[Vehicle] A Banshee balance suggestion

What about the raw damage potential of the banshee? Is that an insignificant advantage now?
As long as you hit vaguely nearby people it has less than half a second TTK, without even accounting for direct hits.
If you shoot people in the face it can kill people in about 0.2 seconds. And to help doing this it has 500 m/s velocity compared to the 300 m/s of the L.PPA. Even with direct hits the PPA has an inferior damage output.

To compare with ground, the Anchored AP-Prowler has 325 m/s on it's shells and that's considered fast enough to snipe infantry at range.

Keep in mind that thanks to the bullet velocity the Banshee can actually reliably land hits in A2A. Can't really say the same for the L.PPA.

So the difference between them is that the Banshee works outside of an A2G AI role, has better accuracy against moving targets (higher velocity), and it has greater damage output.
It does too many things too well. Something's got to go.

Nerf the damn damage if you want, but a weapon is not inherently more accurate just because it can FIRE FASTER BULLETS!

It requires less TIMING, yes, but slow projectiles did not stop the ground PPA from being a Sniper Grenade Launcher...
Kills done "On the Snap" aren't people problem with these weapons, its when they are used to REPEATEDLY kill them with no risk to the user.

THIS is why I have such a big beef with the LPPA; If you line your angles up right, you can camp kills without Infantry being able to DO anything about it.

We all know whats coming if you follow the history of nerfing weapons. The banshee will be nerfed into a useless state and it will sit unused for 3 months. After that it will recieve a small buff, but basically be useless for all eternity.

Note: PPA, Striker, Vulcan, Cannister, Marauder have all seen better days and soon the banshee will join the list.

So will the LPPA when people realize it's a PPA on a flying Turret...

Tbh the whine about the ground PPA was unfair given how the Banshee and P2-120 guns always had it beat in manslaughter.
Also, having faster velocity -does- make a gun more accurate. And that's on top of the absurd damage output.

Both of them can kill from some range, that's true. However the Banshee always kills much faster, and gives less of a warning (both the mosquito and Banshee have less distinct sounds than the scythe and L.PPA). Or in other words, the scythe has to loiter for longer, which increases the risk of getting return fire dramatically.
What's funny is that the best anti-Banshee-squito gun would be the striker, but what good is that for NC and VS?

Perhaps. L.PPA still doesn't do anything but AI, unlike it's TR and NC siblings.

Stay Vanu Vanu...

No, only the LPPA can do so outside of Lolpoding distance...
I think the issue here is at closer ranges, the Banshee is having a large amount of explosive overlap where the blast of each individual shot is hitting all at the same time.
I've noticed on any video showcasing Banshee "Farmers," they are usually trying to stay within 20-40 meters of whatever they are camping, so all there shots would naturally be grouped close together.
If the Banshee has a high Outer Blast Damage, this would put the target right in the center of a bunch of powerful explosions.

If that were the case, I would suggest lowering the Outer Blast Radius and Damage, then tightening the Cone of Fire to make up for the smaller resultant Area of Effect.

True, but you're just asking for Cone of Fire to be slapped on you...

That's rich coming from someone with a TR icon.
In spite of strong denial, the listed weapons did beat the PPA per user. In fact, the banshee wasn't very far behind the Magrider and Harasser PPAs combined.

If the Scythe is that far away infantry can A) see it B) hear it and C) move so the Scythe can never do any substantial damage. And if the TR/NC fail to respond to the obvious give-away of sound, light and everything that's not the gun causing the deadening of ground.
Thing about the banshee, you don't have to be within 20-40 meters. People just do that because then they can dive behind hills with ease and still maintain the absolute best angle. However if need be they can go out to 200 meters or so and still perform just as well as a PPA.

Couldn't care less. I think air is just too ****ing strong atm.
At least the AH is very risky to use against ground.
Banshee and PPA aren't as risky, but the Banshee kills things faster -> don't have to loiter as long, can be used to do something in A2A, and it doesn't have the super-obvious audio/visual give-away like the other two ESFs have.

The LPPA performs at about the same level as the AH (AI-wise), the Banshee significantly above. Quite probably because of those two things.

trust me, it isn't. Direct hit damage is 150, and it has a puny mag size/slow reload. ESF kill speed isn't a problem. That being said, it's resist type makes it better than normal at killing heavy air, so I suggested that nerf.

According to the stats, LPPA and banshee are about even in A2A kills.

Guess that proves how weak the LPPA is against OTHER Aircraft...
Of course, when it's a light LASER ACCURATE SNIPER GRENADE LAUNCHER, it can afford to hang back and take potshots...

Now that stat kind of surprises me. I've killed a few completely unaware Aircraft with it but never hover duels or anything. Does that include just ESF kills or Lib/Valk kills too? Those two are pretty easy to consistently nail with the LPPA.

Waitwaitwait, let me get this straight... Direct damage buff, splash nerf...

You basically want to make it less effective at AI and more effective at AA? Why do we need all weapons to be more similar? I want AI weapons to be AI monsters but suck at AA, this is much better for counterplay. I want my AI weapon to have a completely different role from my AA nosegun.

So no. The only change I can agree on is the extended mag nerf, which makes sense. But everything else is a big no no. If anything, we need the AH nerfed against air and made useful against infantry past 25 meters. The Light PPA could also get a revamp because right now it encourages all the wrong playstyles and punishes the right ones - that is, the LPPA encourages farming where no AA is present (due to short reload, large mag, high spammability, large splash) and actively punishes the pilot if he tries to do strafing runs where AA is present (because the burst damage is way too low to kill anything before being torn apart by AA).

I might get torn apart by this comment by my fellow VSers... but what if the LPPA got the same treatment the MBT PPA did? Maybe a larger splash and tighter cone...

The amount of LPPA complaints I hear

Ironically most are TR.

NC complain more about Banshee than LPPA.

In any case... I think I like your idea in the OP.

I'm a pretty heavy Banshee user... I was thinking actually nerfing damage a little and increasing mag size might be the way to go. This would give it same damage/kill per magazine capability, but require more exposure time to do so.

I think it might actually be a buff.

New ground PPA requires close range. It's easy to force that in an ESF, but the problem is rather that the LPPA requires such a long exposure time that doing so at close range is pure suicide.

If I could make quick in and out strikes with LPPA like I can with Banshee and AH I'd be in love.

MIGHT not work in practice, but in theory I effing love it.

The only change the Banshee really needs is huge nerf in its damage to MAXs in my opinion, besides that strange ability to instagib its supposed counter from 200m away it is just an AI gun that is very gun at killing infantry.
Some may argue that the AH also can instagib a MAX, but in order to do that you have to be very close and any half decent, well positioned AA MAX user would already have engaged and killed you. Unlike the Banshee, if an AA MAX dies to an AH it is always the fault of the MAX.

I don't think there is a sweet spot in vehicle AI balance, its either used in the right situations (small fight infantry farming) with very little risk, causing endless frustration and lets be honest, players quitting PS2 or is it deemed OP and nerfed to the point that it is functionally useless in 99% of situations.

Let's be honest, this game would be in a far better state both in terms of population and fun if vehicle mounted AI weapons were removed completely, I realize that may be a touch hypocritical coming from someone with almost 5k AH kills and 3k Banshee kills but that doesn't make it any less true.

I think removing Thermal Optics from vehicles would go a long way to solving a lot of issues regarding balance without having to blanket nerf every fotm weapon that comes along, as unlikely as that is, the Banshee is going to be nerfed and nerfed hard and then everybody will move on to campaigning against the next thing that kills them.

Uh, no it isn't.
Closer to the Banshee than the Banshee is to the AH, yes. But not on level with the banshee.
That said, they're all pretty close for -vehicle- kills, so the L.PPA does do better against ground vehicles than the other two.
However you're better off running rocketpods or hornets if that's what you want to do, as neither gun can be called "good" at A2G AV.

Banshee users upgrade their Mag Size to 40. This give them access to an AI Nosegun that can single out and kill Infantry targets from pretty far out in very fast Time-To-Kill bursts.

They can also take down a Burster Max. Either at close range faster than the Max can kill it, or in many cases simply by putting the Max down to half health, breaking off to repair the Mosquito, and then coming back to finish the Max (many Maxs don't have reliable access to repair).

Being able to hit from far out means that they don't get too close, where they would be more vulnerable (like the Air Hammer). And Fast kill times means they don't have long hover times where they are more vulnerable.

Bansee is AI and Burster Max is AA. Hornet is AV and Skyguard is AA. These matchups are all more healthy when they are "cat and mouse" (each can win, if they play right) and not "scissors, paper, rock" (one trumps the other).

But that's not even the reason for a Banshee nerf vs. Max. The reason is because Banshee is OP and is gonna get nerfed, and Banshee users should decide what they would like most to keep, what most they are willing to let go, and what angers victims the most about Banshee, in order to have a post-nerf Banshee that isn't junk.

It makes the most sense to address the largest complaints about the Banshee, when those complaints aren't the main things that Banshee users care about keeping. As a long time user of the Banshee, losing killing power vs. Burster Maxs is not a huge deal for me. And yet it's one of the most complained about things by people complaining about the Banshee.

(1) Slightly longer kill times on regular Infantry, (2) distinguishable noise when the gun is used, and (3) losing the ability to one-clip Maxs are all things Banshee users can give up and still like the Banshee. An attitude of not giving these up is just gonna lead to SOE nerfing Banshee into the Stone Age.

Also, tuning PS2 by giving access to extreme power to those able to perform high skill based moves is a mistake. It rewards players simply for having better dexterity, and it creates a massive ceiling on the average player's effectiveness. This is a combined arms MMO where the game needs players to be able to use the units and weapons effectively. This is not a 2-person fighting game. And even a 2-person fighting game that massively rewards dexterity is very narrow, in that it sinks the value of non-dexterity components like strategy, intuition, matchup knowledge, etc.

Give the banshee a warm-up time, perhaps? Start it firing slow, then have it rev up to full fire speed like the Chaingun. Wouldn't that solve the issue of "Dying to it within .2 seconds without knowing what hit you"? It'd give AA MAXes time to figure out where the fire was coming from and fight back, it'd slow down the Banshee's TTK, and it'd solve a lot of the complaints about it without screwing around with damage values, AOE, and whatnot, and we all know what happens when SOE starts messing with those.

*Cough*ZOE, Striker, Vulcan*cough*