This has to be a bug, because all other aircraft don't depend on the vertical thrust to maintain altitude. It is also slower than a stock Liberator. I thought this was addressed? Is this supposed to be this way or...? It didn't do this in the PTS, so why is it doing it in the release? Decaying altitude, poor braking, anemic nose weaponry, still ludicrous vulnerability to small arms fire and flak reduce this thing to a throwaway vehicle. You're not going to get anyone but fools to purchase its nose guns without seriously fixing this vehicle. It's like the down syndrome offspring of a Reaver and a Liberator.
They went for more of an apache style flight mechanic but given how the engine handles thrust it did not work out perfectly. Takes a bit of getting used to but it handles really well. The nose weaponry are really good when used effectively, Close the gap unload the mag retreat and let the Rumble seats finish the target. So far I have found you must fly it with max rank stealth. Not showing on radar is probably 90% of your survivability. It could do with being a bit quicker. Rumble seats could do with more of an angle down, Maybe position them to face down slightly to prevent weird animations. Rumble seats could do with buffing passengers resists so they do not die to flak almost immediately. Some more support like weaponry would be awesome, Side door support weapons for 2 passengers including Smoke launchers, Target painting lasers would be awesome which could add on to lockon weapons reducing target lock times, blinding flood lights etc. It needs to represent an important yet fragile target which provides something. The Target painting laser would provide a brand new team based dynamic. Smoke to protect units advancing and lights to highlight important targets for ground forces
ESFs need vertical thrust to hover... If you're meaning during normal flight though you should always be flying with the spacebar anyways, it gives you a lot more speed and control. Also the Valkyrie has immense vertical thrust with the Evasiveness frame making it the most maneuverable craft in the game.
The rumble seats give free kills to flak as they are right now. I will randomly get infantry kills with bursters when I shoot Valks, and when I fly them, my passengers die in seconds against any burster fire. Does the Valk really need more effective weaponry? Leave the air to ground game to ESFs and Liberators. Infantry don't need any more flying vehicles shooting things at them. I had a good time letting a BR 23 clear out a nest of Vanu infils around Crossroads last night just making a pass over a hill that the ground pounders had trouble scaling. That sort of light infantry clearing is a good niche for the Valk while the ESFs and Libs handled the harder targets.
Valkyrie composite armor defense should protect rumble seats from splash damage. Maybe scale with rank, so at rank 1 it's 50% splash resist, and at max rank it's 100% splash resist. It also needs to have the squad logistics be stock, not having suppression/ flares makes this thing a flying coffin. If galaxies can't survive landing to deploy troops then there's no way this thing can either. I would put 2 light secondaries on positions 3 and 4. A Kobalt/ basilisk / fury slot like on the flash would be great / fun for the gunners. This thing has paper armor, so you may aswell give the gunners a chance to do some dmg before they die. It won't have the range or armor that a liberator has, so there's no worries about it stepping on the lib's toes. But right now, 1 ESF can easily kill a fully crewed valkyrie.
Maybe we could give it some kind of shield that temporarily protects passengers to make it slightly safer as a transport? I don't know if that would make it too tanky overall (though we could compensate by making the base chassis more fragile while the shield is down) but it would at least make it a little easier to keep passengers alive. Similar to the UEF tier 3 transport from Supreme Commander.
I think the Valk could be a bit more tanky, or at least give the rumble seats some more protection. Making Libs extremely tanky is problematic because they have very high offensive potential. Likewise, when ESFs were much tankier at a time when Rocket Pods were also more potent. The Valkyrie hasn't shown anything close to the offensive, fly and farm potential of the ESF or Liberator, so making it withstand a few more hits feels more than reasonable.
It needs 2 retractable side doors for the rumble seats. The doors can be opened/closed while in flight, closed to protect the passengers from flak fire or opened to allow passengers to fire from the air or jump out. Each side door should be able to be operated independently so you could have one open and the other closed.
Sadly, we don't even have doors in buildings. Sticking a pair of doors that can be opened/closed at will on a flying transport that takes damage is definitely not going to happen.
