Lastly to fully cross into mad science territory, what would you think of a swarm variant that does half the damage but applies a very strong slowing effect to it's target?

We seem to be limiting our thoughts to too small an area. Vehicle balance has a major problem. One that might not even be surmountable. The variables we have to tweak are limited. Perhaps too limited to actualy reach a suitable balance without client updates that are not coming.

Perhaps there are other ways to adjust swarms outside of speed, range and damage. I am just throwing stuff out here, these are not well thought out or even practical, there purpose is to inspire lateral thinking (trying to work within the no client update restriction):

1) Special swarms that also do damage to the pilot

2) Missiles that do more damage the slower a dropship is going. Say double damage it it is hovering, half damage when it is at full speed. Then you could remove the afterburner completely

3) Low damage but high impact physics swarms

4) Change the after burner to not change speed but make its heat throw swarms off so they miss (increase cool down too)

5) Link damage to altitude and remove the afterburner. Low altitude = high damage.

6) Remove the afterburner but increase dropship HP

7) increase swarm damage if a dropship has its afterburner active.

Theres are just ideas to get you considering other options.

The idea for example with 2 and 5 is to stop dropships just hanging there raining unfair death. If I do that I take a great risk of getting hit with 440 hp damage swarms. But if I am moving, say flying to drop off troops, like dropships should, then I take far less damage, say 100 per missile. So swarmers can time their attacks for when the dropship reaches it's destination. At the point when we are a threat to the team; rather than just blasting away from long range the whole match.

Both players have to be more strategic. We can remove the afterburner, buff swarm damage. Over to you......

Lastly to fully cross into mad science territory, what would you think of a swarm variant that does half the damage but applies a very strong slowing effect to it's target?

Alright, so I'm going to put some of my early thoughts here. None of this is final and is highly dependent on your feedback

* Reduce ADS price to 250,000 ISK
* Swarms to 150m, Assault Swarms to 200m
* Buff base dropship health a little (not ADS)
* Increase swarm reserve ammo
* Reduce physical impulse on Assault Swarms
* Slight increase to physical impulse on Swarms
* Increase Assault Swarm speed, reduce tracking and flight time. Total range will still be slightly higher. Max Rotation rate is currently 90 degrees, will try 60 first.
* Increase Standard Dropship speed (140 -> 160)
* Increase missiles to 6/7/8, reduce damage to compensate (165) to close gap between standard, advanced and prototype.
* Reduce Assault Swarm damage (looking at 10% initially)

Vehicle Armour Repairers need a big hit with a nerf bat, so I'll also look at those. However they are a much wider issue, so that might take some more time.

The resistance profiles for swarms also seem a bit strange, so I'll dig into those as well.

I saw someone mention afterburners increasing damage taken as a thought, and from what I can see that might be possible, but that's going into mad science territory at this stage and I haven't given it much thought yet.

Lastly to fully cross into mad science territory, what would you think of a swarm variant that does half the damage but applies a very strong slowing effect to it's target?

BUFF PYTHON, BUFF SHIELDS, NERF SWARM EFFECTIVENESS TOWARDS SHIELDS. It's easier to survive swarms in an incubus than it is in a python.

We can change the assault swarm launcher to have fast, long range missiles so there is a way to chase dropships away, but pilots have also told us that sometimes infantry isn't rendered properly so they don't even appear to pilots before the missiles are hitting their dropship.

Please discuss, we want both sides to weigh in.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to be an ADS pilot?

Alright, so I'm going to put some of my early thoughts here. None of this is final and is highly dependent on your feedback

* Reduce ADS price to 250,000 ISK
* Swarms to 150m, Assault Swarms to 200m
* Buff base dropship health a little (not ADS)
* Increase swarm reserve ammo
* Reduce physical impulse on Assault Swarms
* Slight increase to physical impulse on Swarms
* Increase Assault Swarm speed, reduce tracking and flight time. Total range will still be slightly higher. Max Rotation rate is currently 90 degrees, will try 60 first.
* Increase Standard Dropship speed (140 -> 160)
* Increase missiles to 6/7/8, reduce damage to compensate (165) to close gap between standard, advanced and prototype.
* Reduce Assault Swarm damage (looking at 10% initially)

Vehicle Armour Repairers need a big hit with a nerf bat, so I'll also look at those. However they are a much wider issue, so that might take some more time.

The resistance profiles for swarms also seem a bit strange, so I'll dig into those as well.

I saw someone mention afterburners increasing damage taken as a thought, and from what I can see that might be possible, but that's going into mad science territory at this stage and I haven't given it much thought yet.

Lastly to fully cross into mad science territory, what would you think of a swarm variant that does half the damage but applies a very strong slowing effect to it's target?

While I think your intentions might be good on this, I think you are doing it wrong.

1. When you reduce the damage of swarm missiles you reduce the possible chance for them to break the regen cycle. Aka shields will not even slow down and the damage you just applied will mean nothing.

2. Armor repairs do not need a huge nerf on how much they repair per tick, they need a nerf on CPU/PG so that you can not make yourself invincible to most forms of damage, such as only being able to have 2 max on or hardwire it so that you can only have 1 possible. (As you said tank to tank combat is in a good place)

3. Swarm launchers have to short of a range as is, to make it even shorter just puts them more at risk. So much so I will retire my Swarm launcher fit if the max range is 150 for the standard. Because the FG out damages it and out ranges it and even pushes the dropship more then the SL does. Not to mention the PLC might be becoming an actual AV weapon, which again will out perform the SL.

4. Exactly why are you making a weapon, that has literally one function, which is to shoot vehicles less effective then weapons that can actually do damage to infantry as well major example the forge gun? That right their is a huge nerf, due to having to rely upon others to protect them most times.

Though the other changes you are proposing would be very nice, if you need me to I can easily find plenty of videos of SL not doing enough damage to break regen cycles. A SL that provides a slowing buff would be awesome, but I bet every tanker and ADS pilot will complain that it is OP within seconds.

but the low end swarm launchers need a little buff. I'm thinking a reduction to the base lock on time (with balanced reduction to the operation lock-on bonus) to give entry level swarms a better DPS, while keeping wiyrkomi users where they are now.

That would actually make sense. Have a Lock On time per missal, so that while the Proto Swarm with more missals does a lot more damage, the Standard Swarm would lock faster and not be as far behind on DPS.

............

Lastly to fully cross into mad science territory, what would you think of a swarm variant that does half the damage but applies a very strong slowing effect to it's target?

o/ Fox

Tell me, have you ever danced under tank fire while trying to get a target lock?

Alright, so I'm going to put some of my early thoughts here. None of this is final and is highly dependent on your feedback

* Reduce ADS price to 250,000 ISK
* Swarms to 150m, Assault Swarms to 200m
* Buff base dropship health a little (not ADS)
* Increase swarm reserve ammo
* Reduce physical impulse on Assault Swarms
* Slight increase to physical impulse on Swarms
* Increase Assault Swarm speed, reduce tracking and flight time. Total range will still be slightly higher. Max Rotation rate is currently 90 degrees, will try 60 first.
* Increase Standard Dropship speed (140 -> 160)
* Increase missiles to 6/7/8, reduce damage to compensate (165) to close gap between standard, advanced and prototype.
* Reduce Assault Swarm damage (looking at 10% initially)

Vehicle Armour Repairers need a big hit with a nerf bat, so I'll also look at those. However they are a much wider issue, so that might take some more time.

The resistance profiles for swarms also seem a bit strange, so I'll dig into those as well.

I saw someone mention afterburners increasing damage taken as a thought, and from what I can see that might be possible, but that's going into mad science territory at this stage and I haven't given it much thought yet.

Lastly to fully cross into mad science territory, what would you think of a swarm variant that does half the damage but applies a very strong slowing effect to it's target?

As it turns out, I found a bug that means the Forge Gun and Swarm weren't getting their proficiency skill bonuses against vehicle armour on HAVs and Dropships. I think I'll look at fixing that.

Alright, so I'm going to put some of my early thoughts here. None of this is final and is highly dependent on your feedback

* Reduce ADS price to 250,000 ISK
* Swarms to 150m, Assault Swarms to 200m
* Buff base dropship health a little (not ADS)
* Increase swarm reserve ammo
* Reduce physical impulse on Assault Swarms
* Slight increase to physical impulse on Swarms
* Increase Assault Swarm speed, reduce tracking and flight time. Total range will still be slightly higher. Max Rotation rate is currently 90 degrees, will try 60 first.
* Increase Standard Dropship speed (140 -> 160)
* Increase missiles to 6/7/8, reduce damage to compensate (165) to close gap between standard, advanced and prototype.
* Reduce Assault Swarm damage (looking at 10% initially)

Vehicle Armour Repairers need a big hit with a nerf bat, so I'll also look at those. However they are a much wider issue, so that might take some more time.

The resistance profiles for swarms also seem a bit strange, so I'll dig into those as well.

I saw someone mention afterburners increasing damage taken as a thought, and from what I can see that might be possible, but that's going into mad science territory at this stage and I haven't given it much thought yet.

Lastly to fully cross into mad science territory, what would you think of a swarm variant that does half the damage but applies a very strong slowing effect to it's target?

I'll only comment on the points that I have issues with - everything else seems reasonable...

Please do NOT nerf standard swarm range - I think it should be buffed to 200m. It still takes close to a second and a half to target-lock and those vehicles are moving. Good luck getting close enough on foot in Commando suit. I still don't understand why it takes the same lock-time for a 50m target as it does for a 150m target. Longer lock times for farther targets solves this issue without nerfing range. A distant moving/flying target has a greater chance of escape; a closer stationary target, less so.

Adding a weaker, 225m-250m Assault variant makes sense as does a stronger, 150m-175m Breach variant (for HAVs?). Not sure about the value of the Specialist model.

I think swarm missiles should be faster than all vehicles without burners, but probably slower than those with. So make whatever corrections needed there.

Increasing missile count while reducing damage per missile seems a reasonable way to flatten the damage curve from std to proto, but the bug that allows ADSs to shield regenerate throughout a missile volley impact because individual missile damage is to low needs to be corrected.

Standard swarm missile smarts need to be improved some to reduce the odds of hitting inanimate things like molehills and building cross-beams - especially if the number of missiles are to be increased. HOWEVER, adding a chance variable that causes random missiles to miss their target a (very) small percentage of the time even if they run into nothing else on route seems fair and would reward pilot skill.

Alright, so I'm going to put some of my early thoughts here. None of this is final and is highly dependent on your feedback

* Reduce ADS price to 250,000 ISK
* Swarms to 150m, Assault Swarms to 200m
* Buff base dropship health a little (not ADS)
* Increase swarm reserve ammo
* Reduce physical impulse on Assault Swarms
* Slight increase to physical impulse on Swarms
* Increase Assault Swarm speed, reduce tracking and flight time. Total range will still be slightly higher. Max Rotation rate is currently 90 degrees, will try 60 first.
* Increase Standard Dropship speed (140 -> 160)
* Increase missiles to 6/7/8, reduce damage to compensate (165) to close gap between standard, advanced and prototype.
* Reduce Assault Swarm damage (looking at 10% initially)

[snip]

Lastly to fully cross into mad science territory, what would you think of a swarm variant that does half the damage but applies a very strong slowing effect to it's target?

I'm pretty sure that we can reduce that threshold from 102 to 80-75 or even lower safely (anything that isn't an AV weapon already has a really low multiplier so shouldn't interfere still). There's also a strange thing I've found with the resistances for dropships against swarms (the 55% efficiency people have mentioned), so fixing that might solve a lot of problems.

PG/CPU modifications are something we've considered, but that's a little beyond the scope of Bravo. Chances are we won't touch them this time around and leave them for another hotfix.

Swarm Range is the biggest thing I'll need feedback for, as it's hard to duplicate actual battlefield conditions with less people.

There is no damage nerf, prototype damage is the same and standard and advanced are higher. Swarms have the advantage in that they can lockon to their targets, which gives a much higher amount of accuracy.

As it turns out, I found a bug that means the Forge Gun and Swarm weren't getting their proficiency skill bonuses against vehicle armour on HAVs and Dropships. I think I'll look at fixing that.

Swarm Range is the biggest thing I'll need feedback for, as it's hard to duplicate actual battlefield conditions with less people.

. . . Swarms have the advantage in that they can lockon to their targets, which gives a much higher amount of accuracy.