I'm OK with this but how exactly will you steer them?

Why don't we just make swarms go wherever the reticle is pointed.

I've been reading QQ threads about swarms for MONTHS. Apparently some people are so completely convinced that these are broken that they just WILL NOT let it go. I don't agree in the slightest, but ok. I get it. If you refuse to let it go, we need a middle grounds where we can compromise. Your biggest issues seems to be that it requires no skill and it can sometimes make crazy turns. Let's try to resolve that first one since it seems to be the easiest one to fix without starting a lot of arguments.

Why don't we just make swarms go wherever the reticle is pointed.

That way they aren't fire-and-forget weapons, you actually have to guide them to the target. Make the ADS for them lock in when entered and remain locked in until you hit the weapon wheel button, this will free up the L1 button for controlling the flight of the swarms. Of course, leaving ADS would end your control of the swarms as well. The fire button can make them go forward, the aim button can make them come back towards you, holding neither will let you turn and move them side to side, and they have a slightly lengthened flight time to compensate for human error.

For this, they will need a somewhat tighter flight pattern, otherwise they will easily miss their smaller targets. They will also need more carry capacity, perhaps 4 more total capacity since they will miss quite a bit unless the operator is quite skilled.

This will make the swarms a skill weapon that you can't just fire and go do something else while waiting for your LAV destruction points, you actually have to guide them to the target yourself. If the swarms leave your line-of-sight for, let's say, 4 seconds, your ability to control them goes away and they spiral away in whatever direction they were heading last.

Leave the Assault Swarm Launcher as auto lock-on, but make the swarms for it only fire 3 missiles for the basic, 4 for the advanced, and 5 for the proto. This will give people the option to use the auto-locking swarms, but at the price of reduced damage potential.

Lastly, since the swarm is now a skill weapon, we should buff the damage of each missile by around 5~10% on the guided swarms. This will add additional incentive for people to use the skill based swarms instead of the assault one, since the overall damage of these variants would be that much higher.

So, to recap:

Swarms will require skill by being player-guided

Swarms will have a higher capacity and flight time to compensate for human error

Swarm ADS will be locked-in once entered until weapon is changed

Swarms out of your LoS for too long will leave your control and continue upon last trajectory.

Assault Swarms stay lock-on, but have reduced missiles per swarm

Guided Swarms get a 5~10% damage boost

Swarms are no longer fire-and-forget (except for the assault variant)

This would pretty much solve the beef people have with this not requiring any skill. So, any thoughts?

I think they're fine vs tanks, but a bit too easy vs drop ships and lavs.

I'd like to see aerial vehicles have a counter measure - maybe a passive mod that can auto counter one swarm and give an audible warning every 30 seconds.

Like ecm flares?
If so yes please. 45 second cooldown.

My only 2 gripes with the current SL are:
Make the assault SL work, the whole "double lock on" its a fat lie, so the assualt variant: dead on the water.
Some instalations STILL (even after 6 months of the problem being around) are untouchable by swarms unless they are shot point blank, and not even that works all the time.

Fix that and im a happy man.

I like the scoped control idea but I don't think the whole move forward, move backward thing isn't viable.

Just make the SWARMS track to where ever the center of the scope is pointing. If the swarms leave sight of the scope or the ADS view is released, then the swarms go uncontrolled and continue in a straight line until range limit or impact with something else.

Make those changes and we can sit back and watch the QQ threads develop as SWARM users begin complaining about being killed much more frequently as they're buried in their scopes like snipers and can't see an enemy coming, or are immobilized for the duration of their attack making them easy targets for snipers.

The ADS controls could be mapped to other buttons, I merely suggested a locked ADS because changing forward and backwards motion would be more complicated while having to hold the ADS view up. I still think controlling the movement of the swarms should be controlled for a few seconds after swarms leave view because it would be too easy to loose control of your swarms by them flying behind a rock spire or such for a moment. And if your crosshair's placement is where the swarms tracked to, your swarms would fly into said rocks if you passed the crosshair over them while following a vehicle. So you would need to control the distance from yourself that the swarms could travel, otherwise the swarms would become useless quickly due to terrain setups.

ECM Mods won't be until Christmas or after.......not even really soontm

Let alone if they happen to be bugged.

This makes long range Av quite a bit less viable when the problem is just with 2 of the 3 current vehicles but besides the free lavs, Havs make up the majority of all deployed vehicles. What I've been thinking is have locking onto an lav only launch a reduced amount of missiles per lock (only two missiles are launched from the standard launcher to lavs, 3 for advanced, and 4 for proto, while the dropship takes one more per lock across the board)

Standard swarm launcher(4 per mag/launch) vs light chassis = 2 swarms launched per lock on

Advanced swarm (5 per mag/launch) vs light chassis = 3 launched per lock on

Prototype swarm (6 per mag/launch) vs light chassis = 4 launched per lock on

Add one across the board against medium vehicles which would be dropships.

Ok, and how would this affect your ammo? Do your unused missiles in each clip carry over to the next clip?

No, just no. There is no problem with swarm besides the fact that dropships, have no way to counter them. This argument has been settled before. Make swarms faster, make dropships have countermeasures and radar lock on warning.

I say leave swarms as they are. I engaged a tank and a LAV this evening with a swarm. Took me 4 hits to take down the tank, and 1 for the LAV. I then had to go and re-arm. I found it challenging to avoid being shot by infantry and vehicles while doing all this. Weakening swarms would make vehicles over powered.

If you are in a vehicle and swarms are an issue, you need to look at
-infantry support
-situational awareness
-vehicle configuration
-spend more money
-consider retreating

Darn tootin'!

Swarms are fine. They are supposed to make vehicles go boom.

Furthermore, unlike Forge Guns, you cannot shoot infantry with them at all, no matter how good you are.

Running about in a Swarm fit is asking for trouble.

Then again, running about in a tank is asking me to kill it.

Damn straight

Apparently some people are so completely convinced that these are broken that they just WILL NOT let it go. I don't agree in the slightest, but ok. I get it.

Im a tanker and id be happy if they couldnt do 90-¦ turns.

Also, each swarm charge would now show a sub category of how many missiles are left in a single round

That would be interesting, but would have to be built from scratch expressly for this single weapon since all weapons function on generally the same HUD display setup and function based on the same general ammo use/reload mechanics.

I think the swarms are fine as is. They are even a little weak. There are so many tanks running around and you can barely scratch them. Toning down the AV stuff will just make the tanks dominate more.

I have no real problems with swarms as they are other than they can do impossible turns. When flying my dropship I will see swarms arcing towards me at say 60 degree angles then suddenly do pinpoint 140 degree turns when I exceed their turn radius, thus short of completely outrunning them they are impossible to avoid.

Make the dropships more capable of surviving, then we can talk Swarm launchers