Forums » Suggestions
Re: http://vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/28142?page=2#341112
With the corrections made to the charged cannon, the difficult prospect of attacking a player-owned Trident is now much more difficult. Rumor has it, Avalons are supposed to be anti-capship weapons, but they're essentially useless for that task.
By my count, it would take 67 Avalons to destroy a Trident Type M, but a Ragnarok - the game's supposed heavy bomber can only carry 8. It's unlikely a Trident captain will stick around while a bomber pilot reloads 8 times, and with the current state of things, finding 9 bomber pilots who want to destroy the same Trident at the same time is unlikely. Destroying a capship with a bomber should be challenging, but it should be possible.
Here are some possible changes. It's only necessary to do some of these to make a useful torpedo:
* Reduce the splash radius of the Avalon to something fairly small - not more than that of flares. It isn't for annihilating fleets of small ships; it's a torpedo for taking out capships. It could be described as armor-piercing or some such.
* Increase the damage by a large margin. A single bomber should be able to take out a capship.
* Add a small-port torpedo. It seems to me that the right difficulty to take out the smallest capship is just under a fully-loaded bomber's payload. It should be allowed to miss once or twice. Let's say two misses with S-port torpedoes or one with L-port torpedoes.
* Remove the energy requirement to fire torpedoes.
* Make capships more vulnerable to explosion damage if that makes sense to get the damage high enough here without breaking something else.
* Make torpedoes detonate only on contact; they're armor-piercing, not blast-fragmentation weapons.
With the corrections made to the charged cannon, the difficult prospect of attacking a player-owned Trident is now much more difficult. Rumor has it, Avalons are supposed to be anti-capship weapons, but they're essentially useless for that task.
By my count, it would take 67 Avalons to destroy a Trident Type M, but a Ragnarok - the game's supposed heavy bomber can only carry 8. It's unlikely a Trident captain will stick around while a bomber pilot reloads 8 times, and with the current state of things, finding 9 bomber pilots who want to destroy the same Trident at the same time is unlikely. Destroying a capship with a bomber should be challenging, but it should be possible.
Here are some possible changes. It's only necessary to do some of these to make a useful torpedo:
* Reduce the splash radius of the Avalon to something fairly small - not more than that of flares. It isn't for annihilating fleets of small ships; it's a torpedo for taking out capships. It could be described as armor-piercing or some such.
* Increase the damage by a large margin. A single bomber should be able to take out a capship.
* Add a small-port torpedo. It seems to me that the right difficulty to take out the smallest capship is just under a fully-loaded bomber's payload. It should be allowed to miss once or twice. Let's say two misses with S-port torpedoes or one with L-port torpedoes.
* Remove the energy requirement to fire torpedoes.
* Make capships more vulnerable to explosion damage if that makes sense to get the damage high enough here without breaking something else.
* Make torpedoes detonate only on contact; they're armor-piercing, not blast-fragmentation weapons.
I like the idea of buffing avalons, but a single bomber shouldn't be able to take out a capship - just like one fighter couldn't take down a destroyer or something along those lines.
A single bomber should be able to scare the crap out of a frigate. 2 to 3 bombers should be able to take out said frigate. If a single bomber pilot wants to sacrifice a hardpoint to mount one of those battery-draining weapons, or work with someone else to keep the frigate in place for them, then that single bomber pilot should be able, provided they are skilled and quick enough, to unload, reload, and unload again.
These are capital ships, not space-going pintos.
These are capital ships, not space-going pintos.
-1
What you propose would completely change avalons in pretty much every way possible. Why not just create a new weapon altogether?
What you propose would completely change avalons in pretty much every way possible. Why not just create a new weapon altogether?
Player Tridents aren't the only targets, you know. Avalon's are quite effective at dealing a high damage spike for cracking shields and their massive splash radius makes them the best weapon in the game for *disarming* a capital ship. You'll be hard pressed to take all the turrets off a HAC before dealing enough damage to kill it, even with a neutron blaster and surgical precision.
The fact that you suggested this:
* Make torpedoes detonate only on contact; they're armor-piercing, not blast-fragmentation weapons.
tells me that you haven't put in any play time with the weapon to actually try and use it, and do not understand it's shortcomings. Even with their tiny prox trigger, it's extremely hard to hit a Trident or Teradon with a stack of them. Your aim has to be dead-on perfect, and you have to hope they're close enough to the center of the sector that the game's quantized angles don't send them off in different directions.
Trident pilots already flee at the sight of Avalons, not because they spell insta-death for your Trident, but because they have the potential to wipe out your entire group, including your repair team and fighter escort leaving you vulnerable to attack. Especially since there's currently no countermeasure against them.
Anyway, it's not hard to blast the damn things with energy weapons. A Corvus Greyhound does a very good job at dealing lots of damage to a Trident without relying on exploits.
The fact that you suggested this:
* Make torpedoes detonate only on contact; they're armor-piercing, not blast-fragmentation weapons.
tells me that you haven't put in any play time with the weapon to actually try and use it, and do not understand it's shortcomings. Even with their tiny prox trigger, it's extremely hard to hit a Trident or Teradon with a stack of them. Your aim has to be dead-on perfect, and you have to hope they're close enough to the center of the sector that the game's quantized angles don't send them off in different directions.
Trident pilots already flee at the sight of Avalons, not because they spell insta-death for your Trident, but because they have the potential to wipe out your entire group, including your repair team and fighter escort leaving you vulnerable to attack. Especially since there's currently no countermeasure against them.
Anyway, it's not hard to blast the damn things with energy weapons. A Corvus Greyhound does a very good job at dealing lots of damage to a Trident without relying on exploits.
On a less negative note, I totally agree with this:
a Ragnarok - the game's supposed heavy bomber can only carry 8.
a Ragnarok - the game's supposed heavy bomber can only carry 8.
I hadn't considered the anti-turret angle for the Avalon. I had considered anti-shield use and just figured swarms are preferable since they rarely miss, even though the Avalon has higher total damage. Use against an unshielded player Trident does not require stacking.
It makes sense that a single bomber is dangerous to a capship. It's that way in the real world with naval vessels and aircraft. It's that way in games like Wing Commander and Freespace. Given the relatively small playerbase, it should probably be that way here too.
Of course, the capship should be more dangerous to the bomber than it is right now. Automated turrets, better turret coverage, better turret weapons and something nasty for anyone unwelcome who gets too close to the docking bay are all things that deserve their own threads.
It makes sense that a single bomber is dangerous to a capship. It's that way in the real world with naval vessels and aircraft. It's that way in games like Wing Commander and Freespace. Given the relatively small playerbase, it should probably be that way here too.
Of course, the capship should be more dangerous to the bomber than it is right now. Automated turrets, better turret coverage, better turret weapons and something nasty for anyone unwelcome who gets too close to the docking bay are all things that deserve their own threads.
Swarms are horribly suited for anti-shield use. The only reason they were the missile-of-choice for the task for so long is that they go the same speed as Geminis. Otherwise your stack falls apart as the missiles travel at different speeds. Even Stingrays do more damage per-launcher and weigh a heck of a lot less.
On that note, Avalons are excellent for killing shields. They can be fired from outside turret range, they do a lot more damage than swarms do since their damage buff (12k -> 15k), and it doesn't take hundreds and hundreds of them hitting their target simultaneously and lagging out the sector just to drop some of the heavier capship shields (HAC, Leviathan)
The problem with Avalons is their miss rate. They have no guidance and the game's leadoff indicator is totally wrong for slower projectiles like rockets and torpedoes. Their lack of guidance is a blessing sometimes though, because missiles have a fixed speed, they're mostly useless against ships above turbo speed.
On that note, Avalons are excellent for killing shields. They can be fired from outside turret range, they do a lot more damage than swarms do since their damage buff (12k -> 15k), and it doesn't take hundreds and hundreds of them hitting their target simultaneously and lagging out the sector just to drop some of the heavier capship shields (HAC, Leviathan)
The problem with Avalons is their miss rate. They have no guidance and the game's leadoff indicator is totally wrong for slower projectiles like rockets and torpedoes. Their lack of guidance is a blessing sometimes though, because missiles have a fixed speed, they're mostly useless against ships above turbo speed.
I agree with meridian. Avalons fill a niche, it's just not the niche you want them to fill. Propose a new weapon.
As for damaging tridents, like Arf says, it's not hard to do a lot of damage with conventional energy weapons. The real problem is pinning them down long enough to shoot at them, in particular preventing them from rapidly hopping between random empty sectors (which frankly has always felt like a lame game mechanic to me, even before player owned tridents). Hopefully the energy-drain weapons Inc has been talking about will help resolve that, at least in a group attack.
As for damaging tridents, like Arf says, it's not hard to do a lot of damage with conventional energy weapons. The real problem is pinning them down long enough to shoot at them, in particular preventing them from rapidly hopping between random empty sectors (which frankly has always felt like a lame game mechanic to me, even before player owned tridents). Hopefully the energy-drain weapons Inc has been talking about will help resolve that, at least in a group attack.
Yeah, energy drain weapons will definitely make escape a heck of a lot harder for any ships, not just the Trident.
-1 for the op. A pair of skilled vulture pilots can take out a TTM currently. With the turret blind spots the TTM has no decent defense. The skilled attackers seem to know where not to be.
Until the trident has a better defense there is no reason for a super trident-killing weapon.
Until the trident has a better defense there is no reason for a super trident-killing weapon.
I am not opposed to keeping Avalons as they are and adding some new anti-capship rocket instead. That may even be preferable if a significant number of people like the Avalon as it is.
Tridents are the only player-controllable ship in the game that you can't insta-kill using a barrage of weapons that a single ship can deliver in seconds. They have lot of shortcomings to have this ability, and I don't think there should ever be a weapon that enables this sort of attack unless deployed from another capital ship.
You mean like the giant spine-mounted railgun the HAC doesn't have, but absolutely should?
For capship to capship encounters, how about a slightly upgraded megaposi in combination with a capship-only battery that has a huge capacity (say double or tripple) but the same recharge rate.
The range on the megaposi (and all other energy weapons, for that matter) kind of makes it ineffective for capship-to-capship encounters.
Zak, I was thinking something more along the lines of this.
If you ask me, the HAC should have 3 of those. :P
Zak, I was thinking something more along the lines of this.
If you ask me, the HAC should have 3 of those. :P
The appearance of the HAC just says to me that it should be built around a giant gun designed to destroy other capships, stations, ground installations, hollowed-out asteroid bases and anything else that gets in its way. The gun should be permanently-mounted and HAC-only.
There should *also* be a capship port, or maybe more than one kind of capship ports. Different capships should have different configurations of them. You should be able to put a couple BGTWKOAs on a Trident. Maybe the weapon you proposed should be an option for the same port.
There should *also* be a capship port, or maybe more than one kind of capship ports. Different capships should have different configurations of them. You should be able to put a couple BGTWKOAs on a Trident. Maybe the weapon you proposed should be an option for the same port.
sounds like a cool game you are talking about zak, who is making it?
BGTWKOAs
I want to find out who called it that and strangle them. :)
That gun's got a name. It's called Capital Cannon HighPower, and yeah, we should totally be able to put them on Tridents.
I want to find out who called it that and strangle them. :)
That gun's got a name. It's called Capital Cannon HighPower, and yeah, we should totally be able to put them on Tridents.
That would be Mogul.