Pilot Archive
Thread: POB Talk
Now since slicing ship components has been effectively vetoed for balance why not a per flight buff of sorts from any smuggler on board?
Have said smuggler run around each internal component panel and use new /hotwire option on radial menu for increased shield regen, cap regen, weapon refire etc. This would give smugglers the ability to customize their ships and get some small edge for POB ships and shouldnt be available for fighters.
Once destroyed or landed the buff needs to be reapplied and uses simple toolkits for doing.
This is my take!
First, POB parts needs to be increased. By alot. 3x - 5x in stats. Except cannons.
Turrets, dont make them twitch based. Target a ship, turret auto-tracks.
You pilot skills, affects hit-ratio. (0X00 branch). It defies, the space concept.
But as I see it, only way to make POB ships desirable in space. They can hit them small buggers.
Repair crew efficiency, can also be affected by skills. More skills, can repair faster.
Heya Tomo, and welcome back!
The main problem I see with POB's is that they are not masterworthy ships. They are cool, a nice novelty, and you can have some fun with a few people in them but...they are sorely lacking. I made a post in the JTL Ship Balance Discussion thread (page 6) that talks a bit about POB's, but also all of the starfighter balance in general. Some of the things in there may help quite a bit in regards to POB effectiveness. I would really like to hear what you, and anyone else for that matter, have to say about what I tossed out to the community.
I think we can all agree that if you want to do anything *serious* (tier 4+, Kessel, DeepSpace)in a POB, a minimum crew of 4 is needed, preferrably 5-8. I think we all can also agree that these 4-8 people would be much more effective flying their own ships...and sadly, I would venture to say each person individually would be more effective than all of them in a POB. I propose that POB's get boosted up to the point of being close to, but preferrably more effective than those 4-8 in their starfighters of choice.
Somemight shout *but that will trivialize PvE*...blah, blah...isn't it already for a decent lone starfighter pilot, let alone 4-8 of them? I did not say uber, or elite, or true ace pilot(s)...just decent ones.
Others might shout *but that will enable someone to boost a pilot from green to master in a day*...again, blah, blah...can't this also already be done?
The gripe I will acknowledge is the potential for loot farming/spawn camping abuse...but then again, isn't that already done to a certain extent anyway?
About PvP: I don't know about any of you, but...I would really like to know for certain that I will need to bring my *A* game against a player POB, or I'm toast. As it is, they are pretty easy pickings, and frankly...I leave them alone, because at least the folks in that ship have theguts to go to deep space in a POB in its currently gimped form, and I have a lot of respect for that. I don't let them kill me either, though, heh. I do believe these ships should be overpowered, and a force to be reckoned with. So much so, that folks would almost prefer being part of a POB crew.
The Ops chair: C'mon, everyone know how fun this seat is! I don't know about all of you, but wouldn't it be nice if the person in the Ops chair could *paint* a target that both gunners and the pilot will see? You know, coordinate the battle strategy...and hit Shield Shunt...something to think about.
While it's cool in concept...I don't think the repair droid idea will fly 
Again, welcome back Tomo, and thanks for reading!
Domingo
Shameful plug: Since it involves POB's to a certain extent, I posted an idea in a thread called New Content, started by Pace Nebulon. I would like to hear what you, and anyone else thinks about it. A good first stab at the proposed new contentbefore the next expansion, perhaps?
Realistically, outside of a roleplaying batte, a POB ship needs to represent, at a minimum, four regular fighters, since that's what we give up to fly them. To that extent, having defenses and offenses 5 or 10 times that of a starfighter isn't at all unreasonable.
My suggestion was to add another class of resistance to weapons (vs. armor, shields, vs. pob and up). Most guns, especially non-elite, would have a very low rating against POB - making them very ineffective. That takes care of the defense problem, and gives a good role to the heavy bomber ships like the B-Wing or other POB ships who might be able to mount a massive gun with a high vs. POB rating.
The other issue is the turrets - as you noted their firing arcs are limited, and only one gun can be brought against a target at a time. This is a massive disadvantage PvE and PvP. I've seen some interesting solutions including increasing the damage of POB ships, allowing a second gun to be loaded into a turret, and having turrets move to counter the ship - so while shooting my turret stays as stationary as possible while the pilot spins in circles.
Other things that would be helpful would be advanced targeting systems - show automatically what the other turret is targeting, perhaps, or allow the pilot to set targets.
I wanted to qualify a couple things I said in my post:
First of all, I apologize for my blah blah comments, as they are not meant to be a personal attack on anyone...rather, they are meant to emphasize that these points are already statements of fact as the game (and POB's) currently stand, and do not need to be said.
As far as my proposal of overpowering POB's goes, and whether or not it's too much: A friend and I went to the Chiss static spawn in Kashyyyk (several tier 4's at any one time). He parked his Decimator, I had the top gun, his alt had the lower gun, and I'm not sure what he was doing with his main...maybe sitting in the Ops chair. I don't remember him having to hit Shield Shunt very often, if at all in the half hour or so we were there. To reiterate, we were repeatedly getting shot by at least 3 enemies at a time, we were not moving, and we were in no danger. My proposed boost to POB's would not *cause* this type of situation, as it already exists in its current form in *normal* space.
A nice side benefit to the level of my proposed boost: Not only will the folks doing repairs have plenty to do but, more importantly...they will actually have the TIME to do it. Even with my proposed levels of boost (500% modifying boost to weapons, shields, and armor, in case no one wants to read my post on page 6 of the JTL Ship Balance Discussion), I feel quite certain, if you take on a corvette group/gunboat group/both...everyone will be pretty busy. And having a lot fun too, I'll bet.
Domingo
Message Edited by Feynan on 07-22-2005 10:20 AM
Message Edited by Feynan on 07-22-2005 10:21 AM
Reloading missles from inside the ship would go along way in making POB ships more welcome in groups and for solo piloting.
The Idea of Increasing the armor and hitpoints on POB equipment to make them last longer is also a great fix and I have to say i like the idea of watching equipment slowly get chewed up as the crew franticaly repairs in flight. [and wouldnt unbalance PvE ]
POB engines need a fix as well as boosters .... If POB ships become the fastest ships a player can have then survivablity of them in any situation increases if combined with what was mentioned just before. [PvP even since any fighter attacking will get one head on pass then have to "chase" makeing them easy turret targets > ]
What I dont believe they need is an increase in turreted firepower. I would rather just see the survivablity increased.
[Yes i miss-spelled Ahazi in my sig. - to lazy to change it 
]
Ok, compliling my ideas with a lot of those listed here, this is what I came up with:
1. Defense
- Shield Strength: I like the idea of a chassis modifier for shield strength just like the speed modifier. For fighters, make it the opposite of the speed mod. For example a chassis with .95 speed mod would have a 1.05 shield mod, and 1.0 speed would be 1.0 shield. For POBs, make this number disporportionately large.
- Armor Strength: Logically, this would work the opposite way than JanuHull described. A bigger ship would need more mass of armor to have the same armor thickness across its entire hull. But for the sake of not taking steps backwards here, I would say leave armor mod of the chassis. Instead just make POB armor pieces really massive and really protective.
2. Offense
- Hardpoints: POB ships defy the game convention of having one laser hardpoint for every two lasers the ship fires. A quad laser turret should really have two hardpoints each. This would allow the POB turrets to do a lot more damage when they hit, or alternate to fire faster giving them a better chance to hit. The pilot should also really get one laser hardpoint.
- Turret Control: Turrets should continue to be manned, but the gunners should be offered the option of gyro-stabilization as already mentioned numerous times. This technology even our humble universe has had since WWII.
3. Damage
- Attacking Components: I think the way a POB ship takes damage should be half between what it is now and what capitol ship are like.
- Shields and Armor: Like it is now, you should not be able to take out components until the shields and armor are gone. However, either front rear shields should be combined into one shield strength or two shields should be required for front and rear. This will allow for shield disabling. Once a shield reaches 0%, it is toasted. It will not recharge and you cannot shunt it back up. The only way to bring it up again is to repair it. To prevent exploiting by a guy just standing at the shield panel ready to repair, repairing should now take time (like 10-20 seconds). Armor cannot be repaired.
- Engines, DI, Guns, and Capacitor: All of these components can be targeted once he shields and armor are down (much like engine and reactor can be currently). They must be targeted to do damage and the damage does not carry over (so say you hit a Cap with 100 hit points with a 4k dmage gun, well 3900 points of damage will do nothing). This would ensure that multiple passes would be required to disable the entire ship, giving the engineers time to attempt repair things.
- Reactor: When all of the other components have been disabled, further damage stresses out the power systems of the ship and causes the reactor to overload and shutdown. The ship is now completely dead in space. Players will have one of two options here. Either they can hit the escape pods and the ship blows up, or players with repair kits can attemp to restart the reactor. This is a time intesive process, it should take at least five minutes (and even after that the other systems need to be repaired).
- Boarding: Once the reactor is disabled the ship is vulnerable to boarding. Each ship can be docked by two other ships and boarded by the occupants of those ships (so it would be to the attackers advatage to bring a POB ship loaded with troops). Either once all the defenders have been killed or when a console is used by the attackers (preferably on the opposite end of the ship from the boarding point) the self destruct sequence is activated. Any still left on the ship when it goes of is killed. If the reactor is repaired before the attackers manage to blow up the ship, the attack is repelled, the boarders get kicked out to their ships, and any self-destruct timer is reset.
While this might not necesarily make them as strong as four fighters, it might allow them to take on one or two and go a long way to start giving them a combat role besides fighting. In the capital ship expansion, boarding could be used to take over the ship instead of just destroying it (It would be great to do this on the POB ships...but I don't think their owners would appreciate this 
). They could also be used to baord Space Factional bases or something. It would mean you might also be boarded by Inspection teams if there were ever space smuggler missions. And so on. I believe POBs should be a step towards integrating ground and space instead of necesarrily trying to make them great fighters. Otherwise why would they let you walk around on them?
Please give me feedback on these ideas. Especially any potential exploits, oppurtinities to grief, or general "why bother, that's not fun"nessthatyou see.