It sucks. It is weak, it is slow, it makes a warning sound, it can only be placed one time, it can't be improved by more certs. It sucks -- did I mention that?
The problem with it is, that this is the kind of think that could have killed the game (or badly hurt it). So to ensure that wouldn't happen they took the list of things you can do to make something balanced, and did ALL of them instead of just one or two. That's why it's so weak and they aren't in a rush to improve it, because if it becomes OP it can badly hurt it's reputation.
I think spitfire is great overall. If you playing battle engi usually your turret slot is just sitting there doing nothing. And now you can place that thing and it will do something usefull. Im not shure why so little of players use it, it incredibly useful in numbers. But yes, it can be improved. First of all the size of that thing is huge. I think it it needed to be to cut in a half. Just a turret gun and the aiming thing with less of body itself. Smaller tripod should be great too. Right now that thing easily can block paths for friendly's. That change would increase the survivability too. Frontal shield maybe? Just like heavy personnel shield, can block few more bullet and regenerate over time. Add a little bit more durability. Remove that unnecessary shooting after the target being killed\lost from view. Right now it just keep shooting all other the place wounding and sometimes killing your own buddies. There is no real reason for that. And of course the replaceability. There is absolutely no reason not to be able to place it again. Well okay maybe make just a limited number of uses. But not just only one, thats just silly.
I find the presence and addition of auto turrets very disheartening. There is nothing worse than entering a room to take an enemy on and find that you are suddenly at a disadvantage because this robot in the corner is shooting at you. People are complaining that they are not getting enough kills from Spitfire...these things are devastating. if they get a buff I am done with infantry play.
Whaa?? Just lose shields? What do you mean just? That's a huge disadvantage if someone comes in and attacks you. These things do not need a buff in any shape or form. They need a nerf. I don't think they should be able to fire if there is a empire member within 10m. This would remove the cheapness of being shot at by something no human input. Am I taking crazy pills here or something? Why am I the only one who thinks that Spitfire is a nightmare to deal with? Being shot just once by these things is a huge problem when there are enemies around. This is terrifying because Daybreak will see all this complaining and might just buff the damn things.
I put off getting the Spitfire after seeing how easy they are to kill, but a few days ago I decided to get them. I've somehow managed to get 3 kills already, but for me the number one problem is how they target enemies the other side of a friendly Sunderer and keep shooting. I had a couple of TKs and it was constantly firing at the Sunderer because an enemy was the other side of it. I ended up getting a final warning before weapons lock for firing on friendlies, which is ridiculous. It does have its uses, but I think the best way of using it is as a team mate. Don't just dump it and run, it will die. Stay near it and use to watch your back and alert you of incoming enemy attacks, and keep it repaired. Two together are pretty good, and three is really good.
On their own, Spitfire turrets aren't really turrets, and more of an 'alarm system'. However, for maximum shenanigans, and enemy rage... get a whole bunch of 'em in one spot. Seriously, six of these is downright terrifying and absolutely hilarious.
When you see how dysfunctional the turret is you ask yourself .......WHY Clearly the devs have to know this.....so ...why ? My best guess two factions in the dev camp contorted the idea into a ineffective monstrosity one side wanted a good fully functional turret the other was determined to minimize its functionality. The result...the turret got developed/created......its effectiveness has been laughably minimized to the point of being almost totally useless.
I've never been killed by a Spitfire Auto Turret. And that's saying something (I'm quite terrible in combat)
I find that just deploying a AI turret and leaving it there is more helpful of a distraction than the automated turret is (which isn't much), and I don't have to resupply to reuse it.
"I find the presence and addition of auto turrets very disheartening. There is nothing worse than entering a room to take an enemy on and find that you are suddenly at a disadvantage because this robot in the corner is shooting at you." If you enter a room and there's an engineer and a spitfire, that could have been a heavy with their shield up. You can kill the engineer before the spitfire locks onto you, then heal through the spitfire damage with medic ability/Heavy shield/medkits etc and do a little dance in front of the turret. Not saying spitfires aren't useful, but feeling like you're at a disadvantage vs an engineer with a spitfire turret shouldn't happen, if you're a medic(self heal)/heavy(shield)/infiltrator(EMP,cloak). You should be able to kill the engineer before the turret even locks onto you and starts firing. If you attack the turret while the engineer can shoot at you, that's a mistake. Not much reason to fear a spitfire. If it's by itself, little threat. If it's with other players, those players are orders of magnitude more deadly to you than the spitfire.
I used to play a game called Infantry. It was apart of Sony's free games that came with the old Launcher. From what I understand, the original PlanetSide was based on Infantry (as in the story behind it, the worlds, the units, vehicles, etc.) The artwork for both games is very similar. PlanetSide 2 has a lot of the same classes, vehicles, and functions that are the same as the old top-down arcade shooter. The introduction of automated turrets for the Engineer, to me, is awesome. It makes PlanetSide 2 seem even more like a 3D version of Infantry.
You are playing PVP. Go back in game history, most PVP games have some form of PVE in them aswell. Most of the time the PVE is player related,spawned or controlled in some way.
I've hidden them in trees, attacking from behind and above a player. A poor example, I'm talking about 20m overhead when I happened to droppod into a large tree. They have enough time to look around and leisurely find out what's shooting at them, then destroy the turret. By itself it doesn't fare well unless the player has the situational awareness of a rock, no matter how well hidden it is when firing at players on the ground, or if it gets the drop on them and it takes 5 seconds for them to figure out where it's shooting from (If LA's float around in the air too long it can kill them eventually) I've had more practice with it, and it's very helpful. It shows myself and allies where to point our guns, just need to be near it and it becomes a powerful friend, mainly for spotting enemies you would have missed & tanking damage for you. The need to resupply is silly, it doesn't make them any weaker so it won't help you vs an engineer and a turret if you come across them. If they try to drop a turret while you're shooting at them, they should be dead. It just an annoyance to have to resupply at a terminal/sunderer. Imagine having to do that for rocket launchers, medic abilities, heavy shield, spotter darts, and even LA jet fuel. "you've already got utility out of your heavy shield, now you need to run back to a terminal before you can use it a second time in battle" Annoying, right? The limit creates annoyance/unwanted trips to terminals without providing much of an upside for anyone. Is anyone scared of an engineer being able to redeploy the spitfire on a 30sec/1min cooldown? That's the only thing I feel needs changing to make it far more fun.
TO ME....the weapon shows timid design decisions. A bone was thrown to those playing engineers......but because devs didn't want to PO other non-engineer players they made it almost useless.
About the only useful time I've found Spits is if you can get 2-3 (requiring same number of said engies) down near a deployed sundie ~15-20m away to help pick off C4 LA going for the sundie. Otherwise their tell-tell beeping, low durability, and limitation of only 1 in inventory highly limits their uses for much else. The only changes I would like to see though is around a 10% health increase, and the ability to cert into it for more carrying capacity so you can have 2-3 in reserve when it eventually goes down. Grenades should still instakill them, and it would only take a touch more small arms fire to destroy them.
