Directional Aircraft for Rapid Transportation aircraft. 2 seater aircraft, no guns. Cost: 100 nanites Health: 1500 soft Top speed: 350kph, 450 with boost. Abilities: Base ability: When the DART collides with the ground or another vehicle, the pilot and passenger remain alive with safefall. DART deals 1000 damage base, exiting the DART regularly would deal fall damage, transport assists should still activate from the passenger's kills upon exiting. DART mode and landing mode could be switched by activation like a sunderer, or activated like an ESF enters and exits hover mode, but based off of the speed they're flying. Armor slots: 1. Momentum Armor: DART deals 1500-3000 damage depending on speed to a single target. 2. Wraith Armor cloak: DART can cloak with an infiltrator as the pilot, works the same way as the flash cloak, cloaks passengers for up to 10 seconds upon exit, firing stops this effect. 3. Explosive Armor: When the DART collides, it deals 2000 soft damage up to a 12 meter radius. 4. Radar Armor: when the DART collides with buildings or terrain, it remains stationary, giving up to 200 meter radar, and appearing on the minimap same distance for 30 seconds. 5. Triage Armor: When the DART collides, it remains stationary and heals allies based off of the medic's Triage ability up to 50 meters for up to 60 seconds. 6. Repair Armor: When the DART collides, it remains stationary, and repairs vehicles in a 100 meter radius up to 150 hp per second for up to 60 seconds. 7. MAX capacity Armor: can transport 2 passengers, passengers may be MAX units. This vehicle could be used for a single player to move to another base quickly, or for a squad/platoon to enter an area immediately effective in style, I thought about if you flavored the drop pods with these abilities, but it wouldn't encourage team play, some of these would be easily exploitable, and with the extremely limited range a drop pod can move, it wouldn't be that effective.
Although the base idea sounds fun there are some things that need to be looked at. For starters the "1000 base damage when ramming". I would assume that is for ramming where it is destroyed, rather than it clipping a vehicle and surviving? With the safe fall after suiciding into something on, it would make this vehicle perfect for pancaking infantry by skimming the ground. You crash? You survive! The ability to go to town immediately afterwards is a bonus (assuming you crashed close to enemies). For infantry pancaking the explosive armor would be a cheap way to score kills, even if you just ram the ground. I mean with 2000 soft AOE up to 12m even with no inner blast radius you would have OHK capability on infantry up to 6m unless flak is equipped. That means a 12m circle around the impact is an insta-kill (if you ram a Sunderer dead center anyone around it is dead except at the front or back!) And in an 18m circle from the impact everyone is either dead or at half health. If you dont want to suicide your vehicle but want to skim the wraith armor is the cheapest option. Watchout AA MAX's airpads, you could be pancaked by a player you didnt even see until it was on top of you! The other "armors" are fun but I think they need an alteration. If you ram something they work as you describe but I would also let the DART land itself on the ground and deploy to offer those benefits, so it can be used as a utility that lasts longer. The speed is high, extremely so. ESF at 200kph cruise is already fast (55m/s speed! In 6 seconds you travel a HEX along its longest distance!). Your 350KPH cruise with 450KPH afterburn is just ludicrous. Hell 250kph cruise would be pushing it. Just give it a higher agility than ESF in the form of an omnidirectional afterburner (pushes you in the direction of the keys you press) and make it small so it has plenty opportunity to reach its destination. If you can ensure it wont be a pancake factory and doesnt have the cloak or the OP suicide AOE then it could be a good cheap transport.
So basically.... If it could not do ANY of the things it was designed to do.... It would be alright with you. Who here did not see that coming 5 miles away? Hahahahahahaha! Pancaking still happens the exact same way it did when I had my cloaked A.N.T.: Without them seeing me until I was right on top of them, so trust and believe not having a cloak is not going to aid someone on foot in the least with this kind of speed. All it would do is help save its life from Flak or anything bearing Coyotes/Dingo variations thanks to its life being so low. I would live in one of these. My sole purpose would be to try an give a mother snatcher a D.A.R.T.-attack. If you did not get that play on words, let me describe it. I would take the nose of my ship and try to drive it through the heart of as many enemy soldiers at 450K.P.H. as I possibly could. Most high speed craft have issues turning at maximum speed. So I see no issues when it came to balance there. Using Afterburners would decrease turning speed. I would give it some sort of nose gun like a Trace Directed Energy Weapon, and high yield cluster and scatter-bombs dispensers for a target softener and that would give us a new element to the game; Good Ol' Deadfall Dumb bombs for carpeting, but otherwise I LOVE the idea. The original speeds are perfectly fine. You will give even new players relatively safe way to interact on the battle field, and not die every 3 seconds in a standard E.S.F. or Dervish, and Vets, can figure out how to make it lethal. Not to mention, it would give people who are not usually pilots a way to get up there and possibly hold their own against even pro pilots, via Hit and Run tactics. Slamming into a fighter on purpose was something I did for fun looooooong after I learned how to fly. A weak plane BUILT for just that?! Yes, please! While I definitely would say they need to FIX THE GAMES MINOR ISSUES AND COMPLETE N.S.O. ON PLAYSTATION FIRST, this is a really cool idea that should be explored. Here are some design ideas. I would add that it should go THROUGH lightly armored Aircraft. One for each faction.
The DART would be meant to be faster than ESFs because there's no guns, it's mean to be able to potentially outrun them, but ESFs would have an easy time shooting them at slower speeds, hence why the speed would be so high, and the default HP is low. Also, skimming the ground is something only a few skilled pilots can even do, but if the size of the DART was shaped close to how the Vanu symbol is shaped at the front, most pilots would have an exceedingly hard time getting these kinds of kills without stopping their vehicle, unless these roadkills were on the edge of a dropoff, which this can easily be prevented with spitfires or caltrops. Given it's a 1-time use vehicle after it collides, having a blast radius variant, maybe 6m inner radius, 12m outer radius would make sense, especially given the new friendly fire system, making it so it's not a TK machine.
This does sound really fun, but I also agree on the potential problem of wiping an entire squad worth of infantry (with the explosive armor) and surviving the impact (minus mode of transportation) for a nanite cost of 100. This is really cheap for that effect. If the vehicle is shaped more like a needle roadkills probably won't be much of a problem, but that detonation is. I'd suggest putting the damage to 2000 on direct impact (maybe 1 m radius), and 900 for a further 6 m radius. Means surrounding infantry will be hurting a lot and you can go to town after the blast, but they also won't be dead immediately and can still retaliate. Otherwise the price would need quite the hike for this option alone.
You could get 10 kills with it, if everyone is really close together, but it's a one-time use vehicle... maybe 150 for the cost would be better, but a tiny explosion wouldn't be worth certing into, and given nanoweave armor is nerfed, there will be more people running flak today than 4 months ago.
The Area of effect is part of reality. If you crash a car into a wall at a high enough speed and a person is standing next to it, the impact will send out a wave of air and debris which will kill people much greater that a meter away. A Crop-duster can take out an entire house at just the speeds of a controlled crash, so 60-80M.P.H. (Which this game needs to be in.... K.P.H. makes the game look off because the speedometers look broken. 450 K.P.H. is SLOW..... 279 Miles an hour... Congratulations! A plane in the game that can FINALLY reach low budget, misfiring and broken jet speeds.... Everything else in this game may as well have propellers, peddles, paddles, and ores...) Considering we have umbrellas; which since they can stop tank shells and even a Dalton shell, it is unreasonable to not believe they can in theory halt the explosion all together, I do not a real issue with the cost. The wise surviving these and making them all but useless after the first 1 or 2 hit is all but certain. 100 Nanites is plenty for something that can be dropped in only half a clip of anything. A Siren Launcher would decimate these poor things en mass. Since Mega Tanks can equip Dingos..... They are all but safe from any they spot. Now these MIGHT pose a threat to a poorly manned Bastion; if everyone and their mother pulled one, but that is yet another reason for them to allow us to OPEN our Bastions to the public. I believe the GENUDINE fun is going to come from keeping these little muffins alive thus using them in a way not previously thought possible, which means the explosion is not going to be something you are going to have to worry about anyway. Multiple low altitude Carpet Bomb Runs. I mean that is what this game is really missing, the carpet bombing... Out of nowhere, fall where they may, duck and cover, shock and awe, "CHAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOS!!!!" Something the Galaxy should have had access to as a Pilot Weapon as well. An idea for N.S.O.'s Dart.
Thing is, many people already dislike C4-fairies, and a huge explosion on this vehicle (esseintially being a guided missile, which some already find hugely OP on the rather tame Phoenix launcher) for the same cost as a load of C4 would make people complain even more. Nothing happens in a vacuum and such should not be treated as such.
It has to be manually ran to and pulled over and over, that would get tedious, not to mention the low hp would get you killed if you just waited to drop. you couldn't precision drop every time lol. With how low the hp is, air deterrence could easily pick these things apart, especially NC's masthead and TR's Striker, and i think construction has autoturret AA, flak could kill these easily, especially at a 350-450k/m doppler effect. there are plenty of deterrents for spammers.
*I* would spam the **** out of it, already because it sounds immensely fun. Damage being secondary to that.
