If you want to get tryhard tacticool (autism incoming):
Part of it's a problem of us not wanting to hold back or fall back at times without being forcibly removed from wherever we're fighting at. If you're completely boxed in the spawn room and you're not accomplishing anything besides shooting at people from within or rushing outside and dying immediately, there's no shame in falling back, since you're not accomplishing anything significant either way besides gaining certs with the former. You can either coordinate a unified push from the spawn room with multiple squads, perhaps a MAX/medic/engineer rush if it's only infantry and not vehicles camping the room (usually bio labs), or you can retreat to territory farther back to regroup, pull armor/aircraft/whatever, and find better attack angles on the base that's being captured or establish a solid defense.
I noticed this on Amerish yesterday, with the "defense" of Ikanam Triage against the 200+ PHX members. We were being shelled by tanks on the northeast side, which is on the road that led from OUR territory, including the Auger and the NC Arsenal. That should not have been allowed to happen, since people could have easily pulled tanks from the Auger and NC Arsenal and come up on the Vanguards from behind, before the base was capped and ALL of their armored forces started to focus on the road towards the Auger.
During the defense of NC Arsenal, once we started rapidly losing the 1-tank line and sunderers at that retarded base in the middle of the fucking road, we could've been sending a squad up the hill on the left side to deal with the AA line and Sunderer up there and take some pressure off of our tanks. (Granted, I was in a Prowler and busy farming tanks and infantry that were retarded enough to stand still on that hillside, but in my defense, I was lasting a lot longer than most vehicles up there.)
Speaking of holding back and lasting longer, a recurring issue I see with our Prowler drivers is that we overextend a LOT, we have tunnelvision, we like to line up in straight columns (which look impressive but are a generally bad idea in practice when the enemy has strong AA), and when we've taken a little bit too much damage, we back up only to find that there's 5+ prowlers/sunderers blocking our path, waiting for us to blow up so they can get to the front line.
Running over infantry and shooting them point blank is fun and all, but unless you have mineguard and you're confident in your ability to avoid C4 fairies, you're usually better off staying a distance away from enemy bases and laying down suppressing fire, ESPECIALLY since deploy mode gives you increased shell velocity and reload time and your Prowler can dish out a crapton of damage as-is. The thing was practically made for long-range bombardment. If the minute you move out of cover you immediately lose half of your health to APs and Phalanxes that aren't in an easily attackable position, that's a good sign that you shouldn't be trying to attack from there. You should always make sure you have some kind of safe cover or fallback position to go to if you've taken fire and be extremely wary of going into canyons with no air support. Check your flanks and make sure there's no Boombox or Enforcer or whatever-that-Vanu-turret-is harassers or Magriders a distance off, because they WILL cover that distance quickly and make it a literal pain in the ass to retreat. If the guy in front of you's smoking, be courteous and back up so he has room to get out and repair (if you're taking minimal to no damage and you're not accomplishing much, you can move your tank to somewhere where it won't block traffic flow and help repair as well). Really, unless you're a repair or ammo sundie, it's not a great idea to be directly behind somebody anyways. It would be better to spread out laterally, so we can lay down the most fire at once.
Remember, it's not about how much damage either one of you's taken so much as it is about how many guns you have left and how many guns they have left. This is also why I'd be interested in seeing large groups of people/vehicles in coordinated flanking movements, so we can lay down a lot of firepower from unexpected locations. I'd also be interested in seeing coordinated tank fire from Prowlers and coordinated rocket fire, as in somebody giving out orders for multiple tanks to take out high-threat targets such as AP Vanguards and Lightnings before they can react and retreat. After the high-priority targets are removed, it becomes safer for tanks to diverge and focus on sunderers and infantry.
Also, for the love of God, stand a safe distance to the SIDE of vehicles when you're repairing them. Not behind them. And do not run in the middle of the road.