Is it time to nerf cruise disruptors?

[Wesker]

Just because everyone's already used to it doesn't mean it's good for game balance. Cruise disruptors are an extremely versatile tool -- far more so than most other kinds of equipment. Tenacity has a point.

Except that you're not considering that CDs as they are are a reason why many types of ordinance are balanced, because they can be stopped.

Every other kind of equipment in the game has, generally speaking, one or two uses:

• Guns and turrets deal steady, reliable damage, and even come in specific varieties to deal different kinds of damage. Most ships have slots for several of these. Other than pulse weapons dealing powerplant damage, they don't really have any extra uses.
  
• Torpedoes deal large bursts of damage at the expense of energy and sometimes ammunition. Highly useful in piracy or a cap fight. Limitations on ammo (or the expense of the ammo) or high energy costs limit their usage. Spam them, and you waste your own resources. They don't have much use in a furball (unless you're using a suicide tactic in an asteroid field). They're tailored to specific uses.
  
• Countermeasures are solely for attracting ordnance, unfriendly or otherwise. Nothing else you can do with them.
  
• Capship razors are for high-powered sniping shots. Not useful for a steady stream of fire, difficult to hit some ships with, but well worth it if you can reliably land hits, especially against ships smaller than your own.
  
• Mortars are for high-powered sieging. Also not useful for steady streams of fire, but great for going after ships bigger than you.
  

CDs have always been the defense against ordinance as well as a stopping tool since the beginning of FREELANCER ITSELF. It is the only multipurpose weapon in this game and does not COMPLETELY rule out the use of other missiles or equipment amongst fighters and bombers in every situation.

I imagine you get the idea. The cruise disruptor? It's too useful. Generally speaking, unless you're flying a bomber that's not for piracy, or flying with an ID that only lets you engage in self-defense, it makes sense to have one. Stop a transport or a fleeing ship. Detonate mines, missiles, and torpedoes. Cancel somebody's engine kill. Disrupt cloak charging.

Yes, and this is in place to balance out the abuse of the aforementioned types of equipment that would otherwise rupture balance if the current aspects of CDs were removed completely. If CDs couldn't stop cloaks, JDs, than what would stop people from avoiding interaction? What would stop people from avoiding you in all cases, mounting a cloak disruptor? Yea as if someone would gamble their CM slot for that, nevermind how much money it costs to get a cloak disruptor on top of the ammo for it. New players would struggle to keep up in basic interactions on discovery. If Jumpdrives were allowed to thrive with no regulation we'd see even more obnoxious instances of avoiding interactions in general or just fleeing from fights to deny bluemessages - attitude that is already very prominent among several members of this community including some in this thread.

Most people in particular use the Train cruise disruptor, since it'll stop pretty much anything reliably. We have the Mosquito which claims to be better suited for popping ordnance, but it hardly matters when the TCD can do it just as well and stop transports with wide-apart engines.

Actually it does, there is a very very large distinction between the effectiveness of trains vs mosquitos depending on what situation you are diving into and what class you are running. The most effective CD for fighters has been and always should be mosqs. They have less range, but more ammo, and a very very noticeable difference in turn rate which effects the ability to stop mines and missiles. If you are running a fighter, the mosq is always the prime pick, even in some cases as a bomber where you need to defend yourself against snubs - the mosq is the prime pick.

Trains are better suited for stopping the enemy, they can be used against capital-ship torpedoes but do not always guarantee that you destroy the missile. They are also less effective at stopping mines and or snubs in combat due to their lack of turn rate in comparison to the mosquito. Though they have more range, they have less ammunition.

The superiority of the CD is detrimental to distinguishing ship roles from each other. So many loadouts have a very do-it-all quality to them, especially the ones that include a CD, since it gives them all the abilities outlined by Tenacity. Given how much effort the devs have put into the game to make ship classes and the roles of those classes more distinct (different cruise speeds, different weapons for bombers and fighters, different slot types for capital ships), it's contradictory to the mod's logic to let the CD be such a powerful trump card.

Either breaking these different functions out across multiple types of disruptor properly (so that there aren't so many redundant pieces of equipment) or reducing CD ammo capacity to something like 25 would be fine fixes in my eyes.

Discovery Freelancer is the best at ensuring the effectiveness of all types of equipment and loadouts among its classes in comparison to any other FL mod I've seen. CDs do not rupture ship roles or undermine certain types of ordinance completely - they regulate them so there is not a 100% guarantee for their effectiveness everytime. The amount of CDs right allows someone to be well suited for different situations as they move out to interact with other people - often times alone. CDs burn pretty quickly when combat arises, especially if you're stopping multiple targets, nevermind if you get into a fight with someone who is ammo-happy.

25 is ridiculous, mosqs were lowered to 60 and everyone quickly saw the flaw in the change. Why was the change done? Because of 1 person in power getting upset they lost once in a brawl, the fault was not on CDs - but their faulty flying style.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

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