Cruiser Battle Razors

[Govedo13]

The point here is, that all light and some medium cruisers are forced to have a considerable weakness against either bombers, or everything else.

I disagree- Molly cruiser have 4 heavy slots but they are with so bad arcs that you need to waste 2 in order to have working LM- no normal 360° slot so effectively it has 3 heavy and one less light :nono:.
I personally prefer ships with less slots but with good arcs- because having 12 guns that have crappy arcs is a way worst then having 8 with good arcs. Why the Dev team still does consider balancing due arcs castration is beyond me.

- increased speed,

This is the best- speed and range- combined with enough Damage to take down light bomber if it hits hull- but make slow refire rate and huge energy usage with bad efficiency to compensate- so you got potent sniper gun- you does not need to waste 2 slots for it because it have enough damage to take down ships with single hit, It would bring a lot of pain to Gunboats- the current cruiser razors are not dangerous for them- even 2 of them. Do the same for Battlerazor.

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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.)

[JayDee Kasane]

Solaris can save you even better then Razor, if you want to use it...
Im using on my AI Cruiser 1 LM 1 BR and 10 basics. more then enough to face any opponent in skilled hands

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[Aeqvinox]

Get yourself ganked by bombers properly - you'll change your mind in a jiffy.

Really, go to Conn at least and tell 2-3 snubs to shoot you - try to kill someone with those weapons.

[McNeo]

Point isn't to kill, point is to stop them from firing. The longer a capital ship can drag out a fight, the more damage it does. Hey, you might even get lucky and get a few cerbs into one of them and kill them that way.

There is a good reason that escorts are always talked about. Get those 2-3 snubs to shoot at you while a friend of yours (who knows what support means and doesnt just try to duel everything) helps you out. You should see what I mean.

Besides, the cruiser battlerazor being an instakill weapon would make the Kusari Destroyer too good for most people's taste. Not that I think that's neccessarily bad though, as right now the choice between the Kusari Destroyer and the Kusari Battlecruiser is a no-brainer (get the BC).

The very fact that it takes 2-3 players to shoot you down at all is testament to the power of the ships over the players that fly them; those players could each by flying destroyers or battleships themselves instead of bombers.

[Aeqvinox]

Oh dear... mr. McNeo.

If we have a ship... that has several weapons that... can kill stuff [whatever it might be, snub or cap] .... the point is actually not to kill them? *confus*

Point isn't to kill, point is to stop them from firing.

This -is- the point. Best achieved by destruction. How the hell else do you stop multiple targets on your tail from spamming novas? Jettisoning cau8's?


Have you considered that whoever flies capital ships is most likely [or at least should be] a part of an organized fleet, not an indie Cap'n I-can-has-too, and that whatever you're rambling about has absolutely no merit when it comes to large fleet vs fleet battles?

It is most often a very imbalanced scenario. Both fleet compositions are so varied, and ships so different that there is no way you can predict for sure - "yes, we are impervious to nova bombers like that".

Whoever actually is into this kind of thing knows that above a certain number, nova bombers will rape any capital opposition, dodging long enough that no matter how many fighters you tail a single bomber with - he'll get to the point of dealing X times more damage than the capital ship he's targeting, and that's only on his own regens.

Seriously guys, go raid gamma or hamburg with your cruisers before posting here.

[mjolnir]

It's all about instakills. Battlerazors were a problem on small agile cruisers when they could have enough of them (2-3) to instakill any bomber.

With small and agile cruisers I'm talking about: Kusari Destroyer, BHG destroyer, Zoner Destroyer, Corvo (old model). These now have max 2 heavy slots limiting this. Which is why battlerazor won't be going to lvl6 slots as obviously this would create the same problem again.

Though the intention wasn't to completely remove instakills, just change it so that the cruisers had to choose a bit more. Previously those small ones would often use LM + 2-3 Razors + primaries.

These small cruisers can't mount many cerbs either, also note that the cerb stats were radically different in 4.85 in terms of damage per shot so the question of cerbs vs razors is a new one.


Anyway I gave the options for cruiser razors in post #9, so which do people prefer?

Note that cerbs will always have better dps and better efficency because that's their purpose, if they are too good at instakill vs snubs (which isn't their purpose) so that they make razors useless, they can get changed as well.
However cruiser cerberus already have a dispersion when fired so I must say I doubt how usefull they are for instakils in combat.



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@ Govedo, must say that I'm getting a bit tired of how you address the dev team as some invisible entity that anything and everything can be blamed on.

Ship turret positions and arcs are very much given by the model. Changes to the stats of the ship can try to work around this, either by improving things or by making things worse, but they can't change the model. Note that before 4.86 all faction leaders were asked to provide suggestions for the positions of heavier hardpoints on BS/Cruisers, most answered and in just about all cases, their suggestions are what's on the server now.

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Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.

[Ursus]

You could flip the accuracy mask... make the razor less accurate so it only worked reliably with larger targets, and make the cerb a little more accurate since it has lower damage per round. So for the same DPS (assuming you fixed the refire issue), razor would miss against snubs further than half the distance, and cerbs would be able to hit it but couldn't kill it unless he did not move. Seems to solve all your problems

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[Aeqvinox]

(...)Which is why battlerazor won't be going to lvl6 slots as obviously this would create the same problem again.(...)

You know what, i have no clue how the current state of things can even be close to be called balanced.

If you won't make BR's easier to use, it will cripple even the heavy cruisers with 4 class 6 slots which supposedly can mount those weapons. Why?

Because if BR's will stay as they are and on class 7, meaning 2 BR's required to insta bombers, no one will use them on those heavy slots, even on heavy cruisers which need 2-3 cerbs and a LM more than 2 BR's in order to justify even using that kind of cruiser - of which the general point is to have superior firepower against capital threats. You can't keep that with 2 BR's, because that leaves you with max 2 Cerbs and no LM, or 9 primaries with LM.

Everyone will just stick with solaris and LM as the only means of defense against bombers, no matter what you do with class 7 br's.

Anyway I gave the options for cruiser razors in post #9, so which do people prefer?

The only possible option i see here is making cruiser BR more similar to battleship BR - something around 50-65k damage at 400k-800k energy per shot. Slow refire [0.20 max], speed is fine, increase perhaps at the cost of energy. The reason - reducing hardpoint cost for this weapon to make it more accessible.

Otherwise don't bother.

[Ntei]

Anyway I gave the options for cruiser razors in post #9, so which do people prefer?

Nether of these options fixes the problem, all of them combined might do something.

[Knjaz]

It's all about instakills. Battlerazors were a problem on small agile cruisers when they could have enough of them (2-3) to instakill any bomber.

Oh, so here's the problem.

BattleRazors were used to instakill snubs that are sitting on your tail. That was their only use, and that was the only thing why cruisers (those, who knew what they were doing) were mounting them. If your intention was to remove that capability, then you de-facto removed the purpose of battle razors. I don't want to judge if it's wise or not to remove that aspect of the game, you probably see the bigger picture then me, but this is how it is, currently.

There's no use for battle razors rather then instakilling snub targets. For everything else, basics/solaris/cerberus/mortars/missiles are simply better, especially with turretsteering (including vs. gunboats). Better in terms of actual effeciency and the price you pay for mounting those on heavy slots (i.e., acquired capabilities vs lost capabilities)

People will not mount just 1 battle razor to "deal damage" to a bomber and "make him run". As Aeqvinox pointed out, now LM is being used for that purpose, although at less effeciency.

Ship turret positions and arcs are very much given by the model. Changes to the stats of the ship can try to work around this, either by improving things or by making things worse, but they can't change the model. Note that before 4.86 all faction leaders were asked to provide suggestions for the positions of heavier hardpoints on BS/Cruisers, most answered and in just about all cases, their suggestions are what's on the server now.

It's a bit offtopic here, but while we're at it
So Valor's problems with Glaive (mentioned in the appropriate thread), as well as requirement to mount 3 flaks instead of 2 like on turtle/KuBS for 360 coverage (I can't say for Zoner Juggie and Liberty Carrier) and resulting weakest AA capabilities, compared to those, is not a result of counter-balancing it's anti-cap capabilities, but merely a result of it's model/hardpoint location? Correct me if I'm wrong.

- increased refire - won't fix... anything? Unless it will be high, but then you will have snubpilots crying for "razorspam".
- reduced energy usage - cerberus are still better for that. Purpose of high DpE weapons is to drain your energy at maximum effeciency.
- increased speed - will lead to exact same problem you pointed out. Easier instakill.

Which one(s) sound best? - If instakill is a big no-no, think about re-considering their purpose in the mod.

If it's affordable, make it a 0.1 - 0.2 (0.15?) RR Weapon, that deals 65-70k damage (required to instakill a bomber) and drains 700-850k energy. Basically, what Aeqvinox said.