Pilot Archive

Where did this quest start out from?

Redeeding the new ships is bugged right now. Think it's known about, though.

I was afraid this was going to happen. Its not just the rare quest reward fighters either. The new Heavy Scyk, Heavy TIE, and Heavy Z95 all have 94k mass and incredible handling, and to top it off, the cert to fly these three heavy fighters is in the same place as the cert for the basic 12k mass version. We did some testing on Starsider, and the new Heavy TIE, which you get the cert at on Tier I, can easily outfly a high-end PvP equipped A-wing. (The stats on the Heavy Scyk and Heavy Z95 are the same.) You're entirely right, almost all of the pre-ROTW ships are now obselete. Its sad really, but its just more evidence that the devs don't play the game and that they have isolated themself from any meaningfull feadback from players.

Lovely - I liked flying an Advanced for a reason.

Face it, these "heavy" ships are around for two reasons:

1) To make it easier for the newbies they expect to join in droves post-Ep3 (even though they haven't advertised the game AT ALL)

and 2) because they've nerfed loot so much that it's almost impossible for a newbie to retrofit pre-ROTW ships with decent crap that's low mass.

I defintly agree, that for small agile fighters pre-rotw ships are obsolete, the only thing that an a-wing has going for it is a marginaly smaller target profile. But I think alot of the Heavy fighters still have aplicable roles. So I wouldnt say all of them are obsolete.

Fuss

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TomoRainer wrote:
Redeeding the new ships is bugged right now. Think it's known about, though.

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Yea I noticed this, I also noticed I can't load flight computers into the Viktaz fighter (heavy version of the kirkahz) privatteer. I tried all the usual fixes for component loading bugs and they didnt work. Defintly something up with that new ship.

Fuss Bango

Ill tell ya what i think.

I think the devs have been watching our discussions about PvP and damage reduction, and decided that some of us were right, fights should last longer. Soooooo they decided to make fights last longer by making us all harder to hit to begin with. No rebalancing needed, problem solved. lol

Whoah, how crappy IS the new loot?

After sleeping over it to calm down my anger I thought I should comment on this matter too.

The fear that the new ROTW ships would be hopelessly overpowered compared to the old ships boiled inside me from the second the Jedi Starfighter was announced. Up to now space was more or less balanced and probably the most Star Warsy aspect of the game. Even though imperials had in my eyes a very tiny edge over rebels (as you know I am rebel pilot so that might be a bit subjective) it was always fun.

However, this changes dramatically with the release of ROTW. No wait... actually the CU brought the first tidings of the threat for the pilot and shipwright community. While the CU in itself was great for the ground game in almost all aspects (I personally don't like the strict levelling system so I'd like to soften level advantage curve a bit) it also introduced some ROTW content which was not supposed to be accessable. Unfortunately... or fortunately... I don't know, some clever shipwrights managed to craft the very first heavy Z95s, Scyks and Tie Fighters. So everyone who flew in or against these beasts noticed at once that they would cause huge collateral damage to the ship balance in JTL.
Twice the maneuverability of our most maneuverable old ships (i am leaving out novice and tier 1 ships here as these did not have the mass to carry good engines which was probably the reason to increase their maneuverability that much) and nearly the same mass as our superiority ship (X-Wing) these ships obviously made all ships lighter than an X-Wing obsolete. Unfortunately, their mass allows these ships to carry heavy shields, heavy armorand heavy weapons which literally tips the balance between heavy missile ships (mainly the Tie Oppressor) and these new ultra-maneuverable ships. This results in all ships heavier than the new ships becoming obsolete as well as they cannot hit the new ships with conventional weapons (lasers) and that you will be either blown up before you get a missile lock due to the high damage output of these ships or that the shields and armor will soak enough damage to survive.

This knowledge made me worry. I talked to Tomo so he could explainthe huge damage the introduction of these highly overpowered ships would cause to space to the DEVs. With Tomo being pilot correspondent and thus beta tester i hoped his explanation would make the developers see that the new ships could very well turn to be the killing blow for space combat.

Yet I was not at ease as I knew another threat was lurking just behind the horizon. A threat mainly known as Jedi Starfighter. It was my fear that this ship would beat all the heavy starter ships by lengths and thus becoming the only starfighter in use. Little did I know that this ship would only be available to imperial pilots due to the restrictions of the clone relic quest. The grieveous' starfighter sounded equally nice... yet the ship data suggests a big profile which would make it easier to hit. I fear though that the Jedi Starfighter will be smaller and as maneuverable making it the single best ship in the game. The ARC170 sounds like a nice multiplayer ship... but not like a fast and maneuverable starfighter. All other new ships could be literally labelled as junk for PvP as it was obvious that these ships would not be able to challenge the maneuverability of the grieveous', jedi fighter and heavy starter ships yet remain vulnerable to their fire. Lets call these 5 ships "clone ships" as they have near identical stats just with another model and texture.

But there are way more issues than just the balance of the ship types and the different ships that are used in battles. Why am I forced to fly an unaesthetical Z95 as a rebel? Which imperial and rebelengineers had the ideas to design new ships that were inferior to old republic and clone war shipsin all aspects? I honestly would like to play SWG with a 30 year old computer... can you manage that too?Why can't my A-Wing (hyper maneuverable fighter) not outturn a Z95, Scyk and ordinary Tie Fighter(both normal and heavy)? Why does no rebel or imperial engineer think about adding mass to their newest ships before they improve outdated designs that miraculously prove to be superior to new ships rendering decades of starship engineering a waste of time? Speaking of starship engineering... What do we need shipwrights for now if we can get all new ships from (mostly) ground based quests? The pilot profession /asked/ for shipwrights to be more useful out of sympathy and our interdependence... Why cut that bound even more? Why can 30 year old extra mass defy the laws of physics (inertia)?

The time of the Galactic Civil War, the war between the empire and the rebellion, is the single main Star Wars experience. The new movies(Episode I - III)would not be as successful without the desperate fight of the rebellion which is the center of the SWG storyline.
Unfortunately for Lucas Arts these new movies play before the old ones. But to lure the people in the cinema you need to offer them something new... something they haven't seen before... something that is better than what they have seen. Alas, this is also the reason why we are getting flooded with "features" that make no logical sense (both timeline and balance). This is why polearm sabers are superior to two handed lightsabers (it looks more martial arts like... which is "in"... thus a feature for the youth). This is why Jedis have to roam the entire galaxy after they were all (but 1) killed (people see jedis in the new mvoies and want to be one too). This is why we customers are forced to buy an expansion with new "antique" ships just to stay competative. Money.

Making a balanced system would be so easy. You just need to introduce a quotient like mass/(maneuverability*weapon slots*(ordnance slots+1) = tier [1-5] quotient.
The tier quotients would not be terribly different from one another but still make higher tierships slightly better. All ships would then be useful. Players who do not want to be "uber" like choices.

Kitten

/rant off

Am I the only one thatDOESN'T hate those big heavy ships and can actually fly them well?

Y-wing Longprobe? TIE Bomber? Rihkxyrk? Krayt? B-wing?

Been talking to a guildie last night, I came to a conclusion that I hope I am wrong at!

To me if feels that the "Team" not sure if it is SOE or Lucas but it apears that they are going to a loot/quest system instead of the player ran equipment and supplier. Nothing in RotW is player made. With the release of CU crafters are having a hard time as it is getting the resources they need without a full assault squad escorting them, ok a lil much, but you get the point. I was excited when I heard about the new ships. I ground out SW in a heartbeat. I figure something, since they took my Doc crafting from me and I feel meds are of no real use anymore, I went SW. To my surprise the only RotW items I get to make are Cargo bays and Mining laser? Sad day indead that the "Team" is going in this direction.