(12-26-2018, 03:05 PM)Titan* Wrote: [ -> ]afaik you are not balance dev and its mostly up to balance devs right? Why do you even bother when there is no one that can implement these stuff. I made that mistkae once better to not waste time
That's a pretty pessimistic stance. This mod is built on player ideas, at one point the same kind of discussion had to happen for the mining system, sci data system, cap weapon balance, etc.
One godboat can destroy a battleship. I've done it, and I'm a bad gunboat player. Was like my 10th GB flight ever or so.
(12-26-2018, 02:11 PM)eigos Wrote: [ -> ]I'm looking for people who want to help co-create and balance sci-data gunboat weaponry, in a calm and constructive manner. People skilled in PvP with extensive experience in gunboats, caps and snubs are welcome to join me in Discord to discuss the best approach to designing those. I already have one unique model for the first turret (one of my own designs) and I expect to start making more in the future.
With the damage types plugin, the spread factor and a general overhaul of the 3 gunboat classes, I am sure we can come up with good stuff that can be both fun and balanced.
I am experienced with all ship classes. I have flown every ship in the game, except for a few new ones, and have fought every ship in the game. The only class I don't use as much is bombers, however I've used them enough to know how they balance against other classes, and have fought them plenty with all classes.
And I mean all; I even fight extensively with transports, freighters, and light fighters.
I was also thinking of coming up with gunboat scidata guns just yesterday. I was thinking of making them less significant than capital codenames, and not requiring listing of owners, while being craftable on POB's with a modest amount of scidata, along with expensive commodities and possibly nomad remains.
(12-26-2018, 06:50 AM)Tenacity Wrote: [ -> ]Cerberus fires two projectiles, so technically it does do 6k per shot. The listed 3k is only for one of the dual projectiles.
Oh! Well, then, the Cerberus is fine.
(12-26-2018, 06:50 AM)Tenacity Wrote: [ -> ]I do agree that no primaries should have spread, that's one of the things that makes nomad hybrid gunboat turrets so much more powerful than any others (the ones the wild/scorpion gunboats use) - they do a little less dps, but have no spread, so they're hyper accurate against snubs.
Other than that, I think the greatest shortcoming of gunboats is versatility right now. They lack a lot of options compared to larger (or smaller) ships:
-No gunboat has more than 2 heavy turret hardpoints
-Gunboat pulses are heavy turrets rather than light turrets like they are on cruisers, battlecruisers, or battleships. This combined with the above point means you basically have to choose an anti-shield vs anti-hull loadout rather than an anti-cap vs anti-snub loadout. This severely limits gunboat effectiveness and versatility compared to other ship classes; but it stems pretty much entirely from the fact that nobody on the dev/balance team seems to want gunboats to ever be capable of fighting other caps, while at the same time not allowing them to be enough of a deterrent against fighters to be effective anti-snub platforms.
-Gunboats have the least variety of turret types of any capital class: they have fewer missile types, they have no mortars, they have absolutely no sci data / codename turrets, they're pretty much limited to solaris, primary, razor, pulse, and 3 underpowered missile turrets.
-The gunboat shield split, which only really exists for freighters and gunboats now (no other caps really have to make this choice) effectively ruins the entire ship class when it comes to shield 'choice'. There is no choice: a shield with 16k drain per second when the heaviest gunboat only has 60k regen means you're losing nearly 30% of your power core just for a shield that only has 50k more capacity. It's an asinine tradeoff. No decent gunboat pilot uses anything but the light (100k / 10k drain) shield now, whereas this dilemma doesnt exist for cruisers, battlecruisers, or really even battleships (yes there are dread shields, but its not the same kind of balance issue).
I'd like to see these changes made:
1. Make gunboat pulses light/normal turrets, rather than heavy. This keeps consistency across all cap classes.
2. Change gunboat type balance to incorporate different numbers of heavy turrets. Light gunboats/gunships should have the current 4 light / 2 heavy turret setup. Medium gunboats should have a 4 light / 3 heavy setup. Heavy gunboats should have a 4 light / 4 heavy setup.
I'm with you up to that point.
(12-26-2018, 06:50 AM)Tenacity Wrote: [ -> ]3. Add at least a couple additional heavy turret options to differentiate gunboat roles:
--"Mini Mortar", to go inline with the light mortar / battlecruiser mortar / mortar / heavy mortar series, designed as a long range anti-cap weapon.
--Some kind of 'shotgun' anti-snub turret that takes a heavy slot, fires multiple projectiles with each pull of the trigger, and spreads, much like other shotgun/scattergun weapon types in the game.
--Something akin to the hellfire rocket system used by bombers, but upscaled for gunboat use; ideally anti-cap, but high risk/high reward with a large spread and short range.
I don't think those are appropriate. Mortars would make gunboats quite overpowered against capital ships. They're small, and impossible to hit at a distance. The scattershots are only appropriate on bombers; the Solaris turrets are already appropriate for gunboats. The hellfire rockets could possibly be okay for gunboats, but I'm personally not for changing that.
Say goodbye to any PoB-related mechanics for now. It won't happen. It's not that ideas are lacking but the people to work through the most annoying plugin Discovery uses.
(12-26-2018, 07:29 AM)DarkTails Wrote: [ -> ]Battleship and Battlecruiser pulse turrets go on their primary turret slots. It severely limits your primary dps if you go with a full pulse set-up. Gunboats and cruiser have it easy when it comes to their pulse loadouts compared to their heavy counterparts, as those ships still retain the bulk of their firepower. Battlecruiser and Battleship heavies and secondaries will only get you so far. The anti-cap weapons you reference are all in the heavyslots as missile form. Having more than two heavy slots makes any gunboat have the capacity for all roles. There's a missile for each job in the gunboat department. If you want to take out a capitalship with two gunboats, one will have pulses and the other anti-cap missiles.
No "gunboat mortar" exists because it would make the gunboat wipe all snubcraft from the field unless devs got creative with the balance magic plugin. Giving heavy gunboats four heavy slots gives them capacity to fight any situation or be entirely trolly.
The current gunboat nerfs are remnants from before the time of FLhook magic. I see absolutely no reason why the SNAC style balance (making a weapon do less damage to smaller ships and more to bigger ships) couldnt be applied to mortars or other similar weapons. I've said this before: If you're going to remove a one shot mechanic for 'balance', that should be reciprocated through all one shot mechanics. All or none, there's no reason for half measures when we have the ability to resolve this issue.
This applies to non gunboats as well: Cruiser razors, which were one of my favorite cruiser heavies back in the day (in general I just like razors for all ship types), were removed entirely because snubs/bombers complained about being one shot by them; however, at least to my reasoning, the cruiser razor was made to be an anti-gunboat weapon. Right now, gunboats are extremely difficult for cruisers to hit at anything outside of point blank range, which is why gunboats are considered overpowered against larger ship types (even though gunboats lack any proper anti-cap weaponry). Cruiser razors were the solution to gunboats, but got removed because of crying snubs.
If we applied Flhook's snac change to cruiser razors, they could be brought back in a fashion that allows them to deal full damage against gunboats and larger ships, but less to fighters/bombers.
(12-26-2018, 06:50 AM)Tenacity Wrote: [ -> ]Cerberus fires two projectiles, so technically it does do 6k per shot. The listed 3k is only for one of the dual projectiles.
have to add to that, that the Cerberus GB Turrets actually got nerfed to 1500 per shot and not 3000.. so they now deal only 3000 overall
(12-26-2018, 05:04 PM)Tenacity Wrote: [ -> ]This applies to non gunboats as well: Cruiser razors, which were one of my favorite cruiser heavies back in the day (in general I just like razors for all ship types), were removed entirely because snubs/bombers complained about being one shot by them; however, at least to my reasoning, the cruiser razor was made to be an anti-gunboat weapon. Right now, gunboats are extremely difficult for cruisers to hit at anything outside of point blank range, which is why gunboats are considered overpowered against larger ship types (even though gunboats lack any proper anti-cap weaponry). Cruiser razors were the solution to gunboats, but got removed because of crying snubs.
Cruiser razors were as good of a counter to gunboats as *any* other cruiser weapon. Light mortar is a better counter than the razor ever was, because it's as fast as a razor but does much more damage in 1 shot. Solarises were always the only way to reliably hit gunboats.
(12-26-2018, 08:20 PM)Antonio Wrote: [ -> ] (12-26-2018, 05:04 PM)Tenacity Wrote: [ -> ]This applies to non gunboats as well: Cruiser razors, which were one of my favorite cruiser heavies back in the day (in general I just like razors for all ship types), were removed entirely because snubs/bombers complained about being one shot by them; however, at least to my reasoning, the cruiser razor was made to be an anti-gunboat weapon. Right now, gunboats are extremely difficult for cruisers to hit at anything outside of point blank range, which is why gunboats are considered overpowered against larger ship types (even though gunboats lack any proper anti-cap weaponry). Cruiser razors were the solution to gunboats, but got removed because of crying snubs.
Cruiser razors were as good of a counter to gunboats as *any* other cruiser weapon. Light mortar is a better counter than the razor ever was, because it's as fast as a razor but does much more damage in 1 shot. Solarises were always the only way to reliably hit gunboats.
IIRC the old cruiser razors were 1500m/s. Which was a hell of a lot easier to hit a GB with than a 900m/s light mortar
They were 900m/s. 1500 would be very overpowered.
(12-26-2018, 12:25 PM)Antonio Wrote: [ -> ]2. Hard to master - they're very easy to learn, but mastering stuff like perfectly managing range on the fastest-paced cap class will naturally draw people away from it. One mistake can mean an instakill or all your regens gone, and it can happen in a split second. I've no doubt you haven't mastered them or this thread wouldn't exist in the first place.
Bringing mastery into a balance discussion doesn't seem terribly useful to mention to me. If your balance philosophy is to consider a ship class based on the best of its userbase, the average joe (and below) players are going to struggle a lot with it. That isn't to say powerful ships shouldn't come with a little more difficulty or responsibility, but just for accessibility's sake it's better to judge all ship classes by what a typical player is capable of with a few rounds of practice.