I have another balance issue, I assume well known but it struck me in a discussion yesterday:
My basic assumption for my thoughts is:
No one-man activity in a multi-player game should have a chance of 100 % success.
The cloaky, high-CAU Pirate Transport has exactly that. Close to 100 % success rate. 0 % chance for the defending party to fend it off in time, 0 % death risk for the PTrans. I would say it is the most unbalanced ship in the entire mod, even worse than Gunboats.
Why?
A PT has enough cargo to come in undetected. The cloaking time is enough to enter an interaction cloaked.
=> no chance to run on early detection
A PT has the power to win against every other transport in a 1on1
=> no chance for the victim in a fight
A PT has the chance to cloak when he sees that he is facing an enemy he cannot beat
=> no chance for the players who did the right thing (had escort, called backup, teamed up, etc) to win
A PT will likely kill the soft target, then cloak and run off before anybody can do anything
=> no chance even for "revenge". Defenders, escorts etc can just watch the ship die as a PT is too sturdy to die even to big guns. The PTrans just goes "Ok, I kill you and then run" and then hugs the soft target until it blows up. Then cloaks. End of scene and insert random taunting.
I hunted cloaky Ptrans in every ship up to Cruisers. Not even a Cruiser can kill it before it is gone. I managed once in I bet ~40 chases to down one by blowing off the thruster and novaing the ship blindly afterwards. 1 time out of ~40 engagements of bomber vs. Ptrans.
I don't know how to balance it, but I generally dislike the "unlawful bias". PT has great hull, great guns, CD and good maneuverability and cloak and enough cargo to make it work brilliantly. Compare it to other transports of the same size.
The cloaky Ptrans has become the most annoying troll ship ever. With nearly 100 % escape chance, 100 % win chance against a solo transport, 0 % chance of escorts killing it in time, and thus hardly any chance of failing, it is the most annoying opponent that one can have.
Solo activity should in my opinion have a failure quota of 50 %. Not 0 %. Failure should mean pvp death, as it does for nearly all other classes that fail their mission. Not for the Ptrans. It buys dirt-cheap fuel and is back in less than 3 minutes to <strike>troll on</strike> continue interaction.
The cloaky pirate transports needs a lot of balancing against its natural enemies: escorts and transports. Cloaks tilted the scales horribly in the direction of the unlawful transport, making the "unlawful bias" advantage bigger than ever.
Same goes for the fighter/bomber cloaks that are just too weak. Less than 20 seconds cloak time on a UAU8 Roc and 30 seconds on a UAU5 is not enough. It reduces the coak to a "run away" tool, and deprives it of any other use.
I'd suggest a cloak time of 2 minutes for fighters/bombers.
