Its obvious that the Valkyrie feels incomplete, it needs a more properly placed niche to be of use in a tactile sense that a galaxy couldn't already achieve to the same caliber or more. 1 of these 3 ideas could easily fill that niche in addition to adding 2 more passengers and door turrets/ side turrets instead of rumble seats or as a weapon set that could be unlocked for the Valkyrie, any more then 1 is up for debate but it definitely needs something. Increase the stock speed of the Valkyrie, offer a racer option, afterburner The Valkyrie moves painfully slow, to the point of being slower then a galaxy which is just too slow, it needs to have its stock speed increased to at least be faster then a galaxy or the same. As a new stock trait however, in addition to this much needed change in movement speed of the Valkyrie, it could get its speed bumped up to a little bit over the liberators stock top speed with the ability to cert into a racer frame pushing it to be just a bit under the Reaver if not the same. This in conjunction with the crafts lack of small arms fire armor would make it a much more viable yet not so OP. In conjunction with this the handling of the craft would have to change dramatically over how it handles now to be a lot more like the way a liberator or galaxy flies. Phantasm Cloak Give the craft the ability to unlock cloaking the way the Phantasm could in PS1, a very popular idea that would work very well with current handling of the aircraft, possibly OP but with the lack of armor and decent cool down time between cloaking it could make the game a lot more interesting. Give the Valkyrie small arms fire immunity In addition to the much needed speed boost of the Valkyrie, protection from small arms could make it a very useful rapid response pick up and go vehicle for when you need to drop in people with even more tactile precision then a galaxy can. These seem like they could all be viable, seems to be the most solidified ideas on the Valkyrie from others to some extent as well.
Giving it small arms fire immunity and cloaking seems like a bad idea. The ESFs dont have small arms fire immunity so why should the Valk. The cloak will give it the survivability it needs i think. And the speed thing havent it been said to be a bug in multiple Valk threads of the forum?
Wasn't it already confirmed that the Valk is a lot weaker against small arms than intended? That aside, a Harrasser but 10 meters above ground is a niche, too, so with it's ironically rather unique movement profile it could work out for close ground support. And +1 for Phantasm cloak.
There's a bit of a conflict in all of these occupying the same slot. One's a performance mod, another a "Utility" mod, and the last is a defensive Mod. IE: more of a conflict in SOE's own catergorization than anything else. Some of these things admittedly, it NEEDS to get anyway. For instance Higby likes to claim it's supposed to be like a sky Harasser. Well the ground Harasser outruns EVERYTHING when its Vtec kicks in, turns on a dime, and climbs sketchy terrain without rolling better than an ATV. For the Valk to be that viable without a huge forward velocity performance increase AND afterburners, it would basically need to be able to accelerate up and down like a yoyo and literally smash right into the Terrain without breaking apart to make sure all its passengers can get out in one piece. But at the same time, it's "Cheap" resources wise so it can't be allowed to ever "beat" a Liberator in a sky duel. And great Lib crews don't "win" fights on Health & Firepower alone anymore. They also got better Maneuverability over the past year which really is what made them so terrifying this spring. (They were already pretty amazing at release though if you watched people like VirtW & his cronies in theirs). So I really don't think it's reasonable to ever expect this Valkyrie thing to have raw survival/Armor OR the best maneuvering either since they're basically the same exact thing. IE: if most people can't ever hit it or even steady lock-ons on it, then it's basically got unlimited Health since you can just swap the Rumble crew with the 2 engineers in other seats and repair-gun it an infinite number of times while it takes evasive maneuvers. And the even worse problem with that, is it would also make C-4 strafe-bombing way too easy as well. ....all this to me, signifies that there's really only the ONE viable "defensive" option for this thing. And that would be the one that ceases ALL activity of Crew members aboard it. IE: when it's Cloaked, no one can repair it, no one can shoot from it, or drop C4 from it. Locking in Cloaking as the only defensive slot basically means that you're taking "Wolverine Regeneration + Evasiveness" out of the balancing equation. You're also taking all of its Offensive power out of the equation too. As long as it can cloak, it never needs all that other stuff like Afterburners, FireSuppression, Plating, Racer Frame, Hyper Yoyo movement, Door-Guns, Coyotes, or Tons of Hitpoints that would just completely clash with how cheap it is in Nanite Resources Cloaking is literally the only thing at this point that really forces it into a tactical troop transport role for small Covert Ops.
