Hornet is now Under-powered, needs rebalancing (as of 1/14/14)

Originally, the rockets before the latest patch were a little to powerful, but not far off. Some Dmg needed to be taken off and some kind of range limit needed to be put into place.

But now, they are too weak and have to come in way too close to attack. For exple: It takes about 4-5 clips to kill a lightning, thats too much time and effort of the esf part. The become a much bigger sitting target to AA. Heres what should be done to rebalance it:


-increase missle range to 650m from 450m. ESFs have no indicator to the range of the hornets, increasing range helps and more likely to survive. 450m and below is better for rocketpods.

-put missle clip (4) and capacity size back pre-patch. Will allow the enemy to see the missles more easily and decrease chance of hit. As well more evenly distribute the dmg.

-missle dmg 1,250 from 1,500. Total dmg from clip 5,000 from 3,000. Still less than the avg 7600 from rocketpods.

-perhaps add a turn limit like the NC max long-range missles have. Would force the esf pilots to be more careful in aiming at a extreme distance.

This may see like too much power for some, but look at it this way. ESFs need a way to attacke long range ground targets do to the sheer amount of AA that is around most of the time. AA like Burster and Skyguard will still be able to attack the esf, but the esf is more likely to survive. And while the esf may attack from afar, its very vunerable to close attacks since hovering+scoped in is the best way to stay on target at a distance.

I have the feeling this weapon would only be fun to use if its overpowered. :L Was cool and fun on PTS release but now they are meth.

All that needs to be changed right now is projectile speed. Increase it, and leave damage where it stands as of now.
Why?
Imagine 3 esfs with hornets, with the damage values you specified. No armour will exist in a 650m radius, AA present or not.

3 esfs with rocketpods can do signifcantly more dmg if they hit hard and fast in a shorter amount of time than hornets can. You H\have to factor in DMG for hornet vs rockets is less, more time to reach targets, esf has to stay relitavely stationary to fire afar to stay on target, and is much more vunerable to attack because its zoomed in and hovering.
Render distance for armor is 750m, which is the range of a skyguard, 650m is burster range.

Dont just pay attention to the range and dmg buff I'm proposing. Pay attention to the downside as well that Im purposing in order to balance against its strong points:
-Hover and zoomed in = easy target for enemy forces, especially other esfs.
-More missles makes it more noticable and less accurate at a distant.
-Adding a turning limit to missles would force pilots to be more accurate and less likely to dmg moving targets at or near max distance.
-It already takes time for the missiles to reach the target, giving it a chance to move and/or counter. At or near maximum distance this is especially true. Also theres no indicator at max limit of the missles so esf pilots will more often than not have to judge on the spot if they are in range or not. And if not, thats one clip wasted.

Absolutely correct. but.. (read on)

Maximum range and maximum effective range are very different matters. At render range, messing with v. thrust and descend can easily allow you to dodge incoming skyguard flak.

Here's the issue: with rocketpods, they have to get in way closer, to the point where a skyguard can easily tear the ESF apart, since it has to fly a relatively straight trajectory if it's aiming for the rear of the MBT.
If you up the hornet's range to 650m, the 3 ESFs can stay far, risk nothing and plink MBTs to death.

Sounds familiar?
AV MANA turret. Extremely exposed, easy to die to, but hey - you stay far away and risk very little while being able to damage things.

Extremely annoying.

example: hovering over indar excavation, targeting tanks at coramed labs: friendly AA easily keeps you safe, skyguards can't really hit you hard since they can't land consistent hits.
And this is just an example.

i'm ok with more missiles, i'm worried about increasing range to 650m.

turning limit is a limit on the total delta theta of the missile. so unless you try to make it go in a wide arc, it will only matter for sudden last minute corrections or if you're firing at close range and need it to turn a lot to face the target.

The same can be said for AV mana turrets - the rockets are somewhat slow, and nowadays can be seen from afar if you're looking out for them. You can dodge them. But, you can't get rid of the threat. So, it becomes a very irritating nuisance. No fun for the turret user, because he gets no kills, and no fun for the tanker, because he gets no kills. Lose-lose.

255h in ESF, it's not like I'm biased towards MBTs

Assuming theres 3 esf working together. Most of the time they are lone wolves looking for the quick kill or taking down an injured target. When they get in groups they are powerful, true, but they make for bigger targets in a group setting. Most armor moves around, unless in a siege position or ams sundies. If MBTs and other armor are being taken out by long range fire from esf hornets, than either theres no skyguard/max bursters or someone is not doing their job as one.

Knew av turrets would be brought up, but they are a non-factor in comparison other than targeting function.
AV turrets dont factor in that much. Aircraft are larger than a turret and players can see them at 750m vs 450m with turrets. Turret missles do not cost ammo, short cooldown, nor resources to make one. Planes do cost resources,have ammo capacity limit, and have 5-10min cooldown vs 5 secs for turret. So comparing the 2 and making them equal in terms of range is not going to work. Its like comparing apples to ornages. They are both weapons and have simular traking system, but what they come out of is completely different weapons of war.

Your assuming theres friendly AA paying attention as well as fighters not going 800m-1000m hieght in search of other air targets. Also, most places on the contents are elivated between 200m-500m majority of the time. This makes the skyguard well within range of aircraft. There are towers and tall buildings at facilities that allow bursters to get in range of their targets. Even on the flat planes of northern part of indar,(0m-200m+elivation) there are building and terrain that help skygaurds and burster maxes get in range of the fighters.
So really, the vast majority of the time AA from flak does affect aircraft whereever they are at. And while its true skygaurds t that rage are not as consistent at 450m, they do do reasonable dmg to ward the esfs off. And even if theres 3 esfs, well we jsut pulled 3+ skygaurds to push them away or take them out by getting closer first in their blind spot (which is hudge when they are focusing on targets at a distance) and taking them out.

Ever tutorialed a nc maxe with guided missles? Their turring limit is to the point that they can not attack moving targets well above 300m effectively. Theres so many minor adjustments that you have be careful and not overadjust, otherwise the missles stop tracking. This is especially true for mossies who have the worst hovering and maunervablility of any esf

Increasing the max range some could be alright.

But buffing the missile damage AND the clip size? No. One or the other, not both.

Obviously, if you chose damage it would be more than 1,500 (probably close to 2,000)

per missles its actually lower than the current ones but in total dmg would do more than what its currently at with 2x 1500. Also it started out 4 missiles per clip when put on test. And even with the total being 5,000 for all 4 vs 3000 for 2 as it is now, its still 30% + lower than the 7600 avg dmg that rocketpods have.

Doing one or the other in terms of clip and dmg will not work. Increase the dmg alone would make it too powerful in terms of accuracy. And spliting it into 4 alone would make it too low in dmg because missing 1 or more hurts the overall dmg too much to be worth buying the weapon.

I hate the very though of this weapon.....


However if I am to be plinked to death by a no skill cheese weapon similar to the AV turret, please make the mag size such that I can tell that it what is hitting me. Similar to the striker.

Why is everyone looking for a straight upgrade? It is "sidegrade" to rocket pods, possibly aimed to promote coordinated air strikes.

Before it was OP. Now it stands within reason.

You are talking about Indar, yes, its utterly annoying ceiling height pisses off and draws pilots away. I feel much more inclined to play on Esamir and Amerish simply because they have a decent ceiling height, whereas Indar insists in having +300m elevations that keep flak virtually almost EVERYWHERE you go.


Unlike Amerish / Esamir, staying high is not enough because several places are potential places for the annoying AA that you aren't interested in because you are not tackling ground at the moment, it annoys air play, a lot.

The range limit is fine. That needed to happen. The current limit means AA launchers and the Walker and Ranger can actually protect vehicles, and you can't simply hover so far away that flak won't actually deter you before you can send volleys off, or not even spot you in the first place.

I do believe there needs to be more damage/magazine though. The current damage output would be more justified when these could be used at render distance (even though that was ridiculous). I'm not necessarily saying increase the damage/shot, just damage/magazine through magazine size.

In their current state they are a little underpowered. A lot of the anti-ESF brigade will probably tell you otherwise as they want to sit back in their armour all day farming unopposed.. Either keep the 450m range cap and buff the damage a bit or buff the range cap and make it so they don't explode after X metres rather they just lose the ability to track and turn into dumb fires.

Can't really see myself using these with their current damage but more importantly the range cap. At 450m I might as well be using rocket pods. With the pod's I can harass from a much further range than 450m, apply more damage than the Hornets while under 450m all while having the versatility to attack any type of target.

They are better a little underpowered than absurdly broken.

imagine 100 tanks with AI setups ganging up on a infiltrator. This is a huge problem and tank AI should be rebalanced ASAP

It should be a upgrade in terms of AV, which it was. It's terrible at AA and AI however, and rocketpods are much better at those, as well as having AV capability.

Not if they have dual max level rep sundies running. And top armor.

what do you guys think of this

- no range cap, it just feels wrong
- magazine of 4-5 that fire very rapidly, creating a swarm of hornets (just for a good feeling weapon)
- damage adjusted so that ~2.5 mags of 100% accuracy kill a tank from side armor
- missiles can be shot down by small arms, so a determined tanker can still fight back with more than trying to run away

A range cap is required. ESF can get 2x zoom on the hornets or primaries, making it trivial to hit stationary targets (which a lot of vehicles are) at extreme range. The farther the ESF is away, the less effective any potential counters are. Alternatively, damage would have to be kept extremely low if there was no cap on the range.

In regards to damage: Pods are the high-dps, high risk AV weapons that ESF have. This means that hornets will have to do less damage by default. The degree depends on their function, basically. If it's short-range capped like it is now, more damage would be justifyable (but still worse than pods). with increased range, I'd expect them to at least take 3 mags.

Being able to shoot down the missiles with small arms is pointless. If you stop your tank to fire on the missiles, your tank would die in the next salvo anyway. Being able to shoot the missiles down with flak would be an interesting solution as that'd allow them to be powerful and have range, but it'd also make the hornets completely pointless if AA is present. Overall, i see no need to make things more complicated than they need to be with this.

lol, no. pods are close range high-dps weapons and hornets should in no way be faster at killing tanks. they trade range for damage and control. Yes, ESF are used to getting HE and AP in a single weapon, but this still doesn't mean controllable long range weapons get to outdamage short range weapons.

But a range cap on a laser guided weapon is just disgusting.. I want them to be powerful enough that they actually get things done. I think it's okay for an ESF to have some kind of oomph when they give up fuel tanks, and have to tunnel vision to deliver the damage.

The small arms thing is just to buy time, in a vacuum it's pointless but in a real situation you only have to live long enough that people realize there's a cert pinata hovering over there, the pilot gets a bit too much health chipped off and starts feeling the heat, then has to turn around and leave.

Patch is going up tonight so I guess we can just see for real how hornets fare.