[Vehicle] The harasser imbalance

I prefer womp womp and the old flusheroo, personally. Then again, I don't run composite either because sneaky sneaky boiiiiii

It had been a while since i hear vulcan OP.

The aphelion is a more precise vulcan that can dealt more damage over distances,using its charged shot.

The mjolnir is a`weapon that shreds armor up close, it's way more deadlier than the vulcan in the right hands, it's definitely a sunderer's worst nightmare after light assaults.
Basically each of these weapons have their niche, and it's up to players to choose their engagements so their loadout outperforms others.
If anything we should give the gatekeeper a buff because nc and vs have solid long range options.

That is a very wild statement based on poor reasoning. You're trying not make the numbers prove your claim, not the opposite.
Higher vehicle KPU simply could be due to the TR being overpopulated and/or pulling more harassers and prowlers with vulcans since the gatekeeper is **** (therefore spending more time with the weapon) , while the other factions can choose the enforcer or saron for longer ranges, or mjolnir and aphelion for closer ranges.

Another thing is player skill. It seems recurrent in my experiences that TR are the only faction who can actually coordinate, and have the most solid players on their team, I don't know why, but for some reason it always seems like TR know what they are doing, VS are trying to copy them and NC, well....are being NC.

These reasons more than account for the 1 vehicle kill difference in KPU, the vulcan hasn't been OP in years, and it is at an ok spot currently, does not need to get tweaked again.

Go play with the numbers all you want. You will at best find the Vulcan slightly above others (by slightly I mean 20-20%...not insignificant).

Heck, go check average BR. You'll find Aphellion users slightly above the others yet still underperforming.

Then you see crap like this.
I put the Halberds from all 3 in there just to see if say VS/NC were leaning on it. They aren't.

Vehicle kills per hour....Vulcans are mowing down vehicles like a scythe through tall grass...
https://voidwell.com/ps2/oracle?sta...,6120&startDate=2018-12-26&endDate=2019-06-26

KPU paints a different story:

https://voidwell.com/ps2/oracle?sta...,6120&startDate=2018-12-26&endDate=2019-06-26

Edit: For shiggles, I pulled Uniques. Looky here at this correlation:

https://voidwell.com/ps2/oracle?sta...,6120&startDate=2018-12-26&endDate=2019-06-26

Thoughts?

Then we would see that trend back in other numbers, for example the Halberd. But nope! The Halberd-H has more or less the same stats across all 3 factions. Since this NS weapon that has the same proporties on all factions scores the same (although with the NC in a curious small leading role) we can rule out that the TR is being overpopulated and has more targets to kill.

Again, as almost any carbon-copy or NS weapon will show you, there is only a tiny difference between the factions with almost all of these. This would indicate that any difference is neither skill nor population-based, but purely on the difference between the weapon's proporties.

These reasons do not change it as they are incorrect. Unless you have a good explanation why the differences between carbon-copy weapons and NS weapons are almost uniformly the same regardless of them being infantry, vehicle or aircraft weapons, the numbers, reasoning and logic stands.

More so considering that these stats remain like this over the course of months and years. If it was purely population or skill-based it would change on a day-to-day basis.

I've been monkeying in there for a while now. At best you can find things like KPU when visually seem close in the graph. Closer inspection shows 20-50% difference. When you multiply that times number of players the blood flows in rivers.

Halberd and other weapon comparison don't show anything wonky like TR being jedi masters at Harassing. No real abscense of say gatekeep use or something that could explain.

As best I can tell it's just the weapon itself. It's more effective than it's other empire specific counterparts by a substantial margin.

/shrug.

IMO this is due to several factors.

1) Ease of use. Taters gonna tate, and the Vulcan is the ultimate get in close and just smash one single button hurrrrrrrrdurrrrrrrr. So it performs well for bad players. In fact, the margin of difference between **** gunners and pro gunners won't be proportionately all that large because it takes NOTHING outside of your driver being able to get you in good position to use the Vulcan. This goes directly to my earlier comment about skill floor and ceiling.

2) TR weapons outside of the Vulcan (for AV) = the LOLkeeper. Or the Halberd which a lot of new players struggle with. But the Gatekeeper is essentially trashcan, I own it but I won't mount it unless we're just doing meme runs. So you choice is Vulcan - or Vulcan. Or maybe Vulcan.

3) The NC/VS variants provide the POSSIBILITY of better performance. But those AV weapons are tied to the skill level of the gunner directly. If your mouthbreather can't land any shots you just die, die, die, because the mouthbreather on the Vulcan has a much easier time. An experienced and skilled Boombox Jeep is a wrecking ball. A pair of them is GG bois. That goes back to the skill ceiling being MUCH higher. But the skill floor is subterranean.

I think I'm going to spend all of my time for a while just getting a real feel for the ES variants both driving and gunning. I know what I have felt in the past fighting ECUS etc when they were on NC and VS. It was rough.

I don't think this is really true at all.

The Enforcer may provide room for better performance compared to a Halberd given higher accuracy, but a Saron has a very low skill floor and about the same ceiling. If in short range, spam. If not, tap and lead with no drop.

Aphelion can still be point-and-clicked and will still be somewhat effective, but does allow for more skilled users to get a bit more DPS out of it. A Mjolnir however does not.

The Mjolnir has a very high skill floor but has the same skill ceiling. The user must lead and account for drop all almost all ranges, but even the most skilled shot will only ever be placing the crosshair over the area with the highest probability of dealing damage. No amount of skill can shrink the cone or negate the bloom. There are no ways to deal more damage with the same bursts aside from just getting lucky.

Like the Vulcan it's mostly about the driver, only it needs a bit of work to grasp then becomes mostly point-and click-above-and-ahead. It simply lacks the volume of fire.

Probably semantics, but I consider the skill floor as the worst you can do with a weapon. Maybe I'm thinking differently than the consensus, lol.

So the Vulcan is as dumbed down as you can get. Little lead, point and click-hold. Not much to see here, but there's no room for improvement outside of properly timing reloads. I consider THAT a higher floor, because you just can't do worse unless it's on purpose. Tiny variance.

The Aphelion is more accurate, less DPS unless you actually use the mechanic designed into the weapon. This has a wider range of outcomes based on the gunner.

The Boombox can be absolutely atrocious in the wrong hands. Devastating in good ones. I realize that you're saying that the only thing you need to do is learn to lead properly - but that's really close to 100% of vehicle gunplay so I think it gives a much wider variance, thus the floor is in hell, and the ceiling puts enemies in hell.

Also, the Vulcan has some pretty hilariously bad accuracy once you get outside of spitting distance. It might not have the typical life/death hit/miss model of NC weapons, but it can't be effectively used at range, lol.

The generally accepted definition of skill-floor is the minimum skill required to make it work while the skill ceiling is the maximum power you can reasonably achieve with it. For example: a low-velocity sniper vs a high velocity sniper. The high velocity requires a lower skill floor to be effective as you require less skill to know the bullet drop.
For an idea of a skill ceiling. Hitting a stationary enemy tank in CQC with a dumbfire has a low skill ceiling (and floor). But hitting a moving harasser at 300+m with a dumbfire has an enormous skill ceiling and can even become downright impossible when the Harasser tries to dodge at that range.

As for the differences between the weapons. Imagine the Vulcan having a power of 100 while the Mjolnir has a power of 102. But you only require a tiny amount of skill to reach that 100 power on the Vulcan but it takes an enormous amount of skill to reach even just 75 power on the Mjolnir, and reaching that 105 is almost impossible.

Same idea of what I was saying, and I agree that it's true to a reasonable extent. The Mjolnir is technically more accurate than the Vulcan (by the numbers); I think that misses just hurt more and the mechanics take a little longer to grasp.

Personally, I just like the idea of categorically different weapons, and even ones that are harder to use properly. It gives me something else to learn.

Sorry but to me this is quite balanced , not even comparable to other problem in this game.

Vehicle KPU (last 6 month)
https://voidwell.com/ps2/oracle?sta...,6121&startDate=2018-12-25&endDate=2019-06-25

I question whether the people saying "the mjolnir is a beast in the right hands" have actually used the thing, it is BARELY edging out above the vulcan in VR training room levels of ideal conditions, the second you add in factors like you moving, the enemy moving, the terrain being uneven, the target you are shooting at not being the size of a sunderer or bigger, etc. it becomes an absolute trash heap, regardless of how "right" your hands are.

Lets be real here, anyone even remotely competent can gun harassers pretty well in this game as the physics do not transfer momentum to your projectiles, so its all a point and click adventure with small adjustments to account for travel time. This is my whole reason for starting this thread, there is a fundamental problem with the mjolnirs damage delivery method, you are punished IMMENSELY on damage output if even one pellet misses every now and again, and they do miss, often, and not because the gunner doesnt have magic hands, its because there is this absurd inaccuracy and COF bloom baked into the guns stats that simply does not work with a burst firing -must hit every round- type of weapon. If a vulcan misses 4-5 rounds on spinup before hes got the lead down, he loses almost nothing on efficiency of dsmage output, this is the complete opposite of how the mjolnir acts, and it isnt an issue of whether gunners are good enough to use it, the way the weapon works literally MAKES you miss shots via RNG and thus becomes a dumpster fire of a weapon by comparison.

In fact, I just did some quick mafs, since some of you are numbers guys and actually care about the truth of how it performs instead of a bunch of TR mains saying "but its a beast in the right hands" with no real factual evidence to back that statement. The data is very telling on just how bad the Mjolnir is in real world use.

MBT's have a 75% resistance to the gatling gun damage type, so the vulcans 143 damage per shot, factored into the 75% resistance means the vulcan is doing 3217.5 damage in one full 90 round magazine to an MBT.

MBT's have a 0% resistance to the light anti armor damage type, so the mjolnirs 90 damage per shot, not factored as there is no resistance, does 3600 damage in a full magazine to an MBT.

So right off the bat, the mjolnir needs to miss only 4.5 pellets in a magazine to now be putting out LESS damage than the vulcan, and believe me, you will almost ALWAYS miss at least 4.5 pellets if not far more in real world usage due to the RNG based COF bloom and spread, and the terrible arc, and the slow projectile speed.

So, without factoring anything else, its already a pile by comparison. But wait, it gets worse.

The Vulcan has a 0.08 second refire time, meaning the 90 round magazine is empty in right at 7.2 seconds.

The Mjolnir fires at 100 RPM with a 0.6 second delay between each 4 round burst, meaning the 40 round magazine is empty at 9 seconds.

Yup, you read that right, not only is the Vulcan putting out significantly more damage in real world use per magazine, its also putting it out significantly faster, so, why is it the NC weapon thats supposed to bring the hurt, is a joke by comparison in damage output AND delivery speed.

I could make a whole other thread on just how important the nearly 2 second difference in mag dump time is alone considering the way harassers are used. Kinda hard to boom and zoom when you take way longer to boom before you can zoom, and hit like a noodle in the process.

If we look at these same equations using the harassers resistances instead the performance disparity becomes even more laughably imbalanced.

Yes, I suppose so.

What I mean is that the Mjolnir doesn't reward skill, it just requires it. A Kobalt for example requires a bit of skill in aiming but not too much to reach it's potential effectiveness. However, higher skilled players who can chain headshots will have a much higher effectiveness with the same weapon. In this sense, the Mjolnir is only trying to reach the baseline where it cannot go further.

Aphelion is a good example of the concept, I think.

Mjolnir at its peak effectiveness is only marginally higher in DPS than the Vulcan but is almost completely impossible to reach against real targets. It simply isn't ever more devastating than a Vulcan would be unless it's shooting an empty vehicle from point blank.

Vulcan at least deals consistent albeit reduced damage, whereas a Mjolnir may not even hit once in a burst at such ranges.

Been poking around with voidwell, really neat site. I really wish we got a break down on type of vehicle kills. Because of the vulcans gattling gun mechanic it's real easy to stay on point verse moving targets like say other harrasers or quads, should it be nerfed because smaller vehicles are inflating it's scores?

And how would you go about nerfing its kills while keeping the seemingly balanced KPU? You would have to make Tr harrassers cost more nanites to pull so we don't pull as many, and that's something daybreak has never done nor do I think will.

Chiming in here, mostly because I'm tired of looking at this thread

Vulcan v harasser TTK: 3.44 seconds (at max wind up) 5 seconds at long range.
Mjolner v harasser TTK: 3.3 seconds
Aphelion v harasser TTK: 4.65 seconds with button held down. 6.6 seconds at long range

If we're going by max mag size (because that's generally best) the max damage in a mag are:
Mjolner: 4320 (aka enough to kill a lightning from the front)
Vulcan: 10,510 (enough to kill two MBTs so long they aren't the vanguard; from the front)
Aphelion: 8700 (enough to kill 2 lightnings)
This generally varies depending on the resistance type, but I used the most common resistance value for the gatling gun (both aph and vulcan) of 75% for math.

I'm not going to bother doing cone of bloom BS because quite frankly I do math for fun, but I'm not masochistic.

Now no one is probably going to use these guns outside of like, 50 meters, because the damage would drop too hard/cones of fire would be too large to put down anything serious besides the aphil because of it's low bloom and pulse effect.

Are these weapons balanced? Maybe.
Mjolner doesn't have a drop off in damage but it has a large gravity, lowest damage per mag and slowest muzzle velocity and is possibly the worst of the three verses infantry.
Vulcan has the highest per mag and great average damage but it drops off pretty quickly in vehicle terms after 15 meters which is almost breathing distance for tanks
Aphil has the best long range effect of sniping people and good midrange damage similar to the saron but the worst damage output and definitely wants to be the one that hits first.

Personally, even though the mjolner has the best damage as long as all pellets hit, I feel like it could use less drop on the grenades and maybe 50m/s more muzzle velocity. Beyond that, I feel like these are in an okish spot.

If someone could get me the maximum blooms for each weapon we could paint a better picture for each one.

Perhaps you accounted for this, but I saw 0 mention of the fact that the Vulcan starts with a 20% WORSE CoF, and builds bloom WAY faster than the Mjolnir.

It felt like you're assuming that the Vulcan is a Cobalt and you can reliably land every shot. If you're literally parked next to a Sunderer or SUB 10 meters from a tank, then yes, you certainly can land (probably) every shot, and the Vulcan becomes incredibly powerful. If you're anywhere outside of that range the misses add up quickly.

I agree with you that misses on the Mjolnir are more punishing than with the Vulcan. But the accuracy of the Vulcan is legendarily bad and gets even worse really fast.

So a weapon that almost constantly has 20 to 25+% more vehicle kills per user for more than a year isnt OP at all?

You realize that for example the MBT AP primaries have a smaller difference between them? And looking at the threads about those is a nightmare.
It might not look like a big difference but on 100 players for each faction the TR gets 350 to 500 vehicle kills while the NC and VS get 230 to 400 vehicle kills. On top of that the ease of use means theres 3x more TR players using the Vulcan, meaning that the NC and VS get around 230 to 400 vehicle kills per faction and the TR reaches between 900 and 1200 vehicle kills with the Vulcan per day. Yes, the TR gets more vehicle kills with the Vulcan than the NC and VS combined. Which isnt too surprising with a V KPH of 40 to 200 (currently averaging out around 80 VKPH) while the NC and VS get 13 to 40 VKPH, averaging out around 20 maybe?

The Vulcan scores better and has a masaively higher use and effect on the game. This is undeniable. Again the Vulcan has a larger effect on the game than the VS and NC equivalents combined! This doesnt happen because a weapon is weak! Ease of use is just as much a huge power as killingpower is!