The point we are trying to make is that swarms are not under your control, they are under their own. You can increase your chances by firing close, but it is still ultimately the target pilot vs. the game AI.

Neutrons- or any direct fire weapon for example- require the user to be in a specific position with a specific velocity in reference to his enemy. Hitting with them is entirely dependent on how both ships move. Case in point: If my ship never moves, you CAN miss me with neuts and CANNOT miss me with guided missiles. Akan the Swarmer can face away from me at a distance of 1000m and hit if I don't move. He can also hit me if I am behind him, even if he never moves, so long as I fail to get out of the way. That is why we call it a 'no skill' weapon.

Missiles require defender failure every time, while not necessarily attacker triumph. Guns require both every time.

Charging to within 50m of an enemy before you fire is not 'skill.' Especially not relative to the acrobatics direct-fire weapon users put their ships through to hit a moving target.

In response to your comment about rails then- yes, you can't dodge one once fired. Their hit/miss is virtually knowable the instant the trigger is pulled. They are like the perfect opposite of swarms, which cannot be dodged until fired. Up until that railgun fires, you can move your ship, and every degree your position changes means the rail user has to compensate. Try them sometime and tell me if you hit even half as many times as you do with swarms, because you will not.

To recap: guns require you to maneuver better than your opponent, aka skill. Missiles, especially swarms, only require your opponent fails to evade. Half of the formula is missing, and said half is your effort.

Rails can absolutely be dodged.

That would depend upon (1) the distance between the ships at the time of firing and (2) the velocity of the pellet--ADV rail pellets move at 480 m/s. I would bet that at even fairly "medium" distances the alloted reaction time often precludes an intentional dodge in response to a pilot's reconition that pellets are inbound.

Which is not to say you cannot be moving ahead of time with the intent of avoiding whatever might be coming at you--but an ADV rail pellet fired at 100m distance (ignoring any forward or reverse movement by the platform and target) will hit in ~0.2 seconds. The fast side of average human reaction time is 0.2 seconds, with 0.27 seconds being the slower side (admittedly, I'm working off Wikipedia here).

Rails are used at greater (and lesser) distances than 100m, but my point is that dodging rails is usually balls ass hard if you're not already moving out of the way when they're fired.

Good post, lecter.

Rails are dodgable, even in a dogfight.

600m for rails is, because of the low velocity, not a frequently attempted shot.

Ah, you edited.

"Missiles, especially swarms, only require your opponent fails to evade."

I beg to differ on the missile part. It does take some excellent skill to hit an excellent opponent with them.

But on the swarms I agree, they are in fact extremely easy to dodge. The trick here is to not dodge too early or they will adjust and get you as you keep moving, rather when they are close do a sudden movement far enough for them to miss you and then you are good for another round of fighting your opponent until they come back, if they do at all.

Yet, they are fun to fire off and now more than ever fun to look at.

IMO their destructive power should be increase alot as to make them THE weapon to get rid of all the complaining, swarm fearing pirates at once. They really can not dodge them! Buh! hehe...

There are other excellent uses for swarms that I would not talk about here though.


M. Duncan
Commander [VPR]
m.duncan@viperguild.com

One great use for swarms: blowing the fuck out of any species of Moth as it approaches a WH. Bonus points for doing so with a Moth of yer own, the better to collect the sweet, sweet cargoes.

And I see the thread digresses. Do you gentlemen agree, or do you not, that guided munitions are weapons that take less skill to effectively employ than direct fire weapons?

"Missiles require defender failure every time, while not necessarily attacker triumph. Guns require both every time."
Reposted so ya'll don't need to scroll.

By that token, an idiot dodging poorly is as much defender failure as it is attacker skill. While someone can dodge swarms fired from 200 meters away, which is a triumph of defender skill over attacker failure. It';s not so much about skill as it is brain matter; Missiles can be quite effective if the one using them has half a brain for timing.

While I agree with that statement, I also have to add that if you do get hit by swarms and you're not being hit by something else at the same time, you deserve what's coming to you.

When used as a primary weapon, swarms should NEVER hit you. All you have to do is turbo around for a few seconds out of weapons range until the swarms die out, then close in and go for the kill.

When used as a secondary weapon, swarms DO take some skill and tactics to use and they are much more deadly. Instead of just firing them off and hoping they hit, the best swarm tactic is to try to bounce your target with a flare THEN fire swarms. If your timing is right, after bouncing a fighter with a flare they almost never have time to dodge swarms that are fired immediately after.

So yes, missiles do not take skill to use when used as a primary weapon. But they also don't take skill to dodge.

When used as a secondary weapon, they do take some skill and timing and they are, in turn, much more difficult to dodge.

Lecter, yeah. I was not going to say that. That of course had to come from you. ;-P


M. Duncan
Commander [VPR]
m.duncan@viperguild.com

Swarms are cheap, at best skill-less fire-and-forget weaponry, at worst framerate-killing beeping mild annoyances.

But, that's in the context of PvP duel-like combat.

When used against capships, fine. When used against Tridents, fine. Borderline whether using tham against Behemoths and/or Proms is OK or not.

Using them is ALWAYS cheap, however, in my opinion. It's been ages since I've equipped them besides as a joke.

They're efficient. If I want to trade, or not be attacked, I usually equip them, as quite a few should be able to confirm.

I agree that they require far less skill than energy weapons or dumbfire rockets, but they do not require no skill at all. Being able to dodge is still a necessity, or else you won't be able to survive, no matter what. Granted, it's not a skill directly required for firing the swarms, but it's still required.

The problem I have with swarms is not so much dodging them, but what happens if they hit. They have SO much damage potential that if you're unlucky enough to not dodge all the spam inevitably thrown your way one hit and you're effectively dead. Even if the first volley doesn't kill you, it knocks you so far off kilter that the next volley will finish you. Since most people empty their entire ammo store as fast as possible, there's alot of flying missiles to dodge.

That said, if you're pushing in and time your first dodge, there's almost no reason you should get hit the second time they come round, because by that time, your target should be dead.

I saw one person use them to get someone running from them, then they railed the shit out of the boosting fighter. It can be a skillfull weapon, though rarely seen. Most often, it's an excuse.

For good pvp-ers swarms are a lame weapon.
For newbies they represent means to score an occasional pk or save them while they are running for their life.
For lamers and lousy pvp-ers swarms are the ultimate weapon.
As long as swarms are a legitimate weapon in VO, this will not change.

I beg to differ, Bojan.

> . >

< . <

Ever since that trice-darned mystic snuggled me into CLM, she hasn't let me use swarms....even though CLM booted me > .>

Gurls.

Impavid, I do not use more than one volley at once, since I do not know if I'll have to defend myself against another attacker right afterwards.

People who swarm-spam do not have anything else besides the current target in mind. I would like to distance myself from that part of the playerbase, since I think that I am able to see beyond that.

That said, bojan's estimate is pretty correct, I'm a lousy PvPer, and as such, swarms are pretty efficient. It doesn't mean that I solely use swarms, though.

You are not a lousy pvp-er toshiro and I know you use swarms only for defense when you are trading.
As for BG, well... he begs to differ with everything I said because swarms are the only weapon he can actually fight good with. He made an art out of using swarms but without them he is just an average VO pvp-er.

bollox, tosh here doesnt use swarm only for trading, he uses swarms everytime he fight in a taur, i remember fighting 3 Vipers in Verasi last week, all of a sudden i heard beeping behind me Tosh and his swarms.

He wasnt just flying by either on his trade route, he fired swarms at me for the next 10 times when i came back to fight the vipers, so tosh is a swarmer end of story.

I can say with a clear conscience that I have not broken my principle of not firing the first shot, at least concerning your persona, Norse.

I also do not attack people when I see them being engaged by one or multiple foes without asking, either.

I ask that you take back your accusations, except the one about me using swarms.