State of Valkyrie Circa Higby Pls 10/1

Quick, fair buff would be to fix the sniper rifle resistance of the valkryie to the same as the ESF. A day ago I was bored in VR and started shooting the valk with a rams .50m. I thought it did a little too much damage, put a few clips into both the valk and a nearby mosquito. The valk had taken far more damage than the ESF. I think I was able to completely destroy the valk with less than the default ammo pool for the rams.

The Valk would be far more useful as a transport vehicle if there was actually a need for transport vehicles in the game.

Right now, the game as devolved into deploy-side... between spawn beacons / squad sunderers / squad galaxies (all of which have UNLIMITED range) plus the reinforcements requested markers.

- When you become squad leader, your beacon should go on immediate cooldown (which fixes the exploit where squads play change-the-leader to get fresh beacons up).

- Spawning distance should be limited to anything within 400m, or the next base up the lattice.

- Spawn to squad beacon / galaxy / sunder should be limited to 1500m.

- Reinforcements requested should be information only and not provide an easy way for people to spawn in.

- When players enter the game, they should be spawned at the warp gate (or stuff them into the VR room).

I really think that the Valk should really be more of an anti-infantry air platform than something like an ESF, a Lib, or even half a galaxy. Kinda like how the Flash functions well for anti-infantry with some armor fighting ability.

That might work if the valk had the HP to withstand small arms but as it is right now a bunch of infantry fire with a rocket or two thown in can down a valk. It needs to serve the dual roles it was designed for 1 Light gunship and 2 light transport. As a number have said it's more akin to a harasser than a flash in how it combines firepower and transport ability.

The only thing the Valkyrie is really strong at: Sunderer hunting. A Valkyrie with a Hellion and four HAs will utterly demolish a Sunderer or two but the passengers need to bail out because it won't survive long beyond first contact. It's worth it, though, to knock out their spawn.

That sound a lot like what I said about covert drops on a sundy with a few LA with C4, or heavys, or engineers. Yeah it works but pretty much the second you are over the sundy all the troops need to jump out. Try getting a few non-platton/squad members to coordinate on that and see how fast that tactic falls apart. The fact is those people just running around not in a squad don't have the chance to pass info and orders as easily.

The valk just doesn't do any of the roles it was designed for that decently. It just lacks in every category other than how nimble it is in jumping around a base. If it had a sundy like AMS that random players could spawn at and had better speed and small arms resistance than it would be a great rapid transport. If it had at least 1 more gunner's seat, more HP and armor it would make a great ground support gunship. However it doesn't do either of those jobs that well.

With the redeploy system we really don't need a transport and most of the time Libs & Gals are far better at being gunships than the valk ever comes close to being. I often feel like they designed the valk to support armor columns as they push down a road to the next lattice. If that were the case then the passengers need to be turned into door gunners or it need a vehicle repair/resupply function.

As it stand right now the valk can hop around a base like a dragon fly but just doesn't have the weapons, armor, speed, or versatility to be the type of unit it was meant to be.

The Valk would be okay if literally anything else in the game weren't originally designed to appeal to idiots. The reason the Valk doesn't work in a 'support role' is because there's absolutely no need for 'support' in a game that lets me chain-pull vehicles, spawn anywhere, respawn nearly instantly, and pull anything I want anytime I want.

If this were a slower-paced, more cerebral game where it was harder to blow up everything you see, it might have some use. But it's not.

Liberator should be modified to become more like a bomber, and valkyrie to be a proper gunship.
The "infantry transport" role is ridiculous, just like it is in case of the harasser.

Galaxy at max height with 4 fully certed drifter jet LAs does the same thing except the gal will never go down without coordinated fire from ESFs. And since drifters can make it out of the hex from max height, good luck figuring out where they are coming from.

Everything the Valk can do, the Gal can do, and typically do better and survive longer.

Still no cloak ...

While it's true that the Galaxy can do everything the Valkyrie can do better - in most cases - a Gal is more expensive and isn't as nimble. Either way, I agree that with current game mechanics there's not much use for the Valkyrie. As I said in another thread, it was very clearly intended to be a direct action penetrator (DAP), akin to the MH-60L Blackhawk.

Sadly, there's not much practical use for such a thing in PS2, at least not in the Valk's current state - we're in agreement there. In order to function as a DAP in PS2 it'll need a heavier armament and more armor/HP for improved loiter time. Get in, off-load foot mobiles, provide some support against hardened ground targets, and get out.

Yes this is exactly the direction the valk needs to go in. Though to actually get used the redeploy mechanics have to be redone other wise there is little incentive to use any type of transport vehicle over just spawning foot troops or spamming vehicles for max firepower.

Indeed.