anyone seen the accipiter?

[[JiF]AlbieDamned]

Has anyone seen the Accipiter squad leader unlock in use? It's the drone which is supposed to fire at anything on your squad's netbat. I don't think I've ever seen it in use. I've only seen the other drone (the one which identifies targets) a few times. I was wondering whether the Accipiter is any good or not, cause I was thinking of heading up that unlock path next. I know a downside of it must be that, like the other drone, it gives away your position.

[[JiF][AARP]Grimp]

I have it.
You have to have at least 3 or 4 squad members for it to work.
You give up your dropable spawn point.
It gives you away.
If I remember correctly it does protect you even when you are down but only wounded.
All in all its like the sentry gun. It usually does not kill many but works as a distraction with the added detection.
Its kinda funny watching it bounce off your vehicle when you get in.
I find most times I want the throw down spawn point instead.

[JPistol]

Squad Leader unlocks were my first line of unlocks when starting out. The Accipiter is not worth the unlock. Before 1.10 patch the thing could hardly tracked anything to lock on and shoot at. With 1.10 patch it has improved the tracking only a little, but the sensory range is still to small to be of use. The Sentry Enforcer completely nocks Accipiter out of the competition, tracking object clear across a visual plane.

The Accipiter shoots the same cal bullet as the SMG carried by the Engineers.

The Otis and Accipiter have tendancy of getting hung up on walls, celings, trees, etc. If the SL is moving to fast and gets to far a head of floating device. Otis and Accipiter will continue to move towards the SL till it destroys itself from the damage received banging against the object it is stuck on. Dosn't hurt for the SL to be a Engineer to do repairs on it when needed.

In addition.
It takes the SL plus 1 unit to use the SLSB
It takes the SL plus 2 units to use the Otis
It takes the SL plus 3 units to use the Accipiter

A SL sometimes may never have 3 additional units.

[[JiF]Stepovich]

I've seen it used by a decent squad leader I followed around most
of Monday...seems just like what Grimp said for the most part.

As far as the spawn point thing, I much prefer spawning on the squad
leader unless he's in the middle of a nasty fire-fight. You invariably
spawn too far away from the squad to be of any use with the fixed
spawn drop.
I function best in close support since I tend to be doing most of
the reviving

[[JiF]bigjohnson]

I saw a guy jump onit and ride up and up... don't know where he went but he just went up and up. off subject, I also saw the legendary battlefield "floating to heaven" on 2142 which was most common in 1942

[[JiF][AARP]Grimp]

Never saw anyone float to heaven or ever heard about it.

[[JiF]AlbieDamned]

I agree with Step about the spawn point beacon. I'd rather be able to spawn on the squad leader. A nice change for a future patch would be to make it so you can spawn on either the leader or the beacon, instead of not being able to spawn on the leader when the beacon is out. Of course there would have to be a way to tell on the spawn screen which one is which. The beacon does have its uses, like if the leader can get to a point behind enemy lines and place the beacon in a relatively hidden spot. But too often it gets left somewhere and forgotten, and then the squad has a hard time staying together because the leader is somewhere else.

So it sounds like none of the squad leader unlocks are particularly great. I'll probably take the beacon at some point, but that's it. I wonder what the new squad leader unlock will be in Northern Strike?

I think I'm gonna go up the abilities path next instead, to get the two sprint ones. My other option is to go up the "mining" side of the engineer path. I've maxed out the other side of engineer and I've got everything on assault except smoke grenades and the Voss. But so far I'm pretty happy with the Baur so I don't think I'll go for the Voss.

I am by the way having more success with the Baur then the basic assault rifles at longer ranges in single shot mode. I don't think it's necessarily more accurate, but it does more damage when I do hit. I seem to take out most targets with about 3 shots, and I can pop off 3 pretty fast. It seemed to take more like 5 or so hits with the basic assault rifles. The Baur gives me a chance against snipers. I do need to practice more with the rocket attachment, since that seems like a good option for long distance assault fighting.

Ok this post was all over the place and completely off the original topic of this thread

[JPistol]

Even good SLs get shot and killed, and SLSBs can be distroyed too. The benny using a SLSB is the SL can advance a point with their units instead of holding back. If the SL gets killed the team dosn't loose the advanced teritory as quickly thus not pushed way back to the begining upon the SLs death. Which is greatly important for PAC forces.

I know SLSBs is not a liked thing because of the differance. Though after 400 hours and thousand drops, you get use to it, and value it.

[[JiF]Sandretzky]

I still like a spawn beacon on the titan or under it on the ground (so I land on the titan). Squad leaders death and my death dont always work time wise