Discovery 4.87 Balance Discussion

[Knjaz]

Removing BB?
well, will make capital fleet fights even faster, and require less teamwork. Remove them from fighters, buff fighter's armor, if that's a problem. Don't break one ship class because another one is broken, already.

For those who doesn't fly caps - lifespan of a first focused battleship, cau8 RMBS full of bots, in a medium scale combat, is around 25-27 seconds max. In large scale combat, around 15 seconds or less.
It requires good cooperation to trade bots in time under those conditions and keep on fighting at same time, ya know, especially when server is nearly dying.

[Anaximander]

To be clear, I don't mind botsharing between caps or between snubs exclusively; but it's freaking annoying when you duel someone in a fighter and he has two dreadnoughts feed him. You'll never stand a chance at winning unless you have means to instakill him; it rather becomes a matter of how many b/b you can drain before you go out. It's boring.

If Caps just got that much more armor (e.g. turtle's 2000 bots + 2000 bats = 800,000 added hull or something scaled properly to the Cap armor multiplier), couldn't it solve it?

[Haste]

If Caps just got that much more armor (e.g. turtle's 2000 bots + 2000 bats = 800,000 added hull or something scaled properly to the Cap armor multiplier), couldn't it solve it?

This. Why exactly would this add so much workload for the devs? I don't see any "unforseen consequences" (those tend to be hard to see, though) of upping armor and doing away with B/B for caps. Unlike snubs, they don't tend to get insta'd.

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[Syrus]

First off, the models were specifically submitted by the modeler as Raven's Talon and Waran replacements, and the LF was never submitted. Unless the IMG had paid the modeler for those two ships, the modeler is the one who calls which ships the new models will be replacing.

Of course they were submitted as these, the modeler was told while not yet finished with the line, that IMG would not be getting new ships. So it was either "make them RT and Waran" or don't make them at all. I don't know if Nick paid the modeler. Don't really think he asked for payment.


About the Bots and Bats. When I say "remove the bots", I mean:
Add the hull you'd get from them onto the bigger ships. So a Rheinland BS would get 2'000 * 600 = 1'200'000 hull more than it has now.

Some of the heaviest VHFs will withstand a single SNAC hit, if this is done though, but keep in mind, they would not be able to repair that damage, the hull is gone, once it's gone. It might still require some rescaling, maybe reduce the snubs total armor then. (A Templar with AU 8 has 149'000 armor taking bots into consideration.) There'd be no more "double mine" kills though, as well as the quick "missile ship kills" or such (missiles will be more limited in .87 anyway). But it also means, that a ship could not be kept alive for an eternity via bots. My suggestion would be, to keep batteries though. Maybe even increase the amount the ships carry. Especially Cruisers and bigger feel like they have rather weak shields to be honest.

But overall, it's something to consider for future updates at best, I hope.

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[Yber]

Removing bots isn't an option. Making them a part of the ship makes botsharing impossible, which is the best way I can come up with; basically setting them as mounted stuff (armor, weapons, etc).

I don't know how you'd make them work or how you'd adquire high ammounts of them (more than 1) though.

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inb4 Sirius gets renamed to XTF.

[Teerin]

Maybe make a new variety of bots/bats that can only be purchased/used by capital ships (and perhaps regen a little more than regular ones?) so that caps botfeeding fightercraft is no longer an issue.

I don't know how hard this would be for the devs to implement into Freelancer or whether such a change is necessary, but this is just an idea.

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"You see what your knowledge tells you you're seeing. ... how, what you think the universe is, and how you react to that in everything you do, depends on what you know. And when that knowledge changes, for you, the universe changes. And that is as true for the whole of society as that is for the individual. We all are what we know, today. What we knew yesterday, was different; and so were we."
- James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed (1985)

[aerelm]

Nanobots will not be removed, especially not from snubs. Removing bots and increasing the base hull would remove the ability to instakill ships (MR + Nuke, MR + Missile, Double Nuke, Triple SN on a shieldless Gunboat, etc), which is not in favor of balance. There are already a couple of alternatives proposed, but since they're not on the initial 4.87 priority list, we'll be taking a look at them after update 1 or so.

[VerbalArtist]

When exactly will this update be happening?

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I've decided to leave.

Need to contact me? My skype is verbalartistsaan

Goodbye.

[aerelm]

Soon™.

[Thyrzul]

That was quite exact.

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