Howdy folks, Pure and simple question for fellow engies: is the spitfire autoturret worth buying? It doesn't appear to be super popular; is it really so underpowered? If so, do the devs have any plans to buff/rebalance it in the future? Cheers
It is very meh. Think of it as your own BR 20 that will shoot every enemy it finds. The damage is pitiable, at best. Combine it with the relatively low rate-of-fire and it can take a while to even drop that infiltrator, and has relatively low health as well, but not as low as everyone may think. For example, it takes 1 Phoenix rocket to down an AI or AV MANA turret, but for the Spitfire it takes 2. It will attempt to shoot through your teammates, so don't put it near a choke-point where teammates like to go. Infiltrators can indeed 'hack' a spitfire turret, hence giving it to your enemies if left unattended for too long, and disabled for a time by EMP Grenades For it to be truly useful, the Spitfire must be babysat and repaired constantly, which is usually not worth the effort. You can only deploy one Spitfire before you have to go rearm at an infantry terminal to place another. Those are the downsides of the turret. The Ups are: It can be a deterrence for lone enemies that don't pay too much attention, and makes a really loud distinct beeping sound when it spots an enemy. They can hear this as well, too, so take caution. It fires pretty much straight up, making it somewhat useful for keeping an eye on the C4 fairies. However, it has trouble aiming down, making it mediocre with an elevation advantage. It can indeed kill, but there are better options for killing within the Spitfire's range anyway. Unlimited ammo? Since it aims at enemies immediately after spotting them, it can also help direct fire and attention. It's a very meh option, but I find it best used as a sort of alarm rather than a weapon with AI. Camping the air pad at a biolab with an enemy sundy below? Drop a spitfire behind your allies and aimed at the teleporter room, so you will have at least some sort of warning before you get flanked.
The spitfire is extremely weak, but at least it's not a deathtrap. I carry a spitfire by default, because in 90% of situations, the other two turrets are totally unusable except as deployable cover. As already mentioned, the spitfire is best thought of as a proximity alarm rather than an actual defensive weapon. It's also pretty good for defending a sunderer, since it's good at hitting c4 fairies and since you can resupply at the terminal to replace your paper turret.
I think I've died to a Spitfire ONCE and it was because I was running from 2 people and couldn't be bothered to shoot it.
Maybe use it if you use tanks? So if you jump out to repair you have your own little C4-fairy spotter? xD
i think the spitfire is useful for when your solo defending a room. claymores at both the doors spitfire in the middle so it can see both, and you ducking down behind covor. when the claymores are gone its just you and the guys running in with the added benefit of a lil more damage. no more will you see the "one more bullet and i woulda had him" cuz the spitfire is shooting also. all be it weeny pistol dmg, but enough to keep you alive when it counts. its also great for ambushes. people see and hear spitfires a mile away and shoot at them which is a great opportunity to burst from covor n waste them. all in all i think the spitfires need to be about 40% smaller, but they are still somewhat useful to have.
You could duck tape a beamer to a motion spotter and it'd be more effective at killing than the spitfire
Don't use it for damage, don't use it for killing, use it as an advanced Motion Spotter that alerts everyone in the vicinity to the presence of an enemy. Especially on the "farming ridge" on the Crown the Spitfire is a 100% foolproof way to stop LAs from killing the tanks. Set it up near control points when the enemy is taking the next base to stop infils from pre-capping the points. Set it up on the turret deck on the Tech Plant to keep infiltrators from hacking turrets (of course, stay near it to keep them from hacking it itself), etc.
I bought this thing a bit hastily, I thought "wow a sentry turret! Just like Borderlands! Must have!" I was so so disappointed, you cant even put it on ceilings or walls. That'll teach me for not researching first.
Yes, but not as a source of damage. It's extremely low damage, thus, damage is not it's strong suit. What it is good for is the loud, audible *BLEEP* it makes when it starts firing at a target. If you have a spotter implant active, anything it shoots will be spotted for everyone. This is especially nice to place near friendly sunderers, tanks, etc - if any C4 faeries drop in, or if there's an infiltrator skulking around - their first appearance will be accompanied by an audio warning and weak, but still somewhat useful automatic turret fire.
I dont play engie much and being on the recieving end i find the worst thing about them, as many say is the beep. Its a complete '**** when you have just snook up on that group of 5 heavies and c4 in hand... BEEP BEEP BEEP rattatatrat Your stood with your pants down getting pelted by peas as the heavies turn round, point and laugh. But they die so fast, if they arent actually covering anyone they go down in half a mag totally un-noticed. Do they cound towards auraxium kills if you take one out?
Don't know about anyone else, but I'd consider it perfectly balanced if instead of having to resupply it after each placement it was placed on like a 3-5 minute cooldown.
If you are engy who rarely ever uses the other mana turrets you may find it more useful as you can just set it somewhere and go about your way like normal and be pleasantly surprised when suddenly get a kill. Remember: it goes away when you change classes.
I wouldn't tell you not to get it, but I would tell you to prepare to be extremely underwhelmed, and that you will likely tire of it very quickly. It is a washing machine sized glorified motion sensor. That happens to fire low damage projectiles at an extremely low rate. I'm not sure why they called it a 'spitfire' unless they were referring to the volcanic vulgar verbage flying out of Engineer's mouths about how useless it really is. If they wanted to give it a name more suited to its actual performance they should have called it a 'Boilover'. As a cloaker you can uncloak in plain sight of it and destroy it with any sidearm before you take any significant damage. As a C-4 fairy you can hover over/past an AMS and get rid of a couple bricks before you come close to being tickled to death by it. It's pathetic. I honestly don't know any competent player that would ever be deterred by the presence of a 'boilover' except to not give away there presence by activating it or destroying it. If you could place up to 3 at a time so you could triangulate and have intersecting fields of fire it would be less useless than it is now, and would certainly still fall far short of being OP.
Thanks for the responses guys. My fears of it being underwhelming have been pretty much confirmed, I ended up spending my certs on a new harasser gun and that's been great fun. Knowing Planetside 2's history of things being OP, I can see why the devs decided to be so conservative with this type of game mechanic. If the turret was actually effective at the slightest it would almost certainly be spammed and abused. Defending against a zerging army with turrets would not be fun at the slightest (TF2 sentry spam anyone?). C4 fairies would go extinct, engineers would probably replace the HA as the most formidable infantry unit. Still, I'd like the turret to get buffed to make it actually competitive. I would suggest making the turret have more reliable tracking and shooting ability, at the price of only being able to deploy one within a certain radius ( much like sunderer deployment).
