Balance

[Nadir]

Nadir, you say your not encouraging people to come after you in BSs, but thats exactly what the KNF is doing. Every time fighters show up you don't go hop in your own to duel. More than half your members traded in their only fighters for gunboats, and then put as many missiles on them as could be. True, your changing your ships to deal with what you face more often, but when you go to the extent where your using ships and equipment that DO need balanced (Miner with GB weaps in Honshu anyone?) than thats what is making people mad. Misfit is using 5 missile turrets and simply spamming fighters non stop 'just because he can.'

So, fix the game, don't expect us to work around the problems! Missiles will be fixed soon anyway. Who am I to order players to 'play fair'. Want to me ask them not to shoot, or maybe play only using the mouse? Feet only?

This isn't about losing, but about people abusing things that need balanced. You know when the Viper became near-invincible, people started using it because they KNEW it was half-impossible to kill without spamming torpedoes. Then there were the other players who (some even had the ship) refused to fly them until the version came out to fix them. These players were not mad about losing. They were made that a bunch of noobs just went out and grabbed the best and buggiest fighter they could because they knew they would win almost any fight against another fighter.

It's not about loosing, not about winning either, it's about me making decisions for people. This topic was about the philosophy of how to approach rule making. It has nothing to do with the very temporary glitch in the Matrix, as it were.

If there's a bug in a game, get the bug fixed, don't complain about the people using the bug. That's a philosophy. I hope I've defended it and repeating my arguments is a waste of everyone's time. I've even said I don't care if that philosophy causes people to quit (foolish them) - my standpoint seems so self-evident to me that people quitting (have patience for goodness sake!) would have an overall beneficial effect: more bugs and balance issues would be fixed because their existence would be brought to light quicker and more forcefully.

Edit: BEFORE someone jumps down my throat, I'm not advocating people quitting, that's just an extreme example to demonstrate a theoretical point. If you find yourself unable to play because of balance issues, I suggest talking to Igiss to get his take on the balance situation or at least posting something in the Balance sub-forum.

Thats the problem with spamming with 5 missile turrets. You don't want to encourage them from bringing battleships, but spamming missiles IS going to do that. I planned to make a Blood Dragon fighter so I wouldn't always have to use my cruiser, except against cruisers. Now I HAVE to use that cruiser whenever I enter Kusari because all I expect is being spammed. Its ruining the game for everyone. Adjusting your loadout to your enemy is one thing, using an unbalanced one just so you can win is something completely different. It IS unfair and it should be fixed. Not because it beats other loadouts, but because it shouldn't be able to kill a fighter in 5 seconds, gunboat or not. True, a cruiser can hurt the GB more now without getting as much damage, but what cruiser can effectively hit a GB in the first place? My Talarca is a light cruiser, meaning less armor and more agility, and I still have a hard time. If the GB is attacked by a larger ship it can just cut and run until enemy is out of CDs.

Are you saying we're the only ones doing it? Look around! And don't enter Kusari space if it's a problem. Wait for the next beta.

This is an uber-loadout used by those interested in just winning, as is the missile spamming 'tactic' and needs to be balanced with everything else in the game. Its still going to be a very effective fighter killer loadout, but it should NOT be this good. Thats all there is to it, and you can either accept it or deny it, its your opinion, but what is a fact is it IS unfair to anyone in a fighter. True, upon seeing a GB a fighter should run or get some backup, but with this missile spamming loadout a fighter is dead upon sight.

Read my first post again. Balancing the game with an excess of nonsensical rules is what I'm against. I sympathise with being blasted out of space upon appearance.

If this continues unbalanced (which it won't) fighters, the thing FL was made to use, will be useless and never touched. You'll see capships, capships, and more capships. Then GBs will die off as their are no fighters to use. Then it will either be tons of BSs or BSs and cruisers. Maybe with fighters coming back.

The fact is we don't want cycles, we want everything to be used equally and for everything to be able to survive a fight fairly. Already I've seen the numbers of fighters reduced in such a way its sad because all SF, SA, or KNF does is missile spam. I have a great respect for RM because of the way they fight and not use unbalanced or out-of-RP equipment. The fact that they do not go out in tons of RH GBs and missile spams earns them a great deal of my respect. They have more fighters than anything else, unique among the player house factions. They are not interested in winning so much as they are in having fun and the other players having fun. SA, SF, KNF, you three factions are only interested in winning (or in SA's case, making sure they 'appear' to win no matter the cost, as is obvious from their 'buggy' battle reports.) and that fact becomes evident in the ships your use and/or the equipment and tactics. You aren't interested in other people's fun, but only your own, and more importantly (for you), winning.

Winning or loosing a battle is irrelevant. I'm looking at the long term as a faction head - unless they're going to do some serious role-play and develop their characters based on wins and losses, which noone really done, which is fine, the outcomes of battles always result in status-quo for the players. Sometimes people with capital ships have a lot in the way of repair and replacement costs, but we've seen more and more people run and F1. Making rules against this is different to making rules against unfair loadouts and cap ship usage because the former is addressing a permanent game 'bug' while the latter is addressing balance abstracts.

Misfit in a destroyer? You sure? He hasn't cleared that with anyone not posted the information that he's flying one...

One more point.... I would hope, as a result of this and other debates most FL Disco people are now aware of the problems with missile turrets and the problem of excessive use of capital ships is being aired with more vigour. The solution for the first problem is being addressed and maybe the solution to the second problem will be too. That would be a good result.

EDIT: can't get quotes to work, nevermind

Well, I only have a destroyer and a gunboat in this server, and the rest are fighters. Im avoiding most pvp encounters right now, if not all of them. My fighters are going to shoot only at npcs, no pvp situation anymore, except for clan battles. In BK I had used battleships but I think they suck, so I dont plan to have one in disco. My trader is making money more to buy a collection of fighters, but it will comes to be that I will only be shooting at npcs, as people only want battleships.

I, for one, think cap ships should all have vulnerabilities that individual fighters can exploit. Maybe not to the point of taking a cruiser down but certainly to inconveniencing it substantially. I don't agree that it should take 2 or 3 fighters to pose a challenge to one. And at the moment, 2 or 3 fighters don't. This is a game balance issue and as such should be a topic explored in the game balance sub-forum. I encourage everyone to put something in there about this problem.

I'm not going to comment on the armament thing, both my 'missle ships' had missles back when they sucked, and will continue to have missles once they've been changed. I'll refrain from using them for now, and won't be putting missle turrets on my other ships.

This is one of the reasons I believe making rules to fix balance problems is wrong. There are always special cases, always other points of view. Rules just invalidate people's freedom. If there's a problem, fix the problem, don't rule it out of bounds.

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ex