What is good: 1. engagement range. 50 m is perfectly fine to me. These things are best indoors anyways. 2. engineer only. this makes sense, and is not needed on other classes. what is not good: 1. size/look. it is a giant box on a tiny tripod. looks like it would fall over. Top part should be half the size, this is cosmetic and doesn't matter much though. 2. resupply. very annoying to run back to terminal to get new ones. It should be on a cooldown of 30 secs. what is horrible: 1. health. this thing dies so easily it has little point. 2. damage. does very minor damage, should be increased 50-100% Because of these, it has extremely limited use. it is of no use in mid-large battles. There are 3 main roles played in this game: 1 killing, 2 area denial/deterrence, 3 support(heal/rep) This turret does none of these. The only use i have found for it is distraction. put it in one corner and you stand in other, enemy comes in they have to shoot at 1 of you while being shot by both. Even in this capacity it is bad because it dies so fast. I am assuming the intended role of this turret is not distraction but area denial/deterrent. to fill this capacity it has to discourage people from going near it. To do this it needs to be able to kill at a bare minimum 1 small arms player 1 v 1. The turret should be no problem for a heavy assault or max, but be quite resistant to small arms and frags so non-av classes have trouble with it. it should be something like a lower dps stationary MAX, less health than max though by some. 1 c4, 3 frags, 2 launcher shots, 1 av grenade. any of these should kill it, not a guy with an smg not moving at all.
I know I've played at least one other FPS that had automatic turrets. Those were much stronger than these. I think these are behaving just as they should and are meant to behave. Difference in expectations and preference is all, really, but I'm actually glad these aren't area denial machines. To me, they feel like a tool to be used when and where effective... and have to say I've had times where they proved very useful. They die pretty easily without help, but they can be helped and maintained. If we could just drop them without resupplying, I think it would be detrimental during the many hours of day when the servers aren't crazy busy. In a small skirmish, taking out a turret should actually mean you've made some form of progress. That wouldn't be the case if the engineer can just pop another one down easily. Also, it goes both ways. Your enemy's turrets aren't any stronger than yours, which works to your advantage when the tables are turned. The larger size does have an advantage, and can be used to your benefit. I know smaller would make it harder to hit and so more effective by itself, but I see this more as being able to suddenly attach a third arm, more than suddenly having a twin. Just my .02 certs, bit o' yin to the yang.
It's the combination of low health with the resupply restriction that's the issue. If I can place one per resupply, it needs to be durable enough that I can at least try to keep it alive by repairing it. If I can have as many as I want per life (possibly on a cooldown timer), or maybe an "ammo pool" or 3-4 of them, it's fine for them to be fragile. I think the optimal would probably be a combination of both, with a small ammo pool and double the small arms resistance (you could still one-clip a turret with a carbine). 1 c4 or AV grenade should definitely kill them. As for rockets, maybe 1 decimator would be an instant kill, while other rockets don't quite finish it off. They can't/shouldn't buff the damage on the turrets, though, because they would scale too well with numbers if they did. I think they're better for the game as supporting fire for allies in the area, rather than mechanical sentries that guard the point while you're gone. The current damage is sufficient for that role.
But what makes you think that it's intended to do that role " solo " ? Yes It's AI needs adjusting , Maybe it would benefit from greater health or resistances, but the dmg for the most part is fine ... Because said dmg has to scale with their spammability .. Maybe if they added a no deploy radius around them the dmg could be tweaked up a touch .. not by much but just a touch ..
I'm going to disagree with you on a few points. #1 Resupply - You need to think about those small engagement fights. If they could be resupplied on the fly every 30 seconds it would be very over powering in small engagement fights. And it also become a very spammable weapon platform. #2 Health - If you want a turret that has more health for killing infantry, then use the AI mana turret. #3 Damage - It is an auto turret it is not meant to replace the damage output of an engineer like the Mana turrets would, since the engineer enters it like a vehicle. As it is an engineer can stand right next to or behind their turret and fire on the same target as the turret, you need to take that into consideration for its DPS. You also need to understand that these weapons scale very quickly and there are no limitation with how many can be in close proximity. People need to realize these turrets are meant to be used in conjunction with the engineer that placed them. They are not meant to go 1 vs 1 against another player, because that would be incredibly OP. I used mine last night for about 2 hours. They easily killed 10-15 players in that time, and it worked awesome in the three roles you described. It killed players, It worked a bit as a deterrent, since often it was targeted before I was and it helped cover my back as I was engaging other players, we also placed them around our sunderer as well as along the path that we where using to get to our objective and not only did they kill players they also alerted us to their presence....
I have seen very little of these and have yet to be killed by one. I think so far the worst two things are that these are a distraction for the attacker, which they should be but it annoys me, and the look. Seriously TRAY put your foot down . As an artist you can't let the current model slide. This thing is just ugly.
There are also currently no upgrades via certs for the turret as there are with the manned ones. damage, reaction time, health, all of these could be upgrades.
I see a lot of people comparing this turret to the 3 stage engineer turret from TF2 when spitfire is more like the engineer's mini-turret. Let's compare. They both have: Lights and beeping to let you know it's there Low DPS Low HPs Given these similarities, the spitfire should be played as you would the mini-turret. However, I believe the reason this isn't happening is because of two things. It's size - The spitfire's model is far larger than it should be. This contributes heavily to the mindset that it should be powerful. Making it even a little smaller would reinforce how fragile this turret is to players and cause them to use it in more appropriate areas. Inability to be repositioned - Battles in PS2 are very fluid. The front lines shift constantly and having to leave one of your main defensive tools behind is counterintuitive. The worry is that an engineer could keep spamming his turret as soon as it gets destroyed if he could simply place another without re-equipping. A simple cooldown of 15-30 seconds would stop this from happening yet allow the engineer to adapt better to the changing face of battle.
I could get behind this. I'm find with it being as weak as it is, but having to resupply every time an enemy soldier looks at it is really frustrating.
Basically I'm going to agree with this...perhaps a longer time than 30 seconds. Being able to bunny hop turrets to quickly could be an issue. I'm still on the fence about having to go to a term for them. I'm really not overly annoyed. BUT yes, they are a great tool but they are to large of a target vs how much damage they do. They should be smaller and harder to hit to compensate for the damage they throw out. Here is were I change my mind in terms of opinion. A little more HP on them wouldn't be terrible...or just make them smaller and harder to hit. Either way I wouldn't mind. However the damage part I just can't agree with. Remember these things are auto aim and they do not miss. If it can hit you...it WILL hit you. I was working with a friend dropping 2 of these in the same area. They REALLY turn a fight. Just one can help balance a fight vs a heavy assault. Two of them can really throw some useful damage...three is OMG amazing. Giving them any more damage will risk them being OP and end up seeing them get some odd nerf...and end up in that SOE wasteland of things that gets over buffed then over nerfed OVER AND OVER again.
Must change...... Either unlimited deploys like other turrets with current small health. OR Current resupply at terminal with ridiculous large health. Damage - 100 dmg/bullet at 10m 50 at 50m, fire in long bursts, 400 rpm. Don't know what to think of it, but 1v1 against infantry, not so good. Take turret out with half clip. Otherwise, stick with the default turret and don't waste your money.
not many people may like this idea, but i would like to see Spitfires be buffed heavily in DPS and HP but make it cost 100 Nanites to deploy one. that would make them less spammy and more like a tactical support tool instead of the bleeping icecream dispensing machine it currently is
Frankly I'd rather them be more like the TF2 turrets with a no-deploy radius. Powerful but limited. Say what you will about balancing huge numbers and massive warfare, but when you're indoors you really don't want to cater to a "spam 'em all" kind of placement logic. Even if they are balanced to not be OP when spammed, they will still make a concert of BEEPBEEPs, lag the server and reduce clientside performance, ergo one powerful "boss" is better than 20 spammable annoyance machines. Or they could make them like the PS1 spitfires which were balanced around huge numbers because engineers could actually place them in huge numbers, (up to 10 per engineer I think). They were also more powerful, but could be avoided by walking or crouching which was an interesting mechanic.
