Spitfire Turret - Well done SOE

Well done SOE...I think you nailed the spitfire on the head...

I've read a few of the complaints about the Spitfire turret and I think they are hogwash. You nailed and you nailed it well.

Size - I Think it is a good size not too small not to big.

Damage - Solo it might feel weak, but it isn't, its just about perfect. You need to work with the turret and not expect it to do all the work, fire at the same target, utilize your AI mines and you can get lot's of kills. Positioning is key...In groups these things are monsters and honestly this scares me a little bit, but I think they go down quick enough that this shouldn't be a huge problem.

Range - Again, I think you nailed it. 50m gives good coverage, but it 's not too far that the enemy can't engage them and take them out.

Survivability - Perfect...I know some people want this auto-turret to be able to take on another player 1 vs 1, but that would be a huge mistake. I've also found that if you have a maxed out repair tool, you can often keep the turret up vs another player provided they are not launching a rocket at it. I had a few instances where an enemy player engaged my turret and would have killed it, but I started repairing it and it managed to kill the other player, that IMO is perfect.



Resupply - At first I was a little concerned about needing to go to a terminal once your turret is destroyed, but I think for balance purposes it needs to be that way and it also keeps it from being spammed too much, especially in smaller engagements, as these turrets are definitely a force multiplier.

I think those have been the 5 big complaints I have read about the turret and I would have to say I disagree with all of them. I think you guys nailed it and I think this turret will not over power smaller fights of less then 12 players and even in the larger fights I do not think their damage output will scale too badly.

I've heard some issues about tracking and such, but I really didn't notice anything too far off. And I just assumed sensor shield is shielding players from being tracked or targeted, until they do something, that would expose them.

I used the turret last night for a couple hours off and on and I got quite a few kills directly from the turret and many more as I finished the players off in combination with my turret. IMO anyone complaining about the turret just isn't utilizing it properly or has an expectation of its performance that would cause some serious balance issues. Well done DEVS, I think you got it just about perfect and I am sure it might need a few tweaks here and there but over-all, I think it works really well.

Hogwash or not the targetting and deciding when/if to fire delay is plain terrible.

On the few times I think mine has actually fired the DPS actually seems lower than the DPS from a PS1 Spitfire was/is, which might be fine IF it actually targetted and fired in a remotely reliable manner.


Only 2 kills (both from the same mine + spitfire trap) from well over 6 hours play with it (and 1 assist), and I spent much of my PS1 time as a defensive engi.

not gonna lie, the turret is pretty awesome except for how fast it dies from small arms. it could use a resistance tweak in that category.

Thank you for being honest OP, a lot of people in these forums are having a kneejerk reaction since their expectations were way off. The only thing SOE should investigate are potential bugs with turrets not shooting. Other than that this is really a Learn to Play issue

Spitfires are not "Set it and forget it" as they shouldn't be

My only complaint would be that I think they are too vulnerable to small arms. I think turrets should be more of a job for a Heavy or concentrated small arms but not just 1 dude with a pistol. Up their resistance to small arms (or make it a cert the engineer can build up, perhaps as 1 of several "Utility" slots on the gun) and I think it'd be a lot more worthwhile.


That said, even in their present state, at least spitfires give engineers a turret that's not a deathtrap for them.

About that Fire delay& targeting... Do we know for sure if Sensor Shield is shielding players from being tracked or fired upon? Because, honestly that's what that delay feels like to me. I think this may be a case of the opposing player is running sensor shield and they are invisible to the turret, until they do something to break their sensor shield....

It might have lower DPS then PS1 Spitfires, I could not say for sure, but that is irrelevant. This isn't PS1 and for PS2 I think the damage output is just about right...

I do not know what to tell you, 2 kills in 6 hours of time, maybe you are bugged or you are not using it right... I got around 10-15 kills with it all alone in about 2 hours of play and that doesn't count the players I finished off with my own weapon or even the utility uses of the turret, such as spotting players and firing in the direction they are...

I think you understand why the developers have made the choices they have with this turret. Lots of people want this to be like another player if not better but people on the receiving end would feel like that's pretty unfair if an auto turret offers too much contention.

I thought about that as well, but I came to the conclusion they are fine just as they are...And the reason is, that they are already force multipliers any more durability, would only increase that effect. I think increased durability would have a negative effect both in smaller scale fights, but also larger scale fights as players drop 5-10 around a sunderer. These turrets are going to be the bane of Light Assaults.

I would challenge one dude with a piston to take out a turret or group of turrets with at least one engineer repairing them. I think that is where the turrets really come into their own. Sure you can drop them and run away, but if you set up an ambush site or use the turret to augment your own attacks or defenses, then it is going to need more fire power.

PS1 was/is a lower DPS game, yet these seem to have lower still DPS (where as PS2 is a much higher DPS game), although to be honest it is diffcult for me to really judge what the effective DPS is because my turrets just don't seem to fire.

I don't know if some people/servers are bugged, but what makes me pretty sure something is up is the sheer lack of assists, just 1, surely if it was firing immediately at targets (like all the people saying it is fine seem to say it is - for them) then I'd have got somemore assists.

Some people are saying if you have more than 1 target within 50m it constantly changes to the nearest target and if that keeps changing then it basically never fires, but frankly even when I was using it in low density engagements it still didn't seem to be doing much if any better.

Currently if you ported a PS1 Spitfire turret directly into PS2 it would be 2-3 times as powerful and much more useful.

I think that because a developer said in the the dev thread post 35:

"If there are multiple valid targets in line of sight, it picks the closest one."

My only solution why the turret is not shooting for a lot of people is that the turret changes targets because everytime there is new enemy on the closest position. Maybe its a bug and the devs wanted to have it locked to one target but somehow it changes everytime. Its just a idea.

Well done? Are you kidding me?

I'll get right to the point...

...Spitfires are garbage. Waste of 1000 certs. I call it "The Amazing Spitfire Automated Do-Nothing Machine." It can't aim. It won't fire. It has paper mache for armor. And you can only place 1 of the worthless, beeping piles of rubbish.

SOE, every 6 months, you try to re-hash a feature that was alive and working well 10 years ago in PS1. You re-skin it, but keep the concept and the name as it used to be...and you try to pass it off as "new." And the new players are fooled, because they don't know any better.

But what's worse than recycling content and pretending it's "new" is that you seem to strip away any usefulness the ORIGINAL version had, smash it into 100 pieces to make sure it's totally broken, somehow get it PAST the test phase like this, and THEN you go live with it even though it doesn't work in even the slightest sense.

The old Spitfires were FANTASTIC. They had good range, they targeted quickly and accurately, and to compensate for their light armor, you could place MULTIPLE turrets without having to resupply. Why do you continue to break formulas that worked perfectly?!

Please fix the Spits so they do more than just beep. Infantry laughs at them, then walks up and melees them. Either that, or refund the certs and take them out of the game. Thanks.

I've seen other people's turrets; but, I'll be much more confident about them when I see tracers so I can actually tell they are working.

I actually think that's perfectly fair, as long as killing the turret counts the same as killing another player. It can't move, can only fire in short bursts, has a loud sound associated with it, and can't be used more than once without resupplying. As long as the thing was on par with an average player and not a good player, there shouldn't be an issue.

So, I went poking around the game files a bit with ps2ls, and found something that I thought would be a fantastic idea for a (re)design of the spitfire.

Performs pretty closely as it does now (minus the detection tomfoolery), but includes a small bit of defense to it, which justifies the low health of the rest of the turret. Quick render in Blender:



The little bit of shields would provide enough of a defensive mechanism that they wouldn't be destroyed by random fire, while the protrusion of the barrel would still allow accurate players to destroy it with the standard half clip right up the barrel.

It'd fix my main gripe about spending 1k certs on the thing.... >.>

Probably and it would be incredible OP as well. I'm with you I loved PS1 and I loved setting up Spitfires and mine fields in that game, but this is PS2 and what worked in PS1 isn't always going to work the same in this game, which I think is the case.

Also you need to take into consideration, the new spitfires can be placed next to each other. The original PS1 Spitfires had about a 20m sphere of influence, that was their effective range and no other turrets could be placed in that sphere...

Well my experience has been different then yours. I got plenty of kills and it seemed to work well. I would like verification from a DEV, but I am pretty sure Sensor Shield masks players from the turrets, which may be why you think it is not tracking.

I played PS1 as well and the spitfires from PS1, did not have better range, they were easy to defeat. I think your nostalgia is getting the best of you. You could also not place those PS1 spitfire next to each other, they had about a 20m sphere of influence that restricted placing more then one turret in that sphere and they could be placed indoors. The new spitfire do not have those limitations, WHICH IS HUGE!!!

giving it a partial impenetrable defence shield on the front would be actually an interesting idea, as long as you would be still able to destroy it from the front by being very accurate

So you're saying you'd rather use your Engineer AI MANA turret, aka "The Amazing Get-Sniped-In-the-Forehead Machine"?

Well good luck with that.

In my opinion, however crappy the Spitfire may be, realize it's an alternative to the AI MANA turret, which is an engineer tool that's pretty far down the list of useful toys.

The spitfires are awesome. I once held a tech plant solo for 15 minutes against a small squad. All I needed was an AMS, some mines, and a spitfire. The spitfire always marked my enemies and stopped them from rushing blindly, and when the turret locked on, I blasted them from another angle. When you have more than one thing shooting at once, enemies have a hard time reacting and prioritizing targets. The spitfires beauty lies in confusion.