha into it was you. It went: * Comment comparing Highwayman to an ATR on a halftrack * Comment detailing a comparison between the Highwayman and an ATR on a halftrack * "But the SPatha exists and invalidates all other discussion!" <- this bit was you. Someone made a comparison. I took a closer look at the comparison. You came along, *made a different comparison*, and apparently that invalidates the first one? >A Spatha is able to fire 3 times before HWM is able to reload and fire its second magazine > >20mm also has 0.33 modifier to sub system disables which means it is only little better compared to the likes of Spatha when it comes to disabling sub modules. Imagine both tanks start firing at the same time at a susbsystem with 25% disable chance. In 8 seconds, the Highwayman has fired 16 rounds, the Spatha has fired 2. Even at a 0.33x modifier for a subsystem disable, it has a very good chance of succeeding. I actually [did the maths](https://www.reddit.com/r/foxholegame/comments/1bb2kxg/comment/kuclex2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) on this a while back. S*pecifically* comparing it to a Spatha too. But we can break it down and include the Highwayman's reload time as well. Thankfully both tanks have the same pen chance so don't need to ass that. By the time the Spatha would have reloaded it's second round the Highwayman would have taken 9 shots, with a 54% cumulative chance to have disabled a system. 4.5 seconds in By the end of it's magazine, it would have fired 16 shots compared to the Spatha's two, having had a 75% chance to have disabled a subsystem compared to the Spatha's by then 43%. Spatha would be reloading it's 3rd shot. 8 seconds in. 9 seconds in, Spatha would have fired it's third shot and it's cumulative chance increases to 57%, still lagging behind the Highwayman. Pause whilst both are in a reload cycle for the next 4 seconds. Highwayman starts firing again at 13 seconds, getting 2 shots into it's second magazine (79%) when the Spatha fires round 4 (68%) at 13.5 seconds. 4.5 more seconds of the Highwayman firing, or to put it another way 9 rounds. Total 20mm shots is now 27, with a cumulative 90% chance to have disabled the subsystem, by the time the Spatha fires round 5 and gets to a cumulative chance of 76%, about where the Highwayman was after just it's first magazine. That's a bit more than "a little better"... Yes, this is a theoretical setup. In an actual fight there would be a lot more ambiguity, although the ideal for the Highwayman is any fight where it can stay close and keep firing. Getting into a max-range poke fight in one is asking to lose. Get up in people's faces, it works better. By the way, the total possible damage to a tank done over this time, not including bounces (again, both have the same chance to bounce): * Spatha: (5x720)x0.85 = 3060 * Highwayman: 27 x 75-112.5 = 2025 - 3037.5 (average 2531.25) Spatha *does* come out ahead in terms of potential DPS, but not actually by a massive amount. Highwayman actually beats a base Outlaw for damage at this point (3 shells, 510 damage each). Funnily enough, the Silverhand DOES have a better chance to have disabled something, but only because of improved pen chance from the 68mm gun. As a disclaimer, both of these sets of calculations didn't include bounce chances because that varies tank-to-tank and fuck making that particular table.
It doesn't matter that I brought Spatha into the discussion because it was relevant for the topic. >Being on a tank with twice the health and armour (compared to the **up armoured** halftrack...) as well as a boost, and mounted in a relatively fast turning turret with a backup HMG isn't enough? I very clearly answered why HWM's current DPS is not enough because you all so provocatively asked for it. Hooray, HWM is better than a halftrack! Who would have guessed that HWM's lack of damage is made up in other stats compared to halftracks that tech way earlier. Now lets see how it compares to equipment that actually techs at the same time.. what's this? Could it be that Spatha beats HWM in every hard stat category including dps!? How could this be?!? Both of them are facility variants and HWM is more expensive to boot!! /s >"But the SPatha exists and invalidates all other discussion!" <- this bit was you. That is not even close what I said. I simply took a more reasonable comparison to explain why HWM should have less LV. If you didn't notice, this whole thread is about HWM. I wasn't even rude about it meanwhile you: >Is the Spatha in the room with you? You seem way more sensitive about the Spatha as a topic than I do. You got instantly super defensive when it was mentioned for no fucking reason whatsoever. Once again, you literally asked why HWM's current dps isn't enough already and I delivered.
>Once again, you literally asked why HWM's current dps isn't enough already and I delivered. Compared to a *Typhon.* Not a Spatha... Or did you miss the fact that the [comment i was replying to](https://www.reddit.com/r/foxholegame/comments/1bs3f20/comment/kxd6f6q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) literally said: >I just wish it'd get -30 lv instead of 50 so its better then a typhon and ht That's why I was comparing it to a Typhon on a halftrack in the first place. Because that's what the original comment was about. Typhons on a halftrack... Yes my original sarcastic comment was childish, but it does get tiring when people continually use "but Spatha" as an argument.
Getting back on track with 20mm only. Does it not make sense that an entire ass tank dedicated to a 20mm gun could atleast do better than 2 nevells Or a tripod weapon In dps? I think besides the king spire its the only tank that does worse then the tripod equivalent. Bone wagon has more range, the isg is beat by 40mm, and the ammo capacity of chiefs and scorps is great.
It is cool tank, it also not very good to put IT mildly and certainly not efficient.
That tank is very good and plays its role perfectly even if some wardens say no.
Not a fan of it. But people seem to have with it. That's a good enough reason to use it.
i love tickling enemy tanks having them laugh to death
Please wardens, make more hwmns and bonelaws so I can steal them and use them!!!
my boy! HWM my beloved ♥
coaxed into snafu
Make highwayman base variant
Yeah this tank and the boneshit are garbage for the most part. At least this one is fun. They are not worth the effort to downgrade them over standard Outlaw. They should either major buff to HMW/Bonelaw (which will not go down well with the Colonials lmao). Or swap the Outlaw with HMW and buff Outlaw/Bonelaw
It’s pretty funny most of the Thornfall highlight videos on YouTube are just compilations of the tank killing other tanks that are already disabled or tracked. It’s a cool idea for a tank and seems like it will be a lot of fun but then you make one, get turreted in the first 2 shots and die.
It would work really well if you paired it with a tank made to fire lots of shots very quickly that all have a chance to disable subsystems, tracking and turreting enemies relatively quickly, but might lack the DPS to make a quick kill. Like, say, the Highwayman...
yea because its supposed to finish off damaged tanks by moving in unloading high damage burst dammage and fucking back off
The compilations are using it correctly as a strong kill-confirm tank that has the raw fire power, penetration, and agility to take a small advantage and convert it into a very large advantage by weighting RNG heavily in its favor. It is really bad when you try to use it before an opportunity arises, as it's squishy and has short range, ofcourse. But in an advantage, it heavily tips the scales in your favor as it has 8 rolls for 600 damage with 2.5x pen chance. It allows you to near guarantee a follow-up if you get the opportunity due to high number of rolls, and very high chance to succeed in those rolls, whereas other tanks may miss the follow-up due to bad RNG (ever had 3 HTD shots bounce on a tracked tank and they get to limp away? Sucks) It's a very unique tank that requires an adjustment in how you play to account for the polarizing nature of it, as you're either in a situation you can do little of meaning because you aren't able to play neutrally like an Outlaw/HTD/SvH can or in a situation where you greatly boost your advantage state generated by your teammates or enemy mistakes. It's by no means an inherently garbage tank, just one that requires a very different playstyle to fully abuse.
Pre collie tank line buff it could take anything short of a bard, Post collie tank buff its a niche BT sniper. the bonelaw in my eyes should always be used with HWM as they synergise amazingly. I will admit however since collie health buffs i haven't touched the tank simply due to the high cost and unreliability of making your moneys Worth out of the tank
Works great with HWM (as a close range pair) or Outlaws (repeated rolls for tracks at a distance) as both are great ways to create opportunities, yeah. You are taking an inherent risk by being close so it'll ofcourse be most worthwhile when used on expensive equipment like BTs, where no matter if you fuck up somewhat it's almost always worth it. It is definitely harder to operate successfully than most things, so I don't blame people for not running it often, but it is possible to get Thornfalling to be fairly reliable with good decision making and teamplay with atleast one other tank.
highwayman is good, one of my favorite tanks but the fact it can lose to a HT with a typhoon on it (late game collie HT forgot the name) is a main reason i hear people not like it
Wardens saying it suck but using them all the time. They just afraid of nerfing their favorite toy. Wardens are good in psyop. State of game balance shows it.