This sold me on the AV turret. Can't take out aircraft like this bro yet. It kills a sunderer in 4 hits. 4 hits. Everything else drops same speed as it does to stock launcher. It provides similar or identical shield as AI turret, but it just isn't visible (meaning you can still get headshot sniped from ludicrous range, but there is more cover than it appears there is)
↑ This. It is like annihilator.. Soon as everyone has one, no vehicles will be safe, and it will be hit with the nerf bat. When you make a turn down a road to a base and there is 12 of these up on the hill...
Very many people cant use it. I am not very good tank user but I have killed a lot of engies using it or trying to deploy it. Also tanks now likes trees and slopes. Shoot-cover-reload-shoot. Only idiot tank user sits still. Well -there are a lot of them near crown area.
It's quite difficult to use properly and you're a sitting duck with a giant target sign on you when you're manning it. I haven't started upgrading mine yet, but I mainly use it to take out sunderers, and it usually takes me 5 hits unless they're taking fire from elsewhere too(4 from rear if abandoned). 5 hits, 6 second downtime between shots, 30+ seconds. It's quite easy to hunt me down during this time, or just wait until I'm manning it and pop me with a headshot if you're an infiltrator with bolt-action. Against tanks I can kill them if the range is extreme, if they're closer, they kill me more than I kill them, because I need multiple hits on them, they only need one on me. It's almost impossible to hit aircraft with it unless they're parked. The missile moves and turns too slow to keep up with them, and you basically have no depth perception when guiding it, and since it's so slow, they have to be moving towards you, meaning they will see it, and it's easy to evade, it also has a very limited range of movement, the range of movement is also extremely limited, aircraft often fly further to the side or up than I can guide the missile. I think even HA dumbfire launchers may be easier to hit with on aircraft. All in all, it's a worse AV solution than going LA and doing C4 drops, and it's different rather than more powerful than HA AV options. It's not OP. Indeed because it's so situational, I get as much use out of my AT mines as I get my AV Mana turret, about 50% of my engineer kills on sunderers and tanks are with the mines, and about 50% with the turret. I've never taken out an aircraft in the air with it, and I think I've only hit once, unless you count a galaxy that was in the process of landing.
Av turret are balanced when used by a noob, totally OP when used by a decent player. From crown summity AV mana can cover from almost J908 south entrance to several meters behind hydrophonics structures. At that distance rocket are invisible (always the same render problem) and a hit on back of a lighting is almost 50% damage. Useless to say that from that distance a counterattack is totally crazy, and a good user can track you also if u are running at max range trying to avoid those "invisible rockets coming out from nowhere". The first times i was hiding or running around hydrophonics structures thinking "jeez, noone can hit me here, im covering and im also moving", i realized i was totally wrong and i needed a few death to understand what was hitting me (the damn engineer on the top of the crown cliff...) Furthermore, it is not so fast to kill the turret also with a tank, it looks pretty strong.... My vision: they are keeping that weapon in first page of shop to sell it, SOE will nerf someday when almost all have bought it and learned how to use well, cause they know it's op. To balance it i'd keep the damage but i'd consistently reduce the range of effect to about 2/3 of render range or at least lose aim control after that distance and letting the rocket going straight to the last given direction. It also sounds logical to reduce range for a guided rocket.
The problem with the AV Turret is that it is almost impossible to protect yourself from it, makng it fun for the engineer but ****** for everyone else.
okay, the AV turret does exactly 30% damage to the front of a stock lightning, as lightnings have 3000 hp and 55% front armor (6666 effective health) that means the AV hits for 2000. This however does not mesh with its killing a sunder in 4 rockets (which we know it does) as sunderers have 4750 health and 45% armor on all sides or 8636 effective health. To 4 shot a sundy you need to deal more than 2159 damage but less than 2878. They also 5 shot the front of a MBT, and MBT (non vanguard) have 4k health and 55% front armor for 8888 effective health. To 5 shot a MBT front armor you need to do more than 1778 (which is why a mags AP doing 1785 vs a vans heat doing 1750 is actualy a signifigant difference) but less than 2222. So the braket of between 2159 and 2222 are where i got the ~2200 number (also meshed with the 2 hits to kill esf and 4 to kill a lib as air units have a base 50% resitance to any guided weapon). 2000 will mesh with all the other hit numbers just as well as 2200 does. This means that the AV turret has a bonus vs sunderers somewhere between 8% and 43%.
It's the classic modus operandi of any free to play game. Make an overpowered weapon. Sell it like hotcakes. Once you've sold as many as you realistically can, you nerf the overpowered weapon back to "regular" balance. It's already been done with rocket pods. It's all good. You've already gotten your customers' money. You gamers are being "farmed" in real life and you don't even know it.....
My main problem as Engineer (who doesn't have it) but likes to drive tanks is that this reverts part of the fix the render distance brought. I'm now again bombarded by invisible rockets coming from "straight ahead" where I cannot see anything and thus, not retaliate. That's ********, the same one invisible HAs with launchers were. AV turret should simply have the same visibility than tanks. Ie. same range, if you see me, I see you at your turret (and so does everyone else). You might still be so far away it will be difficult to almost impossible to retaliate, but at least I have a chance to. As I said, I mainly play engineer, but I don't have it yet. I'm anxous about dropping money into it at its current state which I too feel is not going to last.
AV turret DOES render at vehicle render distance, which is a large part of why you're so vulnerable while manning it, it's a giant kill-me beacon, especially to aircraft, and of course snipers. I've lost count of how many times I've been one-shotted by bolt-action snipers while trying to kill vehicles with it.
Well then they are the first that are culled when too many people are in the area. Since they are around I get shot by invisible sources again. Often I can tell exactly from which direction the shot has to come (pretty easy when all other possible areas "behind you" are covered by own forces) yet I still cannot see the engi. It's not that he probably hides behind a rock and curve shoots either. Same as with the invisible HA's the rockets themselves are also invisible. All you get is the rumble and hit sound and you lose HP, which is p-i-s-s poor, again, just like it was when render distance made it completely one-sided. Can gladly make a video from me being hit again by invisible rockets all 6 or 7 seconds or so and let me kill so you see on the screen that it is indeed invisible AV turrets. If they should always be visible, this is a bug. If they haven't gotten the same visibility rules as tanks do, then they should.
To be quite honest it sounds like you have a graphics settings problem(possibly due to a hardware age problem), or possibly a bug, and one I have not encountered, rather than the turret being OP. I do not encounter your problem when I am in a tank, the only time I don't see rockets coming is A) when they're from out of my field of view, or B) NC cheaters with the shrike hitscan hack. I play with render distance maxed(along with everything else).
Agree here! People whining, its OP How??? Cause it can kill something if nobody is paying attention to it? My experience: 1. Extremely hard to find a safe level place to deploy it. If you find safe, its not level..and vice verca..I just love a shot in the head trying to place the transparent green turret thing on level ground! 2. Sniper/LA/Tank Bait after that first shot. 3. Looooong Reload time (I am not going to put a lot of cert points into it due to No 1 and 2 above, (have way more higher priority things to spend on) 4. No cover anywhere I use it 5. Seems like it takes an eternity to deploy when I do find a spot I do like having it as an option, and carry one, but I am only going to pull it if I get a sweet opportunity and have the element of surprise. (Standing on the Crown trying to hit tanks on the mountain kilometers away is about as fun as watching paint dry)
While possible I doubt my system is the problem here. I run a rather beefy one with render quality on 1.4 (super sampling) and everything on Ultra and would actually have physX turned on if it wouldn't crash repeatedly since the last update. But perhaps I'm not expressing myself better. It's not the case that all AV turrets are invisible. I see them often, but there are cases when they are simply not visible to me. The last "incident" was between Crossroad and The Crown, which makes me believe that perhaps some render distance system kicked in and simply did not render some objects and some of them happend to be the AV turrets. Matter of fact, I saw one on the air plattform of the crown and I could shoot at it with the Saron on my Magrider from behind the hill at crossroads. However those that fired on me were not visible no matter if I went up to the hill or to the other side to check wheter it's someone hiding behind a rock. Obviously I was visible for them, as they kept shooting at me, but I could simply not retaliate. After I let my Mag die, I redeployed directly ontop of the crown. While I didn't live long and there was about a minute or so between getting shot in my Magrider I saw about 7 AV turrets on ledges / buildings that I simply did not see from "the other side", some manned. There wasn't a major attack going on either, so I'm pretty sure they simply did not render at my distance while they saw my tank. Hence: I suspect they don't have the exact same behaviour as tanks for the render distance system, but they should have. Perhaps it only really kicks in when in crowded areas, but it's hard to find out.
Even if this weapon gets nerfed, it's still so much fun to use and definately a direct upgrade to the AI mana turret simply because the AI mana turret is a very situational POS. It's not the damage, it's the wire guided mechanic.
With the exception of G2A launchers, the AV MANA turret feels superior to HA rockets and MAX AV weapons in most situations. The only time HA has the edge is when you are right on top of some tanks and have a chance to shove a dumbfire rocket up their tailpipe. The cooldown time does not seem much worse than reloading a rocket launcher, especially when you consider you can exit and have your carbine equipped while you wait. It is a bit trickier to guide a rocket to a distant target than to use lockon, but the target gets no warning, you are not completely exposed like you are acquiring lock and you can often fire and forget. Damage seems bugged against sunderers, will probably get fixed first and soonish. Damage otherwise seems a tad high.
HA AV weapons are much safer to use and much faster. Pop out from cover, shoot, retreat back behind cover. Also note that the default dumbfire launcher is free, and the turret is 1000 certs/700 SC. Oh and you are more exposed with the turret than with lock-on launchers because you are rooted to the spot, and your render distance is increased to vehicle render distance. With lock-on launchers, a HA can often fire from outside infantry render distance, especially with the AA one(though the shot can be neutralized with flares). Do note that standing still in a vulnerable position in any semi-large battle, manning a turret, is a giant kill-me sign to every vehicle and sniper on the other side, and such an engineer's life expectancy in those conditions is less than 3 seconds. I agree that MAX AV options are pretty bad, especially the TR one is terribad. This doesn't make the AV turret OP, the MAX AV weapons are UP.
I agree with the general assessment that the turret is too powerful, for effective range more than power. With practice, hitting an enemy sunderer from outside lock-on range is possible, to the effective range is definitely too high. If it just stopped homing to the cursor after 250m or so, it'd be a lot easier to balance, as it's have an effective range of 250m versus moving, and render distance against stationary targets. The same will probably be true for Lancers, and Saros/Enforcers right now, and hopefully happen for the Phoenix, so it's ultimately in good company.
