5.1 "Aftershock"

[pillow]

Cruiser v Cruiser is kinda bland, will admit.

The plan was to make them more individualistic but we had to click the patch game button

[Hemlocke]

Cruiser v Cruiser is kinda bland, will admit.

The plan was to make them more individualistic but we had to click the patch game button

Well I did notice the attempt, different ships having different strengths and weakness. Archer having two defense turrets, while the Scylla has two forward turrets and 1 defense turret. Stuff like that is cool and good. Donau looks very funny but I haven't gotten a chance to test.

[SeaFalcon]

Their strength is not raw DPS. It is not intended to be. Bombs are absurdly efficient, offsetting the fact that bombers have less recharge to work with while their shields are up. They are two out of your eight total weapons. There's a reason you have eight.

Effiency at 100% hit rate, perhaps. They are not if you calculate with expected hitrate. Having to practically ram your enemy and put yourself in harms way to have a slight bump in DPS is not worth it.
Remember bombs have a tiny arc and fly off wherever they want to go, your ship needs to be a specific position to try and get them to go where you want while any other regular fighter weapon you can snap shot anywhere you like.

Right now the bombs are not worth the strain and effort for what they bring to the table.
Same for the torpedoes. You want a reliable weapons and not a role of the dice when that's your only proper weapon against your target.

I agree with the low hit-rate, which is why the latest hotfix increased their turn rate from 30 to 50 degrees per second. Their seeker cone angle will likely go up in the future, too. Obviously they objectively do large amounts of damage for their energy expenditure and modern-day capital ship health values. 5.58 efficiency in a post-armor removal world is nuts. Do also remember that capital ship players are expected to either flak or shoot down Novas as they have no other counterplay against 2k+ range weapons when prims and secondaries stop hitting past ~400 meters. As with bombs, you are expected to use a mix of guns and torpedoes and really use everything your bomber has mounted, not a tiny subset of equipment.

Capitals should be scared when facing bombers. Thats why fighters are a thing, to take out bombers. They were fine in previous patches until the fighter-bomber was introduced with lasers. Those weapons were removed so why nerf the other weapons so far, they are practically worse than regular fighter weapons?

This simply doesn't match what I have seen fighters and bombers do in-game since the patch. Remember that you've got eight total guns, don't just use two of them.

Bombs are practically impossible to aim unless you are basically ramming your target which is unwanted behavior for everyone involved anyway, so why this is recommended is beyond me. The 6 guns that are not bomber guns do more damage against targets than the current dedicated bomber slots do. So why even bother getting myself in a position where I have to loiter 300m away from heavy guns while I can just turn fast and get some primary gun shots off and leave without getting hit? What sort of gameplay is it that it wants you to ram your target to get 20% more DPS for 1 second?

We set out here to make fighters a viable ship in anything but their own little bubble (fighter versus fighter). We have achieved this goal. Bombers are still viable and are at most minor number tweaks away from being very solid choices in most, or even all scenarios. This is a massive improvement from 5.0 where bombers absolutely trashed fighters by virtue of their insane DPS numbers, and fighters were entirely useless in the game as a whole. Both classes now have their place.

Might as well revert back to 4.85 balance then and delete the snac, although with the fuze, the old snac inta killing would not matter anymore either since fighters just regen.

The things people were "abusing" that they "weren't meant to do" was to fire infinite core weapons designed to kill 6 million health ships at fighters and bombers with anywhere between 8,000 and 20,000 health. You can't fundamentally fix this without doing what we did, which is to make it so bombers have to play the same core management game every other class has to and bring damage output between the snub classes much closer together.

They added the FLhook to do less damage against fighters and more against caps. That worked really well, just tweak it more instead of trying to revamp the whole system that you can't possible test enough yourself to know if it'll even work ingame.

Tweak more, revamp less.

Whenever I try to get back into this game, it's completely different. New hidden mechanics are added that are poorly explained or shown. Ships stats are completely changed, not just slightly tweaked no, instead all values are different. Same for the weapons. slots are poorly named and shown which weapon goes where and why. Why even add 2 thrusters to bombers, mass does not even affect gameplay enough to have such an elaborate change.

I could go on about all the changes that I find frustrating and unnecessary, but it really is a pain to try and adjust to something you know will be revamped next patch anyway so why bother learning any of new mechanics at all.
The snub-guns and ships are so convoluted right now it's easier just close my eyes and buy random guns and not care at all.

oh yeah one last major gripe I have is the slow and steady decrease of weapon ranges over patches, stop forcing me to ram someone to get my shots in.

/rant

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Freelancer discovery videos

[Busy Miner]

Looks great, but maintaining POBs is now much more expensive with new prices for Basic Alloy and Water etc.. Has the daily demand been reduced to compensate for that?

PS: I see that the refined commodities have increased prices, too, so that the profit should be higher nonetheless, but for all other bases it seems harder.

The prices for these commodities have increased in the range of twice up to seven times as expensive as before. Has the POB script been altered to use less resources or is this just a big middle finger for all POB owners?

[Schxer]

Looks great, but maintaining POBs is now much more expensive with new prices for Basic Alloy and Water etc.. Has the daily demand been reduced to compensate for that?

PS: I see that the refined commodities have increased prices, too, so that the profit should be higher nonetheless, but for all other bases it seems harder.

The prices for these commodities have increased in the range of twice up to seven times as expensive as before. Has the POB script been altered to use less resources or is this just a big middle finger for all POB owners?

Any coloured name mind answering questions of POB owners?

• Why were the prices of POB commodities increased without any announcement?
  
• Last patch POB maintenance was made more expensive, was there any need to make it even more expensive than that?
  
• Has the consumption rate/efficacy been changed accordingly to compensate for that?
  

[Haste]

Any coloured name mind answering questions of POB owners?

• Why were the prices of POB commodities increased without any announcement?
  
• Last patch POB maintenance was made more expensive, was there any need to make it even more expensive than that?
  
• Has the consumption rate/efficacy been changed accordingly to compensate for that?
  

"PoB commodities" are just commodities. We did communicate that the economy generation has changed, and one of the aspects that has changed is that "producers" no longer sell commodities for a default 1.0x multiplier across the board, and instead the most "remote" ones (from consumers and resellers) are cheapest, and the closest ones are the most expensive. This is a way to make those remote producers more viable. This is applied across the board for all commodities.

Making it sound like some grand conspiracy to target PoB owners doesn't do anyone any favors. Notions like "Seven-fold price increases!" are also a little absurd as my assumption is that that is literally referring to a commodity going from one to seven credits. Which is like, yeah, a seven-fold increase but we're also talking about a miniscule amount of credits regardless.

I do talk to PoB owners and most have thus far told me that the maintenance costs really aren't that big a deal still. And there are options like hydroponics and scrap refining if you don't like how much you're having to pay for basic alloy, food and oxygen. If there are outliers that are costing a particular outrageous amount and have no realistic option to reduce those costs, I would love to hear just how much they're costing and where they're positioned, and I'll look into it.

---

[Busy Miner]

Any coloured name mind answering questions of POB owners?

• Why were the prices of POB commodities increased without any announcement?
  
• Last patch POB maintenance was made more expensive, was there any need to make it even more expensive than that?
  
• Has the consumption rate/efficacy been changed accordingly to compensate for that?
  

"PoB commodities" are just commodities. We did communicate that the economy generation has changed, and one of the aspects that has changed is that "producers" no longer sell commodities for a default 1.0x multiplier across the board, and instead the most "remote" ones (from consumers and resellers) are cheapest, and the closest ones are the most expensive. This is a way to make those remote producers more viable. This is applied across the board for all commodities.

Making it sound like some grand conspiracy to target PoB owners doesn't do anyone any favors. Notions like "Seven-fold price increases!" are also a little absurd as my assumption is that that is literally referring to a commodity going from one to seven credits. Which is like, yeah, a seven-fold increase but we're also talking about a miniscule amount of credits regardless.

I do talk to PoB owners and most have thus far told me that the maintenance costs really aren't that big a deal still. And there are options like hydroponics and scrap refining if you don't like how much you're having to pay for basic alloy, food and oxygen. If there are outliers that are costing a particular outrageous amount and have no realistic option to reduce those costs, I would love to hear just how much they're costing and where they're positioned, and I'll look into it.

Well, it is still much more expensive, especially for casual gamers. And since the commodities didn't get more selling points the work is as tedious as before, so no thanks for that. And btw, the mining in a Hegemon, now huge, slow and clunky and no shields, with the new resource asteroids is a ridiculous disgrace. Very good idea, but about 5-6 times too small yield however. PS: 3-4 times the yield per asteroid would be perhaps more realistic.

[Sam101]

Everything is great, No matter good or bad the fact the game is ever changing makes it great............

[Darkseid667]

Any coloured name mind answering questions of POB owners?

• Why were the prices of POB commodities increased without any announcement?
  
• Last patch POB maintenance was made more expensive, was there any need to make it even more expensive than that?
  
• Has the consumption rate/efficacy been changed accordingly to compensate for that?
  

"PoB commodities" are just commodities. We did communicate that the economy generation has changed, and one of the aspects that has changed is that "producers" no longer sell commodities for a default 1.0x multiplier across the board, and instead the most "remote" ones (from consumers and resellers) are cheapest, and the closest ones are the most expensive. This is a way to make those remote producers more viable. This is applied across the board for all commodities.

Making it sound like some grand conspiracy to target PoB owners doesn't do anyone any favors. Notions like "Seven-fold price increases!" are also a little absurd as my assumption is that that is literally referring to a commodity going from one to seven credits. Which is like, yeah, a seven-fold increase but we're also talking about a miniscule amount of credits regardless.

I do talk to PoB owners and most have thus far told me that the maintenance costs really aren't that big a deal still. And there are options like hydroponics and scrap refining if you don't like how much you're having to pay for basic alloy, food and oxygen. If there are outliers that are costing a particular outrageous amount and have no realistic option to reduce those costs, I would love to hear just how much they're costing and where they're positioned, and I'll look into it.

Well, it is still much more expensive, especially for casual gamers. And since the commodities didn't get more selling points the work is as tedious as before, so no thanks for that. And btw, the mining in a Hegemon, now huge, slow and clunky and no shields, with the new resource asteroids is a ridiculous disgrace. Very good idea, but about 5-6 times too small yield however. PS: 3-4 times the yield per asteroid would be perhaps more realistic.

Yup, commodities for POB supply are still way too expensive (especially compared to pre-5.0 money) and too few and inbetween. 23 cr for BA in Berlin or 34 in Frankfurt? That is 2300 per unit in old money. Does anyone really trade in water, oxygen, food rations or basic alloy? That is not an argument.

[Busy Miner]

...
Yup, commodities for POB supply are still way too expensive (especially compared to pre-5.0 money) and too few and inbetween. 23 cr for BA in Berlin or 34 in Frankfurt? That is 2300 per unit in old money. Does anyone really trade in water, oxygen, food rations or basic alloy? That is not an argument.

Just a comparison: Water is now at least 7cr, that is 700cr in old money, while before the patch it was mostly 15-30 cr old money. Reinforced alloy I can't compare since it is not in the wiki anymore, but was like 50cr in old money iirc, now basic alloy is worth 2300 at least in old money.
The profit margin for POBs that for example refine ores and their respective suppliers/traders nowhere near reflects that because the prices for those have increased to only like 200% (aluminium ore pre-patch vs. refined aluminium now)-300+% (gold ore pre-patch vs gold ingots now), not to at least 2300% like water or over 4000% for alloy. That is nearly the price equivalent of a whole cargo load of mined ore (considering the prices most POBs pay) that you need to cough up for one load of reinforced alloy (daily), plus around two loads of water, some MOX (or equivalent), Uranium (or equivalent), Fertilizer.... Aaaaaaand you have to cross at least 2-3 systems to get to a sellpoint with "reasonable" prices, so that is still a chore, too.
And the argument that you spoke with POB owners, probably playing for years, that sit on hundreds of millions of new money, is no argument, since I am a POB owner and supplier who tells otherwise.
So I suggest you reduce the rate of how quickly a POB burns through the supplies, especially alloy.