Give the tanks the HP they had before 1.7 uprising. Its embarrassing how today's tanks are weak as paper.

That nerf was completely no just no.

When are we getting the Enforcer tank!!??

.... I've seen more assault swarm launchers in the kill feed lately... It weirds me out...

@Ghost Kaisar: That situation is certainly annoying...haven't really thought about specific kind of situation myself...however, consider that one of the main phrases when balancing vehicles is that 1 player should always equal 1 player, an issue that has plagued HAVs (and DS/ADSs to some extent) in many past and in some respects current iterations. In other words, it should be taking an equal number of forge gunners or Swarmers to effectively neutralize 4 transport dropships...(as keep in mind, all it takes to destroy 1 HAV worth 1.5 million ISK is one very determined, skilled, and lucky 32k ISK suit, and that's OK...even if I don't like HAVs being so expensive)

I am aware of the n+1 theory.

I was simply defending my corp mates after that guy said they were bad shots. If they got 4 dropships coming in, they can't defend it.

I would still like some way of combating spam like that though. Too many infantry in one area get a mass driver, but what about AV?

The assault swarm seems like the appropriate answer, but it just deals far too little damage.

cool. But the complaints are, I think, a bit in the other direction, "how can I swarm kill Dropships without it being OP against HAVs"

You should not forget in the game players are not alone. If hav or ads starting to kill too much people , sure around 2 or 3 infantry will come with swarms . That s make the sky not a good place. Many times I ve seen between 3 or 6 players focused on tank or ads with swarms and just destroy them in few seconds.
Killing an ads or tank should be a team work . Buff the swarms and hav or ads will become a joke.

The ads got an indirect buff, and the ads are just standard, there is no adv or proto ads, So dont complain, unless you want to see proto dropships that are unkillable. they would be like flying tanks......

If you truly want to "fix" swarm launchers then the lock on mechanic must go in my opinion. Turn it back into a dumb fired weapon so that skilled shots become a necessity again. You could also adjust damage values to suit as well as keep splash damage low so that they are not an IWIN button against infantry. (That's not to say that a dumb fire swarm shouldn't do some damage to infantry)

Besides as it is right now, this is the only game I think I have ever played where vehicles, (especially air vehicles) do not display or announce with sound or buzzers that a missile has been locked onto the craft. That alone would make a huge difference.

And you could even look past the issues of swarms not rendering at a distance as we would know by default with lock on warnings.

Thought that was why they reduced the explosive velocity (DUSTs sig rad counterpart) in the first place.
Namely to make swarms less effective against fleeing dropships.

The important factor in this scenario is the speed of the target ship. When a missile hits a target, the speed of the target is compared to the Explosion Velocity of the missile. For example, if when a Scourge Heavy Missile - which has a base Explosion Velocity of 81m/s - is fired, the Explosion Velocity is much lower than the target's speed, then damage is significantly reduced as the target is outrunning most of the missile's damage.

The other factor that will decrease missile damage is Signature Radius. The Scourge Missile previously used has a Explosion Radius of 125m - if this missile is fired against a target with a smaller Signature than its Explosion Radius, damage will again be reduced, as only a small portion of the explosion is affecting the target. Although if your missile hits a target whose signature radius is greater than the explosion radius of your missile then the explosion velocity of your missile is increased by the same multiple.

I gotta say rattati you are right on that.

Theres a weapon for everything.

I hear so much about swarms and dropships.

Try this pull out that ishokune assault forge gun on the derpships and use your swarms or plc's on tanks.

I guarantee you will kill 5x more dropships with a forge compared to a swarm.

o7

That's a different part of the EVE missile calculation.

Quoted from Evelopedia:



As you can see we seem to be using half the damage formula for missile like weapons, but do not seem to be using the other half. The second half is important in this case as it allows us to create a situation where a Swarm Missile will ALWAYS do more damage against a same speed Dropship vs a same speed HAV.

Normal Swarm Launcher (vs Derpships), Clip = 4, range 175m, damage per missile 65 X 4... damage per swarm 260, total damage 1040hp Lock Timer = 1 seg.

Assault Swarm Launcher (vs HAVS), Clip = 3, Range 120m, damage per missile 120 X 4... damage per swarm 480, Total Damage 1440hp lock timer = 1.7 seg.


With that derpships are "safe" vs Assault Swarm Launcher and assault is more efective vs HAVS.

Eve-style missile calculations are fun...but I don't know/think we are using any part of the calculation(s) (Neither sig/velocity are taken into account for missile damage). As far as I know the factors that where recently changed where the knockback affects that swarm missiles have, to make it easier to regain/maintain flight control in a dropship...(although, if Rattati or another dev could weight in on this that would be greatly appreciated)

Easy enough to solve. In the "damage-per-volley versus lock-on-duration versus clipsize" design space you can dial in the size of the alpha-strike that can be delivered to an escaping DS and the sustainable DPS on a static target HAV.

Here are some logical sanity-checks for a potential solution:
- A short range SL must be able to scare off a DS further than 150 meters, otherwise a DS with a gunner can rain missiles on the swarmer with impunity. The launched missile must travel to 200-250 meters at least, otherwise the DS can just dip out of range to recover and be back 10 seconds later.
- A long range SL must be able to break the reps on a hardened dual-rep Madrugar, otherwise it isn't an AV weapon. That's 425 DPS to armor minimum. Better add some margin, otherwise the HAV won't be impressed.

Again, why not just have different swams for different vehicles?
One that can only lock on air vehicles, thus can be balanced around that
One that can only lock on ground vehicles, thus can be balanced around that as well

You don't need to tackle the monstrous task or reinvent the wheel by balancing Swarms vs All Vehicles, just divide and conquer the beast like other games do (planetside 2 comes to mind)

I'd like to follow up on this with some numbers, but I'm unsure on the design goals.

Should ADS have a harder time in the future? We just pulled in the range on the SL, so that indicates the intent is to make it easier on ADS, but the quote by Rattati above indicates ADS have it too easy now?

Should SLs become more competent against HAVs? Rattati's quote seems to indicate that HAVs have it too tough against SLs right now. Banter on the forum seems to go both ways.

I don't have enough data to come up with good design goals. My experience as a pilot doesn't give me a clear direction to go. I know my NDS can sustain a single swarmer for quite a while, on the other hand it takes two people to operate a NDS, so that seems fair.

[Edit]
By the way, for future DPS calculations for the current SL you can use a time between two volleys of 2.3 seconds. Back then I wrote this thread I actually measured the time it takes PC players to launch three volleys from a couple of youtube videos. The best SL operator took 7 seconds to lock on and launch 3 volleys. That makes about 2.3 seconds per volley.

Some more general arguments:
Right now, in any situation that doesn't involve buildings, the resolution of a fight between a DS and SL is determined only by the distance between the two. If distance is x then y volleys connect before the DS escapes, delivering z damage within w seconds and the DS either pops or it doesn't. That means I can design a SL that destroys any DS of a given ehp if caught within an arbitrary distance to the SL. In fact I came up with a couple possible variants during a train ride yesterday. However I fail to see the gameplay here. Neither the SL operator nor the DS pilot are doing anything interesting - they're both not enjoying their time, which is terrible gameplay.

I know that isn't what you asked for, but I'd like to put some effort into creating a more interesting SL-DS interplay before creating such variants. Tweaking turn-rate and missile speed as well as implementing directional swarm launching (I'm going to keep banging that drum) creates a much more interesting gameplay where we can involve both the DS pilot and the SL operator in more interesting activities.
However the design is much more complicated - more analysis to come...

The short story:
1. Split SL into anti-HAV SL and anti-DS SL.
2. People complain it's not worthwhile to fit one of these if it can only attack one type of vehicle and doesn't even reliably kill that sort of target ("but that's it's only purpose, why else equip it?").
3. Specialized SLs are buffed to compensate for their lack of usability against other targets.
4. Piloting an HAV is now a thing of waiting until somebody brings a anti-HAV-SL, which is guaranteed destruction.
5. Killing an HAV is now a thing of running to a supply depot, switching out to an anti-HAV-SL, running back to the HAV, killing it and running back to the supply depot to do what you were trying to do before.
6. Both SL operators and vehicle operators now hate Dust. Congratulations.

Seriously, instead of making the swarm launcher 2 different weapons why not just lower it's DPS? That's all that is needed.

If you did that I would never get shot out of the sky I promise. I actually think swarms are finally balanced VERY well vs ads. Having a lot of fun and was still able to wreck people before the update. I don't have many ideas but I will let you know what I think from an ads perspective.

Is It A Bad Idea To Make Specific Swarm Launchers To Specific Vehicles...?

Like For Example:

ADS Swarm Launcher:

Will Have More Efficiency On ADS (100%-110%)

Less Efficient On Any Other Vehicles(75%)

Tank Swarm Launchers:

Will Be More Efficient On Tanks (100%-110%)

Less Efficient On Any Other Vehicle(75%)

Numbers Could Be Different, But 2 Different Vehicle Types In Battle Would Be A Challenge For One AV User (As Always)

And LAVs Would Feel A Bit Buffed

Good Day People!

i like this idea. basically making two types of ammunition types, Armor Piercing and HE variant missiles. AP for tanks and HE for dropships, and just adding something to the names to make it clear which types do what and etc.