I'll just give some observations and logical thought here and you can pick it apart at will:
Observation 1. Infantry without AV is helpless vs. vehicles. 100% helpless, you basically have zero chance of anything aside from hiding until they go away.

Observation 2. A single infantry with AV is unable to kill a dropship unless the dropship pilot makes a mistake, and cannot even drive the dropship away in some cases in the amount of time it takes the dropship to kill the AV player (in other words, even with AV, dropship vs. infantry is asymmetrical in favor of the dropship).

Observation 3. Multiple infantry with AV makes dropship piloting impossible.

Logicology of the situation:
Why is an infantry player running AV not able to kill vehicles unless the pilot makes a mistake when the AV player is making himself food for any non-AV infantry by running that AV?

The reason is because vehicles cost so much, if you made them easy to kill they would be not useless, but definately too expensive to run.

So why do vehicles cost so much?

How about we dramatically rebalance things so that 1. vehicles are killable and 2. they are priced to reflect that.

Final comments:
Dropship v. AV is pretty closely balanced in 1v1 right now, but even so its broken because the AV running a fit specifically created to destroy vehicles cannot do his job without the vehicle making a mistake, and if multiple AV are out on the field the vehicle cant do anything at all.

How about we make vehicles expendable?
How do we do this? Well we could try this...
Make the pilot suit.
Tie pilot suit fittings in with how well the vehicle does
Dramatically reduce vehicle prices and make it so AV has advantage in 1v1 combat with a vehicle.
The majority of a vehicle's "cost" will be in the pilot suit (still not as expensive as current vehicles though), so the vehicle pilot essentially can defray costs indefinately unless his vehicle gets blown up so quickly and decisively that he loses his suit as well.
Making vehicles more disposable also helps to mitigate the multiple AV phenomena, where many AV players can make running vehicles prohibitively expensive.

tldr; Vehicle balance in this game is fundamentally broken. Small tweaks arent going to fix it. Breaking the EXPENSIVE = INVINCIBLE dynamic of vehicles may fix the issues, but this probably wont happen, so whatever.

stuff

But its ok, you will win in the end because vehicle/AV balance will never be fixed because nobody thinks its a problem that tanks are virtually impossible to kill.

Bad players do have trouble killing tanks while they're on both of their hardeners, I'll give you that.

-Words-

As far as the ADS is concerned, 1 AV player is more than enough to handle an ADS. Unless the ADS starts attacking first (which is nearly impossible on an observant AVer considering the range the can see and engage an ADS), the swarmer has the advantage heavily. The reason AV cannot kill easily ADSs is because they can fly away from danger before dying, not because of lack of killing potential.

This is an ADSs only defense against swarms at the moment. All our fittings do is to delay exploding long enough to get away, or in a best case scenario kill the AVer. Unlike forges, there is virtually no player skill that is involved in the engagement; all there is is luck, hoping you see and can hit him before he gets his salvo off.

Your second observation is off because it's assuming they're just immediately shooting at each other. It takes not account of the ability for AV to hide and get the first shot off. Sure, if an ADS knows exactly where a swarmer is and gets in its optimal and starts firing immediately from a standstill, it will have the upper hand, but that rarely happened in battle. AV has a huge advantage of being hard to find, hard to hit, and having a comparatively easy target.

Making vehicles cheap but easy to kill (ie cannon fodder) is the wrong way to go, imo. As mentioned above, the fight already skews heavily toward AV. Vehicles also take much more time to deploy than infantry, making them not only assets of ISK but time in battle. Just my opinion, but I also think making AV vs vehicles quicker/easier very one-dimensional and boring for everyone. As per my previous post (that no one has seemed to have read), I want to make the engagement more engaging for both parties.

Also, AVers should not think "if I don't kill the vehicle I have failed." Driving off and denying areas to vehicles should be the main goal of AV, killing them being the optimal outcome because it takes the most time to bring that asset back (or benches it completely). Occupying the time of the ADS, either by making him flee, try to kill you, or killing him, means less time he is killing your team, essentially making him less useful.

I've had PCs before where a dropship pilot will hover in front of my forge fit and eat 2 full clips of AFG ammo to his face, the only reason I survived was because I was hitting him in such a way to throw his aim off. .

I'm calling bull **** on that one, even if he was a dual hardened Incubus you still would have worn him down in that time, especially if you shot the weak spot.

Sounds like you're just making stuff up now.

I'm calling bull **** on that one, even if he was a dual hardened Incubus you still would have worn him down in that time, especially if you shot the weak spot.

Sounds like you're just making stuff up now.

I've seen a Python use hardeners to reduce Swarm damage so much that the shield repped through Swarm impacts. Think it was triple hardened, according to someone on comms.

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.

But enough about forges, the focus should be on swarms.

I've seen a Python use hardeners to reduce Swarm damage so much that the shield repped through Swarm impacts. Think it was triple hardened, according to someone on comms.

I'm fairly certain you can't even fit 3 hardeners on a python unless they're basic, and even if you can you're on your base shields with no afterburner. It would have a 20 second window to attack with almost 2 minute downtime and can be one shot by almost all AV at any point in between.

Also, only a fool shoots a weapon that's weak vs shields at a shield fit during its hardener cycle. That said most pythons don't run more than one hardener and swarms still do high damage to them considering their low overall tank and the fact that they won't rep in between being hit by swarms.

Honestly it sounds more like a troll Myron fit than anything else. Simple fact is that unless an ADS runs immediately or close to it, it dies. Anyone saying otherwise is lying because math

Oh, it was definitely a Python. He'd buzz in, hardened up, and then missile the roof above C on a 4 point (2 in and 2 out) city map to clear uplinks/distract the lookouts/be a pain in the arse and then fly off when the modules ran low. Occasionally he'd hot drop a Sentinel or two while repping through Swarm salvos.

Niche fit but it did its job.

I still honestly don't believe it unless he was being hit with militia swarms, because it WILL break his rep cycle and if his overall shields would be very low. Again assuming the fit is even possible it would be HIGHLY vulnerable whenever off of its hardener, and that would be significantly longer than when he's on hardeners. Also he would crumple to small railgun fire from LAVs, HAVs, DS or ADS. Basically it was good in that one very specific situation but would go up in flames against most AV, particularly smart AV that baited it's hardener then chased it once on its cooldown.

First off, this is a thread dedicated to generating meaningful discussion on ADS vs Swarm balance. If you want to talk about forges or tanks, please do so elsewhere unless it happens to be relevant.

Secondly, I will be proposing only two seemingly small changes at this time. I ask that you focus your attention on providing feedback on these specific ideas. Due to the focus, this may be simple, but there's nothing like feedback.

And although it should be obvious, this is CPM data gathering, and is no way "Official."



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 "Moderate."

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 from 70-¦/s to 50-¦/s. Curtesy of Stefan Stahl.



Two relatively simple boosts the survivability of the ADS in a swarm engagement while not hindering swarm efficiency against tanks. Fire away.

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).

The problem with swarms is they are expected to be fast enough to catch ADS while being strong enough to kill tanks, which have far more health than ADS. What needs to happen is separate anti-armor swarms, which hit hard but an AS can easily outrun/outmaneuver, and anti-air swarms, which are very fast and have high tracking but don't have as much power behind them.

Then you can balance each swarm based on what it's supposed to kill, rather than balance one swarm launcher around two separate target types. Make the assault swarm launcher anti-air.

There's a lot lot consider here.

Firstly, It might be premature to re-balance swarms to ADS' before dropship tiers are in place.

Secondly, I'm not sure I even agree there is an imbalance in the first place.

If we are strictly talking about swarms, then here's the situation:

One proto swarm: ADS has enough time if he doesn't miss to kill the AV'er, if not, forced to retreat

Multiple swarms in the area: Capable of destroying an ADS, usually a deterrent to keep ADS away.

^ that sounds good good me. I do not want to nerf swarms to the point where an ADS can shrug off and disregard a single swarm user. I also don't want swarm users to be forced to work in pairs.


The real "problem" I think with the swarms are their ease of use. Simple lock and fire with a 99% chance to hit VS. A highly specialized dropship which requires skill and practice to operate.

Instead of an outright nerf, I wouldn't mind seeing something like a smart fire/dumb fire mechanic, where a player could either instantly hard fire, or suffer a longer lock on time than current for the lock fire.

Then swarms would be just as effective, but require more skill to use.

Actually just yesterday I was trying to kill an ADS with proto swarms, cut his shields, he kicked em back in with mods and took me out, he practically faced me head on, which is rare in a dropship pilot.

Only proto swarms are actually capable of getting missiles out to hit the target, all other swarms are trash, so perhaps we need to look at lock-on time and have, from basic to proto, the same lock on time. Any nerfing to SL's will only lead to them to become worthless in both against dropships in general and tank's. Impact force, sure i'll lose that, but don't do damage/range, or lock on.

If you want to make changes to the Assault, turn into a PLC with 4 shot's, low damage radius vs infantry, high direct damage, and low radius.

I have the strangest feeling you're talking about me, as I seem to remember fighting you and God knows what other AV out there.

Anyways, I do agree that damage shouldn't be messed with (well, maybe not), range not so much. I posted a reply around maybe page 2 of this thread which will state why. But the main problem behind swarms is the fact that there is no effort from the player to actually get a hit on a tank or ADS. A lone swarmer is alright, but when you don't even have to maintain a lock to get a hit, it makes it an easy mode weapon that anyone can use and abuse. And as a long time pilot, I can attest that they do.

The problem with swarms is they are expected to be fast enough to catch ADS while being strong enough to kill tanks, which have far more health than ADS. What needs to happen is separate anti-armor swarms, which hit hard but an AS can easily outrun/outmaneuver, and anti-air swarms, which are very fast and have high tracking but don't have as much power behind them.

Then you can balance each swarm based on what it's supposed to kill, rather than balance one swarm launcher around two separate target types. Make the assault swarm launcher anti-air.