General rebalance idea.

[Lonely_Ghost]

Guys.......let it be as it currently is. There won't be balanced and fair fight every time, one side will have advantage in skills or numbers. Making caps more expensive...alright, more powertraders with oorp escorts, more jumptrades.
Cap's speed? Alright, you can feel the difference in conn, where you actually dueling, and there, just a dozen of m/s (meters per second or something others ?) can let your fast and lightly armored dessy to rape something heavy like Rheinland Cruiser. Same goes to C vs BC.
However, in most fights outside of conn, when capital ships are in use, you wont see 1-1 fight, and not 1-2, so does it rly matters?
Re-balancing stat- adding more armour. Well, this can be good, if you ask me as a cap user, but I will say you GTFO, as a bomber pilot. Yeah, it's not so easy to decide. Capital ships, which are easy to kill by a couple of bombers.....who will need such scrap?
On the other hand, how many ppl should log in bombers to take down just a single destroyer.

Disco is more or less balanced for game, which originaly had only fighters to fly (not even transports). Just play, have fun and let others to have fun in play with you.

P.S. Yeah, missiles and CM. Do something already!

[massdriver]

-> cap vs cap - several minutes, almost no chance to escape if caught.
-> snub vs snub - may not end for hours and without any ship destroyed.
BECAUSE
cap guns were introduced by developers from scratch without altering snub guns.

snubs arent efficient thats why there's cap spam as you can kill faster someone in cap vs cap event rather than snub vs snub

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[Knjaz]

-> cap vs cap - several minutes, almost no chance to escape if caught.
-> snub vs snub - may not end for hours and without any ship destroyed.
BECAUSE
cap guns were introduced by developers from scratch without altering snub guns.

snubs arent efficient thats why there's cap spam as you can kill faster someone in cap vs cap event rather than snub vs snub

Exactly.

You cannot proper balance the capital ships if you allow their spam like now.
<skipped snubcraft part>
Ship prices need to go 50% up as well. Small dead penalty for all ships 1 to 10% random generated of its NPC dealer value would be nice. But again before fining one battleship user 30-50m you better make sure the said cap ship have proper guns not like the jokes now.

Well, 10% from ship price, if we exclude armor and include guns and shields, is a fair deal in case of capital ships, if we rebalance them to reflect their extreme operating costs. At same time, if you include armors into equation, it rises few problems.

Namely, cau8's become useless compared to 4.5 times cheaper cau6s, and forcing people to pay 100-150 millions per death will 1) promote EVE-like environment 2) will require capital ships to be extremely strong, to reflect 15-30 times maintenance costs of a fighter. Not just stronger then they're now. Will also bring a great disbalance between ship classes that are relying on Capital Armors, be it transport, gunboat or battleship. By no way a cau8 gunboat operating costs should be comparable to that of a cau6 battleship.

Imho, putting armors into equation is a NO.

EDIT: another option might be rebalancing caus according to their capability... but that might create problems in balance between same ship classes. Should somewhat "richer" ship of same class have 100% victory chance due to 4 times higher hull? Imho - no. Yet, that also comes with a greater cost...
Well, might be worth thinking about it. Any thoughts?

Sadly, a fighter gun "across the board" speed increase would make such weapons like 2.00 1k+ damage guns incredibly OP (never mind the codenames). "Reduce the damage then" you might say?Means rebalancing a ton of guns, and then also at the same time (lets say we decided to up the speed by some 200ms) a 950ms flashpoint barrage would murder fighters in less than 5 minutes

No, don't reduce the damage. It'll affect too much stats and too much scenarios, like fighter swarm efficiency vs gbs, etc. Projectile speeds only.

As for fighter fights lasting up to 5-10 minutes depending on skills, that's exactly what I'm aiming for with original proposal - making them newbie friendly. The speed increase across the board will definitely make people who do not train more useful in a group fight. Combine that with more powerful then they're now, but also helluva more expensive to maintain capital ships

That's also why I proposed a difference in death penalties in form of adjustments to "4 hour" rule in OP in addition to great difference in operating costs. Cheaper to operate and more fragile fighters will require way less time to "respawn". (2 hours vs 4 hours for Battleships and cruisers, or 3 hours for gunboats and transports. Numbers are just an example)


And don't get me wrong here - the basis of proposed rebalance is in making fighters newbie friendly, not in nerfing capital ships. Capital ships will actually become more combat efficient then they're now, to reflect their greatly increased maintenance costs. (like Govedo pointed out)


What makes a difference between a fighter and a capship? As a co-leader of a "faction" that, at some point, incorporated alot of members that barely spoke english, have no idea about the basics of the fight and were called into one of Fleet Battles in TX 3-4 days after their arrival on server - I have quite a large experience in this field.
You can, basically, put someone like that in a capship, give him the "basic course", tell him to stick together and he.will.manage. Yes, he's still a noob, he still doesnt know many things, he will still do some stupid mistake if you won't babysit him in TeamSpeak.
BUT - He doesnt need weeks of training in Connecticut to be able to do damage to enemy fighters equal to 20% of what PROs do. He doesn't need to keep visiting conn to maintain his skills. The difference between newbie and pro capital ships is way, waaaay lower then between newbie and pro fighter. The distance between those is just incomparable.

Truth be told, the current fighter weapon speeds are quite all right, as are fighter guns in general.

They're not, as mentioned above. They're too heavily skill based. And then people wonder "Why all indies fly caps".

I'm one of those "capwhores" that dropped fighters long time ago. I just felt so exhausted after the long fight, that I had zero satisfaction from the game. Plus constant trainings to keep myself in touch. Dropped fighters on May 2011. And I'm definitely not the only one like that.

Another issue with total rebalances is that sweeping changes tend to break a lot of things and are generally terrible to manage, so I'd rather have small but significant changes. Like perhaps removing bot/bat trading... somehow. That change alone guarantees a significant reduction in fighter group fight times, since it will no longer be required to go through the whole group's bots to take out one guy. It's also easy to reverse and applies to everything equally without number bias or other errors...

Why reduce/remove possibilities of teamwork (especially in capfights, where bot transfer is essential, and does not make things to last over 10 minutes) instead of making things go faster then they currently go? Making all ships deadlier through projectile speed increase (with corresponding tweaks in several cases, like with bombers, light vs heavy battleship balance, etc), with corresponding maintenance costs that reflect their combat efficiency (still, in non-linear way, I guess) is a good way to create environment where you can actually balance ships according to their class and role (and reduce/increase their deadliness based on their costs, Lore (Scylla is a great example of lore-friendly cruiser.) and other things)

[Veygaar]

No, don't reduce the damage. It'll affect too much stats and too much scenarios, like fighter swarm efficiency vs gbs, etc. Projectile speeds only.

You do know that... GB turrets are recieving a 50% reduction in DPS come .87 right?

They're not, as mentioned above. They're too heavily skill based. And then people wonder "Why all indies fly caps".

Exactly! Skill based is what makes FL unique! Keep it, and remove the noob "auto aim" zoom on all ships. Zoom used to get you banned here on Discover, now everyone and their skilless mothers use it and ruins what made Disco so much fun: That the sky was literally limitless in how good you could get if you just practised!

All this balance will be solved by removing zoom. (and... maybe taking half the nanos off of snubs)

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Veygaar for Admin Moderator 2013!!!

[Madvillain]

yeah lets create a game that doesn't require skill , like rolling dices .

:|

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Baila Morena | Toilet Trouble | Elder Presidente[TBH] | The Titan Combat Manual | Confession

[Prysin]

Why fix what is not broken?

Is it possible to achieve a blue message with todays system? - YES
Is your own personal skill's, reaction times and tactics part of what makes these fights so "slow"? - YES
Can this issue be solved? - YES
If we change everything, will it mean that fights get shorter? - Not necessarily
Since we do not need to "fix" anything to meet the conditions you seek, why did you ask for a "fix" in the first place? - Because you are lazy and want a instant-fight-all-win-all vehicle.

Wanna instakill people? buy a Dreadnought and spam tri-heavy trebuchets.

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DHC Discord

[Knjaz]

You do know that... GB turrets are recieving a 50% reduction in DPS come .87 right?

Yes, of course I do. Couldn't cover all the points in my post at the time, though.

Exactly! Skill based is what makes FL unique! Keep it, and remove the noob "auto aim" zoom on all ships. Zoom used to get you banned here on Discover, now everyone and their skilless mothers use it and ruins what made Disco so much fun: That the sky was literally limitless in how good you could get if you just practised!

All this balance will be solved by removing zoom. (and... maybe taking half the nanos off of snubs)

Well, I can understand your pain, and pain of everybody else's that achieved a good skill level in snubcraft. I do accept that you'd oppose making snubs more newbie friendly, and increasing projectile speeds, since that would greatly reduce the survivability of a single very skilled fighter in a group fight against medium skilled ones.

But skill will still play a role, just the gap will be lesser. And if we make a complex systematic approach as described above, we'll see a great shift in server's caps:fighters ratio, and it would only improve things overall. Imho.

<...>

Your questions are somewhat incorrect at their core. It's not about "is it possible". It's about "what it takes."

No, I do not plan on instakilling stuff in a fighter, I'm too deeeeep into caps. But, for a casual player that does not possess any exceptional talents, capital ship is absolutely best choice atm. It takes longer to "farm", but it does not require it to spend enormous time on training, and the gap between very skilled, medium skills and not-so-skilled players is significantly lower. The fights might feel better as well, depending on person.

[Veygaar]

Well, I can understand your pain, and pain of everybody else's that achieved a good skill level in snubcraft.

Actually I achieved a good skill with caps... Then everyone got auto aim and now caps are stat/distance wars. No more need for aiming while maneuvering. Dumb.

Let me ask you this: Are you willing to lose zoom in order to have these other changes implemented? If no, why? Is it because it makes it to harder to fly caps now? If it does make it to hard to fly caps, would that be comparable to the current difficulty of flying snubs? If yes, then there is your balance. Make everything hard to master.

Cap pilots are suddenly demanding in a new surge that snubs should be made easier to fly, RIGHT AFTER they've gained the awesome 'autoaim/become a pro in one day' feature of zoom.

You give caps autoaim, now they want it to be just as easy to fly snubs like a pro.

Get rid of zoom, bring back the need for skill on all levels, not just on snubs.

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Veygaar for Admin Moderator 2013!!!

[Blodo]

As for fighter fights lasting up to 5-10 minutes depending on skills, that's exactly what I'm aiming for with original proposal - making them newbie friendly. The speed increase across the board will definitely make people who do not train more useful in a group fight. Combine that with more powerful then they're now, but also helluva more expensive to maintain capital ships

And don't get me wrong here - the basis of proposed rebalance is in making fighters newbie friendly, not in nerfing capital ships. Capital ships will actually become more combat efficient then they're now, to reflect their greatly increased maintenance costs. (like Govedo pointed out)

It is newbie friendly. There are a small handful of players that can use skill in the current balance to their own advantage, those players have their ups and downs in activity, but when they are active people just get this idea that it is somehow a problem that somebody else can kill them in a fighter and it takes work to be able to kill him back. Skill should be rewarded with kills, it's one of the last things that keeps players interested. The only issue with VHF fights right now is lag, bot trading and not enough trick shots.

That's also why I proposed a difference in death penalties in form of adjustments to "4 hour" rule in OP in addition to great difference in operating costs. Cheaper to operate and more fragile fighters will require way less time to "respawn". (2 hours vs 4 hours for Battleships and cruisers, or 3 hours for gunboats and transports. Numbers are just an example)

This is more of a rules question, not as much balance but I would agree with this particular change.

You can, basically, put someone like that in a capship, give him the "basic course", tell him to stick together and he.will.manage. Yes, he's still a noob, he still doesnt know many things, he will still do some stupid mistake if you won't babysit him in TeamSpeak.

The only reason for that is that you put your noobs in RM BS which is by far one of the most extreme ships on the server. Extreme in the fact that you can be lazy while flying it and still get results, you just tell your people to cruise up/rush enemy, close distance and fire all guns. This is not tactics or skill, this is just a simple absolute: close distance or die. But it's how the RM BS is balanced, and we can't really change that without screwing around with the model size - which I don't want to do. It takes a while to sink in for people that an RM BS without a cloak is not a cakewalk, that you need to actually fly that one in a very cautious way against other enemy caps, and if bombers are on the field you are basically relegated to support/damage sponging. But n00bs don't need to know that if they are in a large group of other caps that have a commander to lead them, that's why it is easy for them to fly RM BSes. But when they raid Texas alone, that's when it gets lulzy: they suicide on the Mississipi or get killed by a fleet of LSCs without doing any damage.

But then you say caps have a lower learning curve. Well... they really don't. Sure, the RM BS is at first sight easy to give to cannon fodder due to the way it is balanced, as is the Valor, the KNF BS, the Legate, and any other heavy BS. Now go apply the same tactic in a Lib Dread (which is arguably actually OP right now due to its arcs - and yet still fails unless you know how to fly a cap), a Bret BS, a Jormungand, etc. No, these are the caps that you need to fly smart from the very start, otherwise you fail badly. So I disagree with your statement about cap learning curves, learning to manage caps takes about as much time as learning fighters.

Best example: The.Joker who after his few weeks on the server had his BHG BC beaten by me in a Vidar in 1v1 without me losing bots... then over the next few months went to become one of the best gb/cruiser pilots on the entire server, so that I almost died to his Tridente while I was piloting a Bret dessie in another confrontation a few months later - and this was before turret steer. Cap skill is just as elusive as fighter skill, and demeaning cap pilots by saying it isn't is just kinda bad.

As for fighters learning curves specifically: flying fighters is not for the lazy. If it becomes like that though, it will be just boring because fighter fights will be predetermined by the amount of fighters turning up on the field, and that takes all fun away from the fight. Freelancer capfights are already pretty well dictated by how many caps can be fielded by each side due to the way capship game mechanics work, I really don't want to turn fighters balance into more of the same.

BUT - He doesnt need weeks of training in Connecticut to be able to do damage to enemy fighters equal to 20% of what PROs do. He doesn't need to keep visiting conn to maintain his skills. The difference between newbie and pro capital ships is way, waaaay lower then between newbie and pro fighter. The distance between those is just incomparable.

Not a good example. You go to connecticut, you find there the bored pvp whores of the server who spend their time there because they like the informal pvp setting. It's like wandering into a gladiator pit, of course everybody there will fly better than you, because the whole place is there for the purpose of constant pvp training/ego stroking/whatever. If newbies could just wander in and kill others by dumb luck because fighter pvp was dumbed down to the point where skill didn't really matter, it would no longer be fun for the pros, depopulate the place, and kill skill based fighting in FL. In other words artificially closing the gap between skill and no skill will mean people won't have anything to accomplish any more, which ruins the fun. This is something that basically shouldn't be allowed to happen.

Meanwhile newbies fight each others in fighters in NY quite a bit in pirates vs cops style fashion. Sure that some pvp whores could come in and skew that fight to hell, but when they don't the fight is just normal. In Rheinland the only reason you don't have fighters cruising around any more is because the RNC fly all the caps and the enemies are forced to take bombers with some cap support against them. So the end result is RNC just raid Liberty (because Hessians know how to counter them without fail due to tighter group), and depopulate Rheinland altogether Faction force composition and leadership in an area plays a much bigger role than people give it credit for. Induce your noobs to get battleships straight away and this is what they will do. Encourage them to get fighters, fly fighters yourself and show results... and they will learn fighters.

Why reduce/remove possibilities of teamwork (especially in capfights, where bot transfer is essential, and does not make things to last over 10 minutes) instead of making things go faster then they currently go? Making all ships deadlier through projectile speed increase (with corresponding tweaks in several cases, like with bombers, light vs heavy battleship balance, etc), with corresponding maintenance costs that reflect their combat efficiency (still, in non-linear way, I guess) is a good way to create environment where you can actually balance ships according to their class and role (and reduce/increase their deadliness based on their costs, Lore (Scylla is a great example of lore-friendly cruiser.) and other things)

Bot transfer is essentially an exploit. It makes groups into a single unit which you need to drain of all regens in order to place one kill - and then they all either die consecutively in short intervals, or someone runs to base to bring reloads and we start over. It makes gun kills in group fights a rare thing, and those people who know how to instakill other fighters are the ones who win the fights for their group. This is incredibly suboptimal IMO.

Projectile speed increase is not the way to go. As said above, it will dumb fights down. The only thing that fighters need is more high damage specialty weapon capability returned to them to make fights a bit more interesting (which I am working on). And removal of bot trading. Caps shouldn't trade bots either, then we can give repair ships a repair gun and balance the damn thing right, rather than the current cheese fest that it is whenever anyone fields a cruising repair ship with the 4k bots/bats that can always go to a nearest base for more reloads if he starts getting low. Seriously. I used this thing in Gamma raids, the amount of cheese you can accomplish with it is unreal.

[Anaximander]

All things aside, I do think there is somewhat of a consensus among many players that fighter fights simply take too long, and that conneticut fights are often the most fun. The long fights becomes not only a test of skill, but also very much a test of patience (like knitting and similar "fun" activities). The amount of people that seem to jump right over training fighters to hone their SNAC skills also appear to support this idea: Fighter-on-fighter fights take too long to stay interesting, and the best thing to do as a player is to find ways to end such fights prematurely. Surely there must be a way to address this, while maintaining a balance that allows room for skill.

:Flameshield activated: