I'm going to make a few comments, both about the Razorback and the Hawk. About the Razorback, it was actually before playing the game, just by looking at videos, but after playing a maintain that position. So the following paragraph is from a thread i made yesterday....
It seems to me that the Hawks have a way to recover health, the red (or is it the purple?) pickup looks like it heals it. So, pretty much like Warhawk. Now, Razorbacks as well as Hawks, i'd assume, can also be repaired with the repair gun on the ground, but i still feel that something should be available for Razorbacks to recover health too. All should know that Warhawk had health pickups along the roads for vehicle repair, and of course later in the game the wrench was introduced, but in Starhawk, that element of repair on the road disappeared. But i think it could still be present in another way. Perhaps the garages could work as repair drivethroughs. I was kinda thinking now about how Burnout Paradise's garages work, for example. Of course, it should have a cooldown feature so that you couldn't just drive through one over and over again repairing your Razorback. But i do think that it would also add a new strategic element to the game. Instead of people building garages mainly on their starting points, i.e. the main bases, teams would think about scattering a few along paths leading from one base to another and back.
Ok, so that's all the comments i have on the Razorback. I also agree with people on this thread that keep saying that the seat changing animation is too long, although i found that when changing from the turret to the drivers seat, i can start driving even before my character reaches the pedals lol!
So, now on to the Hawk. There's quite a bit i wanted to say about it, really. It hit me only a few moments before i started playing the beta this past night and i'm going to say something unexpected...
We need an hover mode for Hawks!
There, said it. Now, why? Well, a moment i took part on and that i already saw emulated in other videos cleared it up. I was at my main base when suddenly rockets start hitting our buildings. Scanning where it might be from, i see an enemy on top of the highest towers just next to our base. Trying to hit him with the rifle was impossible, the rocket against ground troops is way underpowered and it didn't even scratch him. If he'd notice he was being shot at, all he had to do was take two steps back from the ledge and people on the ground would lose sight on him. Only weapon on the ground that seemed like it would counter that enemy was the sniper rifle. So i think to myself, i'll go up the launch pad, grab a hawk and deal with him. Flying close to him was easy but the hard part is facing a player like that on top of a tower. Perhaps shooting him mid flight is an option but it's not exactly the most effective, so i try to siwtch to mech and land on a place where i can kill him. The trouble is... he was on a really thin tower and catching the right timing so i can land the mech there isn't easy. Either overshoot it or transform to early and you go to the ground and he's way up there where you can't see him. One of the sides was closer to the top, but i couldn't jump with my mech that high.
Now, i know perfectly well that LBI's idea was to deal with the complaints about WH's hover mode and i realized how important that was, but this little incident made me aware that the mechs on Starhawk have limitations that i wasn't expecting. To think that a guy with a jetpack can be more effective and menacing against an enemy base is outrageous. And i'd guess that like this pilots are expected to fly from above and try to take out the enemy with machine gun fire or some wonderfully placed missiles, sure, there were plenty of times in WH where i pointed to the ground and fired a homing missile on top of someone's head, but honestly, there are times when that isn't enough. And in Starhawk, if you can't kill that enemy on that tower in one passage, when you turn around and try again, he'll have regained health. He'll also probably have rockets to shoot at you while you're flying straight to him.
So, essentially, jetpack+tower beats Hawk.
And any solutions for this, except someone with a sniper from the ground or really perfect flying and aiming? I can only think of another jetpack player getting up there or having hover for the mechs. And i could see it working, if you ask me. I clearly understand why it was taken off, but this might not be the only situation where we're going to miss it. Now, if you ask me how can we have hover so that it doesn't devolve again to being an issue, i'd suggest this:
Make it so that Mechs use the boost bar for hovering. That way, if you are flying and transform into a mech, if you press the R2 button, you'll hover for that small amount of time, but perhaps just enough to deal with an enemy. When depleted, you land on the ground. Also, this could work for jumping higher than you can right now. Just like jetpacks, you could press X followed by R2 so that you'd hover a bit into the air, just enough to get a towering view of the ground or perhaps to get to those hard to reach towers. One other thing that is wrong about the mech is the transformation back to Hawk when on the ground or surrounded by a lot of buildings. As many have noticed already, it's too damn easy to crash into something in front of you that way. Being able to jump while in mech mode, gain altitude by hovering and then switchin to Hawk mode would prevent those issues.
Another thing is that while in Mech mode, people can no longer lock on their rockets or missiles on them. If hover mode would be brought back in this way, i feel that the reason for removing the lock-on on mechs would be lessened and we could lock onto them like it should be. Also, changing the animation so that the mech doesn't look to be just suspended in the air would probably just take adding a boost-like/jetpack-like burst under its wings, feet or both.
All in all, i feel like having a hover mode with a boost-bar would be welcomed and would not become an issue if you'd manage to set its duration and cooldown timer adequately.
