The thing that doesn't feel good about the prowler is the total time between firing cycles is longer than it appears (120 fire rate + 2.5 sec reload) plus you can get stuck with 1/2 shells requiring the full 2.5 sec reload. Since the shells do less damage it's actually disadvantage vs the other MBTs to have it set up like this. I think the way to make the prowler feel good is to set it up so the barrels reload independently. As soon as the 1st barrel fires that barrel should start to reload, with barrel 2 still ready to fire. It seems like it would be pretty easy to program too you just set it up so you have two smaller reload circles to the left and right, and each mouse click switches the active barrel. Overall when firing continuously the total rate of fire would only decrease by 2.5 sec - (whatever the 120 fire rate works out to). You could increase the reload time appropriately to balance it if needed. But overall I think if the prowler would be much more fun to play with if it worked this way. (And if you don't like that idea maybe just try increasing the fire rate, because the delay between the two shells just feels awful)
I think you are downplaying the power of having that second shot. 120 Fire rate is 0.5 seconds between shots. So for Heat shells you get two 475 damage shots within 0.5 seconds, followed by a 2.5 second reload - total time = 3 seconds. I play VS, so for comparison, the equivalent gun on the Magrider, the Supernova PC, you get one 550 damage shot, followed by a 2.25 second reload. After 18 seconds of continuous fire, the Prowler has laid down around 6660 points of damage, compared to the Magrider's 4950. To get a lower damage output than the Magraider over the same time period, you'd have to not use the second barrel shot on every other volley - this seems highly unlikely. Also, the penalty for a missed shot is much lower on the Prowler. You get two bites of the cherry to score a hit with each volley, which can be especially valuable on fast moving or low health targets (it can be the difference between scoring a kill and the target ducking out of sight to repair). Having two shots also means you can split fire between two targets in each volley. The benefits more than outweigh the downsides. Independently reloading barrels on the Prowler would likely make the main gun completely OP. It would effectively shave 0.5 seconds off the time required to start firing the next volley and would therefore increase the overall damage output of the main gun over the same 18 second illustration period above by around 1000 (this would constitute a 13% damage buff over and above the ~25% advantage it already has over the Magrider main gun).
not only does prowler have the advantage in rangefinding shots and advantage if it misses the first or second shot with HEAT or HE you can laugh at infantry and kill them faster with splash with a single salvo while a vanguard has to back up or a magrider has to dance around while it waits for reload to fire again (at which point the infantry might be out of LOS to hit). there's a reason people cried so hard over the years about deploy mode and prowlers HEAT and HE.
So much wrong here. For starters how the Prowler gun actually works. It has 120RPM and 2.5 second reload (unupgraded HEAT). There is a hidden refire time before the reload begins. So a Prowler fires like this: First shot is instantly fired. 0.5 second refire time. Second shot. 0.5 second refire time. Reload of 2.5 seconds. That is a total of 3.5 seconds for one full cycle of fire and reload. The Prowler HEAT deals 475 damage per shot, for a total of 950 damage per cycle. That is a DPS of 271. The Vanguard HEAT deals 600 damage per shot with a reload of 2.5. There might be a hidden +/-0.1 second delay before reload starts but that is as of yet unclear. Vanguard DPS is 240. That is a difference of 11 or 12% with the Prowler. So set up like this the dual canons for the Prowler are an advantage, not a disadvantage. Now lets allow these guns to reload independently: 1 shot, 0.5 seconds, second shot, first shot starts reload and second shot goes into 0.5 second refire time. At 3 seconds the first shot is ready to fire and with the 0.5 second refire time ending directly at the second shot being done reloading the cycle is effectively 3 seconds. 950 damage over 3 seconds=316DPS. Now the difference in damage is 24% with the Vanguard. Then there is the all important question: does the Prowler need this? Its not worse in performance to the other two MBT'S. You are just giving it free buffs.
Yep - it can already out DPS the other two MBT main guns even without lockdown active - and that's before considering the advantages that having a gun with two shots per volley gives (range finding, multiple targets, lucky shots, reduced impact of missing a shot etc). The Prowler simply doesn't need the buff the OP is advocating.
Reading the OP's question again it's actually yes and no. Yes it doesn't need the buff, no because he's wants to feel stronger. So imagine if we buffed the Vanguard, Magrider and Prowler together? Make them all feel better? After all every faction complains about their MBT. The Magrider doesn't have the DPS or extra health like the other two! The Prowler doesn't have the armor or floatiness and that dual shot is a detriment I tells ya! The Vanguard is just a sloth who's only advantage is extra health and a slight increase in muzzle velocity! Shouldn't we be focussing on upgrades and sidegrades that make people proud of their faction tank? I know it's pretty much impossible to get people to look at their own tank and go "wow it can DO that?" by now, but at the very least we can make them feel like they can handle their opponents a bit better? MBT's have a lot of buttons available to them that aren't used. The grenade button, shift if you aren't a Magrider, Space is technically used but barely, X, B, C and ctrl. All these buttons could have something associated to them that the MBT can use. Shift becomes any movement ability. G fires a support weapon like a mortar, smoke grenades or airbursting grenades close to the vehicle to deal with mines and nearby enemy infantry. Ctrl fires something akin to a co-axial or a tertiary driver-controlled turret you can switch to as easily as you would in an ESF. Each of these weapons and abilities can have their own unique spin on it, and because every tank now has a faction-variant ability for movement, attack, defense, scouting and perhaps more there's a much richer variety of things a tank can do to try and combat their opponents. You can even create a system where you have a certain amount of regenrating ability energy and each use of an ability siphons some of that energy. This way a player has to choose a combination of things he can use in quick succession, or try to spread it's uses out so he has some ability energy for emergencies.
Alright im not going to say it's the weakest tank. You would know more than me about that... But for sure there's something about it not flowing and it's features not having good synergy with a defined purpose. You can say the vanguard is easier to use because it's simpler and has less options. But I would say that the vanguard flows better. It has a clearly defined purpose and it's abilities work together. Maybe it's just rampart projector that pisses me off.
