So far I've been very pleased 3.2.0. It is by far the best release to date, hands down. Congratulations!

But just like any other new release, I've got a few things to say about this one:

Bug (Engines busted?) --

My ship can only reach 180m/s boosting speed. I tried purchasing a light, efficient, medium, and heavy engine. I also tried purchasing a light, efficient, medium, and heavy battery with each engine. I could not in any way go above 180m/s while boosting. I'm in Gold Nation, if that matters, and both ships were mediums (marauder and hornet). Is there a max speed limit for ship classes now? If so, will this change? I'd much rather be able to go 200m/s or 210m/s like the older versions.

=(

Suggestion (Hornet as a fighter) --

The Hornet, IMO, should have high maneuverability. Not very high. Just high. It doesn't even come close to being a medium ship. The Vulture is bigger than it. Plus it has two engines, whereas the Hornet has only one engine. Now, I know that this is probably something that's trivial to argue about, but I'd just like to toss in my suggestion to reverse these two ships in terms of roles. They just don't look right in their current positions. Would petitions or votes be considered?

Suggestion (Balance of "special" ships) --

I'm not exactly sure what the role of each nation's "special" ship is right now, but it seems Blue Nation's "special" ship dominates the Vendetta universe right now. It's a fighter pilot's dream. The thing can turn on a dime and its massive hull is nearly impenetrable. I don't exactly know how the devs intended the other nations to stop a fleet of these from attacking them. A miracle, perhaps?

The very thought of watching every future Blue pilot flying around in these isn't something I'd like to think about. Maybe someone can enlighten me as to how the specs balance out. I just don't see it. Right now there are plenty of trading ships in the game, available to all nations btw. I don't see Gold's "special" ship as being a superior or "advanced" trading ship. I don't see it as being a superior fighting ship also. So what exactly is it? I suppose it's a medium ship with the cargo space of a heavy, and some additional hull thrown off to the side as a bonus feature. Not too shabby. But consider what would happen if one of these Gold "special" ships were to go up against another "special" ship with the same hull strength and higher maneuverability. Yep, Blue's "special" ship. It wouldn't stand a chance, would it? In addition to its slower turn rate, It only has 3 small weapon pods -- providing it with little to no defensive power to protect the cargo that it's meant to carry. And then we have Red's Prometheus (aka "Iron Slug"). The thing can be decked out with tons of guns (or so I hear), unlike the Blue's "special" ship. But unfortunately it has a slow turn rate, making it more vulnerable during close battles. But still, the additional pods can most certainly be used offensively and defensively to keep several Blue "special" ships at bay. Something Gold's "special" ship can't do.

But anyway, I guess what I'm trying to point out is that there are plenty of heavies and mediums available for trading. But there are few options when it comes to finding a highly maneuverable fighter with a lot of hull strength. When you provide the best of both worlds (maneuverability AND strength) in the form of a "special" ship to one nation only, they'll most certainly dominate the game. My suggestion to the devs when testing the balance of nation-specific ships would be to spread out and join other nations when testing. I've noticed that most of 'em are from Blue Nation (Incarnate). Maybe once in a while I'd see one on red nation (a1k0n). But there are zero developers on Gold Nation. Bad. Test from all sides to make sure that each nation can defend itself and has some form of balance. My apologies if the devs have already done this, or if they simply didn't have enough time. This is just one of those cases where the shift in balance is more critical to gameplay.

Request (deleting an old account) --

Lastly, I have a simple personal request to make to the devs -- Would it be possible to get my "Khral" account deleted? I'm using a new account and character now and I won't be needing my old one anymore. The only active account I'll be using is "Arolte." Just a heads up for you guys, so more players can sign up for the beta test. Thanks.

The Blue Advanced Fighter only has 3 small weapon ports, and most of the small weapons don't work so good against some ships. Most of them the person has to be standing still to hit which evens it out. I don't know, maybe give the gold ship 2-4 extra cargo space and maybe 2k hp more?

We'll be doing a lot of game balance tweaking in the near future. The itani special ship will definitely be retuned very carefully.

About the hornet vs the vulture... For 3.2, I resized all the ships so that their scale made "sense", based on the size of the ship's cockpit and a 2 meter tall pilot. The hornet's cockpit is tiny relative to the rest of the ship, so it needed to be scaled up quite a bit to have a pilot fit inside of it. The vulture, by the same token, got scaled down quite a bit.

In the description for each ship, you can now see its length. Use that to compare.

Personally, I would prefer the speed and maneuverability of the Hornet beefed up a little bit. But anyway...

The Valk is rather unbalanced, obviously. The only way to take it down is to use 3 or 4 Railguns fired simultaneously. As for the Gold Special, I like it. It could possibly use a large weapon port, but really it isn't that bad. Lots of cargo space (2 more than the next closest ship, which I believe is the Wraith), and handles like a dream (for a freighter anyway). Plus, if you outfit it well, it can come in useful as a warship. :) Not uber, but good.

Here's just an idea... how about making railguns a large weapon? It doesn't seem right to me that you can fit them on a tiny fighter.

Not linked into a group, railguns are perfectly balanced. It's only when they are linked that they are trouble, because they have such low energy requirements.

The solution would be either to increase energy requirements (but it would have to be huge to make a difference given thier slow firing rate), or better yet divide the S slots into Small Gun and Small Missile slots so that ships with large numbers of S slots can't always capitalize on that. It seems like multiple rails are becoming defacto aboard ships which hints to me that they are every bit as broken as the Valk.

And as a general rule I don't like that the special ships are better than comparable ships in multiple categories.

Uberships are bad for the game.

I'd like to ask the devs to please hear me out before making any decisions on changing the current railgun.

When I first started using the railgun, as a single weapon, I felt that the weapon was weak and hard to aim (too small of a projectile to catch anything). I tossed it away. Only after grouping it did it actually do a good amount of damage. IMO it should be left alone as is, but perhaps increase the cost by A LOT and making different "levels" of it. I can assure you, though, that making it a single-only weapon will quickly put it at the bottom of the list on people's minds.

For those who are skeptical, let me explain eight points here regarding the balance of the railgun...

1. The railgun projectile has a VERY high speed. Easy, right? Wrong! This will result in minimal aimbot guidance. You need to rely more on manually aiming it rather than using the aiming reticule. As a result this requires actual skill on the player's part. The railgun will therefore be a weapon owned by a chosen few. If the player can aim, they'll be rewarded with the power. If they can't, they'll just find another weapon instead.

2. The railgun has a slow reload time. Almost all the S-class weapons provided can be used as spray and pray weapons. You need only wait a second or two for your battery to fill up again, and then you're back to spraying. They also fire at an incredibly fast rate with a considerable amount of damage. The railgun, however, has a slow reload time that'll provide ample opportunity for the opponent to either A) escape, B) dodge very quickly, or C) kill you before you kill him. I HAVE in fact dueled players with the railgun only, and I can safely say that it's NOT as easy as it sounds. I HAVE also chased ships away using a three-combo railgun setup. Half the time they escape. The other half they died. It IS possible to escape someone with combo railguns, because chances are the more powerful combos will be mounted on a ship that has reduced agility! A simple zig-zagging motion can easily be used to avoid death. For those who are constantly angered by dying from railguns, I just think they haven't given the new weapons enough time to adapt to. It doesn't take much to figure out what tactics you'll need to employ when it comes to avoiding death with these new weapons. The railgun isn't any different!

3. The railgun has limited ammunition. The moment someone fills up all their weapon ports with railguns only, they automatically mark themselves as a moving target the second they run out of ammunition. Thirty rounds is NOT a lot against a human opponent. It's a lot harder than it sounds. Try it out yourselves and you'll see. So chances are if you're trying to use double/triple combo railguns to stop a fleet from capping a flag, you'll probably run out after one or two kills. If you have any intention of ever defending yourself without worrying about ammo, the usage of combo railguns will be reduced considerably. It's a tradeoff basically.

4. The only one-shot-one-kill advantage the railgun has is with bots and buses (aka free ships). Buses should have an increased hull strength to begin with, to protect against n00b killing. I can tell you through experience that time and time again newbies have always died easily in buses. The problem isn't the weapons themselves. It's the free ship with its weak hull and slow speed. It doesn't matter what weapon you use. You can keep knocking weapons off the list until we're reduced to ramming, but you'll still find newbies dying left and right for that very reason. I think the focus should be on the actual hull of the free ship and bots, not the weapon itself. Every other ship is fine when it comes to taking railgun hits.

5. Also consider that a dual/triple combo railgun configuration may very well be the only line of defense for heavily armored fighters/bombers! The Blue Nation in particular has a very powerful advanced fighter. Gold and Red need SOME powerful weapon to counteract them! The Golds in particular have relied heavily on the railgun combos when taking out these advanced fighters. And to be honest it has leveled the playing field between the two. It is now possible for a generic medium ship to take down an advanced fighter of the Blue Nation, with the help of the combo railgun.

7. I also can't put enough emphasis on keeping it as an S-class weapon. It seems like 90% of the cool weapons are L-class anyway. Before you know it fighters and medium ships will ONLY be allowed to use laser/plasma weapons. That's NOT something I personally want to see. Otherwise it'll be boooooring and there'll be very little variation in weaponry. Please please please please keep the variation under the S-class weapon list. The L-class weapons already have their large share of "cool" and "different" weapons.

8. Another thing to keep in mind is that a railgun is traditionally meant to be a slow loading, fast projectile shooting, and heavy damage inflicting weapon. That's what it has always been and that's the way it'll always be (in games). If they make it slower, make it weaker, or do any other altercations to it... it will no longer be a railgun! It'll defeat the whole purpose of it ever being a railgun altogether. It'll probably end up being yet another laser spam weapon (God please NO!).

So I'm pleading with the devs here. Any drastic changes to the railgun from its current form would result in something boring or useless. Please take into consideration some of these factors which may have been overlooked previously. A railgun should be a railgun. There is no middleground here.

I'd have to agree with Khral on his last post, the rail gun helps level the playing field, for many it IS their only defense.

I am willing to admit that the railgun is a decent weapon and not as overpowered as i originally thought (at the time i was in one of the newb bus ships that Arolte/khral [uhh what does he want to be called now?]was killing with that tri railgun combo.

It does still need tweaked a bit. If you take the medium attack ship (i think it's the hornet, not sure i'm not at my home comp right now.. just bummin around the msg boards while at work) you have a med agile 4 small port ship.. if you link 2 PAIRS of railguns.. one pair to primary and one pair to secondary, and alternate between them you can get a fairly fast rate of fire. (of course after your 30 rounds/gun are gone you are a sitting duck) but with an efficient engine and a fast recharge battery, running away is a fairly simple option.

Maybe having some ports required to be missile class weapons would solve it.. but i dont like that. more effective would be to have firing ARCS, guns at the back of the ship firing backwards or automatically targeting and firing at enemies (at the AI level of skill)

This would allow missile launchers with seeker type weapons to be placed in rear ports and still fire forwards..

hmm not sure if ilike that either tho.

oh well.. 3.2 is a good game.. the devs rule and i'm sure they will come up with something... I tend to agree however that the railgun IS a railgun.. and it does what a railgun is designed to do. maybe some kind of magnetic shield module that can deflect the incoming round for an energy cost would be an option. oh well i'm rambling now gonna go find another post

Well, first off: The railgun technology is, ironically enough not commonly used simply because the energy requirements are so astronomical. When some classmates and I built one way back at the end of high school, we had to sit and let it charge (I believe we used an old computer monitor) all night in order to get enough power to fire. Firing warped our barrel from the heat. The point is that I believe the entire premise of the railgun's energy use to be flawed. It would be possible for it to be a small weapon, but it would need about 300 energy per shot, which would rule out using more than one per ship.

That sounds about right, but you'd have to crank up the damage... Maybe 5k, but 300/shot and 2 sec reload, with limited ammo...

Yeah. I forgot to add that part. We only fired once, of course, and the armament was a sigle C-cell battery. We used a pile of 5 concrete blocks, and it went through three of them, or about a foot and a half of solid (albiet not hardened) concrete. Yeah, so upping the damage a little (short of doubling it, but say, damage and a quarter, or even damage and a half) sounds good.

Ok, right now it takes two direct triple railgun hits to take down a Hornet with 100% hull. Maybe it can be tweaked down to three direct hits instead. That would be more reasonable. A free EC-88 ship should also have the same amount of hull protection as a Hornet as well. The energy requirements is fine as it is. It is a weapon that uses ammunition, so energy consumption should be kept to a minimal level. Otherwise nobody would use if it it had high energy consumption and limited ammunition.

So after playing around with it a little longer, I think the railgun only needs to be slightly tweaked in terms of damage. Just one less hit to kill someone (however much damage points that may be) than it takes now. Three direct hits should take down a Hornet, and not two. That will give the bombers and trading ships a better chance at survival.

<***> NOTE: All these stats are based on the triple railgun configuration. Railgun groupings should be kept for coolness factor! Please do not get rid of it.

I was also wondering... will there be nation specific weapons? Since the Itani have a uber fighter that is strong and agile, maybe The Neutral Territories and Serco can have a stronger choice of weapons to defend themselves with. For example the ship with the weakest hull ships should have the strongest weapons. Whereas the ships with the strongest hull ships should have the weakest weapons. I don't know... just I thought I had. Special nation weapons would be cool though.

well i guess i've wandered back to this post.

ctishman- your post is well thought out.. but not put in perspective.

you are correct. railguns aren't used today because of the high power consumption, however.. how much power do you think it takes compared to the energy required to charge and fire a plasma bolt or an ion burst. The energy required is much higher to generate a bolt of pure energy, give it cohesion, and project it, than to impart kinetic energy into a piece of metal.

however.. your post did bring up one important point that no-one has mentioned from a realisim perspective.. HEAT.
i know that you cant restrict a game completely to the true laws of physics or it tends to become somewhat dull, however, with all the engines firing, weapons blasting away, damage being dealt to a ship.. shouldn't there be some form of heat buildup?

this could be used as an additional balancing element to keep the different weapons modules/configurations from becoming more overpowering than each other.

just a thought

Well, I basically agree with Arolte, though that may not be readily apparant.

The rail gun is an excellent weapon, both in balance and utility. My main complaint is not that they can be grouped together, but that no other weapon even comes close to its utility when grouped together. The real problem with the railgun isn't its large damage. On a per second basis, the damage from a railgun is pretty low because of its very low cycling rate. The real problem is compared to all of the other small weapons it is incredibly energy efficient.

What I think is that on many of the current triple and quadruple weapon ships, some of the ports should be required to hold missile weapons. If that is done, it might even free up all ships to return to something more like 3.1 when all ships could have a range of tactical options. Being able to group all of your weapons ought to be an advantage for which there is a tradeoff.

Otherwise, you might as well throw away all the other weapons, because people are only going to mount railguns.

My Thoughts on the Weapons in General

Ion Blaster: The basic cheap weapon. Almost pointless because you can get weapon0 for free and store them in your inventory if you want to arm a ship with this.

Damage/Second: 1667 Energy/Second: 40 Efficiency: 41.7 Velocity: 140

Changes: Excellent efficiency could turn this weapon into a low cost triple weapon, but it is hindered by its low velocity. +10 Velocity and +50 damage were shot might actually make it useful and would distinguish it further from weapon0

Phased Blaster: A second grade weapon, and as such will probably be rarely used since most players will save up for better weapons. It is particularly hampered by its horrible efficiency.

Damage/Second: 2916.7 Enegy/Second: 100 Efficiency: 29.1
Velocity: 160

Changes: Reduce energy per blast by 3 per shot.

Tacyon Blaster: Seems to be the favorite small energy weapon because of its high velocity and good efficiency.

Damage/Second: 3611.1 Energy/Second: 105 Efficiency: 34.2
Velocity: 190

Changes: Might actually be too good depending on how the other weapons are balanced. Don't change then reassess latter.

Graviton Blaster: It's price suggests that it was intended to be the high end small energy weapon but its actually inferior to the Tacyon Blaster in most cases, and clearly inferior to two such weapons.

Damage/Second: 7222.2(!) Energy/Second: 277.8(!) Efficiency: 26
Velocity: 160

Changes: Simply a broken design for which something must be done to drastically overhual it. In theory it might work on a ship with multiple batteries and relatively limited weapon slots, but that's just too narrow of a window. Might work better as a ammo consuming weapon with markedly better energy efficiency, or if the velocity was considerably higher to make up for its poor efficiency.

Gatling Cannon: I haven't used heavy weapons yet, but it looks dangerous and effective.

Damage/Second: 4000 Energy/Second: 107 Efficiency: 37.4
Velocity: 180

Changes: The weapon is basically a cheaper version of the Tacyon Blaster which tends to indicate that L weapons may not be quite the firepower advantage they are apparantly intended to be. It's slower velocity is an equal tradeoff with the TB's better efficiency.

Advanced Gatling Cannon: The high end large energy weapon.

Damage/Second: 4000 Energy/Second: 120 Efficiency: 33.3
Velocity: 180

Changes: In many ways this is the weapon that the regular gatling Cannon should be, and as such is probably way overprised. Reduce the price down to about 8000cr.

Rail Gun: At present the games far and away most popular PvP weapon. It's readily accessible at 1400cr, and its high velocity makes it lethally accurate even at a distance. If you have a steady hand, you can kill what you are aiming at.

Damage/Second: 1312 Energy/Second: 6.3 Efficiency: 209.9(!) Velocity: 400(!)

Changes: Check out how that low D/S balances with incredible efficiency and velocity. This is actually a very well designed weapon. The real problem is that ships have so little energy that they really need high efficiency weapons to use them together which means that the weapon gets overused in practice. This is a ship design flaw, not a weapon design flaw. You should be able to by 1 bolt rather than five at a time. The high cost of bolts limits this to a PvP weapon which encourages piracy. I'd reduce bolt cost to 5 each from the currect 10 each. The weapon seems kinda cheap compared to the junk competing with it.

Gauss Cannon: A decent idea for a weapon severally hampered by its low velocity and terrible efficiency.

Damage/Second: 2000 Energy/Second: 120 Efficiency: 16.7
Velocity: 150

Changes: Either greatly increase velocity or greatly decrease energy per shot or some combination of both.

Plasma Cannon: A theoretically better gauss cannon. Not that that means much.

Damage/Second: 3650 Energy/Second: 175(!) Efficiency: 20.9
Velocity: 120

Changes: At 20.9 efficiency you'd expect higher velocity not lower. If you really must have a slow moving weapon, double or even triple this weapons damage per shot. Once again we see that large weapons don't always have better firepower than small ones.

Charged Cannon: A good idea. I haven't used it but I suspect like similar weapons in decent it needs a big boost to be really useful.

Damage/Second: ? Energy/Second: 60 Efficiency: ? Velocity: 140

Changes: At 140 velocity it needs high efficiency or some other bonus to justify its use. Its max damage is not that much higher than a rail gun. Perhaps if it had a burst radius or other secondary advantage.

Detailed information on the rockets seems to be classified. They don't seem that popular right now (except for the avalon and that may just be the 'shock and awe' factor). I suspect it is because the railgun does much the same thing and carries alot more ammunition. If the rocket ammunition was doubled from present, you'd probably start seeing some competition.

Thanks for the input, everyone. It'll be very useful in rebalancing.

Celebrim, I disagree with you on the usefulness of the Ion blaster. When I was starting out, I found it to be an excellent bot hunting weapon, quickly giving me the cash to start significant trading. It's cheapness and rapid fire means, IMO, that it's not a PvP weapon, but a newb bot gun. Not all of the weapons need to be feasible in a PvP enviroment, I think. There are already many weapons that possess strengths in that regard.

vorebane: I'm sure you can put it to use, but I still stand by what I said. The trouble is that I can kill bots just fine with the free weapon. Not spending 200cr for a weapon upgrade means that I can start trading that much faster (2-3 cargos), and since I would expect true newbies to die a couple of times from bots (or pirates!) before they got the hang of it they would probably be wasting money buying weapon upgrades with such a small improvement in value.

Today I've extensively tested the Advanced Gatling Turret on a heavy and a medium ship. This weapon kicks ass. And it's probably THE BEST line of defense for a heavy ship at close range. Its high rate of fire, smart AI tracking, high energy consumption, and expense balances out very well. Kudos, Guild Software.

However, the only thing that needs to be tweaked would be its strength. It needs to pack a little more punch. You need to be very close to your enemy for accurate shots. At longer ranges its shots just barely clips the enemy as he/she dodges. After all, its purpose is to keep enemies at bay... much like how guided missiles are meant to shoo away pirates. But unfortunately it's a tad too weak for this role on heavier/advanced fighters. I literally hit a blue advanced fighter by at least 15-20 times with it, and it only reduced it to 40% hull before I finally died. I kept a bead on him for a good two or three minutes while unloading shells into him. This is bad. It should be slightly more powerful, especially with all the money you're paying for it. It should be a weapon that yells "BACK OFF!!" It should force deadly fighters to fight from a medium range, providing the heavy ship with a safer environment.

Anyway, I hope you guys consider upping the damage by just a tad. It could go a long way as an effective defensive weapon.

PS: When you put the new sounds in for the weapons, could you perhaps put the sound of an A-10 Warthog's gatling gun for the advanced gatling gun? That would kick major ass!

=)