Mosquito Needler is overpowered

I would say that the most convincing numbers to say the needler is OP are the ones below:



But again. These numbers can't be taken into consideration on their own. You have to look at the whole picture, which includes there being an air balance of 37% Mossies, 33% Scythes and 30% Reavers.

Edit: what you're looking at is total numbers of ESF killed by the weapon listed.

This is very interesting...

eventhough the Mossy has the least enemy ESFs to kill, it kills the most ESFs.*
Also there are 12% more Mossies than Scythes, but they do 52% more ESF kills than the Scythes do.*
So each Mossy does 36% more ESF kills than a Scythe.*

*with standard Noseguns.

It's really not that surprising if you think about it.

Apply this same reasoning to infantry play using the same number imbalance you see for the air. There are 37 TR heavies with MSW-R, 33 NC heavies with Anchor and 30 VS heavies with Orion. Who will win? Who will have the higher KPH? Will these numbers reflect weapon imbalance?

Okay... let's keep it real, the anchor would win.... but do you see my point? =P

Too many warp daemons. Time to call exterminatus and evacuate...

Scythes are maneuverable and hard to hit from front(hover battles), but their A2A weapons aren't that good. That compensates their maneuverability. But mosquitoes... they are op in A2A in every aspect. Maneuverability, speed and the best A2A nosegun. What makes them op is, normally noseguns with high rate of fire have low ammo capacity.(about 30-40) It has both 750rpm and 75 bullets in the magazine, plus it's accurate as hell. RPM + Magazine size is what matters while dogfighting. They both rule scythes and reavers, if two pilots have the same skill and experience, a mosquito always wins.I watch other people while they do dogfights too.
Scythes and Reavers mostly lose to mosquitoes.

I also have a constructive suggestion instead of just whining about op weapons.
Make needler a NS gun, and give it to all ESF's by default. Remove other ES default guns. That would make dogfights fair.
I can't understand why there are such imbalance issues among ESFs, they must be just skins with same stats.
Or at least they should use same NS weapons pool like other air vehicles.

Vortek has only 33 bullets in its magazine. You need to make all 33 bullets hit the enemy ESF which is not quite possible against moving or hovering targets. It's only good in VR testing area... Vortek will run out of bullets, needler will continue dealing damage and kill you.
Vortek is maybe only for surprise attacks, that's all. In most situations it's useless. Also as I experience the game, I see that RPM is what matters, damage doesn't matter that much because weapons with high damage have either low accuracy or low magazine size.
Outside VR simulator and theoric calculations, mosquitoes dominate everywhere.

Stats say otherwise. I hate to say it as I don't like using raw stats. But since all ESFs are obsolete for when it matters.. they can apply here.

The Needler is not the problem, the Mosquito is. It's hitbox, maneuverability and Speed is OP. The Needler is basically a downgrade of the Saron. The Mosquito however is a huge upgrade to the Scythe.
the Mosquito#s hitbox is so ridiculously slim, it will be rarely hit by Daltons, Tank Shells etc. Weapons that are normally not for AA, but do huge damage (some even OHK) and thus playing a huge role in Air Combat.

The ONLY advantage of the Scythe is, and every Pilot cries about, is the front hitbox being allegedly flat. Which matters in 0.5% of all A2A situations. However, the rear hitbox is huge and easy to hit.
And guess what: Front Hitbox Size = Rear Hitbox Size

The Reaver has high Afterburner Speed and DPS for surprise attacks, however sucks in ranged dogfighting, except you're so good you can hit every bullet and simply out-dps any enemy ESF. This however requires huge skill AND luck.

Also, the TR's unique and OP AA weapons - the Striker and the Lockdown Burster Max are also a huge advantage to the Mossy Pilots, just like the Vanguard's AA Sniper Frontgun to the Reaver is.

What needs to be done is giving the Mosquito itself another downside. Like some additional elements to its shape to increase it's hitbox size or a deacrease of its speed or maneuverability. Or give the VS (and maybe NC) some better AA weapons to compensate for the Striker, Lockdown Burster MAXes and Vanguard's AA Sniper.

Also, you have to look at how much each weapon is used and for how long.

Weapon--------------------------Aveg Uniques-------------------Avg Playtime
M18 Needler..............................717...............................459
Saron Laser Cannon..................631................................380
M20 Mustang............................564................................345
source: http://ps2oraclestats.com/monthlystats/

Needler is being used by more users and it's being used for longer time by each of those users.

These stats say that e.g. 717 Users use the Needler for 459h together per day.
So each of the 717 Users uses the Needler for 0.64h or 38,4 Minutes per day in average,
while the Saron is being used for 36,1 Minutes and the Mustang for 36,7 Minutes.

Why are you looking at the average time per player? Wouldn't you want to be looking at the total from all players for each Weapon: it's their total time that affects the total tally we were looking at.

So (in terms of just crude number reviewing), wouldn't we want to look at?

Vortek Rotary
108.4 total hours played, achieving 1.62% of all ESF deaths. So for every 100 hours, you get 1.50% deaths.

M18 Rotary
111.5 total hours played, achieving 1.43% of all ESF deaths. So for every 100 hours, you get 1.28% deaths.

Hailstorm Turbo Laser
85.1 total hours played, achieving 1.06% of all ESF deaths. So for every 100 hours, you get 1.25% deaths.

M18 Needler
458.5 total hours played, achieving 5.59% of all ESF deaths. So for every 100 hours, you get 1.22% deaths.

M20 Mustang
344.7 total hours played, achieving 3.68% of all ESF deaths. So for every 100 hours, you get 1.07% deaths.

Saron Laser Cannon
379.7 total hours played, achieving 3.67% of all ESF deaths. So for every 100 hours, you get 0.97% deaths.

M30 Mustang AH
96.1 total hours played, achieving 0.67% of all ESF deaths. So for every 100 hours, you get 0.70% deaths.

M14 Banshee
99.3 total hours played, achieving ?.??% of all ESF deaths. So for every 100 hours, you get ?.??% deaths.

Light PPA
102.8 total hours played, achieving ?.??% of all ESF deaths. So for every 100 hours, you get ?.??% deaths.

Antares LC
35.7 total hours played, achieving ?.??% of all ESF deaths. So for every 100 hours, you get ?.??% deaths.

M18 Locust
34.5 total hours played, achieving ?.??% of all ESF deaths. So for every 100 hours, you get ?.??% deaths.

M20 Kestrel
25.5 total hours played, achieving ?.??% of all ESF deaths. So for every 100 hours, you get ?.??% deaths.

I'm just winging it. Someone check my math and process.

in b4 needler is only good mossie weapon therefore used more all stats useless huehueheuheueheuehu

LOL

Needler is definitely good, but so is the Saron and the Vortek.

I think this must be bait, or OP is a newbie pilot who got wrecked by an Ace who could have killed him just as easy with the high capacity ****ter gun

I know this. I posted this myself earlier in the thread.

Ok, some people say that it's the mosquito that overpowered, not the gun. This is also true. All three ESFs should have the same speed, hovering ability, turning ability etc. Unbalanced air vehicles just kill the airgame, it's not like tanks. If you can't dogfight, you lose. It's obvious that mosquito has may advantages over other two ESFs. Terrans already have the best killing machine in the game, Prowler. It's ridiculous that they also have the best ESF. They need a nerf, or other ESFs need a buff. Reaver is the worst ESF in game when it comes to dogfighting and needs serious buffs. Unbalanced stuff is the worst idea i've ever seen in a fps game, seriously.

Reaver is the best at higher levels of play due to it's amazing hover afterburner, but needs highest cert investment. Also Vortek Rotary.
It is known.
Mosquito is the easiest to use with minimal cert requirements, but falls off.
It is known.

Jesus christ the tank buster doesnt even do 100,000 per second, clear math isn't your strong suite either...

Scythe is best esf without question, all esfs nosegun equivilents have the same accuracy, mossy is not best esf although it is easiest to use as it can run has high ammo capacity and high rof for plebbies to use. Any good pilot will tell you that in any fair fight the scythe with win 99% of the time if two equally skilled pilots face off scythe vs reaver/mossy.

Yeah the scythe seems the best for any sort of duel, the mosquito is just a lot more noob friendly because its traits help pilots survive and be more effective at beginner levels. This leads to more pilots staying on and getting better through the mid and higher levels. The other factions seem to lack pilots in the middle level of play, people are either god-like or god-awful.

Reaver ends up somewhere in the middle, better than mosquito at high levels but much worse at low levels.

Not an easy thing to balance really.

Actually, all that you said applies to VS on my server, TR, lots of noob pilots because they get farmed by veteran VS and to some extent NC pilots, chances of getting experienced pilots is slim compared to the other 2 factions.
If anything is noob friendly that would be Scythe, very small frontal frame unlike Mosquito when in hover mode (I love how everyone forgets that Mosquitos exhaust point to the ground making him even larger target to hit unlike Scythe ).
Standard nose gun from VS deals more damage, has better muzzle velocity (for noobs its better, less target leading), it only has 15 ammo less but has 0.5 sec faster reload to compensate for it, while in the end the nose gun difference between those 2 isnt huge the shape of the ESF is a huge factor which people really really like to overlook (on purpose ofc).
What are the Mosquitos traits? If you say agile fighter that is simple BS since Scythe outperforms it on all parts except speed which in the end rarely matters.
Not easy thing to balance when it was messed up at the start.