I find 2-3 huge design problems with the current situation.
It would be long post.
First one is that the game is too skill based, it should be skill based but I kinda does not like the moment where I leave for 3 months and then I cannot kill anything non-nub in fighter or bomber for a bit time till I start to train again etc. This is the main problem also with the declining numbers, 90% of the games on the market are just too easy, indeed Disco would have its core fans but they wont be enough to make the difference.
Fighters vs Fighters in let say 5v5 snub only is extremely boring for causal players with bad aim like me. I know how it would end even before it starts, the side with 1-2 of the good aiming pilots( I guess they are like 30-40 on the server) would slowly eat the bots of the other side and win, it makes no fun for the receiving side to play this.
Fighter 1 v1 Me vs someone in Conn- Same story I win in 80% of the time without giving even a chance to the other side, in the other 20% when I meet someone good I loose without having a chance.
I consider myself as bad/medium PvP pilot and I am casual Disco player.
I cannot train 20 hours PvP per week in order to be able to be good in PvP, I does not want to use macros or camera mods in order to have better aim as well, because people running the game on lower res then full HD need to move the mouse less/have zoomed camera in order to hit more or using macros etc.
The current balance is good for the core discovery base, I can deal with it but it kills the casual/new player type, that kind of players that I as bad PvPer can beat 3-4 vs me. My personal best is 7 vs my Roc- new players die too easy. This casual players feed the mod with people, if they get owned so easy in PvP by the veterans they just leave and we got small amount of total players in the server as result.
Bombers- Light bombers should not be able to mount novas,Snac needs 20% DPS nerf. Medium bombers should all become Heavy ones that have bad dodging like Barghest, Thor/Nada Devi/Challenger should be rebalanced to dodge worse. Heavy bombers should have 6 bomber guns, all light ones only 4, 5 gun bombers should be fixed. The useless bomber shield torpedo should be removed or rebalanced.
Light Fighters- core nerf, guns nerf- max lvl 8,small shield boost, 500 speed and custom better CD. All should be on the size of Liberator.
HFs-this is really mystery for me. Hardest thing to do.
Fighter guns- small speed boost but with higher energy requirements.The idea is to reduce the aiming skill factor a bit without killing it.
Now second point-caps.
When the casual player finds out that he have no chance in fighter or bomber he trade his way in order to buy cap.Unexperienced battleship is as easier to kill then fighter.
Capital ship/Transports bot concept- give 90% of the bots in form of armour, so they wont be able to feed much, fix the armour/bot ratio issue.
I see GB with bots of LF, cruiser with the bots of bomber and battleship with bots of GB if we take the today values. Reduce snub bots with 10-20% with exception of SHFs- they should have purpose as bot donators-300 bots on each or similar gives any purpose of this kind of ship in group fight.
Capital ship guns and transports.
Assign all capital ship guns to new class, give transps new class shield that absorbs 50-80% of their DPS.
Cruisers and Battleships-
Battleship concept is wrong, battleships should be really expensive, restricted,they should use fuel for moving in impulse on 90, otherwise they should move on 30. I guess that if they receive proper fuel usage they would need transport in order to be effective in battle,so they wont be spammed like today. In exchange for the huge nerf I propose 50% more hull,better shield and proper Solaris/Razors that allow battleships to create "safe zone" around it- with let say 1-1,2k distance Also battleship missiles- double the recharge time, make them slower bigger with better tracking/turning and killable from escorts but not stoppable by CMs and with really high DPS- 3 battleship missiles hitting a cruiser should be able to hurt him bad or kill him. Battleships does not need so many guns- 4-6 Solaris dedicated 360 slots close to each other at the center of the ship guarantee that the aim glitch wont be factor,you can combine the 4 primaries slots in 2 only.2-4 support slots for razors/pulses/secondary and same story with the heavy slots. The 3 groups of guns should be made to work as different arrays- on the front part of the ship-heavy anti-cap guns, Deadly accurate Solaris in the middle and the support guns on random but good spots( so one can use double razor/pulse/secondaries in the middle and 1 360° flak slot at each end of the ship.)
Make the BS guns with a lot of health and less on number would make bombing more strategic via sub-targeting the guns. Avoid the extremly crappy gun positions and arc balancing-it is crap at first place and secondly they create more lag, Liberty carrier could be more effective with 16 proper placed guns instead of 27 lag creating guns.
Battleships should be expensive to use and they should have hefty dead penalty but they should be really hard to kill.
Cruisers right now are more then fine- only 2 addons- 1 cruiser flak and a bit better battle razor.Cruisers should be the mainstream capital ship- powerful and with wide usage but still easy to kill for 2-3 bombers.
Transports- give them modules that use cargo space in order to be more battle fit- explained that in other topic around.
In general updating and life testing of the changed features each month would allow everything to be balanced.It is really bad that we have OP GBs for almost a year now and OP RM bomber for 2-3 years. Such stuff should be fixed faster even with temporally not perfect fixes.
TLTR:
1. Reduce aim skill factor in snub fights by increasing the gun speed.
2. Fix GBs by removing GB primaries.
3. Reduce bot sharing factor by reducing the bots of snubs a bit and huge cut in caps with fixing the armour/bot ratio.Exception SHFs.
4. Fix bombers-remove the Medium kind.
5. Making battleships tactical weapons of war.
6. Dead penalty for all kind of ships -small for smaller, medium for transports,gbs,cruiser and huge(50-80m) for battleships.
7. Transports-better shields and guns that take good amount of cargo place, keep the current ones as well.
Before you go impossible...
For the whole deal you need Cannon only for the fuel usage of Battleship- something that he proposed long time ago. The dead penalty works in DoD it could be implemented in the GC as well.
Live testing is the key for anything else.
(10-09-2013, 10:51 AM)Knjaz Wrote: Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)
