That's singleplayer balance, we are on Disco now. An open-world where most play takes place at high-level. I would not have a problem with removing the MK II ships and boosting the MK Is, but still, there should be some exterior design change. Discovery takes place more than 15 years after the original Freelancer's storyline. So we can expect the original designs to be overworked or remade. I think we misunderstand each other: To me, the boosted ships are NEW ships, hence the new names and background infocards. The fact that they look exactly like their weaker and older predecessor simply does not make sense.
When a car company releases a new model of one of their lines of vehicles, while it may contain some new features, in general there is very little change to the appearance of the vehicle itself.
As for what I mentioned being single player balance, this is not something that differs between single player and multiplayer.
The tier system is there regardless. It is just easier to make my point using a single player comparison because that is where it can be seen the easiest.
Characters Alan Markson: The Hellfire Legion's Lord Commander The Perihelion: Freeport Four's guardian, and yet much more. Missing and assumed Lost with all hands. Eric Dresmund: Junker, smuggler, thief. Last seen drunk on Beaumont Vayrn Wyard: IMG Recon pilot turned Neo-Terran Captain. Last location unknown
Mark II fighters were made as people wanted to fly the amazing looking defender etc but the stats were simply awful compared to new fighters added to the mod and even to other vanilla fighters.
Hence the Mark II fighters have the sexy looks and the cool stats.
' Wrote:When a car company releases a new model of one of their lines of vehicles, while it may contain some new features, in general there is very little change to the appearance of the vehicle itself.
Sure, this may be true for a yearly 'redesign', but nearly two decades after the Nomad war? I'm pretty sure they'd look quite a bit different.
I think some people are mistaking the military development lifecycle with civilian development lifecycle.
I was watching a documentary about the AH-1 Cobra today. The original design was created in 1967 as a viable attack helicopter for use in Vietnam. It's till in use today as the AH-1 Supercobra.
Earlier I saw a similar documentary about the A-10 Thunderbolt. It was originally designed in 1970. It's still in use today. According to Wikipedia it's not going to be phased out until at least 2028.
The difference between the time when those weapons were originally developed and now comes with advances in armament strapped onto the machine. Things like 15in. rocket pods, hellfire missiles, and smart bombs were not around in the 1970s. Instead these things were designed to augment the old machinery so that the United States could have a modern armament without redesigning entire systems.
Now if you look at space, it's really a military place. It's not like designing a car. You change the way a car looks and the car still works the same way. It's a rather basic machine. You could think it would be easy to add a fin and a gun to an A-10, but in reality then you have to add and program new controls, rewire the system, and take into account the change in aerodynamics.
We're in space now. That doesn't mean military hardware is any easier to make or change. What is likely to change about an older defender? Armor plating. Powerplants. Armament. Basically everything we've changed. The fundamental ship shouldn't change that much. It's what it can do that counts.
The Mk IIs make a lot more sense from a realistic military life cycle than adding new ones. Really, they do.
[8:32:45 PM] Dusty Lens: Oh no, let me get that. Hello? Oh it's my grandma. She says to be roleplay.
[12:49:19 AM] Elgatodiablo: You know its nice that you have all that proof and all, Bacon... but I just don't believe you.
I have to agree with BaconSoda that minor changes in appearance mask massive changes in performance for millitary craft. The Mrk II's are fine as they are.
As to whether ships should be geared up or down, I think we should start gearing ships down. Weapons and ships have gotten outlandishly powerful lately. I understand the need for powerful weapons to take on capital ships and such, but I think we've gone a bit overboard. Something like light fighters restricted to 7's and 8's, heavies 8's and 9's, very heavies 9's and 10's, superheavies & bombers 10's and bomber weaps. Balance the powercores to fire those weaps, rather than the current, as well as dropping the firepower of several of the weapons themselves and we are talking good stuff.
I doubt this will ever happen, to many people will scream about nerfing and it represents a massive amount of work for the devs. Still, I guy can dream.
Considering you can get enough credits for a VHF in one day, is it really worth even having the mark 1's as a cheap version with low stats? I personally don't think so. I say buff them up to VHF level and get rid of the unnecessary mark 2's.
Also, we have plenty of bad models to worry about before touching the vanilla ones, in my opinion.
' Wrote:I think some people are mistaking the military development lifecycle with civilian development lifecycle.
On the other hand, a newer version of the same military vehicle does not have quadrupled firepower, quadrupled durability and a power generator that outputs nearly 10 times its original amount. And there are some visual changes to these vehicles too, not too obvious but they are there. And I am not asking for much more than some little changes.
' Wrote:I think some people are mistaking the military development lifecycle with civilian development lifecycle.
Sure, but military development differs from country to country and speeds up during major wars and such. Which is why I didn't use it since civilian designing tends to be pretty similar throughout and not to different across different corporations.
Bump, this topic still concerns me. I am still strongly for slightly altering the base HF models for their boosted variations, since they are a lot stronger, are complete overhauls of the older ones according to the info cards and more than 15 years passed since the old desings were up-to-date