You read that right, the MAX is brandishing the close ground attack weapon of their empire. However here's the catch: it's a two-handed weapon. You sacrifice one weapon arm to be able to brandish a huge single weapon, stripped from an ESF. Some special modifications were made to make the weapon light enough for the MAX to carry it and move it inside buildings. M14L Shrike Looking to bring the ground attack capabilities of the Mosquito indoors, TR technicians came up with the M14L. With its high firing rate this stripped down M14 Banshee can lay down an overwhelming whirlwind of projectiles for short amounts of time. RPM: 769 RPM Velocity: 500 m/s Damage: 150 (all ranges) Indirect: 150 before 0.5m to 20 after 2m Magazine: 35 (no ext mags) Reload: 6.0 secs (short and long) CoF: 1.50 Bloom per Shot: 0.4 M45 Freedom Finding the threat of massed rocket infantry defending a choke point troublesome, NC engineers came up with a possible solution when they took the M30 Mustang AH from a Reaver and spot welded it to a MAX. It's wide pellet spread makes it ideal to damage many opponents at once. RPM: 150 RPM Velocity: 550 m/s Damage: 65(x8) (all ranges) Indirect: 100 before 0.5m to 20 after 2m Magazine: 10 (no ext mags) Pellets: 8 Reload: 5.2 secs (short and long) CoF: 6.0 Bloom per Shot: 2.5 Proton II sPPA The "short PPA" is the illustrious VX Labs' solution to even the most resolved infidel's opposition. This shortened LPPA taken from a Scythe is capable of literally melting down enemy held choke points and flushing out even the most dogged defenders. RPM: 180 RPM Velocity: 350 m/s Damage: 425 (all ranges) Indirect: 250 before 1m to 25 after 3.33m Magazine: 20 (no extended mags) Reload: 5.0 secs (short and long) CoF: 1.10 Bloom per Shot: 0.55 Notes, Cone of Fire is twice that of the ESF variant since its carried by the lighter MAX. Reload Speed is doubled as well. RPM has been lowered by what I believe is 1 tier, also to "help the MAX retain a decent cone of fight with this bulky weapon".
Not only are AI noseguns inbalanced as hell on ESF, you even want to put weapons with TR 230.700 / NC 198.000 / VS 121.500 damage per minute (thanks DBG by the way for that obviously ridiculously lower damage for VS and no, the slightly larger AOE does not compensate for that huge difference...) INDOORS and to a MAX who does not even need higher dps than normal classes to be overpowered?! Just compare the weapons you suggest to the AI weapons MAXes are given at the moment (damage per Minute with both arms being the highest dps weapons available): TR: 123.000 NC: 313.500 (209.000 with slugs) And yes, here we see why NC MAXes are indeed inbalanced as f...ck VS: 121836 Sorry but that is not just a bad idea, it is simply sh...t. Those overpowered NC MAXes are already bad enough for any good fight, now imagine this effect being even worse with such much more powerful guns that deal insane DPS combined with AOE!
Max units would actually be effective at AA (at least against ESF and Valks)! We can't have this! Nerf it to the ground!
I think that DPM should be with reload times, which all these weapons would need to go through several times per minute. With 769 RPM and a magazine of only 35 for instance, the M14L would expend its magazine in 2.73 seconds. Then follows a 6 second reload. Add this up to 1 minute makes 6.87 magazines being expended during that time, this makes for 240 shots being fired. That's 36,000 true damage per minute instead of the rather artifact riddled "123,000" damage hypothesis. In fact it's the reload times which pretty much cut the DPM by a sizable portion the MAX as opposed to the ESF; e.g. the M14L has 36,000 DPM (including reloads). The M14 can expend 10.6 magazines in 1 minute, equating to 371 shots fired. This is 55,650 DPM (including reloads). Either way, in terms of DPM the MAX version is 33% less effective than the ESF version (perhaps though this is what the ESF version should be like and the MAX version weaker than that). The sPPA would expend 5.14 magazines per minute, equating to 102 shots fired. This means a DPM of 43,350 and not 121000+. These figures still sound like a lot but require the MAX to hold down the trigger for a whole minute, not letting go and having to actually hit each and every shot during that whole minute. As you can imagine these are ridiculously high accuracy parameters which will never see any real data in a live setting. Every time you stop shooting, the DPM drops drastically. Every time you miss shots, the DPM drops drastically. Every time you stop shooting because you're no longer hitting enemies, your DPM gets destroyed. But DPM is really a theoretical statistic all in all. DPS is much more reliable as an indicator in how devastating a weapon will be in engagements, which tend to be very short lived anyway (rarely if ever requiring a full minute of actively hitting an opponent). DPS on the MAX two-handed weapons M14L Shrike: 1920, requiring 0.52 seconds to kill which is equivalent to an LMG. M45 Freedom: DPS doesn't really count on shotguns, its "instant" kill if enough pellets hit, if not it requires a follow up shot. DPS will thus range between the velocity of the pellets and the firing rate itself. Proton II sPPA: 1275, requiring 0.78 seconds to kill which is equivalent to for instance the Lasher in c.q.c. The differences in TTK here are balanced by for instance the sPPA having better splash damage to anything not hit directly, whereas the M45 benefits the most from direct hits instead of splash damage. Of course the Devs can tweak the numbers to make them all more in line with an LMG in terms of direct damage. P.s. or is Proton II "Heavy Lasher" a better code name?
I know, mathematically you are right that dpm is lowered by reloads but just imagine the scenario: 2 MAXes with Banshee or Air Hammer run into a room and empty their mags within 3 seconds (banshee) or 4 seconds (AH), dealing 10.500 (5.250splash) / 13200 (8.000splash) damage EACH. That means a damage output of about 3.500 per second per MAX (the average damage output for Primary infantry weapons is about 1700 as far as i know), so theoretically 3 kills PER SECOND per MAX with splash weakening everybody around what brings the theoretical kills per second even more up. Just compare it to a lasher with a fire rate of 913 RPM and ask yourself if that was anything you could call "balanced"... The Point is that the damage dealt with 1 magazine is already hilarious considering the time needed to empty it. when you cover a room with 13200 damage wit 8000 being splash the room should be empty so even the very long reload does not matter at all. If you want to balance them to a level equal to what already exists, cut the fire rates that you suggest in half.
I only play support classes and so I only ever fight against Maxes..............you're talking about making them more lethal in CQC, right?
Tbh I don't see the reason everyone hates the idea. For chokes this could be a good thing. Ideally, the game shouldn't be focused on choke points and have more fluid combat, tactics coming in to help break a choke, what helps a choke is always having cover, grenades generally break it up but maxes don't have access to grenades. Considering these weapons would have vastly lower dps than regular AI weapons, they would all be effective at dealing damage at tightly nit infantry. The OP's version of the weapons however are a bit skewed, some vastly out perform other weapons while some just don't cut it. I don't see how they're unbalanced, they are weapons designed to kill infantry and only infantry and yet have been nerfed several times over, maxes are in the same boat of being a versatile dps platform able to swap weapons for different situations with the drawback of less armor and speed of a vehicle. In fact the idea is pretty sound considering that if both arms combined produce the same effect as the noseguns then it would only really be useful AoEing out targets over other AI weaponry. The idea is incredibly sound just as long as the weapons come out to not out dps other ai weapons available to the max. Again; idea of maxes having AI aoe weapons would be pretty cool imo, but the versions listed here are not ideal for weapon balancing.
@LaughingDead: What i said is not that MAXes shouldn't get AOE weapons at all but with the absolutely inbalanced stats of ESF noseguns as Luminari suggested they would easily ruin every infantry fight. According to DBG logic (if you transfer it from the PPA or Lasher for example) AOE has to be balanced by lowering the damage output. At the Moment, MAX weapons (except NC of course...) deal about the same dps as LMG so according to the logic i just mentioned they can have AOE but then with a lower DPS and not a rediculously higher DPS like the OP suggested.
I'm sure DBG can fix the stats. I already given some options to lower the stats, e.g. the RoF but other tweaks can be done. As said, the idea is to lower the DPS at close range and in return give the MAX the ability to melt choke points at close-medium ranges. The ESF nose guns is of course just the lore, models and epicness. Yes, they'd share the character of those weapons but obviously need a long balancing trial before implementing.
This idea is as old as Planetside 2 in beta. Or some variation of the idea. Basic concept for me is to give MAX a solid, reliable source of offensive power. Easiest way to do that would be to have a single weapon setup. Far simpler to control the numbers for balance, and much more reliable. Regardless of the design and base of weapon chosen.
