Why is Discovery Freelancer focused on VHFs?

[Lythrilux]

Does anyone remember early .87 Gunboat Solaris? Those were good at their job and rightfully so. I really miss having Solaris turrets like that, they were dangerous.

I really liked them for their anti-snub properties. They couldn't really do much damage beyond 800 meters, but they forced snubs to break off their target and start evading.
Main problem with them was that 2 Solaris GBs could kill pretty much anything.

The thing is, they could've solved that problem as well as a lot of other problems with capital ships if they made one simple fix: increase the range of cruiser and battleship guns.
Sadly, that didn't happen, Gunboat solaris got nerfed and Gunboats were no longer in one of, if not the finest form they've been in.

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[Jinx]

explanation:

The usual progression of players went like that ( there actually were threads that discussed that progression )

1) player is new, has no money and is flying a cheap freigther

2) player made some money and buys his first snub - fully equipped with the good stuff ( AU8 and lvl9 weapons - and/or the occasional codename )

3) player sells some stuff to trade some more - gets a big transport and starts making serious money

4) player saves up for a capital warship - often letting his character progress in "rank" to use that ship

5) player fully equips the capship - with CAU8, and spends a lot of time optimizing his weaponry

6) player drifts away from the capital warship RP ... often the char starts to fly a snub again

7) player dedicates most of his RP to a snub again - a sort of "back to the roots"

the motivation is similar to RL wealth and money. - you start poor, you make money, you get rich, you show money - and you end up "not needing to show money" anymore - you are a vet.

end) you fly a snub because you WANT to - not because you do not have the money for more.

The above explains how it comes that snubs were for a long time in the past considered "better roleplay". The reason is that many vets who had transcended their time with cap-ships were flying snubs again. And while they still often HAVE capships their "main" chars are usually flying smaller ships.

In terms of skill curve.. i do not think a capship pvp is much simpler - it is different. More time must be spent to assess a when and how to engage than in a snub. - Many capship pvp are already "over" before they fired the first shot - because they simply chose the wrong time to engage.

Snub combat requires more hand-eye-coordination, capship combat requires a little more foresight (call it strategy) - you cannot rush into a brawl, because unlike a snub - you cannot leave it easily anymore. But once a cap is shooting and is being shot at - yea - the skill level is not that huge anymore ( with TZ enabled that is )

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Omi]

I don't know what world you're living in, but it's clearly not the same one as mine. Reading your posts, anyone would think flying a snub is actually worth their time, when in fact you spend well over half your 'combat time' trying to avoid instakills from caps and other snubs.

Flying a snub is as frustrating as it is difficult, and in no situation is a snub of any kind a 'prime choice'. Their only advantage is their ability to engage and disengage at will, as well as extreme agility. Cost, too, if you consider that an advantage. Compared to a capital ship, your impact is much less, you scale much less drastically with numbers (compare: impact of 1 VHF to 10 VHFs/impact of 1 cruiser to 10 cruisers). When capital ships start to appear in groups of more than two or three, snub PvP of any sort quickly becomes almost impossible, unless you count swarms of bombers lobbing SNACs for 3 hours on end as gameplay of any sort. And even that's assuming the cap pilots don't mess you around and start shuttlerunning bots (good luck CDing all of them).

If anything, capital ships are in the prime position right now. You can spend a whole lot of credits and not worry about having any skill to speak of (let's be real here; while the skill ceiling could be argued to be somewhat similar between caps and snubs, there's no way in hell the skill floor is anything comparable) and immediately have a massive impact on groupfights (the smaller-scale, the better). It only takes one capital ship to absolutely trash a snubfight/snub group three or four times its size.

This mod is only VHF-centric because they're easier to get around in and easier to set up. End of story. If people wanted to min-max for effectiveness, I guarantee you the entire server would be flying gunboats (the best capital ship class) around (when they weren't powertrading, of course ).

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[Carlos De La Cruz]

Haste, it is only fun if you are the sort of person who can contribute enough time to the game to get better.

and also: some people just don't like agreesive style of playing choosing control-oriented style. it's just how they play. See ie. some card games like i.e. Magic: you have control, rush, aggro, disrupt etc. I know that disco is not a card game (lol) but we have there some opportunities to make such a difference: capships have great potential for control-like gameplay style. Why not make it really possible?

[Haste]

Probably, yeah. The reason I personally spend more time working on VHF balance is that I actually know my way around it. I know enough about it to have a faint idea of how to improve it.

Mind you, the dev team does want to review and improve cap balance (including cap-snub interaction). It's just very tricky to do. For example, making capitals more capable of defending themselves against snubs also means they become more capable of diving into a small snub brawl and taking everything out single-handedly. As caps are still quite easy to acquire, this would likely leave little opportunity for snub-snub combat (which is what snubs are balanced for to begin with).

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[Lythrilux]

When capital ships start to appear in groups of more than two or three, snub PvP of any sort quickly becomes almost impossible, unless you count swarms of bombers lobbing SNACs for 3 hours on end as gameplay of any sort. And even that's assuming the cap pilots don't mess you around and start shuttlerunning bots (good luck CDing all of them).

That's less of a balance issue and more of a players-being-idiotic issue. Though I do agree something could be done to make Capship pvp with bombers less monotonous.
I feel like I'm the only person who gets a kick out of sending a wave of novas onto my target though ;-;

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[Haste]

When capital ships start to appear in groups of more than two or three, snub PvP of any sort quickly becomes almost impossible, unless you count swarms of bombers lobbing SNACs for 3 hours on end as gameplay of any sort. And even that's assuming the cap pilots don't mess you around and start shuttlerunning bots (good luck CDing all of them).

That's less of a balance issue and more of a players-being-idiotic issue.

Not really. Ideally gameplay accounts for potential abuse and prevents it. This has thus far been impossible, unfortunately.

[Carlos De La Cruz]

Probably, yeah. The reason I personally spend more time working on VHF balance is that I actually know my way around it. I know enough about it to have a faint idea of how to improve it.

Mind you, the dev team does want to review and improve cap balance (including cap-snub interaction). It's just very tricky to do. For example, making capitals more capable of defending themselves against snubs also means they become more capable of diving into a small snub brawl and taking everything out single-handedly. As caps are still quite easy to acquire, this would likely leave little opportunity for snub-snub combat (which is what snubs are balanced for to begin with).

But Capship SHOULD be able to take down numerous SNUBs single-handedly..Imagine RL naval forces: you have patroal boat and BS. And two patrol boats with i.e. mines take down BS beacuse it cannot defend itself aganist them..please..
Of course that shuold happen if those snubs are stupid enough to get 1K to that capship.. or even 0,8 K. but when they safely fight between capships they could fight each other with no problems from capships..(see Battlestar Galactica: fights between Galactica and Basestars: wing of fighters fighting each other to get an advantage and then to attack BS, but when attacking BS directly get's instakills by BS's turrets). That's why fighters should be flying with bombers. but not like 2 bombers could wreck a BS..SNUB vs SNUB protecting bombers that could kill Cruiser or BS but with 5 or 6 bombers..not 2...

[Lythrilux]

When capital ships start to appear in groups of more than two or three, snub PvP of any sort quickly becomes almost impossible, unless you count swarms of bombers lobbing SNACs for 3 hours on end as gameplay of any sort. And even that's assuming the cap pilots don't mess you around and start shuttlerunning bots (good luck CDing all of them).

That's less of a balance issue and more of a players-being-idiotic issue.

Not really. Ideally gameplay accounts for potential abuse and prevents it. This has thus far been impossible, unfortunately.

True that I guess. Still, not like rules against capship feeding wouldn't hurt at least.

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[Mímir]

Well in a cap, you'll be doing both grinding and conn. There still is skill involved, and you can get a lot better by practicing. Capwhores dwell in conn too, spending long hours.

I was never against caps, as nom seems to think. I just realized that for me, personally, the fun in caps lies in symmetrical fleet warfare, and in the past some parts of the community was real upset when that kind of unplanned action took place. That left me with the choice of either be one of those guys that chase lone snubs around for an easy blue, go solo and get ganked by a horde of bombers or simply go to conn and sit around. Caps are in the mod, but it's like the community never fully settled on their use.

I also don't think the entry level for snub pvp is all that high. Sure, when you go up against someone better than you, you feel like you don't have a chance, but you'll learn tricks and counters that you can use to beat other players of your level. There is real progression, it's like 'Highlander', stealing other people's powers and techniques. I don't think any game should be balanced in a way where an inexperienced and unskilled player stands a fair chance against a pro. Why bother get better?

I also think you could have been a real pro if you'd spent all this time practicing pvp, spazzy. You just chose to allocate your time in the way that suited you best, and I think that's what we all should do.

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