Discovery 4.90.1 Patch 3 Balance Changes

[Antonio]

The idea of the change is fine, the Odin was too good in far too many things without enough disadvantages, but I think you've missed the mark of what it should be getting reductions in, which is certainly not turn-rate. The Odin is a visibly sleek ship and as such should have its hull cut down to perhaps the Falchion's amount, or honestly within the range of 10,900 and 11,000, and see its core reduced to 1160 recharge, that way, it's forced to be played with the same niche that it's always had. Sliding.

It's very absurd to see an agile looking ship being slower than some 7 gun VHFs with more core and armour, though the argument of shape can be used, I think shape becomes less of a factor if your opponent has an easier time working his way around you because you physically cannot play the ship the way it was designed to be used. As it currently is, it has to be flown like the Sabre, though it actually can't be flown like the sabre because it's somewhat slower and lacks the 7th gun.

I fail to see how making heavier 7 gun VHFs faster and making lighter 6 gun VHFs slower does. That just defies the logic behind their roles. Especially if we reflect on the Nepthys which has been historically comparable to the Avenger but with a 7th gun.

This isn't a rant about "oh noes, Odin trash now, Lich and Sabre OP." It's a logical explanation that highlights an oversight in the rebalance, while highlighting other areas of the ship where tuning would make more sense. More fragility to match its appearance and less of a core recharge rate make sense when the ship and all the lore behind it are taken into consideration, it's a ship built with a keen focus on high engine performance.

Let's clear up some misconceptions first. Defining an "agile looking ship" is a subjective and highly variable. Something that "looks like it's agile" to one player probably won't look so to the majority, and there's always going to be a bunch of people saying the opposite. We try to stay away from subjective measurements and therefore don't balance a ship's turn rate based on what we "feel how agile it looks".

Instead, we look at each ship individually and what role the ship needs to fill relative to primarily its size, shape, and then purpose, area, opponents it fights, etc. It's the same for all classes and I'll give you examples to demonstrate. Bergelmir is the smallest bomber in the game. It's also the slowest light bomber and one of the slowest bombers in general with terrible responsiveness. Why? Because instead of saying "it's small so it makes sense it's fast" and making it overpowered we do what it requires for the ship to be balanced. It goes against logic because yeah, a smaller ship should be faster, but if the ship would be too good or too bad with that in mind, balancing a ship comes before that.

Similarly, we have a Corsair cruiser as the biggest cruiser in the game being one of the faster ones. Why? Because when it had the worst turn rate -while- being as big as it is, it was garbage. We buffed the turn rate to make it viable in spite of the logic of bigger=slower. If we applied that logic to every ship in the game many of them'd become overpowered/underpowered, it's necessary to keep the game balanced. There are other examples such as Libdread being the slowest BS, Chimaera being the slowest HF (slower than some VHFs), etc. Bottom line is, we balance a ship individually based on what we need to do to make it balanced. If it requires a big ship to be fast, so be it. And so we come to VHFs which I didn't want to mention before.

Why are 7 gun big VHFs like Nephthys, Lhotse, Courbe, Arbeiter getting/already have high turn rates on top of the extra gun? Because we have to look at their role within VHFs and advantages/disadvantages compared to other ships. Let's take a bunch of them like Guardian, Odin, Wraith and Stellion. Comparing the first group with the second one, what're the differences you can immediately spot? First one is that all 4 former ships are bigger. Say we give all of them low turn rates by following the logic "big=slow". Because they are bigger, they're easier to hit. Because they're easier to hit, they're worse in duels and noticeably worse in groupfights. In order to compensate that, they need some tankiness. They get it, but we look at it again and they're still lacking the turn rate compared to a smaller ship. The smaller ship will outperform it in every scenario that isn't mindless jousting because it's faster -and- smaller.

Then they get an extra gun. But they're still too slow because they're big and can't utilize the 7th gun for duels, while in groupfights 6 guns already drain your core so the extra gun is felt much less and the size problem remains. So they need extra turn rate in order to utilize the 7th gun -and- be better at something than the 4 latter ships who're smaller. They become more suitable for duels but they're still worse in groupfights because size and shape define 90% of a ship's capability to dodge unless we drastically change a stat (Bergelmir).

What's the end result? The first and the second group both have some advantages/disadvantages rather than making them flat out worse. As Traxit mentioned, people often overlook size because it's not instantly evident when you're reading stats on paper, so it seems that a ship with 68.75 turn rate, 7 guns, 14k armor and 15k core is super strong, while in reality it dies very quickly in a groupfight. To summarize, big 7 gunners are made for dueling because size is such a big disadvantage in a groupfight that we'd have to drastically change a stat like responsiveness to make them as good as smaller ships. Instead, we take the less resisting approach and make them better duelists. Don't get me wrong, big ships can still groupfight and small ships can duel, at the end of the day it's all about skill as snubs have the highest skill ceiling and gap of all classes.

As for why did we nerf the turn rate and not something else? Mostly because Wraith got its turn rate nerfed as well. Odin was strong all-round and we could've picked any stat to nerf. We chose turn rate. Complaining why we chose A and not B sounds like nitpicking. As for the Lich and Sabre comparison, Odin still has: about the same armor and B/B, much better core than the Sabre (2 levels above) and a bit better core than the Lich (1 level above), 1 less gun, better size, arguably the same shape (some people have no problem shooting a sabre while some hate it because of the holes) and a bit less responsiveness.

The main thing here is size and core. Odin will be worse in a duel, but it's -supposed to be- because it's better in a groupfight. Core and size mean much more in the latter while turn rate and guns mean more in the former. That's a perfect example of advantage/disadvantage scenario. Also, if we make Odin good at duels and nerf the groupfights, Hessians end up with 2 ships that fulfill the same role because they're both made for dueling more than groupfights. By doing that we remove variety and flexibility for Hessians. If you're looking to duel people, fly the Sabre. Otherwise, fly the Odin. At the end of the day both ships can do both, but we made small differences to emphasize the advantage/disadvantage scenario.

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