I just fell victim to this, I don't think flares should be eliminated, but the damage to the firer needs to be increased well beyond the present limits, and their speed reduced considerably......which in its own way, would actually be getting rid of sunflares....

FOR

Here's a simple petition. Either vote FOR removing sunflares, or vote AGAINST removing sunflares.

Recently I've been very frustrated with the increasing number of players who have chosen to equip their ships with three or four sunflares. It's easy to kill players this way and battles only last seconds with them. What's even worse is that you absolutely cannot escape a Valkyrie ship with triple or double sunflares when you're boosting with the medium/fast charge combo.

Example: Today I was trading in an Atlas with a medium/fast charge combo on my ship, when a Valk approached me from behind and started firing rockets. Before I even maintained radar contact with this individual I've held my boost button down and was traveling at a maximum speed of 180m/s. My energy indicator was at 80% when I maintained contact with this Valkyrie ship, meaning I was boosting at maximum speed with absolutely no slowdown.

Anyway, this ship somehow managed to get behind me and started unloading triple sunflares on my tail while maintaining boost. In order to dodge the rockets I had to slow down and turn and then boost again. WELL, since the Valkyrie ship has a faster rate of acceleration he eventually gained up on me by repeatedly doing this and firing rockets. In other words it was IMPOSSIBLE for me to dodge the sunflares regardless of how I boosted or how I turned in my Atlas, due to the Valkyrie's advantage of acceleration. This is definitely a problem that needs to be fixed.

I'm up for reducing sunflares completely, since it's not feasible to have them in the future anyway, considering the fact that today's warfare relies solely on guided weaponry! This ISN'T a 3D FPS game, it's a space combat sim and MMORPG. If the devs absolutely want to keep the rockets, may I suggest either giving them a bulk penalty to slow rocket rammers down or make the rockets expend energy when fired? Right now it's WAY too easy to get a kill using triple sunflares on a Valkyrie ship. There's no way to escape them if you're in a medium or heavy ship.

Cast your votes or post additional ideas on how to fix this problem.

I vote AGAINST removal of the sunflares.
And Arolte.. you're not a rocket rammer only by firing tri/dual flares.

Cheers,
Grim.

OK. Since Arolte isn't good natured, why should I be?

Deleted post, summarized:

Point is, Arolte, you have used this exact configuration to attack people unprovoked. Why complain?

Furthermore, your suggestion to further gimpify the valk seems ill thought out. Do you really want every ship to have the same capabilities? Takes all the "special" out of special ships.

Lastly, there isn't enough weapons choice as it is (I know, I know, the devs are working on it). Why would we eliminate a useful one? I don't even use the damn things and I still believe they should be kept in the game. It wouldn't be much fun if we homogonized this game further than has already occured with 3.2.7 (yes, I'm pissed about my valk getting nerfed).

AGAINST

Oo Oo! people kill me with Gauss too much, can we take that out too?

AGAINST

Independence, actually I figured it out, I hit Refresh, so it re-entered everything I typed. I think any browser would do that

still AGAINST. heh

AGAINST

hey i killed a few people who were chasing me with duel mines. can we take those out too?

@WatercooledCT: check out Mozilla. :)

Actually....I've noticed I get killed sometimes. Lets just eliminate weapons and ships. That way we can all be happy.

Nytemare:

"If you have a suggestion about the game, we would love to hear it. If you disagree with someone, please keep it good-natured. Thanks"

Your first post was deleted. Please vote again.

Semi For.. but instead of removing them I would make this proposal:

Only allow 1 or 2 of each weapon on a ship. Possibly even expanding the port systems to not just be small and large but also energy/rocket/mines. Rocket jocks are a pia... but.. they can be taken down.

as a last note, the point of all the different engines/batts is to allow differnt ships to behave differently for different situations. There is nothing that stopped you from using the heavy engine so you can go 200. I love med/fast or eff/fast, but I know that when I load them up, there are going to be people who are faster and more agile than I am. It's a risk you take.

I mean similarly, I was just playing around in a standard bus when I got chased by a valk with dual geminis. I would like to say I gave a good run, made it about 3 sectors and he had to use about 30 missles before he finally got me, but I was doomed from the beginning. I had free bat/engine so I can only avoid homing missles for so long before I ran out of energy from turbing on and off. The valk had a faster ship. Should I petition that geminis (or swarms) in great numbers are unfair? no, I must accept the fact that I made a poor choice in picking a ship to fly.
We wanted the ability to modify the ships with diff engines and such, so we must realize that each combo has pluses and minues.
:-/

Actually modern military rifles are under development that can fire explosive rounds that detonate within a certain proximity of a target, allowing the shooter to take out targets that are hiding around a corner or beneath a window etc.

As far as the game goes, I personally think that sunflares are already balanced by their slow speed and relatively low damage (gauss does 1200 damage per round and has unlmited ammo, tachyons have a firepower of something like 3600 damage per second, unlimited ammo, 3000 damage per second with only 16 rounds seems pretty reasonable for flares).

I think a good answer to pirate valks using flares is to drop prox mines. This works even better in a centaur, drop 2 pairs of mines and the valk is toast. Use mouselook and as soon as you see the rockets coming let up on the turbo and adjust course. It's not impossible. Just think "bullet time." ;)

AGAINST

I agree with most of what has been said here about correct balance.

AGAINST

As expected, 99.9% of notorious rocket rammers voted against this petition. They've found the ultimate insta-kill config, and now they don't want it removed because it would make them suck if they had to use non-prox/non-aimbot weapons. Boohoo.

The problem isn't the sunflare's speed. They can easily be sped up by boosting, with speeds of up to 235-255m/s WITHOUT ANY penalty whatsoever. You can unload 16 rockets on to a person at this speed in under 8 seconds, due to the insanely high ROF. And what doesn't make sense to me is how the screamers require energy to fire but the sunflares don't. Inconsistency #1.

In regards to the other weapons which I feel need balancing, take a look at the gauss cannon. The gauss cannon is grouped next to the plasma cannon in the "buy" tab. They both also look nearly identical through their graphical representations, suggesting that they both fit in the same type of port. Yet the gauss remains as an s-port while the plasma remains as an l-port. Inconsistency #2.

If this pattern is to be followed, maybe the regular gatling gun should be s-port and the advanced gatling gun should be l-port. Inconsistency #3.

Regarding the engines, the now popular config (medium/fast charge) is just too damn slow. Due to the removal of boost tapping, the heavy battery config is useless for traders. No matter how my Atlas would've been equipped, I would've died to that Valk jockey with triple sunflares. There is NO escaping a sunflare equipped ship with higher acceleration that can boost at the same speeds as your non-special ship, period.

Now you may be thinking, "Well then, don't fly around in an Atlas anymore. Buy a Marauder or Promy for trading, idiot." But then again I would say to you, "As a beta tester it is my job to beta test this game, and that includes the usage of unpopular ships as well." While some of you special ship jockeys may hate it, the balance of non-special or unpopular ships is still something that needs to be looked into whether you like it or not. Not necessarily the physical properties of the ships, but the availability of certain weapons for each.

quick question? how do you get 99.9% out of 6 people?
Also I a Morpheus_sw I defy you to point out one time I have EVER rocket rammed.
You can't.

Also you are now upset about the lack of turbo tapping?
you wrote this previously:
"A lot of you are gonna hate this a lot at first. I know I did. But after a while you get used to it and you'll see why they chose to make this change. There are a few combos that will easily get you across any sector with absolutely NO boost tapping, at a rate of 160-180 m/s. Sure, you lose the ability to go 200 m/s while tapping, but you won't have anymore aching fingers or broken keys. 160-180 m/s isn't too bad, right? And for once that efficient engine is useful! Anyway, I believe this change is going to raise a lot of criticism on the forums. All I ask is to give it some time and experiment with different combinations to see if one works for you." (taken from the 3.2.7 post)

Arolte, I have NEVER rocket rammed. You, on the other hand, have. Its the only way you've killed me outside of flag caps (which is plenty).

Can we say HYPOCRITE?

I take it quite personally when certain gold vets decide to randomly label me "greifer" or "rocket rammer" or "noob killer". Especially with "notorious" attached to any of the titles. The only thing I'm notorious for is capping the holy crap out of gold when you're not looking.

Nytemayre, and that has what to do with that topic of this thread? I've already explained my policy on rocket ramming. I'm not about to repeat myself again and cause this thread to go off topic. Either offer some constructive and valid reasons why sunflares should stay, or shut up.

"capping the holy crap out of gold when they are not looking"
hehee sorry that's funny

I've already explained my resons above, and voted accordingly. My "in depth" reasons were deleted by the mods, so you will have to settle for the brief version.

Now I am simply preventing further gold inspired slander against my name and others.

Lock this friggin thread... flame war warning.