Proposal One: Swarm Impact/Force Reduction - Decreased sway of the ADS under fire, allowing the pilot a greater chance of achieving accuracy, and evening the odds in direct Swarmer v ADS confrontations. Percentage of reduction would probably be large.

Proposal Two: Decreased Swarm Tracking Ability - Further encourage pilot skill and maneuverability while also toning down the ability to fire around corners and obstacles, thereby rewarding smart swarmer positioning. Reduction more nebulous

-Words-

Sorry I dont have video capture card or I'd have stuff like this recorded, but it happened. He was hovering right in front of me next to a supply depot on the acid pits city installation. It was in a previous patch, not the current one, but I havent seen much to convince me that ADS's are much easier to kill these days.

You also say stuff like this "Bad players do have trouble killing tanks while they're on both of their hardeners, I'll give you that." even though it is literally impossible for wyrikomi swarms to kill a double rep/double hardener tank (have tested this in controlled conditions, tank not moving at all, reps out rep the dps until hardeners go down). But this thread isnt about tanks, so whatever.

I've been a pilot since Uprising 1.3.

The biggest problem between ADS and swarmers is target acquisition, i.e. being able to identify they're under attack and from where in an efficient manner and being able to respond in time and appropriately.

Currently, the only notification an ADS pilot has is the sound the missiles make and, if actually looking at where they're being fired from, the missile glow. Both of these have the possibility to be completely glitched out, making swarms literally undetectable before hitting the ADS. This also ruins any possible way for the ADS pilot to identify where the swarms are coming from, forcing him to flee even if he may possibly be able to kill the swarmer.

Some possible remedies to fix this:

-Add missile icons to the minimap, showing the general area where they originate as well as if there are multiple swarmers.

-Highlight swarmers locking an ADS (visible only to the pilot), perhaps with a unique chevron and only on the minimap.

-Lock warnings (sounds) might be considered as well, but alone the don't provide much useful info for the pilot.

Another problem is the ease of use for swarms. Lock, fire, and unless the ADS is already 100m away ABing at full speed it's a guaranteed hit.

Compare this to the forge gun: an ADS pilot skilled enough can orbit over a forger to try and dodge the shots and a skilled forger can still track and lead the ADS (I've been in both situations multiple times). What the Swarms need is a way to implement some way to negate or hinder their use. I'm not a fan of the laser-guided idea others have because it's impractical, but I do have a solution I think might be worth exploring:

-Greatly increase the lock time for swarms, but only require a single lock for the whole magazine (the lock will break when reloading). This means that a swarmer needs one lock and each missile will fire one after another (with a reasonably slow RoF I might add).

-Decrease the size of the lock box (roughly 2/3-1/2 it's current size)

What this will do is allow swarmers to engage other vehicles and non-agressing ADSs normally, albeit with a little longer initial time due to a long lock (but remember, times between each missile volley will still be the same so long the lock is kept). Swarmers should still be allowed to redirect swarms up or to the side in order to avoid obstacles, so long as the box is back over the target in time (very similar to currently where you need to re-lock for each volley), this also giving a little leeway to retarget an orbiting ADS.

Together with my acquisition suggestions, the fight between a swarmer and ADS pilot becomes much more balanced. Both need skill to apply their damage, though I must argue that the ADS needs more skill to both apply and avoid damage (the swarmer avoids damage by damaging the ADS, e.g. knocking him around, which I argue should still exist). The ADS also has more information to help him decide how to proceed. It also shouldn't severely affect a swarms ability to engage any other target (actually it might be a stealth buff to LAVs speeding around, though it won't help one sitting around sniping with a rail turret).