I'd like to apologize for my online behavior on Vendetta lately. I've admittedly been harsh to quite a few people who continue to take advantage of balance issues. When I play Vendetta, I try to have a little fun with the game. I'm not the one who finds the one or two "l33t" ship config(s) and sticks with it all the time to get me to win more often. I always like to have a little variation and challenge thrown into the game instead. Which is why I try to avoid using what everyone else uses, namely the Valkyrie and Prometheus ships. I'm hoping that at least in the future we'll be seeing everyone use their own unique favorite ship, whether it be special or non-special.

I know this may be a little quick, but is there an update planned soon for actually balancing out the game? Cool graphics are good and all, but balancing out gameplay is a far more important issue. Recently there has been a rapid influx of players (both newbie and experienced) that have been flying around in nothing but Valkyries and Prometheuses. They're usually armed to the bone with rockets and gatling guns. When grouped up with a duel against a non-special ship, you can be sure that the person with rockets will attempt to outmaneuver that person and make a move known as "the rocket ram."

It's quite simple, really. The Hornet and Warthog are usually the two preferred fighters for taking out the Prometheus and Valkyrie, respectively. Unfortunately for the Warthog, its lower hull integrity and lower acceleration rate will mean certain death for a Valkyrie armed with 2-3 Sunflares at a very close range. I don't even want to describe the painful death the Hornet would experience from a Valkyrie encounter. You'd be lucky to hit a Valkyrie once with a Hornet in a face to face confrontation.

As for the Hornet against Prometheus, well... when there's someone to escort you it can usually take down the Prometheus with the help of some distraction. But when you're all alone, the Hornet's sluggish turn rate and acceleration just barely allows it to escape the gatling turret. Rocket ramming usually ensues for the Hornet pilot that even dares to come close enough to avoid turret tracking.

This is a problem. If everyone flies these two ships all the time, then nobody will ever touch non-special ships. If they have no advantages or uses of their own, they might as well just be all deleted from the game. While I appreciate the devs' efforts in providing every nation with every ship, as a temporary fix to all these issues, there are still quite a few of us out there who are interested in utilizing those nine other ships in the game that are rarely ever used.

We want to have fun. We want to try different things. Even if they aren't balanced right now, they're fun to use because of the higher degree of customization (for example the Warthog being the only gatling gun capable fighter). Sorry if I've been whining over this issue repeatedly, but it has gotten to the point where I have to plead with the devs to get this issue resolved before focusing on adding flashy graphics and "cool" features.

Well, I think people are finding uses for the other ships as we go along. The 2 large weapon pods on two of the ships make them the preferred choice for frigate blasting, the Warthog is my "botting" ship, and of course the Marauder is still the ultimate trader.
I do agree that there are a lot of Valks and Proms flying around, but I have yet to be troubled by any of these in combat unless combined with 3 or more other players.
Perhaps thew Dev's can find uses for the smaller ships in the future that exploit their particular capabilities. I liked the way station 10 used to be a very tight fit for the larger ships, so perhaps a future station could only allow the smaller craft in. Or newer fledgling stations only allow the smaller scout craft in until the station grows sufficiently in size for the bigger ports and craft. The Valk could be like the Star Wars TIE fighter and just be a local defense ship with no great range or warp capability, so it has to stay near a capital ship or station.

Lots of options there so I'm sure the dev's will have a few themselves. I'm just enjoying it as it is as I'm sure it's gonna change quickly enough to keep us on our toes.

The issue here, however, is mostly with combat. Nobody in a non-special ship should get killed so quickly or so easily by a person in a special ship. Non-special ships shouldn't be limited to being just botters and flag capturing ships. They're labeled "fighters" and "bombers" for a reason. They all need to have some level of fighting capability or something that will help them survive, if and when the time comes that they must confront a special ship. Simply boosting away from a close encounter isn't always the answer, as demonstrated by the Valkyrie's nasty habit of outaccelerating just about everything.

PS: I also missed the old asteroid design of s10. The new one looks totally mutilated and n00bified. For new players who crashed a lot, I thought it would give them a lot practice with piloting their ships. I mean it wasn't exactly the most important location to go to, so why make it be accessible to everyone? The idea I got about the version 3.2.0 s10 station was that it would provide a safe haven for skilled traders who had excellent piloting skills, as opposed to the careless and rushed pirates that would be chasing them. Unfortunately that level or protection and secrecy is now gone with the new design.

I would like to see some reblancing undertaken as well, both with ships and weapons and I agree with Arolte philosophically as too why; though of course we differ on exactly what modifications should be made. I won't bring those suggestions up here though, as we have a different forum for that.

I try really hard not criticize the devs, because I really do feel that they are doing an amazing job, but I find it very hard to understand the position that they have taken with regard to balance issues - especially since at the specific 'numbers rather than design' level under discussion game balance is a task requiring far less effort than code. And I'm largely totally mystified by the decisions made with regard to the few weapons that have been addressed - notably the rail gun - where any attempt at 'pen-and-papering' the weapon should have predicted the weapons near total lack of appeal post change. I know balance is something of secondary importance at present, but a set of reasonable changes wouldn't take much time at all.

The special ships are very awesome ships to fly, and yes it is becoming somewhat of an epidemic to see all the valk and proms flying around. Still there are counters for these ships, today while dueling with a blue I was able to kill his valk in a centurion. Armed with 1 tach against his 2 tachs and heat seekers( sorry I forget their new name. )

Yes the centurion has very little life and the valk could easily attempt to "rocket ram" it to death. Its really late and I think the point I was trying to get at is that... even the non special ships when flown by people who actually are willing to try to learn how to fly them besides just jumping in a valk or prom. are going to be able to hold their own in the long run against the "noobs" who just jump into specials and load up some rockets.

again I apologize its late but I hoped to say something to this problem in this post, but I have this feeling that its very uncoherent, i'll re-read it tomorrow to correct anything that doesn't make sense

Cohl / Jorus

Jorus: The problem isn't so much against 'n00bs' in Valks or Proms, it is that against other experienced players the most experienced players in the game are rather disadvantaged when not flying a Valk or a Prom. The way things are going now, within a week or two, 80% of all participants in combat will be using a Prom.

I would agree. Things are going down hill (and have been since sc15 opened up) now that everyone uses the special ships. If the old ships just had a advantage of some sort... say the Centurian and the Vulture have a linear acceleration advantage (ie forward/backward and strafe) for example.

I also agree...

It seems like all of the ships have some sort of ***intended*** role (fighter, bomber, transport, etc.) but with the current balance there are really only two roles:

1) Bad fighters
2) Special ships

The methods of creating balance aren't overly flawed (i.e., amounts of weapons/cargo/hull)... it could be that just tweaking these elements so that there is more differentiation between ships will solve everything. The way to differentiate ships beyond this (IMHO) is to make the configuration of ships more flexible, so that weapons slots, cargo space, engines and hull can be traded more specialization, etc...

~sk walks up to dead horse. Kicks Horse. Kicks it again... ~

Celkan: I'm not sure what you mean. At present, acceleration depends on the mass of the craft and the trust of the engine and is the rating we know as 'agility'. So simply lowering the mass would create high acceleration, but I think there is a limit to the utility of that. I don't really think there is a need for ships dodgier than Centurians and Valks, because you would be running up against the limitations of human reflex (think what an AI could do with such a ship).

Ok, things I'd like to see:

1) Centurian gets second small weapons slot.
2) Warthog replaces small weapons slot with second large weapons slot OR Warthog gets small mass decrease (in line with Vulture).
3) Wraith gets mass decrease (slightly lower than current hornet.)
4) Vulture gets third small weapons slot.
5) Hornet gets small mass decrease.
6) Atlas gets small mass decrease (closer to present Marauder).
7) Prometheus gets mass increase (closer to that of Ragnarok).

Things that I'm considering:

8) All specials lose 16-25% of thier current hull points uniformly.

The thing is even with the choice of a 'huge' 25% drop in the hull points and the non-specials getting improved as above, the specials are still better than any of the non-specials. That's how wide the separation is between the specials and the non-specials. A Valk with 9000 hull points has more fire power, hull points, and cargo space than an improved Centurian, and better manueverability, hull points, and cargo space than an improved Vulture. The Valk would still be the best light fighter, though a Vulture, Warthog, or Centurian would be alot closer than at present. A Marauder would still rule for trading purposes even though an Atlas would be a reasonably economical substitute, and a Prom would still have vastly more hull points than any other heavy though a Ragnarok would be alot more competive than at present.

Actually, the best fix would be to just seal off 15 (or at least access to other nations' ships).

/me watches this thread get moved to Suggestions, "nooo wait!!!!"

Give the promy back to Serco, the Maurader back to Neutral, and the valk back to Itani. The problem could be solved by giving more than one special ship to each nation.

Serco
Prom - 28k 2s 2l 10 cargo (low maneuv, like the current centuar)- Heavy bomber/transport
Sunstar - 16k 2s 12 cargo (medium maneuv) Transport/lightbomber

Neutral
Maurader - 18k 3s 16 cargo - Transport (forget actual title)
Stryker - 22k 2s 1l 10 cargo (medium-low, lower than current prom)- Heavy Gunboat/escort

Itani
Valk - 12k 2s 4 cargo - Fighter
Falcon - 20k 2s 1l 8 cargo (medium maneuv, slow accel) - Assault gunboat



Now, yeah we can quibble on the specifics, but the goal is to create an identity unique to each Nation by having its own slew of nation-specific (Like Celebrim I detest "special") ships.

Serco tend to have heavier, slower, harder-hitting ships; Neutral tend to have an odd assortment of trading/pirate ships; and Itani tend to have fast, light[er] exploratory and/or military-style ships.

Sircamps: The biggest problem with that is that you require a slew of ship models before each nation has a reasonable range of choices, and you still haven't fixed the problem that all the ships that they share between them are useless by comparison.

Ship models = work = money. I'd rather see that effort not 'wasted' by and large on a few ships for each nation and instead see the largest number of possible choices for every player. The nation specific ships don't have to be this special in order to be special and envied by the other nations.

It's mass, not weight, which determines acceleration speeds.

/me slaps Celebrim.

And I agree with the rest of you. Maybe limiting the availability of special ships would solve the problem. BUT ONLY if the Prometheus is balanced out in one of the many requested proposals.

When the game becomes more finalized, I'd still however like to see some VERY risky or time consuming way of stealing enemy ships. You know... a "find the needle in the haystack" sort of thing, where you'd be the only one to find that other nation special ship out of the thousands of sectors.

/me rubs his cheek.

'Duh. I knew that. It's early.'

I'd think that eventually accessibility of other nations specials might be limited by reputation as well. For instance, before you might be able to buy them on the 'black market' you might need a criminal reputation (and possibly ranks in a skill like 'low life') , which itself might carry penalties and the only other group that might have access would be people with extremely high reputation, at least some level of military rank, and who completed a difficult mission that gives access to an elite 'black ops' special forces unit. Or something like that.

A possible fix would be

A) Allow testers to create ship models. It's a lot easier for the devs to look at a ship and say "yes" or "no" than to model them all by themselves. I've heard many offers in-game from testers that are either in college earning an art degree, or from those who have their degrees. Surely, since Vendetta is only an engine test and never going to be commercial, might it be feasible to allow clients to contribute?

B) Make these "special" ships available to those who have a good reputation with their own nation. Count it by player kills, or flag caps (say, after 10 flag caps you get the lighter ship, after 50 you get the heavy one). Boy, that would sure put pressure on teamwork!!!! Or make it financially impossible to burn through specials. Say 50k on lights and 200k on heavies (or possibly 1/2 that).


However, I concede, it would be easier to rebalance the current ships to be more useful. However, could we go back to the pre-3.1 ships? For instance, take back the heavy from all the nations to be the nation-specific second ship? This would reduce the number of "useless" ships on the market.

To tie in with my post above, make the Ragnorok the Stryker, the Centuar the Sunstar, and the "light bomber" (/me missed the name) the Falcon. This would still leave the Centurian, the Vulture, the Wart-hog, the Hornet for non-nation specific ships. Re-balance those 4 and you could arguably have 4 ships with 4 roles.

Celebrim, I LIKE your idea of dropping the hull points on the specials down 25%. MAYBE even a more drastic choice of 50%. However, as was told to me, E3 brought about flash work. IE the frigate, etc. Balancing was coming AFTER E3. I have a gut feel that the next update will see MASSIVE changes in weapons and ships to try to fix balancing issues. I have to admit, the prom is my choice of ships to go into battle right now... I LAUGH at rocket rammers and rocket suiciders. Seekers/swarms? Bah I don't even worry bout those till I'm at 50%. :)

furball: Well, given the Prom's current design it ought to be (and eventually will be) the choice of everyone going into battle.

If by a 50% cut in the hull points you mean 'I think all ships should be balanced', I have alot of sympathy for that position. It used to be my position. However, I've been forced to the conclusion that there are a significant number of people with an RPG like philosophy that the outcome of the combat should not be solely determined by the skills of the participants. These people _like_ unbalanced ships (and will probably resist any downward change in the specials at all). These people like rpg style 'rewards' - the sci-fi equivalent of +5 vorpal swords of monster slaying. These people are nonetheless potential customers.

Therefore, the 25% was chosen with the idea of trying to get closest to the 'best of both worlds'. Something like balance, but also having a few ships with clear but small degree of superiority. If the difference in quality is small enough that it can be overcome with a slight advantage in player skill, then I'll accept 'high cost' as a balancing feature. Likewise, if the difference in quality is low enough that a newish player is able to compete and contribute in combat nearly from the beginning then I'll accept limited access to superior weapons.

As a known pro-RPG pundit, I want to point out that I personally do not resist balance; I simply promote specialization. The two do not need to be mutually exclusive. I simply believe that differentiation amongst ships and weapons should allow different ship configurations to better suit specific roles and game styles. However, that does not mean that I am "pro Prom" or that I want "+5 Vorpal Tachions of Icarus Slaying"

I think that very defensive ships should be allowed, so long as they are proportionally NOT very offensive. I think very fast ships should be allowed, so long as they are not also obsessively powerful so as to make them the champ of all fights. You'll find that most of my suggestions, when you think them through, balance extremes: very fast, weak attack, weak defense; very defensive, weak attack, weak speed; etc...

In my mind, a successful RPG allows a player to adopt a style and a character, and the ships should support that. To this end, I always promote **differentiation** not any one angle of superiority.

-sk

I'm with you there. I'd like to see the Prom's armor left as is, but with a significant loss in speed and some loss in manueverability (though not so much that unguided weapons are useless). The Valk should be as sprightly as it is, but with a little less armor. There's a niche for each.

Yes, I personally would PREFER to see that each ship has it's own use RATHER than balancing all of the ships per se. IE I'd LIKE to see a ship that was a DEDICATED valk killer, DEDICATED prommie killer, etc... HOWEVER, I also would LOVE to see a generic fighter, generic bomber, generic defender, generic trader, etc...

I think the ability to configure ships with different types of equipment gives you the ability to specialize. I don't think you have nearly the need to make specialized ship hulls as you do a wide range of interesting gizmos. At the extreme end of specialized you have each ship having its own speed, unique weapon, manueverability, etc. at which point you have IMO devolved into a pretty primative arcadish game.