Pilot Archive

In order to define roles, we're going to eed to see more abilities addded to the game - like the ground has now. We sorta need a CU for space (don't scream yet lol).

Right now we have Fighters and Bombers - the Multiplayer ships have little use at all in combat due to their inadequacies.

What we need (for lack of better words) are Tanks, Healers, Utility, Ranged and Melee.

A Tank needs to dish out damage and be able to take it too. This could be the role of the new Heavy Variants.

A Healer would be a new ability, but its basically a Repair ship withminimal Offense, altho it should have decent Defensive shields, and probably a repair crew (MP ship use would be great here). This could be a Multi-player ship ability, but it makes more sense that a new ship type be introduced.

Utility ships would be the 'reloaders' they could also gain a 'docking' ability to transfer crew and loot in and out of ships. Again could be a POB ability or a new ship type.

Ranged ships should gain in range only, and lose some defenses. (750m for fighters, 1000m for POB) These make sense to be the Bomber or big ships - since they already have less defense due to their larger profile.

Melee ships get extra defense and damage but have short ranges (250m) - could also be used as Tanks. These should be the small fighters, A-wing, Khiraxz, etc...

In the end with these types of variety in the game, more space content could be added. Right now we have Deep Space, but NOBODY goes there because it just isn't much fun. If we were forced to have defined roles, viola, we need a group, coordination, and roles to fulfill - that's fun, challenging and a reason to actually participate in large scale battles.

I think when we first all envisioned JTL, we saw these epic space battles with dozens of ships on each side - all player controlled. Has that ever happened? Shouldn't it happen EVERY DAY?

Most of us have participated in a large scale base raid on the ground - we should be able to have content and roles in space where we could do that there too.

The basic ideas above are not particularly difficult to implement either, it could all be done in one publish since most of the art already exists barring the new interiors. If the Devs setup a focus thread or two on how to differentiate ship roles they would be flooded with ideas for parts/loadouts that define ships and their abilities. There are no needs to nerf anything, but we could expand on what we have to make it better.

Plus, they'd earn tons of cookies for actually ASKING us how to design the game we love. Communication is the key to making this successful.

In JTL there are in my eyes three ship classes: Interceptor, Superiority and Bombers. It appears to be Interceptor is supposed to beat Superiority, Superiority is supposed to beat Bombers and Bombers are supposed to beat Interceptors. That worked quite well even though Interceptor fighters were favoured by most of the pilots but in the end all ship classes could be useful.

Until ROTW the ships were factionallyquite balanced. Imperials had ships that stood between the classes a bit which made them extremely versatile. Rebel ships would have a more definate role in one of the classes but without the universal uses of some imperial ships.
To my mind rebels and imperials were almost equal in most engagements. The advantages on the imperial side (subjective, I know) were so minimal that it did not really matter. This advantage was that imperial Tie Advanceds could take out X-Wings (the only real space superiority ship really) before they could destroy the Tie Oppressors. With the Oppressors advantage of 3 missile slots (more than any other ship) they could then take out A-Wings with their missiles while the other imperial Interceptor class ships would only have to face two missiles which can be avoided more easily. In the Interceptor class the A-Wing used to have a slight advantage due to its smaller profile which was balanced out more or less with its lower maneuverability compared to the Tie Advanced/Interceptor.
Effectively Rebels had to use 3 types of ships who all were at the threat of being taken out by 2 types of imperial ships. But again... this disadvantage is relatively minimal compared to what we are facing now.

Unfortunately, the new ships in ROTW tip both the balance between the ship classes and between the factions as well.
The Heavy X-Wing and the Royal Guard Interceptor do not change the balance in PvP between ship classes and factions dramatically.
The Heavy X-Wing might be a good answer for the problems of X-Wings dying to fast on taking out the superior imperial Bomber class ships (Oppressors). Therefore this ship more or less only represents an answer to the weakness of the Superiority class. 180k mass might be a bit muchbut this ship remains limited by its maneuverability and its size and thus remains in its role.
The Royal Guard Interceptor improves the imperial Interceptor class on the other hand. 80k mass is a lot but it still remains in its role. In the end it is a Dunelizard with a smaller profile, 5k elss mass and slightly increased speed. A good ship but nothing threatening the balance. It too remains limited by its maneuverability which is not better than the old Interceptor.

The real threat to the JTL balance are in my eyes the "clone ships" (Heavy Starter ships, Jedi Starfighter, Grieveous'). All of these ships have the maneuverability of the former starter ships. Their maneuverability was so high due to their low mass and thus limited engine along with their relatively low level equipment. This made these ships relatively maneuverable for their level and good to fly.
Unfortunately the heavy versions of these ships totally removed the limitation of the mass. Now these ships did not only have competative mass they got mass that almost equal to our former space superiority ship mass (95k for heavy starter ships and 90k for JSF and Grieveous'). These ships are not limited by their maneuverability either as they kept the starter ship maneuverability but now have the mass to carry heavier equipment than all interceptor ships before. Therefore these ships do not only make all previous interceptor class ships obsolete but also assimilate the Superiority ships, making these obsolete too. Furthermore Superiority ships always had an advantage over Bomber type ships. As the clone ships take the characteristsics of both superiority and interceptor type ships they are able to execute their roles better than the original ships as well. As a result Bomber type ships have no chance against the new clone ships and thus become obsolete as well.
This by itself is already extremely sad for JTL. Only a few - near identical ships - both overpowered in maneuverability and their mass can now be used effectively in PvP. These ships neither resemble the central Star Wars experience (the war between empire and rebellion) nor do they follow logical or aesthetical rules.

However, the peak of imbalance is the new Jedi Starfighter. Next to clone ship maneuverability and 90k mass it offers a profile smaller than the A-Wing and 2 gun mounts for increased damage output. It is thus the single best ships of the clone ships and the hardest to fight as it has only strenbgth without weaknesses. It is only available to ground imperials and thus the balance between the factions is broken.

As a conclusion you can say that ROTW broke both the balance between the ship classes and the balance between the factions. Additionally it broke the Star Wars atmosphere of the space battles.

Kitten

Message Edited by KardenTyrell on 05-08-2005 04:21 PM

Define the roles using a new chassis trait: Defense. Essentially it would be a simple modifier to the ships defensive components.

Start at 1 and move up.

Given equal equipment (which would be silly but still) of Shield 1000 and Armor 100,

An interceptorwould be 1.0. (1000 Shield and 100 Armor)

A heavier interceptor would be 1.1 to 1.2. (1100 to 1200 shield and 110 to 120 armor)

A Light Superiority Fighter would be 1.3-1.4. (1300 to 1400 shield and 130 to 140 armor)

You can probably see where this is going. Those numbers would likely need some serious tweaking but I think this could help a bit in making things like the B-wingand Tie Bomber FEEL like a big heavy nigh indestructable bomber that can't hit a fighter to save its life but can also sit off the bow of a capital ship and take punishment long enough to get their job done. A flight group of only Superiority fighters should feel a bit shy when taking on a capital ship without a big ol' bomber. A flight of only interceptors should feel both naked AND yet still manage to shake in their boots when taking on a capital ship without a big ol' bomber.

I smoked a couple of jedi starfighters this weekend, 1 in my heavy scyk and 1 in my rhyx. They didnt look like they had smaller profiles then an a-wing to me (maybe close, but I would still give the a-wing the edge,but hard to know for sure without them side by side).

Atleast on my server components and pilot experience play a huge roll, I have had better fights with the old a-wings.

Fuss

superiorty fighters: gain dominance over a space. Have advanced targeting capabilities, mauverability, high level and diverse payload.

interceptor: mission is to destroy bombers. (example valkerie fighters in freespace, f-14 uses phoenix missles)

why? they use incredible speed and long range missles to get to the bombers, before thy can reach their targets. Hence the term INTERCEPTOR... the trade off is lower payload.

bombers: mission is to kill targets of importance.

This is just one level of heirarchy.

POB ships should be escort craft. Ever charge a unit of gun ships? its not fun. POB's shuld be used for protection and additional firepower, maybe repairing and reloading too. Makes sense to me.

Also they could impliment an AP system. Where only certain level bombs can penetrate a certain powered shield. Or that it takes many bombs to take a target so that, a squad would have to reload.

Basic dogfighting should be done in superiority fighters, but these should ahve limited access to certain types of missles (maybe proton II and lower only), where the interceptors would ahve access to proton III's and up. But interceptors would ahve fewer guns, maybe only ONE gun mount. Where a superiority could ahve up to 3 but no ordnance. Bombers could be limited on the level of gun that can be installed. And POB's could have everyhting but speed and mauverability.

I wouldnt give interceptors anything higher then concussion missles.

I liked kinda how they did it with the older games, the loads had a specific mass, you could cram 4 torpedos in an Xwing, or 1 spacebomb, or 6 concussion missles.

Doesnt anyone think Missles should be shot from further out? But they are dodgable if you're in a manouverable ship. Being able to fire on them to get them to explode would be a plus too. hehe...shiat...just take the good aspects from the older starwars games.