It's not rhetoric if it's true Rattati, it's called arguing the point. Many of us find swarms so frustrating because they are mathematically guaranteed to hit. Its 'consistency' has often been a very frustrating point of balance, I remember 1.6 gameplay where I was shot down by swarm fire from the other side of the map by someone who went 'oh noes there's a dropship out time to grab a swarm and aggressively hold r1 at this thing that offends me while standing on a nanohive for forever!'

The balance pendulum has swung many times on the swarm where it's gone from overpowered (pre 1.7) to useless (1.7 triple rep maddies) to powerful (hey it could kill tanks again!) to useless (dropships need only hit an afterburner to zoom away!) to powerful again (get too close to a swarm launcher and you are dead - user skill is irrelevant).

Maybe it's time to re-think the weapon from the ground up as it's clear that its current form is fundamentally flawed from a balance standpoint. I'd love to see a swarm launcher that can be boiled down to a wordsoup of 'plasma cannon + av grenade lockon'.

What if the pilot is a super scrub 3?

Righto, I haven't actually run the numbers yet and that was off the top of my head, so let's go.
Will disregard proficiency for all weapons because it only applies to certain damage types. Let's look at raw damage.

Summary at the bottom.



Galmando with Allotek does 1870 damage per shot (glorious).
Reload time with Galmando is 3.5*.75 = 2.25. Charge time with maxed skill is 0.45s. Therefore max fire rate without lag and with perfect timing is one shot per 2.7 seconds.

1870/2.7 = 692 DPS

Minmando with Wiyrkomis does 1373 damage per volley. Lock on time is 1.05s with max skills.

I'm not entirely sure how to calculate swarm DPS, honestly. I know there's a forced delay between lock ons and the SDE suggests that's 1 second, but I might be reading the wrong thing. Let's go with the 1 second number for now.

1373 damage per 2.05 seconds means 669 DPS.

Top AHMG sentinel:

The best case scenario for an AHMG is on the Galsent because it can fit 2x damage mods. 2x HDMs gives about a 9% damage increase.

The proto AHMG does 616 DPS under the current proposal. 616*1.09 = 671 DPS

Let's add the forge gun to this list.

Your normal proto forge gun hits for 1440 damage every 3 seconds. With the same circumstances as the AHMG, this leads to 523 DPS. An IAFG will do substantially more at 726 DPS.




Summary:

So under optimal circumstances:
PLCs do 692 DPS.
Swarms do 669 DPS (?)
AHMGs do 671 DPS
FGs do 523 DPS
IAFGs do 726 DPS


Hm. They're all very close, really. AHMG does very similar damage to swarms and marginally less than the Galmando PLC. Bearing in mind that the Galmando does wonderful, wonderful things to the placon I will point out that a double damage modded non-commando allotek placon without the bonus does 481 DPS. The placon is comparatively only viable on the Galmando, then.


Anyhow, looks like I was wrong about it outDPSing -all- other AV weapons. However, it's very similar in terms of DPS to all the others! IAFGs are the only ones that noticeably outDPS it, at 50 DPS more, and that's a difference of less than 10%.


My concern is that it can very viably compete with all other AV options on raw DPS (and indeed, if those other AV options aren't in optimal circumstances it will noticeably outDPS a good few of them) while being much easier to use than the other options and also being by far the most effective against infantry.

No other AV weapon offers anywhere near as much anti-infantry capability as the AHMG, but the AHMG is right up there with the best of the AV options at the same time. It offers, quite literally, the best of both worlds.


EDIT: I am also concerned that the Galmando is practically required to have viable placon DPS. I know the bonuses fit the commando type, but they just do so much good for the placon that you pretty much need to have them to use the placon viably.

I agree. the only sensible way to do anti-shield swarmies is to make the launcher just that- a launcher.
by adding rockets to the marketplace, you not only give a reason for the calmato to use swarms (scourge rockets) you also would add shield based AV (Infermo rockets and Mjolnir rockets) all without disenfranchising minnowmandos that have leveled into swarms because you said so (Nova rockets). this requires some actual work, but the profound impact that buying ammo for our weapons would have on gameplay (not to mention the increased ease of balancing on account of improving the options for combat) is well worth it. of course, with ammo types, varying advantages and drawbacks are necessary, but theres a game that gives a great source of reference for this. its called EVE Online.

Who is more likely to die, the swarmer or the ADS?

ADS. If the ADS even tries to take out the swarmer, the swarmer will shoot- keep knocking it's aim around and the 350k isk ADS only has what 3-4 shots worth of tank against a 28k isk swarm launcher.

Two critiques:

Assault HMG: let's just bite the bullet and make it 100% AV. take away the aim down sight and aim assist so it can be balanced to fight vehicles without becoming an infantry devouring god-monster. As I have said elsewhere I have a proposal for autocannon firing mechanics and stats if you are interested.

Plasma cannon: there is no problem the PLC has that can't be fixed by sharply reducing the reload and charge speeds. That alone will cure most ills.

Details in my sig.

reload will affect infantry effectiveness where as more damage won't, as it already OHK almost everyone

Only speaking on the PLC comment, I am very happy to see that you understand the Plamsa Cannon. As someone that thoroughly loves the cannon <3 I can agree with this.

Don't get me wrong, I would love a charge / reload speed increase for the base weapon..... but that might be a tad op. Only a tad though because "who uses the PLC" amirite?

I love it when I get my entire squad to use a PLC. The funniest situation was where we were at a DOM, and a tank rolled up to the point, all of our squad mates were relatively close, I told them to all fire on the tank at once, and I got the funniest hatemail I've received in a while.

Righto, I haven't actually run the numbers yet and that was off the top of my head, so let's go.
Will disregard proficiency for all weapons because it only applies to certain damage types. Let's look at raw damage.

Summary at the bottom.



Galmando with Allotek does 1870 damage per shot (glorious).
Reload time with Galmando is 3.5*.75 = 2.25. Charge time with maxed skill is 0.45s. Therefore max fire rate without lag and with perfect timing is one shot per 2.7 seconds.

1870/2.7 = 692 DPS

Minmando with Wiyrkomis does 1373 damage per volley. Lock on time is 1.05s with max skills.

I'm not entirely sure how to calculate swarm DPS, honestly. I know there's a forced delay between lock ons and the SDE suggests that's 1 second, but I might be reading the wrong thing. Let's go with the 1 second number for now.

1373 damage per 2.05 seconds means 669 DPS.

Top AHMG sentinel:

The best case scenario for an AHMG is on the Galsent because it can fit 2x damage mods. 2x HDMs gives about a 9% damage increase.

The proto AHMG does 616 DPS under the current proposal. 616*1.09 = 671 DPS

Let's add the forge gun to this list.

Your normal proto forge gun hits for 1440 damage every 3 seconds. With the same circumstances as the AHMG, this leads to 523 DPS. An IAFG will do substantially more at 726 DPS.




Summary:

So under optimal circumstances:
PLCs do 692 DPS.
Swarms do 669 DPS (?)
AHMGs do 671 DPS
FGs do 523 DPS
IAFGs do 726 DPS


Hm. They're all very close, really. AHMG does very similar damage to swarms and marginally less than the Galmando PLC. Bearing in mind that the Galmando does wonderful, wonderful things to the placon I will point out that a double damage modded non-commando allotek placon without the bonus does 481 DPS. The placon is comparatively only viable on the Galmando, then.


Anyhow, looks like I was wrong about it outDPSing -all- other AV weapons. However, it's very similar in terms of DPS to all the others! IAFGs are the only ones that noticeably outDPS it, at 50 DPS more, and that's a difference of less than 10%.


My concern is that it can very viably compete with all other AV options on raw DPS (and indeed, if those other AV options aren't in optimal circumstances it will noticeably outDPS a good few of them) while being much easier to use than the other options and also being by far the most effective against infantry.

No other AV weapon offers anywhere near as much anti-infantry capability as the AHMG, but the AHMG is right up there with the best of the AV options at the same time. It offers, quite literally, the best of both worlds.


EDIT: I am also concerned that the Galmando is practically required to have viable placon DPS. I know the bonuses fit the commando type, but they just do so much good for the placon that you pretty much need to have them to use the placon viably.

What is the point of increasing the LAV scan radius to 30m when their scan precision is 50 dB and when vehicle active scanner range is independent of base range?

Also why not make basic medium frames have 2 equipment slots so they'll finally be the generalists that assaults and logistics branch out from?

stuff about ads vs swarm in response to a specific question rattati asked bc i hadnt gotten caught up yet so didnt realize he had asked ppl not to talk about that afterwards

@Arkena, @Rattati

Very important inevitable outcome here that I must point out, the Assault HMG must work uphill against the shield regen of vehicles that will NOT BE BROKEN by the minimum damage that it applies. You may think the DPS looks similar on paper until you realize all those weapons break the minimum shield regen damage requirement EXCEPT for the AHMG. Meaning it has anywhere between 120 to 200 HP/s taken off it's DPS numbers unless you are already into armor.

i dont think the AHMG not breaking shield regen is a big deal. Most heavies already carry fluxes, and av oriented AHMG heavies will carry the newly buffed AV grenades.

we going to require swarms to use flux/AV nades to break regen too?