Lancer makes zero sense....

[Badjuju]

Well have to see it in action. The Lancer was my favorite weapon in PS1. Hopefully it doesn't let us down.

[snafus]

You can't always compare weapons just from a individual standpoint. Just as AA was buffed to the point that now it scales out of control becoming far beyond OP when in any kind of real numbers. The same will apply for your Lancer, which with team work will be insta gibbing all the ESF you could want.

[OmegaPREDATOR]

Lancer seems to be the best launcher of the 3.
- 6 ammos,
- fast shoot (sommething like 1/s),
- neer instantanly touching target (nobody will avoid them exepte really fast targets).

The only trouble is the loading system who eems to be useless (it's faster to shoot 3 times than load and shoot).
You will also have possibility to snipe soldiers quite easily (max will have trouble).
So don't yet please.

EDIT : OK, I try it and it sucks so much... 6 shoot on a soldier and still in life

Originally Posted by WSNeo

The NC will have the most annoying, and without cloak bubbles on AMSes, you will never keep an AMS alive with Phoenix rockets scouting the area constantly. Keep in mind that the game is not supposed to be asymmetric, how you engage each empire if supposed to be vastly different.

The Phoenix seems to have a small range (I don't know exactly how many) and only stationnary objects will be easy to shoot (but with rockets comming by the top, magrider will not straf to avoid them!). Still interesting rocket-launcher but not that good.

Originally Posted by WSNeo

You DO realize that TR will be dominating the skies with the Striker regardless, just like they did in PS1 right? All you need is more than one Striker and any ESF/Lib will be screwed. Keep in mind that there are no incoming missile warnings so you can bluff aircraft into bugging it without questioning what type of missile is headed their way. As it stands, I'm pretty sure TR will have the strongest anti vehicle ESL with that burst fire mode.

And ESF have alredy to deal with AA MAXs, Phalanx turrels, Lock-on rocket_launchers (and futur engineer AA mana turrel and future Phalanx turrels), and missiles of others ESF. Flares are not enought good for survive more than 5s more aganst lock_on launchers and wait 60s for next one ...
With the Striker we will need to pass near the ground to evoid lock (by the way does lunch rockets still follow they targer if the Striker is no more on it ?)
-> why don't they increase to 2000m the max altitude

Just wait and see but vehicules will suffer the most with these new launchers

[Rumblepit]

Originally Posted by Rothnang

All things considered, I'm glad that I'm a Vanu Liberator pilot, because the Lancer is the ESL I want to face the least in a Liberator. I don't think it's the most powerful of the three, but it's the one that gives the target the least counterplay.

The Striker is going to be the most OP I think in the meanwhile. While the phoenix is really powerful, when Higby showcased it he barely managed a 90° turn during its flight time, so it's not that bad really. The striker on the other hand is basically several Annihilators strapped together, and Annihilator squads were already one of the main things really tarding up the game.

Also "Everyone has smoke or flares so lockons are bad" is an idiotic argument. Everyone is FORCED to have smoke or flares because of lockons more like.

Annihilators are fire and forget, striker is not, you have to maintain lock..... and yes everyone is forced to have counter measures in game because of all the lockons. so i ask how will the striker be op???? ill tell ya i think it will deter,and do it well.this is why you dont see as many lockons anymore, because everyone already has the counter measures.

[Blinklys]

I think all three ESRL look very interesting and unique. They each have their strengths and weaknesses without looking clearly OP in any regards. Can't wait to try out the Lancer and see how much havoc it can create. The relatively low damage pr. shot seems like a needed trade off for the high accuracy and projectile speed.

[Dragonskin]

Lancer is pretty freaking awesome. At first I was underwhelmed by the damage output of a charged shot, but you can make 2 charged shots per mag. The travel time is almost instant and did you see the range of that thing? That's nuts. It's like the engie AV turrets with near instant travel time. I was also slightly dissappointed in the animation of the shots... the single shot looks like the Lasher animation and it's not very laser looking to me.

The the only issue I really had with the Pheonix is I think range is slightly too limited. Otherwise it could be a pretty awesome rocket launcher.

The Striker looks awesome, but like others have said their are counters already in the game for it. It also requires you maintain lock instead of lock, fire and forget. At least the other 2 ESRLs have a dumbfire option. So I feel the Striker is balanced in that you can't dumbfire, you have to maintain lock.. so if something moves behind cover your lose lock and if something deploys a lock counter while your missiles are in the air then you are boned because none will hit.

[Thunderhawk]

I have a feeling we are going to have squads of Lancer users all lined up in Scarred Mesa Skydock, Crossroads, The Crown, and all sorts of other locations (Regent Rock for example) just sitting there and Spamming the living F*** out of all vehicles....(Air and Land)

Its going to be a Massacre, dont think of Lancer as 1v1, think of what it will do with a group and it will be played in groups I kid you not.

(yes I am buying one tonight)

[Dragonskin]

Originally Posted by Thunderhawk

I have a feeling we are going to have squads of Lancer users all lined up in Scarred Mesa Skydock, Crossroads, The Crown, and all sorts of other locations (Regent Rock for example) just sitting there and Spamming the living F*** out of all vehicles....(Air and Land)

Its going to be a Massacre, dont think of Lancer as 1v1, think of what it will do with a group and it will be played in groups I kid you not.

(yes I am buying one tonight)

This is my fear. Due to their insane range you will be able to sit at the crown and do massive area denial for both enemy gound and air.

Oh well, I'm all for it. PS2 needed something to spice it up. A reason to loathe the enemy factions!

[Hamma]

Personally I believe out of all the new ESRL's the Lancer will be the most deadly. It's instant hit, long range and quiet. It will be the silent killer.

[Shamrock]

I'm going to withhold judgement until live and actually in use, I fully expect all 3 of them to be critiqued by each set of faction players, hell its already begun!

[subDii]

For AV and possibly AA purposes the lancer seems to be the best choice, but for CQC I'm about 110% sure that the decimator is the better option.

When I bump into a MAX I want to quickly end his ass - with the lancer you can forget taking down a max with anything but fully charged shots, but the major, *major* weakness is the charge up time... and that critical few seconds isn't something a good MAX will give you. I'm sticking with the decimator for CQC, I just love the quick n ez badass punch it packs.

If the lancer maximum charge could be held and released on the user's accord that would change things up a bit in terms of its CQC potential, but fact that the shot is released as soon as max charge is attained kills it for me.

[hashish]

Just gave the lancer a go and i gotta say i hate it !! I loved it back in ps1 but they seem to make everything reallly shit in this game

Its too slow to shoot if you are charging, you cant charge with ADS and then ADS when you want to shoot (something higby said was possible but its obviously not). When it reaches maximum charge it just shoots randomly :S and also the projectile speed is NOT near instantanious at ALL ! I used rinse up aircrafts back in the day with my lancer.. Now its just a useless pea shooter than does literally NO damage.. If u shoot someone with the lancer, your position is given away straight away and you will 100% get killed as you cannot react quick enough to dish out any decent amount of damage..

Also there is 0 chance of you hitting ESF's with it.. Worst of all its not even very accurate so hitting max units in the distance is also not a choice...

SOE u failed at this Hope we get some improvements/buffs to the lancer soon :/

[ChipMHazard]

Uhm... Yeah... Sure you're not just exaggerating a wee bit there, hashish?
It fires when fully charged, yes? How is that random?
Certainly the handheld AV weapon with the fastest projectile speed.
And 0 damage? Really?
I'm rather certain that with enough practice and good enough aim you will be able to hit ESFs... Not even taking into account those that are hovering or otherwise not moving.

[LoliLoveFart]

Yeah i gotta concur it is not waht i was expecting, the speed of the projectile isnt near instant, its the fastest projectile currently in game but no where near as fast as we were led to beleive, it also has a range limit, for reference shooting at stuff from the ceres hydroponics v pad up to the crown, no one could seem to hit the phalanx turrets the projecticles just despawned in mid air. However the biggest let down, is the fact the projectiles dont fly straight, short range this isnt an issue but mid long range your projectiles will fly metres to either side of what you were aiming at.

You can hit ESFs they just have to be hovering or moving in a predictable way either directly towards you or away. I am happy for it to have low damage but by christ make its projectiles fly straight.

[Bobby Shaftoe]

Lancer is rubbish, don't bother.

You HAVE to ADS to hit anything but all you get is 1x zoom, you aren't going to be full charge sniping airchavs out the sky, rubbish visual feedback on projectile velocity, it's like someone else said, it looks like some 1970s SciFi visual (d)effect.

Having a whole zerg using the Lancer doesn't make it any good.