Why is Nomad gear so good for PVP?

[HuggieSunrise]

People hate this game zealot you know this. you know they dont like being shot down they dont like our rp. all it comes down to is superior skills and cunning right? Well id like to think so. as an american player i've always played this game with a hand behind my back and a foot up my anus. This is an old thread and old subject no body likes this game cause they cant handle being shot down.

it ruins their little lives.

But i've been here long enough to see that when the stakes are against you and you prevail no one will celebrate it. when you're ganked no one will celebrate it. and when we talk about making all the gear 100% neutral and normal to one another rp wise or pvp wise. No answers will satisfy everyone.

So i refuse to debate this nearly ten year old subject. put it in the grave and leave it there for whatever dev has been afflicted with these issues.

Tactics tech whatever we get well likely lose it at some point. its what this place does. So enjoy the exciting times while they last while their precious.

[Antonio]

I don't even know how you people come up with these conclusions. Let's break it down bit by bit.

So I think anyone will agree, the nomads in this mod have a clear and definitive advantage in pvp. My question is why. Why does one faction have gear that is so much better than everyone else's. Not just a little better, but far and away the best. What is the rationale for this? I know what the answer to this question was from when we implemented nomads as playable in the mod to several years ago, but I am not sure the answer anymore. With this latest patch buffing nomads even more, I think this is a fair discussion to have since we have moved so far way from its original intent.

The nomad gear was either absolute trash or average at best half a year ago, apart from the broken Rabisu which had huge tentacles sticking out of its arse. Only when I started buffing things to a normal level they became "viable", or "good". Let's take a look at all the nomad stuff in the game:

1. The 3 buffs that happened this patch. First of all, the concept of a "buff" is pretty misunderstood in the community. Say you have 2 weapons with identical stats but one has 500 and the other 560 damage. If I buff the former 10 times by 5 damage, it ends up on 550, while I don't touch the 560 one. Technically I "buffed" the first weapon 10 times(!?) while the second one was ignored, surely the first one is better!? No, it's not. It doesn't strictly matter if a weapon is buffed or nerfed nor how big the buff/nerf seems, what matters is the status after the change compared to other equipment or ships of its class and balance in general. As for the 3 nomad buffs you mentioned -

- Nomad CMs ammo: 70 -> 125, hit points: 12k -> 120k
- Nomad heavy CD: c/p of reinforced cd
- Nomad cd damage: 140 -> 255, reduced power usage, ammo: 70 -> 90

-all 3 were complete trash and worse in almost everything than a normal, human CM would be. Before I get into this, the thing you need to keep in mind when it comes to Nomad mines, CMs and CDs is that they only have 1 type of it. 1 type, no variety, no options. They're forced to stick with it. If for example a Fortress CM is bad, a human ship can just switch to a Sentinel or a Silencer, no problem.

The nomad CM was a worse version of the Heavy CM (which is considered below average for humans as well, fortress, sentinel and silencer all do the job better), having identical stats but much less hit points making it die to missiles and torpedoes VERY fast. The hit points buff was simply to give the nomad caps (which are terrible as well, I'll get into that) a viable CM they can use, while it's irrelevant on snubs since if you're hitting their CM -that- hard, they're likely to die before the CM gets blown off even without the hp buff. The ammo buff is needed to bring it up with the rest top tier human CMs mentioned above, having less ammo than a sentinel (by far the most popular and arguably still better CM than any other) and a silencer, but more decoy effectiveness. End result? A balanced alternative to human tech.

Nomad CDs were even worse. The cd 1 (regular CD) was a worse version of the train. It had worse damage, worse velocity and power usage(!?). Think about it for a second. A CD meant for fighters & bombers having power usage, while also being worse in 2 other stats mentioned above compared to human alternatives. The buff makes it have the damage of a mosquito, ammo of a mosquito and range of a train. Again, nomads -don't have- an alternative, they -can't choose- between mosquitos & trains, they only have 1 version which is made to be between the two.

Nomad heavy CD was as bad as the regular nomad CD, having all the stats identical except lower velocity. Granted, it didn't have power usage so technically it was better, but it was terrible regardless. I made it a copy paste of the reinforced CD to give caps a proper viable CD to use. End result? A balanced alternative to human tech.

And that's only the 3 "buffs" that happened this patch. Nomad mines are a slightly better version of Nukes because yet again Nomads don't have an alternative such as a Screamer or a Ripper which is overall a disadvantage, especially on bombers. Let's get onto ships.

The nomad capline is terrible. Granted, they're getting new versions of them soon™, but it's no surprise almost nobody flies them ever, except the Marduk. Marduk was also completely useless for anything but buttcloaking and dying after that before it got its guns buffed. The model was too big for anything else to be done about the dying part, so I gave it stronger guns to at least be able to be a threat to anything smaller than a battleship. It's still dying very fast, but it's scary in return. The cruiser and the gunboat are the largest of its class, which comes as a big disadvantage. Sure, they have the stats according to their size, but -that- big of a size just doesn't end well. They're duel gods, no doubt, but as soon as a groupfight emerges they fall down quickly. All 3 are (below) average at best, and nowhere near as good as human caps.

Snubs I didn't fly much and it isn't my territory, but they're pretty good as far as I know. The Rabisu isn't as broken as before, the Labraid is very good for evading even though it has only 3 guns, and as Vasko said it can survive an instakill which other LFs can't. I'd think of it more as an HF than a LF. The guns are balanced according to @Haste 's formula, so I'm sure nothing is broken or "simply better" there. They have 700m/s 2.00s, but it comes at a disadvantage of efficiency. Cap guns are average, except Marduk prims & secondaries which are balanced specifically for the Marduk for the reason I explained above.


Overall, the Nomad tech is average at best compared to a Liberty, GRN, Bretonia or literally any other complete tech & ship line. It was terrible before we buffed a few things, but still nothing impressive and with a lot of stuff still missing (Nomads don't have flaks, cap missiles or solarises). I'd take for example Liberty's weapons & shipline ANY day over the Nomad one. Where this is coming from I really don't know, but hopefully this post clarified things for you.

[Sombs]

the Labraid is very good for evading even though it has only 3 guns, and as Vasko said it can survive an instakill which other LFs can't. I'd think of it more as an HF than a LF.

Morph is LF, Labraid is HF, by the way.

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[Divine]

... what matters is the status after the change compared to other equipment or ships of its class and balance in general.

... The buff makes it have the damage of a mosquito, ammo of a mosquito and range of a train. Again, nomads -don't have- an alternative, they -can't choose- between mosquitos & trains, they only have 1 version which is made to be between the two.

... End result? A balanced alternative to human tech.

... Nomad mines are a slightly better version of Nukes because yet again Nomads don't have an alternative such as a Screamer or a Ripper which is overall a disadvantage, especially on bombers.

... with a lot of stuff still missing (Nomads don't have flaks, cap missiles or solarises).

Then why make all those special cases in terms of trying to balance out obviously unbalancable nomad-tech instead of creating carbon-copies of human-tech with nomad-looks or just making it plain invisible?
A CD with both advantages of the Mosquito plus the range-advantage of the Train -is- a better item. More powerful Nukes are better. And lets not start talking about the permacloak.
Nomads, as you pointed out multiple times in your post, lack the variety of human-tech to roll with, but the solution to that isn't some mediocre balancing but instead adding the missing equipment to give them the same choices as everyone else. It's not that everyone doesn't get to use the same copied gear anyways. And there's tons of equipment surely nobody ever uses you could just re-use and change, it's not even adding anything new to the mod. And when in doubt or not having a model available, make it invisible.

As for the permacloak: why again? There's absolutely no need for that as it's throwing away any balance around cloaks. The argument that Nomads don't have that much points to reload is invalid, bc that just means they need more places they can sneakily dock with.

Keepers used to fly with all the pre-balanced gear and we did just fine (granted the Voidrunner was an LF back that day). And guess what, people even used the cruiser and we still were able to cause carnage. That being said, as I mentioned the Keepers, it's been said ever since that Nomads need the choices of equipment everyone has, which was never addressed. And despite that, we did well in combat.

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[Sombs]

The perma-cloaks are pretty much faction perks, Divine. K'hara has them, and Wild has them with the use of nomad power cells. Apart from that, the loading times of nomad cloaks are way higher than the ones of human cloaks, so they can't use them to escape from a battle but just to fly to a system without being stopped before reaching it. I don't know how the loading times of hybrid cloaks are, though.

The cloaks however are a technology coming from the nomads. They have mastered it.

But we had this discussion already when you were ranting about the Oracle cloak. Let's rather not finger at the cloaks but rather at the Cloak Disruptors.

I mean, there is literally no real threat coming from nomad cloaks. They can't escape from a battle using them, and they can't buttcloak as they are required to drop the engagement lines uncloaked, even the K'hara. Humans on the other hand are using this method very common, especially on battleships in Liberty and partially within the Core, Corsairs and Maltese playerbase.

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[Backo]

Then why make all those special cases in terms of trying to balance out obviously unbalancable nomad-tech instead of creating carbon-copies of human-tech with nomad-looks or just making it plain invisible?

Good point, actually. I know Nomads already have Pulse type snub weapons so why can't they get other balance copy of the human-tech? Like cap weapon variety and so on?

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Republic of the Sword and Sun

[Divine]

...

It's not about who did what, when and where or who should be able to do what inRP when and where or even why. It's about game-balance. And no disadvantage counters the ability to permanently stay cloaked.
Nomads need in terms of balance to be treatened like every other faction and not in some magical special way. That means they get to use the same equipment under the same restrictions as everyone, just with their own looks. Or we give every faction their very own, unique gear which will be a nightmare to balance at all.

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[Antonio]

... what matters is the status after the change compared to other equipment or ships of its class and balance in general.

... The buff makes it have the damage of a mosquito, ammo of a mosquito and range of a train. Again, nomads -don't have- an alternative, they -can't choose- between mosquitos & trains, they only have 1 version which is made to be between the two.

... End result? A balanced alternative to human tech.

... Nomad mines are a slightly better version of Nukes because yet again Nomads don't have an alternative such as a Screamer or a Ripper which is overall a disadvantage, especially on bombers.

... with a lot of stuff still missing (Nomads don't have flaks, cap missiles or solarises).

Then why make all those special cases in terms of trying to balance out obviously unbalancable nomad-tech instead of creating carbon-copies of human-tech with nomad-looks or just making it plain invisible?
A CD with both advantages of the Mosquito plus the range-advantage of the Train -is- a better item. More powerful Nukes are better. And lets not start talking about the permacloak.
Nomads, as you pointed out multiple times in your post, lack the variety of human-tech to roll with, but the solution to that isn't some mediocre balancing but instead adding the missing equipment to give them the same choices as everyone else. It's not that everyone doesn't get to use the same copied gear anyways. And there's tons of equipment surely nobody ever uses you could just re-use and change, it's not even adding anything new to the mod. And when in doubt or not having a model available, make it invisible.

As for the permacloak: why again? There's absolutely no need for that as it's throwing away any balance around cloaks. The argument that Nomads don't have that much points to reload is invalid, bc that just means they need more places they can sneakily dock with.

Keepers used to fly with all the pre-balanced gear and we did just fine (granted the Voidrunner was an LF back that day). And guess what, people even used the cruiser and we still were able to cause carnage. That being said, as I mentioned the Keepers, it's been said ever since that Nomads need the choices of equipment everyone has, which was never addressed. And despite that, we did well in combat.

Adding proper Nomad alternatives for all human tech is a WiP and something I am inclined to do, but it requires involvement from other devs as well. I'm strictly talking about the status quo, which does unfortunately serve as a temporary band-aid compared to a much better solution you suggested. It's already on our list and will come in the future, that I can assure you of.

Permacloaks are something I, as a leader of a Wild faction, don't like one bit. In fact I would like to see it removed if anything, because the way it's being used is flawed and we see people roleplaying while infinitely cloaked more than anything else (which is terrible, please stop doing that for the love of God) at the moment. Not only that, but having 10-15 minutes of cloak already does most of the job for stuff like buttcloaking, scouting, moving through dangerous areas, etc. It'd require the Nomads to be able to drop engagement notice before uncloaking though.

Edit: Why that was never done (Nomads getting all equivalents to human tech) I really can't tell since I joined the dev team recently, but I'm willing to start the initiative. Better late than never, right?

[Sombs]

...

It's not about who did what, when and where or who should be able to do what inRP when and where or even why. It's about game-balance. And no disadvantage counters the ability to permanently stay cloaked.
Nomads need in terms of balance to be treatened like every other faction and not in some magical special way. That means they get to use the same equipment under the same restrictions as everyone, just with their own looks. Or we give every faction their very own, unique gear which will be a nightmare to balance at all.

In that case, you'd need every faction having the same equipments, shipclasses available, ship sizes and shapes. In that version, you could just go back to HHC and fight all the Eagles using an Eagle.

Diversity should be given though, and the nomads simply have a special role in the mod, just as the Gammuians do, as well as the way, WAY more overpowered Outcasts given what they have available, in ID lines, ZoI, technology and ship classes.

The only things in Discovery that need balance are PvP-contents, trade-routes and PvP-RP-ratio on the server. However, the nomad cloaks simply aren't of any use in PvP. No buttcloaking, no escaping. In the end, the only thing a nomad has from having a cloak equipped, it the lack of the ability to counter missiles. Of course that's something you seem not to have thought about.

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[Backo]

Edit: Why that was never done (Nomads getting all equivalents to human tech) I really can't tell since I joined the dev team recently, but I'm willing to start the initiative. Better late than never, right?

I believe (could be wrong) that it's a remnant of the old days before we decided to do a gameplay balance over roleplay approach. Back when Krakens were the goto Class 9 gun along with Sammaels (and perhaps Black Widows) and so on, while some factions were stuck with crappy 600m/s 4.00 neutrons... Back then factions followed their vanilla tech tree and just had stuff buffed up to class 9 so Nomads being vanilla had only hull-busting guns and no debilitator equivalent.

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Republic of the Sword and Sun