They're supposed to assault light vehicles. Because they did such a great job Vs LLAVs in the last few months.

Problem is, CCP and tankers seem to think they are working.

People don't seem to understand how balance works. If an AV weapon is overpowered relative to vehicles, then how do you beat it? You don't call in vehicles. If a vehicle is overpowered relative to AV, then how do you beat it? You don't because AV is the one thing designed to destroy the vehicles.

Right now the only viable way to kill a tank is with a tank, which is the definition of overpowered. Having to use 3 or 4 people all using proto weapons designed specifically to destroy vehicles just to kill one militia tank is moronic.

Well they are an anti vehicle weapon. I'm sure you have already made up your mind on the term anti vehicle, I view it as destroying or deterring vehicles. Swarms deal explosive damage so they are more suited against armor vehicles.
Further more swarms are a light weapon, so I assume they are most effective against light vehicles, however when coupled with a few other light weapons, or a heavy weapon or another vehicle they can help on harder targets like tanks.

message from Godin: swarms are fine. At the most, they need a projectile speed buff.

That's my point. Refer here for the play-by-play of how Rock-Paper-Scissors works right now in Dust.

Swarms are a really nice way to get a vehicle to turn on their hardener, which means that when that hardener is up, the vehicle is going to to have diminished defenses. See AV guys are confused, and it's not their fault because they've been conditioned to believe otherwise. Not every AV weapon is supposed to be able to kill HAVs, especially LIGHT AV weapons. The forge is still very much capable of killing HAVs and I've seen it used to great effectiveness post 1.7. Swarms on the other hand are good at a could of things.

1. Duping the tanker to turn a hardener on. HAV pilots know they cant take a hit with that hardener off, but they'll avoid using it til they have to because cooldowns are long and they dont want to get caught with their pants down. Doing damage to an HAV is going to spook them into flipping that hardener on early, meaning they're going to be weak later.

2. Negating Armor Reps. This is particularly important, as while swarms are generally not enough DPS to break the tank's effective tanking rate, it does nowever negate much of that repping. This means that additional burst damage such as a forge will be able to cut through the tank's reps because the incoming swarm damage is effectively reducing the rep rate.

3. Pushing HAVs out. This somewhat goes hand in hand with number 1, but if a HAV is taking up a static position, swarms will be able to force the hardener on. Because tankers know that any swarmer worth his salt is going to have a nanohive and thus nearly limitless ammo, that tanker also knows that he will not be able to take sustained fire for long and will eventually be forced to vacate the area once his hardener are up.


All of these roles are useful and important but as you can see, flat out killing HAVs is NOT one of them. You have been conditioned to believe that you are entitled to be able to solo HAVs with a light AV weapon because that's how its been for a very long time. However, because you are using lighter weapons against a heavier target, as a Swarmer you are a SUPPORT AV role, not a primary, that job belongs to the HEAVY AV weapon, aka The Forge Gun.

Light weapon=light vehicles. Also, installations and dropships.

Ultimately a deterrent to tanks as a still very successful area of denial.

No, killing a tank is not the only measure of success of a light weapon.

You realize there are more vehicles than just tanks right? And unless I am mistaken, LAVs are slower now, so your swarms can catch them.

A HEAVY vehicle needs a HEAVY weapon to destroy. Boost swarm damage, and give heavy and medium vehicles an innate resistance to them. If swarms are supposed to kill heavies, then make it a heavy weapon and be done with it.

Otherwise, we could absolutely revamp swarms into a single use AV weapon similar to the AT-4 or LAW. make it deal a good amount of damage to heavy vehicles, and make it take an equipment slot. can only be reloaded at supply depots.

Actually, I like that idea a lot.

Track LAVs. Able to chase dropships.

Suppose we increase swarm speed, to make them better at catching nimble targets like LAVs?

Shotguns could be a heavy weapon if they gained more range, more ammo, and a faster fire rate. They are light weapons because they have severe penalties for their damage, namely a tiny optimal range.

Swarm need love, speed, range and/or damage(maybe lockspeed) at the cost of turning radius. Swarm are meant to and have always been meant to take down all vehicles, and while they were never meant to be as devastating as forge, their real advantage was the ability to fit them on faster lighter suit allowing you to out maneuver and out position tanks. thats gone now with the range nerf so swarm need a re-tweak, but they are still dangerous if you can catch a tank in a bad situation.

Posted in another swarm thread:

#104Posted: 2013.12.16 00:58 | Report | Edited by: Terarrim
I run a proto swarm logi with huge investment in skill points to make my role viable and my role pre 1.7 was this.

My primary role could be split into two catogories.

Support my team mates with scanners, ammo and watch my team mates back with my sidearm (prof 4, sharp S 5 smg).

My other primary role is to stop tanks from rolling my team while I travel with my squad. Using my flux grenades and Prof 4, tripled damage mods, ammo 3, reload 3 I make my fit to be feared on the battelfield and I am skilled enough to run under or dodge CQC balster fire to do serious damage to tanks.

My practice with my scout and proto grens means that I am used ot engaging tanks in CQC as the close you are to the tank the harder it is for them to track you. I have built my game for being a pain in the ass for tanks not neccesarly to destroy them though I do. However I run with my squad to make sure that one tank does'nt destroy my whole team of intantry.

I played this role in MAG where I put down mines had specalist rpg's and even grenade launchers vs AV.

I played this role in battelfield where I put C4, put mines down and or use rpgs to destroy tanks.

Tanks have been and allways will be the single biggest threat to my team which is why I have dedicated much of my 32 mil sp points to protecting my team.

This weapon has had a massive massive double nerf that really has made it extreemly difficult to use.

Remember when swarm launchers, tanks and forge gunners used to complain about logi lavs beeing indsictructable?

Tanks are have the speed more speed and are more invincible than logi lavs, in addition they can provide logistical support with mobile CRU's and battelfield scanners. Their weaponry is devestating on anything and everything on the battelfield. And they have acces to "God mode" cool downs where they are for a time all but invincable to everything including other tanks.

The tactical applications of a super fast indistructable machine that can destroy anything is tactcally staggering. Want to set up a spawn point anywhere on the map without anyone able to stop you. You can just hit nitros hit your cool down and nothing is going to stop you getting to that point.

Due to the speed of the tank no tactical positions are safe either. The tank can by speed take steep surfaces that infantry cannot traverse. It can do any any role on the battlefield of the LAV and have huge advantages over it. It is much safer to use a tank for transportation of troops for example than a lav and you have a mobile killing machine there to back you up.

Also due to the cool downs tanks are enrouching into cities into infantry areas with little or no consequence. Dust is the only game I have ever played with infantry and vehicles were land mines are not tank killers in and of theirselves.

Before it took skill for a tank to kill me. I'm still not an easy kill to be honest due to my experiance in using my environment to my advantage. This has been negated by the fact that tanks can speed straight into my position not worry about my proto AV or my swarms and take x3 proto fluxes and x2 swarms (on a hill with crevices no place for a tank to be) and shrug it off because they were completly and utterly immune due to their cool down ability.

In a pub the other day I engaged a tank it was a militia tank i thought this one was going down, only for it to activate a booster it went from A bridge to the road under the pipes flying through the air. I shot two more swarms but it outrun or made my swarms hit ground.

In the mean time I was throwing my proto fluxes into another tank putting my hives down round rocks. Not to any avail due to cool downs another tank joined in so this its x2 madrugers after me I was still surviving by using the rocks the tanks actually took the time to kill my hives lol. Finally the malitia tank came back and joined in the fun yes it was x3 tanks putting a triangle around me and killed me. You think tanks are powerful you have seen nothing yet wait until people actually use TANK TEAMS IN SQUADS, its going to be trully frightening tbh. There will be nothing that wont be able to do better than anything on the battelfield that inclusds logitical support as people can easily jump out of a tank hack an objective or put down links etc and jump back in if you have people covering your tank etc.. With a pure tank squad of three to six experianced tankers what can actually stop them?

If you want to keep the damage the same then fine with the swarm launchers. The distance needs to be improved to at least 250 meters though as 175 meters is almost blaster range the shortest weapon range.

If people don't like swarms to not be a dps then something else needs to be given. My proposal is electronic warfare. In that successive hits reduce cool downs by 20 percent per hit(emp swarms). Or that swarm hits slow the vehicle down to 20 percent per hit (web swarms). That way I am contrabuting to teamplay and not killing the tank on my own and still need help to take it out but I am taking away some of the advantages of the tank to allow my team to help me take the tanks out.

nerds want ccp to be on the nerd bandwagon. eve and all. CCP wants to make a fun FPS game. Lets see how this goes about.

"we just want to make a fun FPS game" *yup. Quoted from CCP*

Yup.

Since when did the whole "light weapon means a weak weapon" thing start? Is this why people counter AR/CR/RR/SC and other light weapons with the superior heavy weapons? No one in their right mind would think that light weapons are weak in any other aspect but vs. a vehicle unless we're talking about the SL. SL users sacrifice a weapon to defend themselves to make suicide runs trying to destroy tanks. I call it a suicide run no matter how tactical you are about it because they're sitting ducks to everything. To say that a light weapon should be ineffective just because it has "light" in the description is ridiculous when you consider that the only alternative is that for every tank you need 2 proto forge gunners waddling around.

If everyone wants to jump on this "SL is a light weapon therefore it can't kill anything because it's a light weaponGǪ light weapon" bandwagon that seems to have just taken off the last few days then I propose the FG gets a massive damage buff. Like crazy. I'm talking about buffing it from the 1.4 baseline. If it's to truly be the "main AV weapon", make it able to destroy a specced out tank in one clip at maximum optimization. By this i mean proto/proficiency 5/damage mods. It's a "heavy weapon" after all and should obliterate everything, especially "heavy" vehicles like tanks.

I won't QQ about a respec if everyone's all on board with this "light/heavy" bullshit, I'll start grinding today for the FG fit. At this point I'll have just about every method of AV at my disposal and if someone tells me I shouldn't be able to kill a tank then I can confidently tell them they don't know what they're talking about.

Until that time I say drop the whole "light weapons can't hurt heavy things because like the names are different" argument because it really doesn't match up to the fact that the SL holds the title for the AV weapon of Dust 514 in the sense that it's completely, irrefutably designed for destroying vehicles. **** the "well not all vehicles because, well you know, lightGǪ" spam. It simply doesn't mean anything when you look at what the weapon is.

When drones and small turret installations come back then swarm missiles will seem worth it.

Vehicle drivers don't want to play the game, they just want to collect free kills, so wherever they can see AV nerfed, it will be nerfed.

This game is an absolute joke right now

to answer the OP, atm the swarm launcher is meant to serve as a visually pleasing yet absolutely worthless AV weapon, which due to nerfs, cannot fulfil its intended role, and should the AV runner get within the new joke targeting range, the weapon doubles up as a poor suicide device.