Sounds like the days where tanks go 50-0 without any fear of death are making a return. Yes, AV needed to be balanced but CCP doesn't know the meaning of small tweaks. They just all out neutered it.

Except you still can't kill Logi LAV's, so reducing the AV damage plus the range just makes them even more of a nuisance.

Has a great point about scope though - ScR and RR could probably get a slightly greater magnification but I doubt it is happening.

My bad, you're correct about the timing.

The issue with the gun, however, is not that the AR comes out slightly ahead in a straight up fight.

It's that it matches the AR pretty close in a straight up fight, and has 75% longer optimal range.

That kind of range should come with a significant DPS reduction. The SMG still kills with it's tiny range, having the rail rifle's DPS brought down to SMG levels does not seem like an extreme reduction at all.

As it stands, it has potentially higher DPS than the AR while totally spanking it in the range department. The game doesn't need new ARs on steroids.

A dropship can't hurt you from such distance, why would you want to destroy it?

Swarms need that range. Without it I only see 2 fixes.

1 make them OHK fast vehicles and 3 hit kill slow ones.
2 make them sidearms with reduced skill multipliers and CPU pg usage

Without something along these lines it will take multiple dedicated av specialists to kill one vehicle. This imbalances 1 paper beats 1 rock.

New Rifles look great but am concerned about the lock range nerf on swarms - with the speed of tanks let alone dropships and LAV's how to you envision it being possible to get more than one shot off on a target?

Yeah, no. The range nerfing will gimp the swarm launchers. You'll need to be on the top of a building to lock a dropship, and you will need to jump off to lock random LAVs and HAVs. Forge guns will be our only option.

Here is my feedback.

1. Stop using the nerf hammer, use the nerf screwdriver; i.e. do gradual tweaks.
2. Swarm launchers are being hammered into uselessness. Sure the lock on range could have used a nerf but not by this margin. I don't think there was a need to reduce the damage by 33%. Reducing the clip size from 5 to 3 was fair enough IMO.

Why should it be a 'game changing force multiplier'? Because you want it to be a win button?

My reasoning behind FGs being OP is that they only sacrifice very little ease of use for very high versatility. IMO if a weapon can kill anything in the game, and OHK people, it should be exceedingly hard to use.

I like to call this concept of making hard to use weapons better 'balancing for skill'.

The FG flies in the face of balancing for skill. It has one of the longest ranges in the game, does the most damage, and has perfect accuracy, and isn't really that hard to use at all.

The only downside of the FG is its charge and its limited Ammo supply, and the charge isn't even much of a downside because you can hold it.

It outperforms the Plasma Cannon in almost every way, despite being easier to use. It has a higher DPS, doesn't have projectile drop(or slow speed), has a faster fire rate and can fire more rounds before it has to reload(which is only barely longer than the Placons reload I might add).

Keep in mind that I don't want to nerf the FGs DPS. It needs it to be an effective AV weapon. What I want is for it to be much harder to use against infantry. In the same way the Placon is better at killing infantry than vehicles, I want the FG to be better at killing vehicles than infantry, by making it harder to use against infantry.

but how do u change it all at 1 time and expect to know how it will work this is using a railroad spike to hang a pic when all u need is a tack
what good is my swarm launcher if i have to be so close with as wide open as the maps are several times i want just 1 more swarm b4 reload do to as i reload they hit the booster and drive a 80 ton tank at lighting speed little tweeks is all thats needed just slowing down the tanks wood have helped and limiting the amount of ammo b4 they have to stop and reload to prevent target spamming
But no we nurff every thing related to tanks and what killes them why not just remove them all together then u can take out installations too cause most of them are only good to blow up do to bad placement
stop using the 15lb hammer when it only needs a little tap from a tack hammer