How do you justify 800m range on the Lancer & Vortex?

I respect and appreciate you taking the time to respond to my post in its entirety with some rational points.

However, much of the info you responded with is flat out wrong. Most of the stats you pulled are wrong. Charge from nothing to full is not 3 seconds but nearly double that not including refire time. It's 3 seconds to get to the second stage of the charge. It's a 3 stage charge weapon. The resistances, which you did not list, are yes better than dumbfire rockets vs most tanks but worse against some other targets, and significantly worse than the faction parallels of the Striker and The Phoenix (which is, on average, approximately 2x as good damage resistance wise) There is COF, there is Bloom.

Basically, while I appreciate your thoughtful responses and reasonableness -- you are doing so from inaccurate stats. Some quick googling (and I made sure to check at least 4 sources) would clear that up. And more specifically, it would (or it should if we are being fair and honest) change your conclusions.

Why not?

It's not like that extra 2-300m or so of range is game breaking when hitting anything in that range requires a huge amount of skill or luck.

I mean the Parsec only has a OHK range of something like 230m, yet I've scored kills with it at well over 300m by either hitting wounded targets or double tapping people. Does that make all the bolt action long range sniper rifles OP because they are still effective past their OHK range in skilled / lucky hands or should they all just magically stop doing damage past their OHK range to remove the luck / skill from the game?

Speaking of sniper rifles, the Phaseshift, a weapon that has the same charge up mechanic and no drop as the Lancer in addition to having unlimited ammo completely, should be denying infantry advances out to 200m since that's it effective OHK range when massed like the Lancer right?

Only, that has literally never happened in the history of this game.

I will say that the Lancer, much like the Phaseshift, is an absolutely devastating weapon when you use it exploiting all of it's strengths to cover it's huge number of drawbacks. However when you try to use either of those weapons outside of their very strict effective parameters they are woefully inferior to every other option available. I say this as someone with the top 10 in KDR, Accuracy, and HSA with the Phaseshift so yes I know the exact parameters that it's effective in and much like the Lancer only use it when they exist.

If you're going to claim you checked "four different sources" you better post them, because I'm calling your bluff on that."Me, myself, and I" won't get you to three, by the way.

http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Vehicle_armor_and_damage_resistance

The resistance tables here show that the only area where the Lancer has less favorable resistances than a dumbfire is against aircraft, and that is because it is far more difficult to hit aircraft with a dumbfire. If the Lancer was able to one-shot ESFs it would just be ridiculous. Its damage against aircraft, like its vehicle damage, is comparable to a lock-on ("Medium anti-armor ordinance" includes lock-ons).

The Lancer has zero CoF when using the sights, which is how you really should be firing it. And bloom is a complete non-issue if you're charging, which you should at any appreciable range.

And it definitely takes slightly less than three seconds to charge the Lancer. When you start charging, you'll immediately hear a little "thwp" sound, and the bottom side of the triangle will fill in: that's the first charge level. Somewhere between half a second and one second after that, you'll hear a second "thwp" and the left side of the triangle will fill in. That's the second level. Just under a second after that, you'll hear a third "thwp" and the right side of the triangle will fill in: you're done charging now and can fire immediately.

You are allowed to hold the charge about 2-3 seconds after you reach the final level to facilitate aiming, or changing targets at the last minute if the one you were aiming at died. If you already have your shot lined up though, it's unnecessary.

You don't have to take my word for it though, here's a video of the Lancer charging up in much less than six seconds:


You can even see the handy hits-to-kill chart, which you may note is pretty much identical to a lock-on launcher except for needing one more hit on infantry, and generally one or two less hits on aircraft (presumably because it's harder to hit an aircraft with a Lancer than an AA lock-on, though with the nerfed tracking that's questionable).

What are the new values? The only problem with the Striker 2.0 buffs is that they'll likely make AA better, which more or less is fine as is, especially in the context of close up anti-spawn camper power.

In all fairness, Imp - the Lancer does indeed take only 3 seconds to charge. I doubted my original estimate of that value from the other day, so I hunted down the most recent stats from the patch notes from 2013 when they gave the actual values. A bit of searching yields no documented stat changes to charge time since then.

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...r-maintenance-03-27-2013.109342/#post-1468048

Unfortunately, they never did give the actual damage that it drops off too at range, but from Dasanfall, the 'mode 1' damage is thus

http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/item/268

That's 73% of the damage past 400 meters (Which the patch notes contradict, so that value is suspect.) If we assume that dropoff now starts at 500 meters. The damage value (73%) is probably safe to use, as nothing I found suggests that they ever changed the damage, just dropoff range and projectile velocity.

From one of my posts above, with damage at maximum dropoff...
(.73 * 750) * (1 - (-1) ) * ( 1 - .63)
547.5 * ( 2 ) * ( .37 )
547.5 * .74
405.15

Since all MBTs have 4k HP, that's 10 shots to kill at maximum range, with 5.2 second reload. Assuming absolutely ideal conditions (With perfect, instant aiming at something that may or may not be a dead pixel) thats a 50.8 second TTK vs front armor.

A bit less than I would have done with the velocity, but then again I was saying to only buff the velocity. That they're also buffing it's effective damage against ground vehicles should mean that the buffs will make it only slightly better against air but much better against ground vehicles which is what's needed.

I think they can justify it because it offers a unique advantage to the ESRL over the others at the cost of damage per shot. I am of course only speaking of the NC TV missile and not of the Striker. The Striker cannot be compared at this juncture because it is just so awful. That being said, if the VS would think for one second and just get an entire squad of Lancers together with an engineer, find a vantage point, and attack incoming vehicles - there is nothing that will stop them.

I do see this occasionally, but to catch armor 500+ meters out, you need to anticipate when it's going to arrive, which means reading the flow of battle and correctly predicting what lattice an enemy force is going to follow after winning a defense / attack, then coordinating enough people into the same area to counter it, complete with engineers and medics to support them. Very few squads are that organized, which is why it is only seen rarely. More often then not, I see one or two lancer users taking pot shots at far off armor for an assist or so.

You just defined every AV weapon in the game, this is why the AV turret was nerfed, it was happening too frequently. This is the state Ravens are in now, but they are less of an issue due to the sizable nanite cost. It can't happen as often, which is why they have lasted this long. (The fact that NC maxes suck at mid / longrange AI helps too, it's a tradeoff - but they are a bit heavy in the AV dept right now.)

• Except bolt-action wielding Infiltrators,

• Zephyr Liberators coming in from high altitude,

• stealth ESFs cutting engines at maximum altitude and doing AI runs with zero warning, and if done at night, zero visibility unless anyone is staring up spamming the Q button,

• tanks sniping from over hills,

• flanking light assaults with C4,

• dropping light assaults from high flying aircraft, also wielding C4,

A pair of light assaults with stealth ESFs and drifters can potentially drop on the lancer squad faster then a tank can drive that 700 meters over rough terrain entirely unopposed.

I wish that kind of support and backup would be there.. all the time. The ranges of these weapons makes it often impossible to shoot back as a tank.. while I can see where I got shot from. I cant' "Q" the shooter, if the shooter doesn't show up, I can't kill it.. ergo: I can not fight back.
Half the time I get hit hard.. and I can not tell you from where or by what.. it just doesn't show up in game.. all I know is that I just took some big hit and then another.. the invisible mystery cannon hit.. that's no fun.
if a weapon can hit my tank from 700-900 meters out.. why can't i shoot back?

Now THIS... this is the problem right here, I get this all the time when i'm attempting to tank, on all three factions.
I get this anywhere from 40 meters, all the way out to 900 - with tank mines especially - even with EOD, they don't show up until your tread is literally sitting atop it, more often then not. With lancers, the issue is exacerbated, as it is with Raven Maxes, Fractures, Snipers, and anyone further away then spitting distance. (This has been improving, but the problem still exists, and the longer the range, the worse it is.)

Shortening range based on the bug, however, would end up reducing the range of all weapons to sub 200 meters. A potential fix for this, would be to assign render priority to both parties, when one attacks the other (Although I have no idea if they have this sort of capability, it seems like they would, given how often they change render settings to try to fix similar issues.)

I feel the same way, but in situations like this, a full lancer squad of 12 + support crew can be removed by a 2/3 liberator crew, or a pair of light assaults dropping from ESFs.

It takes much less coordination and effort to remove the obstacle then it does to organize over a dozen people into a certain place just at the right time to hold off advancing armor at 500+ meters... then it does to grab a buddy and fly over with C4, or grab a liberator and drop a few magazines worth of Zephyr shells.

In over 3000 hours of play, I can recall exactly four times that I personally saw a Lancer squad pull off a major victory (Twice, I was on the receiving end of it. Both encounters were between old-style indar-ex / that one base to the west that was recently redesigned ) most of the attempts I participate in end up falling to the counters I mentioned, although a trio of Snipers is typically enough to disrupt a squad into chaos - it's hard to stand there charging for multiple seconds, aiming at targets approximately two pixels wide, while still preventing 50 caliber rounds from entering your face.

I looked at that exact armor resistance sheet. Right below it, you might note that Phoenix -- another weapon with long range. As I said in my first post -- faction comparison because the Phoenix and the Lancer are the faction specific 'specialty AV' weapons. IE...that is what you would compare -- much like you would compare the Guass Saw to the Orion LMG and not -- say, the Ghost sniper rifle. Please try NOT to omit context when responding as it is important.

Now, I see you are changing your statement about the Lancer not having CoF to, the Lancer doesn't have CoF when ADS. Of course you don't always ADS. Sometimes you turn a corner (or step out a building) and *bam* there is a tank (or ESF) right there and you have to shoot it rapid fire. I will assume you aren't just trying to flip flop on your last statement and were actually thinking in the context of ADS only when you posted it. The flaw there, though, is that you won't always shoot ADS.

Now I did go and look and dig into it a bit further and the stats listed show that you are correct and that the Lancer charged up faster than I initially thought. That changes DPS values quite a fair bit. However, I also looked at this video

and pulled a stopwatch. The charge to fire time was exactly 5.0 seconds. In fact, if you follow it through 2 charge fire cycles you get 10 seconds. My memory of using it in the ps4 beta matches this video. So I will concede that with further testing I, and maybe this video, are somehow wrong and that my memory is somehow wrong. (Fun difference between us so far in this discussion. I double check and re double check and don't shy away from admitting I may be mistaken on a point.) Anyway -- stopwatch and that video said 5 seconds -- but when I get home from work in 5 hours I will make a VS HA alt, power level up asap on Koltyr, and run tests again. I may come back into this chat changing my tune about the DPS of the Lancer tomorrow. However, there may have been a nerf to charge up time at some point and we haven't found the stats for that. I am currently withdrawing my assertion that the lancer is the lowest DPS AV weapon in the game pending further testing.

Stormsinger -- your math fits about what that video I just linked showed. I am basing my opinion on the DPS numbers WTSherman gave as I believe he is correct on that account. But thank you for going into more detail on the practical application on the Lancer as well as it's strengths and weaknesses as opposed to just its paper stats. Context and practical application are in short supply on the forums.

That said, KPU, KPH, Kills Per Anything are pretty low with the lancer. It is only one piece of evidence that says that the range on the lancer does not break it as those numbers are not the whole story, I did not include this page earlier
http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/items/weapons
because I feel that it skews the argument too much into raw math with no consideration for situations even though it supports my position.

You'll note he's not ADS in that video, so you can't see what charge level he's at. In fact he never ADSes at any point in that video, and that's his mistake: he's sitting through the 2-3-second "hold" time that you're allowed AFTER you finish charging, and holding down the trigger until it auto-fires.

The Auto-Fire is not the final charge level. You gain nothing from waiting for it to auto-fire.

In short, the person in that video is using the Lancer wrong. As, apparently, are you.

With the Lancer, you will always shoot ADS if you know what's good for you. It's not the weapon's fault if you use it wrong. That would be like me trying to hipfire the Gauss SAW, and then declaring the weapon sucks because it can't hit the broad side of a barn.

Honestly that would probably also explain why you think it's difficult to aim, of course it'll be hard when you're letting the game auto-fire it for you and you don't know exactly when it will go off. Pay attention to the charge levels, once you hit the last one let go of the trigger as soon as your shot is lined up (which may be right away if you were aiming while charging).

You'll cycle your shots faster, and you'll find it much easier to hit when you're the one deciding when to fire.

I think the lancer is in a good spot, since it's basically a sidegrade to the default launcher. The Striker could use a buff to catch up to it, and the NC Phoenix....is a piece of junk that no one needs to waste or certs/money on. They should make it a wire guided missile launcher.

I don't know about wire guidance considering how hard it hits even though that doesn't sound unreasonable -- but, and understand I've never used one, I have heard that it has a weird cone of fire making it a matter of luck to hit targets farther out. If that is true -- DBG could certainly fix that

translation

Aaaand I am done with you. Lancer is what it is so this is all moot. And since you can lead a horse to water but..., I will take my leave.

So many misconceptions in this thread its not even funny

Just to reiterate

Lancers maximum range is 700m not 800m, and definitely not 900m (for those that have said anything above 700m please say it after me "the lancer has a max range of 700m"), and has no zoom function so at 700m you are aiming at a target that is 1 pixel in size.

Phoenix that other long range weapon the NC use is 280m (ish as its a function of time not a fixed distance).

Anyone not ADS'ing the Lancer gets a nice CoF and a silly charge up, HOLD and then fire time of about 5, those people using ADS tend to fire at 3.

I was thinking something along the lines of the hornet missiles, but weaker.

Interesting, should certainly give it a buff AV-wise.

Great post....but sadly it will be ignored so that the OP won't be forced to actually consider the truth. He will simply ask again in a few posts why it has a 800m range. Because that is quote "Insane"

But yes the balance is there...with some exception of the striker which needs a looking at. But that is another thread.