@Virus: thats an honest statement. and to me it explains why there is a need not to restrict the equipment too much. its rather sad that there is some sort of "required" equipment at all. Allthough you could probably go with the civilian shieldbusters aswell, not as good as the pirate ones, but still good enough, - you re supposed to outnumber the pirates - yea, i know .. wishful thinking... .
Anyway, i m rather referring to the more rediculous equipments anyway. Like explained at the start, i m rather more concerned about the special faction ships, like nomad battleships using the special equipment.
currently Jinx uses a zoner juggernaut as a floating home in delta ( yes, i am one of those independant capship owners that got a battleship and it not thinking about joining a faction - ... but there s been enough yelling at ppl like me "capship whoring" ) - now the powersupply is 7.000.000 - that allows shooting 2 heavy mortars for quite a good impact at the target ( 300.000 dam ) - thats like 15% of a nomad battleships armor, so its not too bad.
the time it takes to regenerate that energy ( roughly 80% of the juggernauts energy ) is too long to allow one more salvo of heavy mortars. so its basicly only 2 mortar shots / fight - unless you want to cool down. - all in all the total damage to time is better dealt with either nomad turrets ( i m still not sure if they are out or roleplay, or dealt with like nomad cannons on fighters, sort of common to equip )
But there are those nomad ships that can fire heavy mortars as a main weapon in a rapid chainfire mode. ( or was it only that felhunter guy ) - i saw him chainfire 5 heavy mortars at least 5 or 6 salvos. now i think the inforsheet of the nomad battleship says... 7.000.000, too? - but somehow he was able to shoot those mortars like it was a justice mk1.
if a ship allows a "superweapon" to be fired in chainmode, there must be some limit about it. or a GREAT deal of responsibility - but since its a nomad battleship, i would expect it to either shoot every human being on sight or else have a strange and good reason not to.
i just referred to the hacker felhunter, but after he was banned i had that other nomad battleship on track with 5 heavy mortars aswell. and i really don t know why ANYONE would mount 5 heavy mortars if it wasn t able to fire them all at once.
so in the end, i don t really mind the corsair that mounts lets say 4 infernos to act as a shieldbreaker in a major battle. its out of roleplay - but its OK, he ll have to wait for a long time to recharge; or the outcast that has nothing but mortars and heavy hull breakers.
those ships are balanced. they have a limited power supply and the heavy superweapons are sort of in line with that.
but the special ships like the nomad ships are unbalanced. felhunter shot down, i think it was [aw] odyssee in a matter or seconds ( he has an outcast dreadnaught ). i undocked at that time, so maybe i didn t see the full fight, but anyway, i think the dreadnaught was destroyed waaay too quickly ( no wonder if there are 5 heavy mortars chainfiring )
well, allright i think i made my point with that whining post. it should be clear that the only problem i REALLY have with equipment is when its equipped on the rather unbalanced ships. ( and no, thats not a "remove nomads" post. - maybe remove them from zoner bases though and put them anywhere else, hate to be associated with folk selling nomad stuff - i d rather see fighters being sold by the order, aren t they the guys that put all their effords into studying and fighting them? )