Ok, we all know Osiris was nerfed, and rightfully so. Now, while it keeps it's insane maneuverability, with just 1 heavy slot it's anticap capabilities drastically nerfed. (although, due to new solaris it did become better at snub killing, I'd say. but it's ot the point of current topic)...
Before we move to the next point, few gun stats. Will use some of them in future
Damage to Energy ratio (damage dealt per 1 energy spent)
4.85 Primaries(basic ones) - 0.38 DtE, 4.86 - 0.28 DtE
4.85 mortar - around 0.15 DtE, 4.86 mortar - 0.23
4.85 cerbs - 0.28 DtE, 4.86 - 0.40
1) ....but I have a question here. Why the same wasn't done to Liberty Dreadnought? It has 3 forward firing heavies last time I checked, 2 of which fire backwards. With good kiting skills, at 2.5 distance that's a certain, guaranteed death to any heavy battleship. Heavy will have just 4 primaries at 0.26 damge per energy used with a projectile speed of 800 to have at least a chance to hit it. But it's still not enough due to reduced amount of primaries that makes chainfiring less effective, and primaries being around 1.5 of 4.85 primaries (not like you guys said they'd be equivalent of 2, 3 or 4 guns. Although, I guess you had reasons to do it this way), he'll have to fight a battleship that is hitting him with 0.40 DtE guns. In terms of 4.85 it will look like - Cerber-armed rheinland BS is trying to kill full Lane Hacker primary-armed Liberty Dread. With exception of reverted projectile move speeds. Are you kidding me? (yes, I do know that 2 backwards firing cerbs is not enough to drain powercore, but they require almost same amount of energy LibDread regenerates per second. And it still has it's primaries to get rid of free energy)
Well, my proposition is quite simple, really. Keep 3 heavy slots (even if ossie have 1...). Just make it so 2 of them are forward-only. Although, even then problem stays, just on same level as it was in 85, not worse. (well, bit worse due to mortar being way more effective then before)
2) Also, why nothing was done about general balance of light&sleek vs heavy armored capital ships? I know it's the general problem of freelancer, where agility >>> armor, but it became significantly worse with battleships after thruster drain was buffed from 5 to 10-20 seconds. Back then, Light BSes were superior in range warfare, but at same time they had to rely on teamwork to keep their enemies at bay (CDed). We've been constantly doing it with OCies in Taus, and it was very entertaining and interesting - you have to pay attention to them and CD when necessary, if you fail your weaker battleships are doomed. And vice versa, if you succeed at that, their huge ships are kinda dead in the asteroid field, even against Zephyrs (that was one of the worst BSes around, although few still loved it)
You don't really need CD'ers now, do you?
What's the point for a nation to build heavy, big sized capitals when smaller ones are MORE effective for LESSER cost? I'd pick LibDread over Valor (that's also totally useless in dense asteroid field. I wonder how much did it take them to place one in Tau 23) any time!
I'd propose to have a very cautious approach towards strafe on BSes with a small forward/backward square, possibly nerf it to oblivion to make em rely on turret steering other then AWSD strafe, but I'm not hoping on that. (and that might not solve the problem, actually) :)
OR redo the cruise drain for BSes and use CDs to keep em at bay.
3) Battleships (and possibly cruiser) Missiles. As you remember, people were very pessimistic about their usefulness in 4.85, therefore you could rarely see them mounted on battleships. They were only really usefull in base sieging and keeping cruisers at bay. Even then, few people, who wanted to have additional options on the battlefield or just wanted their BS to be versatile and all-round, still installed them.
Well, they're even more uselss now, and thats even if we don't take into account the effeciency of flak guns versus them (although I do like how it's done) Why?
They're taking a heavy slot. Means, you can rarely afford 1 missile, and almost never 2. Because it will mean, in most cases, that you have to drop 0.40 DtE weapon and refer to 0.28 DtE only, just to have a "feeling" of a battleship.
That's like going with full cerbers against full primary setup in 85. gf...
Was it intentional to make missiles less usefull then they were in 85? If yes, then why so?
Possible solutions here might be increasing Cerber's damage while decreasing it's Energy Effeciency, and/or make missiles available to medium slots. Not like they're so uber effective against enemy heavy caps at less then 50% of mortar's energy effeciency
P.S. I do understand that it's just 4 days since the mod became public, and it will require way more time for testing, etc. But I'd really hope to see at least some of the above fixed (even partially) before the Final Release version, where you can't change anything anymore.
LOL Heavy battleships are not useless in the least.
They're meant for charging and clobbering small ones.
I've avoided plenty a light mortar in my Kusari BS in 4.85 (can still prolly do the same now)
In reality nobody can kite for long in a light BS unless they're impulsing away from the advancing heavy BS in which case that heavy BS should cruise up and clobber them when they regen.
Turret steering for BS's seems less useful than for cruisers, because most battleships are long rather than tall and strafeing still seems to work equally as well as turret steering.
' Wrote:LOL Heavy battleships are not useless in the least.
They're meant for charging and clobbering small ones.
I've avoided plenty a light mortar in my Kusari BS in 4.85 (can still prolly do the same now)
Don't you dare to compare KuBS kiting with RhBS/Valor/LiCarrier etc kiting! It was in the class of it's own. :P
(I remember someone posting tests of their KuBS vs Marduk after cruise drain changes)
Quote:In reality nobody can kite for long in a light BS unless they're impulsing away from the advancing heavy BS in which case that heavy BS should cruise up and clobber them when they regen.
Turret steering for BS's seems less useful than for cruisers, because most battleships are long rather than tall and strafeing still seems to work equally as well as turret steering.
First of all, as I pointed before, it was the case till the Cruise drain "nerf". Before that balance in BS vs BS was somewhat better - either your allies make sure enemy won't ever engage cruise (and trust me, it's easy. I've been mainly fighting on the "Light BS" side in the Taus, and they were waaaay worse then LiDreads), or what you just describe will happen. It's quite different now, don't u think so? Those 10-20 secs = 2.6-5.2 millions of energy if we talk about LiDread, that result in approximetly x0.40 damage to you. That is, when you're already damaged (since you're starting to cruise when enemy energy core is empty)
Quote:First of all, as I pointed before, it was the case till the Cruise drain "nerf". Before that balance in BS vs BS was somewhat better - either your allies make sure enemy won't ever engage cruise (and trust me, it's easy. I've been mainly fighting on the "Light BS" side in the Taus, and they were waaaay worse then LiDreads), or what you just describe will happen. It's quite different now, don't u think so? Those 10-20 secs = 2.6-5.2 millions of energy if we talk about LiDread, that result in approximetly x0.40 damage to you. That is, when you're already damaged (since you're starting to cruise when enemy energy core is empty)
I did perfectly fine cruising up to a Liberty Drednought (at least in 4.85, I doubt it would change much now because the stats are mathetmatically the same, Jinx said 4 primaries of 4.86 are equal to 12 of 4.85's, and Mortars are still very good, and they are STILL more energy efficient than Heavy Mortars.) in my Rhienland BS in 4.85. He was shooting back at me when I stopped about 1k from him, and I still ended up winning.
I did have a single bomber helping me, CD'ing him...
Quote:Don't you dare to compare KuBS kiting with RhBS/Valor/LiCarrier etc kiting! It was in the class of it's own.
Hehe yeah, the Kusari BS is damn near one of the best ones around =P
Rhienland BS its much harder, I think strafing down and up is better because of its relative short height if you can avoid the camel hump in the back. The valor is the same way, its very thin vertically. As for the Carrier I cannot say becuase I have not had one.
' Wrote:I did perfectly fine cruising up to a Liberty Drednought (at least in 4.85, I doubt it would change much now because the stats are mathetmatically the same, Jinx said 4 primaries of 4.86 are equal to 12 of 4.85's, and Mortars are still very good, and they are STILL more energy efficient than Heavy Mortars.) in my Rhienland BS in 4.85. He was shooting back at me when I stopped about 1k from him, and I still ended up winning.
I did have a single bomber helping me, CD'ing him...
Wrong. They're equal to about 1.5 primaries in 4.85 in terms of pure damage, equal to 2 primaries in 4.85 in terms of energy consumption. Although, I do like how that makes capfights longer. Also, as far as I understand it was a bomber and a RhBS vs LibDread? well, I'd just make bomber keep him CDed and EK on him from 10k. but that really doesn't happen too often, does it?
I'm talking about situation where that LibDread have a fighter with RCD and is shooting you with cerbs, spending rest of energy (just 40k/second, not that much) through primaries, while effectibly evading most of ur cerbs/prims.
Well, then you need to aim better. Or, what I like to do is put the little reticle behind them, so the spray goes out in all directions all around them, so at least SOMETHING hits instead of nothing.
At the moment it isn't particularly that small BS are bigger than better BS... just that Liberty dread is better than a lot of BS of its size - while being a class higher than them. BHG BS is also classed as a small battleship, at the same time is quite outclassed by most medium battleships despite its size.
Heavy battleships make up their size with more armour, regens and now also more actual firepower thanks to turret split. So I wouldn't say light battleships trump them, rather they are meant to be used in different ways. Most importantly, battleship duels are generally silly. The battleship with support always wins: if you are in a light/medium BS and have a fighter/bomber to CD the heavy bs, it can never cruise up = you win. If you are in a heavy BS and have a fighter/bomber to CD the bs that is kiting you, you cruise up and it can't escape = you win. If both have bombers with CD on support, the one who can deal more damage in shorter amount of time will win. Then it gets really interesting...
Anyway, the Liberty dreadnaught is mostly balanced against RM BS, hence it's relative strength compared to the Osiris. As far as I can tell the Order is still not in a state of war with Liberty, so the two don't need to be compared much. As far as Lib dread balance goes, well... against RM BS it really is too early to tell after turret split. We need some more fights happening between RM and LN so that things like this can be pinpointed to being a balance problem and not a player skill problem.
On point 3:
Battleship missiles in 4.85 were used for one purpose: cheapkilling fighters. Now that battleship missile slots have been restricted, heavy turrets are more important for anti capital warfare, and bs missile exploding doesn't blow up other bs missiles in the vicinity AND most importantly, now BS missiles actually damage capital ship, the BS missile is useful for one purpose only: long range bombardment against other BS/cruisers.
The debatable thing on it is refire IMO. It could be decreased so that a single missile can be fired more often. Other than that, I think it's more or less ok, which fights on server can hopefully confirm.
Quote: heavy turrets are more important for anti capital warfare
I do have an issue with this.
Battle Razors are on the Level 10 slot (generally, HEAVY, missles, mortars...)
They should not be.
They're not for capital warfare. This EXTREME restriction of use makes them being used even less than they were in 4.85. ( I dont personally see them as useable on battleships, I wish they'd be anti cap again or something... because they are simply not efficient at the job they're supposed to do...
They should be placed in level 8, (light type turrets) with the flaks, solaris and secondaries...
Quote:Heavy battleships make up their size with more armour, regens and now also more actual firepower thanks to turret split. So I wouldn't say light battleships trump them, rather they are meant to be used in different ways. Most importantly, battleship duels are generally silly. The battleship with support always wins: if you are in a light/medium BS and have a fighter/bomber to CD the heavy bs, it can never cruise up = you win. If you are in a heavy BS and have a fighter/bomber to CD the bs that is kiting you, you cruise up and it can't escape = you win. If both have bombers with CD on support, the one who can deal more damage in shorter amount of time will win. Then it gets really interesting...
Agree with all of that, especially bolded portion. You dont really experience a BS (or any ship for that matter) in battle untill it's in a fleet, with support.
' Wrote:The debatable thing on it is refire IMO. It could be decreased so that a single missile can be fired more often. Other than that, I think it's more or less ok, which fights on server can hopefully confirm.
The energy usage is quite brutal still as well. Increasing the refire won't do much if the thing drains your core after a few shots anyways, just help drain it faster.
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Well, the missile is meant to be more as a support weapon than an assault one. You sit back and lob missiles at a target that is far away and hard to hit with guns, not necessarily close by. I can see the issue however. Now that the "double missile anti fighter cheese" is gone, I agree that it warrants a second look.
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As for razors, they remain as a mostly anti gunboat weapon that also has some use in surprise killing fighters/bombers. Contrary to opinion, one can still semi reliably bias a battleship for anti fighter/gb duty by filling it with solaris/flaks/maybe gatling solaris or some secondaries on light turret slots, some pulses on the med slots for deshielding gb/unlucky bombers, and on heavy slots of course razors for surprise kills. Switching razors to light slots will allow all battleships to supplement themselves with razors as part of a standard loadout.
This can be a big or small change depending on the type of battleship really... letting an osiris mount razor and full solaris with newly increased solaris range now might once again return it to a place where it can very easily destroy any small ships at short and medium range - while at the same time also being able to kite other capitals to some extent if it can still mount a mortar on top of that, as it will always have its 5 primaries to play with in addition to all the light slots.
