Chaos and Order

[ClaytoniousRex]

With the obvious fixes already posting in the 1.1.5 release, I want to elicit input on Bigger Questions. This includes those recently posed by bjarmson but dating back even to the earliest Yurchposts.

Combat in DropTeam is often frenetic, fast-paced, and downright chaotic. For the player who likes to stand back, take stock, formulate and execute a plan, it is sometimes hard to catch one's breath long enough to do so. Before we talk about "fixing" this, here are some things that are "not broken" about it:

</font>

• The above description sounds like real combat. It really is hard to catch your breath and execute plans in the midst of combat. Combat is chaotic. The goal is not to make the game unrealistically prozaic.</font>
• Knocking the enemy off balance and seizing initiative is an important part of tactics. Therefore, it should not be impossible to do this. Any "improvements" that make it impossible to be overwhelmed or confused are not a good idea. When the situation falls apart and the enemy is coming at you from all directions, this means the enemy has done a good job and you rightly should be at your wit's end. But this shouldn't happen all the time.</font>
• The level of chaos on a team is highly dependent upon the players composing that team. Some of the "fixes" required are not game-related or technological but merely a matter of the same people learning (drilling) to play effectively together.</font>

Having said that, it would be nice to reduce the current level of chaos a bit (but only a bit!) So we're asking for your thoughts (and votes) on the best ways to do this moving forward. Some of us have already posted ideas on this subject scattered across different threads in the forums, so consider this topic a "consolidation" topic if you like. It's OK to repeat what you said elsewhere here or even just link to it.

The most effective way to do this is to first identify the primary problems that cause unwanted chaos. Once we've identified the problems, then we can sensibly discuss solutions (sometimes a single solution can address many of the problems together, but this only works if all of the problems are on the table for us all to see).

Here is my list of the primary "bad" contributors to chaos. I call them "bad contributors" because, again, not all chaos is bad. There are some other contributors to chaos not mentioned here - I consider those "good". Here's the difference: "bad" chaos contributors are those things that cause a team (or a team's plan) to fall into disarray that are not caused by mistakes made by that team and are also not caused by the enemy team doing something clever to make them happen.

So here is my initial list of "bad" chaos contributors:

Dropship Deployment

This one might already be mostly, if not completely, fixed, but here it is. If one or both teams have free reign to drop almost anywhere on the map with short notice, then no amount of tactical maneuver is going to matter. No matter what you do, the enemy can always drop on a flank or behind you and ruin (or at least significantly alter) your plan. Dropships raining down all over the map creates such total chaos for both teams that only the most micro-scale tactics are possible: yes, you can find and use hull down positions, flank or outmaneuver individual enemy units, use the right weapon against the right target, etc. But you can't execute a broader, team-wide tactical plan because the overall situation is simply too fluid.

On the other hand, dropship deployment is fun and, when properly limited, very tactically interesting. The key here is "properly limited". We do want a fluid battlefield (but with only the right amount of fluidity). A while back I posted the story of how dropships worked while DropTeam was still in early alpha - it literally took a couple of minutes (at least) for a dropship to arrive and deploy a new unit. No one wanted to play this game. It wasn't only boring for the guy doing the drop; it was also boring for the other team waiting for opponents to appear. There were other problems, too, but for now just believe me when I say you don't want this option.

The right way to balance over-zealous dropping is by providing teams with adequate air defense assets to prevent "willy-nilly" dropping by the enemy, but not so much air defense that a team can easily dominate the entire scenario over the long term (temporary domination is OK as long as there are ways to counter it). A team should have enough air defense to properly protect its flanks and/or rear, in at least a wide enough area that they can properly execute broader tactical plans without fear of enemy drops right amongst them. Particularly in Objective games, it's vital that the defender have some ways to channel the attacker. Without this, the attacker has an infinite number of axes of attack which is an almost insurmountable challenge for the defender. Also, the attacker has no way of properly attacking since the defender can drop behind him at any time. The right amount of AA fixes this for both sides.

The new Cobra AA turrets went some of the way toward solving this problem and I think Yurch's Bacchus went the final distance. As I see it right now, there finally seems to be a good balance between a team's freedom to deploy with dropships vs. the other team's ability to limit that freedom. Now that we've all had some time to play with the AA turrets and the Bacchus, does anyone agree or disagree with this?

Bots

Getting the bots to follow a plan is like trying to herd earthworms from Texas to Montana. The best compendium is here: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=48;t=000254 Of that compendium, my feeling is that platoons are the most important single feature, even if only implemented for bots at first. For the purposes of this thread, it's best to simply cast your vote "Yes to bot wrangling!" rather than expand upon the details of it - use the original thread for that.

Defensive Tools

This one is highly scenario-dependent, but often defenders don't have sufficient tools at their disposal to mount a proper defense of a static location - they don't have enough ways to prevent the attacker from deliberately turning the engagement into a chaotic, point-blank brawl. The defender needs ways to channel the enemy (but, as always, not too many of them). One easy solution is to give them a greater variety of turret types (such as heavier, more lethal AT turrets than those that can be delivered by dropship - something like a 120mm AT turret that can only be placed during the deployment phase, or even proper bunkers with heavy AT weapons that can only be placed during deployment).

Another possible feature that might be nice to give to the defenders is a way to modify the terrain during the deployment phase directly, just by clicking, without having to use Cutters or anything else. This would model in depth preparation and digging in that has occurred prior to the beginning of the scenario. The technical challenge here is how to properly limit this feature (1,000,000 meter gorges in the earth all around the objective would be - uh - unfun).

Those are the main 3 from my perspective. What else do you see that needs to be added to this list, and how do you propose to address them?

[ September 02, 2006, 09:10 AM: Message edited by: Grappler ]

[emodin-]

In regards to defensive terrain moding features, maybe you could use some kind of preset feature that the defenders 'place.' I am thinking specifically of the ability to create a dug-in Thor/Apollo position (or one that works for any other vehicle, for that matter). If the defender could only put one of these positions in one place, that should probably elimiate the ability for them to create canyons or massively deformed terrain. Of courses you would probably have to be able to set the facing of such positions as well to make them really effective.

Something I just thought of: it might be nice for the defending team to have some kind of bunker or other physical object where they can rearm without calling in a Galaxy, something that would be beneficial especially when the attackers have brought in long range AA assets.

[ September 02, 2006, 01:51 AM: Message edited by: emodin- ]

[aittam]

Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex:

Dropship Deployment anyone agree or disagree with this?

agree as it is, pods should be faster but highlighted on the tac screen for a while (30"?) in the form of a flashing dot (if a meteor like thing falls on an area 25x25km it's noticed) once you know infantry's nearby you get ready to deal with it, this can be a nuisance to manouver but nobody said it'd be easy

extra ammo for all units could be deploied same way

Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex:Bots

yes to platoons wrangling seems to be the only productive way if a couple of other players are dealing with artillery and EWS

Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex:Defensive Tools

yes but the attackers need some extra arty support may be in the form of a mlrs

[poesel]

IMHO you forgot one main chaos creator: communication or lack thereof

The game would profit immensly if players had more tools to communicate. A short list:

- paint on tacmap

- grid on tacmap

- textbox for battle plans

- after action chat

- some info if a player is already online during deployment (=has clicked OK on the objective box)

- a way to recall the objective text and the parameters of the planet

- player profiles (self written) to shortly brief the others what you are up to.

Ok, have to explain that last bit. The profile would be accesible from the player list and would look like, for example, for 'poesel06':

Commander: no

Bot wrangler: no

Tanks: yes

Artillery: no

AFV: yes

Infantry: yes

(this is of course not complete)

Dropship Deployment

A fun thing would be if you had to fly the dropship yourself (or have some human do it). Else it will simply drop straight down. Would create some pedestrians.

Or: as it is currently, you can drop from a rather great height with 'b' and just fall straight down without any damage upon hitting the ground.

What if the DS would drop you from even greater heights on a simple (auto gyro) platform. The platform has thrusters which you have to operate. The thrusters are mainly vertical but allow a bit horizontal movement.

Thus you can control the rate of your drop and the place you land (at least a bit).

Bot wrangling

Yes! (the link has a dot at the end)

Defensive Tools

Click modifying terrain would surely help. I loved Populous!

Or give some presets (sensor hole, vehicle hull down, wall, ditch, ...) and limit their numbers.

A wonderful thing would be to be able to save a setup. The setup would include terrain modifications, deployables, bot orders and waypoints. The commander could then load his setup in the deployment phase and then spend his time instructing his team.

[Dark_au]

Simply changing some of the timing and scales could get rid of a lot of the chaos. Double the default point spacing on the maps from 20-30m to 40-60 m. Make the drops take a couple of minutes. Allow longer mission times.

Oh and have forces not all available at the start. So you may get 12 thors over the mission but you get 3 every 10- 15 minutes. Therefore it allows a side to keep a reserve for a desisive action.

[ September 02, 2006, 05:43 AM: Message edited by: Dark_au ]

[Sabot3]

The planning tools mentioned above by Poesel71 would certainly help a team get their act together more quickly, provided that they wished to do so. It would also help make in-game communication more precise.

The ability to form mixed and same type equipment platoons. I've been trying to get Hermes to escort tanks and other vehicles and without this option it can be a chore.

I like Dark's idea about phasing in the reinforcements. It would also help prevent the bots from squandering all the resources in one mad rush.

I've thought over a lot of these issues and compared them with my experience in other online games. I believe that one of our major problems at the moment that is leading to a lot of player frustration is the low numbers on-line. You need a certain number of players to make an attack or defence work effectively. You need someone handling direct fire, indirect fire, air defence, security of the Drop Zone, bot wrangling, cut-off of enemy reinforcements, etc. When just two players who don't normally play on the same team are trying to do this all together with 4 minutes prep time it can lead to a lot of frustration. The defence has equal challenges. Improving bot wrangling will only go so far to make up for the lack of players online at any one time. I think a lot of these problems will remain until we start to see at least 4 people per team playing together as a team on a regular basis.

In addition there is still too much reliance on typing even though we have a voice capability in game. I hate "death by typing" and it happens far too often. Effective voice comms help to improve teamwork and fun immensely. More players and formed teams will hopefully encourage greater use of voice comms.

I keep reminding myself that this game is still very young and this type of balancing is to be expected and I'm very happy to see the efforts made by the design team to do use player input to do so.

[mcoyote]

I agree with much of what you say -- it's not supposed to be easy or predictable or especially pleasant to mount an armored assault on anything of importance.

I still prefer the destrictuveness of the bot artillery as-is, FWIW, because I have been able to productively evade it many times now and it keeps things tricky.

I also don't think their facility with the mortars is other-worldy -- it's *very good*, but indirect fire (and prediction, even with mortar platforms) is possible for any player and we just have a lot of players who don't like to run arty wagons much.

On to your questions, however:

Defenses

I do believe our defensive options are limited. I think doing emplacements or other terrain prep in the deployment phase would be very productive and would motivate a bit more thought prior to engagement and a bit more care on the part of attackers.

Terrain mods could be made to be fairly limited -- i.e., trenches, sandbags, obstacles, etc. of only so much height/depth, and perhaps make the production of same take time during the deployment phase itself to force some forethought.

The thought of non-explosive obstacles is attractive (e.g., jacks) but they need to be destructable to a point.

AT and AA turrets are ok, but the AT turrets could stand to be a bit more durable or deadly (maybe not both) and we should probably limit the facility of AT turrets/bots to knock down aerial units since few humans could.

Maybe more diversity with these, I'm not sure -- i.e., an ATGM turret or the like -- as opposed to bugger cannons or more damage resistance.

FWIW, the MBT's are too slow in normal gravity/density. Most current MBT's are significantly faster and routinely sport anti-personnel and anti-material weapons beyond the main gun and coax MG.

The secondary weapons thing is tricky, I realize. In SB, when you normally assume the cmdr's .50 the automated gunner takes over the cannon and vice-versa, but you don't want this to shut down your infy because suddenly they get popped whenever they get within 50 meters of a tank.

To counter that, perhaps, any switchably-automated secondary weapon could have a very short range or whatever is not being crewed at the time by the player simply isn't active. Since these turrets traverse very quickly, however, you might as well stick with the coax in those cases.

FWIW, the infy could stand to have an ATGM or (when bot'ed) use their ATG's a bit more aggressively.

Dropships

I'm liking dropship behavior lately, but more and more I'd like to assume manual control of a dropship during decent and egress, possibly with the option of setting a unit down again and using a dropship as an in-scenario airlift capability.

Considering that dropships are a limited resource and are very vulnerable to a set of air defenses already, such capability would still come with a risk and a price and would probably motivate some additional creativity during engagements. Having an airlift capability might offset slow MBT's also.

I've had some good success with the drop pods. They could stand to be a bit less visible, IMO, to increase their survivability or descend faster (again, maybe not both).

Bot Wranging: Yes.

They need to act like player-centered platoon members, basically, to keep them out of trouble. Tell them to line up for road travel to follow the leader, line abreast and hull down, etc. but stay under fairly loose control of a player while shooting autonomously, etc.

Again, I come back to SB's (Steel Beast's) pretty suave platoon model. If you've never played SB Pro PE (or especially the original Steel Beast) you really ought to -- DropTeam has other things to recommend (certainly as just a game) it in contrast, but they have the team management functions down very well.

[konstantine]

Yes to platoons/bot wrangling. I rarely play 1 on 1 online because I suck so bad at this. Making it easier would be good.

I like the idea of being able to build defenses without cutters during setup. Naturally as said limit the depth of any setup trenches (say to 3 cutter passes, unless you are actually using a cutter) but have the trench tool only employable on the space bar map, so that it can be used quickly but that would also make it hard to micromanage it to exploit terrain quirks in a gamey fashion.

Last, roadblocks. A limited number available only during setup that can only be destroyed by HE. These could be in the form of stacked trees or building debris. Although they could be used to block off the flag...

[bjarmson]

It's great to see everyone attempting to help make a good game even better. I hope my various comments aren't construed as just grinching on my part. I LIKE this game, but I'd also like to see it get even better.

The chaos of the battlefield environment is a tricky problem. Too little and the game becomes boring, to much and the game becomes ovewhelmingly frenetic and every battle a Somme-like lunarscape. Also real combat tends to have spurts and lapses (the hours of boredom, and minutes of sheer terror thing). It's nice to be able to get your ducks (bots) in a row at the beginning of a game, and occasionally issue an order or two during the frenetic part. With the artillery barrage crazy bots we have now this is almost impossible, once you're in the visual range of these things, if you don't keep moving and shooting, you're dead. Whereas, I never used to try to target things with a 120mm until I was in the 3000m range, I now have to start shooting at mortar bots from 5000+m, because they can hit and damage (if not kill) you at that range (though I'm not very good at it). Virtually every disputed area is soon littered with huge (100m across, 30-50m deep craters-these things seem to have more explosive power than 16inch battleship guns), and so much dust and smoke and shaking nothing is visible (at least from my side-the bots still seem to be able to target pretty well). Not every battle should be an artillery barrage. If utter destruction is what we want, let's arm everything with tactical nukes.

Dropship Deployment

I like dopship evasion, for the most part it works well, particularly at distance. It has basically stopped 120mm from destroying dropships at distance. Currently there are two big problems with dropping and they both have to do with lack of bot judgement when deploying.

1) Dropping where it causes the units destruction. Every standalone Dead Gulch objective game I've played recently has had somewhere around 1/4 of the dropships dropping their units into the gulch. The dropships also often drop on steep inclines, with the resulting flipping and destroying of the unit. This should be a relatively easy fix. Just make certain areas off-limits for drops (into the gulch for one) or make them not drop onto inclines above a certain steepness.

2) Dropping where it causes dropship destruction. In every standalone objective game I've played recently red drops virtually on top of the objective area until all their dropships are exhausted (somewhere about 2/3 of the way through a 30 minute game). Most of the dropships are being killed by 120mm and not AA, because they are trying to drop directly on top of us. When the bots have to run units down the road from the ground deployment area, it just leads to a shooting gallery game. This may be more difficult to fix. Once the aggressor side has control of the objective, maybe red could drop no closer than 1000m. Or, that final stationary hover by dropships (really makes them big fat targets for 120mm at close range) could be eliminated.

As for AA defenses. The Cobra with its huge range should have a hit or miss ratio of about 50-75%, depending partly on range to target (would reflect the pilot seeing the missile coming and taking extreme evasive maneuvers). Right now these things seem 100% effective (I've been killed more than once at beyond its shown range because it was fired when my dropship nipped the edge of its range-marker on the way down).

Bot Wrangling

It would be nice to be able to at least restrain bots from doing utterly ridiculous things.

Defensive Tools

Yes

[adzling]

These ideas are mostly based around trying to use some of the strategic elements you have to consider when waging war and how they reach down to the tactical level to affect the way individual battles are fought and the how the combat stance of the forces gives them differing options to work with.

First off i'd like to see the objective battles broadly defined as either:

a). typical set-piece battles

or

. meeting engagements

a). typical set-piece battles-

This is where the defender has has significant time to prep the battlefield yet the attacker has dislodged (temporarily or permanently) their planetary and interplanetary support. This would allow the attacker to dominate the flow of reinforcements and create an inbalance in the nature of play. Attacker get more units/ quicker reinforcements while the defender has better/stronger defences.

These battles could change states as they progress. Perhaps after a set-time the defenders planetary, interplanetary or both support is restored to some degree and the attackers is degraded forcing a shift in tactics. Or perhaps the attacker's ability to maintain local support superiority is a function of them capturing a specific objective within an alloted time frame (i.e. capture that bloody huge hellbore cannon within 10 minutes or the defenders regain local support superiorty and their reinforcements start flowing again).

. meeting engagements-

Both sides arrive on an equal footing with similar time to prep (or not) and everything is relatively equal as far as support goes (reinforcement flow etc) however once one side captures objective "A" the other side's support capability is deteriorated and their reinforcements slow down or become poorer quality. Capture objective "B" and it get worse or better etc.

a list of things that would help defenders:

1). pre-designed hull-down positions and other emplacements/ earth-works you can place without using the cutter to dig. You can mandate only a certain number of these are available to place avoiding the map-wide entrenchment.

2). visual camo you can place over a tank or other equipment to create a hide. perhaps with sensor jamming or perhaps not thereby requiring the user to pair it with a sensor jammer manually.

3). spider-holes for infantry with an accompanying bot order "wait til their close enough to hit with atg's".

4). tougher turrets that can only be placed during deployment phase...you still get the weedy turrets to be deployed during the rest of the game but the one dropped during deployment phase are ARMORED and have BIGGER GUNS.

5). Armored buildings or other deployables that can be placed during deployment phase to fill a similar role as walls, strongpoints, ammo depots and command centers (see M.E.U.s in modding forum).

I think it's worth looking hard at the role that a real command post might play for the defender on the battlefield.

With the ability to place sensors of various types in advance and to have a dedicated front-line command post with enhanced information processing (i.e. real-time a.i.) it might go a long way towards justifying giving the defender a real-time battlenet where if any pipper or information shows up on a team-mate's sensor display it's shared with the rest of his team....with perhaps even the nice capability of switching view to their gun cam, work together to lase targets, switch to control a remote turret, mark targets for arty to fire at, an enhanced display that allows those counter-battery pippers to be used somewhat effectively etc.

What's nice about this is it would also be a prime target for destruction by the attackers.

As a defender you could place it in the middle of your primary defensive position or in some unobtrusive area of the map and hope it remains hidden while the attackers pound away at your main base.

and for attackers:

1). more units/quicker reinforcements.

2). better units (as the attacker you know where to focus your forces and can therefore concentrate your best units in this engagement....the defender has has to spread their units among many possible targets.....as well their interplanetary and planetary defensives....so the attacker made the choice to concentrate their forces HERE, drive away/degrade the interplanetary and planetary suport capability of the defender and theny landed with the best units he had.

3). force-fields! yeah ok you don't get many and their not impervious but as the attacker you should have the choice of deploying one or two vehicles with a force-field generator to act as the tip of your spear....after all you chose the site of battle and chose your best assets to attack JUST THIS SINGLE SPOT while the defender had to spread his out all over the solar system.

This would also doevtail nicely into yurch's thread about varying tech levels to some degree....the attacker's advantage is composed of a mix of more units, faster reinforcements, better tech levels while the defender's advantage is prepared defenses, better organization.

This assymetric nature of the battlefield encourages complexity by ensuring that you don't end up with the default tactical scenario of "5 thors meet 5 thors and shoot at each other til one side dies".

[ September 04, 2006, 03:18 PM: Message edited by: adzling ]

[Chilibird]

I know we don't want to do anything by having defenders have more/different units than attackers, but here's my thoughts.

If I ever figure out what I'm doing with the Ramses, that would be an effective point/side defense weapon. (ya know, a modeling tutorial would be really nice ) The 120 MM cannon firing AP rounds, if stationed on one side of the defending teams' base.. let's say raid in this example.. could effectivly help control the mad rush to make things point-blank, since it would have a large kill-range. Granted, they'd be slow, so you have to have your defences in place before the mad rush begins, but it would at least allow the defenders to slow things down a bit, if properly deployed.

Personally, I'm happy with how the game is, at the moment. It's like real combat.. well.. with dropships. The only thing I would say is to make erecting defenses (I.E- the cutter's trenches) easier.

[poesel]

Iceman - take a look at the Wiki and write the tutorial yourself. If you just write down what you did and what worked and what didn't, will help others in your tracks.

[Chilibird]

lol, that's the thing I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing myself

I have the chassis created, but I'm still lost on other matters.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Back from the Con and fighting either Con Crud, but its worth noting a couple things that spring to mind immediately:

</font>

• Dropships
  Well, the game is called DropTeam. We should no more pare these back than we should drop tanks from the game; its just not reasonable. Recent changes have made the lowly DS just a bit more lowly, plucking them from the air with brutal intensity. This isn't wholly bad, but it is something to keep in mind.
  The ability to deploy tactically in a broad area of the battlefield is one of the things that sets apart DT from the reasonable number of modern tactical shooters out there. That's one of the reasons I'm generally sad to see small DZ's in some scenarios; given the overall mobility of defenders and attackers, unless the scenario is intended to be LiveShip vs colonists where the latter is a densely defended area, there's no reason both sides shouldn't be able to drive in anywhere along whole sides. Attackers can be assumed to drop in through an AA hole off-map and skim to a safe drop, defenders can be assumed to do much the same thing or simply have resources off-map nearby.
  The "chaos" of DS wide-deployment is countered inherently by something every good Prefect player knows well: Force concentration. The wider you spread the net, the fewer forces you have hitting one spot. "When you strike, use a fist" is well known doctrine. Its because of this I'd like to see more maps with multiple objectives ... forcing both sides to make judgement calls about force concentration. (This is one of the best design facets of Battlefield 2; multiple spawn points that require capture keeps forces moving dynamically and demands command choices.)</font>
• Bot Wrangling
  Yes. 'Nuff said, here, I think.</font>
• Defensive Emplacements
  And offensive ones, too, in theory. These should be pretty easy to code up as "Drop Options" that show up during Deployment (and some during the combat phase). Berms should be droppable in 20m sections easily enough, as should Deployable, Thor, Apollo, and Paladin Pits. Those are all just scripted terrain deformations with a facing. Iridium wire, abatises, and any other "blocade" style hardware should be deployable during combat by a drop pod. They're just as useful to the attacker suddenly defending a position as to an emplaced defender. Likewise with spider holes, which should be deployed as explosive rain from a drop pod, or by simply increasing the coverage value of artillery craters for infantry.</font>
• Communication
  Like real estate's "location," communication is the key in DT. The wider you can make the window of communication, the better coordinated the group will become with less effort.
  Possibly shading over into bot wrangling, being able to tell the bots "drop in this area" without telling them what would help. And likewise for humans.
  In a sense, the more simple symbolic language you can create for inter-player comm, the more of that you can use of that to gather intent for the bots. If the bot knows its in Alpha Platoon of Obsidian Company, and Alpha has this area of suggested drop and this current defined axis of assault and this is where the minefield is, and this is where the objective is, and this is the current desired platoon stance/formation, you can get a lot more seemingly intelligent behaviour out of a bot keying on a relatively simple number of inputs ... like a human does.
  All communication, all the time.</font>
• Misc
  Longer deployment times with both sides having a deployment area, if different elements they can deploy, would help a lot. (Attackers can drop jammers, sensors, turrets to secure the flank deployment area, light raiding vehicles to secure a beach-head. Defenders can deploy berms, defensive emplacements, and heavy elements already positioned to meet an axis.)</font>

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Oh, yes, one more thing it occurs to me to add ...

We have in-battle airborne transport that doesn't involve a DS. Its called the "Viper."

It's also a stone bitch to pilot in anything like a reasonable fashion.

Barely good as aerial recon, getting LoS to the enemy for pipper purposes and looking for Hermes, but anything that requires moving at more than a slight walk? Forget it. Actually using the grapple to pick up a unit? Its possible, but good luck with that.

The Viper controls need to be refined in a big, scary way. It also wouldn't hurt if it had a built-in 14mm gun like the one on the Bacchus to harass targets with.

[aittam]

Originally posted by Alexander SquidLord Williams:

The Viper controls need to be refined in a big, scary way. It also wouldn't hurt if it had a built-in 14mm gun like the one on the Bacchus to harass targets with.

yep not a main priority but sometimes this has to be done or removed it altogether

[Chilibird]

aye, I agree. I'm one of the very few who actually drop these things, and also one of the few who can pilot it with any reasonable sucess. The thing is, I usually get blown out of the air before that happens.

[yurch]

Originally posted by Alexander SquidLord Williams:

The Viper controls need to be refined in a big, scary way. It also wouldn't hurt if it had a built-in 14mm gun like the one on the Bacchus to harass targets with.

I can fly it, but it's feasability took a giant dive with the introduction of the jammed ATGM turret. The old plasma ones were 'dodgeable' provided you weren't trying to land near one.