Making snubs more appealing

[Lythrilux]

- As for the complaints that snubs are essentially invincible against caps, this is a half truism. They're invincible if fully dodging. But when a gunboat barges into a snub v snub fight or when snubs are going on the offensive against a capital ship, they are completely and totally vulnerable.

But then the snub can just flee from the Gunboat. Or even worse, if it has mates nearby in snubs, the snubs can just circle-jerk around the gunboat by going back and forth grabbing regens until the Gunboat is destroyed. The invincibility snubs have is completely true, and silly recent changes such as restricting gunboat missiles to a single slot (with some ships not having a slot at all) makes this sort of behaviour even harder to counter.

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[Vrabcek]

Sadly all the cap development in the past years made the gap between snubs and caps bigger and bigger. Many people were disgusted by those changes, begging developers to remove them, but nobody heard them out.
Now instead of removing proven balance breakers, as the well known turret zoom, you trying to find ways how to balance it out again, but youll most likely succeed in making disco fights even worse.
In the past, capital ships were dangerous too, but a rookie cap was more or less the same dangerous as a rookie snub pilot and a skilled cap was a pain in the ass, as same like a skilled snub, but in certain scenarios. Of course less and less new players are now choosing playing snubs when they can be five times so dangerous with a gunboat that can easily deal with more enemies at once, than a lonely snub that can barely deal with one opponent at one time.
Its said its not worth looking backwards, but sometimes its worth evaluating whether the development was a success or not...

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[Salmin]

Stop to improve the speed of cap and transport weapons, it is awful. From patch to patch. And stop listening QQers.

1500ms guns with Zoom vs snubs, win.

[The Savage]

don't forget the disappointment you feel when something you used to is changing in the game, especially when it is nerfed or so...

One word on that: cloaks.

[Sanctions]

Remove or nerf TS and it's all fine.
As an option, bring back the originality of the House/Faction guns (like they were pre-.87).
"Why are you running away? Are you cowards? Why are you mad?" - some RNS GB staying under OPed NPC Valor base.

[Swallow]

Remove or nerf TS and it's all fine.
As an option, bring back the originality of the House/Faction guns (like they were pre-.87).
"Why are you running away? Are you cowards? Why are you mad?" - some RNS GB staying under OPed NPC Valor base.

TZ is not TS.

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FL MOD(EL)MAKING: TOOLS, RESOURCES, TUTORIALS AND MY SHIPS (OLD)

I am on discord: Roal-Yr#5994, I don't log on forum more than a few times a year.

I am not making ships for FL anymore, I am making my own space game instead:
https://github.com/roalyr/GDTLancer
https://roal-yr.itch.io/gdtlancer
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5HQB...cdH45LZgjj

[Jack_Henderson]

I like flying snubs as they are.
I like flying caps as they are.

Something that is annoying about caps though is: they interfere with snubs a lot, while fighters (in reasonable numbers and most situations) cannot do anything to them.

Targetted Snubs hug caps. At close range, caps are absolutely deadly. Let's not even talk about insta-loadouts here.
=> The presence of a cap can ruin the fight for every fighter.

Now I hear: fighters should not be able to even dent caps. The reasons given are more or less okay.

However: if that happens, caps have also to be neutered against fighters. Like... really neuered. Then I will gladly buzz around the warships and hunt stuff, but if it means suddenly eating a load of prims, it's a very one-sided situation in which caps ruin snubfights, while snubs can't "retaliate".

So... I am not opposed to separating caps and fighters totally - leaving only bombers as a snub that can damage caps.
However, this needs to go both ways.

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[FallenKnight]

Sadly all the cap development in the past years made the gap between snubs and caps bigger and bigger.

All ship classes should be focusing on their role to fight their main targets - not to fight one another and be 100% balanced. Unless you are a fan of 4.85 meta of "2 sabres can kill a battleship" (and a lot more on top of them ).
The cap development during the years improved greatly - yes it made caps stronger that is why so many people complain on forums - but in the same time it made them more realistically "heavy". The weapon replacement of heavy/medium and light turrets was a huge step forward.

In the past, capital ships were dangerous too, but a rookie cap was more or less the same dangerous as a rookie snub pilot and a skilled cap was a pain in the ass, as same like a skilled snub, but in certain scenarios.

That was partially true, but lets not forget that back then a battleship could be armed with as many solaris/cerberus etc as possible. Also the lack of "field of view" made it super frustrated during combat with even one target. Any time you had to look around...you were looking at your ship and the enemy was behind it...you know what I refer. I support the idea of reducing the current "maximum" unzoom option by half but removing it would only make flying a cap frustrating again.

Of course less and less new players are now choosing playing snubs when they can be five times so dangerous with a gunboat that can easily deal with more enemies at once, than a lonely snub that can barely deal with one opponent at one time.

Your assumption is actually not the reason why players chose bigger ships. They do so because they like bigger ships - simple as that. If you had to choose from Imperial Star Destroyer and...TIE fighter what would you choose? I would like to be on the bridge and give commands (from RP pov), so if you choose to be there in the field of battle in a cockpit...that is your choice. Same thing can be noticed here in disco - tons of players simply choose caps cuz they are more epic to fly, the weapons are more different, the way you fight is not so dull and outdated (still outdated but aw well). Fighters are simply not for everybody so the alternative is to get something you are good at - referring towards those players that simply hate fighters. FL vanilla was snub orientated but disco is not, so arguments of "FL is all about snub" are not legit.

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About the topic - Currently the snubs are fine but changes to the whole system/specification between the classes must be made. For example:
1) Light Fighters need to be useful (and not only for trolling). More gun options for them or only tied to use specific set of guns/missiles which are unable to be mounted on HF/VHF. Like ability to mount the best CD in the game limited only to them. Also +1 level per guns
2) HF needs to be improved (not to look like a broken VHF). Same like LFs - more options and distinctive speed difference compared to VHF. Lets say they can mount missiles - best in the game. To have +2 level per guns.
3) VHF are fine and should remain as they are. They could be limited not to use what LF/HF can mount but to have different versions for different situations. So they cant mount superior CD nor Missiles (from HF line) but to be able to equip Razors (restricted to them). To have slightly more armor (all of them) and +3 level per guns.
(Would be nice to see that Tier 1 guns are limited to LF...T2 to HF and T3 to VHF. All to be building up more dps but the ships to be compensated by their "limited" per class special equipment. This could be close to what caps have as option - Light/Medium/Heavy type of weapons but these types to be strictly limited per LF/HF/VHF class.)
4) The bombers (part of the snub line) must be reduced to only be useful against caps. Remember the Campaign mission (one of the first few) that you had destroy a base in the dark cloud? Well, back then the Liberty Navy called for "bombers" to assist them to take it down...for their weapons were rendered useless. Bombers in disco needs to be like that - very heavy armored, with minimum weapons - useful only vs caps - and with superior types of long range bombardment tools. Weak against all snubs, strong vs all caps.

My opinion is that the snubs needs to be more distinctive cuz currently - VHF and Bombers are on the top, where most of the time the Bomber is the ship to get to handle...anything. Yes skill is needed to fight VHF but once you can do that then why to get VHF? Once all 4 classes are distinctively separated only then players will think about going back to one of the four...and get to use something new instead to be thrown a VHF in their face.

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[Zayne Carrick]

Haven't read this thread.

Turn fighter torpedoes into really good anticap weaponry, something like nova, but with 2 times less damage.
Problem solved.

[FallenKnight]

@Zayne Carrick , that will solve nothing - it will only make bombers absolutely useless and the "VHF above all" doctrine will remain active. That is why I proposed each snub to have a role (caps must also be tweaked but this is not thread for caps).

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