That said, agaisnt a player 9/10 times are ineffective.
Agaisnt NPCs, well...
in any case, invest in a different wep, flaks just arent worth the money unless you know what you're doing. And theres more efficient and better things to put in that hardpoint than a flak.
' Wrote:But, then again, all of the Solaris problems will be supposedly fixed by Mjolnir and his wizarding band of turret class splitters.
Mjolner IS the balance team, from the devs Ive talked to Cam. Theoreticly all are, but from what Ive had multiple devs tell me, tehy pretty much leave it to him, or did for .85
I'll belive the fix when I see it.
As it stands there is no balance.
The standard RM raid on texas these days is a point in case, a swarm of VHFs and a few bombers, and the VHFs alone can kill anything short of a BS with ease and minimal risk.
' Wrote:Mjolner IS the balance team, from the devs Ive talked to Cam. Theoreticly all are, but from what Ive had multiple devs tell me, tehy pretty much leave it to him, or did for .85
I'll belive the fix when I see it.
As it stands there is no balance.
The standard RM raid on Texas these days is a point in case, a swarm of VHFs and a few bombers, and the VHFs alone can kill anything short of a BS with ease and minimal risk.
So what you're saying is that a swarm of players should be less powerful than a single player who spent over 150,000,000 credits? That's what I gather by your post. The 8-10 fighters should all be swatted pretty easily by a single Cruiser or 2-3 Gunboats, right?
Right now, I think we have very good balance (And if you were here for .84, you'd thinks so too). Fighters are powerful, and are often the deciding factor in fights where the majority of combatants are fighters. Multiple players should mostly always be more powerful than a single player, and in the case of fighters, it's an exponential increase in power. I don't understand how this is bad. 5-6 Gunboats can kill 8-10 fighters pretty well, mostly because that's there intent, but 4-5 Cruisers are definitely not designed to fight those 8-10 fighters. That's why Navies still field fighters. If their capital craft could counter the small craft, then they would just pump out Gunboats, Cruisers, and Battleships instead of building those fighters...
[8:32:45 PM] Dusty Lens: Oh no, let me get that. Hello? Oh it's my grandma. She says to be roleplay.
[12:49:19 AM] Elgatodiablo: You know its nice that you have all that proof and all, Bacon... but I just don't believe you.
' Wrote:So what you're saying is that a swarm of players should be less powerful than a single player who spent over 150,000,000 credits? That's what I gather by your post. The 8-10 fighters should all be swatted pretty easily by a single Cruiser or 2-3 Gunboats, right?
Right now, I think we have very good balance (And if you were here for .84, you'd thinks so too). Fighters are powerful, and are often the deciding factor in fights where the majority of combatants are fighters. Multiple players should mostly always be more powerful than a single player, and in the case of fighters, it's an exponential increase in power. I don't understand how this is bad. 5-6 Gunboats can kill 8-10 fighters pretty well, mostly because that's there intent, but 4-5 Cruisers are definitely not designed to fight those 8-10 fighters. That's why Navies still field fighters. If their capital craft could counter the small craft, then they would just pump out Gunboats, Cruisers, and Battleships instead of building those fighters...
Oh I remember the nightly lolcap raids on Manhattan in .84, my first sighting of BSs was during one of those.
I was in a camara, and blew up seconds later.
Later in .84 I pubicly mocked a admin over system comms over the problem.
The admin logged.
The problem isnt caps killing snubcraft, its that a handfull of fighters can QUICKLY kill a cruiser and take minimal risk to themselves.
Fighters SHOULD be able to evade the larger caps, yes, but they also shouldnt be able to kill them with ease
' Wrote:Oh I remember the nightly lolcap raids on Manhattan in .84, my first sighting of BSs was during one of those.
I was in a camara, and blew up seconds later.
Later in .84 I pubicly mocked a admin over system comms over the problem.
The admin logged.
The problem isnt caps killing snubcraft, its that a handfull of fighters can QUICKLY kill a cruiser and take minimal risk to themselves.
Fighters SHOULD be able to evade the larger caps, yes, but they also shouldn't be able to kill them with ease
So you know better than the administration, huh? I figure I should note that down...
Why should four players be less powerful than a single player? That is the question I am posing. I also say four players because that is rather the turning point in a fight between average fighter pilots and an average Cruiser pilot.
It isn't easy to kill a Cruiser with less than six or seven fighters: I'll tell you that much. You need a pretty consistent DPS to keep his shields down, which anything less than three fighters simply cannot achieve. Furthermore, the risk of getting sniped by a Cruiser is quite high because Cruiser Primaries deal a good bit of damage, as well as the speed of Cruiser BRs/Pulses. Furthermore, any Cruiser with decent armor will take a long time to kill with fighter weaponry, mostly because of their lower dps output compared to other ship classes which increased the windows of opportunity of getting sniped. It's a really delicate game to kill a Cruiser with anything less than six fighters (I've done it, it's hard, that's what she said). It's not easy, but those four players are more powerful than one player and four players should mostly always be more powerful than one player. That is how balance goes. Why should one player be more powerful than four players?
In RP, if caps were invulnerable vs smaller ships, then Navies would not even bother fielding fighter craft. Cruisers are not designed to kill fighters; they are designed to kill Gunboats and Battleships. Gunboats are designed to kill Bombers and Cruisers. Bombers are designed to kill Cruisers and Battleships. Battleships are designed to kill Cruisers and Gunboats. Fighters are designed to kill Fighters, Bombers, Gunboats, and Cruisers, needing exponentially increasing numbers for the last two to kill them easily. I think that's more balanced than making combat efficiency a function of time invested into trading.
[8:32:45 PM] Dusty Lens: Oh no, let me get that. Hello? Oh it's my grandma. She says to be roleplay.
[12:49:19 AM] Elgatodiablo: You know its nice that you have all that proof and all, Bacon... but I just don't believe you.
If gunboats were designed to kill bombers then they're not doing their designated jobs good enough. As far as I know they're relatively easy to defeat with bomber SNACs.
' Wrote:If gunboats were designed to kill bombers then they're not doing their designated jobs good enough. As far as I know they're relatively easy to defeat with bomber SNACs.
Then you can't have gone against any decent gunboats lately :nono:
The Liberty Gunboat Assault1 is a prime example. It is impossible to hit at any range over 1k and the captain of this vessel instantly switches to anyone under 1k range.. You'll sacrifice half your hull to get a snac to impact the shields
And as for soloing a gunboat.. So many people claim that they can easily solo gunboats in a bomber. Well, unless every one of your Snacs hit and you have alot of time on your hands it is impossible. :angry:
Back on topic Flak is a good idea but just doesn't work
got a bull head, loaded with two zoner flak, and used it to joust bombers. it sucked at killing them, but even better; it kept destroying the bombers' SNACs and intercepted novas causing them to blow up in the bombers' face.
on battle cruisers (with thrusters( yeah that narrows it down to bullhead NOTHING ELSE)) they CAN be useful/fun when flinging your ship around like a drunken lolwut while fighting bombers.
' Wrote:If gunboats were designed to kill bombers then they're not doing their designated jobs good enough. As far as I know they're relatively easy to defeat with bomber SNACs.
You've obviously seen some pretty horrible Gunboats vs some pretty awesome Bombers. I'm no slouch in a snubcraft, I won't lie, I'm pretty confident in my abilities in something smaller than a Gunboat. I will not fight a Gunboat in a Bomber unless I have another player with me (more players = more power).
Here's the scoop as to how this balance works:
Gunboats can turn just as, if not faster than Bombers.
Gunboats have faster (both refire and speed) weaponry than Bombers.
Gunboats have shields which recharge faster than the Supernova
Gunboats have armor which, when reinforced, can withstand more than one SNAC.
I really think Gunboats could use some loving, but really it can't happen unless they are prohibited from piracy (which I want), but that doesn't mean that they can't completely obliterate a bomber. A bomber has to be at least 1k from a Gunboat (as stated above) to hit it with a SNAC (most of the time, closer), mostly because if a Gunboat has half a brain, he is turning and strafing like he's flying a fighter. Bomber guns are just too slow to keep up a consistent enough dps against Gunboats.
The problem is that Gunboats have so little armor that they can't effectively take a Supernova hit unless armored well. The extreme (LH Gunship) requires a Cap VI armor before it can take more than one SN shot and live. This problem is mostly alleviated by the fact that Gunboat shields restore themselves before the SNAC can refire, though, and then there's also the fact that Bomber guns are slow as all hell.
As I said before, though, it's impossible to balance both the Transport and Gunboat class correctly until they aren't made to combat each other often. Or at least that's what I think. >.>
This is why the best thing for fighting Gunboats are Cruisers or 3+ Fighters. Bombers are just too big and slow to effectively combat them, however, like mostly everything else, more players equals more power, which means that a swarm of Bombers can probably end up killing a few Gunboats.
[8:32:45 PM] Dusty Lens: Oh no, let me get that. Hello? Oh it's my grandma. She says to be roleplay.
[12:49:19 AM] Elgatodiablo: You know its nice that you have all that proof and all, Bacon... but I just don't believe you.