State of the Lightning Address

Actually .. the "longer" reload and one shot damage is something I prefer more ... it gives you more room to look around and steer in between shots fired.

It's actually a good ratio, you fire, look whats in front of you, steer around, plan ahead for the next shot during the reload and repeat that process.

Yeah, there are advantages to high alpha for sure, and that gives MBTs an edge, which is fine. If the AP damage was buffed even slightly it could kill an MBT in 3 shots. I'm cool with that, but compared to the effects of a 0.25 refire rate the change is too dramatic, and the lightning's TTK would be too low.

This goes back to you talking about the lightnings speed. If the lightning had a vanguard turret it would be pretty ridiculous because it could very quickly go into cover between shots and the enemy wouldn't have a sufficient opportunity to bring him down.

Now there is the question, does it even need a buff? I justified the 0.25 second reload buff and the 25m/s buff to compensate for other changes that have happened over time.

• MBT secondary buffs kill lightnings frighteningly fast, prompting an immediate need for a faster TTK to minimize exposure.
• ESFs can no longer be one-shotted by the AP cannon because they all run fire suppression. MBTs retain this ability while AP lightnings have a death wish if they try it any more.
• 1/2 Prowler and vanguard accuracy at range is far better then the AP/heat lightning. Tank vs. tank battles often take place over long distances where the AP lightning loses its ability to be competitive.
• Liberators often use composite now, and AP/heat no longer phases them. Though MBTs share this problem, a 1/2 MBT can use an AA secondary while a 1/1 lightning can now only run and die.

Another thing I would want for the Lightning chassi is either a higher stock top speed or a faster stock turn rate.

With combat chassi you can turn around really fluidly but you are so awfully slow, most Sundies use Racer, most MBTs use Racer too and all of them are faster than you.. not really a "Lightning" and it hurts the hit and run tactic really hard.

With Racer chassi you are kinda fast, its nice but you are much more of a bolt of "Lightning" in the bad way, you go in one direction and thats forward.


I mean a Racer Prowler is really fast and its about as agile if not even more agile than a maxed Combat chassi Lightning.... so a max Combat Lightning turns fairly similar to a stock Prowler, thats just wrong.

*Edit*
Racer Lightning ~86kph / ~9 sec to turn 360 deg.
Combat Lightning ~70kph / ~6 sec to turn 360 deg.

Racer Prowler ~70kph / ~7 sec to turn 360 deg.
Combat Prowler ~60kph / ~6 sec to turn 360 deg.

Did some quick testing in VR... but yeah, Lightnings are pretty sluggish.

Id like to see for all tanks an indirect scaling of the other upgrade instead. Where getting up to racer 3 also gives you the equivilent of rival 1 and vice versa. Just enough so that the vehicles handling and speed scale properly. The choices are still there but both chassi handle better.

Really, itd be great for them to overhaul the chassis upgrades. There is a lot of cool stuff they could do. Armored chassis that gives you an armor bonus at the sacrifice of turn rate. Maybe a chassis that adds elements of both rival and racer at the cost of armor.

I never really felt either the racer or rival lightning were sluggish. Tricks like gear skipping can be used to allow mbts to match the lightnings acceleration when normal mechanics wouldnt allow them. With racer i hold the reverse button to hard turn and it works ok. The physics in this game can make driving a real pain though, the more you rely on speed, the more you notice how broken it is.

Only problem with brake turning with a Racer Lightning is that it doesnt always work.

Not sure what is different but sometimes I be driving around far from top speed and it just slides around like a dream and other times I can have way more speed but it still refuse to make a break turn :/

One fancy thing you can do with the Combat chassi on a Lightning is you can fairly easily get into a almost eternal break turn, awesome when you find a damaged tank and just go sliding in a circle around them keeping the front armor pointed at them all the while sadly I find Racer just more usefull.

I know what your talking about. Its so frusterating when the tank suddenly tanks it. I spent a good amount of playtime swearing at my racer as it just sits motionless refusing to respond to my heavy jamming of the forward button. And other wonderful tines when the tank wont turn 2 degrees to dodge that tree root 200 meters ahead.
Rival is nice. The poor hill climbing kills me just as much though. Its like i put a geo engine i my tank.

i can't wait until they nerf the AV turrets. speaking as someone who plays heavy assault almost exclusively when on foot, a turret with infinite range, unlimited ammo, and guided shots is complete crap. I actually have to calculate lead on my targets or get very close and i have very limited ammo. those D-bags just find a sniper perch in the middle of nowhere and guide their limitless rockets straight in to targets that are over a kilometer away. it is to the point that i have been tempted to murder a few on my own team for that BS (so far i have resisted the urge). /end rant

wish my killboard would load. if you've got nothing to say about HEAT you must be doing it wrong. running FireS/Radar/Rival and thermal on my gun with maxed reload i make an effort to flank and hunt down enemy spawn positions, loose infantry, skyguard batteries and generally anything i can bully with the sub 40 rounds i have to work with. hitting an enemy sunder with AP did feel nice for a time but having one lightning hit it with HEAT and purposefully shooting under it to kill those engineers behind it just feels more effective. could probably do the same with the viper but that drop and travel time at range is poop.

The biggest problem with heat right now is that the viper has the same velocity, the same one-hit-kill potential, A faster TTK against vehicles, and only 1 meter smaller splash radius spread across 6 shots per reload.
The viper is so far ahead of the heat gun against infantry. One viper shot has 20% less blast radius and half the max damage, but it fires 6 shots. Each shot from the viper has a chance to kill a target in one hit. The only, only thing heat has going for it right now is higher alpha damage.

Yeah, you can do it with heat, but there are much better choices just in the default gun alone.

The ap and heat don't have any difference against sundys. The difference comes when comparing AP and heat against tanks where AP has a hefty 20% damage bonus plus the higher base damage and 25m/s higher velocity.


This should be fixed, but even then. I don't run heat, because I believe lightnings perform best when they are specialized to a single task. This is just my playstyle though. I think heat would be a perfectly good weapon for players if it received the same benefits proposed to AP. +.25sec reload speed, +25m/s velocity. Then heat will be more accurate then each individual viper shot too.

Heat should have decent AI ability while also being able to take on every other more specialized lightning except the AP lightning. Then one could say the viper is better, but a heat can kill the viper and still kill infantry decently. Thats what I think a heat cannon should be like.

Sometime over the summer the viper's velocity was buffed. ITs drop and travel time is the same as the heat cannon. 200m/s

Here are some TTK values between heat, viper, AP, and skyguard against tank rears and sundys. I don't have the free time to compare side and front shots. These numbers may be off + - a second. Better tests would be great.

Skyguard

• Lightning rear TTK- 15 seconds
• Vanguard rear TTK- 16 seconds (strange right?)
• Sunderer TTK- 24 seconds

viper

• Lightning rear TTK- 8 seconds
• Vanguard rear TTK- 13 seconds
• Sunderer TTK- 20 seconds

AP cannon

• Lightning rear TTK- 6 seconds
• Vanguard rear TTK- 9 seconds
• Sunderer TTK- 18 seconds

HEAT cannon

• Lightning rear TTK- 9 seconds
• Vanguard rear TTK- 12 seconds
• Sunderer TTK- 18 seconds

The viper, far and away, is too strong for an AI weapon, while the skyguard is much too weak. The test showed a skyguard sitting point blank at a tanks real putting a full clip in without missing a single bullet, and can't even come close to a viper. Whats worse is that the skyguard's TTK against a lightning is simply embarrassing.
The game will not break if the skyguard could actually deal decent AV damage again point blank. There is no reason AI weapons should be beating an AA weapon considering the AI weapons have many more targets and things to do with their time while the skyguard actively needs a role when air isn't around.

Those guys are doing it wrong.
To use an AV turret you need a skyguard. You park the skyguard behind a sniper perch, plop the AV turret down in front of you, and snipe infantry with a battle rifle when there aren't any tanks or air.

Who told you my secret strategy?

at least with a battle rifle you have to lead your shots, instead of laser guiding them in.

The lightning cannon seems to do less dps than MBT cannons. I don't know if its just low compared to prowler though. My prowler can usually win a dps race with other 1/2 MBT, and the occasional 2/2 maggy. Sometimes even lightning AP feels weak.

Welcome Hoki.
The lightning actually has the second best DPS of all the tank cannons by a small margin. It also has the lowest TTK vs. other tanks though in most situations, so its not really a dps problem but rather a TTK problem.
For example, despite doing more DPS then a vanguard, the lightning AP requires an additional shot to kill a prowler from the rear. The additional shot takes more time despite the vanguard firing slower.

prowlers are designed for high DPS though it is their thing. prowlers get high rate of fire and DPS, magriders get lots of mobility and can ignore most rough terrain, and vanguards get indestructible ***** powers.

i think prowlers should always either have the highest DPS or be tied for the highest. currently though the highest DPS award is firmly held by tankbuster liberators.

Really solid post, teks.

This one needs to be on Higby's desk first thing, and preferably in a different pile than the Galaxy update one ended up in.

The reason we're seeing a general drift towards 4x HEAT and a Skyguard is because the stats will always show the most popular weapon will be the one that is most generically useful - because 90% of players will pull a gun they feel will be useful for more than 2 minutes.

Specialisation is great, but it doesn't work when there is such a steep cost associated with rectifying the wrong choice. With all tanks (and the lightning is no exception), there's also the logistical issue of making your choice and then having to get to the fight - and often discovering that the reason you made the choice has now evaporated so you're left looking for something to do. That, or hop out of your lightning and infantry like PS2 players are supposed to?

Which is not to say that I think they should drop everything and implement vehicle loadout swapping - they've said it's hard and risky and I have no reason not to believe that. Instead, they need to embrace diversity and look carefully at why each role is needed.

Better mobility for all tanks (gun stabilisation for all!) and velocity parity on the Python and PCs (equal main gun velocity for all, except the Vanguard who can be faster... and the lockdown Prowler too) will, I think, go a long way to achieving this.

In the meantime, your suggestions are solid and SOE should be carefully considering the reason why they're drifting towards HEAT for all, rather than just blindly following the analytics values.

well on test server...

• C75 Viper
  • The weapon is too effective in both anti-tank and anti-personnel. Both aspects are being toned down
    • Direct hit reduced from 400 to 345 damage
  • This makes it so all HEAT cannons kill tanks faster than the C75 viper.
    • Blast damage reduced from 600 to 500 damage
    • This reduces the radius for two hit kills by 0.5 meters
  • Can no longer one hit kill infantry on a direct hit

so i'm probably not going to be shifting to viper. nothing on engineer AV turrets there yet. just saying.

Yes thats what the section on the viper is addressing.

Yeah. The specialization issue normally revolves around the skyguard because outside of aa its a pretty crappy turret. They changed resists and inadvertently nerfed the skyguards av power. They need to buff its av power so that the skyguard has something to do when no air is around. For example, you pull skyguard and travel to a hot zone but there isnt any air so instead you bump into the rear of a farming viper lightning not paying atention or you begin strafing an isolated sunderer. You are putting yourself at alot of risk by going so close and should be rewarded with higher damage potential.
The viper on the other hand doesnt need this because infantry are common. The viper would normally have stuff to do.

Im against turret stabalization because im vs and that would equal a magrider nerf and also because i spent a lot of time learning how to shoot in 3rd person. If tanks could all move and shoot with impunity i would have a much harder time performing hit and run maneuvers.

I totally agree with your statement about soe balance. Its kind of lazy and lqcks forsight or big picture planning. Weapons are losing identity as they make very broad nerfs and buffs based on spreadsheets rather then molding weapons into a unique and balanced role.

Again, the viper. There is a problem with it being a default weapon thats ai. That gives every player a powerful specialized weapon right from the start and it cwn be frighteningly effective. Increasing the skill cap while retaining its role as an ai weapon could be a good solution. This would prevent players from pulling a lightning and spamming viper effectively with little practice. Good viper players would need to grasp the drop rate and work on direct hits in order to be rewarded with kills. Even i just spam all 6 shots to kill infantry 300 meters away. As long as 2-3 shots are in the ballpark i will get a kill. Instead the weapon should encourage well aimed individual shots where i am actively aiming each shot i fire in hopes of achieving a direct hit.

There's just a ridiculous amount of wrong in the ideas you have for the Lightning's weapons, but I think "I'm against gameplay changes because they negate the time I spent overcoming them" illustrates the core of the issue.