Rocket Launcher incoming

That last screenshot you posted is interesting, however, looking at playtime...



Looking at playtime, it appears as though more recently, the lancer is actually on the bottom, although I believe we can attribute that to the recent Striker changes: People are testing out the new stats en masse, rather then using it due to increased potency (Although some may like it's odd functionality vs Air, it's nice for firing over cover at aircraft hiding behind hills, or galaxies attempting to repair behind hills.)

Yep, i'm in complete agreement with this point here, the striker still needs quite a bit of help. Regardless of other stats, the Phoenix and the Lancer have their Niches - if the Striker has one, it hasn't found it yet.

My idea for the Striker is to leave the current function alone and add a secondary fire that can be dumb fired or it can lock onto enemy aircraft just like the regular launcher except it launches all rockets in the mag in a shotgun spread pattern. (Yes kind of stealing the NC's thing, but they can get over it) When you lock on fire it this way and the enemy pops flares there would be a random chance for at least some of the rockets to still hit the target depending on angles and fancy math and whatnot, not really random but depending on where they are, where they are going, where you are, etc.

This would also bring the striker up to the same level as the Phoenix and Lancer in terms of maxes, not enough to kill them unless they are in battle, but still enough to make them run, currently its very hard if not impossible to use the striker on maxes due to the long fire time, not so true about the other two. Also the other two are good for large aircraft and hit or miss on the smaller aircraft, but seeing as the striker is for aircraft, it would make it good for large vehicles and hit or miss for smaller vehicles, sort of opposite but similar.

Also it would look cool.

Well, in my view the usage difference comes from two things.

1) There are more NC running around than VS. This means that even if launcher usage is equally proportional, the NC are still going to have more playtime hours simply because there are more NC.
2) The Phoenix mechanic means that NC soldiers need to spend much more time using the weapon. Say a NC Phoenix and a VS Lancer are both firing at a target 300m away. The Phoenix needs 7.14 seconds to make it that far, followed by a 5.2 second reload for an engagement time of 12.34 seconds. The Lancer level 3 beam takes 0.375 seconds to go 300m and takes about 4 seconds to charge to level 3... plus you can shoot twice before having to reload. Essentially to shoot a Phoenix takes three times longer than a single shot from a Lancer, which is why Phoenix usage time is much higher.

Lancer is superior against infantry and aircraft, also both the most reliable and easiest to use.
Extremely underrated, unknown to the majority, just because it looks/sounds weird or something.
I'm almost always the only one in an area using it, really saddening as it's probably the most OP thing in the game with a squad.

Firstly, I shall post this here for reference.



This is the number of average uniques contributing to the stats - there are indeed the most players on the NC, and there are roughly 100 more average users of the Phoenix then there are users of the Lancer. That said, the total KPU is higher for the Phoenix compared to the Lancer (3.26 vs 2.61, respectively) the NC are using more Phoenixes, each unit of which is scoring a higher ratio of kills to the total number of users then the Lancer is - that's to be expected, given how each weapon is used. (The Phoenix is good vs all targets, the Lancer is specialized vs ground vehicles, and yes, large air vehicles are viable targets as well.)

To be fair, the Lancer only takes 3 seconds to charge fully - a firing cycle (2 triple charge shots and a reload) is a total of 11 seconds, which is indeed less time then it takes a Phoenix to do the same.

That said, I don't think this matters for the total-playtime stat. The last time I really dug through the API, I seem to recall that the item use length function only returned the amount of time that the given weapon was equipped, not how long it was actually selected and actively being fired / reloaded / aimed, etc. The current average playtime for the Phoenix is 178.7 hours a month, and the current average playtime for the Lancer is 128.4 hours. Even accounting for a NC population advantage, Phoenixes are indeed being lugged around significantly longer then Lancers are.

The Lancer is vastly, vastly inferior vs Infantry - it's a sniper rifle that cannot OHK. At 3 seconds charge time to do any appreciable damage vs infantry, plus time aiming and ginormous tracers, the only worse launcher vs infantry is one that cannot be dumbfired (This is by design, and justifiably so, else VS HA's would be snipers as well as front line infantry, which is unacceptable.) It is fairly nice vs Liberators and Galaxies, but an aircraft moving at an angle at any speed is quite difficult to hit for the average user, which is why even the current striker has a higher AKPH stat then the lancer does by over double.

The Phoenix is the easiest to use due to it's guidance system, which allows you to drive your rocket to a target - it's effective vs anything you can hit - the primary limitation is that of it's reload time and maximum distance. The Lancer is not difficult to use, but leading targets at high range is fairly challenging without finer controls then PS2 allows for.

Well okay, get good and all but... Sniper rifle that can't OHK = semi instead of bolt.
edit- Also tracers? What tracers? It's a tracer for anything EXCEPT your target.

Oh Phoenix, good luck actually finishing anything without serious backup.
It's great but only as a killsteal weapon on par with Lancer just with more flexibility and safety.
Severely overnerfed, only leading at anything due to the cam-guidance's persistent novelty, popularity.
It's definitely not the easiest one from a technical and statistic view.
You will miss most of your shots, you will not outmaneuver anything actually aware of the rocket, especially Magriders.

Coordinated strikes are severely underrated there too, met Phoenix groups via any faction only twice this year.
Should probably try leading simple "____ ONLY" squads, every time I've joined one for Striker/Phoenix/Lancer was great.
That includes the Archer now, which is basically an NS take on the VS' particle-accelerators.