Discovery 5.1 Dev Diary #3 - More System Changes & Other Things

[Dark Chocolate]

• All cruisers will receive components, similar to battlecruisers.
  
• Cruiser heavy turrets have been divided into forward-only guns (bow chasers) and backwards-only guns (stern chasers). They can both shoot broadside with a slightly overlapping arc.
  
• Bow chasers are faster, less efficient, with more range. Stern chasers are more efficient and pack a higher punch.
  
• Prims remain 360 guns, same as now. Pulses as well.
  
• Cruiser shields have been reworked. They have lower capacity and larger regen, while draining powercore if damaged. You can turn off the shield regen (and core draw) with a new "/shields" command, which you can keybind.
  
• Higher DPS across the board. Stronger cores.
  
• Lower range on all guns, to keep cruisers in check for the core/dps buffs and propel their in-your-face playstyle.
  

How does this work out in practice? On paper you'll want to shoot the opposing cruiser with your stern chasers as much as possible, as they are the most efficient. You will also want to shoot the opponent's components as much as possible. In practice this is not easy due to both ships' movement making components harder to hit as well as the speed of stern chasers being lower than bow chasers, which are less efficient but will hit the target easier. Both hitting components consistently and hitting the opponent with the stern chasers will be a challenge, as the opponent will try to do the same to you, engaging in a tactical battle on top of existing mechanics such as core, range and arc management.

When you say "In your Face" Play Style + Use Stern Cannons as much as possible,
This is what I can imagine.



Basically thrust towards the enemy and then turn immediately to use the rear cannon.

Why are you guys so obsessed with the high efficiency rear guns like the BC ones.

Also with what thought would Cruisers be engineered by people in space to have their most efficient guns on the rear which are supposed to be fired by such complicated maneuver.
Wouldn't they want their most efficient firepower to be facing forwards?

Also This is like the third rework on cruisers, I'm not sure if we need it at this point..
Adding the Component systems to cruisers would have been good enough. All Capital ships should have it.
I have mixed feelings about the Shield Enable/Disable thing. It sounds unnecessarily convoluted but kinda make sense as Warships require to "redistribute" power to have different ships systems working efficiently. But then again, If we are adding it to cruisers then every other ship class atleast Capital ships should also receive this change.
And I don't like the idea of most efficient gun on the rear, coz It doesn't seem to make sense why Cruisers would be built this way, plus it appears way too familiar to battlecruisers.