-1 standard swarms should be support weapons. Nova knives, yes

-1
You guys don't want to balance the game you just want more firepower for yourself.
Standar swarms are supposed to be for militia-standar vehicles. That means stander swarm against proto/adv modeules are only support. I personally like the AV/vehicle balance in 1.8. I can solo gunlogis and madrigals with a cbr-7. Its a lot of work but you can do it.

So you want proto min scouts running the standard knifes? ..eh

Agreed and that's why I liked this statement .

If this is the case then all standard weapons should be buffed and not what you prefer .

Damage grows in progression and stages , hence the SP's placed into and at each level . If you want more damage then max out that weapon , which would grant you a damage increase .. use damage mods and use the standard .. hell militia to get the results that you are looking for .

Ya that's what I'm getting at. Now imagine some1 who has their minja maxed out, and/or has their nova knife prof maxed.

Not a troll, I've been on both sides swarms, before and after 1.8. The problem with reducing all swarms to standard is that, (using proto as an example) instead of 6 missile impacting at 220 (no mods or bonuses) for a total of 1320, 4 missile will be impacting at 330 a missile for a total of 1320. Seems great, right. The problem comes when you put variables in. What if one missile hits a building side. Then you lose 1/4of your total damage, instead of 1/6. Also, when it comes to taking down dropships, the kinetic impact of swarms is severely undervalued. I can't count how many times I've thrown a dropship into a building with swarms.

With the hotfixed hardeners, it entirely likely that this change would make standard swarms very powerful. And if the standard version is as useful as the proto, but at a fraction of the cost, then why use anything else? Swarms are the easiest anti vehicle weapons infantry can use. So they should also require some teamwork (or some time) to work. But if you specialize into it, you can become you squads solo anti vehicle support.

PS: I have only 1 kill with NKs, so I don't consider myself qualified to talk about them.

The problem I have with buffing the lower tier swarms is that you'd buff the free anti armor starter fit which everyone has, where people with 0 SP into swarms will be dealing close to proto level damage against vehicles.

The only way to buff the lower tiers of swarms is to bring back tiers for vehicles. Make proto hulls and mods be what a maxed out fully proto vehicle is like now, then reduce the effectiveness down the tiers. Now you got militia AV that can take out militia vehicles, standard AV against standard vehicles, etc.

You might say that proto vehicles will become invincible to anything but proto AV, but here's where SP makes it balanced. I dedicated so much SP into my proto hull, this it should take someone of similar SP investment to bring me down.

But I think the current balance is all fine. Just balance tank vs tank and then it's all good and CCP can finally give us racial parity for AV and vehicles.

+1 for very much agree. In the same vein, fix shield extender scaling to mirror plates.