[Suggestion] Instead of nerfing rocket launchers...

Agreed. MAXes are essentially just "better infanry" - and better by such a large margin that they aren't remotely comparable to soft infantry. They don't NEED support by any stretch. They are just even more powerful with support since that allows you to go with kinetic armor and heal up in seconds between firefights rather than running with autorepair.

That said - a large portion of the problem of MAXes stems from the broken resource system currently. In theory I have no big problems with accepting that MAXes are just "better infantry" if they had a real cost associated with them. Currently they don't. You can pull one every 5 minutes, and typically you will get infantry resources to buy new ones as fast as you spend them. If you run out of infantry resources for your MAX fighting in a biolab for example you are doing something very very wrong. Potentially a full rewamp of resources could alleviate a lot of this. I am skeptical that the current proposed rewamp really acomplishes this though. I think we need a larger resource pool and less income over time personally... but the right resource balance could theoretically fix a lot.

I think the second issue is a design issue in that I think MAXes would fit the game much better as "the tank", "stalemate-breaker", and "pusher". Currently they can do all the fighting themselves far better than anyone else. I'd like to see MAXes have much less firepower but also a little more durability so they could have the role of pushing into rooms, but also require softie-backup rushing in right behind them to provide the real killing potential, such as heavies for example. As a rough idea, Imagine a MAX with about 50-75% more health, only one arm that can fire at one time (which would actually give you a reason to consider having different weapons on each arm for a change) and the NC agegis shield ability (none of that silly charge nonsense). That would be a good "siege-breaker" unit that can break stalemates and keep the flow of battle going - without just being the all-in-one superunit it currently is.

Without this the MAX will continue to be essentially just a "super heavy-assault", and even if the resource system ends up limiting them in some more reasonable fashion than it currently does there will essentilyl be no reason to not use a MAX anytime you can afford one - which is bad design in my opinion.

-Stigma

I don't get the problem. Two decimators to the face of a MAX is still going to kill them outright after this change.

That still wouldn't explain the weird numbers. It's 1135 + 1000 damage. However, MAX without Flak takes about 1100 damage, and about 950 damage with flak.

Agreed. If anything, removing acquisition timers will make chain pulling MAXes even easier.

Agreed. In that setting, MAXes could even be free, or cost much less.

To the best of my knowledge flak armor is special for MAXes in that it does NOT come into effect for direct hits (it does for infantry, or will very soon, I'm not sure if this is active right now or comes in the next patch). It only applies to the splash-potion of the damage. The thing is that when you score a direct hit you get both direct damage and also splash damage.

I think that explains why flak armor matters so little for MAXes on direct hits. They take full direct damage (which is the lions share of the damage) and then take a little bit of splash, which I think they have some innate resistance too to begin with - and is further reduced by 50% by flak. I think that explains the above results if that data is current.

They might have to make some minor tweaks to MAX resistances to keep MAXes from being able to tank 2 rockets and still not die, but the remaining health is so low that I doubt that it will really matter most of the time. Barely surviving 2 AA rockets from full health might be reasonable though given that the AA rockets aren't exactly meant for this job, but I feel that standard rockets should do a minimum of 50%, not just below 50% like the test results indicate. That's just my opinion obviously.

-Stigma

Flak Armor long since protects infantry against direct damage as well, it's just not enough to survive a direct hit + splash damage from dumbfire launcher. Splash damage gets reduced in the next patch, so that's why it will be possible to survive a direct hit.

Did you mean to say:
Flak Armor long since protects infantry against _direct_damage_ as well
?

Wasn't the whole idea of that change to make it so that maxed flak armor could prevent being one-shotted with a rocketlauncher?
If the added protection from direct rocket impacts still does so much damage that you can't survive the impact anyway then it seems like it would be an entirely pointless change (except for the rare occation of a HA who already had his shield active at the time of impact).

-Stigma


EDIT: Sorry, I fracked something up in trying to make the changed part of the sentence bold, and it won't let me change it...

Yeah, that's what I meant Silly me, gonna edit the post to avoid confusion.

Well simply put, you have an opinion on how viable rocket launchers should be against infantry, and I have another opinion. You don't like rocket launchers being effective against infantry, because I assume it's a "no skill" sort of thing to you, whereas I do like rocket launchers being effective against infantry because they're friggin rocket launchers.

And it's not just a matter of realism... it's a matter of effectiveness. Rocket propelled grenades do make great tools to use against entrenched infantry, because since the invention of hand grenades in the 8th century it's lots more useful to kill enemies when they can't see you.

The point is IRL rocket launchers were adapted into anti-infantry weapons because they are useful tools for the job. And PS2 rocket launchers have the exact same use and purpose.

Don't believe me? Then take a gander at the in-game descriptions of the rocket launchers:

Essentially the rocket launchers were designed to be useful against infantry and vehicles... this is not players abusing these weapons by any means, but they are using them as intended. People are always under the misconception that shooting rockets at infantry is somehow wrong or unfair... but they ignore the fact that it is actually the role of rocket launchers to be used as such.

So for me, toning down rockets against infantry is out of the question. But what should happen is that rocket launchers remain relatively powerful weapons, just that their ease of use goes down. And this is why making them take longer to prepare and reload as well as adding risk to their use would do precisely that. Giving rockets a per-use resource cost would also accomplish the same thing, but I suspect there would be extreme backlash to that.

Well this idea would require infantry to step up their game and get with the teamwork. If you're running in a squad, have two of your guys set up beforehand with rocket launchers and clear lines of fire. Then if they are charged by enemy infantry, the rest of the squad can gun them down. But if a MAX stumbles through that door, that's when the HA's with preprepped rockets can do their thing.

But if you're not closely working with an organized infantry squad... well... sucks to be you!

They already having a working prototype for a not-soft launch rocket launcher that practically eliminates the risk of backblast while having minimal impact one weapon fire and reload rates. I wish I could find you the video of its demonstration but I don't even remember what was the hosting site.

I think I might have seen something like that on Future Weapons.

EDIT: Looks like there's a version of the AT4 with a CS tacked on to the end of the name, standing for "confined space." It uses saltwater to absorb a lot of the energy, making it safer to use in confined spaces. This lowers the velocity though.

There may also be other methods out there, but that's all the random research I felt like doing.

I like this suggestion actually keeps the number of launchers the same but add the specialization that's missing. Make people go back to a terminal though to resupply and change ammo types.

I've suggested this before to cut down on rocket spam as well.

I wish this had stopped SOE from nerfing something before however they seem to be incapable of following their own in game descriptions.

Well descriptions fall into the same category as the realism thing honestly. Descriptions are initially made probably around the time the first release iteration of a weapon gets made. After that you are bound to have changes and rebalancing to most weapons. It makes a lot more sense to update descriptions to match the rebalanced weapons than to go "oh well, we have to make it fit the description". If radical changes have to be made to a weapon to the point where it essentially becomes something else than what you bought/unlocked then a simple refund is the way to go about handling that IMO.

-Stigma

Look at his name again and realize you just got troll baited.

The point here is simple. The Devs put rocket launchers in the game, designing them purposefully to be equally effective against infantry targets as well as vehicle targets.

The rocket launchers worked exactly as intended. People were using them exactly as intended.

Then along comes a really vocal minority of players who for whatever reason feel like rocket launchers should not be effective against infantry (despite the stats showing that it really isn't much of a problem at all). So they whine and whine and whine, and like many fun things in the game the rocket launcher is slated for severe nerfs.

Really this isn't a simple "rebalancing", it's making the rocket launcher so ineffective at something that it's essentially lost one of its roles altogether. It'd be like removing the A2G component from ESFs and just leaving them as A2A, or taking away the MBTs ability to effectively engage infantry (oh wait...). This sort of "dumbing down" really reduces the attraction of the game.

Ah, I see the problem. It takes more than one rocket to destroy all Vehicles, but one; but, one rocket was all that's necessary to kill all Infantry classes, but one.
I expect a Flash armor buff.

There was a bunch on forums with discussion about rocket launchers and judging by all the likes there was more people against the nerf, but once higby posted on his twitter about it I knew it was going to happen. The HE/HEAT nerf was also unnecessary especially after the resource revamp. I don't get it honestly, I can get a bunch of kills with the carv-s a lot faster than with a rocket launcher, i rarely got killed by rocket launchers and when I did it made sense. Now infantry can survive rocket launchers and tank shells it really makes this game seem like a joke. I mean you don't see infantry in battlefield survive a rpg hit and the player base doesn't complain it should be the same in planetside.

*Looks at name*, *looks at post*. *Name*, *post*, *name*, *post*, *name*, *post*.
SIGH...
RONIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!