On 2014-02-03 09:37, Ent wrote:

Quote: On 2014-02-03 08:45, Pantheon wrote: I don't see defence numbers here. Suspiciously overlooked. Same with falloff. [ This Message was edited by: Pantheon on 2014-02-03 08:45 ]

This is because UGTO and KLuth's single biggest weakness is that you only need to through 1/4th of the armor to get to the hull. For ICC, you need to go through all their shields.

In addition, ICC ships can fit Auxillary Shields which provide a significant boost to overall ship HP and regen, thereby putting any ship that can fit them at a higher HP threshold than other ships of the same class.

ICC weapons have no falloff on all but Valence cannons and the greatest range. What they lack in volley damage they can make up for in DPS and energy efficiency. Ammo is restrictive on purpose. Most of the complaints listed with ships offer no specific instances of why they are not good for their intended role (for example, frigates have no inherent risk due to zero prestige loss, and specific ships fill specific roles). I see nothing of the sort.

UGTO can counter a majority of ICC's range based weaponry which provides much lower risk by fitting ablative which reduces their damage by 50%, but Valence cannons and Fusion Torps and beam weapons deal energy damage which can counter this.

UGTO also can use EMP (and Kluth can use ELF) to deal 50% more damage to shields, although EMP and ELF based weapons do less damage overall.





-Ent

On 2014-02-03 01:01, Deadly Jhomes wrote:
FRIGATES

1. Sensor Frigate- PROBLEM- damage/ammo) useful ewar abilities however countered with lack of ammo and damage to attack target with its 2 heavy 1 light gauss guns. This ship is rarely seen in use.

3. Lance Frigate- PROBLEM- very high risk/low damage) 7 beam lasers... as we know 4 standard lasers=1 heavy beam so despite technically having more firepower than the sabre it still suffers the same fate when attempting to attack even ships of its own size. I have never seen this ship in use.

5. Sniper Frigate/Mline Frigate- PROBLEM- deja vu) these 2 ships are exactly the same in every single way except the tier 3 sniper frigate has 3 extra ecms which it cannot use in combat without dropping its energy to 0 in seconds. Just like the mline, the sniper has 3 heavy gauss guns along with 5 missiles, however the gauss guns arcs are terrible and are side fire only. This makes sense in the tier 2 mline frigate because it is tier 2 and must expect tradeoffs, but is unacceptable in a tier 3 frigate when ugto and kluth tier 3 frigates are far superior ships. dropping the gauss guns on the sniper and refitting with a single forward only ion cannon is a quick and easy fix without adding or subtracting significant firepower. I personally use the sniper frigate and it needs to be changed.


The frigates not listed here have use in some situations.



DESTROYERS

2. Combat Destroyer-PROBLEM- poor fire arcs) classic cannon torpedo combination should be effective but is crippled by poor fire arcs. Ship has 10 torpedos but can only fire 6 forward, 3 on each side and 4 backwards. One of many examples of looking good on paper until fire arcs are revealed.
This ship is in use.
3. Minelayer Destroyer-PROBLEM- very poor fire arcs/armor placement)
ship with 12 torpedos but only can fire a max of 6 at once, armor x3 placed on sides and back with only shields in the front makes for ackward combat when attempting to engage anything with both mines and torpedos This ship is rarely seen in use.

4. Interceptor Destroyer-PROBLEM- high risk/low damage) 1 heavy beam 7 standard beam lasers is enough to engage enemy ship but the damage is far too low for the high risk of close combat.

5. Escort Destroyer-PROBLEM- useless) a ship with point defense as its main use however it being a small ship still means the amount of PD beams is small and not useful enough on its own. I have never seen this ship in use.

The destroyers not mentioned here are able to compensate for any problems.


Cruisers

1. Light Cruiser-PROBLEM- low damage) featuring 6 heavy railguns as only armament this ship struggles to engage anything larger than a destroyer no matter the weapon configuration you choose. (btw ugto interceptor cruiser has same problem) 6 heavy guns alone is just not enough. This ship is in use.

2. Heavy Cruiser-PROBLEM- poor forward fire arc) technically not a bad ship but is equipped with 12 torpedos yet can only fire 4 forward and 8 on each side. traditionally good icc broadside fire but only firing 4 forward and 2 backwards is quite a large tradeoff. Another example of looking better on paper than in gameplay. This ship is in use.



Cruisers not mentioned here have no problems worth mentioning individually.



Dreadnoughts


1. Assault Dreadnought-PROBLEM- poor armor placement/lacks firepower of equivilant enemy ships) armor x5 with second plate in front may seem good but dreadnought low turn rate makes very vuln to close attack. Far less firepower and defense than equivilant ships of other factions leads to Assault dread losing close combat battles with cruisers and dreadnoughts very often. Very limited use makes Assault Dreadnought merely a shadow of its former versitile self. This ship is rarely seen in use.


2. Heavy Missile Dreadnought-PROBLEM- defense/offense) less missiles and less armor than the standard missile dreadnought makes this ships title a bit odd, the heavy missile dreadnought features ecms to attempt to be stealthed while attacking. However missile range and signature increase of recharging missiles makes this ship nothing but a Heavy burden.
I have never seen this ship in use.


3. Flagship Dreadnought-PROBLEM- basic armament lacking appropriate capital weapons) command ship featuring great electronic systems and priceless wormhole device yet its 14 railgun armament is uninspired. Simply a large amount of the most basic icc weapon proves ineffective and unintimidating when trading blows with so called equivilant enemy ships.
This ship is in use.

4. Strike Carrier-PROBLEM- basic armament lacking appropriate capital weapons/EMP vuln) another high rank ship equipped with large amount of low rank basic heavy railguns. Lacks capital ion cannon weapons appropriate for such a difficult to attain trophy. Complete lack of composite armor means the shields transfer emp damage directly to the hull devastating ship systems quickly and disabling ship beyond repair.
This ship is rarely seen in use. (due to high rank mostly)

5. Line Dreadnought-PROBLEM- none really this is another icc dreadnought making the 4th that has a large amount of basic icc railguns. but the need for them to be replaced or augmented with capital ion cannons is canceled by the fact that is has a brutal missile payload. i mentioned this ship only to show that its fine to have many basic heavy railguns when its not the only main weapon. This ship is unofficially the favorite of icc and is a common site.



That concludes my list of PROBLEM ships.


Now to cover the universal ICC problem.

ICC weapon damage is too low. We have all been saying this for a long time but have been told time and time again that we do more damage per second. This is not true and i am not sure why i am still hearing this. Even if i ignore the math it is very obvious when playing other factions that icc weapons take much longer to destroy enemys than ugto or kluth. Now kluth do massive damage and that is expected, and they carry more weapons per ship than ugto or icc. I want to focus on the railgun/particle cannon for now. Ill start with an easy to understand example. Using an ICC heavy cruiser i attack an UGTO supply platform from 1000 gu using only my railguns. I hit the platform with a single round of fire. That is 3 heavy railguns and 2 light railguns. The platform takes damage of 1-2% off of total armor. Now i repeat this with an ugto cousin the battle cruiser. i fire at the same UGTO supply platform using particle cannons only, that is 4 heavy particle cannons which is equivilant to the 3 heavy 2 light of the heavy cruiser. At 1000 gu the platforms takes damage of 3% and at 90 gu the platform takes 4-5% damage from a single round of the 4 particle cannons. Even with maximum falloff in place the particle cannon damage is greater. The recharge times on railguns and particle cannons differ by only 1 second. This is but 1 simple example of the difference in weapon damage i have countless other examples that do not need to be presented as this is easy to see for yourselves and any experienced player would already know this. This same damage difference applies for all of our weapons compared with the ugto equivilant. I have been told that range is supposed to be icc advantage but anyone who has played this game knows that even a dreadnought can dodge a railgun from 1200 max range and combat takes place anywhere from 100-600 somwher around there. A pathetic 200 extra range that a railgun has over a particle cannon is not an advantage when the particle cannon still does more even when maximum falloff is in place.


The simple fact is that ICC cannot compete with ugto or kluth in battle we lack the ship variety, the ship quality and most importently the weapon damage. This falls on you developers you did this and need to admit the mistake already. Its not a big deal just please acknowledge this before ICC is gone completeley. I recently was told the system layouts are changing again and that ICC will have territory back when that happens but if nothing is done to FIX ICC then what will prevent this from immediatley happening again? This is not just one persons opinion, ICC needs help, all of the experienced ICC players feel this way. I dont know why you guys do not see it, but i hoped if anything I may have shed a little light on some of the reasons we are being slaughtered. Unless the goal is to rid Darkspace of ICC and have only 2 factions somthing MUST be done right away.

On 2014-02-18 21:21, Lord Victor Davion wrote:
I'd throw my thoughts into the mix as well, I fully agree with the Author, for I'm mainly and mostly UGTO player, after taking time off I decided to play as ICC, to be honest it was blind to me in the past due to my arrogance but I clearly see that ICC is rather..how can I put it... Inefficient, now I've also played ICC in the past briefly and I can say proudly that ICC in previous versions were more balanced then this so called patch this time around.
To be frank, I don't really call this a patch, but rather a cluster---k, putting it out there, many other previous patches were more balanced then this rubbish.

On 2014-02-22 02:51, Chewy Squirrel wrote:
Also, just wondering why the ICC torpedo fighter(XB-17) is complete crap compared to the UGTO torpedo fighter(B-29)?

The B-29 does 2700-8100 damage, and the XB-17 does 1800-3000 damage. This is not even accounting for the incredible accuracy the B-29 seems to have while the XB-17 loves to miss with its sabots. Oh and all other stats including energy drain are the same so lets not even start down the "But yours uses so much less energy!" path...

On 2014-02-23 09:48, Taelon wrote:
Think of the K'luth!

That is all.