Cruiser Balance

[Jonathan_Archer_nx01]

I think the cruisers r badly balanced.

For instance...Rheinland Cruiser, 260k armor with 11 turrets. More evergy supply than any other cruisers. This is absolutely the best cruiser.

Then look at the Corsair cruiser, 225k armor with 12 turrets. But only 10 of em can shoot forward, and about 5 can shoot backwards and other directions. It turns even slower than a battlecruiser. It is a weak cruiser and it costs the same credits as a Rheinlanc cruiser.

Then look at the Outcasts cruiser, 195k armor with 12 turrets. It turns really fast. ALL TURRETS can shoot forward and backward. How it is fair?

I thinks this is really bad...quite unfair.

This is a nice equation but you failed because you only counted with "a" and "b". Now put in "x" - maneuverabilty and "y" -size/hitbox and you should get a better result.

[Telbasta]

ah, the outcast cruises blind spot is its bottom, isn t it? - i thought all its turrets are mounted on its top - and it cannot fire straight downwards.... but i might be wrong.

The outcast destroyer has two turrets (maybe just one, but I think i saw a second) on the bottom, but almost all of it's turrets are restricted to top firing arcs only - so yea, it has a huge blind spot underneath the ship.

I do agree that most cruisers need work, however. They dont have great power supplies, and most of them are too large. Ideally they should be manuverable enough and have a long enough range to act as anti-battleship vessels in numbers (2 or more), just like gunboats are anti-cruiser vessels in numbers (2 or more, usually).

Manuverability and the capability to dodge incoming fire seems much more important here than raw hull strength or firepower. My kusari gunboat - with two missile turrets, two solaris turrets, and a forward gun - was able to take on an outcast destroyer 1 on 1 almost entirely due to the fact that I was able to dodge 90% of his fire.

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[mjolnir]

...because your guns happen to have 1400/2000m range.... so you can stay far and dodge the fire.
Which is one of the main problems of GB vs Cruiser.... once GBs loose the range, it won't be such a problem.

Most cruisers can sit at 2k and bombard BS with Light Mortars, some even have forward guns to do that.
In pairs any two solid cruiser captains should be able to kill a BS.

There are some cruisers that might be a bit weak but don't really need upgrade - Zoner Destroyer for example.
Some others do need some upgrade - Dragon one among others.
I don't think cruisers should be balanced against each other, but rather for their specialized roles. You can really balance Liberty Cruiser (which is basically anti-BS/BC) with Rheinland cruiser/Outcast dessie who are more general purpose cruisers.

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

[Telbasta]

wait... what? Gunboats are having their weapon range reduced?

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[Jonathan_Archer_nx01]

...because your guns happen to have 1400/2000m range.... so you can stay far and dodge the fire.
Which is one of the main problems of GB vs Cruiser.... once GBs loose the range, it won't be such a problem.

Most cruisers can sit at 2k and bombard BS with Light Mortars, some even have forward guns to do that.
In pairs any two solid cruiser captains should be able to kill a BS.

Which is all fine. It happens rarely, but it's good to see a smaller ship causing some troubles to a bigger one. You're not seriosly suggesting a range reducuction so that the smaller vessel would have to come close just to eat all that nasty s**t?

[chopper]

wait... what? Gunboats are having their weapon range reduced?

Nothing is certain. But if they do, I'm certain there will be many happy people.
Manny unhappy ones too, since Gunboat spamming is one of the greatest Disco problems at the moment.
Aren't you flying a GB? Is that why you'r concerned about it? Meh..

Anyway, RH cruiser is the best cruiser as much as Barghest is the best bomber.
By your logic, Waran is a much better bomber then a Catamaran.

Cruisers generally need upping, but against each other I'd say balance is pretty fine.

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It is every Corsair's responsibility to die a beautiful death in defense of Crete, regardless of how OORP or how capwhoring the opposition is. Launch your fighter, joust the battlecruisers and die a beautiful death. Then, drink it down in the bar.

Can't let you bash folks in your sig Chopper-Del

[Blodo]

Yeah, but the question is how to up cruisers so they don't become the next gunboats?

The problems with cruiser is like Doom said related mostly to other classes. Two decent cruisers could take out a battleship, that's fine, so could two decent bombers. Those same two bombers not only can take out a cruiser, they can eat it for breakfast if allowed to. Now bombers are hard counters to all sorts of caps, lets not touch that, but perhaps cruisers/destroyers should be allowed to just sit at range and pummel away at their enemies while retaining the amount of armour they have now? Increase their overall weapons range to say 2500 (or more even), so that they can lay down fire from a good distance? That would make them proper destroyers effective against battleships in 1v1s if they could manage to stay at range. They would still be useless without escorts when it comes to bombers, but we want to keep it that way. What do you guys think?

[Telbasta]

yea, I do fly a gunboat... one of the weaker ones (hull strength wise). Basically the issue is that if you reduce gun ranges on gunboat turrets, they'll become ineffective against anything but smaller craft. Cruisers already tear us up if we get too close because their weapons do a lot more damage than ours. In a straight head on firefight a cruiser will always beat a gunboat - the gunboat can only win by maintaining range and using higher speed to dodge.

I think if you end up reducing ranges on our normal turrets (and maybe forward guns), you're just going to see a lot more 'missile-boat' spamming. At least there are a lot of balanced gunboats out there right now, but if you make our weapons ineffective against larger ships we're going to be forced into specializing against the only things we're still able to kill - bombers and fighters.

There will be an uproar from those bomber and fighter pilots if every gunboat they see is running with 4-6 missile turrets.

in the end you only fix one problem to create another.

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[Blodo]

Well, once 4.85 comes bear in mind that not only will the GB missile no doubt be nerfed (or possibly even forced to use ammo like fighter missiles), but also it appears vanilla ships will have their vanilla vulnerability to missiles removed. Ergo, missiles won't be such a gamebreaking problem as they are right now.

However Telbasta I disagree with your concerns vs. cruisers. Gunboats are meant to be a hard counter to all sorts of small craft, while being devastated by those bigger than itself. You can't have a ship good versus everything, otherwise everyone will fly it. Like they fly gunboats at the present moment. Don't worry in 4.85 it will most likely be encouraged for you to have a good anti fighter loadout, but GB missiles shouldn't be all the rage anymore so you will still be able to enjoy fine GB on GB combat.

[Telbasta]

However Telbasta I disagree with your concerns vs. cruisers. Gunboats are meant to be a hard counter to all sorts of small craft, while being devastated by those bigger than itself.

So when walker, in the SP campaign, said "Fighters, target those gunboats, they're too fast for our turrets" he was talking out his ass?

and with the other changes to missiles... basically we're going to end up with gunboats that are ineffective against everything?

They wont be able to take out fighters/bombers effectively without missiles due to being outmanuvered, and they wont be able to take out cruisers due to having to get close enough that their agility doesnt help them avoid fire.

Maybe I wont be sticking around for the new ships, sounds like they wont be useful for anything more than RP'ing a moving target.

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