What does the Vulcan miss to become viable for the prowler?

Since the developers can't figure out how to make the vulcan useful (except there is a real TR overhaul around the corner that I missed...), how about (yet another) brainstorm session how we could make the Vulcan viable for the Prowler? Our ES ability sets us in the role of an artillery tank that gives long-range support. But our ES secondary was made for CQC brawling when facing a tank at point blank. (Ever checked how far 10 meters are in this game? You literally have to hug the opponents tank.. )

In my personal opinion, the weapons should be balanced for dealing consistent damage at a specific range. And that's what the Vulcan lacks. In theory, the damage output is enormous, at least if you were able to hit with every single bullet. But it isn't since the spread makes most bullets miss.



Why can't we simply give it accuracy values where you are able to hold the trigger and hit a target at x meters with almost all bullets and then scale the damage so you deal ~20-25k DPM ? I wouldn't even bother if it did the same damage at all ranges. But right now it feels like "Hey, I got a gatling gun with amazing 60 bullets and can dish out a lot damage, sadly half of my magazine misses due to the spread..".
We are supposed to be the military guys, yet we have engineers that are not able to build a proper weapon? What does this look like? Aren't we supposed to be the low damage, high ROF and high magazine capacity faction?

Please give us 100 rounds per drum, keep the ROF and readjust the damage like stated above..

Oh and btw. the Saron doesn't got a "Auto" Fire Mode since you can't hold down the trigger.

The Enforcer is fine, but should not have been nerfed. The Vulcan must change. They should make the Saron the long-range weapon it once was.

I apologise for the lack of meaningful content.

if the vulcan was to be viable,
the COF would have to be almost pinpoint
The start up removed
the damage lowered
And the magazine extended
And the bulletdrop almost removed along with faster projectile

it would become a accurate machine gun that kills armor at long range .

(Damage lowered because it would be too strong otherwise.)

it would essentially be a halberd that shoots bullets instead of a a rocket.

In exchange for better damage drop-off and accuracy, they would have to decrease the damage and change resistances so that it's not capable of killing infantry very well. But "why shouldn't it be good at killing infantry, it shoots armor-piercing rounds?" you may ask, and then I direct you to the Enforcer and Saron nerfs.

I'd just get over it.

It was intended to be a battle axe but that wasn't fair to the other tanks that got rolled up on.

And at the same time, it can't get accuracy cause that would be OP against infantry.

So basically it has to be ****. The original idea was cool but it doesn't work.

Solution: refunds

I have given this some thought. My conclusion is that the best fix would be to change from chaingun to autocannon.

It could keep the increasing fire rate with corresponding CoF penalty, but the fire rate would be much lower and projectile damage would be higher, especially to vehicles.

In this way, you can have low, sustained DPS that is accurate at long range (balanced to be very low AI). This would speed up to being about as accurate as Saron HRB at maximum fire rate with similar damage (Saron better burst, Vulcan better sustained).
What would be really cool would be to have the gunner use W and S to set the RoF with the HUD showing a numerical value and CoF circle so that you could always be firing at the desired rate. What else are they doing with WASD anyway? Plenty of gunner weapons could have some functionality controlled by these keys, but the Vulcan could certainly make good use.

Another thing, lockdown bonus should apply to TR ES secondaries at the very least. I can see how lockdown Halberd would be considered OP, but TR-specific guns can be balanced with lockdown in mind


The history of the Vulcan is pretty sad. It started out as an AI weapon, with the Marauder being AV. The vulcan was utter rubbish at AI and the Marauder was hopeless at AV. In a 10-year-old tradition, they switched roles for two TR weapons. They worked better in the new roles, but have been fiddled around with to the point of uselessness (compared to NS alternatives).

This is because they were not created to fit their current roles, but badly-designed weapons for different roles shoehorned in to the opposite ones.

For TR, you want a rapid-firing, low alpha, high DPReload; large mag, long reload time (which wouldbenefit from lockdown, were it applied to TR ES weapons). You want to hurt vehicles, but you want to be worse at AI than Basilisk. A variable RoF:CoF autocannon would be easier to achieve than a badly bolted-down gatling gun.

Lockdown does not affect secondaries.

I know

Fixed for clarity.

But it could and should.

They could change the Vulcan up in several ways. But what definitely needs to happen is that it loses it's current damage model. Instead it should get the exact same damage model of the Halberd, Saron and Enforcer. For this to work it's damage would need to be significantly lowered.

What this means is a 1.5x damage modifier to ground Vehicles, no damage fall off(atleast in its intended range), very little damage to Air(50% less, like all AV Secondaries) and because it's damage has a 1.5x modifier, it's base damage is low enough to make it as "bad" of an AI weapon as the other AV weapons.

Now for the accuracy ... I think they could solve this in many ways. All depending on what weapon it should actually turn into in the end ... meaning for what range it actually should be used in. Can be a spin up mechanic were the cones starts out big but gets smaller once spun up, as an example. Or link it somehow up with Anchor Down.

The alternative is ... make 3 new ES AV weapons, a NC/VS close range AV weapon and a TR long range AV weapon, ideas are there ...

They should make it affected by Lockdown, at least, remove CoF bloom when the tank is locked down.

Scrap the dumb thing in favor of a fracture launcher. Been saying this for awhile, as I've felt it'd be more effective to have an anchored max on my prowler with fractures.

After driving with a good prowler driver i think the vulcan needs good tank drivers to be viable

Then you have to ask why the Terrans need good tankdrivers in order to have a deadly ES secondary while the other two factions can roll with unexperienced BR1 tankers and still kill with theirs..

The Vulcan needs to become the anti armor MCG for tanks.
Fixed COF, less spin up time, high rate of fire, long reloads, 100 Bullets per magazine, effective range up to 50 meters and damage that does not make it op.

We don't mate. Put a halberd on a prowler and BR1 will be able to use it. Vulcan is a pro tool, something that neither NC or VS have. I think we can both agree that Sauron and Enforcers are noob friendly, but here is the catch, so is the halberd and we also got access to that while NC and VS don't have the "pro" tool like Vulcan. If you have two really good tank drivers from VS and TR facing off against each other in short range, the prowler will vulcan will always win. So please try to appreciate the vulcan, if you can't use it then the weapon is not for you but please don't bash it, I would hate to see it get changed into something that is nothing more then a re skinned halberd (because we CAN use the halberd already). Moral of the story is that no one is forcing our tank drivers to use the vulcan if they don't want to since they can alternatively use the halberd.

I believe, it is not about the Vulcan being bad, but about Prowler being a close range tank forced into long range role with lockdown and Vanguard's shield.

1. Lower Vulcan damage and give it a small velocity buff.

2. Greatly increase Vulcan ammo reserves by at least 2x if not more depending on dmg changes.

3. Let vulcan have access to all ammo without need for reloading (make it THE damage over time weapon thats good for prolonged exposure instead of peakaboo-tank-games....this will make it work with lockdown)

4. Change Vulcan CoF to where it starts horrible (aka current) and gets MUCH MUCH more accuracte the more it shoots.
(effectiveness over time with LOS to target)

5. Lower damage vs infantry more so its significantly worse then the kobalt vs softies via damage # tweaks.

6. Un-Nerf the Enforcer. (It was tank AV done right....bring stuff to its level..not nerf it)

7. Give Magrider main cannon same velocity of other tanks.


This fixes the ESAV where vulcan can work with or without lockdown in mind, and gives it the best LOS over-time niche if it both tanks can see eachother for extended periods. This is a big playstyle change from halberd alpha...giving TR tankers choices, thus halberdside from continuing.

Un nerfing Enforcer makes it a obvious choice between more alpha from halberd and a bit more damage over time by using the enforcer.......thus keeping halberdside from continuing.

This fixes something that should of happened long ago. I still don't know why magriders have less tank velocity, even though they can strafe...............un-nerfed enforcer and revamped vulcan would even this out EZ.


Fixed.

Besides range, the Vulcan suffers severely in a large fraction of encounters because of its lack of alpha damage per bullet and slow muzzle velocity. The Halberd is far, far better at engaging even close-range targets if the enemy vehicle in question isn't 100% in LoS (i.e. ducking in and out of cover, being partially obscured by a hill, rock, or structural beam, et cetera). More muzzle velocity and a tighter spread would partially alleviate this, but given the context of SoE's vehicle balancing philosophy, AI guns would have to receive another buff to compensate in order to keep them from being too redundant. Which would be fine, since a tank-mounted gun with the express purpose of killing infantry at the expense of armor-killing potential should be able to do so with ease at most reasonable ranges.

The Vulcan also meshes poorly with vehicle stealth; its tracers are easy to spot and track, and it keeps the Prowler on the enemy's minimap for several seconds at a time. It's a relatively subtle issue, but it matters when you're tank hunting with rank 4 vehicle stealth in any relatively hot engagement.

It's a poor weapon overall in the actual game. Seems okay in the VR, but in a less perfect world, competent enemy tanks usually don't sit still in docility while completely exposed. It's still viable on solid, dedicated Harassers, but that's more or less where the story ends.

In Otherwords, you want a Faster RoF Kobolt lol.