I've just read through every post. My thoughts on T3 and vehicles throughout the Tribes series...
If the skiing bug in T1 wasn't there then vehicles obiviously would have played a bigger role. I remember when I started playing and I'd get an HPC and fly some other noobs ove to the other base in Scarabrae. But skiing happened and made the game better. T1 vehicles in base weren't used because of the simple fact that they were useful for the most part.
T1 Renegades had the Interceptor which was definately more useful than the T1 base Scout. It had a high powered chaingun and was good for chasing, but no other differences. A good Interceptor pilot was an asset, and this is when games were 10 vs 10 and vs renegays that had speed boosts. I loved the interceptor.
T2 brought the shrike and the bomber, the two most used vehicles and the ones that had the biggest impact to gameplay.
I don't think that shrikes were the cause of players not finding good cap routes, if think it was the crappy map design. I'm of the opinion that the people who made the maps hadn't played T1, or if they did they were the ones getting the HPC's ready. Horrible flatlands, huge crevases (sp?), cappers picked shrikes because the maps were shitty. T1 was a fluke because the maps were simple and perfect for skiing.
That being said, the T2 shrike is good were it's at currently. Not overly used but useful. It doesn't take anything away from the game and a good player can add to it.
If anything was to be done to the shrike I like the idea of not being able to eject rather than ejecting straight up or dying if going too fast.