Pilot Archive

Last night we had a huge space battle on Starsider: about 25 Imperials versus 35-40 Rebels across the Naboo system, some RPing when we weren't too busy staying alive, even a film crew out to tape the proceedings. It was without a doubt the most fun I've had in JTL, and the most fun I've had in the whole game for quite some time--there is nothing like being on the leading edge of a squadron as it hurtles face-first into a radar screen full of red--and as my first large-scale space PVP experience, it got me thinking about a couple things.

1) PVP damage isn't as bad as I thought. On one-on-one confrontations it is indeed ridiculous when it's all a matter of flying straight at each other and landing the first two shots (though this is in part due to poor tactics), but in a bigger dogfight where you're already engaged and don't have to go through that it can be extremely hard to hit a good pilot. I tailed an A-Wing last night for the better part of a minute without landing a single shot, due largely to the fact the pilot was whipping her ship around so violently and erratically I had a hard time just getting missile lock on her (and even when I did, she chaffed them away, heheh). There were also three or four times when I took a hit, wiping my shields out, but dodged all other fire until I was able to shunt my shields back into existence. Our engagements lasted much longer than I thought they would, and I was shocked that I was able to survive as well as I did when we were regularly diving into groups of 10-20 Rebels at a time. It has me thinking that PVP is close to being right, and that a 50% damage reduction might be ideal for making dogfights last a little longer while keeping them dangerous and allowing skill to be more important than equipment.

2) Hugely problematic, though, is the 10% decay when in a good event you're probably going to be dying 1-5 times in a pretty short span of time. I'm a shipwright, so I'm a little conflicted over this, but I know that as a pilot there's no way I ever use my good stuff when it's going to get ruined so rapidly. I'm of the mind that PVP decay should be reduced to 3-5% and soon. I'm not sure how they'd implement this--whether you can track if damage is inflicted by a PC or NPC, or if you'd have to do something like just make it so the decay drops whenever you're overt--but I think it'd go a long way towards encouraging PVP. Right now I'm going to need to swap a few components out every time I go out with the main intent of PVPing (and I'm considering just setting up a ship devoted to the role), and while it's not a major hassle, it still seems like one that doesn't have to exist. Besides, I want to be able to use my good stuff without worrying about it being reduced to uselessness in a handful of battles. I also want to be able to be aggressive and put myself out there for people to fight and have fun with without resenting the damage they're doing to my engines and weapons and capacitor.

All in all large-scale PVP is ridiculously fun, much better than I thought given the half-dozen solo encounters I've had before, and I'm going to be up there whenever Starsider puts an event together, but these two things would help ensure we all have a lot more of them.

Mass PvP is indeed a laugh, its just a shame more people do not realise it.

Just use deep space to avoid decay, stuff gets decayed in other systems anyway. As the best pilots can confirm, we get cocky and we get killed, stuff decays. As a SW I have no problem with this, anything to promote epic, SW style battles.

Message Edited by Eaca on 01-09-2005 08:42 PM

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Eaca wrote:

Space decay sucks. Period. On the ground my 90% composite armor will stay at 90% until its condition gets down to below 50%, then I can get it repaired and still use it at its max efficiency. If the JTL system were effectively implimented on the ground, when I died, my 90% comp would permanently go down to 81%. Actually thats not quite true... If JTL were on the ground, PSG's would be our main line of defense, but our armor and HAM would decay 10% on each death. Cause thats what effectively happens in space, if you die one time, you die easier the next and easier and easier until once your shields are gone, you're dead. Good armor in normal (non deep space) space is about worthless because it becomes below average armor in 2 deaths. Without the no decay rule in deep space, every time I went back to get revenge I would go back in 10% weaker in armor and HP than when I died the last time. That's just not fun to watch a ship I put so much time and effort in decay in front of my eyes faster than I can replace it with good RE parts. Since you get down to less than 50% of your starting HP in about 7 deaths, to keep your ship PvP worthy with crafted components would mean you would have to replace almost EVERYTHING every 7 times you die. You can die that many times in one day if you're having fun (tho it wouldn't be fun replacing a 2mil cred ship daily).

Message Edited by Eaca on 01-09-2005 08:42 PM

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Message Edited by NasherUK on 01-10-2005 04:38 AM

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... no one would use it and no one would PvP (just like no one does in space because of it).

People do PvP in space rather a lot (Farstar)

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Chiwawa wrote:

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... no one would use it and no one would PvP (just like no one does in space because of it).

People do PvP in space rather a lot (Farstar)

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what? where? i only see 1-2 people everyday in deep space

I think the real problem is how similar the ships are.

I would like to see multipassanger ships that have shields and armor capable of taking a beating before failing. I was onboard the "Event Horizon" durring the PVP battle on starsider, and was very dissapointed because we never had a chance to repair the ship. As soon as a fighter shot at us, we would die. Seeing how these multiplayer ships are the closest things to a capital ship a player can use, I would like to see armor and shields that actually make them dangerous to fighters. As it is now, they are just large targets. Modifying Chasis hitpoints for multiplayer ships would help by giving passangers a chance to repair individual components and get the ship operational before the chasis exploded.

Ok, my battery on the laptop is about to die, so I will have to continue this post some other time.

I did intend to say something about how the big MP ships need some serious changes--I took down two or three of them in that battle and they were the easiest targets of all. Huge area to hit and no ability to maneuver seals their fate. And while those turrets did get my heartrate going, the chance of them hitting my corkscrewing Advanced on a strafing run (I don't exactly have to come in on a straight firing line when the target's that big) is negligible.

However, they did actually take about 4-5 hits to kill instead of 2, so reducing damage by 50% or whatever would help them somewhat. But they need something else on top of that, be it a new class of Mk VI shields and armor, double layers, or a more creative solution, because right now, they're no good on offense or defense. I actually felt bad killing them because I knew I was taking out 3-5 people who were going to be very frustrated by their lack of impact on the battle, and the last thing I want is people discouraged to PVP when, under the right circumstances and with a couple of changes, it can be so much fun.

After a couple more large PVP battles and a fair amount of skirmishes, I've refined my opinion to where I think decay should be removed entirely and damage could probably use another 25% reduction. I'd hope that would be enough to make heavy fighters a more viable choice without turning fights between two skilled light fighter pilots into an endless circle. And POB ships could still use a separate system entirely.

If we were to remove PVP decay, insurance is a good call (the devs love credit sinks, and with the way it's affected travel costs and ramped up income for pilots, JTL could probably use another one), but it would be nice if we could come up with a way to open a revenue stream for shipwrights to replace the business we'd lose from eliminating decay. Even if there's no good way to do that, I'm still in favor of getting rid of PVP decay, but if we could brainstorm a few good ideas, I expect there'd be less resistance from the shipwright community.

Of course I don't have any ideas offhand, but I'm going to give it some thought over the next few days and see if I can come up with a proposal for this.