Merge transports' nanobots into hull

[Antonio]

My short thoughts - last paragraph of this thread. I support the idea given by Snak3.

It would not be hard to write a plugin that cleanses ships of nanobots if they can't have nanobots.

That'd be very helpful.

Its still confusing and counter-intuitive to have 300 nano capacity that you're not allowed to use, even if some flhook gimmik makes it impossible to use them. Insta-kill snak has been an issue for much longer than this, and a simple fix was and is is to reduce snac damage and increase refire rate. I'm pretty sure it would have been done if peeps-in-charge wouldnt enjoy insta-killing unsuspecting noobs so much.

(or replace nova torp with snac, problem is the same)

Please. You couldn't contradict yourself more with the first and the last sentence. First things first, you wouldn't have 300 nanobots you're "not allowed to use" because the nanobot cap would be 0 and you wouldn't have any on your ship, so there are no 300 magically popping out of nowhere to repair your ship. If you mean the beginning of transition when the ships get their hull changed but keep the nanobots until they die or dock, I doubt it'd be an issue. Battleships and battlecruisers received the same treatment, and keeping nanobots on them has an incomparably higher impact on fights. Seeing as their transition went smoothly and those who decided to abuse this exploit mostly got their ships deleted, there's little to worry about.

SNAC only instakills people who don't have an AU8, and frankly those ships deserve to die. The risk of not having an armor upgrade is high chance of getting instakiled, it's as simple as that. If you ask most armorless transports why they didn't buy an armor upgrade, they'll say it's because it takes up cargo space. They know they'd like to have one, but they don't want to lose profit on it. The problem is obviously that an AU8 takes up only 25 cargo space so if it saves you once in 200 trips on a 5ker it's worth the purchase. A new player doesn't see this and just looks at max profit, immediately. They accept that risk and are aware of it, but decide to roll with it anyways.

Second, if you reduced SNAC damage and increased refire rate to appeal to transports you mess with balance of all classes. As a weapon that interacts with everything to an extent, changing it to shoot more often with less damage and energy would give more instakill opprtunities against snubs. We don't need more, we need less opportunities given to bombers to SNAC a snub. It'd also mean that the "peeps-in-charge who enjoy insta-killing unsuspecting noobs" (I'll assume this is directed at me) get to do it more often, which contradicts your whole point. It'd also be a nerf against caps because having to shoot it more often means you're exposed to danger more often. And finally, changing such a high impact weapon when looking at interactions between classes to appeal for transports of all classes is ridiculous.

Edit: Pirate transports would benefit from this because the ratio of getting instakilled/instakilling someone right now is higher than 1. That means this change would be a buff because it reduces that gap to exactly 1. They're still transports at the end of the day, and they'll rarely instakill other transports or any ship in general (a very bad snub that forgot to use regens and got hit so often by charons). You'll suffer from not being able to refill on NPCs for instance, but it's such a minor and negligible thing.

Also, we'd be crazy to balance based on armorless transports. Balancing on subomtimal loadouts or tacits is a recipe for disaster. If I took my fighter, mindlessly jousted a bomber and got instakilled and then proceeded to complain how fighters are garbage and need a buff, or if I take cruiser solarises, duel another cruiser, lose and complain how solarises are bad and need a buff, where'd balance be? Ships and equipment have a purpose, they have things they're good against and bad against. Not having an armor upgrade on your ship makes you worse against everything, and appealing to someone without an armor would only result in those -with- an armor benefiting the most.

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