Looks: It's a pair of helicoper cockpits, on a helicopter chassis, with wings bolted on in various places. It's a stubby helicopter with no top rotor. Wow? I was expecting something different than actual existing helicopers. Maybe more saucer-ey, with good vantage points for the side gunners? A more open cockpit, the Scythe bubble is nice, but that's too Vanu for NS, so a bit more blockiness and a couple struts would be fine, just as long as the pilot and gunner could see a target at the same time for once. I don't think there's any particular reason it has to look like real-world stuff. Ah well, I fly in third 90% of the time anyway, whenever I don't need a reticle. Handling: A transport that is slow. No cloak. Questionable weapons. It gets eaten by ESFs. It gets eaten by flak. If you roll, the side gunners lose any hope of maintaining a lock. It flies close to the ground where it will get knocked out of the sky by every half-competent treaded tank. Plus most of the other things on the ground. Which leads into.. Weaponry: The base nose gun seems adequate at close range stuff. Two nose guns are broken, so I can't judge them yet. The rocket stuff is interesting, but lacks a bit of punch. I suppose this is a good starting point, as it lets the devs balance them out via buffs instead of nerfs. The side seats are interesting. They get whipped around by roll, which basically invalidate an entire airframe for side gunners. They cannot acquire lock while the aircraft is evading. Ammo packs are laggy, and I've heard they affect flight, though I didn't notice that on test. I can see them working if the pilot holds perfectly still on rolling and only steers left/right/up/down. I don't get the role here. If it's anti-air, it sucks at it's role. If it's anti-ground-armor, it's going to die. A lot. If it's anti infantry, it's going to die a lot as well. If it's a transport, it's slow. About the only thing that I can see it doing well is hunting snipers? The ones without sensor shield, anyway? I do have some suggestions though. Dual-mode flight. Hover mode, then you press B and it goes into flight mode, about the same speed as an ESF. In hover, the rumble seats could extend a little, allowing them the ability to both fire forward and down decently, and also backwards. (More nose gun damage in hover? Debatable.) SOMETHING should happen in hover mode to make the Valkyrie less vulnerable to the inevitable flak, lockon, and dumbfire spam though. It can then lose that advantage in flight mode. (?) Shielding. Make it so large hits are ablated to a maximum of 10% of the Valkyrie health at once. AV shots are nice and all, but... mmm. It needs SOMETHING to make it less of a cert pinata. Tie in to hover mode? Passenger view stabilization. They should be able to acquire locks and fire with SOME degree of precision. At all times. Engineer ammo-triage. Laggy ammo packs are not an elegant solution, give engineers a 200-cert option that provides ammo to vehicle occupants. (Roll out with a medic and engy in the 2 front seats!) (Debatable) A utility slot cert that disables the nose gun seat in favor of a cloak. Also maybe a panel deploys down to prevent the gunner seats from firing while cloaked? Have it also provide ejection seat functionality? Good synergy with Stealth defense system. Cloak effectiveness is very debatable. I would kind of LIKE to see a more inventive and novel model, but that's less important to me than the thing actually having a role. You'll notice that I didn't suggest any raw HP or DPS increases, just systems to actually allow it to apply it's potential DPS with better effect. This IS a ship that requires at least 4 people to use effectively, and yet it has light years LESS ability to apply the DPS that 2 MBTs, or 4 ESFs bring to the field. So yeah, basically a 4-man Valkyrie should probably be in the same level of annoying as 2 tanks or 4 aircraft. Lock-on spam would achieve this, if the locks could actually be achieved. Or aerial spam from the rumble seats around a base. I do remember this one Ghost In The Shell scene, where a sniper kills people. From a helicopter. While it's in the air. A Valkyrie capable of being a sniping platform in flight?
have you not noticed the weapon designers of auraxis are seemingly ignorant to nearly all aspects of actual weapon design. i mean ffs we have "fighters" with some of the worst visibility imaginable, a ground attack jet with no ability to look down, a transport that can see the ground its trying to land on. split track tanks that get stuck in valleys yet some how SOMEHOW our fully armoured tanks have a nearly unobstructed view like the **** pit is made of glass. but T-ray thinks their pretty....
I just gave it a go on test. To be honest, I really cant see any reason for people to use a Valkyrie for anything. I destroyed mine with 3 clips from a carbine, which means its pretty much toast if it even goes near a group of infantry. Even used en masse I cant see these things being effective at anything. But then again it has the potential to be the most OP vehicle in the game, good luck to the designers fiddling about with this one for the next 3 years
I do agree with what you are saying, but unfortunately until its put into live and in live combat situations it is just to early to tell. The speed on it is a necessary evil. I did some testing with some friends to see how locks on would work, and it will have a huge impact on air game as far as I can tell.
They said that small arms was set incorrectly, don't judge by the bugged value. It seems pretty easy to hit with everything else though, so it'll be vulnerable to EVERYTHING, from small arms to tank shells. Maybe a bit chewier than ESFs? But with none of the speed, so ALL of the dead. You ever see an ESF slow down above significant AA? They die. This has no ability to speed up, so it'll die on the way in to anything important. Did you try rolling and evading while they tried to get lock? If you go up against air, you'd better not roll, or they aren't locking ANYTHING. And if you do that against ground, you'd better hope that you're fighting Magriders, because Vannies or Prowlers are going to put shells into them easily. But yeah, I'd like to try them in a fight to see how they actually perform. I just don't see any role they'll be good at, besides just supporting a ground group that was going to win anyway. And an ESF/flash can do that too, this just hovers a bit better and can suck up 6 people to do the scout radar job that a single ESF/flash could do.
IMO, its way too slow, as a tanker who enjoys shooting down ESFs this thing will not be a problem. Unless they giv it alot more health, which would break it in small fights, it needs more speed.
Aaaaaaaand this got me excited! I bought one helmet ingame just because it Kinda reminded me of how one of the military snipers looked like Cool stuff in the rest of your post too, the Valkyrie is but another vehicle ingame. They've never gone too wild with new content yet, the ESRL were probably the best we've seen so far.
I was piloting the Valkerie as they locked so there wasn't much evading to be had given the open terrain on indar. But your right it depends on the piloting. The person piloting would need to be aware of ground so standing still like I did won't happen often. But much like the harasser I am sure the first month will be filled with balancing; buff / nerf depending how effectiveness of the new vehicle. I am a little surprised it doesn't have a secondary at the moment even AB makes sense. Lib's and Gal's can take the flak and lockons that are dished out at them. These can't.
They don't have the bullet resistance values in. Infantry gun dmg is bugged against it. They're also increasing rumble seats to 2 per side, 4 rumble total, 6 including driver = gunner. It has MASSIVE V-Thrust. The amount of maneuverability granted is insane. These things can do crazy tricks and stop on a dime or change directions almost instantly (as long as it takes you to roll so "up" is the direction you want to go.) The guns on it seem awesome. The default is very good all purpose. It does feel like it needs more speed. Always forward short use afterburner could do the trick. It's always in hover mode, but could really use limited quick forward bursts of speed. I need to get it's HUD so I can see how fast I move with full tilt and VThrust on to see what it really needs. It's hard to tell how fast I'm going.
Ok, so the 2 gun reticles for "AI" and "AV" are fixed. The AI is about as good as the Wyvern, why did you even bother? The AV has a NOVEL spool-up mechanic that makes it worse than rocket pods. Because forcing a close range craft to hover and make noise and attract attention is a GREAT IDEA AROUND TANKS THAT CAN KILL IT? The Valkyrie is still useless. It is now (un)officially renamed the Pinata. Rumble seated lockons are pointless with the flight model. Roll directly moves the reticle, making acquiring lock impossible if the Pinata rolls at all. A non-rolling Pinata is not using the vertical thrust to maneuver and will die even faster. This would be even more impossible in an air fight- an ESF just has to pop flares and get in close, and GG Pinata, time to respawn all 6 guys. Also, the fins are in the way. It cannot kill air. The nose gun has neither the bust, lockon, nor DPS to be even close to effective. Rumble seats can't get lock. It cannot kill armor. Well, maybe Magriders, but a Prowler or Vanguard has roughly 30 seconds to finish their beer, swing the turret lazily around, and paste the Pinata with a shell. It might kill infantry. If they forget how flak or rockets work, or are alone in the field. You know what ELSE kills infantry that are alone in a field? Any other vehicle. And faster. It might carry troops in, if it flies in sideways. If it catches flak on the way in, 4 of those troops will die on the way in. You know what can carry troops and not lose them to flak on the way in? Any other aircraft. I wanted to like this thing, and it does look sleek and all, even though the "art" guys basically just took an attack helicopter, pulled off the rotor, put on some fins, and hollowed it out. But it brings nothing new to the fights, and does everything worse than several other alternatives. Again, constructive suggestions: Dual flight mode. Fast for transport, hover for close range evasion. Rapid sideways movement without rendering the rumble seats pointless. A couple seconds to switch. Moving between rumble seats. Passengers should be able to press Left to move to empty left seats, and Right to move to empty right seats. No-one is going to sit in one of these circling a fight lobbing lockons if they're staring out the other side of the plane. Did anyone really plan to crew these 6/6 for anything but transport? Shielding against large hits (AV shells). They should hurt, but the TTK should be manageable, not two seconds. Small hits (flak, LMG, missiles) should be more effective than just pasting it with tanks. Heck, extend this to Liberators. Vanguards and Prowlers are way too good at hitting air, and/or Magriders are way too bad. Passenger view should not suck. It must be stabilized. It must have a good view. Fins must not be in the way, or at the very least, the launchers should ignore them while getting lock. Passengers should not die to explosive damage before the hull dies. Nanites. Maybe snipe them or a hail of bullets, but not just flak. Have a medic in the gunner seat providing triage. Imagine how satisfying it would be to snipe a heavy or Infiltrator out of a Pinata. Engineer ammo-triage. Because deploying an ammo pack inside the cabin manually is just silly. It ups the game for Harasser rumble seat too, which is good, because nobody EVER uses that. Cloak. The utility is a cloak module. Defense slot for stealth (neither requires the other, invisible Pinatas on radar, or visible Pinatas not on radar. Precludes passengers and gunner from firing while invisible. Perfect hover. A pair of snipers in a cloaking/uncloaking Pinata at range would be neat.
I think that the galaxy is fine. Its a trash support transport. It can provide cover fire. Drop troops. Not to mention its dirt cheap. The Valkyrie was meant to be a cheap alternative to sunderer/harrsasser/esf hybrid. As of now i think the role is filled perfectly.
