DUST Search - Slow, constant shield recharge and active armor reps

Pokey Dravon wrote:

CCP Rattati wrote:

Banjo Robertson wrote:

CCP Rattati wrote:

Just as a player, I have not been able to kill a single vehicle in the last few weeks. And I am dedicating myself, to really see how it is, by always spawning in as AV when I see any vehicle and going after it.

As an experiment I have had two to three proto AV fits, both a cloak scout plc and/or Minmando swarms, on my main. I am simply terrible with RE's so I don't even run them. I always fit Proto AV grenades, but they are not overly effective.

Against a semi-competent driver that doesn't panic and drive into a wall, there is no way to kill a HAV. They simply harden and rail or blast me, fairly easily.

2 AV scare most HAV's away. Thing is about PLC is that it is very difficult to hit a moving target, the first shot is a hit, 2nd maybe and then you are in dream territory.

Even fitted as I am, the last two week KDR against HAV's is approximately 0-20 on my side.

Against random guys that start shooting me when I am trying to AV, I am probably a 5/30 KDR with my measly scout HP, or screenfilling swarm launcher.

The situation is not even close to what you are describing, for me at least.

Does this mean you wana buff the plasma cannon some more? Big smile

The very least it means that AV is not inordinately powerful. The PLC is actually, as demonstrated by Breakin, painfully UP compared to Swarms.

The PLC is for sure a very difficult to use weapon and while it can be used at range, typically my most successful runs with it involve me getting up close and personal with an HAV which almost always ends in my death or the HAV's death, rarely do they run at that point. Also note that when I do get an HAV kill with it, its typically because I can alpha down the shield's buffer before the hardener goes up. Once that hardener is up....good luck.

I think the main problem with swarms is their concept in general. Typically Missiles in EVE are known for 2 things.

1. They're useful from their max range all the way down to 0km. They don't suffer from tracking issues, so they can target anything if its within their effective range.
2. They never miss. Damage can be reduced if the target is small/moving fast, and in exceedingly rare instances they can outrun/outrange the missiles.

What this leads to is a philosophy of "Constant Sustained DPS". They don't tear targets apart like say a Blaster would with crazy close range DPS, but what they do allow is that once you start firing on the target, that target is going to sustain moderate amounts of damage for a long period of time while they try to either kill the AVer or simply outrange the enemy. I think after the range of the Swarms got castrated, the obvious assumption was that the DPS had to increase to compensate which was reasonable...but it's also not quite working right.

I'm not advocating for a return to the crazy ranges we had before (What was it, 400m?) but it might be interesting to take a look at the concept for a longer range, lower DPS swarm launcher that is built more around long term sustained DPS rather than shorter range higher DPS.


Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 3 post(s)
MINA Longstrike Kirjuun Heiian 2169	Posted - 2015.02.12 18:07:00 - [1] - Quote Spkr4theDead wrote: CCP Rattati wrote: Just as a player, I have not been able to kill a single vehicle in the last few weeks. And I am dedicating myself, to really see how it is, by always spawning in as AV when I see any vehicle and going after it. As an experiment I have had two to three proto AV fits, both a cloak scout plc and/or Minmando swarms, on my main. I am simply terrible with RE's so I don't even run them. I always fit Proto AV grenades, but they are not overly effective. Against a semi-competent driver that doesn't panic and drive into a wall, there is no way to kill a HAV. They simply harden and rail or blast me, fairly easily. 2 AV scare most HAV's away. Thing is about PLC is that it is very difficult to hit a moving target, the first shot is a hit, 2nd maybe and then you are in dream territory. Even fitted as I am, the last two week KDR against HAV's is approximately 0-20 on my side. Against random guys that start shooting me when I am trying to AV, I am probably a 5/30 KDR with my measly scout HP, or screenfilling swarm launcher. The situation is not even close to what you are describing, for me at least. I can be on at midnight Friday night my time. I can show you what a tank can do to enemies. Like get wrecked by malleus? Hnolai ki tuul, ti sei oni a tiu. Kirjuun Heiian. I have a few alts.
MINA Longstrike Kirjuun Heiian 2169	Posted - 2015.02.12 19:45:00 - [2] - Quote Pokey Dravon wrote: CCP Rattati wrote: Banjo Robertson wrote: CCP Rattati wrote: Just as a player, I have not been able to kill a single vehicle in the last few weeks. And I am dedicating myself, to really see how it is, by always spawning in as AV when I see any vehicle and going after it. As an experiment I have had two to three proto AV fits, both a cloak scout plc and/or Minmando swarms, on my main. I am simply terrible with RE's so I don't even run them. I always fit Proto AV grenades, but they are not overly effective. Against a semi-competent driver that doesn't panic and drive into a wall, there is no way to kill a HAV. They simply harden and rail or blast me, fairly easily. 2 AV scare most HAV's away. Thing is about PLC is that it is very difficult to hit a moving target, the first shot is a hit, 2nd maybe and then you are in dream territory. Even fitted as I am, the last two week KDR against HAV's is approximately 0-20 on my side. Against random guys that start shooting me when I am trying to AV, I am probably a 5/30 KDR with my measly scout HP, or screenfilling swarm launcher. The situation is not even close to what you are describing, for me at least. Does this mean you wana buff the plasma cannon some more? The very least it means that AV is not inordinately powerful. The PLC is actually, as demonstrated by Breakin, painfully UP compared to Swarms. The PLC is for sure a very difficult to use weapon and while it can be used at range, typically my most successful runs with it involve me getting up close and personal with an HAV which almost always ends in my death or the HAV's death, rarely do they run at that point. Also note that when I do get an HAV kill with it, its typically because I can alpha down the shield's buffer before the hardener goes up. Once that hardener is up....good luck. I think the main problem with swarms is their concept in general. Typically Missiles in EVE are known for 2 things. 1. They're useful from their max range all the way down to 0km. They don't suffer from tracking issues, so they can target anything if its within their effective range. 2. They never miss. Damage can be reduced if the target is small/moving fast, and in exceedingly rare instances they can outrun/outrange the missiles. What this leads to is a philosophy of "Constant Sustained DPS". They don't tear targets apart like say a Blaster would with crazy close range DPS, but what they do allow is that once you start firing on the target, that target is going to sustain moderate amounts of damage for a long period of time while they try to either kill the AVer or simply outrange the enemy. I think after the range of the Swarms got castrated, the obvious assumption was that the DPS had to increase to compensate which was reasonable...but it's also not quite working right. I'm not advocating for a return to the crazy ranges we had before (What was it, 400m?) but it might be interesting to take a look at the concept for a longer range, lower DPS swarm launcher that is built more around long term sustained DPS rather than shorter range higher DPS. I think a great deal of swarm problems could be solved if they were simply required to sustain a lock and damage was buffed appropriately. Death to fire and forget. Hnolai ki tuul, ti sei oni a tiu. Kirjuun Heiian. I have a few alts.
MINA Longstrike Kirjuun Heiian 2170	Posted - 2015.02.12 20:28:00 - [3] - Quote Spkr4theDead wrote: MINA Longstrike wrote: I think a great deal of swarm problems could be solved if they were simply required to sustain a lock and damage was buffed appropriately. Death to fire and forget. Even more damage? Jesus Christ, why is the only solution to buff AV? You saw 'increased damage' and didn't bother to look for any context beyond that did you? You just went for a straight kneejerk reaction of 'this means its a buff!!!!!' Instead of considering that by being forced to maintain lock swarms wouldn't be fire & forget things that always hit. I'm just sitting down after a blood donation, skimming the thread, I'll try to gather my thoughts for a big perspective on av balance type post soon. Main points: -high differences between std & pro -one av ineffectual, multiple av terrifyingly lethal -'waves of opportunity' incentivizes flight over fight -high cost of vehicles makes them unsustainable if so much as a single loss is occurred (which is why people want to not die) Hnolai ki tuul, ti sei oni a tiu. Kirjuun Heiian. I have a few alts.
MINA Longstrike Kirjuun Heiian 2174	Posted - 2015.02.13 09:10:00 - [4] - Quote I'm just going to do some stream of consciousness style posting here. Disclaimer: Not all points will be well argued or supported, but I feel that they have some merit to them, most of this is opinion but I'll try to ground with some supported reasoning. This post may have some terrible formatting in places, I hope it doesn't get to be too wall-of-texty. To start with, I feel like 'waves of opportunity' is a failed design premise, the way it has ended up panning out is that vehicles are either alive and nigh-invincible (we'll get to the madrugar being underpowered in a bit) or they're about to be really ing dead. In the case of smart vehicle users any situation where they would be about to be dead, they instead opt to leave the battlefield and wait for modules to cool down. When all of this is paired with the high rep values currently in game it's akin to always having to fight a lightning fast sentinel suit that has full hp if it gets out of your sight for 15 seconds. In short it's impossible to grind down a vehicle due to speed & rep values. Vehicle hp is either full & modules are up (they're invincible), or their hp is full & modules are down (they're going to flee) or their hp isn't full and their modules are down (they're about to die). When experiencing this as an av player, you always feel like you're fighting a vehicle when it's 'invincible' and you cant do anything to them. When playing like this as a vehicle user you feel horrifically weak and underpowered unless your cooldowns are all up - your best option is to flee because you feel underpowered instead of reasonably durable. On both sides of the equation, there's horrific differences between standard weapons/modules and prototype weapons/modules. Proto swarms are 20% better than basic before proficiency, the commando bonus that minmatar (should not) have then you toss complex damage mods on that and you can have a massive damage gap. In essence higher levels of sp/isk investment (in any role) is similar to choosing to play with an advantageous 'handicap' in dust... a handicap that can amount to >30% damage and +100-200% hp on top of having more experience actually playing that role. With all this variance it's hard to achieve any points of balance. On vehicles you want to fit multiple of the 'best' module so you're never weak / always playing with advantageous handicap. PLC and Forge operation should be changed to reload speed (3% per level) and with all AV weapons damage should be standardized a bit more (buff weaker weapons, nerf overperformers), Minmando needs to lose swarm 'bonus' (seriously, it is the FOTM AV fit), Proficiency on AV weapons should go towards fitting cost reduction or something. On vehicle side I'm not certain how to correct, I'd probably favor a return to 1.6 style things of better modules being easier to fit, and vehicles more oriented towards passive resistances and slightly slower speeds, less incentive to flee the battlefield after killing your one installation / vehicle etc. This ties in with both of my previous walls of text. One source of anti-vehicle or anti-infantry (infantry or vehicle) is often ineffectual against a target... it may be a 'threat' but vehicles/infantry can avoid it but multiple sources of av/ai utterly smash the crap out of things. I'll admit that this is more oriented as an av rant, but I feel that there's a bit too much disparity between how good one av/ai is and how good multiples are. Nyain-San / DunaCorp tankbush was real and couldn't be stopped because there were too many targets and there's also a flipped situation where one av is 'whatever' but two avers can instakill things (2x wiyrkomi breach forge, or 2x wiyrkomi swarm vs armor tank). I had a bullet point here that I want to re-iterate: "waves of opportunity" design incentivizes flight over fight, massively. Vehicles feel incredibly weak with modules down or like unstoppable gods with modules up. If we moved back to a system like 1.6 (with not-terrible shield recharge. Seriously 5 ***ing minutes to get shields back on a gunnlogi? I'm okay with a minute or so) vehicles would feel like they could stay on the field with their passive modules and wait it out for their repairers / boosters / recharge, this would probably be much less frustrating for infantry and vehicles alike, it would also allow vehicles to be flanked / overwhelmed. Finally getting to my bullet point that certain hulls / vehicles perform MUCH better or MUCH worse than intended because there's a lack of weapon parity and the 'good' weapons are too powerful at certain things. Madrugars don't exist on the battlefield currently because swarms / missile tanks instantly kill them... whereas the 'good' av weapons aren't as good vs shields, and the weapons that are* good against shields are either underpowered or can be mitigated to the point of being ineffectual. More types of AV means more variables, this could be very good. Final bullet point: Vehicle users hate dying simply because it means that we go deep in the red if so much as a single loss is incurred... due to the isk costs associated with vehicles it feels like we shouldn't be losing them, if vehicles cost less in terms of isk, people would be much more okay with losing them. Edit: Forgot my random bit of hatespeech about the swarm launcher being disproportionately easier to use than other av because of its 'fire and forget' and 'cant miss' (yes you can lose missiles to terrain) nature. There's been many suggestions on this - I wouldn't mind seeing it have to maintain target lock to hit and getting a proportional damage buff because of it. Hnolai ki tuul, ti sei oni a tiu. Kirjuun Heiian. I have a few alts.
MINA Longstrike Kirjuun Heiian 2176	Posted - 2015.02.13 11:02:00 - [5] - Quote ^Breakin, I didn't mean to imply that forge guns should be left at current (pre operation) charge values. Much like the plasma cannon I'd like to see them standardized at their current (max operation) charge values. Forge guns do need some improving (notably on the standard / breach variants). And if minmatar explosive bonus is a non-factor why is EVERYONE running that suit? EVERYONE. I can see it several times a match and a lot of the time it's from PC corps. All adv/proto minmando with 2x damage mods and wiyrkomi swarms. It may not have an 'effect' on dropship TTK, but something seems out of line with it being so omnipresent. In short I want to see some of the gap closed between basic and proto on both sides and I want vehicle players to stay on the field where they can be worn down instead of running away to the red line the moment they don't have modules up. Hnolai ki tuul, ti sei oni a tiu. Kirjuun Heiian. I have a few alts.