| Author |
The simple problem with fighting Kluth |
Lark of Serenity
Grand Admiral
Raven Warriors
Joined: June 02, 2002
Posts: 2516
|  Posted: 2010-07-29 00:11
Edit: LOL at people thinking i want to nerf kluth? asking that they have more than 1 option to attack us and we have more than 1 option to attack them isnt nerfing. youre all so presumptuous.
you dont have options
Here's a rundown of an invasion against UGTO:
Combat:
Close range or long range? are we fighting a mixed or one-ship-class fleet? are they using ECM? What planet-capture method are we using? How should our fleet organize in combat?
Capturing:
inf or bombers? what kind of bombers? (PSM, fighters, bombs, ECM), bomb first or inf rush?
Here's how our decision matrix looks for kluth
Combat:
ECCM. Beacons. Dictor. Close range.
Option 1: field nothing but small ships. this way you can constantly be on the move and surround kluth. but they die easy.
Option 2: field nothing but big ships. this way u can at least pretend to match kluth firepower.
fielding a mixed fleet is usually suicidal. the big ships get in the way of the smaller ones, and get priority targetted anyways. since the light ships cant kill the kluth fast enough, the big ships die and your fleet falls apart.
youre also guarenteed to be facing a fleet of mainly kluth dreads. they have no reason to fly destroyers, frigates, or scouts. the only reason youd find a kluth in those ship classes is because they got bored. Granted, kluth havent seemed to grasp the concept that ECM will bring their cloak time back down and that they have ships with plenty of ECM on them to do this. doesnt seem to stop em though. occasionally u see a cruiser or station, but theres not much point for them to be used by kluth. dreads have tons of firepower, just fast enough that u can evade fire when u cloak, and plenty of defense.
Bombing:
regular bombers are off. kluth decloak behind u and kill your bomber. youd have to move the entire fleet with the bomber to do a successful run. cant ECM bomb either. so youre stuck with PSM, which means taking a missile ship, which means youre going to die, or using fighters.
why does no one like to fight kluth?
some other problems: whereas kluth get to click on our ship and hit spacebar, we spend half our time shooting at empty space. id guess that if u took a look at the % of hits in a kluth V human fight, human would be around 30% and kluth would be around 80%. ECCM pinging doesnt give u the option of actually shooting directly at the target, it doesnt last long enough. beacons help, but evidently someone decided to give kluth stealth modules? youre stuck firing and hoping half the time instead of actually being engaged in real combat.
if you want fighting kluth to be fun, A) force them to fly things OTHER than dreadnaughts. i dont care how. the dreadspace-for-kluth thing is ridiculous. B) make it so we actually have a variety of options to deal with kluth other than, essentially, one track.
[ This Message was edited by: Lark of Serenity on 2010-07-29 07:57 ]
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Admiral Larky, The Wolf
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Shath
Admiral
Pitch Black
Joined: July 17, 2007
Posts: 219
From: Portland, OR
| Posted: 2010-07-29 00:35
larkeh why u hate us kluth so much? D:
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Lawman
Fleet Admiral
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: February 28, 2003
Posts: 276
From: New Jersey
| Posted: 2010-07-29 00:41
probably because you blew our late night raid out of the sky.
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MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2010-07-29 01:13
How many more of these Kluth QQ threads will we have this week?
Kluth only use dreads because Kluth stations are too fragile for combat and take forever and a day to cloak/uncloak, their cruisers mostly suck, and destroyers are no threat on any faction. They don't bring ECM ships because they're not needed; the firepower of 1 more dread is better than the faster cloak/uncloak a smaller ship gives to the fleet.
As much as you want more tools to fight Kluth, they can't be given. There's a very delicate balance right now and a small tip of the scale can screw things all up. Example: Kluth wither and die when engaged in a prolonged battle without cloak. They cannot fight 1v1 uncloaked no matter what anyone says. They will lose and have to jump away every time (frigates are exceptions). Making it so Kluth are forced to fight that way by giving humans more tools to counter their cloak can totally screw up the faction.
Nothing can be messed with regarding cloak and anti-cloak. It was hard enough to balance it to this point.
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Lawman
Fleet Admiral
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: February 28, 2003
Posts: 276
From: New Jersey
| Posted: 2010-07-29 01:44
but seriously Lark we lose against K'luth because we don't coordinate as well. Nerfing K'luth (again) wont solve anything.
There is a very fine line of balance, and we cross it over and over again.
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Bardiche
Chief Marshal
Joined: November 16, 2006
Posts: 1247
| Posted: 2010-07-29 01:46
Actually, K'Luth Destroyers are quite competent at damage dealing. The Nymph can take on Dreadnoughts. I've done it, and no one who's seen me fly will claim that I am exceptionally good at what I do, so I'd think most K'Luth should do better than I.
That said, it seems inaccurate to say Luth only fly Dreads; after all, I encountered a fleet of Cruisers and Dreadnoughts last. A Krill, a Mandible, two Siphons and three Piercers. Silly Lark.
---
Ditching the joke... I'm sure Lark's got good intentions in posting. If you compare the way the factions work, considering deployment, K'Luth have an advantage. Work with me here.
For K'Luth, due to Cloak and the faster AMJD, they have no real need to fly small ships to provide this purpose. They can cloak, hide behind an enemy, and fry them. The very nature of the faction makes Dreadnoughts an excellent choice - the principle of the K'Luth faction is "they hit hard, but have little armour", correct?
Now then, a K'Luth Dreadnought brings enough firepower to bear that it can compensate here. Due to Cloak, the K'Luth is given the advantage of selecting the time of engagement, the positions of engagement, and have the advantage in masking their precise numbers and fleet make-up. Against K'Luth, you basically have to guesstimate their numbers.
Moving on. Luth seldom seem to engage without a charged jump drive - this lends them an advantage none of the human factions have, as engaging the enemy almost always means they have to charge a jump drive during the fight. Unless they are gatecamping on both sides.
But due to having a charged jump drive, they negate one of the disadvantages of Dreadnought-classes themselves: the reduced mobility, especially jump drive speed (and, to some extent, sub-light speed, but you'll agree a jump drive is infinitely more useful for survival).
Finally, the K'Luth Dreadnought shouldn't be too hard-pressed to hull their target before or immediately after they themselves are hulled - this is true against enemy Dreadnoughts, at the least. You'll wonder where I'm going with this, and that is this.
Against smaller ships, the ICC and UGTO Dreadnoughts have a problem: if that smaller ship keeps distance, it's very, very difficult to land some good hits on it. This problem doesn't exist as much for the K'Luth Dreadnought, which can uncloak as close to the smaller ship as they very well like. Theoretically speaking regardless - assuming they can get close to the smaller ship, which is enabled by Cloak.
With DarkSpace now growing towards a trend where smaller ships become more viable, and a developer stating that the intention of the game is to balance it around Cruisers, one has to re-evaluate whether or not the K'Luth faction works within that design ideal. Dreadnoughts, with their higher firepower than any other ship bar Stations, excel at defeating ships their own class and one class lower, at least for K'Luth. And due to the very nature of their beam-focused weaponry, a small ship entering weapon range has slimmer chances than its bigger counter-parts.
If K'Luth were to fly smaller ships, however, we'd have a lot more complaints because their fast cloaking speed would render them near impossible to destroy save with Dreadnoughts, particularly the Assault-class Dreadnoughts. Faced with these, K'Luth will have to bring Dreadnoughts and--
I think the very nature of the faction itself promotes use of Dreadnoughts, and for good reason. A supply platform in the dark reaches of deep space lends them all they need to be practically self-sustaining in combat. I think a major reason to fly them exists in a combination of durability through dual AHRs, and enough armour to permit Cloaking while suffering no more than 20% hull damage in an engagement with a single enemy regardless of one's own numbers, and having the firepower to ensure hull damage on the enemy... but this is only true in rear-oriented combat.
As Gejaheline said, a very nasty to balance faction. It's not surprising that people will take issue with the way they function, as they require specific counter-measures to combat where they require no measures of their own to operate save for a platform out in space, and those are quite easy to erect. (A single engineer is good for at least five platforms)
In a game where an emphasis is being placed on smaller ships serving support roles, one will have to re-evaluate the design choices on a faction that promotes the exact opposite, the fielding of larger ships due to: small ships uncloaking to ECM gives away the K'Luth attack, even if only moments before it happens; the small ship must be able to ECM itself under 0 signature, or it becomes a massive target; and, K'Luth Dreadnoughts often bring more to the table due to an increased capability of dealing with their adversaries that a Proboscis simply doesn't provide.
Of course, I don't believe many of us have an immediate answer to the question "And how do you suggest we do that?". There's no way to "balance" the K'Luth towards smaller ships without dealing a harsh blow to their Dreadnoughts, and much like the ICC and UGTO, I am quite sure that K'Luth enjoy their faction populated with people, and any sufficiently harsh measure against certain playstyles is liable to de-populate a faction.
tl;dr lol cloak
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Siginau
Fleet Admiral
Pitch Black
Joined: March 19, 2010
Posts: 72
| Posted: 2010-07-29 01:50
wow lark crys alot ....
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Bardiche
Chief Marshal
Joined: November 16, 2006
Posts: 1247
| Posted: 2010-07-29 01:53
Quote:
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On 2010-07-29 01:44, Lawman wrote:
but seriously Lark we lose against K'luth because we don't coordinate as well. Nerfing K'luth (again) wont solve anything.
There is a very fine line of balance, and we cross it over and over again.
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To address this, as I am sure is a favourite K'Luth argument as well:
One will have to consider the following.
As a K'Luth, coordination means that you focus on the same target, uncloak at nearly the same time, and cloak away or escape again around the same time as the rest of the fleet does. Doing so enables you to take out the enemy one by one and whittle down their strength.
As a human, coordination versus K'Luth means you must bring a ship capable of pinging, cover the rears of any given ship to avoid being ganked in the rear without the ability to respond harshly to such action, and focus fire at the precise moment that the enemy uncloaks. This is easy when one ship uncloaks before any other, but it becomes a tad more difficult when they do it simultaneously, or for example a juicier target (i.e. siphon instead of mandible) surfaces to fry arses.
The amount of coordination versus K'Luth ships outbalances the amount required to use the ships, which is often the crux of any argument against the K'Luth.
Of course, as MrSparkle points out, anytime K'Luth cloak and de-cloak, they need to replenish hull and armour, and if they spend too much time doing so, the enemy will either jump away, or recover its own armour/shielding. Against a sufficiently large fleet, the K'Luth can't do much more than pick at the damaged, secluded ships because large fleets mean any attack guarantees the loss of a ship without the guarantee of a destroyed enemy.
One vs One they might still have a fighting chance, but the larger the human fleet, the more disadvantaged a K'Luth fleet. (provided the humans field sufficient amount of big ships. A superior fleet filled with Frigates don't tend to scare off K'Luth that much.)
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NoBoDx
Grand Admiral
Joined: October 14, 2003
Posts: 784
From: Germany / NRW
| Posted: 2010-07-29 02:25
[sarcasm]
why not wipe all layouts and equip each ship with identical layouts ? that way every ship is balanced, but looks at least different
[/sarcasm]
seriously, im getting tired of all the "nerf-{insert faction}"-posts
some patches ago, everyone cried to nerf ugtos
before that everyone cried to nerf icc
before that it were luth...
maybe its time to hit-luth with nerf-bat so we can cry for icc-nerfs again
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Gerlach
Marshal
Joined: May 07, 2010
Posts: 78
| Posted: 2010-07-29 03:26
[sarcasm]
Quote:
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On 2010-07-29 02:25, NoBoDx wrote:
[sarcasm]
why not wipe all layouts and equip each ship with identical layouts ? that way every ship is balanced, but looks at least different
[/sarcasm]
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Your ship model is OP!
Quote:
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On 2010-07-29 02:25, NoBoDx wrote:
seriously, im getting tired of all the "nerf-{insert faction}"-posts
some patches ago, everyone cried to nerf ugtos
before that everyone cried to nerf icc
before that it were luth...
maybe its time to hit-luth with nerf-bat so we can cry for icc-nerfs again
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Well bring it on!
[/sarcasm]
Calm down Lark and stay strong, it's not good when leaders of a faction start to write threads like this, leave it to others.
note to self: I think I will have to stay up one night so I get a brief view how it looks like when the US part of ICC players is on the stage.
[ This Message was edited by: Gerlach on 2010-07-29 03:26 ]
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Bardiche
Chief Marshal
Joined: November 16, 2006
Posts: 1247
| Posted: 2010-07-29 03:27
Quote:
| when leaders of a faction |
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Hey now, wait a minute there.
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| Dark Hiigaran |
Chief Marshal
Joined: July 07, 2007
Posts: 426
From: Slovenia (Europe)
| Posted: 2010-07-29 03:45
don't hate us just 'cause we're better than you
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Max Kepler
Fleet Admiral
Templar Knights
Joined: March 08, 2002
Posts: 589
From: ICS Victory
| Posted: 2010-07-29 04:18
This is only partly related to the original post, but... I've always thought that damage done to K'luth ships while they are cloaked should either be amplified, taken straight to their hull, or maybe cause some system damage. Or, potentially, slight damage to the cloaking device -- it makes sense to me that with sufficient bombardment, eventually a cloaked ship would not be able to sustain the cloak any longer (clearly you don't want this to happen too easily). If it wouldn't be too hard, maybe even a visual distortion (that would at least reveal which direction the ship is pointed).
Why? It seems a bit silly to me that we can have 3 or 4 ships tracking down 1 cloaked K'luth Dread (it's HUGE, it should be easy to find) but not being able to do enough damage via blind shots to make it worth it. AHR makes up for it too quickly.
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The Fridge
Chief Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: December 13, 2008
Posts: 559
From: In Your Fridge, Eating your Foods.
| Posted: 2010-07-29 05:09
Increasing the Sig that Kluth Dreads have?
There's probably a bad side effect of this.
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*Obsidian Shadow*
Grand Admiral
Joined: January 03, 2010
Posts: 316
| Posted: 2010-07-29 05:20
Quote:
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On 2010-07-29 02:25, NoBoDx wrote:
[sarcasm]
why not wipe all layouts and equip each ship with identical layouts ? that way every ship is balanced, but looks at least different
[/sarcasm]
seriously, im getting tired of all the "nerf-{insert faction}"-posts
some patches ago, everyone cried to nerf ugtos
before that everyone cried to nerf icc
before that it were luth...
maybe its time to hit-luth with nerf-bat so we can cry for icc-nerfs again
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+ 1
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