yeah, i know youve all heard me bitching about swarms before.

but seriously, 6000HP damage in one volley is ridiculous.

consider the flares "nerf" bringing one tube's damage to 18k total.

jackhammers have 24k in a set.

screamers are essentially torpedos, and aren't of much use in any battles with the scale we're used to- compared to the other weaponry on offer.

chaos swarms max out at well over 30k in total... are very easy to hit with, and are pretty much an "i win" button in a heavy vs. heavy battle. if im using the most broken ship in the game, then i expect to be able to dodge weapons which take essentially no player skill to use.

don't pick that statement apart, its deliberate irony.

something's slightly off here, especially since they're fire-and-forget. they're really quite dangerous now they head to intercept rather than chase directly, not sure when this started to happen but it means you can't go sharper than 45 degrees towards the swarms with most ships. im sure those of you who fight in uber-cents/valks find them a mere trifle to deal with, but frankly they sap the fun out of heavy-on-heavy battles.

judging from the diplomatic silence over CP's awesome missile change thread, dramatic changes like the ones he suggested ain't gonna happen. until then, chaos swarms need a little love from ye olde nerf stick.

either give them one less volley, lower the damage of both swarms by ~150 per warhead, lower the prox radius (that's the real killer, but changing it could leave a stingray situation), or lower the speed a bit. if this *is* a twitch-based combat game, i want my ass handed to me by the pilot- and not the missiles.

or, here's the big idea. give them a hefty safety (contact-only for 3-5s), and turn them into a distraction/support weapon only- no more swarm-ramming. i dont honestly see why rockets got this tweak yet none of the homing missiles did.

what im seeing now is a "oh, im not going to beat this guy like this- lets bring some swarms" mentality among quite a few players, because they can simply run in the general direction of target, unload a volley, and bugger off while you frantically try to dodge the blue death-warheads. and let me tell you this, if you think a ragnarok is scary with swarms, try a prom.

Yeah. Being his by swarms sucks.

Light ships can easily avoid dodge/outrun any of that but this essentially means breaking off any combat until you can circle the opponent and come back for another round (wich typically means dodging against the next volley).

From another heavy, including the Centaur (the lightest of the heavies I suppose), it's very hard to cope with swarms. I usually take one full hit and try to deal with evading any next volley if I can't down the target with whatever I have on board.

You best weapon against swarms is to ridicule your opponent over 100! Bah!

But I dont think we should nerf the swarm for that matter.

I have no trouble dodging swarms in heavy ships (Rag, Taur), unless I mess up. I can even counter-attack to some extent while dodging the swarms, although that's a lot more difficult & I'm more likely to mess up than if I just turbo until the swarms timeout.

I have no problem with swarms, they're already next to useless, nerfing them would just make them moreso.

yes, uncle dave, simply put : they are fine, its just that when people use them in rags, or 'tars, they stock 2 of 'em at once. it has 5 shots, so it balences itself out. if you stick some flares on a hornet...

Just let us shoot them down.
This would be very hard to do with lasers unless we could target and then auto aim them.
But with flares it'd be a sinch.

Targetable missiles would be kickass, yes, Kix.

Seekers aren't usually a problem for me, since I'm usually in a light & fast ship, hear the "pet beeps", and can figure out how to avoid them.

It's the sunflares and the crazy 30 m proximity that kills me all the time. Oh and the AGT.

But hehe, yeah a swarm rag is usually a death sentence for any other heavy ship. But usually, any rag without AGT or flares dies quickly to those fast & light ship pilots.

I never fly ships that can mount swarms. I am usually on the receiving end of things. Yet, I would much prefer to keep them as they are. Swarms are the only viable defense for a heavy ship against a light fighter (minus SkyProm, which is not a heavy ship but more like a heavily armored Orion Centurion). It also allows heavy ships to effectively use rails in combination with homers. Swarms are still easy to outrun in a light ship, and when you fly a heavy, better get used to being hit. Thats the idea of it. You will be hit, but you have more hull and deadlier weapons. And yeah, btw, nerf the SkyProm for crying out loud.

"Swarms are the only viable defense for a heavy ship against a light fighter"

But they SUCK against light fighters. All they succeed in doing is providing an "I WIN" button against heavy ships.

If you let them hit, they are lethal, but they are so easy to avoid and carry so little ammo, you usually only bag a gung-ho moron or a person who's distracted. So, keep them as they are, sez I.

Swarms, when compared to the Stingray are rediculously overpowered. The Stingray is supposed to be a large and powerful, abiet easy to dodge, guided warhead. In short, anti-heavy missiles. The swarms, on the other hand, are supposed to be less powerful cluster missiles that are much harder to dodge. Anti-Fighter insurance. However, swarms are more powerful than Stingrays, dedpite their relitively small warheads (volume-wise anyway). Thus, Stingrays fall into disuse, and Swarms are primarily used against heavies--the very thing whose hull is supposed to be too thick for the swarms to cause much harm. Its not the fault that the ship doesn't have enough armor, but that Swarm warheads are too powerful for even the heaviest hulls to withstand.

True, Swarms are heavier than Stingrays in terms of mass, are more expensive, and require a high liscense level, but in retrospect this has more to do with the launching and guidance mechanisms than the strength of the warhead. (after all, don't Mk2 Gauss cannons do less damage than the Mk1?)

yes, but they have a higher velocity and less energy/shot than the MkI.

honestly i'd like to see the swarms not fire in a voly like they do but rather have an extreemly low fire delay (so you can fire vollies of any size, from 2 missiles to the whole tube).

anyway, i don't have much of a problem with swarms from a balance sence. there are a number of ship hulls against which they are next to usless, and they aren't over used.

personaly i's like to see more good missiles (perhaps a missile designed for dogfighting that can down a cent with one hit, and has exelent tracking, but the ammo costs 100k per missile, and the tube only holds 3).

anyway, i agree that missiles should be destroyable by normal weaponsfire, but not that swarms are unbalanced (annoying maybe but not unbalanced).

Because most fighting is currently 1v1, swarms are annoying. I don't know how hard it would be to change, but if swarms were self targeting nearest opponents instead of being guided by your ships targeting, it might make it's name more understandable. I would have imagined swarms being just a flurry of missiles targeted at any ship it can find, but no.

Anywho, it's barely possible to dodge them in heavies while still combating. I think that's the point. But being that, they're fine as they are. You all get some swarm dodging practice in now.

uncle dave, I've killed niki, and two other people, with them all attacking at once in light ships (vults) in a rag with swarms.

I've even killed shape with them. it takes practise.

which side is everyone on? im getting a bit confused.

I love swarms. I also hate them. There are 2 kinds of swarm user: The pilot who uses swarms skillfully, and the pilot who is just lazy. The lazy swarm user is easy to beat. The skilled swarm user is harder to beat, but still at a disadvantage, especially to a prom jock such as yourself.

I'll load up some swarms when I'm harassed by a prom jock. The prom is such an advantage that it deserves some swarms. Prom pilots should only attack in B8 after getting consent.

--Harpo

Lets get back onto the specific topic of swarms. I don't mind them, but I do kinda mind when a pilot closes in on me, empties all his tubes at me, and then runs like hell. Maybe a hefty power drain would slow things up a little.

Swarms definitely have a problem. They're not supposed to be a problem to heavies, but the lights. They're easy to avoid from a distance, but up close, it's really easy to deal a huge blow to a heavy.

My suggestions:
Control over how many missles per volley
Much less damage per missle
A bit more speed, but less prox.
*Make them spread out in different directions*

fooz, light ships like the wraith or the hog can't carry enough to make much of a diffrence. their's does around 3000 dmg per shot , and when you only have 5 of them, it isn't worth the wieght, you could use screemers instead, have a better chance of hitting, and have 10 of them.