Not sure if I correctly understood you. By this you mean the hardware of the warp-gliding (along with several other) Spider player, right? I may be wrong, but I think that in a 3D environnement this jump style (invisibility, no more affect by gravity (free movement), movement speed increasing) is far more easy to code than the jet-pack's one (object's weight factor, take-off angle, acceleration power, etc.), and thus would do more good to one's performance. Furthermore, while in "ethereal" state the Spider could see his personal model replaced by something more generic, using very few polygons (a bit like the whisps in WoW); again this would significantly increase one's performance. See how we ended with such an efficient model? As the lore said: warp-jumping is in fact very risky for its performer's life and soul. Now, because this little piece of fluff partly exists in order to balance the Spiders' strength in TT (in a way that they would not be too OP), there is actually no reason why it couldn't be use in the same purpose in EC: the longer you stay in the warp, the more life you will lose (increasing exponentially toward sudden death when it comes to cross a critical threshold!), same thing when you start to jump to often without taking a break. Hence, while warp-jumping would have at most little cooldown, it would require skill to be used to the benefit of it's performer.
If the draw distance for characters is reduced so only those enemies in your immediate vicinity are rendered then that will more than offset the extra load of having to render the environment textures (rendering multiple characters is typically much more complicated than rendering environments) and furthermore stops Warp Spiders from becoming uber scouts, which isn't really their intended role.
I think swooping hawks can fill the role because like warp spiders they also have haywire grenades as well as plasma grenades. Now they might not be able to destroy the gun emplacements but they can imobilize them which is just as effective, at least till reapers and dragons show up.
How do you propose to make Swooping Hawks any less able to do the same thing to tactical troops, assault troops and heavy troops as well as vehicles? What pray tell would counter them and how?
Rapid firing anti-air comes to mind. Anything with a high rate of fire and accuracy, something that is used to bring down light aircraft or damage them. It would work great for larger groups of swooping hawks. How not to do the same to tactical troops etc. question: Lasblasters of course. I cant see them trying to kill off a hundred heavy infantry by continuously throwing piles of grenades at them, and haywire works only in vehicles.
But aircraft aren't going to be a part of EC at launch, so why make the only counter to Hawks an otherwise useless unit/weapon. Supposing that you do treat Hawks as an exception to the rule, needing a specialised weapon to deal with then aren't Heavy weapon troops the go to troop type for anti-air weapons? Being able to use missile launchers (which typically have anti-air missiles as an option,) makes the counter to the Eldar anti-heavy weapon infantry unit - Heavy weapon infantry!? Doesn't that totally defeat the point? But that piece of logic aside you still haven't answered my question. Surely if Hawks are able to pose a significant threat to Heavy Weapon troops then they should be able to do significant damage to them - otherwise they will simply be ignored by the Heavies while other units deal with them since to do otherwise is wasting ammo. Clearly if they are able to deal significant damage to Heavy weapon troops at range, despite facing the most intense anti-infantry fire (by definition) of any standard unit then they will obviously be able to deal equally significant damage to other less ranged damage focussed troops with similar armor - Such as (in the case of Marines) Tactical or Assault Marines. So I repeat... If Hawks are acting in an anti-heavy role then what stops them from being an all-round excellent anti-infantry unit with no obvious infantry counter?
Hawks role is not anti-heavy, it is destroying tanks and light infantry! What else could they do with S3 AP5 lasblasters and haywires? And no, plasma 'nades doesn't help in that. I think I said it before but throwing out grenades to continuously kill infantry (heavy or not) is not a good tactic, but continuously using haywire to wreck vehicles does work. And I repeat, anything with a high rate of fire and accuracy is a counter. Doesn't even have to be anti-air, as long as it can be pointed up. Whatever else would be used to bring down assault marines, would be good enough for hawks. Even if the marines are more armoured, there still needs to be something accurate to stop them.
Mngwa if you intend on crashing other people's discussions you should at least try and acquaint yourself with the context first to make sure you aren't getting the wrong end of the stick. The role in question was that Swooping Hawks would be able to fill an anti-heavy role (I specifically used the case example of bunkered Heavy squads and weapon emplacements), which is something I have been busily refuting in order to make the case for Warp Spiders, who actually can fill that role. A role that the Eldar army really needs filled IMO since we lack a basic jump H2H unit. In an attempt at getting people to think about just why Hawks aren't cut out to be anti-heavy weapon troops I posed a set of questions that would force the person answering them to think about the consequences and repercussions of fitting Hawks into this role - which you answered... out of context. If you don't believe that Hawks can fill an anti-heavy role then we are in agreement since I too do not think that Swooping Hawks are cut out for the anti-heavy weapon role - as you would know if you had actually read the thread so far.
Been posting on this thread for some time, and I really do not have any intention of reading through the few pages of text that had apparently nothing but how warp spiders teleport and going in cover vs. going in air as well as how warp spiders work in TT. Also. I am not one to record what opinion everyone is about something on a forum, so I will hope you will be a bit more clear if you want to state that they are not anti-terminators.
Jeebus no one said anything about Terminators, it's heavy weapon troops for example Devastators, you know those heavy weapon wielding basic troop types that specialise in powerful long ranged fire support. You may not want to acquaint yourself with people's opinions, but if you intend to wade into the middle of an ongoing discussion you could at least try to find out what is under discussion first! Seriously though I don't really want to have to argue with people who haven't understood what I'm saying. I feel I've made my point perfectly clear regarding why I think Spiders would fill a more essential role than Swooping Hawks (at least to begin with) and so I'll move on to more interesting topics.
