i managed to hit someone dead on with an avalon. then again, he was headed towards me with rockets and we were both killed by the avalon's splash damage.

if there's is a way to "fix" the rockets to make it seem more like 3.1, i would recommend limiting rocket launchers to one per ship.

> I understand the "rocket rammer" issue, but (for the purpose of this response)
> addressing strictly the problem of a trader trying to flee from a pursuer.. what's
> wrong with carrying mines? I built up one of my characters with an atlas, mostly
> being chased to and fro by people while using the (relatively) slow efficient/fast
> recharge combo. But.. with a lightning mine launcher, people usually learn it's
> unhealthy to close the distance really quickly. Even solely as a psychological
> deterrent, they still seem to work pretty well.

Keep in mind we can only be equipped with four l-mines. That's not even close to being enough to deter a Valk moving at 180-200m/s behind you in an Atlas. Proximity mines could maybe do more damage, but you'll probably end up issuing since you're taking fire up the ass anyway. I think once the problem of station mining is cured, you should increase the mine port capacity greatly to provide that level of protection to traders. But for now mines are ineffective unless used on stations, on flags, or other various key locations.

On another note, 16 rockets is a tad bit too much isn't it? Before it was only 8, but now doubling it made it into a spam weapon. Most ships will only take two or three triple flare hits before blowing up. The rocket pod must be HUGE to have such a high capacity.

Oh... I also like the idea of having contact only weapons. Reducing the proximity radius may very well cure the problem also.

My vote:

Make all weapons contact only (or, if you must, 10m det range). After all, if it worked for the Avalon, it MUST work for everything else.

I believe 16 is a fair ammount
I have a hornet with 3 tachs and 1 sunflare.

now on a good day I should be able to use up those 16 rockets among several enimies without having to reload.

Say I want to cap (in a hornet for some stupid reason) I wanna have my blasters, but I also want to have a good supply of rockets for when I'm being overwhelmed.

the point of having 16 is so that a ship would load 1 s port with rockets. The fact that people use ALL bays for rockets can not be blamed on the design of the game.

As I said before, make them impact only. that should solve everything except for the poor shmoe in a prom who is easier to hit then a blind/deaf whale

While I understand arolites frustration with the rockets, I am against thier removal. Rockets are the only viable way to kill while in pursuit. We need either effective lower energy weapons or power system that is seperate for energy weapons and propulsion, they can still be linked though. For example, you have 150 E of weapon power and 250 E of propulsion, but you can use both for propulsion. Rockets need a timed fuse to keep combat skillful. While arolite and I do not get along, we should keep public forum comunications cival and thoughtful, maybe even productive.

-homestar

AGAINST

Removing a weapon because you can't find a good defense against it is stupid, sunflares are easy to avoid (even rocket ramming, it is possible!!!), just because you can't find that way doesn't mean we should remove the weapons. And yes, I do believe that people voting for the removal just can't find a way to beat it, simple as that, or else, why would they have any problem with it? Doesn't look pretty? ;)

I never use them, i almost always get killed by them

But...

If sunflares are fired at you, imagine the line they are flying in and boost at a 90 deg angle from this line. Dependant on how quick you are to react to this and how close the source is you can escape with minimal and sometimes *NO* damage. Besides if you score enough hits and you get rrammed the player issues in your splash damage (this make me chuckle!)

Vult V Vult battles with energy weapons can be *really* dull! There have been times when i have just shut my engines off to escape the boredom.

I hate rockets, i hate them with a passion, but there needs to be a challenge somewhere...

AGAINST

Hrm, tough decision.. I would vote for the removal of them in their current state. HOWEVER, we do need a small port rocket.. if nothing else, I feel it would be good to reduce the sunflares back down to 8 capacity where they were before. This would help reducing spamming and give more a chance, particularly when they are used in linked fire.

Also, its amazing the damage these do. I saw silicon destroy a warthog by firing quad sunflares at point blank range.. the warthog didnt even have time to turn, in under 3 seconds(literally) it was destroyed. Their rate of fire could also be toned down.

For those who say it's easy to get away from, you obviously haven't experienced this phenomenon. Because you've had no experience to provide evidence that such a problem even exists, you automatically dismiss it. For those who have doubts, try the following experiment:

Have a Valk pilot run your Atlas (or any non-special medium ship of your choice) down with triple sunflares. Let's say you're both 300-400m apart and you're boosting at a constant speed. This is usually the average distance from which you break away from an ambush with an enemy player. So anyway, the Valk behind you unloads one or two bursts of sunflares and you immediately spot it on your rear radar. So you let go of boost for a split second and change your direction and then boost again. That split second just cost you about 50 meters of distance, since the Valk has a higher rate of acceleration.

So you're boosting 50 meters closer now and the Valk pilots shoot sunflares again. And you repeat this process until the Valk pilot is really close to you. It'll eventually get to the point where you'll have less than a second to dodge the proximity radius of those sunflares. And no, I'm not exaggerating. There is a point where you wouldn't be able to escape the proximity in time. The acceleration of the Valkyrie ship and the usage of the ship as an added boost for the sunflares makes it impossible for someone of a lower acceleration ship to get away. Literally impossible!

You can dodge your ship and boost in all kinds of ways all you want. You can describe to me all sorts of methods you'd use. But realistically speaking it's not going to happen. And you won't believe me until you've experienced it yourself. Phoenix originally raised concerns about this in the Valk thread of the suggestions forum, in regards to quad sunflare Hornets running him down. I dismissed it thinking that he simply couldn't dodge very well. Well, now that it has happened to me I know exactly what he's talking about. And I've been playing Vendetta since 3.0.7 and never have I encountered a situation where it's impossible to a escape from rockets. The combination of the Valkyrie and sunflares have managed to break this record and have given rocket rammers the edge in gameplay.

My vote is limiting the flares (f. e. 2 of them maximum per ship, better only 1) and the number of rockets decreased from 16 to 10.

When i take a look in the past, mostly of my "deads" in combat (not meaning 1vs1 duels in sec. 7 or 15) are results of the combination valk with two, mostly triple sunflares.
For the moment, i miss the diversity, the individuality because most fighters are using the valk/flares-combi (my sight, maybe i'm wrong) and weaker pilots/fighters in other ships will not really have a chance to survive.
I ask: What about people, who don't want to fly a valk, prefer other ships, don't see fighting as their primary proposition?
Are they wrong in Vendetta and better should leave?

Have a nice day
Linda (-:

An explanation of the terms Arolte uses 999999-times a day on various pilots:

Rocket Ramming: If you fire rockets too close to your target and take some splash damage yourself, and do this often, you're a rocket rammer.
You're NOT a rocket rammer just by using tri/dual rockets.

Griefing: If you kill a person repeatedly and the person you're griefing doesn't think it's funny at all, you're a griefer.
You're NOT a griefer just by killing a person once or twice.

Cheers,
Grim.

I'll say it again: If one weapon is too hard to escape under a certain situation, then we should NOT nerf the weapon. Instead we should think of ways to counter the weapon; add that extra element into the game and the game becomes richer. Keep nerrfing weapons and the game becomes booring.

If you are at war, and the enemy develops a powerful rocket, do you:

A) Send your scientists into a room to develop a counter-measure
B) Send your diplomats to the enemy, trying to convince them that their weapon isn't fair

Imagine if we had any one of the following weapon choices:

1) rear-firing gattling
2) forward-thrown mines
3) anti-homer 'flares'
4) cloaks
5) ...[see the gizmo thread]

If you had trouble dodging rockets, you could outfit your ship with one of these things, and it would help ***you**** avoid rockets. But the others wouldn't have to deal with nerfed weapons to do it, and rockets would still be perfectly useful against those who didn't deem it important enough to waste a weapon slot on counter-measures.

my 6.5 cents

Forward thrown mines, sorry to say, is the worst idea. Do people who lay mines lay them in front of them then drive over them? I don't think so.

Side thrown are ok though.

Yeah, it would be dumb to throw a mine forward and drive over it, but that was just an off-the-cuff example to get everybody thinking that there are more constructive ways to solve sunflares without nerfing them.

Sorry if my examples suck.

Actually I kinda like the forward mine idea. First, you can't be hurt by your own mines. I would enjoy throwing one in front of me where my persuer can't see it, then I can quickly swerve around it and as my persuer is watching me, he'll just drift through it.

against
i finally learned how to use the damn things
89

AGAINST - I can't see any problem with Sunflares, hardly anyone has rocket rammed me... maybe people should learn to dodge better...

Slappy, it's just a frickin' game. Stop dreaming about fantasy politics and theorizing all sorts of possible solutions and ways of dodging the rockets. I don't think the devs are about to add more weapons just for the sake of killing rocket whores. Wake up! REALISTICALLY it's IMPOSSIBLE to do anything about it in a slower accelerating ship. The Valk will repeatedly slow your ship down by forcing you to dodge while the two of you are boosting.

And can I ask you why only a handful of players use energy weapons? Practically everyone and their dog uses a gauss, sunflare, or a combo of both. Or they'll grab an advanced gatling turret Warthog with sunflares/geminis. There is absolutely no variation whatsoever. Now why is that? Why don't we have diversity? So basically what you're implying is not to nerf the sunflares but keep all the other weapons nerfed? <sarcasm>Ohh yeah that's A LOT better.</sarcasm>

Umm...

1)He's not talking about fantasy politics. He's talking about real life. Thats how it works, in case you didn't notice.

2)Yeah its impossible, but so is dodging lightning mines outside each station exit. Shall we remove them as well? I'd suggest you fly a better ship. A Yugo WILL get owned by a Dodge Viper any day of the week. Its a fact you have to accept.

3)You seem to have reversed your argument. Are you asking for stronger everything else instead of weaker sunflares? I'm intrigued.

4) For the record, I suck with flares. I can't use 'em for squat. Geminis are my only projectile friends. From what I can tell a lot of people are the same way. I also can't say I've encountered may rocket rammers before. Sure, they're around, but how is that any more common or problematic than station mining/nuking, vets ganging up on weaker innocents, n00b hunting, or abusing veteran reputations to falsely declare people rammers, pirates, n00b hunters, griefers, etc?

EDIT: Or how about de-miners, or flag squatting? There's a ton of problems that deserve way more attention than stupid rockets.

5) STOP USING THE TERM ROCKET WHORES. You are being inflamatory, and I AGAIN ask the mods to practice some uniformity in their policies.

Uh, we do have diversity. I like tachs. Very much. If I could use them and boost at the same time, Id have 3 of them on my ship. If the railgun was non-crappy, Id have two tachs and a rail. If the gemini was harder to dodge, etc, etc.

The problem here is random rocket usage spoiling fights, or utilising their inaccuracy to hit more. If you know what I mean. Reduce the capacity of them slightly, to say 12 or even 10, and the problem will start to go away. Youll need to be able to hit with the damn things and not just spray them and hope.

Ironically, whilst I at first decried the elimination of boost-tapping, now it has made my job a lot easier... but I think that it was still a minor mistake. Now traders cant change course without losing ground... and that makes things way too simple.

The basic truth is that grouped energy weapons SUCK for chases, for defense, for pretty much everything but a straight duel.

I think Im putting random points down in no particular order.

OK, anyway, heres my idea to solve this.

1) Reduce the autoaim of the gauss a bit, and increase the autoaim of other energy weps a bit. Not so theyre the same of course, just reduce the margin a bit.

2) Correct the autoaim bot. NO MORE BARREL ROLL WALTZES!

3) Reduce the sunflare capacity a bit. To 12, say.

4) De-crappify the railgun. 250 energy use, 2900 dmg, 600 m/s.

5) Limit the sunflare to 2 on a ship. Max.