^^ I think you misunderstood my post. I'm talking about the lights and heavies on the receiving end.

swarms do a lot more than 3000 in a volley. try double that.

Correction... Screamer tubes have 16.

Jack tubes have 12

As beolach said, swarms are generally easy enough to avoid... the only time you have trouble with them is when you attempt to counterattack at a bad time, or if you get in too close to avoid them (which usually happens when you counterattack at a bad time)

I do think that UD has a point though abou the damage - no weapon should be able to annihilate an apponent in only two volleys (or one volley with two tubes) With their refire rate, it's a simple enough matter to swarm-charge a heavy ship pilot with four flights at close quarters, and pop them without effort or giving them time to engage.

I'm all for reducing the refire rate by about 66% - if they want to fire them quickly, they'll need to chainfire them, which would reduce their "oh shit" factor significantly without making them any less effective from a tactical standpoint.

I sort of like the idea of giving them a conact-only safety for the first 2-3 seconds of flight, except for the fact that such a safety would completely eliminate their effectiveness agaisnt light ships in close-combat (which is bad enough as it is)

so here's what I suggest:

5% reduction in damage
66% increase in firing delay

Well, despite the lack of response to my missile suggestions, I'll post them again to remind people what they were all about

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/9080

sunflares need to be toned down more than anything. saying swarms is a brainless weapon is the funniest thing ive ever heard. lets make sunflares 0 proximinity. id love to see how the kill rate drops then.

Yeah, that's the spirit! Make them a 1000Kg mass, slow projectile velocity weapon, with no auto aim, and a 0 prox range! That will solve the problem, that flares can actually kill people. The fact that no weapons designer worth the spit from an itani whore would ever produce such a dumb weapon is, of course, besides the point.

...

[insert penguins here]

I'm really liking CP's suggestions...

And since when were swarms anti-light fighter? Last time I checked... they did a number on anything heavy or mid and usually missed the itty bitty lights...

Arming distance change=good

flares are just fine imo (just start moving backwards when someone fires them at you), and to come back on topic, I dont see a real problem with swarms either to be honnest. Annoying, yes, but a problem, not realy.Try to stay between some roids when your fighting in a heavy and you can make em all impact on ice_yo.
The only thing I would like to see changed about them is the way they launch. It would be cool if they start in a radial pattern around your ships z axis and fly very chaotic (hey, chaos swarms, no?) in all directions towards the target, manga style. Oh, and a very long trail from each missile would be cool too.

What about being able to counter swarms/seekers with decoys? Releasing a decoy (thingie that floats in space with your signature luring the seekers to hit it) is a standard tactic in some other FPS space games. Decoys would have to be a weapon taking up an S port.

Decoys could have another tactical advantage besides taking missile hits; it would shop up as a dot on your enemy's radar (since it has the same signature), making it more difficult to target you (you'll see that it is a decoy when targeting it, but by then the real ship may already be taking advantage). That would definitely make decoys worth a weapons port. It also adds variety.

I support being able to shoot missiles too, combining that and decoys would make it possible for skilled players to twarth spammers, and makes close-range fights more interesting. That way you can humiliate the spammer by shooting down his missiles (if you hit one in a volley, it goes boom and detonates others within range), kill him in a fair fight, and _then_ humiliate him on 100. Or her. Heh.

I've held off commenting to get a feel for how the others felt about swarms (my weapon of choice).

I don't use them because they are an "I WIN" weapon, I use them because I can't, for the live of me, aim an energy weapon in a Centaur.

I used to get many kills with limited use of swarms but, recently, many pilots have gotten used to how they work and have effectively learned to dodge them proficiently.

Swarms do come with the "No Ram(TM)" safety. They blow the hell out of me when I fire them at a ship that is too close.

Give it a little time UncleDave and I'm sure you'll come to laugh at swarms like so many others have learned to do.

At the risk of sounding like the NSA (National Swarm Association) I think that the swarms aren't so much the problem as some of the people who use them. I certainly don't begrudge a heavy ship pilot unleashing a few swarms in a brawl, but I do kinda mind the "sneak, swarm and run" tactic, wherein a pilot zooms in and unloads a few volleys of swarms unprovoked and then runs off. That's just plain cowardly.

I'd like to see some sort of energy drain so they can't get away so easily after launching both tubes together or in rapid succession. That said, I don't find swarms to be much more than an irritant in most cases.

As I said, I think raising the refire delay would help fix the spam&run issue, as they wouldn't be able to get off a tremendously lethal amount of missile in one pass. I really don't think energy drain will stop spam&runners, since they generally fly infiniturbo ships, which would allow them to sufficiently distance themselves without running out of power before escaping.

Why everyone thinks that cowards would stay away from a fighting space game is beyond me...

Cowardice is a fact of life and true honor comes from facing ones fears and rising above them...

Weighing in on swarms:

If we were allowed to tailor the amount of armor on these ships, this arguement would just go away...it would be your own fault when the armor burst.

FSNI: WTF?

I thought it was self explaining....

Hehe... Armor tailoring?

Like rolling a high CON?

It sounds like an interesting idea... ship customization... mmmmm.

hehehe... :P

I don't think swarms have ever been an issue for me... I've never been killed by them, and they're easy enough to avoid. It's only the rockets I have trouble with (and being killed by running into a player's rockets post-mortem sucks)

(¯`·._.·\\«Aequitas»//·._.·´¯)