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balancing |
Demigan
Vice Admiral
Joined: September 12, 2011
Posts: 88
|  Posted: 2011-09-21 12:40
I've only been playing for a couple of days, and did a quick browse of the forums. But so far I've found a rather annoying flaw in the game.
The bigger the better.
For a game that prides itself on the tactical warfare, and there ARE a lot of tactics involved, it seems that bigger ships like dreadnoughts just trump any smaller ship, unless they attack in groups. Which gives the small ships only one real good tactic when a dreadnought appears: run.
So, give smaller ships better manoeuvrability. Not better turn speed and sublight speed, but their warpdrives.
Why? because right now, a dreadnought is too good because it can jump away just as quickly as any other ship, it's hard enough to track a ship that is jumping away as it is. A dreadnought has the full right to be powerful and strong, but dedicated small ships should have a chance to get him, without him just warping away when it looks dangerous.
You might say that a ship has been invented for that: the interdictor or his respective counterparts, but that's already a big ship, and lower ranked players still don't stand a chance!
So, you could give smaller ships a shorter time to reload their warp drives. That would level the playing field between new players and older players, without actually making dreadnoughts any less potent at destroying something.
The current reload time for the warpdrives seems right to me, if someone warps and you catch up, you have enough time to get a good shot and a fair chance to kill him. Maybe even lengthen the base recharge time for every ship a little.
So, the time it takes for big ships to recharge their warpdrive should be lengthened. This will make using dreadnoughts, cruisers and stations a much more tactical challenge, they have to know where to warp, when to warp, and how far. If they jump away and get in a nasty spot, they have the armour and weaponry to last quite long. Small ships would be far more useful during attacks. You could lure away big ships from important points, then double back and assault something before the dreadnoughts catch up.
This would break the 'big ship = win' scenario. Small ships would still be trumped by dreadnoughts time and again, but a good tactical decision with small ships could earn loads more.
Yours sincerely,
Demigan.
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Bardiche
Chief Marshal
Joined: November 16, 2006
Posts: 1247
| Posted: 2011-09-21 12:46
It's only K'Luth Dreadnoughts that can jump as fast as human Cruisers. Other Dreadnoughts take a notably longer time to charge their warp/jumpdrives.
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CM7
Midshipman
Faster than Light
Joined: October 15, 2009
Posts: 1812
| Posted: 2011-09-21 12:59
Dreads and stations are not actualy better than Small ships.
This is just a false perseption.... ill be it, a popular false perseption.
Its a mater of knowing what to deploy for which situation. Something only about 10% of the current player base knows.
I should also point out that this is a skill based MMO. I know of no other of its kind.
Through skill, a captain rank player can overcome a Chief Marshal rank player. Something not possible on other MMO's
[ This Message was edited by: Defiance{CM7} on 2011-09-21 13:22 ]
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Iwancoppa
Fleet Admiral
Joined: November 15, 2008
Posts: 709
| Posted: 2011-09-21 15:21
great to see some input from a new player.
what faction have you been fighting?
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[ML]RogueAvengerTTV
Marshal
Joined: September 11, 2010
Posts: 300
From: England
| Posted: 2011-09-21 16:20
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On 2011-09-21 12:59, Defiance{CM7} wrote:
Through skill, a captain rank player can overcome a Chief Marshal rank player. Something not possible on other MMO's
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or/and luck
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Pantheon
Marshal
Palestar
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 1789
| Posted: 2011-09-21 16:47
Bigger ships jump slower and recharge their drivers slower.
"Bigger is better" is just a popular misconcept. You can easily beat a team of dreadnoughts with a team of destroyers - almost too easily in-fact.
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*FTL*Soulless
Marshal
Joined: June 25, 2010
Posts: 787
From: Dres-Kona
| Posted: 2011-09-21 17:30
Only reason most people fly large ships is cause of A) Defences and B) Damage output.
honestly what are you gonna fear more. A Destoryer comming at you or a Dreadnaught? Most people fear the dread because it is bigger. That leades to the people have to use dreads to fight dreads and it becomes dread space. Smaller ships are good but if your fighting anything over crusier it take a long time to do any worthy damage and you have to be carefull not to get wasted your self
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Whiterin
Fleet Admiral
Joined: November 15, 2007
Posts: 146
| Posted: 2011-09-21 17:55
There are a few players that play almost exclusively smaller ships like frigates or destroyers despite being very high ranked.
I have recently made the jump from Cruser to Dreads myself... and I can tell you... you notice it!
There are times I will encounter a group of small ships that, in the cruiser, would be no problem... In the Dread though, I find my armor dropping rapidly because I can't dodge shots well at all in something that big and lumbering.
I can also say... it's very annoying when there is a player zipping around you at 35-40 gu/s in an enh dessy picking away at you. Even if they only do 1% damage per shot to you, they are still damaging you... while you're doing no damage to them because you can't hit them.
My main reasons for playing Dreads are simple. Most other people play dreads, and I like to be on equal footing with them in terms of power. And, because I am an impatient SOB and I like to crush ships I find near to me within seconds instead of minutes.
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Gejaheline
Fleet Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 19, 2005
Posts: 1127
From: UGTO MUNIN HQ, Mars
| Posted: 2011-09-21 18:42
Warning: Wishful thinking ahead.
Personally, I've always thought that there's some scope for torpedo-boat-like ships armed with weapons that can cause significant chunks of damage to dreads but which are too slow and unwieldy to use against other smaller ships.
This would create a need for larger ships to be supported by smaller ships to protect them from the dread-killer ships while they're busy fighting other dreads, making things a bit more combined-arms and letting lower-ranked players contribute to battles beyond plinking away at dreads and fighting enemy small ships. And enemy small ships tend to only be around because either they're too low ranked to fly a dread or because they feel like it rather than because small ships are a deadly threat to opposing forces.
It doesn't really help that dreadnaughts can basically one-shot-kill smaller ships if they either stumble into beam range for a short period of time or if the dread jumps right on top of the smaller ship and unloads all of its weapons, which it can do with a rather high level of precision and accuracy. Would be nice if beam weapons didn't render dodging useless (since dodging is basically the ONLY way smaller ships survive for any period of time) and dreads (especially luth dreads) didn't mount enough beams to horribly mangle smaller ships nigh-instantly, and if larger jump drives weren't capable of pinpoint-precise jumps, instead perhaps having some element of randomness (which would cause no end of fun when it comes to running into planets).
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Talien
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: May 11, 2010
Posts: 2044
From: Michigan
| Posted: 2011-09-21 21:24
Quote:
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On 2011-09-21 18:42, Gejaheline wrote:
Personally, I've always thought that there's some scope for torpedo-boat-like ships armed with weapons that can cause significant chunks of damage to dreads but which are too slow and unwieldy to use against other smaller ships.
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The ship itself doesn't really need to be slow and turn like it's stuck in molasses since the torps have that covered themselves, just look at the Model T Frigate the Pirates have.
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It doesn't really help that dreadnaughts can basically one-shot-kill smaller ships if they either stumble into beam range for a short period of time or if the dread jumps right on top of the smaller ship and unloads all of its weapons, which it can do with a rather high level of precision and accuracy. Would be nice if beam weapons didn't render dodging useless (since dodging is basically the ONLY way smaller ships survive for any period of time) and dreads (especially luth dreads) didn't mount enough beams to horribly mangle smaller ships nigh-instantly, and if larger jump drives weren't capable of pinpoint-precise jumps, instead perhaps having some element of randomness (which would cause no end of fun when it comes to running into planets).
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I've often thought this myself, it's why I don't fly Frigates and Destroyers anymore since they're practically 1 alpha kills for an EAD or Siphon. Having JD become increasingly inaccurate with larger ships could be interesting too, though it shouldn't be much more than a couple hundred GU to avoid the "oops I hit the planet" issue.
[ This Message was edited by: Talien on 2011-09-21 21:29 ]
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Kenny_Naboo
Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: January 11, 2010
Posts: 3823
From: LobsterTown
| Posted: 2011-09-21 22:17
Quote:
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On 2011-09-21 18:42, Gejaheline wrote:
It doesn't really help that dreadnaughts can basically one-shot-kill smaller ships if they either stumble into beam range for a short period of time or if the dread jumps right on top of the smaller ship and unloads all of its weapons, which it can do with a rather high level of precision and accuracy. Would be nice if beam weapons didn't render dodging useless (since dodging is basically the ONLY way smaller ships survive for any period of time)
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Yer right. Wishful thinking. 
After all, when you have auto targetting weaps this is bound to happen.
Unless you want weaps to be manually targetted and all that the system does for you is to project a lead-computed targeting recticle.
[ This Message was edited by: Kenny_Naboo[+R] on 2011-09-21 22:22 ]
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Demigan
Vice Admiral
Joined: September 12, 2011
Posts: 88
| Posted: 2011-09-22 04:27
I like the fact that people are trying to come up with balancing idea's.
I have played exclusively with the ICC and fought everyone, k'luth, MI, pirates and UTGO.
On hindsight, my idea is already in the game. I don't know how long it takes for them right now, and someone should tell me if this is a good idea or not, but so far I should think that the time to recharge could be made longer.
I quite liked the idea of having torpedo ships to fight dreads, as mentioned, the strategics of the game would become more fluid. small ships need to stay away from dreads, dreads need to stay away from torpedo ships, torpedo ships keep away from small ships.
I was also thinking of an interdictor type small ship.
Instead of blocking all hostiles from using their drives, this ship will have a weapon that will reset the timer on the target's tachyon drive. This means that upon using it, it will be as if the target just jumped and needs to wait for the bar to recharge. This is ofcourse a support ship, so it will support battle armour to survive and small weaponry. The extra interdictor weapon should be a close range weapon with a recharge time twice as long as the longest tachyon recharge time.
yours sincerely,
Demigan.
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Phoebuzz
Grand Admiral
Joined: November 17, 2003
Posts: 110
| Posted: 2011-09-22 04:33
It's not wishful thinking, it would be easy to make beam weapons dodgeable by small ships without any (or very little) coding change.
Just make beam weapons (CLs & Ds) use the cannon weapon code, this would result in Star Wars style 'lasers'.
Same range, same damage type, same firing time with many 'pulses', same effective cycle time, same overall damage, but with slow enough projectile velocity to give smaller ships a chance to dodge them.
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[ML]RogueAvengerTTV
Marshal
Joined: September 11, 2010
Posts: 300
From: England
| Posted: 2011-09-22 04:41
Quote:
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On 2011-09-22 04:27, Demigan wrote:
with a recharge time twice as long as the longest tachyon recharge time.
yours sincerely,
Demigan.
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or mabye just fly a dico cruiser if you think about a ship that can distort space/time to stop a ship jumping at ftl speeds its gonna be one hefty device and one big'en two personly a jd blocker ( the ones attached to cruisers i belive you should have to "lock on" to a ship you want to stop from jumping with a "targeter" that stops that ship jumping as long as its within 1000 gu and drains energy at a rate of say 20 energy per minute when moving at full speed and around 10 when not moving per ship so you could block several ships with this device but it would drain alot of energy also this should be an addition idea to the jd that we all ready have but alter that one to just cut jds not block them so you hit it and jd cuts out but you can jump out of it unless target by the dictor device i suggest above
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Gejaheline
Fleet Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 19, 2005
Posts: 1127
From: UGTO MUNIN HQ, Mars
| Posted: 2011-09-22 04:49
Quote:
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On 2011-09-21 21:24, Talien wrote:
Quote:
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On 2011-09-21 18:42, Gejaheline wrote:
Personally, I've always thought that there's some scope for torpedo-boat-like ships armed with weapons that can cause significant chunks of damage to dreads but which are too slow and unwieldy to use against other smaller ships.
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The ship itself doesn't really need to be slow and turn like it's stuck in molasses since the torps have that covered themselves, just look at the Model T Frigate the Pirates have.
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If you read carefully, I was referring to the weapons being slow and unwieldy, on the unspoken assumption that slow, unwieldy small ships would die almost instantly on the battlefield.
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