Is it time to nerf cruise disruptors?

[Greylock]

I’m with Crucible on this. It isn’t broken, so don’t change it. Go fix SNACs and then we can talk.

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[DarkTails]

This hasn't been an issue literally ever nor is it an issue now. It's not a gun, it's, at best, a premature ordinance detonator.

"It disrupts cloaks." No. It disrupts the charging process. Once your cloaked, there's nothing your standard train or mosq CD will do to you. Continuing to use CDs on a successfully cloaked target is a rule violation.

As Thunderer said, jump drive disruptors don't exist. Using a CD is your only way to stop a jump drive without the player stopping it or killing the ship.

The way you portray CDs is honestly dishonest. One of the main reasons CDs are dominant on most choices is because they can do precisely what their first purpose is, stop a ship from entering cruise.

To effectively and consistently intercept and destroy hostile ordinance in the window that matters, you have to use a CD that has a larger (by comparison) explosion range, limiting you to a shorter range CD, making you less effective at stopping fleeing ships than one with a train or heavy CD would be. You half your range on intercepting ships to compensate for effective and consistent ordinance disposal. Don't make things that aren't an issue an issue. CDs arent some be-all-end-all weapon. They're a utility. Ofcourse a utility item is going to have more versatility over a regular weapon. A CD can't nearly one-shot an enemy fighter, a CD can't deplete an enemies shield in one shot. You can argue "yes it does" all you want when in reality it doesn't. You require the other set of tools to put the CD to effective use. Those tools are much more limited themselves because of (in the case of mines) they have a much more restricted ammo capacity or lower explosion radius/damage if you go for spammable ones, which the vast majority don't considering I only ever see two mines in use: Screamer and Nuke. Screamers are a nuisance to shields, but otherwise do no hull damage. Nuke mines generally get CD'd in time to effect you enough if you're: A. A top PvP ace, even then half the time it doesn't work. B. You were going to hit it anyway.

Focus on the real issues with Disco, not making up issues that don't exist.

[Commander Crucible]

There was a time when people simply adjusted to what they had at hand instead of crying nerf.
No offence but rather than nitpicking a game mechanic that has been the bread and butter for pvp in discovery for many years now, why not adapt to it like the rest of us and climb the ladder of skill that many people have grown accustom to.

With regards to the minority claim, a quick search on this site yielded zero popular results on the topic you proposed. A bit of verbal discussion also yielded no results ergo it was never considered a problem since discovery or freelancer’s inception.
But hey, that’s just me.

Cheers

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[Wesker]

If there's one piece of equipment that makes or breaks pvp in this community, it's the cruise disruptor.

This is the 4th time I've seen you gravedig terrible ideas in this subforum. Please take the time to truly farmiliarize yourself with the potentials of each class and all types of equipment before you draw conclusions like this that would completely rupture balance as we know it and in the process take away one of Freelancer's fundamental mechanics.

The name suggests its intended purpose: keeping people from cruising away, or stopping them while they're cruising, but it does so much more beyond that, whether intentionally or not, that it's become a necessity to any pvp engagement, from solo duels to group fights.

The purpose of CDs has reached far beyond what its name states since the beginning, CDs regulate and otherwise force people to consider a counter when agressively using ammunition of any sort. In several other versions of FL it is the same, allowing ammo to be used unchecked without a counter like the CD would create tons of other balance issues in the first place. But let's break it down.

A) Disrupts the 'engine kill' maneuver, a vital aspect of both snub and cap pvp

Point A: this is probably built into the engine and isnt something that can be changed. However, perhaps reducing Cruise Disruptor ammo capacity could prevent this from being spammed to completely shut down someone's maneuvering in combat.

This was done before out of spite and the end result crippled VHFs in particular since the target CD was one mostly employed by the VHF class. CDs have different stats to ensure that no one CD is the "meta" above all others in all scenarios. The most common VHF CD is the mosquito which has a very tiny range of 1.6k, it is made purely for snub pvp. The train, while having more range, does not have as much turn rate and is less effective in detonating ammunition since it does less damage.

However, in regards to crippling movement of caps and snubs, the capital ship portion is critical to ensure heavy battleships, battlecruisers, and other tanky-based capital ships cannot just engine kill on their lighter counterparts. The numerical amount is necessary in this case especially when you consider that in many modern-day scenarios there is only 1 person dedicated to keeping caps pinned, nevermind what he/she has to do to defend his/herself from other snubs and as well stop novas and missiles.

In regards to snubs, this is so far from the case it is laughable. CDs do not completely mitigate your ability to move, in fact - most veteran snub pvpers spend very little time in engine kill. As engine kill prevents them from strafing and in many cases - aiming properly. You have to remember that in snub pvp cases when a snub CDs you he is not only stripping you of your ability to EK (CDs do not mitigate ANY OTHER TYPES OF MOVEMENT) he is also stripping HIMSELF of that ability because of the detonation radius. As you become more and more proficient, you also realize that you can snap around people with short engine kills between CD shots. Since CDs fire so much slower than in other mods it's obnoxious.

And if my words aren't enough, here's a video against the very own founder of tCS Dominique Armande. (this vid was unlisted but now it's been some time, to everyone watching join RHA or tCS to see more exclusive vids )



Nowhere in this video am I struggling to move at all. The CD count is fine as it is and serves a very good regulating role.

B) Detonates mines, missiles, and torpedoes, which has both offensive and defensive applications that make it indispensable

Point B: Detonating ordnance offensively has been done for ages via minetrapping or blowing up a bomber's novas as he launches them. I dont like it, but it doesnt have as many implications as the defensive applications for ordnance detonation.
Missiles and Torpedoes have limited ammo, often times far more limited than the number of cruise disruptors one ship can carry, despite the fact that nearly every ship has a cruise disruptor and in a group fight you effectively have unlimited cruise disruptor ammo because of this. For the person using things like capship missiles/torpedoes, or nova torpedoes, this is extremely frustrating; most, sometimes all, of your ordnance, which you're spending a valuable heavy weapon slot on, will end up getting neutralized before it even gets to the target. On top of the cruise disruptors, explosive ordnance weapons already have several other counters: flak turrets, countermeasures, and simple dodging on applicable ships. This means you've got 4+ ways that the enemy can shut down your limited ammo weapon, and no ways to make sure it works reliably.

Yes, welcome to... the challenge of the game? What did you expect? An engraved invitation stating that because you made a sacrifice on your precious weapon slot to hurt capitals with novas, that it deserves to go about with a 9:1 ratio in favor of you landing nearly all of your Nova rounds? I have never ever, at all, in all my time on discovery until now seen a complaint like this. Numerically, yes, the number of CDs is greater than that of nova rounds, but that does not mean every nova round gets stopped, it does not render novas less than anything else. In fact, right now after the snac nerf, novas are more favorable. The instances of novas always being stopped are completely subjective to the type of situation, in large cap fights or large snub fights, bomber swarms will always manage to get most of their novas to the enemy vessels. In the New london storyline event, every GRN/Corsair player was running a dual nova bomber loadout and managed to down several of the heavily armored npc cap ships. The novas carried them, they do more dps in comparison to other weapons in the bomber arsenal, the fact that they are ammo-based is likely their drawback.

The snub aspect of detonating mines is a typical new-player or inexperienced-player complaint and since you didn't go so deep into it I'll let it slide. Perhaps if you invest more into VHFs or the fighter arena you'll quickly discover how it's not nearly as bad as what you stated earlier if you learn to use mines and CDs properly.

C) Disrupts cloaking devices and jump drives

Point C: This is probably an unintended side effect, but when we have cloak disruptors and jump drive disruptors, do we really need cruise disruptors covering those roles as well?

Cruise disruptors stop an opponent who is attempting to cloak, and dear god would this cripple interactions if it were changed. Every ship needing to sacrafice a CM slot to mount a cloak disruptor? Cloaks would quickly become twice the meta for avoiding interaction that they already are. Same goes for Jumpdrives, Jumpdrives take time to charge, but it would just enable people to easily avoid interactions or flee from fights.

Ultimately, point is that cruise disruptors have too many uses, too many advantages, and arent limited enough in their ammunition or capabilities to counteract those strengths.

CDs are not all the same, some have more ammo depending on their stats than others, they are a regulation tool for people that look to invest in easy cloak/jumpdrive getaways and for people who spam ammunition recklessly. They are a huge part of what provides a learning curve and teaches players to spend equipment tactically/properly (looking more at snub pvp here).

The minority is here are the people in favor of change, CDs are fine as they are. And I've just probably wasted time typing this but this notion is ridiculous.

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[Tenacity]

All I'm really suggesting is heavier ammo limitations. 70 CDs vs the 20-50 missiles a cap can load into a turret, along with additional counters like CMs and flaks, render those ordnance weapons pointless, and that's just from one fighter/bomber/gunboat/cruiser/battlecruiser focusing on destroying incoming missiles and torpedoes. IMO flaks should probably have ammo limitations as well, and countermeasures likewise tend to have too much 'ammo' (though at least they arent 100% effective).

@DarkTails

Destroying ordnance in the manner I'm implying doesnt require explosive radius, so no, there's no deterrence to using train/reinforced CMs. All you have to do is target the torpedo and fire a disruptor, and the end result is 100% effective.

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[Tenacity]

No offence but rather than nitpicking a game mechanic that has been the bread and butter for pvp in discovery for many years now, why not adapt to it like the rest of us and climb the ladder of skill that many people have grown accustom to.

I've always said the motto of discovery is "we fear change". Sounds about typical.

Ever think that maybe we're growing stagnant here because of that attitude?

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[Wesker]

Destroying ordnance in the manner I'm implying doesnt require explosive radius, so no, there's no deterrence to using train/reinforced CMs. All you have to do is target the torpedo and fire a disruptor, and the end result is 100% effective.

Nope, not against all torpedoes, trains will not always detonate the torp. Neither will mosqs in fact, and trains already have less ammo than mosqs. Situations where all torps get stopped are usually in close duel encounters. But torps are usually a liability for larger group fights anyways, and in larger group fights there are always torps that make it through - cap and bomber alike, and they are enough to do effective damage.

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[Grumblesaur]

Just because everyone's already used to it doesn't mean it's good for game balance. Cruise disruptors are an extremely versatile tool -- far more so than most other kinds of equipment. Tenacity has a point.

Every other kind of equipment in the game has, generally speaking, one or two uses:

• Guns and turrets deal steady, reliable damage, and even come in specific varieties to deal different kinds of damage. Most ships have slots for several of these. Other than pulse weapons dealing powerplant damage, they don't really have any extra uses.
  
• Torpedoes deal large bursts of damage at the expense of energy and sometimes ammunition. Highly useful in piracy or a cap fight. Limitations on ammo (or the expense of the ammo) or high energy costs limit their usage. Spam them, and you waste your own resources. They don't have much use in a furball (unless you're using a suicide tactic in an asteroid field). They're tailored to specific uses.
  
• Countermeasures are solely for attracting ordnance, unfriendly or otherwise. Nothing else you can do with them.
  
• Capship razors are for high-powered sniping shots. Not useful for a steady stream of fire, difficult to hit some ships with, but well worth it if you can reliably land hits, especially against ships smaller than your own.
  
• Mortars are for high-powered sieging. Also not useful for steady streams of fire, but great for going after ships bigger than you.
  

I imagine you get the idea. The cruise disruptor? It's too useful. Generally speaking, unless you're flying a bomber that's not for piracy, or flying with an ID that only lets you engage in self-defense, it makes sense to have one. Stop a transport or a fleeing ship. Detonate mines, missiles, and torpedoes. Cancel somebody's engine kill. Disrupt cloak charging.

Most people in particular use the Train cruise disruptor, since it'll stop pretty much anything reliably. We have the Mosquito which claims to be better suited for popping ordnance, but it hardly matters when the TCD can do it just as well and stop transports with wide-apart engines.

The superiority of the CD is detrimental to distinguishing ship roles from each other. So many loadouts have a very do-it-all quality to them, especially the ones that include a CD, since it gives them all the abilities outlined by Tenacity. Given how much effort the devs have put into the game to make ship classes and the roles of those classes more distinct (different cruise speeds, different weapons for bombers and fighters, different slot types for capital ships), it's contradictory to the mod's logic to let the CD be such a powerful trump card.

Either breaking these different functions out across multiple types of disruptor properly (so that there aren't so many redundant pieces of equipment) or reducing CD ammo capacity to something like 25 would be fine fixes in my eyes.

I’m with Crucible on this. It isn’t broken, so don’t change it. Go fix SNACs and then we can talk.

The SNAC is only tangentially related to this discussion (since it occupies the same slot), but if all you want to do is whinge about how the SNAC should be reverted (and it shouldn't be), how about you go to a thread where that's more on-topic? Your one-liner doesn't contribute anything to the conversation that your first post didn't already.

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A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

[Wesker]

I've always said the motto of discovery is "we fear change". Sounds about typical.

Ever think that maybe we're growing stagnant here because of that attitude?

Except that discovery is always changing. The problem is when changes are poorly executed or if they are simply just wrong, and there has been no shortage of that over the years. Many fundamental aspects of fighter pvp have been destroyed and have sent off players in turn. Capital ship changes have gone back and forth, the initial removal of meta cerberus turrets was flawed, but eventually was fixed with the introduction of what we have now.

People here are less afraid of making changes to additional aspects of the mod and more fearful of crippling the fundamental aspects of freelancer that make freelancer - freelancer.

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[Commander Crucible]

No offence but rather than nitpicking a game mechanic that has been the bread and butter for pvp in discovery for many years now, why not adapt to it like the rest of us and climb the ladder of skill that many people have grown accustom to.

I've always said the motto of discovery is "we fear change". Sounds about typical.

Ever think that maybe we're growing stagnant here because of that attitude?

On the contrary, the reason we “Grew” stagnant was because we changed too much.
This is unfortunately a fact. For proof, please refer to all posts under general discussion post 4.85.

There is good change and then there is bad change. Change for the sake of change is what lead to the chaotic destruction of many a loved game franchises ( refer to Halo, Dead Space for further clarification ).

A small correction to “ we fear change” is “ we fear counterproductive change”.
My sample space of opinions for statement 1 is about 20 or so friends of mine who left due to “counter-productive changes” to existing game mechanics in the name of “balance” that have existed since the birth of discovery.

Cheers

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