Nuclear mines are VASTLY too strong and do way too much damage. They always have and have managed to dodge the nerf they are dire need of for many years. In addition, there is no variety to mines as you just mount a nuke and off you go.
I suggest nuclear mines are nerfed and ripper and swatter mines are buffed to make them viable, but in different ways, to promote diversity.
This would keep the nuclear mine as the most damaging mine, but reduce its obscene damage and keep it as the slower of the mines. It would still instakill most LFs if it connects to their hull, which really it should. Some of the higher hull ones would survive from full, but that's fine, that could be a bonus for them being so big.
Half the damage of the ripper, double the refire. Same DPS at the same speed. It'd probably need its lifetime and owner_safe_time bringing to 6 and 3 respectively, in line with the above mines.
Nomad mine is a sort of hybrid nuke and screamer as it's the only mine they have. Maybe we could ditch the combination of hull and shield/energy damage to make it basically a nuke with ripper speed and a bit of extra ammo.
Radius and seek_dist would need standardising too but they're less debatable. The more important stats are as above. Screamers could be left as they are, I guess.
Falloff was readded because apparently nukes are overpowered. So, a global constant was messed with, which temporarily ruined every other explosive, to address this (which still in the end didn't even really solve the problem), instead of just...nerfing the nuke?
Turn falloff back off, nerf nukes, buff other mines so we have some choice and variety.
taking off falloff and putting these stats on is way worse than the current status of nukes. All you have to do is not be stupid and avoid them and you'll be fine. They track at 0 mph. They only do full damage on impact or if you're dumb enough to end up close.
On a more serious note, the only way the refire rate of a mine would ever be relevant is if you made nukes a lot slower to drop consecutively than they are now, or if you made some kind of alternative mega-nuke that had a slower refire in turn. You'd probably have to go with the former and make a mini-nuke that drops at the old (or just a faster) speed instead, though, because I don't really like the idea of some 25k+ damage hydrogen bomb that can be rammed into enemy snubs being balanced around the idea that you can only drop one every 30s or whatever. It's just going to make nukeramming take centre stage again with a vengeance.
Ammo count adjustments are a far more impactful and sensible set of changes to rein the impact of minetraps and general spam in where snubfights (especially duels) are concerned.
The problem is that whenever you touch the Nuke, you get complaints, because every time someone touched the Nuke they made things worse.
The only thing that should be changed immediately is removing the damage fall off because currently it means that as long as you don't hear an incoming missile you can just drop one and even if you get hit by a CD at that time, the damage will be negligible cause you will have already moved out of the way.
Everything else about the nuke is fine. If you're upset about spam, mount a CD. If you're upset about mineramming, move out of the way.
Yes, please, disable explosives damage falloff. Taking 17k hull by flying close to deshielded target and pressing a button was so good.
The mod is called Nukescovery Nukelancer, after all, so why the hell the main feature was turned into some auxiliary weapon?
Edit: to be serious, no-falloff mine with considerable range (such as nuke), regardless of its damage, allows to deal no-brain damage.
With falloff the damage to the ship attempting this trick will almost always be few times higher than to its target, because the mine has literally just left the launcher, making trick much less practical and forcing to use mines in a different way.
In accordance to the Mini-Razor damage nerf, nukes should as well.
Nuclear Mines take off too many nanobots (12) and for too many goddamn times I died with nanobots remaining on my ship because a guy managed to connect a salvo and a nuke in less than a second, very annoying.
If the entire premise of current balance is to remove instakills (and pseudo-instakills), I don't see why nukes should be exempt from the chopping block.
As always Mephistoles is correct.
Also to the git-guders,
maybe try aiming instead of taping ur hands into two buttons. Everyone can enter a mindset of never eating nukes but it just makes fights unnecessarily long and tedious.
(08-07-2020, 09:46 AM)Traxit Wrote: If the entire premise of current balance is to remove instakills (and pseudo-instakills), I don't see why nukes should be exempt from the chopping block.
I'm largely indifferent about mines but I feel like this is a fair point.
(08-07-2020, 09:46 AM)Traxit Wrote: If the entire premise of current balance is to remove instakills (and pseudo-instakills), I don't see why nukes should be exempt from the chopping block.
It's a fundamentally wrong premise because all it does is exacerbate the fundamental flaw of Discovery pvp which is that if you want it to be fun, you need the other side to be gentlemanly and not throw two people at you. If there exists a possibility of an instakill, that means that 2v1s (and more) are theoretically winnable. If there isn't such a possibility, then the best thing you can do in a 2v1 is just run away. That means avoiding interaction, avoiding ganks, avoiding blues and making everyone upset.
The logical extreme of this is that if you cannot get your entire faction to log in numbers matching the opposition, the optimal solution is not to log/fight at all.
Stupid instakills are stupid. Missilecycler of ye olde should've been axed in 3.7 seconds flat after it was discovered yet it persisted for a good couple of years (and even then people found ways of dealing with them (CD)). Same with double nova suicide bombers (hello CIA).
Snac nerf is stupid because landing a snac on a fighter takes skill and avoiding snacs is also a skill.
Nuke nerf is stupid because of the same reasons. Same with nerfing the MR+Shotgun combo.
Instakill loadouts should be viable, high risk and high reward. So it was with snac bombers fighting snubs. Similarly, instakill playstyle should be high risk and high reward. Mineramming used to be dangerous until it no longer instakills, neither you nor your opponent. Spamming nukes in an attempt to get two of them to hit the enemy at the same time also used to be dangerous until falloff was introduced and now there is virtually no punishment for dropping nukes with no shield as long as you pay attention to the incoming missile alert.
(08-07-2020, 09:46 AM)Traxit Wrote: Also to the git-guders,
maybe try aiming instead of taping ur hands into two buttons
>my way of playing the game is better than your way of playing the game
I mean I guess if nuke was some sort of mystical weapon locked behind a wall of SRP or a very high pricepoint I guess, but if you're upset about it, just use it yourself lol