Pilot Archive

Message Edited by JanuHull on 06-17-2005 07:17 AM

OK, lets try this again.

Theme: No enemy ship of any Tiershould be any more or less powerful than an equivalently tieredplayer ship. The difference is in your piloting skills. Afterall, this is twitch, yes? The current system of designed imbalance is the result of JTL being designed as a PvE first/PvP second system. NPC defenses are ridiculously powerful and their damage is proportionally pitiful. I've seen Tier 5 NPCs battle each other for 20 minutes barely doing more than 1% damage to each other's shields. This is as insipidly stupid as PvP ships vaporizing each other in one pass. This imbalance is further exacerbated by the introduction of supersmall, supermaneuverable fighters in the ROTW expansion. Of all the original ships, even the A-Wing is finding it hard to maintain footing against the JSF/Crimson TIE.

Idea:

1) Redesigned all NPC fighters from Tier 1 to Tier 5 to be absolutely equivalent to player ships of equal Tier. Meaning, no more 5 minute beatings to drop the shields of a Tier 5 fighter. If we have 1850-1900 strength shields at Tier 4, that's all they get. If we're capped by certain loot/crafting restrictions, those ships should be no more effective. Gunboats and other larger than fighter/smaller than capital ship should have the equivalent of Elite POB crafted components. As a counter, if we can rapidly kill them, they should be able to rapidly kill us.

2) Reduce weapon damage to 33% of the current value. This increases the survivability of both NPCs and Player ships. The ability to one shot kill any ship, while possibly close to cinematic presentation, is NOT good for balanced and enjoyable gameplay.

3)Halve the refire rates of current weapons. Spam kills balance as much here as it does on the ground. Right now, with our weapons putting out as much, if not more, damage in one shot than our entire defensive array generates, the ability to blast such shots out faster than half a second in most cases makes for ridiculously impossible survival.

Alternate: Allow players to toggle their weapons for slow shot, high damage or rapid shot, lower damage. In some cases, it becomes more important to put constant damage on an enemy. In other cases, when things have gone bad and you need the power to finish an enemy before your ship is destroyed, the slower refire power shot becomes a last ditch chance to win.

4) Increase component effectiveness of Type Vand Elite (level 9 and level 10) such that the benefits gained for such incredible component mass allow for the possibility of a very strong element of player ship design matched to a sacrifice elsewhere in performance. The effectiveness increase of Tier 5 components should be no less than 35-50% over current values. Elite components should receive no less than a 100% increase in effectiveness, these are truly massive components which should make a POB/Gunboat a true terror to engage.This allows fora PvP fighter that is not much beyond a massive engine and gun with minimal support for reactors and capacitors to be the one shot killer these players desire with almost no effective defenses as a result. Counter

A second side effect of making the jump from Type IV to Type V components should result in POB ships being capable of putting full arrays of Elite components in place which will give them an increased chance of survival and a fighting chance at participating in PvP as something other than cannon fodder.

5) Reduce current lock on times to half the current speed, and increase the range to 1000 meters. Missiles represent stand off capabilty which they really fall far short of in their current iteration. Missile damage should remain high, as countermeasures and lock on difficulty balance their power very well in PvP.If an increase in Type V/Elite Components goes forward, Spacebombs will be brought to the forefront as ship busting weapons.

6) Corvette/Star Destroyer shields should NOT be bypassed by missiles. On no other ship is this occuring. This failure of shields to protect capital ship subsystems is the core of their current soloability. To many pilots, the finalmaster mission to complete a squadron has become the easiest mission in the entire profession.

7)Looted and RE'd components should continue to allow players that take the time and invest themselves in gathering what are otherwise superstat components and merging them under the guidance of a Shipwright to break the curve. You pay your dues, you get the goodies. This allows for the chance for players to attain 'legendary' performance capabilities

Message Edited by JanuHull on 06-17-2005 07:57 AM

Sounds good to me. Making the [(mass +energy use) / (Performance)] of the different tire components similar would help a lot. If something has 2 times as much mass, it should be 2 times as efficient (2x the DPS, 2x the defence, 2x the manor ability, and so on). Weather that is achieved by lowering mass requirement or boosting performance or both maters less.

As for loot drops, I think we should do away with the junk loot, and just keep the "good stuff" but make it drop less, all the junk loot drops could then be replaced by credit drops. Make a RE- job something special. On top of that remove the chaise dealers ability to but the loot components, the credit would drop directly in space, and all the good loot component would become available to Shipwrights.

Crated components should at the very least be able to beat re-engineered loot components (and reword components) on any one off the stats, but the reengineering works should be over all better. So crafted = specialist, re-engineered = generalist.

Actually, I like the junk loot, because for players who are not ubercombatants on the ground or focus primarily on piloting, junk loot to the chassis dealer is a vital source of income.

Space ain't cheap, don't put'em in the poor house.

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JanuHull wrote:

Alternate: Allow players to toggle their weapons for slow shot, high damage or rapid shot, lower damage. In some cases, it becomes more important to put constant damage on an enemy. In other cases, when things have gone bad and you need the power to finish an enemy before your ship is destroyed, the slower refire power shot becomes a last ditch chance to win.

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reduce damage by 67%? so someone with a 2000 dmg elite blaster does 660 damage (pre WO3) and someone with a re'd 5000 dmg blaster does 1650? news for you:

A) players would still die in one or two hits.

B) now players without uber weapons would be at a marked disadvantage.

so now you have to raise shields. terrific, now instead of dying in PVE once a month i'd die once a year. unless you increase NPC weapon damage... and now we are talking about a complete redesign of the way the game works, when in fact the game works perfectly now save a few ignored defects.

space pvp is fast and unforgiving intentionally. once you embrace how dangerous and exiting it is, and how boring PVP'ing with level 1 weapons (which really is what you are trying to ask for) is, you'll understand the dev's decision for making the game this way.

and just as an FYI, PVE is not that imbalanced now either. tier 5 ships go down under my guns in a salvo, just like player ships.

i'd also like to stress that PVP is only "imbalanced" and "not fun" from your (i daresay limited) perspective. the real truth of the matter is that few people fly in space, and out of those who do few really want PVP, out of that small minority even fewer avoid PVP because they think it's not fun under the current setup. implying it's a general consensus is extremely misleading, as is implying that all space PVP is over in 1 hit. my last 3 fights i survived 2 hits each fight and i'm not using the reward shield.

well tonite I was going to do some test to work out the damage ration. But the final result would be somthing like this.

All shields should be calculated with the forumla of

"lvl 9 shield"at 2.4k would be2.4k * 9 = 21.9k
"lvl 7 shield" at 1.5k would be 1.5k * 7 = 10.5k

As I see it a player ship taking on a Decimator (NPC)will and does take time, where as the same ship against a Decimator(Player) can destroy it in 3 shots.

So by applying this increase there would be no differance between a player taking on either a player owned or npc Decimator (or other larger ship).

these figures I have just pick, will try and see if I can work out what the current ship shields are currently.

For me the rest of the game in space is working well, its just the shields and armor.

Message Edited by Shadow-Walker on 06-17-2005 04:27 PM

damage reduction is not the answer, it never was the answer and the developers showed their agreement when they introduced POB equipment into the game. fighter vs fighter PVP is nearly dead on the money now, with really only minor modifications needed to perhaps give 1 more hit. even that is likely not necessary as most experienced PVP practictioners agree that "one hit pvp" is generally a myth anyway. it's a gut reaction to dying quickly that is dismissed when you fight players more frequently.

now POB vs fighter and POB vs POB PVP needs to be worked on, but again, you start talking about damage reduction and you start talking about a system that affects much more than what you are considering.

also, you need tothink aboutthe fact that this discussion has already been had hundreds of times, and put to rest. now is the time to get behind a decisive push to increase the viability of POB crafted equipment, specifically shields and armor, so the intent of this thread can be achieved without a sweeping change that would be no doubt disasterous to PVP for the average player.

If they had just ported XvT over to XWG, this argument wouldnt exist. I once fought an AWing in a TIE interceptor for 10 minutes......I finally slammed into an asteroid and got destroyed that way.....I had a buddy that could hold his own in a regular TIE against me in an XWing.My kill ratio was 2/1 but that is pretty on his part taking my down with an unshielded fighter