On 2005-08-21 13:47, Arcanum {C?} wrote:
How can there be balance if there is a superlatively powerful ship in the game? The assault type dreadnought should be the most powerful ship in each faction, but certainly not the Elite Assautl Dread being the most powerful in the GAME.

On 2005-08-21 12:01, N'Kra The Wolf {C?} wrote:
the bismark:

the hood was the biggest battleship in the entire british fleet, fyi. it sunk in 6 minutes, yes, because the bismark landed a shot right on the waterline within the opening shots of the fight.

when the fleet of british destroyers surrounded the bismark, they were out for revenge, not to sink the boat. they wanted to cause a lot of pain. not a single british shipped aimed for the bismarks waterline, they aimed for its deck.

On 2005-08-25 22:39, Tikki (Viking Kitten) wrote:
I think the biggest point to all of this is don't piss off the Brits when it comes to naval actions! (DS and WWII)

*duck*

FA dreads for every faction have a big problem fighting a long time.

The EAD doesn't need to move a lot when fighting with his slew of long range weapons and if something comes nearby, the torps and the HCLs can take care of it if it's small and not too heavily armored/shielded, but it's staying power and sheer firepower compared to a BD makes it unappealing to flight.

The AD can fight alright with his guns and long range weapons too and has less energy problems when moving than the EAD, but the energy reserve gets drained way too fast compared to a combat dread which can last 4 to 5 times as long on the battlefield without running out of juice. Then again, the human factions have a "fallback dread" to rely on.

The siphon can fight alright with what? Long range weapons? yeah... beams are so long range... The siphon NEEDS to run at least half speed to do any kind of attack, yes it's got 6 special slots, but they only BARELY ( considering that 3 reactors lvl2 don't generate that much power ) give more power, in comparison, going half speed, drains almost half of the engines power that can't be used to fire any weapon ( BTW, most of the time I can't do anything but go almost full speed so that you guys don't flee out of range like sissies ). Yeah, I can go 1.7 gu while my core weapon recharges and cloaked and won't lose energy, but is that REALLY usefull considering that if I do this I get beaconed, gun spammed and promptly slaughtered? What's more for the K'luth, we don't have a drad to "fall back" on for a few reasons. The Manadible's got the same energy problems as the siphon, you drain it's reserves 3 to 4 times as fast as a BD or CD ( thanks to the assault disruptors ( yes I tried to keep them as a "finish him strike" but the other ruptors/torps don't do any decent damage to be able to achieve this ).

Jack's claim that the siphon is the most damaging dread over time is right, that is if the siphon and it's target are both standing still and the other ship ( god forbid a dread, I'd be dead faster than you can say, beginner mistake ) goes gentle on your front paper layers. A situation that NEVER happens, since most of the time I end up chasing a dread or a cruiser at almost full speedso I can hit him in the rear / right / left where I know I won't get WTF owned over time by the front facing weapons ( yeah, our armor really suck, even tho we have countless weapons, a kluth dread sitting in front of any human dread, alphaing and being alpha will go down before he can really hit the human dread hull ( SI doesnt help here, since it does crap on armor and shield, like 25% of a layer ). Result, the human dread lives with the front layers obliterated and minor hull damage, the K'luth dread is space dust. Do I have to say that I can't run like a human dread at full speed in a fight as they can do to drain my energy reserves? because I'll uncloak... get beaconed and die 20-30 seconds later.

Now that we can all agree that core weapon ships are the crap for everyone and that K'luth ships don't have the CHOICE of using long range tactics or having a dread that doesnt drain it's energy in less than a minute firing pee shooters and hence don't have ONE decent dread to fly for combat. I can explain part of why it is so...

Guns

Guns are overpowered in this build, they hit harder than most beams/torps over time since dreads CANT dodge guns fire. We even tested a Mandy fully outfitted with p-cannons was doing more damage over time with less of an energy drain than a full set of disruptors/StandardCL/psi cannons/railguns.

Small ships can dodge guns fire alright, for cruisers it can be a nuisance, not an achilles heel tho, as it currently is for the dreads that get pounded by the dessies that they can't get close enough to, to fire beams at and go too fast for torps and guns.

Energy problems

Dreads run out of energy too fast, especially human assault dreads and every K'luth dreads ( don't even being on the hit&run nonsense, if I don't have energy left, I CANT RUN since I wont be able to cloak... duh ).

Acceleration

Dreads don't accelerate or deccelerate very fast, back then, a cruiser that would run in front of an enemy dread would get chased upon by the dread which would inflict him major damage until the poor cruiser pilot would flee or finally, after a frenzied chase, get outta range ( or get tractored closer by the dread until the cruiser is ablaze ) ( or if he's good enough, make the dread flee by managaing to maneuver behind the dread before he's getting hit on the hull ). You can't see that anymore...

Small ship problems

Escort and picket dessies are obviously overpowered, but why? 2 reasons, Next to impossible to hit and they ALWAYS hit with their slew of guns ( pcannons ). Also they have too thick defenses over the hull for their class.
Moreso, other cruiser and below ships are mostly useless for big old fashioned MV fleet skirmishes. Not to mention us K'luthies don't even have ONE decent ship below the scale or parasite ( which have the same energy problems as the dreads, with the added pleasure of having far less firepower and gimped defenses ).

So my suggestion is :

1st and foremost, NERF THOSE GUNS on the damage they do, I'd nerf em by a factor of 3.

2nd, dreads must be able to go at least 5 gu and alpha ( without the core weapon ) without losing energy ( make aux cores upgradable to lvl 10 on dreads first, if this isn't enough, add one engine slot to the non-core weapon bearing ships and add 2 to the core weapon bearing ones ).

With these 2 moves, you take care of the small ships owning big ones, since they cannot use pcannons instead of close range beams anymore, picket and escort dessies get the nerf bat hard and need to get in close to do any real damage. If they get in close, that means you can fight the small ships using the dreads torps/HCLs. Providing the human dessie and below ships get a significant adjustment to their armor/shield values that are by my approximations, ludicrously high, so much so that ships in the WW2 with so much armor and so few engines wouldn't even be able to move and would get owned by the dreads big toys of destruction. Also, you give dreads enough energy to be able to fight a decent amount of time without running out of energy as long as they don't go full speed or overuse their "hard hitting" ( assault ruptors, HCL, core weapons ) weapons.

On 2005-08-25 23:34, Arcanum {C?} wrote:
Enterprise - Even though your comments about modding K'luth dreadnoughts for long range via a cannon configuration are absolutely correct, I would like to point out that K'luth are not supposed to be long range fighters. The reason we must resort to long-range weapons is because our signature short range weapon - the standard disruptor - currently does next to no damage on standard armour, and truly negligible damage on reflective armour.

The reality is that K'luth are a broken faction in the sense that they must resort to faction-external weapons to be effective. (And for those people who would immediately object to the term "broken," no, it does not mean that K'luth need to be made uber.) I am merely pointing out the fact that disruptors are a major issue for the K'luth JUST AS energy is a major issue for EADs.

On 2005-08-25 23:48, Arcanum {C?} wrote:
If missile tracking and cannon projectile speed were better, coupled with stronger beam damage, one could even have different primary/secondary weapons for each faction, which may have been the intention all along. The problem here is that certain weapons are simply superior to other weapons.

I am of the opinion that missiles should deal more damage than torpedoes, but should be fired much more sparingly but with greater deadliness, as opposed to the missile spam that we witness now.

Also, AM torpedoes are now of minimal utility, because of their slow projectile speed, and the dearth of ammunition that is carried on each weapon bay, as opposed to fusion torpedoes or proton torpedoes. Yes, this opinion takes into account remote detonation and the wide explosion radius.