Is it time to nerf cruise disruptors?

[Tenacity]

If there's one piece of equipment that makes or breaks pvp in this community, it's the cruise disruptor.

The name suggests its intended purpose: keeping people from cruising away, or stopping them while they're cruising, but it does so much more beyond that, whether intentionally or not, that it's become a necessity to any pvp engagement, from solo duels to group fights.

In addition to disrupting cruise, this piece of equipment also:
A) Disrupts the 'engine kill' maneuver, a vital aspect of both snub and cap pvp
B) Detonates mines, missiles, and torpedoes, which has both offensive and defensive applications that make it indispensable
C) Disrupts cloaking devices and jump drives

Point A: this is probably built into the engine and isnt something that can be changed. However, perhaps reducing Cruise Disruptor ammo capacity could prevent this from being spammed to completely shut down someone's maneuvering in combat.

Point B: Detonating ordnance offensively has been done for ages via minetrapping or blowing up a bomber's novas as he launches them. I dont like it, but it doesnt have as many implications as the defensive applications for ordnance detonation.
Missiles and Torpedoes have limited ammo, often times far more limited than the number of cruise disruptors one ship can carry, despite the fact that nearly every ship has a cruise disruptor and in a group fight you effectively have unlimited cruise disruptor ammo because of this. For the person using things like capship missiles/torpedoes, or nova torpedoes, this is extremely frustrating; most, sometimes all, of your ordnance, which you're spending a valuable heavy weapon slot on, will end up getting neutralized before it even gets to the target. On top of the cruise disruptors, explosive ordnance weapons already have several other counters: flak turrets, countermeasures, and simple dodging on applicable ships. This means you've got 4+ ways that the enemy can shut down your limited ammo weapon, and no ways to make sure it works reliably.

Point C: This is probably an unintended side effect, but when we have cloak disruptors and jump drive disruptors, do we really need cruise disruptors covering those roles as well?



Ultimately, point is that cruise disruptors have too many uses, too many advantages, and arent limited enough in their ammunition or capabilities to counteract those strengths.

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[realekki]

yes,
and point c) is by far the most ridiculous

[JonasHudson]

In regards to cloaks,

I'd like to see a switch up and make cloaks only disruptable but a cloak disruptor, even just a charging one.

But then the cloak disruptors should be made to fit in a gun slot, so no one has to sacrifice their normal CD to have one. That means more people could/would use them, and you could combine having a cloak and cloak disruptor. The same would go for me with jump disruptors. Make dedicated equipment for it, and make them guns essentially, and only work for jump disruption. Each disruptor basically would only have the one purpose, but in theory you could then stack and no lose normal CD ability.

So those only wielding regular cheap old CD's, you dont get 2 or 3 in one. And hey, that itself could be a super item, a CD that will disrupt cloaks and jumps. That does sound like it should be not so easy or common to me. A good goal to work on. People could specialize or sacrifice guns to stack.

I think that would make normal CD's more traditional weapons again.

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[Thunderer]

There is no jump drive disruptors.

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[Greylock]

But then the cloak disruptors should be made to fit in a gun slot, so no one has to sacrifice their normal CD to have one.

It goes on CM slot, actually. And as for making them fit on normal gun slots, we come to the issue of what ships can use them.

The Cloak disruptor type 1 is for gunboats and snubs/bombers. These have different gun classes.

Type 2 is for cruisers and battlecruisers, which again, have very different gun classes.

Type 3 is for battleships and carriers. Those actually share gun classes.

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[TLI-Inferno]

At first, I was thinking, "Nerf cruise disruptors? No way! They're an interesting part of PVP, and are a balancing force that gives smaller ships added value so that people don't just BS spam. Their variety of uses make them a unique tool."

But, then I saw your suggestion. I think limiting their ammo capacity would be appropriate. At 70, they are completely spammable. With less capacity, they will still be useful, but they'll have to be used wisely, and multiple people with cruise disruptors would be necessary in order to use them consistently throughout a fight.

But, the only problem is that this would make it very difficult for someone to solo pirate. Without enough cruise disruptors, how will you prevent someone from cruising away if they are constantly trying?

Thus, sadly, they should remain at 70. However, if it is possible to change cruise disruptors to not negate missiles, then perhaps it would be a good idea to have different kinds of cruise disruptors: ones with more ammo that cannot destroy torpedoes, and ones with less ammo that can. Perhaps, if possible, they could even be made to require multiple hits with cruise disruptors in order to destroy heavier ordinance, in which case they would not be able to disrupt so many missiles, but they would still be just as effective at disrupting cruise.

[Markam]

Cruise disrupters are fine.

What we need to nerf is cruising during combat, you know, cruising on people. It breaks the whole range/speed limit dynamic when you can just cruise on someone.

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Markam is evil

[Commander Crucible]

Let’s not try to fix something that’s not broken.
The CDs are fine as they are.

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[Tenacity]

At first, I was thinking, "Nerf cruise disruptors? No way! They're an interesting part of PVP, and are a balancing force that gives smaller ships added value so that people don't just BS spam. Their variety of uses make them a unique tool."

But, then I saw your suggestion. I think limiting their ammo capacity would be appropriate. At 70, they are completely spammable. With less capacity, they will still be useful, but they'll have to be used wisely, and multiple people with cruise disruptors would be necessary in order to use them consistently throughout a fight.

But, the only problem is that this would make it very difficult for someone to solo pirate. Without enough cruise disruptors, how will you prevent someone from cruising away if they are constantly trying?

Thus, sadly, they should remain at 70. However, if it is possible to change cruise disruptors to not negate missiles, then perhaps it would be a good idea to have different kinds of cruise disruptors: ones with more ammo that cannot destroy torpedoes, and ones with less ammo that can. Perhaps, if possible, they could even be made to require multiple hits with cruise disruptors in order to destroy heavier ordinance, in which case they would not be able to disrupt so many missiles, but they would still be just as effective at disrupting cruise.

A solo pirate can destroy a trader with ease after the use of only a single disruptor. At most you'd need less than a dozen to deal with a pesky trader that somehow manages to avoid all of your fire (and in that case, maybe piracy is not for you).

I would say, tentatively, that most cruise disruptors should be limited to 15-20 ammo, maybe 25 tops. You have missiles and torpedoes in the game that are already limited to 25 ammo, which means a single fighter would still be able to completely nullify a cap's missile allotment.

However, I would also say that on many ships, having a 360 degree (or even 90 degree to each side) firing arc for the cruise disruptor would be perfectly acceptable with a limited ammo count.

Cruise disrupters are fine.

What we need to nerf is cruising during combat, you know, cruising on people. It breaks the whole range/speed limit dynamic when you can just cruise on someone.

I agree with this as well, I've suggested before that the FLhook plugin which causes cruise power drain should not allow your ship to recover energy until you're traveling once more at your ship's normal maximum speed - that'd be 90m/s for battleships, 120 for battlecruisers, 130 for cruisers, etc (max speed with thrust active). This way, you would not be able to cruise, engine kill at 200+m/s, and regain your energy back while moving faster than your ship normally would be able to.

Let’s not try to fix something that’s not broken.
The CDs are fine as they are.

Obviously you're in the minority here with that opinion. Giving one piece of equipment too many strengths and not enough weaknesses is most definitely something I consider 'broken'. Every other piece of equipment in the game has drawbacks - weapon loadouts tend to be good for one thing, and weak at another, jump drives and cloaks all have their own limitations, shields for some classes even have varying strengths and energy requirements to offset those strengths.

A spammable, effectively unlimited-ammuntion weapon that can be used for both offense, defense, and utility is broken.

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[Tenacity]

In regards to cloaks,

I'd like to see a switch up and make cloaks only disruptable but a cloak disruptor, even just a charging one.

But then the cloak disruptors should be made to fit in a gun slot, so no one has to sacrifice their normal CD to have one. That means more people could/would use them, and you could combine having a cloak and cloak disruptor. The same would go for me with jump disruptors. Make dedicated equipment for it, and make them guns essentially, and only work for jump disruption. Each disruptor basically would only have the one purpose, but in theory you could then stack and no lose normal CD ability.

So those only wielding regular cheap old CD's, you dont get 2 or 3 in one. And hey, that itself could be a super item, a CD that will disrupt cloaks and jumps. That does sound like it should be not so easy or common to me. A good goal to work on. People could specialize or sacrifice guns to stack.

I think that would make normal CD's more traditional weapons again.

As grey already mentioned, cloak disruptors occupy the countermeasure slot, not the cruise disruptor slot (which also means that, hey, even if you run out of disruptor batteries you still have a cruise disruptor to effectively do the same thing). They're fine as-is, cloak disruptors can cover a 10k+ radius (type 3) and occupying a countermeasure slot means they cannot be used at the same time as a cloak (for most ships), which is a proper tradeoff - you either get stealth or you get anti-stealth, not both.



Another issue with cruise disruptors: on fighter-class vessels, they bring such an overwhelming amount of utility, offense, and defense to the table that they completely void the other weapons which use the same slot - mini razor, hades/inferno/escopeta, and fighter missiles. These weapons are almost never seen on an actual snub because a cruise disruptor is too powerful in comparison. The one time you do see those weapons is on SHFs or Bombers which have multiple mounts for them, so they can still run a cruise disruptor.

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