Why is Discovery Freelancer focused on VHFs?

[Highland Laddie]

I agree with and am interested in improving capship balance along the lines of what Thyr suggested earlier - lower refire rates....longer range for their main weapons, and keep a few specialized weapons for skill sniping, brawling, and anti-snub.

I also agree with Lyth (getting scary) about how nice it was to have truly effective GBs at the beginning of 4.87 with the Solaris, especially considering that GBs were largely useless back in 4.86. If there could be a nice rebalance there, I think would go a long way for the class.

But I fully agree with idea to make CAPs separated from SNUBs, because I still can't understand how 3, 4 bombers can take down big BS flying 500m from it..Thyrzul's ideas in this case sounds very reasonable.

I'm still confused as to why people find this so incredulous....that a bomber; a ship specifically designed and intended to hunt and destroy large capital vessels, is actually capable of doing that, especially in a squad of 3-4. This is ALSO part of the tactics of fleet diversity. The game should rightly be balanced so that you cannot safely go trolling around solo in your BS and be invulnerable to anything but another BS. If you get set upon by bombers...then you obviously need some fighter or gunboat escorts to help protect you.

[Carlos De La Cruz]

But I fully agree with idea to make CAPs separated from SNUBs, because I still can't understand how 3, 4 bombers can take down big BS flying 500m from it..Thyrzul's ideas in this case sounds very reasonable.

I'm still confused as to why people find this so incredulous....that a bomber; a ship specifically designed and intended to hunt and destroy large capital vessels, is actually capable of doing that, especially in a squad of 3-4. This is ALSO part of the tactics of fleet diversity. The game should rightly be balanced so that you cannot safely go trolling around solo in your BS and be invulnerable to anything but another BS. If you get set upon by bombers...then you obviously need some fighter or gunboat escorts to help protect you.

You mean like submarines can take down whole fleets of Bs's in rl? ok. But those BS's also have mines which can easly kill some of those Sub's.. and have an escort that can change them into scrap.. The problem with the escort in game is that when 4 bombers meet BS and snubs BS is already dead despite of his snubs..this is what I call unbalanced gameplay.. And I do not complain, cause in Cruiser I manage to kill bombers as well. I just say that I find it unbalanced..and also, as stated above, IMO snubs couldn't be able to fly so close to the capship and still be alive..

[Panzer]

Oh that's very simple.

Bceause VHFs are the best combination of survivability and firepower, considering how weapons and movement work in FL. Given... the same number of battleships pitted against VHFs - The VHFs will be getting increasing odds of winning, the more ships are involved in total. Big stuff might tank it to some degree, but snubs can avoid getting hit altogether, while still firing and given enough of them - overcome the shield tank. It's not ideal, but that's how it always worked.

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[Scotia]

The primary problem I see with snub balance within the other classes is that the LF and HF only gain maneuverability for their advantage, and sacrifice regens, health, power, and damage output against the VHFs. If the lighter classes gained a combat speed advantage over the VHFs, it might actually make them more appealing choice against them.

The other problem of using fighters of any class other than VHF against bombers is that they are by and large just ticking any bombers they might intercept, and have no real ability to stop them prior to them dealing out damage to their heavier targets.

Snub combat is heavily laden with missile, cd, and mine spam. If a cap comes in, regen feeding spam as well.

I can respect trying to separate cap combat vs snubs, but increasing the projectile speed on cap weapons would improve their ability to counter snubs, not hinder it.

[Pancakes]

I agree with and am interested in improving capship balance along the lines of what Thyr suggested earlier - lower refire rates....longer range for their main weapons, and keep a few specialized weapons for skill sniping, brawling, and anti-snub.

I also agree with Lyth (getting scary) about how nice it was to have truly effective GBs at the beginning of 4.87 with the Solaris, especially considering that GBs were largely useless back in 4.86. If there could be a nice rebalance there, I think would go a long way for the class.

But I fully agree with idea to make CAPs separated from SNUBs, because I still can't understand how 3, 4 bombers can take down big BS flying 500m from it..Thyrzul's ideas in this case sounds very reasonable.

I'm still confused as to why people find this so incredulous....that a bomber; a ship specifically designed and intended to hunt and destroy large capital vessels, is actually capable of doing that, especially in a squad of 3-4. This is ALSO part of the tactics of fleet diversity. The game should rightly be balanced so that you cannot safely go trolling around solo in your BS and be invulnerable to anything but another BS. If you get set upon by bombers...then you obviously need some fighter or gunboat escorts to help protect you.

GBs weren't useless in 4.86, far far far from it. And GBs with Solaris, I beg your pardon, weren't balanced at all.

You keep forgetting that while snubs are something that can be played by any faction, GBs aren't and most certainly caps aren't.
I have more than once faced on my indie Xeno during that time a GB pilot that rained havoc upon me and my friends - and I couldn't do crap. Why? Not because he was some godly PvPer - on the direct contrary, all he did was fly in a near perfect circle and shoot at us all zoomed out.

Pardon me but - why should a person who invested about 3 hours of his life honing his PvP skills be allowed such an easy time to take on 4 snub vessels, that invested hours of their free time to train, because that's how they like to waste it?

Right now, a good GB pilot can still take on 3-2 snubs all alone. GB isn't useless, and most definitely didn't lose of its anti-snub role.

Anyway, as for the BS thing - BS - bomber balance is fine as it is.

Only a really terrible BS pilot will get wrecked by 2 bombers, a good one will die out of an attack by 4-5 of them. And that's fine, because bombers are supposed to have the upper hand here, as this is their role. You also do have to take in mind though, this is still not a "fair match", since if you pose 5 players vs 5 players? The bombers wouldn't win. 5 battleships wouldn't only easily fend the bombers off, they could just ignore them all together.

[t0l]

Probably, yeah. The reason I personally spend more time working on VHF balance is that I actually know my way around it. I know enough about it to have a faint idea of how to improve it.

Mind you, the dev team does want to review and improve cap balance (including cap-snub interaction). It's just very tricky to do. For example, making capitals more capable of defending themselves against snubs also means they become more capable of diving into a small snub brawl and taking everything out single-handedly. As caps are still quite easy to acquire, this would likely leave little opportunity for snub-snub combat (which is what snubs are balanced for to begin with).

But Capship SHOULD be able to take down numerous SNUBs single-handedly..Imagine RL naval forces: you have patroal boat and BS. And two patrol boats with i.e. mines take down BS beacuse it cannot defend itself aganist them..please..

US Navy PT boats in WW2 carried torpedoes, which were capable of doing some pretty heavy damage to larger ships. These boats were fast, small, cheap, able to avoid enemy fire easily, and still were able to engage targets much larger than they were.

Most modern frigates carry torpedoes as well. I don't think anyone important uses PT boats or anything like them in large scale war conditions anymore.

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[Nacho]

Because David made a cooler hero than Goliath. The real mystery is: Why Gallia? I mean... that must have been the single most dumbest idea for a mod theme in all of the history of Freelancer. Or does anyone know of anything worse?

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User was banned for: karlotta?
Time left: (Permanent)

[Highland Laddie]

I agree with and am interested in improving capship balance along the lines of what Thyr suggested earlier - lower refire rates....longer range for their main weapons, and keep a few specialized weapons for skill sniping, brawling, and anti-snub.

I also agree with Lyth (getting scary) about how nice it was to have truly effective GBs at the beginning of 4.87 with the Solaris, especially considering that GBs were largely useless back in 4.86. If there could be a nice rebalance there, I think would go a long way for the class.

But I fully agree with idea to make CAPs separated from SNUBs, because I still can't understand how 3, 4 bombers can take down big BS flying 500m from it..Thyrzul's ideas in this case sounds very reasonable.

I'm still confused as to why people find this so incredulous....that a bomber; a ship specifically designed and intended to hunt and destroy large capital vessels, is actually capable of doing that, especially in a squad of 3-4. This is ALSO part of the tactics of fleet diversity. The game should rightly be balanced so that you cannot safely go trolling around solo in your BS and be invulnerable to anything but another BS. If you get set upon by bombers...then you obviously need some fighter or gunboat escorts to help protect you.

GBs weren't useless in 4.86, far far far from it. And GBs with Solaris, I beg your pardon, weren't balanced at all.

You keep forgetting that while snubs are something that can be played by any faction, GBs aren't and most certainly caps aren't.
I have more than once faced on my indie Xeno during that time a GB pilot that rained havoc upon me and my friends - and I couldn't do crap. Why? Not because he was some godly PvPer - on the direct contrary, all he did was fly in a near perfect circle and shoot at us all zoomed out.

Pardon me but - why should a person who invested about 3 hours of his life honing his PvP skills be allowed such an easy time to take on 4 snub vessels, that invested hours of their free time to train, because that's how they like to waste it?

Right now, a good GB pilot can still take on 3-2 snubs all alone. GB isn't useless, and most definitely didn't lose of its anti-snub role.

Anyway, as for the BS thing - BS - bomber balance is fine as it is.

Only a really terrible BS pilot will get wrecked by 2 bombers, a good one will die out of an attack by 4-5 of them. And that's fine, because bombers are supposed to have the upper hand here, as this is their role. You also do have to take in mind though, this is still not a "fair match", since if you pose 5 players vs 5 players? The bombers wouldn't win. 5 battleships wouldn't only easily fend the bombers off, they could just ignore them all together.

In my personal experience, I saw very very little GB usage throughout 4.86, largely because they were either too vulnerable to good bomber pilot squads, or too vulnerable to cruisers. I am sure there were some examples to the contrary, as you point out, Pancakes, but I would take them more as the exception than the norm.

Now, contrasting that to early 4.87 when GBs were OP and wrecking everything....quite a difference. Now, I'm not quite sure how they sit. Maybe more in-between, but still underutilized.

[Pancakes]

Probably, yeah. The reason I personally spend more time working on VHF balance is that I actually know my way around it. I know enough about it to have a faint idea of how to improve it.

Mind you, the dev team does want to review and improve cap balance (including cap-snub interaction). It's just very tricky to do. For example, making capitals more capable of defending themselves against snubs also means they become more capable of diving into a small snub brawl and taking everything out single-handedly. As caps are still quite easy to acquire, this would likely leave little opportunity for snub-snub combat (which is what snubs are balanced for to begin with).

But Capship SHOULD be able to take down numerous SNUBs single-handedly..Imagine RL naval forces: you have patroal boat and BS. And two patrol boats with i.e. mines take down BS beacuse it cannot defend itself aganist them..please..

US Navy PT boats in WW2 carried torpedoes, which were capable of doing some pretty heavy damage to larger ships. These boats were fast, small, cheap, able to avoid enemy fire easily, and still were able to engage targets much larger than they were.

Most modern frigates carry torpedoes as well. I don't think anyone important uses PT boats or anything like them in large scale war conditions anymore.

Or you can keep the comparsion of BS and patrol boats.

And give the patrol boats a dedicated anti-ship missile launcher like Yakhont missile.

[Carlos De La Cruz]

Probably, yeah. The reason I personally spend more time working on VHF balance is that I actually know my way around it. I know enough about it to have a faint idea of how to improve it.

Mind you, the dev team does want to review and improve cap balance (including cap-snub interaction). It's just very tricky to do. For example, making capitals more capable of defending themselves against snubs also means they become more capable of diving into a small snub brawl and taking everything out single-handedly. As caps are still quite easy to acquire, this would likely leave little opportunity for snub-snub combat (which is what snubs are balanced for to begin with).

But Capship SHOULD be able to take down numerous SNUBs single-handedly..Imagine RL naval forces: you have patroal boat and BS. And two patrol boats with i.e. mines take down BS beacuse it cannot defend itself aganist them..please..

US Navy PT boats in WW2 carried torpedoes, which were capable of doing some pretty heavy damage to larger ships. These boats were fast, small, cheap, able to avoid enemy fire easily, and still were able to engage targets much larger than they were.

Most modern frigates carry torpedoes as well. I don't think anyone important uses PT boats or anything like them in large scale war conditions anymore.

Or you can keep the comparsion of BS and patrol boats.

And give the patrol boats a dedicated anti-ship missile launcher like Yakhont missile.

You know..I've done quick review of mentioned PT boats and their other nations counterparts and have found very little succesfull destructions of ships class dessie or larger. They usually were destroying transports and other PT boats, later submarines. Bigger ships were simply to powerful for them.