Why can swarms take out a centurion in one hit?

Them having proximity detonation is pretty lame for that level of firepower too.

Mayhap they should use energy, like the avalons did. And maybe a little bit of a reduction on the prox would be nice. But it should still be prox. They're not that hard to dodge.

Quick confirmation of my math -- 750 * 8 = 6,000, correct?
...Why then can a fully armored SkyCommand (20,000 armor) be wiped out by one salvo?
-:sigma.SB

not hard to dodge... as long as you either have a good connection with good experice + luck, or turbo away (which would be a victory for the swarmer).
But, dodging aside, it's doing more damage than it should be (lvl 2 rockets?).

Good question.

Ok, well, I did find a bug where it says Chaos Swarm Missiles do 750 damage in the Buy menu but it says 850 (which is how much damage they actually do) in the Ammo menu.
That explains how it can kill a centurion in 1 salvo. It doesn't explain how a SkyCommand could be killed in 1 salvo.

Is it really a problem that it can kill a centurion in one salvo? A cent can easily avoid the things, and we hear in all the other threads about how the cent is too mighty anyway. As a cent-lover, I don't mind that I can slice up a heavy but might get my head handed to me if I'm not careful.

well it might not be that much of a problem for cent in 1 set IF they didn't hit 95% if you don't turbo and kill other ships in 2 sets. The launcher holds 5 sets!

there shouldnt be any one hit kill weapons on any ships, especiallya one hit kill wepoan that requires absolutely no skill to use. The only really effective way to avoid swarms in any fighter ship is to turbo away till they are out of ammo, at which point they run away.

We used to be able to dodge swarms without turbo. I did it when we were CTFing. So what changed since then? Are the old swarms equal to our current Locusts and the Chaos's better?

you dodged because the chaos swarms user wasnt skilled.
and i doubt you are the best dodger in game too.

nerf it will only make it useless.

i have no problem against swarms users.
and dont known why there are so many complain...

He used to be able to dodge because this was before they upgraded the missle code. I used to be able to dodge them without turbo too, and I know I'm not the best dodger in the game.

Swarms weren't very skilled then and they don't require much skill now (unless "skill" is get close and shoot like a sunflare).

Well it's either way too fast (something like 85m/s), way too agile (although it does say medium...), too much damage (let's say 850 x 8 = 6800), too much prox (20m!!!), too many rounds (5), too much fuel (no one mentions this? half a minute!), 0 energy to fire (fire and run), and/or... probably too light (2000kg... lightning mines are 2400kg... you'd think with the ability to hold and fire 50missiles in 6 seconds would make it really heavy).

I thought that the original problem was that 1 salvo of Swarms could blow up a Centaur, Ragnarok, Prometheus, or Marauder , ships with between about 10,000 and 20,000 armor... but the missiles are only supposed to do like 8*750 or whatever, which is like 6,000 damage. Even two swarms salvos hitting at once, that is 12,000 damage and many of the ships variants have more armor than that. And many of those missiles should be exploding at proximity, not right on top of the target, which means the damage should be less than the ideal maximum. Am I right?

As for the rest of it, I don't know about all that. But It does seem there may be some kind of bug in the damage code.

I think that if the missiles were less fire-and-forget than they are now, then they'd balance out nicely.

Something as simple as requiring the crosshair to remain on the target for the missiles to continue seeking, I think would change missile combat dramatically. Right now, lots of players, especially when ctcing, will lob swarms at the nearest player, then another player, and then several at the transport. Or maybe even that the player has to be pointed at the target (ie. so that guns can autoaim) upon firing.

The ability to just lob missiles at everything while boosting, or fire missiles at a target behind you, seems to make them a little too easy to use - this just encourages newbies to use them as opposed to learning how to fire guns. Either of the two changes that I suggested above would have major changes to how missiles are used (different missiles have different targeting systems, the higher level missiles - both large and small - use the second system, while lower level missiles -both large and small - have the first system... I dunno). The slower ships would have to fire them from greater ranges so they can keep up with faster ships, while the faster ships would be more effective with them at shorter ranges, though they would be adversely affected by the limited ammo, that kind of thing.

ohh... I _love_ this idea

Hmm... On the subject of bad damage calculations, maybe there's some inertial damage being added in- the explosions could be 'forcing' the ship into other explosions, causing added damage from impacting a solid object even though there's no solid object around, or causing some damage to happen multiple times as the ship's jerked around.

it's the chunky salsa effect!

that entire post by crippled explains why swarms are so busted quite nicely, and I like his solution for it, make missles have a targeting laser. If its not painted on the target, it doesnt hit the target, nice n simple.

Yeah, I agree with Crip. There shouldn't be ANY fire and forget weps.

And it IS possible to dodge swarms... If you're using a very fast ship. You can't dodge them in most of the ships right now without turboing, because the average MASS of ships has increased.

Also, level/cost barriers shouldn't be included in the balance of any wep/ship. Those barriers should be used in such a way as to set a learning curve for pilots, so that pilots learn cheaper/low level weps first, and then start to learn other ones.