Nova "spam"

[Knjaz]

Not like a balance issue yet, but more like a question.

Were Novas properly tested in large battles, with 20-30+ players, with at least 6-7 bombers on one side and capital vessels (with and without flaks) on another?


It's a bit too early to make suggestions, but so far it looks like Nova efficiency increases exponentially with the amount of bombers that have them, to the point where bomber effeciency far exceeds of what it was in 4.85 when turret steering mod wasn't implemented.

Flak effeciency decreases exponentially with the amount of novas that are coming towards ship or with the size of the ship. If launched at certain angle, Nova's vector change after being hit by flak simply isn't enough to make it miss the ship. (in case of heavy battleships)


Combine that with Nova having 300m/s (with ship acceleration) and being almost impossible to spot when there's a combat going around you, or if there's large amount of targets, each having own small "crosshair". You just won't see it till it's very close, you have 0% of evasion if you're on a heavy capital vessel, like Valor or Rheinland Battleship. Even if you're on agile vessel (like a thresher, for example), even 2 nova bombers can give you a very hard time. CMs help only partially.

Since it still might be a bit too early to draw conclusions, what I'm asking here is: what was your experience with "Nova spam" in large battles (from both sides of sender and receiver), in fights with large amount of people present on the field, in the instances where amount of enemy Nova bombers exceeds certain amount? - Edited ?

I just suspect there might be same issue here as the one with Battleship missile spam that did lead to their RR halved, or Gunboat missile spam.

[CzeReptile]

I too do wonder, how in heat of the battle, while being shot upon, do devs expect player to have tim to track incoming missiles and shoot them down with something as badly done as flak, especially in terms of energy.

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[ryoken]

Novas are nasty, but have a large blast radius. In large fights i have seen friendlies go poof if to close to a cap hit. That makes them nasty in large battles to both sides.

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[Knjaz]

Novas are nasty, but have a large blast radius. In large fights i have seen friendlies go poof if to close to a cap hit. That makes them nasty in large battles to both sides.

That's an organizational, not technical issue.

"ALL BOMBERS NOVAS ON #t" in group chat is more then enough for a player to stay away from that particular enemy, when you're somewhat organized. Almost never seen that happening when fighting as an, or against an organized force.

Edit: Sorry, I'll refrain from comments for some time, just want to gather people's experience for a start, without getting into hot discussion (as it usually turns out here, khehe)

[sadtranslation]

I find new capital ships balance and their balance towards bombers fairily acceptable. While the effeciency of battleships against bombers had decreased, they still do offer a fair challenge if escorted by cruisers or lighter ships. A tad more tactics, a tad more fun for everyone.

In the meanwhile, I found the Countermeasures on the Jormungand I fly lately fairily useless.

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[Toaster]

Not just heavy battleships have problems with Novas. My Liberty Dreadnought was torn apart by four Nova bombers in orbit over Manhattan even though I had help from an LABC and two fighters. Flaks didn't help for crap. They barely ever knocked the Novas and never damaged one of bombers.
In the end I was just flying circles in turret steering while every half second a Nova popped against my hull.

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Olivia Sable

[McNeo]

I've only been on the receiving end of nova torpedo spam, and I say, it's good that a battleship cant handle being shot at by 6 bombers. My battlecruiser could barely handle being shot at by four bombers with novas, and why should that be different? Admittedly, I did lose because I decided to spam the fire button, which meant that I ran out of energy and thus couldn't flak away a lot of the novas.

Why should a battleship/battlecruiser be able to directly counter (a large amount of) nova torpedoes? I would say that if a battleship were able to effectively deal with 6 novas coming in from different directions, that nova torpedoes should become solely energy based and lose their ammo requirement.

To be honest, it can probably still be done. Cruisers can generally avoid them by thrusting and turning, which works for the lighter ones (and good luck hitting a gunboat). The heavier ones sacrifice this for their still-smallish size and more power/armour. BCs have the flak since they cant avoid novas due to their own speed and increased size, and battleships can mount more than one flak. Sure, one battleship cant deal with it, but I'm sure that with good teamwork, you can multiply your effectiveness. Of course, this teamwork is something yet to be developed in such a young system.

I'll quote Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and say "Air power rests at the apex of the first triad of victory, for it combines Mobility, Flexibility, and Initiative." Battleships certainly don't have mobility, and most times lack initiative as well. If anything, bombers have all three. They are mobile, very flexible (considering their primary role) and you can choose when to engage and disengage your enemy, provided they're capital ships.

The bottom line is that bombers are designed to be level with capital ships. Why is this? Think of it in terms of diminishing returns. Additionally, when you die, you don't lose anything, which means that any ship has mathematically infinite returns (no matter how much or little you spend, you will never lose your ship (your investment), thus the ratio is always infinity). Excepting the negligible costs of buying ammo and regens, this means that investing in a fighter has the same return ratio as investing in a battleship. Because the returns are the same for each, they should also be even in terms of balance. By even, I mean 1:1 balance. This isn't the case when it's one battleship versus one bomber (BS wins), but neither is it the case when it's six battleships versus six bombers (Bombers win).

If you wish big expensive ships to be more powerful and better able to protect themselves, there has to be a cost for their usage that is dependent on the usage of the ship, rather than simply a one-off purchase price. This is the primary reason why increasing the price of a battleship (from 100 mil in 4.80 to 1.5 bil (BS+Cap8) in 4.86) has not resulted in any change to the ratio of snubs to capital ships.

[Vito]

I know this is a cliche', but you should get escorts for those big ships. Nova's are just fine

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[DarthBindo]

The only apprecciable difference between novas then and now is they do shield damage (which was not a feature, but a bug in 4.85).
It would however be interesting to see four doublenova barghests tearing apart whole capital fleets that don't have escorts.
But that's the catch. Two fighters on a bomber will rip it to pieces in a minute or two at the most.

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gone four years, first day back: Zoners still getting shot in Theta :|

[Knjaz]

Edited the original question, because, as it seems, not everyone got the idea of what I was talking about.

Were Novas properly tested in large battles, with 20-30+ players, with at least 6-7 bombers on one side and capital vessels (with and without flaks) on another?

Edited version looks like that:

What was your experience with "Nova spam" in large battles (from both sides of sender and receiver), in fights with large amount of people present on the field, in the instances where amount of enemy Nova bombers exceeds certain amount?

Sorry for the initial confusion.