Logical balance

[sovereign]

Every ship is a pile of crap by itself.

Let me say that again for emphases:
Every ship, by itself, is almost useless.

Yes, 3 bombers can slaughter a battleship. That's three players to your one, I don't see why they shouldn't kick your ass. 3 battleships to one bomber and that bomber is fried. Don't you dare tell me the bomber can run but the battleship can't, I'm no novice bomber pilot and I've chased a battleship for 120k without it dodging or cruising. 2 bombers and a fighter with MR vs one battleship, battleship flies out 60k and back and then docks. You can get away, you just need to swallow your ego and run rather than trying to kill them all. (And if you're farther than 100k from a base you can dock on, you have no right to whine about being unable to run.) You'd call one bomber trying to kill 3 battleships an idiot, wouldn't you? Same deal.

One fighter, by itself, can do three things with a good chance of success:

• Duel another fighter
  
• Duel a bomber
  
• Stay alive by dodging or running
  

One bomber, by itself, can do three things with a good chance of success:

• Duel another bomber
  
• Duel a transport
  
• Stay alive by dodging or running
  

One transport, by itself, can do three things with a good chance of success:

• Duel another transport
  
• Make money
  
• Stay alive by paying off an attacker or running through a star corona
  

One gunboat, by itself, can do four things with a good chance of success:

• Duel another gunboat
  
• Duel a fighter
  
• Duel a bomber
  
• Stay alive by dodging while running, using its shield to absorb small fire
  

One cruiser, by itself, can do three things with a good chance of success:

• Duel another cruiser
  
• Duel a gunboat
  
• Stay alive by running, dodging heavy rounds and using its hull strength to absorb small fire
  

I really hope you're starting to notice a pattern here.

One battleship, by itself, can do three things with a good chance of success:

• Duel another battleship
  
• Duel a cruiser
  
• Stay alive while running, using its enormous hull strength like a sponge
  

Take a good, hard look at that. One ship can, at best, take on one other ship with a reasonable chance of success. Yes, Terrance can take a fighter into 4 fighters and kill them all, but with comparable skill levels, one ship can take on one ship. Nothing takes on three of anything and defeats them through strength of arms.

So, no, one battleship should not be balanced to have a 50/50 chance to kill 3 bombers. You'd cry foul if 1 bomber was balanced to kill 3 battleships, wouldn't you? It's the same thing. One player should not be able to kill three players in a "fair" fight. Hell, one battleship versus three opponents has a vastly greater chance of killing at least one of them than any other ship does. You put one fighter versus three gunboats, do you really expect the fighter to kill a gunboat before going down? Hell no!

By this point I hope to have made my point clear to all rational people who perhaps had not thought about this in a broad enough scope. For the rest of you who want the ability of a player to contribute to combat to be based on the size of their <strike>epeen</strike> ship (that would be those of you who want capships to be able to take on 3 ships at once and win), go play any space game that isn't Freelancer. Or masturbate to the thought of your pixels being better than someone else's pixels, either way you're not wasting my time with your endless whining.



Oh, and Lunaphase: remember this thread? You asked for turret classes to be split, they're getting split. Whining about something you've already been given is the tool of drama queens, and as a battleship captain I'd like to ask you to shut up before Mjolnir decides that it's not worth it to split turret classes because it won't stop you from crying about fictional oppression and bias.

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[Lucas_Fernandez]

I've always pushed for bombers to be bigger (huge, even), and slower and heavier and basically like RL bombers -- slow and totally vulnerable by themselves but devastating if successful.

What you are talking about is a strategy bomber. in RL a fighter in the airforce can destroy large ground or airtargets, and even take down smaller fighters.

I have 3 Batleships. 2 of them are in my possesion since 4.84. But I was already satisfied with them in that version

[mjolnir]

I've always pushed for bombers to be bigger (huge, even), and slower and heavier and basically like RL bombers -- slow and totally vulnerable by themselves but devastating if successful.

So bombers, IMO, should be GB-sized vessels with broad spans but thinner in general. Think the US's B2.

1. It's a bit boring to fly such a ship.

2. A lot of capships in discovery can dodge fairly well, notably just about all cruisers, so there are limits on how big and slow bombers can be. You can't compensate with shields/armor cause then you again get issues with fighters taking them down. If you compensate with huge firepower (firing 2 sns at once anyone?), you get a ship that comes into a fight and within 3 mins either kills something or dies.. or most likely both. Again a bit boring to have a ship that you fly in 3 mins and then have to wait for 4 hours.

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Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.

[Camtheman Of Freelancer4Ever]

Bombers are MEANT to kill battleships. Heavy Battleships should NOT be balanced to kill bombers. They should be able to rightly cannibalize any other battleship, however.

A brief example.

Light Battleships EX: Osiris, Lib Dread:
More anti gunboat / cruiser, less anti battleship
Medium Battleships EX: Bretonia BS (?):
Fares well against battleships and gunboats / cruisers, but isn't exceptionally good against either
Heavy battleships EX: Rheinland, Kusari:
Utterly destroys Light, medium, heavy battleships, but are too slow to hit gunboats and cruisers reliably.

Fighters are meant to kill bombers. Do they always? No.

The glory of freelancer is that you can outfit your own weapons on your ship, thereby specializing it to whatever you choose. If Jhonny nubs-a-lot wants a 16 turret Solaris BS, he can have it, He will just utterly fail against any other battleship or other capships.

3 bombers should kill a battleship, but I think 2 bombers it should take quite a bit longer. I mean, look at how long it takes for a bomber to kill a cruiser. Quite a while, but it can do it, right? Two bombers VS Battleship should work like that too, only with 3 bombers shall they have inevitable victory.

One battleship, by itself, can do three things with a good chance of success:

It does not always work this way, pilot skill/error has to be put in. I've killed numerous Challengers in a single battle in my Kusari BS simply because they seemed to REALLY want to use their short range guns on me. Does that mean my BS should be nerfed? No...

[CzeReptile]

Delete caps altogether. Saves time for balance and such topics. And modding problems. And did I mention the balance stuff? Lolwutery?

Really, its just another rant here.
You cant nerf bombers right, not even make them awesome slow ships cause then they are useless to cruisers which I heard should be screening ships so now we are worrying about cruisers so they can be balanced to bombers who are scrapping battleships. Kind of the endless line aint it?

I see the reason simple. NObody wants a buffed battleship, rather make it a piece of scrap metal thats useful in group only. Assume everybody can have dozen fighter screen protection of excellent pilots.

So do not buy a battleship, use the common answer, get a fighter right? No need to mindlessly trade and give pirates more happiness. I personally find it silly. Destroyer (Storta fe.) has like 295k basic hull. 3 snacs right? That weapon is totally balanced towards everything. Stronger bombers can solo that. Buffing cruisers? Hell no I hear. What would those poor folks in bombers do?
wanna know
use what Ench said, GROUP UP! A big ship with lot of firepower dying to 3 small blue balls of death? Come on. Torpedoes fine, although they could use a BIG projectile so you can shoot em down. Or give them nuke warhead and in seconds kill system with radiation.

Entire balancing is silly and is not following the common sense, but wishes of the few. And mind me saying, those few are not flying the big ships.

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[mjolnir]

Destroyer (Storta fe.) has like 295k basic hull. 3 snacs right? That weapon is totally balanced towards everything. Stronger bombers can solo that. Buffing cruisers? Hell no I hear. What would those poor folks in bombers do?

You know we did some kind of testing, with cruiser guns a bit worse than they are at the moment. We put 3 very good bomber pilots vs 3 mostly first-time cruiser pilots.

In 2/3 of the fights the cruisers won.

That said all the people flying cruisers are very good at flying fighters as well.


Over time and watching player development here, there's one clear observation to make....

If a player is good in a fighter, he's also good in a capship (maybe not top 10, but good) this works also the other way - it almost never happens that a player who is good in a capship is really bad in a fighter.

To fly a fighter well you need to be able to dodge and aim.
To fly a capship well you need above all to have good aim.

It's easier to learn to dodge than to aim.

People get to their first fight in a fighter and get blasted, the first reaction is "I'll get a big ship and show you". I did exactly the same thing after I got killed in my first fight without ever downing enemy shield under half. Big ship won't help you if you can't aim, though yes you can learn to aim flying it because then you don't need to think about dodging so much.

As a result you have people who are mainly fighter pilots saying how caps are fine, because they fly them and can kill lots of stuff in them.

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Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.

[CzeReptile]

You know we did some kind of testing, with cruiser guns a bit worse than they are at the moment. We put 3 very good bomber pilots vs 3 mostly first-time cruiser pilots.

In 2/3 of the fights the cruisers won.

To fly a fighter well you need to be able to dodge and aim.
To fly a capship well you need above all to have good aim.

It's easier to learn to dodge than to aim.

People get to their first fight in a fighter and get blasted, the first reaction is "I'll get a big ship and show you". I did exactly the same thing after I got killed in my first fight without ever downing enemy shield under half. Big ship won't help you if you can't aim, though yes you can learn to aim flying it because then you don't need to think about dodging so much.

As a result you have people who are mainly fighter pilots saying how caps are fine, because they fly them and can kill lots of stuff in them.

What a foolish cruiser pilots. It is probably me facing the real first timers since ive shot down over hundred of caps on my bomber or nyx being almost never shot. Just happens. And yes, in a cap you need aim. However, the range > aim. And SNAC > Caps

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[Huhuh]

Buff battleships to be the ultimate death machine their price suggests they are (would still die to 3 bombers but make it a close battle) but make them SRP only. No more lolwuts.

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[kuth]

If some of you haven't noticed by now; cap ships in Disco aren't like their kin in other sci-fi games.

They aren't the end all be all machines of war.

A solo bomber pilot can take them on.

In most other sci-fi games, that would be suicide for the bomber pilot.

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In closing: Cap ships in Disco won't be made as cap ships should be. If they are, there'd be a ton of restrictions placed on them so our lolwut populace couldn't abuse them. This would mean that the people who want them to role play would likely loose the ability to get them without jumping through a million and one hurdles.

Get a few friends to hop in some fighters and fly around with them. It is usually more fun doing that anyways.

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Lurker

[Lance_Uppercut]

In closing: Cap ships in Disco won't be made as cap ships should be. If they are, there'd be a ton of restrictions placed on them so our lolwut populace couldn't abuse them. This would mean that the people who want them to role play would likely loose the ability to get them without jumping through a million and one hurdles.

Get a few friends to hop in some fighters and fly around with them. It is usually more fun doing that anyways.

Wait, why not? Cap ships should be powerful but also rare. Let cap ship purchases be SRP-driven, and then you won't have to worry about lolzy people.

If you're a lolwutting type of guy, what better motivation to put effort and time into your RP than to have a capital ship as your reward? And if you abuse it, let it be taken away.

Too simple?

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::The Pennsylvania Liberation Force