(the following was posted in the pinned mod balance thread. i've reposted here for anyone wishing to discuss)
Alright folks, here's my take on balancing the transports with all the new ships being added to in 4.84. It's a great bunch of ships and I hope my suggestions are taken in the positive "let me help!" manner intended:)
Rather than try to force the amount of information needed for this project into a forum post, I've set up a spreadsheet with google docs.
There are three pages to the document. The first page shows the balancing changes I think are needed to make many transports more attractive to players. The second page shows the current stats for beta 2 ships. The third and last page shows turn rates of a sampling of current ships for reference purposes.
> 4.84 Transports Google Spreadsheet <
Here are screenshots of pages if you'd rather not make a google docs account:
page 1
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page 2
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page 3
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A cursory comparison of the readme and the list shows you missed a couple. The Container Ship and the Heavy Tanker.
I love the ideas you have!
Mohr
I think you have the thruster speed of the Firefly too low. Personally, I think the Firefly should (with the new turn rate you gave it) thrust to 200 like the Behemoth. Perhaps several other ships, too.
Ships that need 200 thruster:
-Firefly
-Prison Liner
-Kusari Transport
-Train
-Percheron
-Mining Ship
: Urgh! Not sure how I missed those two ships... ah well hurry makes sloppy:P
: I'll look the Firefly over again, but that ship is a beastly trader as it is, even with reduced maneuver. It has a ton going for it even without full thrust. As for the liners, I didn't do anything with those at all because there is a lobby to have them restored to their hybrid roots. We'll see where Igiss takes those.
Thanks for the feedback so far; I'll get those other two ships in asap and wait for more opinions.
Edit: updated first post with the two ships I missed.
Here are a couple of edits I'll be making to my table after work (google docs is blocked at my office :angry:). These changes are based on comments by Igiss:
Behemoth: Igiss says he's dropped the speed of this one to 140. That puts it in line with the big Kusari Transport and the Train. To differentiate the Train from the other two (what's the point in having 3 ships with nearly identical in stats?), I will remove my recommendation for incraesed agility and instead drop it back to 0.2667 but give it a CM dropper.
I'll update the tables asap.
So the container transport is nerved down from 4400 cargo to 4200 cargo? Why is that?
ok - i took the time and made up my mind about it all. i think it would work fine. again, i d like to express that players, of course most of all those traders, that allready HAVE a good amount of cash - don t allways go for the biggest size there is.
in the beta 2, the adv. train still flys way too easy. it needs no "aiming" to enter a tradelane, even the docking autopilot gets into the lane allmost every time. ( try that with a lux liner )
taking away thrusters is a good thing for sure. keep in mind that the adv. train is a fortress. it has the armor of a gunboat and can ( in beta 2 ) equip shields that boast the capacity to 110000. - thats well over 50% more than in 48.83.
there s just one thing. - i d like the power of the large transports to be cut so that firing a weapon actually drains the power. right now, the container transport. to chainfire the highest possible turret available should drain the energy at least a bit.
i think its allready confirmed that the behemoth gets its thrust speed nerft to match the other house medium transports. ( which is quite sad )
i d like to have the adv. train and the heavy tanker to have a travel speed of 75 only, too. ( it won t really be much slower when nothing happens but flying the traderoute. but 75 means they can be mined. )
now, we just have to hope that some of the suggestions will be considered.
' Wrote:i think its allready confirmed that the behemoth gets its thrust speed nerft to match the other house medium transports. ( which is quite sad )
This is true and I made that change to the actual google spreadsheet but haven't updated the image. I'll try to get to that today.
I'm really hoping Igiss will take some advice on giving the smaller transports a few high points to counter their size deficiencies. Size does not mean everything to many of us... There are good RP reasons to use certain ships and this should be encouraged. But instead it is discouraged because there are few strengths to most of the smaller ships, but every advantage to the larger.
I have two guys now in my faction enjoying freighters as RP convoy raiders (Turanic and Kushan) and another using a Camara as a smuggler. But each of these lovely ships brings problems that prevent them from being good at what they do. The Turanic is a bit too sluggish, the Kushan and Turanic need cruise disruptors, the Camara needs to be more agile than a 3000+ cargo ship.
With a few tweaks many more people can be interested in using smaller ships because they'll flll both a god RP role and at the same time be effective at that task.
I updated the linked images in the first post to reflect Igiss' statement that the Behemoth's speed would be nerfed.