5.2.1.1

[Mort]

Reject PvP, embrace mining. The only part of the game that hasn't yet become a victim to hardcore boner.

Embrace mining and get skillganked by you and @HonourWolf

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#MakeOmega-48WhiteAgain

#BringBackOldValor

[Lord Caedus]

Neither weapon consistently hits anything at 500m. I don't know what backwards method was used to actually test Prim changes but they're absolutely useless to keep a fighter off of you which is clearly the entire point of the weapon now, but they don't actually do enough damage to be a threat. Flaks are way too inconsistent to reliably keep a fighter away and once the fighter is inside of the minimum range of the flak the prims aren't enough of a threat to discourage them from sitting on you. I'd genuinely rather have the previous version of prims back where they move slower (but still fast) but actually do damage to the ship when they hit. I don't care about power core damage because the damage they do because they do is only really noticeable against bombers, which are by far the least relevant snubs.

In short, cruiser prims effectively do nothing and you're genuinely better off just shooting your defense turrets at a snub because you're more likely to hit with them.

honest question, have you ever actually tried to fly a snub at cruiser flaks

Yes, I found them annoying at most. That was against the previous iteration of them too which if I'm not mistaken have been tuned down. Have you actually tried to use cruiser prims and flaks on the live patch, cause if this is what they're meant to be I don't know why we're even bothering to have the things.

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[HonourWolf]

Reject PvP, embrace mining. The only part of the game that hasn't yet become a victim to hardcore boner.

Embrace mining and get skillganked by you and @HonourWolf

Huh. When did I gank a miner?

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[Chxlls]

Not any sort of cruiser ace so take this with a grain of salt.

During the most recent RM/DTR battle in Sigma-15 I felt like cruiser flaks were consistent at peeling fighters off of other caps by deshielding them and our side’s fighters and gunboats leveraging that effectively. However, I was grouped up with the other caps. I would imagine an isolated cruiser would have a much more difficult time, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing as it encourages more coordinated cap play and mixed fleet comps.

Prims on the other hand, felt pretty useless. Maybe you can do powercore damage to fighters coming into range, but that would be the limit of their effectiveness. It seems like cruisers lack the tools to actually KILL fighters on current patch.

But maybe that’s a skill issue on my part. Just some anecdotal experience I figured I would share.

[Vendetta]

honest question, have you ever actually tried to fly a snub at cruiser flaks

Yes. They didn't feel like they were deterring me from dealing any damage to the ship firing them (tested on a Hel, a Praefect, and an LSC) nor did I lose more than half of my shield. They barely managed to track my VHF while I was flying in a straight line at their nose.

By the time I was in range, the flaks were no longer a problem to me in my crappy Prosecutor as they'd fly past me and detonate behind me, so one would think the prims would be, right?

Also no.

That cruiser I just attacked wasted all of its power trying to stop me from attacking, so it can't even fire its prims long enough for it to matter. The speed doesn't make up for the dispersion because I'm a moving target at range. Up close, there isn't enough power left to stop me from hanging in a blind spot and hammering one of the engine components. Given my Prosecutor can indefinitely fire its pulses, there's nothing stopping me from deshielding the ship as it probably is sacrificing its shield regen for power (and still not getting enough!)

Will the lone cruiser live a long time? Sure. It'll be a slow and miserable fight for everyone, but two fighters could already kill without much struggle and you don't even need a dedicated bomber to accomplish that.

Now imagine that in a group fight or fleet engagement, where said cruiser is probably already engaged with other capital ships and likely doesn't have the power core to turn its flaks onto whatever pair of snubs decide to take the easy pickings.

Doesn't seem particularly engaging for gameplay from the cruiser's perspective. Kinda feel defenseless now.

So either the average cruiser pilot is incompetent, or the equipment they're being provided is lackluster and not effective at their intended roles.

quick edito:


forgot to mention that even if you've got the core, missing roughly 45% of your shots and not having the damage to make the ones that land matter adds up there, too.

[Haste]

Now imagine that in a group fight or fleet engagement, where said cruiser is probably already engaged with other capital ships and likely doesn't have the power core to turn its flaks onto whatever pair of snubs decide to take the easy pickings.

This is a bit of a moot point, though. If all those snubs were instead Gunboats pouncing on that powercore-less Cruiser things would be much worse for the Cruiser. Powercore is a limited resource, and spending it intelligently is a huge part of (capital ship) skill expression. If you're in a fleet engagement and you find yourself having to both do loads of damage against enemy capitals and defend from snubs, your allies are not pulling your weight.

For the record, we'll do some further testing of BC/Cruiser prims soon enough and tune things further. I'm not claiming they're perfect. The goal here was to make prims more reliable and functional. They really weren't very good before these changes, and it's remarkable to me how rose-tinted the glasses are in this thread. Prims weren't good against competent players, and the biggest performance gap is against NPCs of all things.

It seems like cruisers lack the tools to actually KILL fighters on current patch.

This is kind of inevitable and the only "fix" for this is to remove snub death fuses. And even then balance ultimately would solve to average-and-below snub players getting deleted on their first pass, with competent players plinking away at caps from relative safety, if everything is designed around a lucky instakill. Old prims really weren't any more threatening in terms of their ability to burst you down since their hitrate past 200-250 meters quickly approached zero, and the only weapons I really saw triggering fuses were things like Storms, which remain unchanged. In fact, grouping your defense turrets with a single prim is a pretty nasty hack to instagib boxing snubs. This is admittedly quite difficult to do in the middle of a chaotic fleet fight.

I think that in the healthiest possible balance environment, pure snub versus pure cap would just solve into a sort of stalemate. This doesn't exactly sound exciting, but it's the only way quick and agile snubs that are free to restock 520 times if they so desire can be balanced against capital ships that are locked in to a fight with little room to disengage. The best fleet we would encourage therefore would have a mix of different classes, which is kind of where we're at as it is anyways.

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No matter what direction we take prims in, players shouldn't expect being isolated in a lone cap against multiple snubs to be a particularly good situation. Those snubs need one another to get any work done against caps - caps need one another for cover. I suspect further reducing dispersion will get us there eventually, rather than efficiency buffs.

forgot to mention that even if you've got the core, missing roughly 45% of your shots and not having the damage to make the ones that land matter adds up there, too.

Edit: I do have to quickly point out how staggeringly high a 55% hitrate against snubs actually is.

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[Lord Caedus]

For the record, we'll do some further testing of BC/Cruiser prims soon enough and tune things further. I'm not claiming they're perfect. The goal here was to make prims more reliable and functional. They really weren't very good before these changes, and it's remarkable to me how rose-tinted the glasses are in this thread. Prims weren't good against competent players, and the biggest performance gap is against NPCs of all things.

You seem to be operating under the assumption that you have made prims in any way more reliable or functional. You have not. You have also turned them from being ineffective against competent players to ineffective against stationary targets. Any time I can go target a ship that is stationary at 500m and have a low enough hit rate that with my prims that I drain my power core before the ship dies, then we've over tuned things too far to one extreme.

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[Vendetta]

forgot to mention that even if you've got the core, missing roughly 45% of your shots and not having the damage to make the ones that land matter adds up there, too.

Edit: I do have to quickly point out how staggeringly high a 55% hitrate against snubs actually is.

Yeah tbh my ratio there is probably off. I don't think it was particularly as high as I wrote it down to be.

If I were to re-assess I'd estimate it's closer to around 25% in that ballpark area, or lower.


quick edit i forgor to actually reply to your post:

Dispersion definitely needs a calculated reduction. Gunboats are rocking around 2.6m dispersion at like 500m iirc. That's not taking into consideration that absolutely insane speed cruiser prims currently have, which leaves them with dispersion around 25-26m. With how low the damage output is in comparison to the efficiency, you could probably drop that dispersion down into the late teens (18-19) and get that desired effect.

[BobMacaroni]

It seems like cruisers lack the tools to actually KILL fighters on current patch.

This is kind of inevitable and the only "fix" for this is to remove snub death fuses. And even then balance ultimately would solve to average-and-below snub players getting deleted on their first pass, with competent players plinking away at caps from relative safety, if everything is designed around a lucky instakill. Old prims really weren't any more threatening in terms of their ability to burst you down since their hitrate past 200-250 meters quickly approached zero, and the only weapons I really saw triggering fuses were things like Storms, which remain unchanged. In fact, grouping your defense turrets with a single prim is a pretty nasty hack to instagib boxing snubs. This is admittedly quite difficult to do in the middle of a chaotic fleet fight.

I think that in the healthiest possible balance environment, pure snub versus pure cap would just solve into a sort of stalemate. This doesn't exactly sound exciting, but it's the only way quick and agile snubs that are free to restock 520 times if they so desire can be balanced against capital ships that are locked in to a fight with little room to disengage. The best fleet we would encourage therefore would have a mix of different classes, which is kind of where we're at as it is anyways.

Not necessarily, no. You can have reliable, strong turrets that can kill fighters while still keeping death fuses and not relying on instakills. Remember the whole point of primaries is not to kill snubs (they can just run away no matter what you do), but to deter them and get them off of you. This doesn't exclude death fuses at all, it just means that if they don't dodge your fire and let their teammates work for a little, then they will take heavy damage and die, as they should. But low damage, low efficiency, fast speed turrets lead to the opposite effect, providing light damage always hitting them which can be good, but isn't a deterrent. It is not the necessary firepower needed to defend yourself from them from getting all up in your face and walking over you, and not letting them do whatever they want. Remember the main point (and the goal you are alluding to) is to make primaries to deter snubs, which the current setup does not provide the best solution to account for, as other methods would.

No matter what direction we take prims in, players shouldn't expect being isolated in a lone cap against multiple snubs to be a particularly good situation. Those snubs need one another to get any work done against caps - caps need one another for cover. I suspect further reducing dispersion will get us there eventually, rather than efficiency buffs.

Of course not. And the more snubs there are the better they should stack against capital ships, but I think you've come to the wrong conclusion given the right data. Further reducing dispersion will help yes, but it still doesn't tie in to the root issue - capitals need a concrete weapon that they can use reliably against snubs to at least do something, so they can at least attempt to defend themselves. That was the point for the new cruiser primaries, and instead of increasing efficiency or damage, speed was increased. Naturally this has to be balanced so efficiency and damage went down. But was increasing speed the best solution? Yes it gives capitals the ability to reliably defend themselves (by hitting the target) but in return it takes away their ability to be able to reliably defend themselves (by having any energy or damage left to hit the target with.) I agree that capitals should learn how to manage their power core, thats fundamental. But their power core is taken up so fast by primaries for so little return, that it doesn't matter how they manage it, with the current system they will still get the same result regardless, due to the way it is set up. Personally I would keep the old 5.1 turrets and increase efficiencies (they weren't that bad! I found them quite decent, if a little inefficient for what you got) but thats a topic for another time.

Edit: I do have to quickly point out how staggeringly high a 55% hitrate against snubs actually is.

A 55% hit rate does not make weapons good on their own. If we were talking about a 55% hit rate using defense turrets, that would be a much different story. The point they were making (at least from what I gathered) is that a 55% hit rate, under 500 meters no less, weighs poorly given the incredibly low efficiency and damage of the weapons. When your point blank defense can not reliably be expected to deter the enemy snubs, that is the issue.

[Chenzo-]

The game used to run like a large and ever changing game of rock paper scissors. Everything had its counter before 5.0.

LF to VHF: Good against LF to VHF and bombers, in numbers good against Gunboats.

Bombers were good against Capitals(as they should be) but useless against VHF's and below, also requiring multiple to take down a GB or larger(this was perfect before imo)

GB's were excellent against snubs of all kinds, a good support ship for other capitals.

Destroyers, Cruisers, Battlecruisers and Battleships all float at varying effectiveness against each other- All requiring at least two of the lower classes to take down a solo Battleship- This was all great before.

Why did this need to change?

Now, a solo gunboat can piss off a Battleship- Maybe not kill effectively, but still send it running.

Bombers are next to useless against capitals- The number of missiles you can carry is very, very poor given the hit rate is low in an actual fight. Edit: In a fight I had to re-stock 3 times on missiles using a bomber, pounding missile after missile at a capital with lots of help, to return a 10ish % damage when it eventually went down?

This is more than a usual "skill issue" thing.

Super edit: Capitals should rely on their snubcraft team mates to clear enemy snubcraft.

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