You're basically always going to have issues with any turret that has a high fire rate and lots of shots in the magazine, like the Large Blaster, when it comes to Turret vs Infantry balance. As it is now dispersion is pretty high but even 1-2 shot bursts can land shots pretty close to where you want them to go. This is of course an element of luck involved in hitting infantry with a Large Blaster but the fact of the matter is that you can still do it consistently enough to cause issues, and rightfully so as the weapon is supposed to be AV. It is far easier to consistently kill infantry with a Large Blaster than it is a Railgun or Missile turret.

The immediate reaction is "Oh just increase dispersion further" but you quickly get to the point where dispersion is so bad you can't even hit a vehicle properly with enough shots to deal appreciable damage which is part of what makes the Large Blaster so horrible at AV. Dropping the fire rate and upping the damage might help but might also be worse. It means that while less shots are going out, it takes all that much fewer lucky shots to drop an infantry, so it's questionable if that will change much at all. What is also problematic is that "Short Range" for a vehicle is vastly different for an infantry. Meaning that even though the blaster is "Short Range" for a vehicle, it's actual range is seemingly much larger for infantry trying to take cover.

It might be a bit ambitious but I think a general redesign on how a Large Blaster fires would be the best solution. The two best proposals in my opinion are as follows:

Shotgun Blaster: I've always felt the Shotgun really hit the nail on the head of what a blaster is, which is surprise up-close "OH KITTEN!" damage which is basically going to rip anything apart that's close to it. If the Large Blaster could fire like a shotgun, preferably lots of pellets with a low damage per pellet, in full auto mode with a pretty slot refire rate, you could achieve a true Blaster feel. Dispersion is tight enough to reliably hit the majority of your pellets onto a large target at 30-40m but would struggle to do a lot of damage to a small target due to low pellet damage.

I don't know if you guys can retrofit the shotgun fire mode to a turret and playtest it internally, but if you can give it a go and see how it feels.


Plasma Cannon: This also hits that Blaster feel pretty damn well. The "I dunno if I"m going hit you but if I do, it's going to hurt". I believe it was True Adamance that came up with this one, but essentially to fire either a 3 burst of Plasma Cannon shots or a triangle of them. This is fairly self explanatory, but at close range you could easily land all 3 shots on a large target, but hitting a small target would be....well about as hard as consistently doing it with a Infantry PLC. It's kind of a variant of the shotgun, just with very few, but higher damage 'pellets'. Damage per shot should obviously be lower than a PLC.

Again if internal playtesting is possible, I'd love to see how this sort of concept performs.

I like the blaster in its form of a vehicle mounted assault rifle. I also like that it is an AI-capable weapon. Again, this ties HAVs into the escalation of a match very nicely.

However, if any turret has AI-capabilities - that means if HAVs are part of the rest of the match - then this AI-capability has to be factored in with the 'utility' of the turret. If one turret is good at AV and also good at AI it's going to be plain more useful than another turret that is only capable of AV. That is how we got to the recent situation where the blaster was exceptional against infantry but fell short against vehicles. These days it's bad against both AI and AV.

There are three levers here. AI capability, AV capability and fitting requirements. I don't think we have to reduce the problem to "all turrets have equal AI capability of zero, equal AV capability and equal fitting requirements".

As to the blaster, its current form is as anti-infantry, and trying to force it to be AV only makes it more useless than it is. Either dedicate it to AI at the expense of AV, or completely overhaul it for AV duty. But its current iteration cannot be buffed for AV duty without overpowering it against AI, and balancing it against infantry makes it worthless as AV.

And make long range always better? I disagree.

Oh lawd. You're cherry picking specific extreme situations to push your point and it's not going to work.

Obviously the Blaster will struggle to fight against a long range weapon, because it's a short range weapon. That's not what we're talking about. What I'm talking about is that if Large Blasters are an AP weapon, a tank driver is capable of easily killing any infantry within the range of the Large Blaster. However infantry are completely incapable of retaliating in any shape or form *at any range or situation* unless they are using very specific weapons. You're trying to create a situation where a solo tanker can roll around, Immune to like 95% of all the infantry weapons in the game, but be extremely effective against 100% of the infantry in the game.

Just no.

Large Turrets are AV.
Small Turrets are AP.
Ratatti has spoken.
Get over it.

Or just have a gunner on the small turret deal with the infantry like they're supposed to? Or have infantry on the ground around you to protect you? In fact the purpose of the UHAV is specifically to hunt down and kill infantry with its small turret bonuses while the large turret helps suppress and defend against larger targets. As a general rule, a vehicle should always struggle to deal with infantry AV if they're running solo. Always. Otherwise you're just encouraging the AV community to push for the "Well if 1 guy in a tank can slaughter infantry easily, 1 AVer should be able to take out the tank by himself" mentality.

Again I maintain that the Large Blaster should be the best large turret to use to kill infantry but it still maintains its primary role of being AV. Small turrets of all types should easily trump the Large Blaster in terms of effectiveness against infantry, but fall short in terms of AV.

This thread is becoming fairly derailed.

The purpose is to balance the Blaster, Missile and Rail, as they are, within the the known constraints. Designing plasmacannon turrets belongs in another thread, and is perfectly fine.

Blaster is Heavy Autocannon, CQC AV with AI capabilities, especially with a new active dispersion mod in high and active heat reduction mod

Rail is long range AV, meant to be not as powerful as it is for allcomers.

Missiles, can use the dispersion mod, I am still mixed whether Missiles should be 2 long bursts, instead of one hold the button.

This, and why would there be a big ass turret for a small ass target?

Heres my general thought process, because I don't think I'm expressing it clearly.

Typically the AV community feels "If an HAV can easily kill me, I should be able to easily kill it. A 1 to 1 ratio." And while I don't completely agree, their though process has some merit to it. That being said I don't particularly like the idea that in 1 AV can easily take out my big fat ass, then 2 will completely wreck me....this doesn't sound very fun.

Instead if you make it so a Solo tanker struggles to kill infantry by himself, then conversely, the solo infantry AV would also struggle to kill the tanker. By make it more of a requirement for tankers to carry a gunner for the small turret, now it takes 2 people to easily kill infantry (Driver and Gunner) and you can more safely say that it takes 2 AVers to easily kill an HAV.

This seems like it would be more enjoyable. Does that make sense?

How so? UHAVs get bonuses specifically to small turrets to make them designed to fight infantry. DHAVs don't get small turrets and are designed specifically to NOT fight infantry, and instead focus on AV.

This is in line with my statement that multiple people are needed to effectively fight against infantry, and solo players are focused specifically on AV. It pushes the effect to a greater extreme with the bonuses and how the base attributes are set up.

UHAVs are slow and cumbersome and more susceptible to enemy vehicles, but are able to dispatch infantry AV quickly with its powerful small turrets.

DHAVs are weak and fast, more susceptible to infantry AV with little ways to counter them, but can quickly outflank and outdamage UHAVs with its powerful large turret.

I don't see how making an anti infantry HAV....weak to anti infantry....will make it good at anti infantry. It sounds like you're trying to nerf UHAVs in order to make DHAVs viable, rather than just making DHAVs sufficiently strong to counter them.

I'm just going to skip the above **** as it's unnecessary **** that makes no sense. First off, I can say that most people here has said several times that Large turrets shouldn't be MADE to be AI as it's primary function, and rather Anti big ****. Blasters are currently the opposite, which is why people wants it to be changed.

Futhermore, you say that YOU think that blasters are good at AV, yet both the opinions of several people here as well as the math behind these changes says otherwise. You're quite literally using the argument of "I think it's fine, therefore it shouldn't change" when several others says otherwise. You might have a argument if say everyone who said otherwise didn't even pilot or know the ins and outs of piloting, but no, most here is either a pilot as a main, or has a pilot alt.

Lastly, saying that "Rails will be forever be better AV than blasters" is silly. Why should they? I don't think you get the point of this thread.

what is your feeling on blaster ROF, not DPS, just feeling.

do you generally like the

dum dum dum dum dum (current)

or you prefer

dum...dum...dum...dum more like an APC turret from other fpss

or dum.....dum......dum like a tank from other fpss



;) vote now

I still don't want them to be anywhere close to a rail, there is a sweet spot there, i think


also missiles, i feel the rof is way too high right now

Take into consideration the Hull bonuses, Missiles will do 25% more damaga on a Proto Caldari Destroyer HAV. Once you have the destroyer maxed you will have roughly the same damage output as current.

Until then, its hard to envion the future tank meta revolving around shield blaster tanks or shield rail UHAVs.

UHAVs will have a resistace bonus to hybrid weapons, and shields have a natural resistance to missile. With the huge amount of damage being afforded by equiping a large rail turret, only Blaster destroyers have a shot against you. Once of your crew jumps out with Pro swarms, its lights out Gal destroyer.

Your best bet would be a gunlogi with an Ion cannon/rail, or another rail UHAV.

DHAV gives missiles and blasters at least 25% permanent bonus at level 5, rails will not get bonus.

DHAV will push forward and backwards over and over so only half the rail shots connect due to poor tracking.

What, like amar assault's and scrambler? Commandos with sniper rifles, rail rifles ( cal) and swarms ( min), assault rifles and gal assault... Sounds like Dust to me..

If you drive a missile tank, that isn't a DHAV, up to the front of a rail tank and just sit there, then you asked to get popped.

why so mad though lol

if you can't figure away out to use your highslots properly for a missile tank fit with 5 highs on shields and 3 highs on armor then i don't know what to say other than don't park your missile tank in front of rails and just hold down fire expecting +75 +75 +50.

Try using rails, it seems more your style if you can't manage with 8000 insta damage and unskilled 12 sec reload.

They are nice graphs

The missile turret does lots of damage before the rail even gets a shot off. Good time for missile tank to take cover or move on to a target 12 seconds away.

I understand what you are trying to say, but we have different opinions with regard to your worries.

Harpya, can you make an extended chart that continues to show damage over longer periods of time? I would like too see how long each turret needs to hit a damage threshold. Lets just say how long will each tank need to empty the entire ammo supply, and chart that damage over time.

That way, we can see if several full clip bursts from missiles can out pace blaster damage. And how much blaster/rail damage can be done after each cooldown/reload?

A s in Time x axis, damage y axis and the line graph marking the total damage over time until each tank finishes ther ammo supply.