My gut feeling, based on what you are asking / saying, is that it is not locked yet. Remember it does take a few seconds to actually lock and you have to hold the button that entire time and you have to have a clear radar-line of sight to the target that entire time.

When I say clear radar-line of site, there are certain battlefield materials where you can get a lock, even if you cannot see the target. For example there are certain concrete walls that allow you to lock-on even though you cannot see the target, just their icon. ;)

Holy cow they need to un-nerf the direct hit damage against tanks. Unless you've got a forge gun on your team, high level tanks will run roughshod over you. I'll spend literally the entire match Swarming against a tank who can insta kill me on sight and drive shockingly fast around the map, only to get his armor down to ~15% at the end of the match.

I get that they are expensive and tough, but the only difference between a high level Swarm Launcher and the basic model is two extra missiles. If they all manage to hit, that's only 700 extra damage.

The low splash damage is fine for keeping people from abusing it against infantry (though it renders the splash radius upgrades useless) but the direct hit damage needs to go up for everything but the basic and militia models.

Since dropships are much more fragile, we need to nerf the lock-on against them. Missiles shouldn't be able to track them endlessly across the map. Currently, I am every dropship's worst nightmare but useless against all but militia and low level tanks.

Also, there needs to be some kind of audio or visual indicator of when the launcher is ready to lock on again. If you press the button too soon, nothing happens. (Sometimes nothing happens at all until you switch weapons and switch back.) It's very frustrating to wrangle the targeting when your victim is shooting back or making a break for cover.

TL;DR - Fine against infantry now, direct hit damage against tanks needs a serious boost, the lock on system needs to be refined, and dropships need a way to avoid missiles once they're locked on and away.

TL;DR - Fine against infantry now, direct hit damage against tanks needs a serious boost, the lock on system needs to be refined, and dropships need a way to avoid missiles once they're locked on and away.

swarm launchers have infinite flight time. the flight time of the swarm needs to be capped, or lessened, because right now i dont see them ever not hitting me after i see the swarm and fly away from it.

Yeah, tanks with insane shields take far too long to destroy, blasted one with all my anti-vechicle grenades and swarms and barely made a scratch.

Disagree with the dropship thing.
Only thing that could be done, is to give dropships anti-missile weapons to use like flares or something similar. This might even balance them a bit against infantry as well as you'd need to decide whether to take extra defense against missiles or firepower.

I think some kind of limited capacity chaff or flare item would be ideal. That way they're not invincible, but can at least survive the first salvo or two. (Then the pilot will know a SL is after him and adjust his tactics; it's probably annoying to learn of the shooter's mere existence via 3 salvos already locked on.)

swarm launchers have infinite flight time. the flight time of the swarm needs to be capped, or lessened, because right now i dont see them ever not hitting me after i see the swarm and fly away from it.

See.......... I had no idea that they had infinite flight time or that you get no warning that someone is trying to lock you up so youve nullified me even using countermeasures....and militia get these for free come on man....I reported this as a bug....I was playing the other night and I thought these missiles flying out side my shields while my booster was on and following me at slow speed then once it shut off and they hit my armor causing the vehicle to be destroyed was a bug. Uh can I have my skill points back that I put into dropships back please cause a missile that can track me and fly forever is OP... dont nerf damage ,let them lock on, give drop ships a warning tone for enemy attempting lock.Infinite flight time...my shields arent infinite...eh what?Balance out with cool down times on the counter measures.

Okay, tell ya what... Let's trade.

I will agree to nerfing the range of the Swarm missile, if you agree to your dropship only being able to go forward or backward... No side to side and no up and down.

I will agree to giving you a warning while I am trying to lock on to you, if you agree that from that point on, any time a DS pilot complains about the warning, the price tag of all DS will quadruple. Each time.

I will agree to nerfing the Swarm missiles already stupid agility if you agree that any time a Forge gun so much as looks at your dropship, the DS will blow up killing everyone within a 5 meter radius of the cockpit.

Given the level of your whining, I think those are all fair and balanced.

Seriously though, think before you spew that garbage. You are able to fit the current missile turrets which are infinite ammo - 0HK weapons... They are free and you can fit two of them. You have 5x the shields of a militia heavy armor and 3x armor. You move faster than the fastest prototype scout (Which costs more than your militia DS), you move in three dimensions. All of those give you real advantages. That same prototype scout cannot single hit kill your militia DS even using his prototype SL, but you can single hit kill him with your militia turret.

Yer a moron.

He only equips the vehicle with his own isk which he purchased

as well and no militia turret is on hit killing anyone that Ive seen.

I cant believe that they would give a generic rpg tool that can attack air, land, and infantry allowing it to lock on all of those.

This one size fits all launcher

You with your missles with infinite flight time lol.Im talking about a warning tone TOOL and thats all im talking about

A dropship pilot will end up spending over a million skill points to have the ability to buy/equip there drop ship

lock on warning yes I think so as far as the tech argument is concerned the dropship/lav/hav is delivered from a flying vehicle that can cloak itself

swarm launchers have infinite flight time. the flight time of the swarm needs to be capped, or lessened, because right now i dont see them ever not hitting me after i see the swarm and fly away from it.

This is endlessly frustrating for dropship pilots. There absolutely needs to be a flight time restriction. Otherwise a player can pop off a launch, and it doesn't matter how fast or how far a ship flies away, the missiles will always land.

No. One, the DS pilot should not be flying in a straight line, nor should the pilot be flying above the level of the buildings, otherwise they are invite swarms. Two, if a DS pilot flies low and uses the terrain to their advantage they can completely negate the Swarm missile salvo I have watched them do it.... Hell, I have done it myself multiple times.. On top of that once afterburners are added to the game, the DS will be able to fly faster than a Swarm missile. Next, your weapons have infinite flight time as well.

No, if anything Swarm missiles need an increase in overall damage of about 50 - 75%.

Hi guys,

Just wanted to let you know we will be making a temp fix for the Swarm Launcher OHK issues people have been complaining about. There will be a very significant nerf to the splash damage and direct damage against infantry targets in the next update.

This is a bit of a brute force fix but it should solve the issues youGÇÖre currently experiencing. WeGÇÖll be looking at a more elegant solution for a future release when we have a bit more time to work on it.

Cheers

CCP Wolfman

Yeah, tanks with insane shields take far too long to destroy, blasted one with all my anti-vechicle grenades and swarms and barely made a scratch.

Disagree with the dropship thing.
Only thing that could be done, is to give dropships anti-missile weapons to use like flares or something similar. This might even balance them a bit against infantry as well as you'd need to decide whether to take extra defense against missiles or firepower.

1) If a DS pilot is flying in a straight line, anything more powerful than light handheld weapons can shoot it down (blaster/missile installations, tanks, other dropships, etc.) As for the level of buildings, they're quite low as it is, and the whole point of being in a dropship is to...you know....fly in the air. Even if you do keep low to the ground, SL's can still get you. So those points are irrelevant.

2) This method works maybe 30% of the time, and you have to be ridiculously skilled with the dropship's already-finicky controls. If the salvo doesn't get you, crashing into the map objects will. By then you've slowed down enough for another SL salvo to hit you.

3) Afterburners don't last forever. SL missile flight times do. As it is the dropships already fly faster than the salvos. The point is that they inevitably catch up.

On top of all this is the fact that the missile mechanics in EVE have flight times as a part of the game. Skills and better modules increase the flight times, but it's not infinite. This is to prevent the exact situation that we're currently dealing with, where as long as you can get a lock, you get a hit.

So you're basically arguing to keep the SL's missile flight times overpowered, and relegate the dropship's utility to that of disposable drop pods. And if you got your way with damage increases without changing the infinite flight time, they'd be flying trash cans that cost several million ISK/unit.

I think you're alone on this.

Why not give Swarm Launchers a minimum distance?

If it impacts with something less than a certain distance, they don't explode, dealing minor impact damage.

That way, it'll still kill infantry, just not as nearly effectively as before...

Why not give Swarm Launchers a minimum distance?

If it impacts with something less than a certain distance, they don't explode, dealing minor impact damage.

That way, it'll still kill infantry, just not as nearly effectively as before...

keep the swarm lancher as a lock-on launcher and introduce a new direct fire launcher with dumb rockets (like a RPG launcher)

This is not my idea someone else suggested it in a topic discussing the Swarm launcher, can't remember his name tho.

Why not add an arming time to the missiles? Should be mandatory on weapons that can hurt you if a missile hits an obstacle obstructing you're view