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[majorfreak]

of all the weapons needing an upgrade, the swarmer is the one i keep coming back to thinking about. Yes, it would be nice if all types had upgrades from small to large, but it's the swarmer that i keep being reminded of.

Why do i think it's worth championing for? well, fighters respawn, so why can't a medium upgrade double the ammo supply?

[MesoTroniK]

A straight up bigger Swarmer launcher is not the most interesting idea, but something like the Inferno MIRV in Ship/Weapon Pack is much better.

[Megas]

Locust is the bigger swarmer launcher, but it seems underpowered for its size.

Since fighters will be infinite missiles next version, it would be nice if Swarmer became unlimited too, and size determined DPS.

[King Alfonzo]

Or maybe a middle ground? For instance, consider Blackrock, who have the Dart; a fragmentation version of the swarmer that reloads. It comes in two types, Light and normal, with differences in total ammo count, how quickly it reloads, how many missiles it chucks out at a time, and the OP cost (4 for light, 8 for standard). The thing is, both are small missiles. So maybe an 'improved' version of the swamer that has a bigger ammo count, and a bigger burst with increased OP cost could be a useful alternative.

However I think the main issue is the swarmer does HE damage, which means it can, when massed, completely ruin non-fighter ships. So if you made it better, you'd get essentially a burst fire homing annihilator pod. Trying to balance that would be incredibly difficult, and enabling reloading (in both small and improved versions) would in turn make it a bit too powerful. Meso's suggestion for a reloading MIRV like from S&WP would be pretty useful; the nature of the missile means larger ships can clear the main missile before it hits, while smaller craft get minced by the mini-munitions.

[majorfreak]

cheers, guys. To be honest, after seeing people talk about mods i realized i'd already installed the ships/weapons pack - i'd just not seen the inferno MIRV ingame on the market yet

[joke]Sounds like modders don't like me suggesting Alex dumbs down the game more with derivative ideas[/joke]

[Harmful Mechanic]

The issue is really that you have to think about adding new weapons from a creator perspective, and with the gestalt created by the game's systems in mind. Gaps in the weapon roster are often intentional, left there to increase, not decrease, the fun and challenge of the game.

In the case of 'medium Swarmer' the gap turns out to be really significant. Most ships that could benefit from such a system either have alternatives (like the Condor, which can mount Proximity Charges, a very different sort of missile, but extremely good for anti-fighter work), or would become hard counters to fighters (think of all the cruisers and capital ships with 2-4 medium missile mounts - they'd be bomber-proof! Not fun). Then factor in the Locust large anti-fighter missile launcher; if you want one of those, you can mount it on ships like the Apogee or Gryphon. Even more effective.

So that's fundamentally where we come from. Weapons aren't just upsized versions of each other, they're designed to fill a given role at a given slot size. A diverse array of weapons makes for a more complex and varied tactical landscape, which, in a game, equates pretty directly to More Fun.

[Megas]

Re: Swarmer HE Damage
They do not inflict enough of that against big ships.  Player can have 20+ frigates focus-fire and unload their swarmers at a cruiser or battleship, and maybe kill or severely damage that ship, then be out of Swarmers.  They were okay when Harpoons used to cost 5 OP and pre-nerf Salamanders were limited, but now that Harpoons cost 4 OP, they are more useful than Swarmers against more things.  Against fighters, just use PD weapons (beams, IR pulse laser, Vulcan, flak, whatever) to make them disappear.  Swarmers are not that great as anti-fighter because they run out of ammo fairly quickly, much like Vulcan used to when ballistics used ammo.