[Suggestion] Spitfire feedback

I Thought they were gonna go with ES turrest models...?

'Not at this point in time' [paraphrased, by a dev]

Well, that was about the turrets themselves, but if that be the case, this'd stay as more an NS variant and 3 new ones would be made as a result if/when they ever did make ES variants.

Tossing in my feedback here, as a career engineer, and a turret farmer in TF2 and Tribes. The spitfire is a disappointment that does not live to it's namesake from PS1.

Visually it's another disappointing engineer turret. It has no faction traits/styling, the sounds are not distinct (if they are I'm not noticing), you can't put camo on it, it does not look as cool as any of the concepts we saw for it (or even the unused missile turret model). Just recycled burster on a skewed crate. I expected a little better after seeing actual concepts for hover turrets, I didn't realize it would be another "bulldog on a tripod"

In use (again only been a day). The turret is weak. It has limitations in place that make it seam like it should be very powerful when you do throw it down. If you only get one of something per life, and it's made of glass I expect it to be wrecking fools that just run right at it. I think a simple damage falloff change might be best like 200 dmg out to 8 meters, 125 dmg at 50 meters. I think it's fine that EMPs disable it, but it should last less time, or maybe just cut down it's tracking speed but not stop firing.

Also it appears to have some tracking bugs, I noticed when deploying on the top of a tower (wall tower) that it would beep and try to track people in the ring below, and fire at people out of LOS in the gravlift in front of it.


So to sum up, I think its needs:
- More HP or more Damage (just one not the other)
- Either cooldown based or carry some amount of them with cert investment (like motion spotter), but only a single deployed
- Only beep when engaging, but have some kind of different empire specific audible noise for scanning (just redo the knife noise or something)
- Certline to improve it, maybe ability to carry more, add another shot or two to the firing burst, or such
- Reduce the size of the model by about half (this alone might do a lot, you can't miss these things right now)

They should remove it and give all their SC/Certs back

Give it a slight increase in health and it needs to recognize and target enemies faster.

I don't know where that comes from. I've had to deal with half a dozen turrets, and the one's that I encountered fired at me the instant I came into view... and the turret wasn't even facing me. So I think that the turret "problems" are more likely AI problems based on server conectivity.

The thing is, in every scenario that people have described the AI/AV turret wasn't better. People use the AI/AV turret rarely anyways, unless they are in a defensive position. Now you can use the power of your choice of Carbine, without being stuck in place. It starts becoming a question of what you will need more, the shield or a distraction.

Many people keep talking about their experience so far, but aside from someone running around a turret, I've never seen any of the other experiences. Even then, you killed 2 engineers and still had to deal with the turret, trying to prevent him from shooting you. That made you vulnerable, while you were running around the room trying to not get hit anyone could have gunned you down, and the thing even hit some of your health away!
In fact, the turret did exactly what it was supposed to do. You tell me that the turret warned one of the engi's, who then had time to rip half your health away? I would say that's a sucess, as otherwise you would have lost nothing, not even some health when the turret started firing. Sure, the engineers still didn't know what to listen for, but give them time and people will have the perfect sentry to watch their back, the next time both engineers will turn around and you won't survive.

And here's some of my own experiences:
3 guys put turrets up on an airpad while enemies were comming up the gravlift. Every enemy was engaged instantly and were incredibly easy to gun down with 4 or 5 bullets, if not less.
2 spitfires were placed next to a Sunderer behind some cover. When we were pushed back the turrets were able to soften up half a dozen targets, due to the amount of players around the Sunderer no-one fired at them. About 5 or 6 LA's must have died placing C4, as it took just one or two hits by the time I saw what they were firing at to kill them, and that's just the one's I killed.
A hostile spitfire was placed in a tower near the A point. The battle was actually happening outside so no-one knew I was there. The turret beeped, I fired at it till it was dead. In the meanwhile the engineer had come out of the A point and fired at me. I ran out of ammo before I killed him and while switching to pistol he got me.
There's a massive Zerg around a hostile Sunderer, but we have foxed them in inside one of those Sunderer Garages. I fly down and take one of the lesser used entrances, making sure to stay at the ceiling as I enter. I switch to C4, get almost on top of an unuspecting heap and get gunned down by the spitfires alone, placed near the corners of the garage. No "acquisition time", just straight up killed.

I'm actually very surprised to hear your experiences... admittedly today I did have trouble with one turret, but that was because I was trying to get auraxium on my rebel so I went stalker infiltrator and didn't feel like using my emp grenades. Took nothing but time, which I knew I could afford.

In my run-in with the engineers, the sound of my bullets ripping into the one engineers is what tipped the 2nd guy off... I wasn't aiming for the head and I had a long-ranged LMG so it took a bit longer to kill him, so the guy had about a second to register my presence. The turret didn't start firing until I was halfway through the 2nd engineer, probably because it was facing the other way. While it is true that I could have been finished off by a third person, that would have been true anyway. I believe the turret only did about 300 damage, which is just a few bullets. Keep in mind that turret cost him 1000 certs. I assume the guy set up the turret to help him deal with people like me, which it failed to do.

I played almost all day today and, except for the incident I mentioned earlier, have never seen turrets be anything more than a passing distraction. I will say that they are able to engage enemies faster than I first noticed, but they still don't really pose a threat.

I agree with you that AV/AI turrets tend not to fair much better, in fact as a sniper and avid phoenix user I love it when people set those turrets up... mostly. I have occasionally seen them put to pretty good use, plus a few coordinated AV turrets, if gone unnoticed for long enough, can potentially clear a battlefield of vehicles in very short order. Moreover, you can respawn these turrets at will, if yours gets destroyed or you need to relocate; plus they are moderately resilient against small-arms fire, so they can act as a shield if nothing else.

I can see how they would be useful in protecting sunderers, in certain circumstances. Like I said, I don't think they're entirely useless, and I don't think they need massive buffs, but I do think 1000 certs is too much for the limited effectiveness it currently has, or at least that I've yet seen.

Less then 1000 certs for brand new and shiny (alas mostly useless) item? Likely story.

2Demigan

You do realize that other equipment would do a far better job in situations that you mention as beneficial to have a spitfire?

Early warning? Motion sensor\darts\flash and even an ESF (Answering beforehand to "Oh, but there is implants these days, those things just wont do!" - and so is cloakers, EMPS and decoy nades that counters turrets detection)
Protection from flanking? Mines and allies.
C4 fairies at your sunderer? Blockade armor or shield in sunderers utility slots.
Stacked turrets will annihilate anything that comes in range? Try to stack those cupboards closely to each other and make them shoot at a same target. Unless there is only one target, they are going to spread its damage onto many target with little effect total. And guess what, killing a single target with group of people is not something earthshakingly hard to do. On top of that you need to get a bunch of engineers together to place said turrets to begin with, and if one gets destroyed to the terminal you must go or you just lost your ability slot.

It is just not worth to bother with. If you like to toy with it, fine. But it is not an adequate exchange for AI\AV turrets in almost any scenario. Atleast you can use those as a cover or an extra elevation to make use of uncommon cover if nothing else.

Already a thread for this in the engineer forum.

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/spitfire-dec-18-feedback-thread.210155/

need certification line like for med kits - to increase number of turrets