What the ****?! Ratatti are you serious? Add a swarm launcher variant that rips shields apart like a hot knfie goes trough butter? We do not want to improve swarm launcher performance. Instead you should take a look at the plasma cannon which is a true shield AV weapon. So my counter proposal would be to buff the plasma cannon in those aspects:

-Change the reload time from 3.5 secs down to 2 secs
-increase projectile speed by 50%
-less falloff on the projectile to make ranged hits easier

There thats how to properly make the thing viable outiside of CQC. Reduced reload time is basically a DPS increase
(cause you need to reload each shot) and the other two make it more viable at range. You might aswell want to give flux grenades a sticky function. No homing just when you hit a vehicle with it they stick to it, it would aswell enhance the CQC AV performance from the gallente. Get up close, throw 2 flux that stick on a gunnlogi and when they set off fire your PLC.

A swarm yhat melts shields is going to have a ***** of a time killing an incubus.

Another argument for pushing heavy weapon parity would be the ability to trade the splash resistance for a heavy weapon bonus (that applies to all of them), and a racial weapon bonus (which applies to the matching racial heavy weapon)

Honestly the HP is high enough that fatties don't need resists to rifles.

and unless fragmented weapons are UNGODLY powerful or the anti infantry module is game-breaking the splash resistance isn't going to be needed to fend off the vehicle turrets.

Let me be blunt, the resists don't help enough on the calsent and the minsent to be worth it, and they are TOO effective on the amsent and galsent.

So you would want to swap to a shield swarm and back to an armor swarm as AV infantry?

Example: A corp mate of mine, who is very good and very intelligent in this game didn't know that the weakspot of the dropship is the thrusters on the side until very recently. A lot of Casual DUST players don't even know that vehicles have a weakspot.

You do realise that the proposed swarm launcher in question will only be a variant. So every 1 with a half working brain will have two fits.

1. that melts shields
2. that melts armor

Or you go ultimate scrub warrior, sit on a rooftop with a commando and have 2 swarm launchers. So he can shot at any vehicle that comes in range with the matching weapon.

Indeed. I mean if the concern is player understanding, I don't think dumbing it down is the right way to go. I mean we saw this with CCP Z's plan for character progression in Legion where he basically stripped out much of the freedom we have in the skill system for a dumber more linear system like every other game has, simply because "Its too hard to understand". That was met with massive backlash because it stripped away a lot of what made the New Eden experience interesting.

I think this falls under a similar context in that if the issue is that damage profiles are difficult for new players to understand, I don't feel the best choice is to simply get rid of them, but rather make them easier to understand through proper documentation and explanation. I understand this takes additional resources to do, but at the same time a change that gets the desired effect, is not always the best choice if a better choice also accomplishes the same goal. And like Avallo pointed out, adding exceptions to rules actually increases the learning curve, rather than decreasing it.

Additionally as for the benefit of faster balance iterations, I believe that in most cases you should assume neutral damage when it comes to calculating overall DPS. Damage profile (obviously with some minor adjustments) works itself out in the end. Some weapons will simply work better against certain targets than others....that's how all weapons in this game work, infantry and AV alike. I don't think that it's unreasonable to ask someone to bring the right tool to get the job done either. I mean if I have a Laser Rifle and come up against a heavily armored unit...I'm going to get my ass kicked because I didn't have the right tool for the job. I don't see why AV needs to be different.

I understand what you're trying to accomplish and I think it's a noble cause...but I think you're going about it the wrong way.

How are you going to react if Rattati introduces a heavy AV laser weapon? That will incinerate python shields. Same thing. Shield vehicles need weapons that will crack them open as much as armor vehicles do.

For those wondering, that was me