Are missiles now more effective than cannons?

[bl00dykill5]

With the jet cannons being nerfed, are missiles now more effective?

[FrugalDangerMan]

"Effective"

 

Yeah.

 

F-160 mission. 2 enemy avengers. 80+ missiles fired. 60+ landed.

 

50% health loss on one Avenger. 10% on the other.

 

One cannon shot from them decimated me.

[HonkMeat]

23 hours ago, bl00dykill5 said:

With the jet cannons being nerfed, are missiles now more effective?

 

No, but you have to now be accurate with the cannons.  They still wreck, but the rate of fire is lower so you can't just expect kills by spraying.

[grimper12341]

Basically, for the average player who is not an elite pilot, killing players on foot with the cannon is no longer viable. Against vehicles tho, the cannon is still the best option (except for very small nimble targets like the mk2 op).

[SHOKKERZ91]

Good luck trying to destroy any armored ground vehicles with those cannons. Nightshark is pretty much in godmode against those. Also any player with BST gets only tickled by those, plus getting ragdolled out of any follow-up shots.

The nerf to the cannons was overly complicated. Would have been enough to just lower the explosive radius to either explosive sniper rounds or even lower and keeping the rest.

[Alfonso93]

7 hours ago, SHOKKERZ91 said:

Good luck trying to destroy any armored ground vehicles with those cannons. Nightshark is pretty much in godmode against those. Also any player with BST gets only tickled by those, plus getting ragdolled out of any follow-up shots.

The nerf to the cannons was overly complicated. Would have been enough to just lower the explosive radius to either explosive sniper rounds or even lower and keeping the rest.

it's a joke now, is so hard to hit a npc/player with it, you have to hit them directly in the body but on top of that they don't die, they ragdoll and lose only half of the health

[GoodTimesAhead]

VIP Headhunter gonna take longer than 3mins now

[Pedinhuh]

In order to say its effective or not you need to define what's it being used for.

 

On-foot NPC enemies? Yes, the homing missiles are more effective as their blast radius is larger and you don't have to be accurate with your aim on them. As it has been the case with the B11 and the Rogue for years.

 

Players and NPC enemies in a land vehicle? Depends on a multitude of factors, including speed and trajectory, armor, etc...

 

On-foot players? Both the cannons and missiles won't work on them, as is the point of the nerf and is what almost everyone asked. Now jet griefers are going to be far more rare than they used to be because they lost their overpowered weapon.

 

Players and NPCs on a aircraft? The missiles are still as effective as they always were, which is none at all and you still need to use the cannons for dogfights, but with the added bonus now that dogfights takes longer and requires more skill, in fact all interceptor aircrafts are mostly balanced within each other as the Lazer and Hydra are not the META any more.

 

Well, they also needed to buff the B11 cannons as to make it a proper air-to-surface attack aircraft, maybe by increasing the range on the canon tenfold but keeping the damage and rate of fire as they are, it's annoying that they didn't do this, but I will take what I can get at this point.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Pedinhuh

[SHOKKERZ91]

28 minutes ago, Pedinhuh said:

Well, they also needed to buff the B11 cannons as to make it a proper air-to-surface attack aircraft, maybe by increasing the range on the canon tenfold but keeping the damage and rate of fire as they are, it's annoying that they didn't do this, but I will take what I can get at this point.

Consoles already struggle to render players in the current B-11 cannon range, so increasing the range isn´t exactly productive. It would make more sense to greatly buff the firerate and in return nerf the agility of the B-11.

[Tex2]

Rockstar took a hardcoded approach with nerfing the jet cannons in freemode. Which is interesting since I would've assumed it would be scripted. But they may have needed to do that since the scripted approach could have resulted in glitches where you could return the jet cannon to its previous state.

 

I am yet to locate the code for where the Lazer & Hydra cannons are changed to the new explosion tag, "Balanced Cannons", but I did find some code changing the blast radius, during freemode, from 5 to 2.

 

Me and @floorball have already experimented with this before. I survived three jet strafes from floorbell when we were testing with 2 blast radius. Which is what's currently the blast radius for balanced cannons. You have to really aim for a sweet spot when trying to kill players with this blast radius.

 

To be honest, I actually prefer the cannons to be this nerfed, but I didn't think Rockstar would drop the blast radius down to 2.

[Pedinhuh]

5 hours ago, Tez2 said:

Me and @floorball have already experimented with this before. I survived three jet strafes from floorbell when we were testing with 2 blast radius. Which is what's currently the blast radius for balanced cannons. You have to really aim for a sweet spot when trying to kill players with this blast radius.

Perfection, that's exactly what they needed to do + nerfing the damage per shot so its not a insta-kill to vehicles, therefore making dogfights more interesting.

[Pedinhuh]

5 hours ago, SHOKKERZ91 said:

Consoles already struggle to render players in the current B-11 cannon range, so increasing the range isn´t exactly productive. It would make more sense to greatly buff the firerate and in return nerf the agility of the B-11.

Players yes, but for enemy NPCs who mostly stays in one place or moves in a predictable manner it would be more effective.

 

Buffing the fire rate of the B11 would just turn it into a Hydra against on-foot players, except much harder to kill because of the extra armor + countermeasures, homing rockets are useless against it, and it can take over 6 explosive rounds to kill it because you have to damage both of it's engines. Even if you nerf it's agility.

 

Buffing the range to something like the range of the double minigun on the speedo custom would be good enough.

 

[lnterloper]

The cannons on the Hydra and Laser are now crap, Rockstar does not have a clue on how balance stuff, I challenge anyone to do a Headhunter armored car in one strafe, people on Nightsharks, MOC cabs (if they work) and Imani tech stuff have, almost, godmode. I had hope they would rebalance other stuff, but I guess this is all the rebalance we will get for now.

[DODI3OG]

So, the average joe struggles with air-to-ground strafes against armored cars, but as I can see Youtubers don't seem to break a sweat even after the nerf.

 

Have you guys tried strafing with the Lazer and Raiju? They're too unstable at lower altitude and the Raiju is too sensitive on pulls. Meanwhile, I haven't used the B11 in almost a year now. The Raiju is excellent for dogfights! It's not as nimble as the Lazer, but the TG Maverick maneuver is too handy when you're getting circled.

Edited June 16, 2023 by DODI3OG

[Alfonso93]

it's quite funny that the sound of the b-11 cannon seems to shoot faster than it actually does lol

[AUScowboy]

Did they do anything to the B-11, or was it left as it was?

[Pedinhuh]

39 minutes ago, AUScowboy said:

Did they do anything to the B-11, or was it left as it was?

Left as it always was.

[BaId_Razor]

14 hours ago, lnterloper said:

The cannons on the Hydra and Laser are now crap, Rockstar does not have a clue on how balance stuff, I challenge anyone to do a Headhunter armored car in one strafe, people on Nightsharks, MOC cabs (if they work) and Imani tech stuff have, almost, godmode. I had hope they would rebalance other stuff, but I guess this is all the rebalance we will get for now.

as a weak pvp player plus a weak pilot, I am very happy with such a change.

players with high skill and flying talent had too much advantage when they also used the so-called spawn kill method where they killed players in a loop, a second after they appeared on the map after death

[SHOKKERZ91]

3 hours ago, DODI3OG said:

So, the average joe struggles with air-to-ground strafes against armored cars, but as I can see Youtubers don't seem to break a sweat even after the nerf.

Youtubers normally cut alot of stuff out, so destroying a armored vehicle in 1 strafe while in reality they did 10 is absolutly nothing impressive. That, or they have multiple friends in the lobby that softended the opponent up. Otherwise, you will not destroy a nightshark with those cannons. Atleast not if the driver has atleast a halfway functional brain. Granted tho, the people that those youtubers fight are absolute troglodytes most of the time.

[AUScowboy]

21 minutes ago, SamKylian said:

as a weak pvp player plus a weak pilot, I am very happy with such a change.

players with high skill and flying talent had too much advantage when they also used the so-called spawn kill method where they killed players in a loop, a second after they appeared on the map after death

Get gud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

sorry, I could resist. J/K of course.

[Tex2]

22 hours ago, lnterloper said:

The cannons on the Hydra and Laser are now crap, Rockstar does not have a clue on how balance stuff, I challenge anyone to do a Headhunter armored car in one strafe, people on Nightsharks, MOC cabs (if they work) and Imani tech stuff have, almost, godmode. I had hope they would rebalance other stuff, but I guess this is all the rebalance we will get for now.

They can.

 

Spoiler

 

I, personally, would have included an extra check to verify whether you're in an invite-only lobby or not. If you are, then the Lazer & Hydra cannons return to normal. Thus, playing in invite-only will allow you to complete VIP Work as you used to.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Tez2

[PwnageSoldier]

On 6/15/2023 at 9:56 PM, lnterloper said:

The cannons on the Hydra and Laser are now crap, Rockstar does not have a clue on how balance stuff, I challenge anyone to do a Headhunter armored car in one strafe, people on Nightsharks, MOC cabs (if they work) and Imani tech stuff have, almost, godmode. I had hope they would rebalance other stuff, but I guess this is all the rebalance we will get for now.

Good lmao. You shouldn't be able to strafe those cars once and immediately murder them with fighter jets, that's absolutely stupid. I hope in the future they buff the B-11's cannons to have a very high RoF whilst nerfing it's mobility so it becomes a dedicated attacker jet, then it would be perfect.

However, the Hydra's cannons should do slightly more damage honestly. It's a pretty sh*t fighter aircraft, and would be better suited as an attacker jet, essentially filling the opposite role that the Raiju now fills for jets. It just shouldn't have cannons anywhere close to as good the B-11 would have, as the Hydra would be more agile than it is in this scenario, and we'd end up in a similar place to what the B-11 is currently.

 

I should also mention these changes to the meta would open the door to a multitude of helicopter buffs, as the Savage can fill, and is already filling the role the Lazer and Hydra once did, and it isn't nearly as overpowered due to being a big, slow target. All it needs is to take an additional rocket, and have flares (not chaff, I think that would be too much).

Edited June 17, 2023 by PwnageSoldier
Paragraph restructuring

[PwnageSoldier]

58 minutes ago, PwnageSoldier said:

Good lmao. You shouldn't be able to strafe those cars once and immediately murder them with fighter jets, that's absolutely stupid. I hope in the future they buff the B-11's cannons to have a very high RoF whilst nerfing it's mobility so it becomes a dedicated attacker jet, then it would be perfect.

However, the Hydra's cannons should do slightly more damage honestly. It's a pretty sh*t fighter aircraft, and would be better suited as an attacker jet, essentially filling the opposite role that the Raiju now fills for jets. It just shouldn't have cannons anywhere close to as good the B-11 would have, as the Hydra would be more agile than it is in this scenario, and we'd end up in a similar place to what the B-11 is currently.

 

I should also mention these changes to the meta would open the door to a multitude of helicopter buffs, as the Savage can fill, and is already filling the role the Lazer and Hydra once did, and it isn't nearly as overpowered due to being a big, slow target. All it needs is to take an additional rocket, and have flares (not chaff, I think that would be too much).

 

To expand on my previous point, I feel the aircraft in the game should fit specific roles in the game whilst still being usable for any task, just underperforming compared to other aircraft. It would give you a reason to mix up the vehicles you use, and would prevent oversaturization of a certain vehicle in the game everywhere (i.e Lazer being everywhere until this update since literally day 1 GTA Online). What I would suggest would be:

 

Lazer, Raiju, Molotok, Pyro, Nokota - these are your aerial superiority planes. They excel in air-to-air dogfights, and really anyone can use them for that; however, they struggle in strafing and bombing ground targets. With enough skill, they can be used for it, but not as well as other vehicles.

 

B-11, Hydra, Streamer-216, Mogul, Tula - these are your attacker planes. While they are (or should be) excellent for devastating ground targets; being able to carry more deadly bombs that cause a wider explosion radius, and deal more damage to armoured vehicles. While they would definitely struggle in any sort of aerial combat, it wouldn't be impossible to take down another aircraft with them, as they are armed for it.

Side note for the Streamer-216, Mogul, and Tula, these attackers would be more bomber-oriented, and would be able to carry an increased bomb capacity of 75 compared to the other attacker aircraft, to make up for their poorer capabilities against aircraft.

 

Volatol, Bombushka, Alkonost - these are your bombers. Massive, slow, and an easy to hit target, these planes would be heavily armoured, carry a hefty amount of bombs (100), and their bombs would be absolutely devastating to any enemy target, dealing massive damage to ground targets with the explosion radius of the Volatol in it's featured Heist setup. While these bombers are fit for their job, they'd be a sitting duck to any other aircraft in the air, and be nearly incapable of defending themselves outside of their remote turrets; if they have them.

 

Slight side topic for these bombers as they are currently very pointless and unbalanced;

I would keep the Bombushka as is in maneuverability, remove the stupid cargo bay wall, and upgrade its armour to 12 rockets, as it does have extremely deadly explosive cannons and would be pretty overpowered with a manned crew if you were to give it any more. 

The Volatol should have it's current bug with lock-on warnings fixed, and become OTR if at a certain height like the current Alkonost, having its armour increased to 10 rockets, and become slightly more maneuverable with it's rudders and pitching. This bomber should be in-between the other two in terms of armour + sheer power, and speed + maneuverability.

The Alkonost should receive an stealth mode akin to the Raiju and Akula, and should immediately open the bomb bay once you deactivate stealth mode. The armour should be buffed to 8 rockets, being the weakest out of the 3 in terms of durability and defense, but with it's current speed and maneuverability making it great at surprise attacks on ground targets.

 

The Rogue and Starling will fit into our fourth and final category; multirole planes. They will be capable all-round at both air-to-ground, and air-to-air but not necessarily exceeding at either well.  They should have their bomb capacity nerfed to 25, and have the live version of bombs whilst the other aircraft have more effective bombs (if they have them). Personally I would rebalance both of them in different ways, but in terms of their role, changing their bomb capacity would fit them well enough as versatile multiroles.

 

Maybe I might expand on helicopter roles and specific aircraft, but who knows. I just wanted to ramble about my idea and hopes for the future of aircraft in Online.

Edited June 17, 2023 by PwnageSoldier
Error with attackers

[El Cavilldo]

10 hours ago, AUScowboy said:

Get gud.

 

 

sorry, I could resist. J/K of course.

 

'If a jet is killing you, just bring it down with your sniper rifle, duh' 

 

[PwnageSoldier]

13 minutes ago, El Cavilldo said:

'If a jet is killing you, just bring it down with your sniper rifle, duh' 

I know this is a joke, but it would be nice if ex rounds got a nerf and took a little more to bring down vehicles

Edited June 17, 2023 by PwnageSoldier

[Tex2]

Found the hardcoded code. @needforsuv since you were asking.

 

First off, this function changes the Explosion Tag from Grenade to Balanced Cannons (its explosion effect is same as Pipe Bomb)

Balanced Cannons have distance damage calculator enabled

Spoiler

__int64 __fastcall sub_7FF6F867C5A8(__int64 a1)
{
  __int64 result; // rax

  if ( !(unsigned __int8)_CHECK_IF_PLAYER_IS_NOT_IN_FREEMODE() )
    return *(unsigned int *)(a1 + 36); //Returns assigned Explosion Tag ID
  if ( (unsigned __int8)_CHECK_IF_PLAYER_IS_IN_JOB() )
    return *(unsigned int *)(a1 + 36); //Returns assigned Explosion Tag ID
  if ( (unsigned __int8)_LOBBY_CHECKS() )
    return *(unsigned int *)(a1 + 36); //Returns assigned Explosion Tag ID
  if ( *(_DWORD *)(a1 + 16) != joaat("VEHICLE_WEAPON_PLAYER_LAZER") ) //If vehicle weapon type isn't Lazer Cannon
    return *(unsigned int *)(a1 + 36); //Returns assigned Explosion Tag ID
  result = 85; //Changes Explosion Tag of Lazer Cannon from Grenade to Balanced Cannons (May look similar to Rogue cannons, but its explosion effect is that of the Pipe Bomb)
  if ( byte_7FF6F9F959C9 ) //Debug check leftover?
    return *(unsigned int *)(a1 + 36); //Returns assigned Explosion Tag ID
  return result; //Returns changed Explosion Tag
}

 

This function adjusts the blast radius from 5m to 2m

Spoiler

float __fastcall sub_7FF6F867C3C0(__int64 a1, __int64 ExplosionTagData)
{
  char *v3; // rsi
  char *v4; // rcx
  int v5; // ebx
  float result; // xmm0_4
  int v7; // ebx

  v3 = &byte_7FF6F9028303;
  if ( !(unsigned __int8)sub_7FF6F875EF18()
    || (!*(_WORD *)(ExplosionTagData + 8) ? (v4 = &byte_7FF6F9028303) : (v4 = *(char **)ExplosionTagData),
        (v5 = sub_7FF6F8953664(v4, 0), v5 != (unsigned int)sub_7FF6F8953664("EXP_TAG_KINETICRAM", 0))
     || (result = -1, -1 <= 0.0)) )
  {
    if ( !(unsigned __int8)_CHECK_IF_PLAYER_IS_NOT_IN_FREEMODE() //Checks if Player is not in freemode
      || (unsigned __int8)_CHECK_IF_PLAYER_IS_IN_JOB() //Checks if Player is on job
      || (unsigned __int8)_LOBBY_CHECKS() ) //Lobby Checks - Ensures player isn't in a loading menu 
    {
      return *(float *)(ExplosionTagData + 32); //Return assigned explosion radius
    }
    if ( *(_WORD *)(ExplosionTagData + 8) )
      v3 = *(char **)ExplosionTagData;
    v7 = sub_7FF6F8953664(v3, 0);
    if ( v7 != (unsigned int)sub_7FF6F8953664("EXP_TAG_BALANCED_CANNONS", 0) ) //Checks if the explosion tag IS NOT Balanced Cannons
      return *(float *)(ExplosionTagData + 32); //If true, return assigned explosion radius
    else
      return *(float *)&dword_7FF6F9479884; //If false, force change explosion radius to 2
  }
  return result;
}

 

Both these two functions adjust "m_time_between_shots" and "m_alternate_wait_time" to 0.125

Spoiler

float __fastcall sub_7FF6F86827C4(__int64 a1)
{
  if ( !(unsigned __int8)_CHECK_IF_PLAYER_IS_NOT_IN_FREEMODE() //Checks if Player is not in freemode
    || (unsigned __int8)_CHECK_IF_PLAYER_IS_IN_JOB() //Checks if Player is on job
    || (unsigned __int8)_LOBBY_CHECKS() //Lobby Checks - Ensures player isn't in a loading menu 
    || *(_DWORD *)(a1 + 16) != joaat("VEHICLE_WEAPON_PLAYER_LAZER") //Is "Lazer/Hydra" cannon current vehicle weapon?
    || byte_7FF6F9F959C9 ) //Debug check leftover?
  {
    return *(float *)(a1 + 316); //Retrieves m_time_between_shots
  }
  else
  {
    return *(float *)&dword_7FF6F947847C; //Sets m_time_between_shots to 0.125
  }
}

 

float __fastcall sub_7FF6F8679D34(__int64 a1)
{
  if ( !(unsigned __int8)_CHECK_IF_PLAYER_IS_NOT_IN_FREEMODE() //Checks if Player is not in freemode
    || (unsigned __int8)_CHECK_IF_PLAYER_IS_IN_JOB() //Checks if Player is on job
    || (unsigned __int8)_LOBBY_CHECKS() //Lobby Checks - Ensures player isn't in a loading menu 
    || *(_DWORD *)(a1 + 16) != joaat("VEHICLE_WEAPON_PLAYER_LAZER") //Is "Lazer/Hydra" cannon current vehicle weapon?
    || byte_7FF6F9F959C9 ) //Debug check leftover?
  {
    return *(float *)(a1 + 336); //Retrieves m_alternate_wait_time
  }
  else
  {
    return *(float *)&dword_7FF6F9478E50; //Sets m_alternate_wait_time to 0.125
  }
}

 

0.04 is the original time between shots for the Lazer & Hydra. So setting it to 0.125, that's 212.5% increase. Plus, alternative wait time was nonexistent for original Lazer & Hydra, but now it is for balanced cannons.

 

Time between shots is in seconds.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Tez2

[SHOKKERZ91]

3 hours ago, PwnageSoldier said:

I know this is a joke, but it would be nice if ex rounds got a nerf and took a little more to bring down vehicles

That and the railgun tbh. Both should be nerfed into irrelevancy. Atleast a flag that hard nerfs damage against players and player vehicles and keeping the damage for npc´s. They even could buff the projectile speed of that thing in return. This would buff it to easier hit broomstick boys to ragdoll them off the flying wheelchair.

Edited June 17, 2023 by SHOKKERZ91

[DODI3OG]

15 hours ago, SHOKKERZ91 said:

Youtubers normally cut alot of stuff out, so destroying a armored vehicle in 1 strafe while in reality they did 10 is absolutly nothing impressive. That, or they have multiple friends in the lobby that softended the opponent up. Otherwise, you will not destroy a nightshark with those cannons. Atleast not if the driver has atleast a halfway functional brain. Granted tho, the people that those youtubers fight are absolute troglodytes most of the time.

Speaking of Nightshark, I got into a 1v1 with it last week. Even with a near-invincible R2K raining missiles after missiles on it, it still got me mainly due to speed and lucky hits from its front MGs. In this case, cannons are more effective than missiles.

 

I have a Chernobog, but I never ever killed anyone with it mainly because I was afraid it'd take too long to set it up and I would just miss air targets, thanks to this youtuber who made its missiles look like trash vs a Lazer. My friend told me it was really easy to set up and it's basically a fortress against jets. Will surely try that out.

[SummerFreeze]

On 6/15/2023 at 6:05 PM, GoodTimesAhead said:

VIP Headhunter gonna take longer than 3mins now

You still can if you practice the Raiju in VTOL mode.

 

Savage also, if the targets aren't too far apart.

[BaId_Razor]

On 6/16/2023 at 7:16 PM, AUScowboy said:

Get gud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

sorry, I could resist. J/K of course.

funny