CEONSS

I still don't know whether I should've opened a topic for this. First I want to make a thing clear: this topic is for those vehicles which can be found only on a few maps and you'd like to see them more. Well personally I'd like to start with 2 vehicles, which I'd like to see on more maps.

Wyvern: Imo Wyvern is a very well balanced vehicle. It is fast moving, but unlike the Manta it uses precise laser guns. The Wyvern is a bit hard to use, because it is even more fragile than the Manta and it can be hard to hit infantry with the lasers, but if you learn how to use it, then you want to get this vehicle as much as possible. I think this vehicle deserves to be found on more maps.

Draco: I've already mentioned this in the "Draco" topic. MasterBath isn't a good map for Draco, but I think there are lots of other maps in which the Draco would be useful.

Actually the Wyvern has been faded out of use a bit because it often dominated the maps it was previously available in.

Skillful players can dominate with anything.

Also to tell the truth Wyvern requires some sort of skill to be able to use it properly. Vehicles like Dragon, Minotaur and Arbalest are pretty mindless. All of them is about camping and spamming.

The Wyvern is pretty much the ur-example of balancing through extremes and one can easily deduce how it even came to be from its modder's starting agenda. To set itself apart from the common Manta, the Wyvern needed to shoot a hitscan repeater type of weaponfire. Since that made things much easier for its pilot compared to slower moving, ranged plasma shots, it needed to be hobbled in some other way, thus the halving of its armour, which made it practically a deathtrap as soon as it receives one shot from most any weapon in the game. With just one knob dialed up and another dialed down, the vec still seemed pretty derivative so ludicrous max speed and jump height were also thrown in with the notion that this would introduce some kinda nuanced skill check and act as its own caveat. Instead, what we get from that decision is a vec that can only take advantage of its full speed potential in open and unobstructed terrains, most specifically in elongated maps; small surprise that Panalesh is among the few that fit the bill and that's why it's still there.
Imagine the Wyvern trying to survive just by negotiating the geometry of the average (indoors?) map, never mind getting shot at with its cardboard armour: unless its pilot kept cutting off the jumps not later than midway through, it'd be thrashing all over the place and be useless in any kinda scenario. The predictable trajectory of its typical peak jump doesn't help things for its rider either. In the end, the only way the Wyvern can contribute in a fight is by taking opportunistic shots while its target is busy fighting something else and retreat before an enemy decides to deal with it. Introducing vehicles that rely on and foster such a playstyle (I won't call it cowardly, but I've certainly heard it used, definitely among custom flyer pilots trying to have a dogfight above only to keep taking potshots from those turds below) don't exactly improve gameplay. Overall, therefore, I'm quite happy to only come across Wyverns in Panalesh and, hey, at least the combo of open spaces and its passing speed make for good LG target practice - a few months ago I think I downed 3-4 of 'em in motion just with the trusty sniper, never mind the Ballista's charge turret; aside from that, however, there's a reason why it's underused and I really hope it remains that way.

The Draco isn't even an established addition to the custom ONS loadout so I don't think one could legitimately label it "underused" at this point. For further discussion on its usefulness, there already exists a thread dedicated to it.

I think there are more maps where Wyvern would be useful and I have to disagree on some of your points. From my experiences Wyvern is designed for long range combat. I have to say that I single handedly defeated a Minotaur using player on Panalesh by using Wyvern. Even though that the Minotaur's weapon has a rather big blast radius and ridiculously big damage, the Minotaur driver couldn't do anything against me, because I was too far from him and I kept moving and "jumping". And no, that player wasn't attacked by somebody else.

You describe a fight with a player who didn't know the mino-laser

You can probably frag a player in any vehicle or using any weapon with any other vehicle or any weapon (and I'm only using "probably" here because shieldguns won't hurt enemy vecs & their drivers as much as you, scorpion excepted), but as long as we don't know what the skill differential was, how hurt the enemy vec already was and a number of other parameters, it still amounts to little more than just a single piece of anecdotal evidence. In terms of larger numbers and averages, one can easily conclude the Wyvern isn't designed for long range combat - it's just not designed to do combat at all. It's kinda like suggesting an RPG launcher is designed for combat, you know?

Still, kudos on your kill .

I think you just underestimate the Wyvern. I made much use of it and as I've heard others did make use of it too. Why can't you just make both Manta and Wyvern available in some maps?

Also Rott, the player did try to use the laser gun, but he didn't succeed in using it. It's a small detail, because he didn't use the laser much, because he couldn't hit me with it.