Pilot Archive
Thread: The death of all pre-rotw ships...
Moriendor wrote:
Because of Episode III... the devs don't want anykiddies to burst into tears when they find out that the ship "Ani" or "Obi" was flying is not as cool as in the movie
LeaphChausew wrote:
The new ships..yeh they're good but the thing which narks me the most is this.
The story arc of the Starwars universe.
E.G 'The A-wing is the fastest most agile starfighter in the galaxy' - quoted from numerous texts...erm ok, so why am I now being out manouvered by ships which should by all rights at 'this point in fictional time' be -OBSOLETE- and be standing in museums.
. I'm sure they'll give it a balancing pass (old ships vs new ones) as soon as RotW sales start dropping (goes quick with games... they only sell really well in the first 3 - 6 weeks usually)and/or ifa certain projected number of subscribers has stuck around for 30+1 days. That's when the nerf stick is gonna magically hit the new shipsa.k.a the Episode III kiddies get their "good-bye thank you" for buying the game
.
I guess thats the most we can expect 
And again... as much as I would like to cut the amss down and just ignore all items in these new ships. This is the single thing that will never happen. Either we will have /really/ "uber" prenerf ships then (prenerf engines are an advantage but due to their larger turning circle they aren't the best either) or the only option will be lowering maneuverability.
It's sad but I hope they listen to Tomo. I am sure he will fight for us.
Kitten
Message Edited by GileHarleen on 05-07-2005 05:16 AM
Kitten_Starsider wrote:
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
QFE
Me thinks the dev team sold out and decided to offer "uberness" as a way to get people to buy ROTW. If you don't buy ROTW your going to be pwned......
Sold out game balance for sales.
Ok then, I test flew the heavy -95.
Thing is...I wasn't too shocked.
Yep, it has uber y and p but..r. Yeh its very good but compared with the Y and P felt a bit out of proportion to me. Also...those guns are so far spread apart that your onlyhope of hitting anything in pvp consistently would be at long range..especially against somthing like the Jedi starfighter.
I was impressed that I was able to fit on a lvl 10 re'd gun, mk IV shields and my pre-nerf engine along wiht image recs and chaff and various other good stuff AND still run EO4 on the thing, but...I don't know. I think I like my A-wing better still.
The Z-95's Top speed is actually the same as an x-wing would have using the same engine so the A-wing still has the speed advantage, but also...I'm not totally sure but it felt like the heavy 95's most effective turning speed was at 98%-100% throttle thus giving it a wide turning circle even though it has incredible y,p acceleration.
The z-95 also...packing that pre-nerf looks ridiculous and is a big target. have no doubt it'd be good in the right hands for pvp but as it stands currently, I'm keeping my A-wing and my stance remains the same...attack me with all those new ships, I'm really not worried.
In fact, I'm going to see if anyone else with a heavy 95 wants to duel me in my A-wing in order to see which comes out on top.
The Heavy Tie Fighter does not have that weapon spread since the weapon is mounted right under the cockpit. Also you get full damage if one of the two laser bolts generated by one gun hits.
I am not sure about the Scyk.
For rebels the new Z95 is not really that bad in making all other ships obsolete whereas for the imperials the new Tie Fighter does not have a much different profile and thus is better than the Tie Advanced and Interceptor. And again the Jedi Starfighter tops it all for the imperials.
As a result you can say that for PvP balance rebels are at a disadvantage while the imperials received a dramatical nerf in the amount of effective ships they can use.
The speed disadvantage can be balanced out by using a level 8 reward engine (freelancer). I am not sure where the perfect turning rate point lies for the new ships though. Probably it is the same as the starter ships.
I personally will keep flying my A-Wing as well but from the reasons I meantioned in my first post it makes no sense to have really old ships outmaneuver a hypermaneuverable starfighter.
Kitten
the a-wing has less mass than the TIE advanced, actually, and the intercepter and advanced are more nimble, responsive ships. The advanced turns best at about 90% throttle (i haven't been flying much recently, that number is probably a little bit wrong), interceptor turns best at about 95% throttle, and both do pretty well turning while boosted, and do really badly at under 50% throttle or so. Haven't flown the a-wing, but i'm told it has similar turning speeds...turns greatat full throttle, a brick at low throttle
and anyone mounting a great lvl 8 gun in their a-wing is giving up even more mass to those of us with, say,two lvl 6 guns in our TIE advanced (like my twowith about 1800-2600 damage each,combined mass under 19000, and itrim a little off that without too much trouble).