Pilot Archive

---

Kirkmeister wrote:
Janu I'm after an Elite for my Nova, I'm currently running on my Star Map reward, so could do with some extra speed. My Mate is a shippy, but I have 3 resource crates. Can u advise me as to what I need to be able to get a decent engine? If I can get that, then I'm sure I will be even more of a force in PvP

---

Personally I think boarding would be one of the most exciting things to do in space PvP. However I don't think it should be implemented because it forces a crew to not only be competent in space but also be competent Pvpers. For example lets say two POBs engage each other. One is crewed by a very competent team. The other is alright but gets disabled. If the enemy ship had to be boarded to destroy the first ship would have move in and board the diabled ship. The first ship whos crew (all very good at what they do and most master pilots) happen to be made up of mostly non combat ground professions. The pilot has some shipwright (to RE his own stuff) the top gunner is an entertainer, the bottom is a newbie, the 2 repair crewmen are both shipwrights so they can craft repair kits in emergencies. The only Clvl 80 is the Co-Pilot who doubles as the ships medic as a Doctor/Tka.

The second ship's crew is only mediocre. However, they all are good PVPers. They have three jedi, 2 BH/Riflemen, and a Tka/Fencer with some doc. They are able to quickly kill the boarding party, repair their components and blast the othe pilot as he tries to flee with his crewless ship.

Now, my example is exagerated but basically the way I see it forcing rewards the ship with the best ground combat crew, which doesnt seem like a good way to encourage space PvP. If boarding wasn't required and you could blow the ship up from space, it would become a little pointless because why would you risk having victory turned into defeat when you know you can when by just blasting a helpless ship.

Of all the potentially unrealized things in SWG, POB Ships to me are the saddest thing of all.

Not just offense and defense are missing, it is also
CONTENT

-POB ship only missions, given by stations, you can only get while flying (or being grouped with) a POB ship - against large targets.
Relating to that: A new Missiletype for POB ships, that is needed to do the kill shot´on the target (think Proton torpedos being nessecary to kill the Death Star), to make them actually neccesasy on the mission, while still allowing escort fighters.

These missions could also be staged in instanced zones (why don't we have these in space for anything, fighter missions included)

Regarding damage - what i don't like is how damage is set up in the game - while the component damage might be okay for fighters it takes the fun out of POB ship repairing.
Firstly I totally subscribe to the idea that POB ship components must be seperatly targeted to destroy them in any case.
Secondly i think that Hitpoints on Components should be greatly increased - not armor - but hitpoints - by a lot. Why? to make it fun, repairing giving a chance to actually do it,
There should also be a IFF like droid command in PVP, to scramble the subcomponent targeting of an attacker - either just dropping it - or making a specific subcomponent untargetable for some time (meaning lots of droid commands, and selecting them wisely in load out and use for the co-pilot)
For that there should also be a POB flightcomputer with more storage.

I am againt the girostabilisation though - IF the ships can be made more effective by other means - i think a good crew and pilot should be worth a lot.
Also i still think forwardfiring guns are a bad idea, IF missiles camn be reloaded and the Targeting-lock is made easier on POB ships.


A Question to Tomo.

Since the Correspondent Boards will always be a mystery to me - are we just blabing about here (or there)- or is this thread inspired by any DEV?
I don't doubt DP wants Space to be good, but what is he working on, because i don't see much improvement since release. Even if something new is introduced it's full of holes and bugs.
What are the plans? What can we do to get him to talk openly about them, because you are bound by a NDA?
What i am asking - is there a lively DEV involving Discussion going on?

Respectfully
Magnum

PS:
If anyone is looking for a crewmate in whatever position on LOWCA send me a mail IGN: Vir

Message Edited by magnum1138 on 07-24-2005 11:10 AM

Ya know I was just watching epsiode II again and thought man!!! Charges whould be cool!! (aka space mines we can drop behind when we are being tailed)!!!

---

magnum1138 wrote:
Since the Correspondent Boards will always be a mystery to me - are we just blabing about here (or there)- or is this thread inspired by any DEV?
I don't doubt DP wants Space to be good, but what is he working on, because i don't see much improvement since release. Even if something new is introduced it's full of holes and bugs.
What are the plans? What can we do to get him to talk openly about them, because you are bound by a NDA?
What i am asking - is there a lively DEV involving Discussion going on?

---

We're not exactly just talking to ourselves here, as my plan for this thread was to spark some discussion and synthesize from that a few documents I can give to the devs. I want it to be built on a strong analysis of what is and isn't working to give them as much info as possible towards doing something to address those problems.

I'll be including plenty of suggestions as well--there's been some great ones here--but it's impossible for us to know what sounds good to them, or what can and can't be done, so in my mind, it's the analyses of weakness that are most important. That's what'll stand on its own without knowing what's possible or having a dialogue with the devs, something that's difficult to achieve in any situation, but particularly so before the details have pretty much all been worked out anyway.

I think that the greatest gift POB's have is Co-Pilots. That is where we need to have POB's make their mark. They need increased shields/armor, and more damaging, faster firing weapons, but they should be more ofa utility ship then a miniature cap ship.

The Co-Pilot, through POB-only droid commands, is where we can give POB's their flare.

Here's a (possibly) outlandish idea for POB ships:

Don't give POB ships clearly defined roles. Allow them to be customized to a greater degree then any other ship in the game - to an absurd degree, even. Why lavish such a tremendous reward on the owners of POB ships? Isn't this unfair to those owners and operators at lower levels whithout access to POB ships? Indeed, but with highly customizable POB ships we're opening the door to a new type of Master-Level content.

Keep SW crafted POB ships the way they are - if you want to fly it "stock," go for it. /shrug If, however, you don't then you can go out in your POB ship and, as was mentioned earlier, enter a series of POB-ship specific quests. An NPC ship will say something like, "Hey, it looks like you've got a lot of space on that thing. Maybe you could help me [haul freight / transport passangers / take out the Death Star by flying out from the sun at the last possible moment and shooting a TIE fighter that veers off and wings my dad's TIE, sending him hurtling into space and giving me the opportunity to fire a one-in-a-million shot]" These quests would lead to more "experienced" NPC pilots showing the PC how to modify their POB ship. "Hey, you know if you have someone shave off some of that plating around the underbelly you'll give yourself a lot more cargo room - hard to find cargo room, possibly - and you'll make the bird more maneuvarable. 'Course, you don't want to take a hit there. I know a guy that can hook you up." The PC could then make a permanent modification to the ship that would change certain statistics. There could be a whole branching series of these quests with the branches depending partially on what the player chooses for a modification - that way you won't be going into the mission designed for an POB tank with a POB that's modded for speed and agility.

At the end of the day the POB ship would, ideally, be a nearly complete custom job. With multiple levels of modifications that would effect all of the major areas of performance - shields, armor, weapons, speed, agility, capacitor, DI, boosters, reactor - you'd end up with players setting up a wide variety of ships to suit their playstyle. You wouldn't be able to have the fastest, best armored and most powerful ship - you'd have to make a choice. The current trend on POB ships is to go for the best of everything because they can have the biggest and best of any component. That's not likely to change, however if permanent modifications can be made then some real variety would emerge. That's something that I'd like to see - I want my ship to REALLY be my ship - not that guys ship with maybe a better gun but a crappier capacitor.

This is a great thread, I support many of the ideas posted here, as I would like to use my Nova for more diverse purposes than I am doing now...

One more thing that just popped into my mind (hope it wasn't posted earlier) were the missiles. Having 3 (or 2 for the YT) missile slots already make the POB stand out. However, getting a lock on a fighter is near to impossible, especially if you want to keep the turrets usefull as well.. So the missiles are not very usefull against the more nimble enemies.

While I realise this could easily lead to balance issues, why not making the lock of the POB missiles go via a system with for example a "free floating" cursor, independent of the crosshair of your ship.(not sure if this term explains it wel, but for example a certain area around the ship would be lockable by holding the cursor over an enemy during a certain period, possibly still affected by moving of the ship, to make it harder. A cursor like the yellow arrow the pops up if you hit ALT). Hope I put it in words well and that you all understand what I mean... Going for this would also make it more logical to me to have the missiles under the co-pilots thumb, which would make his role more fun too.

Then the pilot should really have a more commanding role, with more focus on issueing commands etc. I have been thinking that a command system like that of the ground squad leader would be nice.

As a final note: although it could even be nice to make this missile thing even allow one to fire missiles backwards, I think setting some sort of cone as the targettable space would be better, making coordination between both pilots even more important. What DOES seem nice to me is to be able to drop mines or something similar, that could explode when enemies hit them or pass withing a certain distance... Just gettig on a POB's 6 would be much more dangerous then...

Just my 2 cents....

Message Edited by ljhfkjhaiu on 07-25-2005 02:25 PM

---

ljhfkjhaiu wrote:

One more thing that just popped into my mind (hope it wasn't posted earlier) were the missiles. Having 3 (or 2 for the YT) missile slots already make the POB stand out. However, getting a lock on a fighter is near to impossible, especially if you want to keep the turrets usefull as well.. So the missiles are not very usefull against the more nimble enemies.

Just my 2 cents....

Message Edited by ljhfkjhaiu on 07-25-2005 02:25 PM

---

Drop your speed to 50% get a decent PYR engine, and use Image Rec MK II's. they lock in seconds, nad 3 of them will take out a fighter no problem. I don't have a problem getting locks as people tend to fly straight at u, load up with front enhance will buy u time with your shields too. Hope this helps a bit I can take u up to show you what you need to do for PvP on Chinaera if you like m8. Give mea shout any time

I always thought for PoB's to be useful, having a gun in the direct back of the ship (well the y8 would need a different spot), and missle launching abilty from those turrets (not the y8 here, not meant for combat..still needs more gun though). PoB's dont do enuff dmg fast enuff. If you can take the enemy fighters out fast, the PoB life is alot longer.

Yes it can be hard, but if the pilot thinks about what he's doing, he can target one with his missiles, and the gunners target the other fighters. if you think about it, you can possition the ship so that both gunners get a look at the targets.

Tomo, I guess the general theme here is pretty set on needing a boost. As a POB enthusiast, I'm gonna step back a bit and be a little contrary to that theme. When and if POB defenses and offensive abilities are revisited, please be sure that performance balance is observed. Right now, we can throw every Elite component available into a POB, there's simply no consideration required for compromise or sacrifice. If POB components get a substantal boost to power with no mass/balance consideration, there's nothing preventing POBs from becoming unstoppable battleships.

Having sunk some thought into the matter, I believe the best solution for boosting POB performance is to leave the current generation of Elite components as they are. Fix the Engine and Booster schematics, sure, but beyond a basic 15-20% improvement over level 9 components, leave them alone.

Create instead a second layer of Elite Components, 500k mass or more, with the substantial level of improvement from the current breed being asked for here. Engines with speeds in the 125-135 range, shields around 4000-5500 points, armor in the 3500-4500 range, weapons with 5000 or more points of damage, reactors with 30k+ available energy, and capacitors with 70ish regen and 2000 cap energy.

I also believe POB mass should be revisited. Five million was a very over the top number thrown in at the last minute in the Beta (I seem to remember the strategy guide calling them out at 500k mass). We should not be able to have everything, this is becoming a recurring theme in JTL, with new ships allowing pilots to simply slap the best of everything on a chassis and trivialize the nature of the game like they've accomplished something.

Call me crazy, but I'm thinking an experimental baseline of 2 million, with a cap of 2.5-2.75 million is more than enough. We should not be able to simply slap the best of everything on our ships and call it a day, some thought, some compromise, some balance should be imposed. If no second level of Elite component is considered, and 250k is as large as Elite components will be, then the mass cap should be lowered further, to 1.25 million mass base, with a 1.75-2.0 million mass cap. Make us think about our set ups, make us compromise somewhere.