To continue the Solaris discussion

[Jinx]

it is hard to balance such weapons as the solaris - cause the main factor to assess such a weapon is a statistical unknown.

the one factor that would be needed is the actual "to hit" chance of a ship vs. a target of the speed and numbleness of a bomber.

comparing stats is rather pointless for that matter. - and all attempts to balance the weapon is based on pure ingame experience ( which we all know differs not only from person to person, but also from emotions and situations )

of course all weapons balance is based on balance, but some are simply easier than others.

in the last thread someone compared the "damage per second" of both weapons and then stated that only one SNAC may be mounted on a bomber and up to 17 solaris can be mounted on a battleship. - only he forgot to factor that the chance for a bomber to hit a battleship is a lot greater than the chance for a battleship to hit the bomber - which then balances those weapons again.

what he also forgot was the game mechanics - which means that you can inflict like 9.000.000 damage to a bombers shields in one salvo - and it only drains the shield, no matter how great the shield is. ( and that the game doesn t really recognize hits below a specific timespan. - so if another shot hit the bomber like 0.2 seconds AFTER the shield was drained, this shot was still not damaging the hull - the game simply isn t that accurate )

and thats the main problem. - we do not know those very important factors to balance the weapons - thats why all of disco is a permanent "beta test" - and things are rebalanced all the time.



currently ( or some time ago ) we had a weapons discussion on the dev board, too. - playing around with new weapons roles, stats etc. but its simply too hard to think of something balanced when the most various ship sizes are involved - along with turret mount numbers from 8 to 18.


and lastly - feeling and emotions play a much greater role in the perceived balance than stats.

we can agree that a full solaris zoner juggernaut is quite a crappy ship. - but a bomber that was just totally owned by one in a matter of a second will still feel "unfairly treated" - and will rant against a full solaris battleship... simply cause its always easier to find unbalancing factors about the "others" than to search for what oneself might have done better.
on the same page - the battleship that cut cruise and was blown up by a swarm of bombers will ask for a rebalance, too. - meanwhile i might ask - "why didn t you cut cruise 8k before - picked your place better - and moved into the brawl on impulse ... with enough energy to open fire ( and having more time to RP ) "



the current solaris turret has flaws that we are all aware of. - the current bomber SN causes problems that we are also aware of. - but for now ... we might consider it the necessary evil. - those that are working on the balance of weapons are quite aware of most of these things - and are also trying to be as objective as possible.

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