Regarding Airhammer Range Nerf

The stock Air hammer with 3 rounds was a joke. The only way for it to become marginally useful was for you to spend a lot of certs to max out its ammo capacity, so sure 2 more rounds is beneficial but it is not as great as you think it is. Especially when you take into consideration the range reduction...

MAX DAMAGE REDUCTION FROM 150m to 50M
MIN DAMAGE REDUCTION FROM 300m to 100m

I could careless about another 2 shots, I've already spent thousands to max out the ammo capacity to 7, so two more rounds are nice that's about a 25% increase. However, those two shots aren't worth a 33% range reduction in Max/Min Damage. How many times have you flown your ESF under 50m in order to take out ground targets, let alone in the largest profiled ESF, there is literally nothing that isn't going to be shooting at you and hitting you.

WOOT! I want to see you fly your ESF with in 50m of ground targets and see how that plays out for you. That damage and round increase buff is a joke, so clowns can make idiot claims like " but look it has had its damage and ammo capacity buffed"

Not worthless. Just worth less than all of the other noseguns, significantly so, where it used to be fine and fun to use. Will people still use it? Yes, there is not a single weapon that does not get used. Will it underperform more than it did before? Yup.

God forbid you have to burst fire to kill infantry more effectively at range than the AH could lol. Don't use VR training as an example, splash damage doesn't work. You have to test it in real situations to see that they need to revert the damage drop off changes and it'll be fine.

I only tried the new Air Hammer for a few minutes but I was still able to splatter infantry with ease. It might just be play-style but I've always found the air hammer easier to use than the PPA (haven't tried the TR one). It IS higher risk than the PPA, though, but I love it.

On the other hand, the only thing it ever did to liberators for me was piss them off and get me killed. Again.. play-style, I guess.

Goooooood, release your anger, STRIKE ME DOWN!

Seriously, its not that bad at all, maybe actually try using it since the buff? Might help there.

I have tried it, the 50m cap for max damage and the buff that corresponds to max damage is ABSOLUTELY ridicules, that doesn't mean you can't kill things, but having to get under 50m for max damage is worthless and it might as well not even be on the weapon, because you would never want to ever get that close to your target.

The question is have you tried it? Even if you are not NC, set up your personal marker on a tower or something and fly till you are just under 50m and tell me that isn't ridiculously close for an ESF to have to get to a target in order to get the maximum benefit from this weapon. At that range you wouldn't even need to ADS with your rocket launcher to hit the reaver.

Sorry, but reducing that max damage range from 150m to 50m and then saying yeah but we buffed the damage to compensate is a slap in the face.

See you saying its worthless is completely opinion based.
YOU find it ridiculous.
YOU find it worthless.
Others can disagree and think its dumb.
It still kills and still kills well within its effective range.

Saying its worthless is like saying shotguns are worthless because you have to be close to kill them.
Its all up to the user.
They may change it back but its not worthless, its not useless, its not ridiculous, at least objectively.
To you though and many others it is but to many others as well, it isnt.

You want range? go Breakers. they do a better job of AI than the anti-infantry nose guns anyway.
But if you want quick swoop in swoop out gibbing then the AH will fill that role.

Yeah I agree if you are hover spamming with it on a tower, it makes you easy to shoot. Probably shouldnt do that.

And you are right, the stats may say its terrible in a few weeks making it objectively suck *** and validates your opinions but on paper right now, it looks alright. Its better against infantry and ESFs than it was before so it has potential.

From the 30 or so kills I have gotten with it since the update it seems to hold its own fairly well, the lack of range is noticible but killing infantry is far more reliable.
Before i would put 3 shots in and the bugger would still be limping on and I would swoop over and need to do another pass, now though i plug in 3 and he drops. Range = sucks but as a weapon in itself. its pretty sweet. (to me)

Basically, bottom line is, lets wait and see.

I think you are missing the point I am making...Buffing max damage and then reducing the max damage range to under 50m is my issue. I am not saying you won't do damage and kill things, but having to get under 50m to realize the max damage is ridicules...

Both the Banshee and the Hailstorm have a 150m / 100m range for their max damage respectfully, In terms of balance either reduce their Max damage range to 50m or at the very least move the Air hammer up to 100, which is still 50m less then where it was, prior to this nerf.

You should link your char I'd love to see those 30 kills...

So actually, your problem is with the Banshee and PPA rather than the AH itself?
I see

Im done.
Im not going into 'why is my empire so much weaker than yours' stuff.

ROFL...I don't have an issue with the Banshee or the Hailstorm, but they are the equivalent weapons to the Air hammer, yet they continue to maintain their max damage range of 150m and 100m while the Air-hammer is reduced to needing to get with in 50m in order to utilize its max damage....

I see you aren't going to link those 30 Air hammer kills, since the nerf. I guess we'll just chalk that up to talk to make it sound like you know what you are talking about...

just tried using AirHammer on my alt... ended up dying to dumb-fires multiple times due to need to get close. Will not use again.

Moin

Still have to try the "new" AH out more, but the changes don't look good for me so far.
@all who think that the range reduction isn't really noticable and Reavers should get very close to their target to deal maximum damage: Go to VR. Set a waypoint and take a look how close 50m is in reality.
Ganking ESFs may still be viable, it may be even more viable now then pre-patch. Killing infantry may also be a bit easier now. But the AH sure lost a good bit of versatility. Not that it was ever good at medium range, but now it's even worse.

It requires it's own methods of play. Don't use it like you use the other factions AI weapons. Also, it really needs thermals to be able to acquire your target and drop them fast enough to save yourself (and still afterburner away for the guy you DID'T see). It NEEDS (in my opinion) some magazine upgrades and thermals and practice to be useful. I hated it for months until a gave it another longer chance, then I fell in love.

I like it and use it mostly because it is fun- hard for me to say how useful it is in practice. I mostly try to use it as AA, I try to stay back from the better pilots and engage other ESFs that engage them. I find that if I end up in a dogfight myself then it usually ends badly but this is still often true with the Vortek as well.

Against Mossy with Banshee/Scythe with PPA:
Infantry runs trying to take cover, pulls flak maxes and AA lockons.

Against Reaver with Air Hammer:
Infantry pulls dumbfires and take turns at the XP piñata.

My first impressions were wrong. I finally got a decent bit of time with the new Air Hammer in both infantry and ESF fights. It still requires constant tributes to RNGesus to be even mildly effective against infantry. And the new extremely harsh damage fall off makes it extremely difficult to use against an opponent that doesn't have his map screen up.

I can still make it work but I'm not going to bother this time. I don't want to accidentally put kills/points on the board with it and get it nerfed further. Ultimately if damage fall is to be it's balancing mechanic it needs it's pellet spread tightened. Otherwise there will always be the risk of well setup strafing run being ruined by a string of misses that are outside of the pilot's control. It also needs to be a full auto weapon, same rate of fire just a quality of life improvement.

I've been trying to use this in air battles for a bit now. Effective engagement range is unfortunatly too close for the Reaver to maneuver properly, and further out it's... far less effective than it feels like it should be against aircraft, I haven;t gotten a kill with the new revamped version yet, despite the 2 extra rounds per clip. I think I'll be using other weapons for aerial engagements, you can't get the same kind of drop on people you used tobe able to.

It is still effective against infantry to a point, but the loss in effective range means that this insta gib ranges requires a lucky fly by, unless you want to explode from a dumbfire, or be too close to escape any form of lock on... Thus any other nose gun has proven safer and more effective after the new update.

The weapon's strength has always been alpha strike potential, and it's lost a lot of that. I still think it can be saved, but it would require adding the option of slug rounds to the weapon, something they've never done for vehicle shotties yet, but at least it would give it more of a fighting chance in the role the Dev team is trying to refine it for: combat versus Light armor.

If you're going to do that, you'd be better off replacing it with a single fire high damage Rail gun, with 1 to 2 second reload... effectively creating the first real ESF sniper platform, something our Boxy frame can use to keep a safe distance with, compliment the downside to the NC's Boxy flight frame, which gives it a better fighting chance against light armor. 3 shots to take out an ESF if 2 second reload, bringing the TTk to ~6 seconds, but extremely unforgiving if you miss, and less effective against groups of infantry than the other two options... infantry have enough things relentlessly bombing them.

I feel like many, including posters in this thread, and more disturbingly, developers, have no sense of this game's actual scale. However, thanks to the miracle of the level-3 rangefinder implant, I've put together some pictures of what 50m actually looks like:

First, hovering ~50m from the upper doors of a tower. Note to get this close to the infantry, I am actually *over* the airpad.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=274076096

Landed the reaver, ranged it. It is parked beneath the air pad (actually crashed into it taking off again, lawl), and standing at the top of the outside elevators put me at 50 even.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=274076161

But what about air to air? Here's what a mosquito looks like from the cockpit of a reaver under 50m.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=274076228

...And a liberatior.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=274076277

TLDR: If you can see past your target, you're too far for the Air Hammer.

It's damage fall off was severely nerfed, which also bled over to the ESF combat. The Banshee is by far a much superior weapon.
I hope for the Devs sake the revert the damage fall off against ESF's, because as it currently stands it's just another Canister troll weapon.