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Beams vs Cannon |
Lonectzn Fleet Admiral
Joined: January 06, 2005 Posts: 202
| Posted: 2005-05-12 10:02  
First off I have to say congratulations on the work on beta so far, I've found most of the changes have been impressive, and I do like the direction you're trying to go with it. Of course you never hear about the good things in the forums, they are as much taken for granted as the problems are jumped upon.
Of course, this post is no exception.
I simply feel that the pendulm has swung a little too far to the cannons from the beams. It seems the main idea is that the fact that they can pd makes up for the weaker damage, far lower range, higher energy use and weakness vs reflective armour as compared to cannons. I'm not really buying that, especially in respect to disruptors.
Disruptor make for extremely poor pd with the recharge, energy and arcs, and take almost all your firepower. So it's purely defensive, and even then insufficent for the current amount of missiles and fighters around. Then, you're again better off cloaking to avoid missiles and the such, since if you had pd on you've lost most of your firepower and are not going to be shooting a lot anyway- especially as dessy/cruiser.
You're better off switching to psi - more damage, better range, just as accurate within ruptor range and far less energy use (can fit ecm then).
With ICC/UGTO it isn't so bad, because they don't have such a heavy reliance on the heavy mounts, they can easily fall back on missiles or fighters. However I really don't want to see the death of the close-range all-damage dessy and cruiser. One of my favourite release ships is the assault dessy, now it only has 1 fore, 1 left, 1 right torp so has to completely rely on the heavy mount. So the choice is cannons or beams... And I wouldn't like to see ds come down to a one-option game for most ships.
Even the new picket dessy (supposedly a pd ship) suddenly becomes far more powerful when you mod it up with cannons. I would like to see damage and range ramped up, to allow it to become a viable alternative to cannons in combat.
You sacrifice a lot using cl for pd, since lvl0 are best for pd, while lvl8 are much worse pd but high damage. However even lvl8 don't have the damage at the moment to make them a reasonable option for close-combat.
I had also been wondering how new players would actually go about gaining combat pres. Stock frigates and dessy are so weak as to make even observing a fight dangerous. Of course this would be resolved somewhat with the implementation of sy upgrading, but still looking at luth would it turn into that the primary skill for a newbie is replacing your ruptor with psi? Yet again, it's really not that bad. With the improved missiles, it'd be rather safe for a newbie to grab a missile ship and spam at the enemy from a safe distance. Especially for ICC/UGTO. Plus I have to take into account the lack of high level missiles, so haven't been able to test them properly. Probably just a wait-and-see on this one...
This is not a rant. I'm just doggedly defending my beloved dessy and cruisers, not leaving without a fight
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DangerBabe Cadet
Joined: December 21, 2002 Posts: 429 From: Charlotte, NC
| Posted: 2005-05-12 19:39  
Ya, I was noticing that too...that it looks like players will absolutely have to mod in this version since the stock ships are so weak.
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BackSlash Marshal Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003 Posts: 11183 From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2005-05-12 19:59  
Gives credits some use.
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Tael 2nd Rear Admiral Palestar
Joined: July 03, 2002 Posts: 3697 From: San Francisco Bay Area
| Posted: 2005-05-12 21:41  
Ya havent seen everything yet...
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Beast Cadet Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: May 27, 2002 Posts: 345 From: Wouldnt you like to know
| Posted: 2005-05-13 00:07  
This is where I,m gonna see alot of complaining in the forums in the event a faction loses all of it,s modding planets . "And It Will Happend"
It will be almost pointless Coming out of any SY or the gate, as matter of fact. Once a faction is capped it would maybe only take 2 or 3 ships to camp the whole home system. While the rest of the invading faction moves on to the next race.
Does this mean a reset of the MV every time a faction gets conquered??
If thats the case then there will be even more upset players. I,m just trying to see into the future a bit. While there will always be people who cry in the forums. This could be a big problem that needs looked at and thought about before Beta is released.
[ This Message was edited by: Beast on 2005-05-13 00:09 ]
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Dwarden Admiral CHIMERA
Joined: June 07, 2001 Posts: 1072 From: Czech Republic
| Posted: 2005-05-13 07:57  
what about increase also range with level for CLxxxx ? bit but still well paid for high levels ...
_________________ ... Ideas? ... that's Ocean w/o borders !
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Lonectzn Fleet Admiral
Joined: January 06, 2005 Posts: 202
| Posted: 2005-05-13 09:48  
Quote:
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On 2005-05-12 21:41, Tael wrote:
Ya havent seen everything yet...
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Hehe... Tael is trying to be mysterious
That's good to hear though, I had been under the impression that this area was about done, otherwise I wouldn't have said anything. Way to nerf my post.
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BackSlash Marshal Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003 Posts: 11183 From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2005-05-13 09:53  
Tael's keeping the Faustinator200 (beam weapon) till last, and the Taelron2k (stands for 2kool ... tael cant spell) ...
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Tael 2nd Rear Admiral Palestar
Joined: July 03, 2002 Posts: 3697 From: San Francisco Bay Area
| Posted: 2005-05-13 10:39  
no, there are a couple of things i was going to hold out till the next patch, but am going to put in early while waiting for other code fixes to be made.
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