On 2008-06-28 13:17, Junky Da FunkyMonke wrote:
I see a flaw this formula does not take into account skill, different weapons used, different factions, or armor. Which makes it more of a guessing game then a statistic. We aren't in the exact same ships sitting in the same spot just alphaing each other.

On 2008-06-28 13:00, Gejaheline wrote:

.. If I'm in a cruiser fighting a dreadnaught, I'm going to keep at a distance, vary my speed and direction, and get behind them. If I do that, I can avoid virtually all of the dreadnaught's firepower while still fighting effectively.
If I'm using, god forbid, a scout, I could evade until doomsday, barring having a dread dropped right on top of me.

Now, I can see what people are saying; you're not going to be able to get in a one-on-one with a dreadnaught, simply because while you're fighting one another will be creeping up on you.

But a dreadnaught will have a lot of trouble killing a scout or dessie; its huge guns will miss all the time, and it can't get within beam range. The person flying the dreadnaught is going to have to downgrade to a smaller, faster ship that has weapons capable of hitting smaller craft, or risk being slowly plinked to death. Yes, there are tactics to kill small things (point jumping, for example), but equally there are tactics on the part of small craft to avoid these (ECM and becoming untargetable, for instance). A balanced force is going to need small ships to intercept the enemy small craft (or ECCM them, so they can get point-jumped).

On 2008-06-28 17:28, Gejaheline wrote:
Ent, the entire point is that a cruiser does NOT do an exponentially lesser amount of damage. It does a precisely linear amount of relative damage: Half that of a dreadnaught. If a cruiser does not have half as much weapon efficiency, the game lacks that two-to-one relationship that is desired.

Additionally, unless I am woefully mistaken, EW devices like ECM have an inverse level relationship: The bigger the ship, the lower the device level. Thus, scouts have level 10 ECM, and a dread has a level 2 ECM.

As for the battle-dread-killing-assault-cruisers thing, I suspect your ship selection was poor. The dreadnaught WANTS you to get close and move slowly, since that's where it does the most damage. If you had, say, an interdictor and a missile cruiser, or two missile cruisers, and still did appallingly, I might be more worried.
Where you get the idea that dreads don't have weak rear arcs from, I'm not sure; all the ships in the game are weaker when fighting rear-on.

On 2008-06-28 18:32, Gejaheline wrote:
Ent, you may notice that I previously stated the assumption that dreadnaughts have twice the weapon efficiency of cruisers. This means that a dreadnaught has the equivalent of the same amount of armour and twice as many guns, or twice as much armour and the same amount of firepower. Or, if you're compromising, it will have the square root of two times the amount of firepower and armour, which is a little more than 1.4. This has nothing to do directly with levels or amounts of devices; all that matters is the raw hitpoints of each ship, and the raw damage per tick that each inflicts.
If this is not the case, which is what you're implying, this entire debate is moot and the game designers have failed to achieve their aims, since the 1 dread = 2 cruiser assumption is wrong. So we can either continue using this assumption, or end this thread.
[/quote]

Developers have already stated that the '2 to one' assumption is a general ideal in which 2 ships of a lower class have the potential to do enough raw damage to overcome the raw HP of a ship one class higher.

It was not intended to be taken literally, since combat skill, individual battle experience, and individual ship roles skewers the numbers to such a point, it was only meant to give a general idea of how smaller ships are potentially just as good as larger ships in numbers

Simply because two missile cruisers have the potential firepower to get through the raw HP present in a ship, it does not mean they will. Due to PD, the enemy pilots ability to dodge missiles, the enemy pilots ability to close the distance to reduce the amount of damage, and the amount of damage over time and.. again, so many factors.

I used the 2 AC's vs 1 Battle Dreadnought to highly illustrate this point. No matter what something should do and no matter what something is capable of, in practicality it gets tossed in the bin. Cruisers are simply not as effective as dreadnoughts against dreadnougts. Although that shouldn't be true against cruisers, it is simply because cruisers require greater numbers in practicality. In practicality, 2 cruisers aren't enough.

Quote:[/small]

As for the close-range attacks on dreadnaughts... As far as I knew, assault ships with lots of beams (aside from K'luth, who have entirely different tactics) weren't really ideal for attacking dreadnaughts, simply because they have trouble avoiding the dreadnaught's fire. Yes, they're faster and more manoueverable, but that's no help when you're right at knife-fighting range and the dread only needs to turn a tiny amount in order to turn its main batteries upon you, at a range where it can't miss. [/quote] Which is why my example was using the Battle Dreadnought not the assault-class version, the Elite Assault Dreadnought which is the beam boat of terrible destruction that anything stupid enough to get close to deserves to die. Battle Dreadnoughts on the other hand, are general combat purpose ships, mostly cannons. Quote:[/small] At a distance, one can stay in the rear arc more easily, since there's more area to move around in, and you can dodge what it does fire at you more easily. [/quote] I have to disagree with this point. At the range in which it is effective to dodge most dreadnought weapons (+400gu), a Dreadnought can turn as fast as you can rotate around it. With two cruisers attacking, one can stay on the rear, but another cannot. One cruiser will always be susceptible to point jumping. Quote:[/small] Dreadnaughts are very, very good at what they do. What they do is kill slow things and things that are at short range. If the target is one of these two things, regardless of how dreadnaught-slaying they may be, they can expect to take a lot of damage. If they do not fall into those categories, they stand a much better chance of avoiding damage. Get behind them, yes, but this is secondary to staying well away from them. [/quote] Yes Dreadnoughts are good at what they do (taking out big, slow targets), that was their main intention after all. However again, there are tactics that allow Dreadnoughts to bring firepower meant for larger ships on smaller ships, increasing the already ferocious amount of damage they deal. Personally, I don't think thats a good thing. It doesn't take a particularly large amount of skill to point jump an enemy cruiser, and the only way I've found to outmanuever a dreadnought is at close range, or alot of cloaking so they dont see where I'm turning. Thats the key issue, as long as dreadnoughts can bring firepower to bear on smaller ships with such ease, then their superiority is obvious. People can argue that dictors stop it, but what happens when the dictor dies? Are we really going to have every fleet of cruisers outfitted with three interdictors just to prevent it from happening? Will we really need more than twice as many cruisers to take out a number of dreadnoughts? Statistics are nice, and they illustrate nice, general examples, and sometimes they are vindicated, but I've too much practical experience to fully support that Dreadnoughts aren't as good I'm claiming them to be. It will likely take several actual battles to decide the real way that balance rest. Im willing to debate the point until then, but I really don't see any argument that doesn't support what I'm saying : In a battle where everyone is capable of getting dreadnoughts, all it will take is one person getting a dreadnought for most of them to get one too, simply because it can do the same job as cruisers with less numbers. -Ent [ This Message was edited by: Enterprise on 2008-06-28 23:15 ] _________________ Gejaheline Fleet Admiral Galactic Navy Joined: March 19, 2005 Posts: 1127 From: UGTO MUNIN HQ, Mars Posted: 2008-07-03 09:37    (Yes, yes, late post. I've been busy.) Gosh darn it, Ent, you're right. Dreads can point-jump, kill their own mass in enemy shipping, and generally slaughter things, and no amount of raw statistics can deny the fact that they are better than any other type of battleship. But that's not my point. From a game-balance point of view, you don't account for that kind of thing when developing each unit's basic statistics, because if you did the apex skill level would become boring. If everyone fought in a tactically optimum manner, the game would have certain outcomes for any given situation. "Okay, so they have two cruisers, and I fly a dreadnaught. Since statistically they out-power me, and we're all flying at our maximum skill and efficiency, I'm going to lose. Might as well jump away now. Ho-hum." Rather, you work from the other side. Balance the ships in a case where nothing matters but how quickly they batter each other to pieces, and you end up with people developing strategies to tip the odds in their favour. Outnumbered? Fight near a planet with a dictor, so the missiles and dictors work for you. Enemy has bigger ships? Use your speed to engage at a distance that benefits you. Enemy has lots of missiles? Picket dessies to the fore. Beams? Reflective armour. The number of times I've been flying a ship- virtually any ship- and someone in a smaller vessel has managed to stick unshakeably behind me and ping me to death makes me wonder why it's such an incredibly difficult job to do it to a dreadnaught, rear guns or no. So there it is. Statistically, dreadnaughts can be beaten with two cruisers. But it's down to the tactics of the pilots in the battle to translate that advantage into an actual victory. It would be boring otherwise. Maybe it could do with some tweaking to limit the amount of point-jumping a dreadnaught can do, but that's down to testing and seeing if dreadnaught are really the god-killing machines everyone makes them out to be. _________________ [Darkspace Moderator] [Galactic Navy Fleet Officer] Enterprise Chief Marshal Joined: May 19, 2002 Posts: 2576 From: Hawthorne, Nevada Posted: 2008-07-03 16:17    Omitted the rest of the post as I agree with it. Quote: On 2008-07-03 09:37, Gejaheline wrote: ...Maybe it could do with some tweaking to limit the amount of point-jumping a dreadnaught can do, but that's down to testing and seeing if dreadnaught are really the god-killing machines everyone makes them out to be. Well they're locked in Beta at the moment, because it was obvious that none of the smaller ships were getting tested (and because I complain too much). So for any current testing to take place they'll have to be unlocked once more, which may not be until release. The dreadnoughts that were used before they were locked (and there was no shortage of that, since mostly everyone was in one), did indeed, prove to be formidable on their own to anything except stations (which for once, clobbered them to hell and back). It was watching what dreadnoughts did to smaller ships that convinced me to first start ranting about it. Limiting point jump though, is a two-fold problem. On one hand, its pretty much the primary way that dreadnoughts get close to any enemy target, on the other, it allows them to deal their amount of firepower with little skill into smaller ships. To me, that seemed unbalanced. In previous versions, seeing what happened when dreadnoughts were remotely good (that is, people tended to favor them for their firepower alone), well, it was clear someone had to say something... -Ent _________________ Leonide Grand Admiral Templar Knights Joined: October 01, 2005 Posts: 1553 From: Newport News, Virginia Posted: 2008-07-04 02:19    and you said it for about two weeks now. _________________ captain of the ICC Assault Cruiser C.S.S. 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