I'm not going to really say much about the Scarab, because it really is a good general purpose vehicle. Unfortunately, the Scorpion was given to the players for combat, and to put it plainly, it's not good at it. I will give it some credit though. It does handle better than the Scarab, the extra hull armor is handy, and the second seat is quite nice if you're playing with a friend. But the shortcomings are too big.
[Scorpion]
So let's talk about the problems. The biggest problem in my opinion is with the weapons. The surge repeater on the Scorpion is an absolute joke. Yes, it can shred enemies IF you have enough juice in your capacitor to allow it to fully spin up so it can actually hit something. The problem with this is that it basically fully drains the cap to do so, and you can't power anything else in the meantime. You basically just end up spewing all of your ammunition in the general direction of a combatant with about a 10% hit chance. Talk about a HUGE waste of ammunition. Then there's the rockets. It literally takes two at a minimum to kill a person. One to take down shields, even if they only have 1% of their shield left, the second to do the damage. I'd say use the rockets for fending off air-support, but they literally do nothing against ships, and ships absolutely wreck the Scorpion.
It's exactly this reason that makes the Scarab more deadly than the Scorpion. The Scarab can sit at distance and pick off bad guys well outside of their threat range because the dual-repeater is just so accurate. Even if the hit damage is lower, the hit percentage is far higher resulting in a high larger DPS output. I can clear scavs from the outskirts of a settlement in a Scarab, or I can run them over with a Scorpion. I'd say I could shoot them with the Scorpion, but let's be realistic, I can shoot one person and then run away to save my skin because I've been surrounded and am taking way too much damage to survive against.
The best fix I can think of for the surge repeater is a means for improving accuracy. Either we need the option to fit it with a more accurate weapon, or we should have an option to pre-spin the MR at the cost of overall vehicle movement speed. Perhaps this can be accomplished as a "light" load on the WEP capacitor, say something like a draw that 2 PIPs to WEPs could handle. Pre-spinning the MR would then allow it to fire at full speed immediately with full speed accuracy, but it wouldn't allow you to simply reap the benefits of full speed fire and accuracy without a different cost. On the subject of weapon replacements though, I'd really LOVE to have the options for replacing with other weapon types though. I think players would really like being able to sit on a hill side with a Scorpion armed with a small-scale rail gun, or something that is more tailored to anti-air to fend off overhead defense ships.
The next shortcoming is the lack of targeting capabilities. The only way you can change targets is to literally be pointing at the target you want, or manually select it from the external contacts panel. This is not at all practical in combat situations. Scorpion pilots MUST have a way to cycle threats for targeting. Otherwise, you're just right back to being surrounded by targets you can't lock and you have to flee just to survive.
Lastly, I think the threat range of the SRVs needs to be decreased. I've noticed that ships will engage an SRV from WELL beyond the SRVs capable range. I tried to do a settlement mission in which settlement forces were tipped-off, and it was a nightmare. The ships engaged my ship as soon as I dropped from glide, so I touched down on the opposite side of a mountain range and deployed my SRV at a distance of 4 km. Even with a mountain range in the way and with that distance, the ships at the settlement would immediately engage my SRV. The only way I was able to survive was to get out and walk the whole way. It was kind of pointless to have the SRV. If the the threat range was reduced, at least then I could have closed the gap on wheels a bit first.
[New Vehicle]
The Artemis was built with the idea that people would get out on a planet and then walk for long periods of time to do ExoBio. That's all well and good, but that's not at all how it's panned out. People have found that the only practical way to do ExoBio is to fly your ship to a bio specimen, get out, scan it, get back in your ship, fly to another one, rinse, repeat. They do this because the sheer amount of distance you have to traverse for genetic diversity is too high to do on foot, and you also lack a useful vantage point to see potential other hotspots. Sure you can get in an SRV and drive that distance quickly, but you still have no way of locating more of the same bio material, so you just end up driving blindly in a direction hoping to find some.
I'd love to see another SRV that is specifically intended for ExoBio/Geological discoveries. What I envision is essentially a skimmer with a piloting bubble, and equipped with a pulse wave analyzer. The unit would deploy on small landing wheels used to get away from the mothership. These would also be used for landing the unit to disembark. Once out of the stowing range of the ship, the unit can enter into hover mode and fly around. Hovering would have a low altitude cap so it can't just fly around all over the place, but it would be high enough for explorers to get a good vantage point on more discoverables. Additionally, its ability to hover will make it far easier for navigating the rough terrain during exploration.
This craft is EXPLICITLY intended for exploration, therefore it would not have ANY weapons fixed to it, nor will it have a cargo scoop or hold space for cargo. What it will have instead is a pulse wave scanner for locating ExoBio and Geological materials. Maybe it could be called "The Butterfly" or some other insect name that feels non-threatening.
[Scorpion]
So let's talk about the problems. The biggest problem in my opinion is with the weapons. The surge repeater on the Scorpion is an absolute joke. Yes, it can shred enemies IF you have enough juice in your capacitor to allow it to fully spin up so it can actually hit something. The problem with this is that it basically fully drains the cap to do so, and you can't power anything else in the meantime. You basically just end up spewing all of your ammunition in the general direction of a combatant with about a 10% hit chance. Talk about a HUGE waste of ammunition. Then there's the rockets. It literally takes two at a minimum to kill a person. One to take down shields, even if they only have 1% of their shield left, the second to do the damage. I'd say use the rockets for fending off air-support, but they literally do nothing against ships, and ships absolutely wreck the Scorpion.
It's exactly this reason that makes the Scarab more deadly than the Scorpion. The Scarab can sit at distance and pick off bad guys well outside of their threat range because the dual-repeater is just so accurate. Even if the hit damage is lower, the hit percentage is far higher resulting in a high larger DPS output. I can clear scavs from the outskirts of a settlement in a Scarab, or I can run them over with a Scorpion. I'd say I could shoot them with the Scorpion, but let's be realistic, I can shoot one person and then run away to save my skin because I've been surrounded and am taking way too much damage to survive against.
The best fix I can think of for the surge repeater is a means for improving accuracy. Either we need the option to fit it with a more accurate weapon, or we should have an option to pre-spin the MR at the cost of overall vehicle movement speed. Perhaps this can be accomplished as a "light" load on the WEP capacitor, say something like a draw that 2 PIPs to WEPs could handle. Pre-spinning the MR would then allow it to fire at full speed immediately with full speed accuracy, but it wouldn't allow you to simply reap the benefits of full speed fire and accuracy without a different cost. On the subject of weapon replacements though, I'd really LOVE to have the options for replacing with other weapon types though. I think players would really like being able to sit on a hill side with a Scorpion armed with a small-scale rail gun, or something that is more tailored to anti-air to fend off overhead defense ships.
The next shortcoming is the lack of targeting capabilities. The only way you can change targets is to literally be pointing at the target you want, or manually select it from the external contacts panel. This is not at all practical in combat situations. Scorpion pilots MUST have a way to cycle threats for targeting. Otherwise, you're just right back to being surrounded by targets you can't lock and you have to flee just to survive.
Lastly, I think the threat range of the SRVs needs to be decreased. I've noticed that ships will engage an SRV from WELL beyond the SRVs capable range. I tried to do a settlement mission in which settlement forces were tipped-off, and it was a nightmare. The ships engaged my ship as soon as I dropped from glide, so I touched down on the opposite side of a mountain range and deployed my SRV at a distance of 4 km. Even with a mountain range in the way and with that distance, the ships at the settlement would immediately engage my SRV. The only way I was able to survive was to get out and walk the whole way. It was kind of pointless to have the SRV. If the the threat range was reduced, at least then I could have closed the gap on wheels a bit first.
[New Vehicle]
The Artemis was built with the idea that people would get out on a planet and then walk for long periods of time to do ExoBio. That's all well and good, but that's not at all how it's panned out. People have found that the only practical way to do ExoBio is to fly your ship to a bio specimen, get out, scan it, get back in your ship, fly to another one, rinse, repeat. They do this because the sheer amount of distance you have to traverse for genetic diversity is too high to do on foot, and you also lack a useful vantage point to see potential other hotspots. Sure you can get in an SRV and drive that distance quickly, but you still have no way of locating more of the same bio material, so you just end up driving blindly in a direction hoping to find some.
I'd love to see another SRV that is specifically intended for ExoBio/Geological discoveries. What I envision is essentially a skimmer with a piloting bubble, and equipped with a pulse wave analyzer. The unit would deploy on small landing wheels used to get away from the mothership. These would also be used for landing the unit to disembark. Once out of the stowing range of the ship, the unit can enter into hover mode and fly around. Hovering would have a low altitude cap so it can't just fly around all over the place, but it would be high enough for explorers to get a good vantage point on more discoverables. Additionally, its ability to hover will make it far easier for navigating the rough terrain during exploration.
This craft is EXPLICITLY intended for exploration, therefore it would not have ANY weapons fixed to it, nor will it have a cargo scoop or hold space for cargo. What it will have instead is a pulse wave scanner for locating ExoBio and Geological materials. Maybe it could be called "The Butterfly" or some other insect name that feels non-threatening.
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