Liberty Navy [LN] Feedback Thread

[McNeo]

All of what you said is the extreme of the direction that we've taken, but I'm still not totally convinced by the reasoning. Plus, we don't go to the extremes like we could, perhaps by encouraging everyone of rank to get a gunboat decked out with full Zoner guns and encouraging their use in any situation. However, that we could makes people who think with a longer term view reconsider their actions. People have always required incentives or disincentives to encourage or discourage certain kinds of behaviour after all.

Firstly, the only odds that are helped by Zoner guns are the gunboat ones, the others aren't so great (yet I think a few asked for some fury 5's).

Cruisers can be deployed successfully if they are mixed with snub craft.

If the gunboat goes in a straight line while strafing to another point, the cruiser can't keep up. The successfulness of deploying capital ships against gunboats is very dependent on whether those gunboats choose to fight. If they do that straight line while strafing, the cruiser is out of options. At least, this has been my experience.

Also, a Liberty GB with your own turrets can still beat an Explorer on it's own.

The likelihood of this is very slim if the Explorer has Zoner GB guns.

Its skill dependent of course, but given good equal pilots, the favour would probably turn to the Explorer. And then, the straight line plus strafing works against Liberty Gunboats too, due to the firepower and armour difference.

Doesn't the LN have the same kind of edge with their Magma hammers, compared to all other unlawfuls in Liberty?
As far as I know, most people are just mixing 4 codenames and 2 mh's now. But even 6 mh's is an edge.
Also, didn't the Liberty Navy sell those guns to certain Mercenary groups for them to have the edge too?
Imagine the IMG having to fight against a 4 code + 3 mh sabre in the Taus. Now, imagine the IMG contacting you and asking those guns for themselves, or else they would remove your docking rights in Magellan. Of course, you don't need Freeport 4 as a docking point too much, but I'm just making a point.

I suppose we have as much an edge with the Magma Hammer as the Rogues do with the Sammael, or the Xenos with the Black Widow. As much as I can see your point about those factions needing to even their playing field, the effectiveness of these guns is very much dependent on the pilots, and not in the same way as gunboat guns. Those who can use a Sammael may not be able to use a Magma Hammer, and I would venture to say that the 4.00 refire of a Black Widow makes it quite popular as a kracken substitute.

The point I'm making there is that Zoner GB guns make a GB universally more effective. If you can use any gunboat primary (except the Nomad one), you don't need to change the way you fight. The edge with fighters in Liberty is based on whichever gun you know how to use best, whereas if you know one gunboat gun, you know them all. From a pragmatic point of view, it makes no sense to hold back when others do not.

Regarding your example of the IMG, the Liberty Navy is one of the very few factions that people have a hard time bossing into unfavourable positions. I have no problem with exploiting this position, as America does (or perhaps, used to), and it could probably be argued that not to do so would not be in keeping with traditional American, hence Libertonian, foreign policy. Should the IMG, or other faction not based in Liberty try that line with us, what we lose is relatively little to what they lose (which would probably be docking rights in all of Liberty, as LN NPCs make everyone else red too).

To be honest, I am pretty scared when I get jumped by the [LN] on my unlawful, and that is perfectly fine. I run. I always do. And that's the way it should be actually.
But when I see you doing the exact same thing as indie Explorers and Tridente's, it just ruins it all.

Ruins it all? You point out that you haven't seen a Liberty gunboat decked out with Zoner guns yet, and to be honest with you, neither have I. There is one, to my knowledge, and as I understand it, it's brought out to kill those Explorers and Tridentes, not so much to deal with those others who don't use them anyway. If anyone has seen this not to be the case, please correct me.

Well, it's based upon military system actually, which is different then the pirate one.
Your pilots are soldiers, they get a ship and weapons, they undock and do their job, in my head at least.
It's not -theirs-, it's -theirs to use-.
While pirates are actually owning the ships, at least 'indie ones', as far as I can see it.
And pirates actually do visit Zoner bases. They can win the ship with guns in a bar brawl for all I care.

But I'm pretty Nazi about this thing, back then when we were starting a LPI faction, I demanded from Zapp that we all use the same loadout.
And we did, in the first 6 months or so, then it all went downwards.
So, yes, I'd probably like you to have a 'uniform loadout', but I know that won't happen, and I understand that.
But using Zoner GB guns, or even Bretonian guns is just not right.

Absolutely, which is why all the tech measures we have in place have been executed in a top down manner. We cant really enforce a sense of the state owning these things though, as that's not the case in reality. A sense of suspended disbelief, like with most issues in FL, is required. There's that lovely line that I've seen a few times, "I pay my taxes like every other good citizen and I am [dissatisfied in some way]", to which the universal response has been "What taxes?".

Today, we are approaching (and to some extent already experiencing) the era of mass-customisation. The ideal you appear to hold to is comparable to a production line, where "you can have any car you like, as long as it's black" or "any loadout, as long as it's this". I very much doubt that it would be in anyone's best interest if everyone of a given rank in the armed forces got issued with exactly the same inflexible equipment. In fact, if I were left-handed, that would put me right off due to searing empty bullet cartridges flying in my face when ejected from the chamber. What I'm trying to say here is, the gun they use may be the same, but the way its configured is always tailored to the person who uses it.

I do not see the link between state ownership of their property inRP and what tech we can or cant use inRP. States sell each other arms, and as far as I know, it's for their respective armed forces to use. You could say that the Zoners aren't a state, and apparently they're not, but if they have the capacity to produce their own weapons, they must be pretty large. This is based on the fact that most smaller states these days purchase their weaponry rather than build their own due to the ridiculous costs involved. Either that, or far more likely, factions producing their own weapons was done for balance and variety reasons, which itself requires suspended disbelief.

Now, imagine some indie Rogues using Roc bombers to get an edge, because Barghest just dies too fast. You see them, and you think 'hm, why do we have to stick to our ****ty Upholders'.

Some already do this and have so for a long time, but it's not a problem on the same scale. In fact, nor is it of similar seriousness. There are rogues who fly with Sabres, and most Pirate IDd characters also have Sabres. In fact, since the Xenos naturally use the civilian line, what you describe is business as usual.

An Explorer with Zoner guns is significantly harder to kill than a Roc, or the other two. We got very tired of the amount of force we had to exert on a (good) GB pilot doing the flying-in-a-straight-line-strafing thing, since it was a daily occurrence (Joker plus assorted stuff), which numbered about five fighters if we wanted to take him down. Of course, you could say "lrn2pvp" but I'd like to see you try against those skilled gunboat pilots.

That veered off course a little. Your comparison with the Roc is different than this situation for the reasons I already mentioned.

We tend to view tech as more a "what do we not have in a given class" than a "what do our enemies have that's better?" It's been my aim, for a very long time, to get some kind of in-between for people who do not like to use 2.00 or 8.33 weapons, for example. This is where the sunrails came from, and to some extent why we also have access to Fury's. This is also where the few challengers we had came from, as we had a light bomber but lacked one with serious power to use against capital ships. We look at bridging gaps in our arsenal rather than giving our pilots the edge in only a few particular scenarios. Perhaps this is just my ideology.

1 -couldn't deploy cruisers, battlecruisers or battleships, as they are easy to outrun in a gunboat. Only a handful of times has the Maryland been deployed successfully against gunboats, one such time being Joe firing two battlerazors into the hull of one who was cruising away.
2 -couldn't deploy a single gunboat against one of these, as ours would lose without a doubt. This is due to the firepower discrepancy.
3 -found it difficult to support a single gunboat with a bomber or two due to accusations of ganking.
4 -found it difficult to swarm with fighters and bombers due to the tendency of these gunboats to sunsurf. Of course, the sun kills fighters and bombers far more easily than a cap 8 heavy gunboat.

In the case of the Roc, it can be beaten by fighters, which can also keep up with it. There is a solution as point four no longer exists (unless Rocs can sunsurf <_<), which means we just apply fighters to the solution, just one or two.

The manpower required to take down an Explorer is far higher, and a pain to get on every day. The situation was to some extent already a detriment to fun, in the same way that logging on as a Corsair every day to deal with seven Outcast Dreadnoughts was. It was monotonous and boring, so we decided to change it.