So basically, your Swarms would only fly to the target as long as a lock is maintained?

That could make LAVs impossible to kill in certain situations.

Like I said in DUST Fiend's thread, the slow speed of swarms plus the effectiveness of the afterburner basically grants pilots a get-out-of-jail-free card. They'll just sit there trying to kill someone while they are being swarmed and once their slow thought process catches up and realizes what's happening, they just turn on their AB and escape all further damage.

I'd even argue for a 50% swarm speed buff.

You do realize that you're effectively nerfing swarm travel distance from 400 down to 175?

I think that swarms need a higher speed without any concessions given to pilots. ADS pilots need to fly smarter. Evading swarms should be about getting out of their lock range before they can send more volleys at you.

Like I said in DUST Fiend's thread, the slow speed of swarms plus the effectiveness of the afterburner basically grants pilots a get-out-of-jail-free card. They'll just sit there trying to kill someone while they are being swarmed and once their slow thought process catches up and realizes what's happening, they just turn on their AB and escape all further damage.

I'd even argue for a 50% swarm speed buff.

All numbers can be changed freely, I simply ask your opinion on the concept. Swarm lock range can be adjusted to make this a balanced engagement.

Longer down times between lock-on's thereby lowering it's DPS and you have to maintain lock..... basically you are saying you want to completely break the swarms down to just killing LAV's parked at objectives.

No thanks.

All numbers can be changed freely, I simply ask your opinion on the concept.

I invite everyone to comment their opinions, but I'm really interested in hearing Judge's opinion on things. I don't know if this would take a client-side update, as it adds in no new objects and such, but it might help Swarms kill ADS and help ADS escape them at the same time. I would send you a mail Judge, but I didn't want to send a giant block of text, since there's no real way to organize text in an email like you can on the forums. All numbers can be changed freely, I simply ask your opinion on the concept.

I found that your video had great points about AV/ADS balance, but I do feel that ADS can escape very easily. I feel part of it is how clunky the lock on mechanic is for the swarm launcher. The lock on and fire are both tied to the same button. So here is my idea.

To help swarms, we would slightly increase swarm speed. say 15% to start out, and adjust from there. We would bind lock on to L1, and keep R1 as the launch button. Now when a swarmer locks a vehicle, as long as they hold L1, they maintain a lock on a vehicle. This is through the launch of swarms as well. As long as they remain in range and hold L1, the lock remains. We would increase the time between swarms to compensate for this. Let's say 1.2 seconds between launches. It is now much easier for swarmers to get their swarms in the air, flying toward you, meaning you have less time to react and save your dropship.

Now for ADS counter. If the lock is broken while swarms are in the air, they stop tracking the vehicle, and fly in a straight line until they run out of fuel and disappear. So by breaking the target lock, either by killing the swarmer, outranging him, getting behind a building, etc, you could stop the swarms chasing you from impacting, as they would no longer be homing on you. As unlikely a scenario as it is, if for some reason a vehicle got in the way of swarms that had lost their lock, they would take damage as normal.

In this way, swarmers now have an easier time getting their DPS into the air. Bad pilots who stick around now die much quicker, as the time between swarms is reduced. It also means its harder for an ADS to outrun swarms, as they are faster, although still not quite as fast as an ADS running an afterburner. In addition, swarmers have it easier maintaining a lock on vehicles, since all they need to do to keep a lock is hold down L1. For ADS, it means escape is easier, as you no longer have to outrange the swarms themselves, but the swarmer. Once you break that lock, his swarms cease being a threat as long as you don't fly in their way. Swarm lock range can be adjusted to make this a balanced engagement.

Thoughts?

That's the whole problem. Swarms don't have to focus on their target like all other weapons do. No infantry weapon allows you to fire and then leave while the rounds home in on their target. This corrects this, while also increasing swarm DPs without modifying their raw numbers.

but this would leave swarmers defenseless against infantry if they have to maintain the lock on their targets

You do realize that you're effectively nerfing swarm travel distance from 400 down to 175?

I think that swarms need a higher speed without any concessions given to pilots. ADS pilots need to fly smarter. Evading swarms should be about getting out of their lock range before they can send more volleys at you.

Like I said in DUST Fiend's thread, the slow speed of swarms plus the effectiveness of the afterburner basically grants pilots a get-out-of-jail-free card. They'll just sit there trying to kill someone while they are being swarmed and once their slow thought process catches up and realizes what's happening, they just turn on their AB and escape all further damage.

I'd even argue for a 50% swarm speed buff.