how long are you up in the air for? how long is the cooldown?
~5 - 7 seconds, and the cooldown's really short. 10 seconds or so, feels shorter than the jumppack even. I didn't time anything but it gives you plenty of time to- say- rise above a chaotic scene to take out a key enemy with a quasar shot or fly over a group of enemies to pepper them with arc bolts or incendiary breaker shells.
Here's a breakdown of how the thing works: You press space, it sends you up, you hover ~10 meters off the ground relative to where you started. You hover in the air at this height for the duration of the hover. You can 'walk' in any direction, which as far as I can tell moves you as fast as walking (not
on foot- walking. it's pretty slow) does. You are locked in the hover until the duration runs out, then you drop from the sky and the remaining bit of charge is used to slow you down to safely return, like the jumppack
I have also noticed that if you activate it while already falling, it will skip hovering and instead slow you down for a safe landing. Then it will resume charging from however much it had left once you land, which is probably going to be most of the tank. It also seems to climb up walls if you press against them. Generally speaking, anywhere accessible by a jumppack is also accessible by the hoverpack.
Like I said though, with how slow it is I don't see it being super useful on anything except terminids. (Again, haven't played anything except terminids with it so I may be overestimating how much of a sitting duck it would make you) I assume they were very careful not to outdo the jumppack but there is no competition between the two because they totally fulfill different roles. They are very different mechanically. The jumppack is a movement aid, the hoverpack is combat utility.
Bottom line: It makes you feel way cooler than you actually are.
