[Suggestion] Make the Flash Passively Faster

This post pertains to the Wraith Flash's effectiveness.

I know what you are probably thinking. "Scroffel, it is a weak transport that costs 50 nanites. Deal with it." That may be true, but it is annoying to be gunned down by a Harrasser that you can't escape for the sole reason of your vehicle being too slow. It isn't hard to see a Wraith Flash when you are close. I am biased in this respect. I am tired of being gunned down by an Ant or a Harrasser just because they can catch up to me. I personally don't think you should have to spend certs to get the Racer Chassis to make your vehicle faster, because that cuts off your other options for the other chassis that make you more helpful. I am not suggesting a bonus in Health or Damage to make it more effective for combat. An Infiltrator isn't made for a head on firefight, so why should a Flash with an ability to cloak only if you are using the Infiltrator be any different? I don't want to be able to take on a tank with pure damage. I want to escape. It is much easier to escape Infantry and Tanks and ESF and Sunderers than it is to escape a Harrasser or an ANT. Here is an example.

I had a Fury Wraith Flash and I saw a 2/2 ANT building a base. This was after the nerf to the Wraith cloak. I went and attacked it, and tried to get away. The driver, however, saw me trying to get away after I recloaked and just followed me. The gunner of that ANT couldn't take me down, either because he was a terrible aim or he was laggy. I only escaped because I went through a small crevice with my faithful steed that they couldn't go through. I couldn't win. I had to wait for them to get out before I could take them.

See the point of my story? I couldn't escape the ANT all because I maneuvered better, but I couldn't make some space between us. That would have lead to my death if the gunner could aim.

The Flash is a small, light, low health vehicle. In the right hands, it can do well. By increasing the speed of which the vehicle travels, it can do what it is meant to do better: it can transport passengers better and escape vehicles it can't fight. I don't care about being a Tank Killer or a Harrasser Hunter. I just want to know that if I am a good enough driver, I can escape them.

What kind of speed boost am I talking about? I have a few proposals. I would suggest an increase in acceleration, braking power, max speed, turning speed, and reverse speed. These would all help it to get away. Another option is to let it passively have access to Turbo, but that would have its own problems. You wouldn't be able to use the Turbo while cloaked, obviously, and it wouldn't be as powerful as the regular turbo, to prevent players from taking flight as Infiltrators, though it would be cool to drive up some slope and turbo, then cloak midair. Those are what I was thinking about. One more option that has nothing to do with this post would be allowing the Deep Operative implant to make your Flash's cloak less visible, but I don't know.

What do you think? Please comment your ideas on this below, such as pros, cons, personal opinions, and anything I am missing. Keep them kind and season them with a grain of salt. Thank you in advance.

Sounds more like an issue with how fast the ANT is for a vehicle covered in heavy armour.

maybe that ANT had racerperformance?
also a ANT can have it´s own cortium reliant turbo ...

Maybe, but a small, light, fast, and relatively weak vehicle sounds like a good idea to me. I want it to be able to escape, not necessarily dish out a ton of damage. If it dies because you overexerted yourself in a situation where you shoulda backed off, that is your fault, but when you are escaping and they can see your cloak and just chase you down, even if they can't hit you till your cloak wears off because their gunner is a bad shot, that seems to be the vehicles fault. The best you can do is try to juke them, but if it is a Harrasser, they can just follow that. Also it'd be fun if it was lighter so we could do crazy shenanigans, but that is a stretch.

So, you are basically annoyed because you couldn't compete against an ant, using a 50 nanites, one manned vehicle against a two-men, 200 nanites one? Next you will be crying over your flash not being able to take down a galaxy properly because your flash-mounted basilisk is a heavy machine-gun that would shred through a plane's armor like an orange peel. This is a game balanced, or better: Unbalance towards cooperative gameplay. A more expensive resource that requires more cooperation between pals is more rewarding than solo features: A liberator or galaxy owns ESFs (unless they form a squadron and take them all at once), a two manned MBT is much more fearsome than a solo MBT (less exposed against unseeing threats, gunners can increase pilots' awareness), even ******* infantry play, a 2 maxes squad usually gets owned against a tiny squad with 3 to 4 players, and so on. It's to disencourage soloing and improving interactions between faction members, remember that always.

I had already said that I didn't want this suggestion to be based on assault; rather, I want it to be based on defense and escape. Here's the thing. This game is based off a planetary war. No one is dumb enough to make their lightest and weakest vehicle slow enough for a big armored vehicle to catch up and shoot them. To add to balance, you make your small, low health vehicles faster, and your big, tanky vehicles slower. I am not "crying" about anything, because the thing you said I would be "crying" about next is that I can't take down a galaxy. I have already acknowledged that the Flash is a 50 Nanite vehicle that is weak and light, and that I don't really care about its combat abilities. I have even went so far to suggest somewhere here that we can use Wraith Flashes to get allies from Point A to Point B around an armor push at a stand still. So again, to reiterate the point of this suggestion, I want it to be used for escaping after you already tried to bring down something that is trying to kill you, not to fight it.

it's a quad... quads are slow... and cheap

As long as the speed boost replaced the weapon slot I would be fine.

Having a cloaking / decloaking flash with a weapon that is also the fastest thing on Auraxis is just asking for abuse and fun killing cheese.

Honestly I think the wraith cloak should also be a weapon slot item. AV weapon AND can cloak? That's a bit off IMO.

Well, if you did that, making the vehicle 10 MPH or KPH or whatever unit the vehicles are in, if you made it that much faster, that doesn't really give a buff. Or are you talking about the turbo? Anyways, if you got rid of the weapon slot, you wouldn't need the speed boost because you would never attack anything. You would use the Wraith cloak just to get past vehicles, so why do you need to go faster to do that?

It just be nice for the vehicle to be faster or as fast at a Harrasser so they don't run you down with a gunner when you are trying to escape. Chances are you won't be destroying many vehicles as a Flash, so they might as well boost its speed to help you escape. Also, if the Wraith Cloak was a weapon slot item, why ever use the Flash except for getting base to base? And if you want to get base to base, why not just bring a Sunderer or literally any other vehicle and use it to blow up whatever is in your way? I like having weapons on a Flash, but it doesn't do you any good if you attack, cloak, and they just turn around and catch up to you and run you over while you are trying to escape, and the cloak doesn't do you much good in escaping if they can just see it.

Weapon, Speed, Invisibility.

Pick 2.

If it were up to me, you'd get to pick one. I veto pick 3.

If you want more, the nanite cost is gonna have to skyrocket.

The weapons require multiple mags for you to take down a vehicle, any vehicle. You are dead against Air, you are probably against a sunderer, you are very likely to die against a Harrasser or Ant, and you are extremely likely to die to a tank. I can deal with a 100 nanite transport. Just gotta survive for 2 minutes. The combination of speed, invisibility, and a weapon isn't a game-breaking one. It would work, because the Invisibility part is already nerfed, the weapons are better against Infantry than against Armor, and the speed is a passive upgrade just so you can drive the same speed as a Harrasser. I don't even care about being faster. If the Harrasser uses its Turbo, then it will definitely catch up and murder you, but otherwise I want to be able to juke it. I don't want them to catch up again unless they use their turbo, for the sole reason I was outmaneuvering them. I want to win escape being a better driver.

Anyone who has played a racing game knows that you can't win a drag race between two equally skilled players if your car goes 20 MPH slower. You will reach max speed and they will have passed yours. You could, however, win a curvy street race if you are a better driver., if you are good enough and can keep them behind you. I want to be the better driver and escape because of it. This whole idea doesn't NEED to be implemented. I just WANT it to be implemented.

The whole idea kinda stems back to Infiltrators who snipe. They may not be as useful in pushing somewhere as a Heavy Assault or Medic, but they force you to go chase them if they keep taking out your team. They are your number one priority if they are being an annoyance to everybody. I think the Wraith Flash should follow them same kind of logic. You can just do a little bit of damage to whatever vehicle is killing your team, and they chase you. You have then taken them from the battle and relieved your team a bit. Its like how the current flash probably won't one mag a Lightning and definitely won't one mag a MBT, but shooting at them turns their attention to you. I just wish you were able to escape from Harrassers and ANTs, though it has been brought to my attention that the ANT may just have had Racer Chassis.

I want the Flash to live up to its name. It would be like a flash of lightning, fast and blinding. It would take your attention from the goal or your duty, and would eventually strike again.

i don´t think you should realy be able to escape from harrassers cause these are basically the cheetas of the PS2 vehiclepool
so it´s already filling both the hunting and hit and run style ...
flashes are rather about falling in the back of a vehicle .. that´s what the wraithcloak is for ..
and as such if it fails at falling in the back of a vehicle and take it out then yes the defending vehicle should be able to punish it ..
a flash shouldn´t be just able to drive in, fail it´s attempt and get out scott free just to try again ..
also the flash unlike other vehicles is the only cloakable vehicle were 2 men can fire together ..
the ANT is limited to one gunner, the harrasser can not cloak as well as the rumbleseatplayer being limited in is firingdirections ..
so for a flash to be truely effective you should have that rumbleseatplayer (best a heavy assault) with you and you can take down lightnings and mbt´s fairly easy ...

I can understand where you are coming from. It's just that even if it is a 1/1 Harrasser, they can just zoom up on you, switch seats, and shoot you off, even if you are cloaked. That gets annoying, and sure, I can escape half the time, but the other times my cloak runs out, I start getting shot, my cloak recharges a little bit, and I recloak. They then start chasing again.

The Flash may be the only vehicle where you can cloak and have 2 men on it firing, but it is also the only vehicle to have all players exposed. You don't have to take down a Flash; you have to take down the player. I can't even tell the time that I got sniped by a tank off of my Flash because I was trying to escape, and my Flash was perfectly fine.

I can understand being punished by the other driver because you failed the getaway, but the thing is that you don't have enough bullets in your mag to 1-mag any vehicle other than a Flash, which isn't even your biggest threat. You have to reload, and at that time you are vulnerable to attacks. You can't escape if someone has decent reaction time, because they can see your cloak while you are getting away and shoot you. I don't want it to be too much faster than the Harrasser; I just want it to be fast enough to be driving in a straight line and gain a little ground so you can escape if they can't shoot the driver off. I can see how unfair it would be if you can fail at everything and still get away alive. That is unbalanced, and I don't want that. I just want it to be fast enough to gain enough ground to escape if they don't kill you when you are trying to. I want to be rewarded for being a good shot, yes, but I also want to be rewarded for being a good driver or a good pilot.

I do like your point about riding with a Heavy. That would do serious damage too, but that is why the cloak got nerfed. It was too powerful with a Heavy and Wraith Cloak, a 2/2 Flash. It got nerfed for that reason, so I don't want to use the same strat that got it nerfed. If it becomes too powerful again, BOOM! That was the sound of an update hitting that nerfed the cloak again.

Thank you for your comment!

They probably need to have turbo built into it like they have with the Harrassers, case solved.

I do think the flash should be the fastest vehicle. It was at one point. I cant disagree with built in turbo either.

I did not know that, Silkensmooth. Thank you for the information. Built in turbo would be nice, but I think that it if you could use it when cloaked, it would have to show a blue fire trail effect kind of thing when you activate the turbo, so that you don't all of a sudden super speed around like a crazy dude and then it actually would be unbalanced. It would be unfair for someone to chase you and lose you just because the cloak got out of range.

Yeah, this is old. I still care about it. If you give the Flash the integrated turbo or just make it faster, it balances out the vehicle. I can't outrun a Harrasser so 9/10 of the times you will die to them. I can't outrun a Galaxy or Liberator or ESF so 9/10 of the times you are going to die to them. I can't outrun an ANT so 9/10 of the times you are gonna die to them. You can barely outrun a sunderer, but if they are shooting at you, you are probably already dead.

In a game where your main method of travel is just teleporting across the map (redeploy) at 0 cost. Any transport better be VERY good at its role to compete with that, especially if it cost resources.

Yeah. I made a suggestion to nerf redeploys, but that went nowhere. Vehicles better be good at vehicularing. The Flash, for instance, is a transport, but it is slower than the other vehicles. That means you aren't gonna be doing a very good job at transporting, so naturally people strap a gun to it and say, lemme go farm some people. Less and less people have been doing that because of the nerfs, and you can't use it well as a transport. So this is the best course of action.

Suggesting adding anything to the flash is seemingly a hated thought.
I once saw a suggestion for a flash eject seat, but apparantly that would 'completely destroy infantry combat'.
No idea why theres so much hatred.