This post is a general overview on Junker-specific hardware and equipment.
Im posting this after extensive testing; youll have to search hard for a better authority on Junker ships than me. Im going to keep the sarcasm down as Im trying to make a valid point, and with some of the issues Im going to highlight its going to be difficult. Youll pardon me if Im a bit shaky on some commonly used technical terms, but Ill try to make things as clear as possible.
Junker Ships:
The general concept of Junker craft is higher-than-normal capacity for regens and high turn acceleration, traded for limited offensive capacity and the slowest maximum turnrates per shipclass of any faction line. The words 'hybrid' and 'experimental' are also tossed around a lot. As concepts go, there are better ones out there but this is acceptable. What it means is that Junker ships are meant to survive damage (barring instant death) better than most, but are arguably the weakest shipline in dogfights compared to most other factions ships. People that use Junker ships to fight complain of inability to keep opponents off their tail. People that fight against Junker ships complain of constant shield running, often simply the result of the Junker player trying to get his opponent back in his sights.
Basic Stats and Commentary:
The Collector (VHF): Turnrate / Radii Turned in 0.5s / Time to 90% Max Turn Velocity: 1.000 / 0.3273 / 0.4264 Power Capacity / Regeneration: 12400 / 1270 Regens/Hull Strength: 110 / 12600
Commentary:
Its got three Class 10 gun slots, three Class 5 turret slots, two of which fire forward, and a CD/T. Discounting the torpedo, thats five forward firing guns, the second-lowest number for a VHF in the game behind the highly agile and rarely used 3/2 Kushan. The hitbox is neither tall nor wide, but neither flat nor narrow. Multi-directional strafing works well for it by my experience. Its touted as a fighter/freighter hybrid, and the 110 cargo space is often brought up as a factor in its balancing.
With its limited standard offensive capability, it does most of its damage through razoring and throwing ordinance, taking advantage of the med-high plant for razor shots on demand.
Maneuverability has always been and always will be its Achilles heel. With a 1.000 turnrate, at max turn it corners about as well as a Harvester SHF or a Mjolnir, with its responsiveness placing it at the middle of the pack. People will argue its got a high turn acceleration, but acceleration is relative with a low top velocity.
As a result, the Collector is relatively easy to tail and at a disadvantage when caught alone, or focus fired in group combat. It has more regens, but it has less opportunity to do damage due to poor agility and barring hits with the Mini Razor, less damage potential when lined up on a firing run.
The Bull Dog (HF): Turnrate / Radii Turned in 0.5s / Time to 90% Max Turn Velocity: 1.0976 / 0.3435 / 0.4717 Power Capacity / Regeneration: 9000 / 900 Regens / Hull Strength: 66 / 9400
Commentary:
Two Class 9 slots, four Class 8 slots. Both a CD and a Torpedo slot. B/B capacities rivalling that of VHFs. A thin profile that when combined with up/down strafing, makes the ship a difficult target head-on. The lack of agility is almost forgiven despite the slightly insulting realization that it shares its agility stats point-for-point with the Templar. Ill let that sink in for a moment.
Under the surface there is an underlying issue with the Torpedo slot, in that it does not allow the weapon affixed to its hardpoint to fire through the model. Putting a MR here leads to a lot of frustrating misfires as a result, due to the ship's tendency to lean into turns and most firing passes with the razor being inside a turn and above the ship's wing where it can't reach. This has led to a lot of Junkers including myself to write off the ship, or mount a torpedo as the only option.
The Recycler (SHF): Turnrate / Radii Turned in 0.5s / Time to 90% Max Turn Velocity: 0.9412 / 0.2978 / 0.4605 Power Capacity / Regeneration: 40000 / 1800 Regens / Hull Strength: 260 / 24600
Commentary:
Two Class 10 Gun/Missile slots, five Class 5 turrets, three of which fire forward. A Class 6 freighter shield and enough hull to survive concentrated fire from a gunboats on firing passes. The model and hitbox is a barn from all angles. Not quite on the level of the Spatial, but comparisons have been made.
The Junker Bomber tag is arguably the biggest misnomer since the term Self-Cleaning Oven was coined. Its not a bomber so much as a flying bullseye with the ability to fire a SN shot every 20 or so seconds, with any similarities ending at that and the fact that it has a second torpedo slot usually relegated to mounting a CD due to anything else being a waste of precious powerplant.
All this on its own can be dealt with; the Recycler excels at certain roles and its being used for this to good effect. But there are critical issues with the model that were overlooked during testing that will be brought up now.
- Contrails. It has contrails on every wingtip whether superfluous or not. This seems insignificant until you realize just how many wingtips the Recycler has. Including the four engines, this totals 12 contrails. Can this be cut down?
- Thruster Hardpoint Location. The exhaust smoke actually blows directly at the camera if the ships nose dips ever so slightly, blotting out minor details such as mines or incoming SNAC shots. Can it be moved somewhere more out of the way? Junker Guns:
The Barrager:
The other underlying issue in regards to Junker hardware is the combination of a shipline with slow turnrates with a faction gun that requires several hits in quick succession (8.33 refire) with a velocity that makes getting these hits on evading targets somewhat difficult (600m/s) to do any significant damage. Lining up on an opponents tail in a Collector or Bull Dog is a rare feat and is often over very quickly. Never even mind the Recycler. This dilemma is compounded by players tendencies to get out of harms way when taking fire.
Here are some hard stats on the Barrager V, with stats on other 8.33 weapons for comparison:
Barrager V (Junkers - Photon): Damage Per Second: 240 * 8.33 = 1999.2 DPS Velocity: 600m/s Energy Consumption: 65 * 8.33 = 541.45 EPS
Deaths Hand V (Order - Laser): Damage Per Second: 240 * 8.33 = 1999.2 DPS Velocity: 750m/s Energy Consumption: 70 * 8.33 = 583.1 EPS
Skyblast B (GMG - Photon): Damage Per Second: 226 * 8.33 = 1882.58 DPS Velocity: 750m/s Energy Consumption: 63 * 8.33 = 524.79 EPS
This group was selected primarily for choice examples, each tested in Open SP. The Order has the Nepthys, a VHF with a large core and slow turnrate. The GMG Heavy Fighter boasts incredible agility, same goes for Kusari fighters in general. High muzzle velocity made targeting easier, and high agility makes lower velocities more forgiving. I found them all easier than any Junker-centric loadout.
Proposals:
The Barrager: Muzzle velocity for Barrager IV and V guns and turrets should be upped to 700m/s, in line with the Barrager III turret. Energy consumption upped to 70 per shot for the Barrager V if balancing is necessary. Reasons being that Junker ships have poor agility; a gun with a higher muzzle velocity allows for just a bit more of a chance to score hits.
The Collector: Increase max angular velocity slightly. Like maybe even to the Turanic Raiders LFs stats. (Im not even going to touch that ship. Whose idea of a joke was that?)
The Bull Dog: Fix the Torpedo slots firing angles. Thats all it needs for now, really. Even with its amazing Templar agility. Maybe rename it too. Can I help with that?
The Recycler: Remove some of the contrails, Seth Karlo has already announced that the camera is indeed too close and this will be fixed (yay!). We'll see what that does for exhaust blotting out the camera. But please, remove the 'Bomber' tag from the thing.
After testing the ships myself and gathering feedback from other Junker pilots, I've concluded we've either got to say something or we're going to see a lot of Crows and Eagles with civilian lasers soon.
Bravo,i think youve hit the nail square on the head, either give the<strike> self cleaning oven</strike> 'bomber' a bigger PP or make it a SHF, i am forced to play FL on low settings becaue of the contrails (not that my onboard can take any higher anyway!)
it shocked me to find that the bulldog is so unmanuverable, bravo again!
though it plumped up, since haveing a flea-sized zippy HF that can fire a razor would be kinda unbalanced
Isn't the Collector model the same as the CSV? As I recall that is quite a small model. That also has to be taken into account when discussing balance.
Not only that, but Junkers aren't really a combat faction... are they? I can under stand your want to have your factions ships balanced of course. I guess I'm wrong but I didn't think the Junkers fought -that- often.
Also, the Greyhound has less fire power than the Collector and Kushan, with 4 forward firing guns. It's also a rather slow turning ship (so I'm told) but it has a relatively small model, which makes up for the balance.
(People call the Greyhound a HF, but really the only thing that makes it that is the info card).
The bulldog could use a litle more agility being that its weapons and armor are so weak. Ohh yeah, and a name change back to the death scythe. I use one of these daily and love it. It is too bad it is such a underperformer.
' Wrote:The Bull Dog: Fix the Torpedo slots firing angles. Thats all it needs for now, really. Even with its amazing Templar agility. Maybe rename it too. Can I help with that?[b]
You sure can, let me know what you would like changed and I'll submit it right away!
' Wrote:Not only that, but Junkers aren't really a combat faction... are they?
I think this is a non-argument. In vanilla, Junkers are as much of a combat faction as Hogosha. And they get the Black Dragon. In terms of Discovery, why would a "non-combat" faction have an HF (with CD and CD/T) a VHF, a "bomber," and a transport with gunboat turrets? Junkers have picked up a steady stream of enemies in Discovery; there's a good 10 or so factions who'd probably end up firing on them, not to mention the various "isolated" incidents of attacks from essentially anyone. If they're a non-combat faction, why do they have combat ships and guns? Or they should have all the ships, but they should be terrible because they "aren't really a combat faction"? How does that make sense?
Also, the greyhound is a fantastic ship. Don't know about the Rogues, but over in Bretonia the Mollys (and even a couple of, um, "PvP-centric" freelancers, to put it mildly) have been using the Greyhound to great effect.
Anyway, on to more tangible issues, the two big problems with junker ships are:
The aforementioned barrager problem. Rudo's hit this pretty much square on the head. These guns are absolutely terrible, and do not fit at all with the shipline. I'm soldiering on with junker ships, but I have to admit I have at current one barrager in a forward-firing position. They're just shocking.
The 'style' of junker ships being slow with high regens is not in any way a good one. The main reason for this is bombers. 260 regens doesn't mean a thing when you can get insta-killed by a supernova. And the maneouvreability of junker ships contrives to make this occurence as regular as possible. Obviously basically every ship in the game outmaneouvres the Recycler, but I think all the 48k bombers also outmaneouvre the Collector, and I think even the "heavy fighter" is in line with things like the Mamoru.
Compare the Collector to a bomber for a moment. They have similar forward firepower: The collector has 2 guns and 3 turrets. Bombers vary from 2 guns and 2 turrets to 4 guns and 1 turret. So what seperates them? The bomber has an extra torpedo slot, a huge powerplant, and the ability to fire supernovas. The collector? It has about 20 more bots. Hooray. Oh oh! It also has about 30 more cargo space!
You can say that Junker ships "aren't supposed to be good." But where's the fun in that? Kind of gives the whole faction the shaft (except for the power smuggling side of it of course, but apparently it's not this side of the faction that is riling people up?). I mean, I don't believe there is any other faction being given ships which, essentially, are terrible. Why set some weird precendent?
And yeah, as Rudo said, it's going to lead to Junkers flying Eagles and Crows with flashpoints and purple godesses. Which sucks.
I agree with Dusty, very well done. I also agree that there is no one who knows Junker ships better, I know how much time went into this. I stand behind all of it.
I like the recycler, but agree it doesn't have much practical use. It will get murdered against any other bomber or fighter. I don't have as much problem with that, I'm fine with using it as just a heavy assault craft because that fits in more with what we do and why we wanted it. However, if that is what is intended to be it should have more power and be able to fire 2 SN's
' Wrote:I guess I'm wrong but I didn't think the Junkers fought -that- often.
I believe this is a misconception held by many. True we are not a military faction. By this I mean that we do not have a fleet of caps flying about showing the flag. We are very discreet about our operation and as such prefer smaller combat vessels. The work we do has made us enemies. It is very often necessary for us to defend the operations that fund all we do and to strike at those who seek to interfere with us. You will not see grand battles with Junker vessels, but there are many skirmishes going on in the scrap fields that are necessary to defend our way of life.
Even though I dont fly any of these ships... I agree, junker ships could use a little buffing in regards to combat.
I still think we just need to give the collector a freighter shield too =P
Quote:Not only that, but Junkers aren't really a combat faction... are they? I can under stand your want to have your factions ships balanced of course. I guess I'm wrong but I didn't think the Junkers fought -that- often.
Current Junker Enemies:
-Xenos
-Hogosha
-Farmer's Alliance
-Samura/Kusari Navy/Kusari Police to a lesser extent - unfriendly relations, not full on hostile
-The Wilde - Particular problem at yanagi and sometimes bornholme
-The Nomads/Keepers - Also a problem at yanagi
-Gallic Brigands, Maquis, and to a lesser extent (unfriendly status) the council
-Cocky Pirates
-Cocky Lawfuls
-Bored PvPwhores
Too bad the Collector can't fire a mini razor in reverse anymore (I'm told). Make its turning even less and give that back, that's how to fix things! :laugh: Or the freighter shield thing, that'd make things interesting, too.