I’ve been playing drones because of the new cabin, and it got me thinking about how we should have drones that we can drive (and not just for Dronapocalypse).
And now that they’ve tested the helicopter mechanic, we have an easy way to adapt the concept to both wheeled and flying drones.
They’d have to be high energy and high damage, otherwise they’d fail for the same reasons TOW isn’t popular.
Possible concepts:
Flying lunatic suicide lance drone. Not far off from current improvised drone warfare
dirty bomb wheeled drone. Basically a high explosive fuse drone you can drive.
artillery sight. No weapons, but can be combined with mandrake or Heather to aim from a remote controlled flying drone. Lower energy, as it’s really hardware
TOW should hit like an avalanche, and cost the same energy.
Werewolf should hit like my proposed first person drone (like three fuses going off at once).
Ideally they would fix the two above ones at the same time as adding some new ones.
The Clarinet isn’t popular because it’s the most demanding weapon, and it’s ignored by the developers.
First, one needs to understand that this weapon is a scalpel, not a hammer. If someone wants to use it like a hammer, they’ll be disappointed, and then may post their opinion on the forum, based on such a misconception. The Clarinet being as demanding as it is, there’ll be more of such players, and they’ll create an echochamber, mutually reinforcing this misconception. Which objectively won’t make them any less wrong.
The player needs to make extensive use of the minimap - which is rare.
The minimap’s scale should be set to 1.0 and the size to Large, in order to see more. The default settings aren’t sufficient for Clarinet gameplay. But hardly anyone changese these settings, including some streamers and youtubers. These default settings can be an obstacle for some players who don’t know they can be changed.
The weapon requires a Doppler and a Verifier. Which means a player needs to have a preference for using these modules. And that’s just a prerequisite for becoming a Clarinet pilot.
Clarinet gamplay requires thorough knowledge of the maps and precise tactics. One small tactical mistake can result in a lost battle. I’ve been studing the maps and working out the tactics for my latest Clarinet car in custom brawls. And it’s already paying off. It takes time. Not just the number of hours, but repetition and reinforcement of the knowledge gained, so that it becomes instinctive. How many players would be willing to ‘do their homework’ in custom brawls?
The very piloting of the missile takes a long time to learn. Getting a feel for the turn angles, the maximum distance, which points can be reach from where - it’s best figured out in custom brawls. And then doing it all over again after upgrading the weapon for +15% missile turn radius, which is the most useful upgrade.
All the shrubbery and destructible trash on the ground added in the recent months pose additional obstacles, making it necessary to actually study the maps and practise in custom brawls or battles if one wants to get decent results with the weapon.
The map reworks don’t take the Clarinet into account. The bridge debris at the Bridge can’t be traversed by the mssile, despite being driveable over. Or the tower debris at the Nameless Tower - it can be good for some Clarinet players, if they choose to hide behind it. It can be an obstacle for the missile. (I stay away from the tower, there are better spots for a Clarinet car.)
After the co-driver change, we no longer have Hans’ +2 sec. to the missile flight time. It’s now impossible to reach snipers on certain ledges, or at certian distances. Especially hover snipers, which this wepaon excells at dealing with. A reduced range has also resulted in reducing the weapon’s damage output, as the user needs to get closer to targets and has to retreat more often.
The Icarus VII buff compounded the issue. For a weapon whose default targets are hovercrafts, them advancing faster, without Hans’ perk, considerably nerfed Clarinet gameplay. Even at 90 km/h, they’ll be rushing a Clarinet layer too fast. The buff also made the VII fly so high that the missile can sometimes fly under witohut making contact, with a target hovering in place over even ground. At least it’s been announced its flight altitude will be lowered.
A Clarinet car outfitted for the most fun is expensive. Using the weapon with either the Harpy or the Cockpit requires a lot of upgrading, at the very least to offset these light cabins’ low carry weight. One can make do without upgrading anything, but upgrades improve the experience.
It’s not the weapon that is lacking, e.g., in terms of its base damage. It’s just the hardest weapon to learn, and it’s also mostly ignored by the developers. Recently, they enabled crosshair color change for it, and that’s all they saw fit to improve. They didn’t realize how much worse it’s gotten without Hans and with faster hovercrafts. I’m Crossout’s most accomplished Clarinet player (meaning, I constantly try to innovate, to find ways of using it for the best results, and I use it as my main PvP weapon), and the only thing I need to be changed is the flight time adjusted to the max. speed of hovercrafts. IIRC, I calculated that 95 km/h would require an extra 5 sec., but that could be unbalanced in relation to other movement parts, so at least those 2 sec. from Hans’ perk. Boosted Clarinet gameplay is the best kind, and for that I’d prefer the Cockpit’s max. bonus to be +50% or more, but just the +2 sec. flight time from Hans would do. And that’s it. These conclusions are based on years of experience with this weapon.
Now, if you want more damage for the Clarinet - imagine getting hit by such a missile. I wouldn’t mind it being OP, especially now that I use 4 Barriers with it, so I’d be safe from enemy Clarinet missiles. But I use it for the fun factor, at 11-12K PS, to hunt hovercrafts, and not for sealclubbing or whatever. If you want to use it like a hammer, or a cannon, you will fail. This weapon works just fine when used like a scalpel, and increasing its damage would make it OP. Posting your mistaken conclusions on the forum just exposes your lack of experience with the weapon and doesn’t provide a credible basis for a buff. But if all these complaints from a number of players result in a buff, or a legendry version being released, I’m all for it.
Im all for a huge flying drone that that uses those helicopter propellers. Make it 10 or 12 energy or something too.
Id like to have a feature that as long as you have a chamelion on your car when you activate and drive the drone your car stays invisible or at least camoflouged like a faster moveing car cloaked is.
Id also like to be able to switch between driving the car and driving the drone. When youre driving your car and the drone is active the drone becomes ai controlled and operates like an anihilator, but does less damage when not controlled manually.
I have no idea what the drones perk could be or what a good weapon for it would be. Perhaps The drone could do more dammage when its a certain distance away from the carrier and when its close to the carrier it slows down an enemy vehicle its hitting. Maube it even has different weapons used depending on which perk it has. Like close to the players vehicle it could be like an anihilator ot shotgun and fsrther away from ghe player vehicle it could have a mid tonlong range weapon used.
id love to have this and i pitched an idea about this before in the past for controllable drones. like you can put out 3 drones and the 2 other drones will follow you (the lead drone) to your target. once you lock your sites on a target they help you explode on them.
however there is the issue of your vehicle being a sitting duck. there should be a module that cloaks your vehicle when you use that particular type of drone and lasts until the main drone is destroyed. if not then it would just be alot easier for people to find you and destroy you. the cloak would have to have special properties though like having some immunity to the dopplers massive radius.
i was thinking a legendary or relic fuze drone, aka a mini nuke, could have a passive side effect where it will cloak you however it disables any type of other cloaking when coming back out of cloak when your drone deals damage. just to make it not very broken. plus it would have to have quite a bit of a reload timer.
id really just love controllable drones. in PVZ garden warfare they had the artichoke drone where it would drop small exploding corn husks on enemies, i was thinking maybe the heli drones can do the same, equip it with some missiles that hit the ground and explode dealing damage in a small area.
i also would like to have a customizable drone to. maybe slap a few weapons on it. like it had a certain amount of energy and weld points and we have to make it work.
Programming drones to drive waypoint maps would be nice. Military drones do this and you can’t “hack” them. Only spoof their GPS navigation. This would make a great replacement for wallhack radar detectors.
While the idea has a lot of charm to it most of the small drones aren’t really fast enough or maneuverable enough to go against full sized vehicles in that capacity. With the exception of artillery sight I’m thinking it’s probably better if they just fixed the Tow or make a legendary version that launches vertically, has 3d flight, and to some extent extended range.
In regards to a remote artillery sight it’s usability is really going to depend on how much energy it consumes as well as how how fast, far and high it can travel from it’s launch point as well as active duration of in air time. Most players probably would not be too happy if they spend the majority of the time getting to a clear vantage point only to find out that they do not have time to make a remote strike with their artillery. Due to this I would suggest launching the FPD as an artillery unit to start with as this would reduce the initial travel time. However this approach also decreases the need for it to be be a mobile unit. The other issue is just because the remote unit has a clear line of sight to the target it doesn’t necessarily mean the artillery unit does too so the remote strike could just hit a near by obstacle nulling the actual attack.
and they both kind of suck.