A few balance suggestions.

[Kontrazec (Somni)]

Hello, Disco. I've been floating around this community for a long time now, and I've noticed recently there seems to be a lot of complaining towards the balance of capital ships versus snubcraft (a permanent topic, really), the annoying factor of NPC capfleets popping up out of nowhere to make your life very difficult, very quick, and I've also noticed there is a certain thing I'm biased towards, shamelessly, because let's face it- The concept is cool, but the iteration leaves a bit to be desired. So, let me get right to it.

Section 1: Capship balance

Okay, so, I've seen my share of capship battles going on on the server. Most of the times, you gotta admit- They're a cluster****, very difficult to coordinate, find one's way in, balance out and make bearable for the server load. Too many projectiles, me thinks! So let's touch up on that one first.

Rebalance the battleship turrets. Most of the 'important' ones. I'm talking a complete tectonic shift. I know realism doesn't seem to be a great part of Discovery, but I would reckon a touch of verisimilitude would do absolutely fine; Particularly with something that should be flown and used in a VERY particular and careful manner. Right now, if I'm not mistaken, there are battleship turrets that can fire several times per second- And these are the ones pointed towards countering other capitals... Nah. Too much, y'all! So, to make things easier to read;

-Primary battleship turrets; These seem to be, for an anti-cap weapon, pretty damn powerful. They quickly turn into firestorms of doom (for the server), with a LOT of projectiles flying around and being, more or less, wasted, in the hands of a lesser pilot. My suggestion is to make their damage considerably higher, keep their range & projectile speed the same, but here's the caper- Make their refire rate much, much slower. I'm talking one shot every 4-5 seconds; A cannon this size should fire slowly, but be extremely powerful in terms of pawnch.

-Secondary turrets; Keep their function as is. Solaris, beams and such work fairly well as it is right now, for their job of countering smaller craft.

-Heavy stuff: Mortars, pulses, razors. Amazing stuff, there needs to be more of this used in capship battles. Hard hitting, slow to refire, hungry for energy. My only suggestion here would be to upgrade the mortar visuals- Right now, they're sort of underwhelming.

The idea behind these changes would be to make battleship combat much slower paced and tactic-oriented, reduce the load on the servers in large cap battles by cutting the projectile number in space by a great deal- Fiddling with the speed and range should also be up for discussion, and that's what the thread is for. And in the end, giving capitals a high skill threshold and giving them an 'elite', particular flystyle would reduce the amount of people that strive for one of these, simply because the concept is less interesting to 'those people' than something that basically is a flying machine of death and destruction.

Section 2: NPC balance

From my experience on the server, I've taken notice of a few things concerning capital ships. First of all, they seem to be a lot of players' wet dream, a sort of a 'top of the food chain' thing, and honestly- This should definitely be killed once and for all. I've noticed, in connection with the latter topic of NPC balance, that a player flying a battleship or dreadnaught, using a CAU8, is going to have VERY little trouble with popping up capfleets on his ass- Honestly, a battleship user, and a good one at that, will tear an NPC battleship into shreds, together with its cruiser and gunboat wing, with virtually no danger to his own self. This happens VERY rarely, as well; How often do you run into an NPC battleship while flying one of your own- And at that, having the run-into NPC hostile to you? Yeah, not too often.

On the other hand, those piloting cruisers, destroyers or gunboats- Hell, even transports at times, have to be extremely wary of many of these things. NPC cap spawns have far too much CDspam capabilities, but they do provide a certain tactical gimmick at times; Maybe not too fair or perfectly designed, but hey. Space is dangerous. So, on this topic;

-Remove the NPC's CD capabilities. Seriously. If you're flying a trader and have the bad luck of getting a gunboat spawn while flying relatively close to a hostile base, you will get shredded and locked down in place with little to no chance of actual escape, a topic that's been raised a lot of times. If you want to make things a bit more interesting, without nerfing them into the ground, leave CD's on those NPC's flying intercept role craft; Bombers, light fighters- The ones easy to shoot down and turn tail.

-Adjust the NPC capitals weapon stats. For something with an infinite powercore, NPC gunboats and higher have a very jolly time punching you repeatedly with full salvos, razors, pulses and forward guns if applicable without mercy or pause- This is a big problem for anyone flying a matching class, apart from battleships- Battleship pilots are in very little danger from NPC's at any point, but if you, in a transport, run across a hostile battleship or cruiser patrol? Say bye bye, you'll get torched in seconds without a chance to run away. At least nerf their ranges and refire rates, if anything. (Yes, I'm aware certain tricks exist, like spamming shield bats and praying the trick of thrusting away while noseturned to the NPC's under engine kill gets you far enough so you can turn and cruise, but that's honestly a glitch, and shouldn't be referred to as a proper escape tactic.)

People have suggested many things- Removing NPC's entirely being one of them, and the most extreme- Recently, I've read someone's rage thread about the concept of PVEing on Discovery- You may laugh, but you need to remember everyone plays the game for their own joys, and I don't think we should deny people this when the problems caused by said NPC's are removable by rebalances.

Section 3: The bolter

Alright, I come to my personal little thing. The Bolter turret, the one for transports... I love it. I absolutely adore the concept behind it. Oldschool slug mechanics? Hell yeah! Except... Not really. Anyone who's tried to use these turrets on anything smaller than, say, a Pilgrim, will have gone 'What the f**k is this?' and sold them in about 20 seconds post purchase, 10 of these seconds being the time used to undock and redock. HUGE model, ridiculous sound, ridiculous projectile.

-Change the turret's model. Give it a model of, say... The gunboat Solaris. You know, one of those asymmetrical ones with the little dish and gatling gun look. Would be absolutely perfect, the size would fit on most transports very smoothly, and it's a neutral coloured gun. Delicious.

-Change the turret's firing graphics and sounds. For example- The Kusari photon guns, the ones for the fighters? You know 'em. Their 'muzzle flash' looks very cool, even if the projectile doesn't, and their sound is pretty good. Dakka dakka dakka; It doesn't even require importing sounds from outside the mod. Use this sound, the muzzle flash, and give the projectile the appearance of, say, a Vengeance laser shot, recoloured a bright yellow. That would make the Bolter a real bolter, and it'd make it more used- Plus, make me a very happy camper.

That's it for the balance topics- I've decided there's one more thing to add in the whole wall of text I've thrown at you folks here, and here it is.

MD-7 Rail Cannon
Class 9 Heavy Turret (battleship)

Hull damage: 185,000 - 197,000
Shield damage: 3,000 - 5,000
Refire rate: Once a minute/40 seconds
Range: 7000 m
Projectile speed: 3500 m/s
Energy consumption: Forgive me, I have no clue about battleship power cores, so let's say... low.

The MD-7 Rail Cannon serves the purpose of a tactical battleship or, if you fancy the idea, cruiser weapon- A sort of sniper round, only usable at certain times, able to hit from very far away; The speed of the projectile would ensure that, inside 3.5k range, it's more or less a guaranteed hit, and at 7k, with a bit of skill, can be used as a support snipe for when the target's shields are down. The idea behind it is a large heavy metal slug, without an explosive payload, being launched at ridiculous speed by a system of extremely powerful electromagnets in a stream- Of course, the slow refire is based on, well, reloading the cannon with the massive slugs. Hence, the miniscule shield damage, but pretty serious hull breaching capability. The number range would vary from house to house, as do most of the weapons already. For terms of projectile size and visibility, I would suggest using a white or blue-ish teardrop shaped projectile with a trail left behind it- Something like the beam weapons we have already, with a slow fade once the weapon has been fired. Numbers are, of course, subject to discussion.

That's it from me for now- I hope whoever has read through this all hasn't gotten an aneurysm, and I do hope you will participate in discussing this as rational adults, with constructive criticism and with my lack of battleship knowledge in general taken into consideration. Have at it!

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Sucks to be a weight on the wrong side of the brilliance-insanity scale.