This weapon is a problem for any future balancing of vehicle combat and I will explain why.
In order to balance a power weapon, one must follow these guidelines:
- That weapon must take a relatively high amount of skill to successfully get kills with.
- That weapon must have a niche (close, medium, long range) that it is most effective in and should not be too effective at other ranges.
- That weapon’s ammo supply must be very limited (respawn times also fall into this rule).
Of course, you can bend or even break one of these rules and still have a balanced power weapon so long as the other remaining rules are compensated (or even add weapon specific balances that we will get to later). How does the rocket launcher compare? It doesn’t take a lot of skill to use effectively, but it makes up for that in its close-medium range niche, very small supply of ammo, and extremely long respawn time. How about the Sniper? It is arguably one of the most skill-demanding weapons out of all the power weapons, has a long range niche, and usually has a dozen or less shots.
Now let us look at the Spartan Laser. It is primarily an anti-vehicle weapon, but can also be used effectively as an anti-personnel weapon. I can’t imagine keeping your cross-hair on an enemy vehicle for 3 seconds to be considered skillful, nor can I pinpoint an exact niche for the Laser because the laser travels almost instantaneously, allowing for extreme range shots, and the weapon isn’t too bad in close range due to the fact that the Laser fires not one, but a few laser bursts per shot, and not all of the bursts need to hit to land a kill which means “sweeping” with the laser is an effective CQB tactic.
The Laser has 5 shots, one more than the traditional Rocket Launcher, and each shot can destroy even the most heavily armored Tank. One of the specific balancing features of the Laser is the red light that paints anything you are charging up at, which gives your victim fair warning and time to hide. Unfortunately, a good strategy of only aiming at your target when you are at the peak of charging your Laser and/or a combination of Lag effectively negates that effort of balance.
So, to sum up:
- Little input of skill needed
- Almost non-existent niche
- 5 shots (I’ll let you decide if this is balanced or not)
Failing to meet two out of three of these guidelines doesn’t necessarily damn the Laser into being unbalanced, but I’ll offer up my second point in assessing the Laser’s balance.
Under normal circumstances vehicles should absolutely roll infantry to their grave, but if that infantry possesses a power (or anti-vehicle) weapon, the balance is tipped in the infantry’s favor. When balancing this scenario of an infantry (with a power weapon) versus a vehicle, one must never forget the skill v skill relationship between the two. That is:
- It must take skill from the weapon the infantry is using to take down the vehicle.
- You must give the pilot of said vehicle a chance (no matter how small) of using their skills at driving/piloting to dodge the infantry’s shot and escaping alive.
Not without both of these requirements met can you consider any anti-vehicle weapon “balanced” (keep in mind, IMO). One of the greatest examples of this balance in theory were the weapons that fired locked-on projectiles. The Halo 2 Rocket Launcher, the Halo Reach Rocket Launcher versus Air, The Missile Pod, and the Plasma Launcher all fall into this category. It required good positioning of the shooter of these weapons to score a hit on these vehicles, and at the same time it took skill from the pilot of these vehicles to successfully evade these projectiles. In reality, with the exception of the Halo 2 Rockets (and perhaps even the Reach Rockets against air), these weapons were considered under-powered against vehicles, but not because these weapons fulfilled points #1 and #2 above, The projectiles were under-powered because they fired much too slow and were easily evade-able by vehicles.
Does the Laser fulfill any of these 2 rules? Do you think it is fair that a weapon should demand little skill from the user and give the pilot of said vehicle no chance to use their skills at driving/piloting their vehicle to escape death? Is this the future of Halo you want to play in?
I suggest scrapping the laser entirely and bring back a projectile based weapon that requires a lock-on in order to track vehicles. You could even bring back the Plasma Launcher or Missile Pod, except this time buff the speed of the projectiles. As an added side-note you could also give the pilot a warning when projectiles are homing in on the driver’s rear. Bad drivers/pilots may freak out but the good drivers/pilots will have a chance to show off their skills and successfully evade these projectiles. Of course, correct balancing won’t make vehicles completely dominant over infantry, it will just give the good drivers/pilots an increased skill ceiling to improve their abilities and dominate the battlefield.
TL;DR: ^ Last two paragraphs
