from the sound of everything it sounds like you want a grenade launcher and not a missile launcher.

Considering the blending going on today there is very little difference between a grenade, rocket, and missile.

grenades are just a self contained explosive device. while also being a self contained explosive rockets are unguided and missiles are guided.

as for these changes, they all seem way to gimmicky to be used. they all have a single purpose and what seems to be going on is that they are too weak to be effective. why would you want a grenade launcher when you can just pick up a mass driver and do it better?

you can't go back to the old build of swarms because they were too effective against dropsuits. they limited the damage making them pretty worthless to dropsuits to compensate. now they are useful but only to vehicles that are weak. using weapons that have only one purpose is usually a death sentence for the weapon and sees practically no service. if everyone wasn't running around in LAVs ready to be killed i would probably not use it (i love blowing a fully packed LAV).

The swarm launcher has range, reach, and coverage, the mass driver only hits one tiney small spot this is meant to carpet bomb LAVs, Tanks, and Blobs of infantry mostly.

Secondary Function Is EOD which is a role far too time expensive to do with a mass driver.

a cluster bomb might be interesting but i don't see it being too effective, swarms have a hard time doing anything at the moment. if a tank is fitted really good they 5-10 people have to pull out some form of AV to push the tank back away. it doesn't kill tanks but it forces them to retreat till their shields are back up and their shield rep is reset.

launching into the air and landing on vehicles is something the swarms should already do (like a javelin). instead of launching breaking into 4-6 parts and then derping their way into the vehicle or dropship.

but i could be wrong right now the pace is slow and doesn't offer anything for anyone who wants fast pace action.

well right now swarms have an extremely nasty habit of slamming into everything along the way to the target making them more useless. But carpet bombing + large target = more damage.

Yeah I agree about explosion mechanics needed to be adopted from eve, larger the target the more of the damage explosives do to the target.

i just wouldn't know how they would work out. making them R for rockets that can fit in light weapon slots.

swarms, rocket lawnchairs, might as well throw mass drivers in there as well because area damage of sorts.

have 4 separate skills instead of the normal 4.

Having the missles go killzone style and launch up and cluster down would be an amazing asset in the battle field. Makes it so people cant really out run them and making Anti-vehicle truly anti-vehicle.

true, the Swarm Launchers are THE dumbest smart missiles ever. They do seem to deliberately steer into any and all objects in its path.
Maybe making the Launchers more dedicated to a single purpose can increase it's effectiveness.
-Like a Launcher that shoots a huge-ass Shaped-charge missile that actually does a ton of damage vs. Armour.
-A Flux Missile launcher that completely annihillates shields.So you and one of your friends can equip one of each missiles and be the absolute bane of any tank on the field.

- A Flak swarm launcher that actually intercepts Dropships and explodes when it comes near, causing the Dropship to get staggered, and take a ton of damage.
-I'm not familiar with the EVE universe, but an EMP variant for Launchers and grenades which immobillize vehicles for a few seconds could change the way Tanks and Infantry interact, IE; Tanks moving up while being supported by a squad of footsoldiers, instead of charging headlong into battle unsupported.

Ideas?

Alternatively this idea was to specifically fix pathing as well.

I like the roles you've identified but right now I'd rather see them in separate weapons than all wrapped into a single multipurpose weapon.

More configuration options and the possibility of ammo swaps in the field are a fun idea for EVE folks but may not be right for DUST 514. A clear cut role for a weapon makes it more easily understandable and makes fitting a particular battlefield role easier. The current mechanics don't support multiple ammo types, though they may in the future. Swapping weapons and reloading need to be improved across the boards. A weapon of this kind at this stage would suffer from handicaps in the underlying system that were not really it's fault.

I see the kind of weapon your suggesting as a "next generation" weapon for after the game gets established.

On one specific point...
Do you think the pathing with the current Swarm Launcher implementation can not be fixed? If they did track targets and didn't run into things would they be more useful?

I suggested changes to swarms as AV only weapons here but those changes would depend on the system being able to manage pathing.