roguelazer I changed suggested the centaur to have the exact same speed as a marauder. Which means 'the only thing keeping it alive' would no longer be applicable. Rags are easy pickings for me in a centurion, so I don't feel that any number of L are going to help the centaur without turning it into an extreme bomber. You are right that L-ports are the only thing the trade ships have going for them at the moment, but I feel that it's ineffective. A trader by themselves is going to live by running and discouraging it's opponents with small attacks.

randomize it's the same as the current maurader will 4000 less hull and 1 less small. That's not a nerf ship. With a med engine and flare/homer or guass set up it would be able to escape from a vult with an equal pilot.

eldrad, i'm sorry, but your changes are too drastic. it should be slow improvement, rather than let's change this, this and that and see what happens. you say centaur will be the same as marauder, with less (half) hitpoints and smalls (bah!). now whenever i flew centaur the only thing that kept me alive was mines. if I dont have a trading ship with mines you can forget it, bots are never going to leave you alone and you will die a horrible death. believe me I've flown Centaur for long enough to make my starting few mils.

It is damn effective. Nothing better than hearing that mine fall of the back and beep to follow in sector 17. And you telling me I have to turn around and face leader and his two wingmen with two small ports and bugger all hitpoints? you are joking, right?

the prom isn't bad at all if you're a heavy pilot.

Everyone suggest stuff that would make it to THIER advantage. Come on...leave stuff alone and wait for new stuff to come out. If you really think about it a lot of you complain about balancing issues more than playing the game its self.

The devs are here to keep adding on and making the test a better success with newer/greater stuff. Like dynamic economy, bots that jump through multiple sectors, and etc. They should not need to change the hull of some ship, waste time trying to figure what would be the best way to fix a balancing issue, continously change this stuff because someone can't kill a ship fast enough or it feels like the ship is a bit way overpowered.

When the specials first came out yes that needed rebalancing...after it happened there were still complaints...and so on and so forth.

Just leave it as it is and go about your business. The economy is so screwed up currently that there is really no point to trade. Thus no point of using a maud.

Cmdr Freeman, the problem with the serco special at the time is the fact that it could stand outside not near a dock and nuke and then easily go back in to repair. It's agility was so high that you couldn't really knock it out of place to stop its nuking.

randomize: you're right I made these suggestions to deal with humans, not the current bots. I did this for two reasons. 1) this is a MMOL and 2) the bots AI is going to be improved and they will go back to having more normal engines, bats and such (Incarnate told me this).

But given the critisism I'd like to suggest that the two ships I purposed be added instead of replacing the two current "traders."

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/7/13/25151/2680

Article is very appropriate for the discussion

the centaur should not be altered in any way. i think's it's a great ship the way it is. even while i was still on gold, i did all my trading in a centaur.

For a good game, this is what i think you should do :

up the amount you get for trading.
make trade ships a hell of a lot worse.

Now, you may think : hmm but then fighters with 4 trade slots would still make a lot of money.

So dont change how much you get per package. Change how many packages a transport can have.

If a fighter can have 3-4 slots, then imo a transport should have at LEAST 5 times that. (15-20) But i think 30 spaces in the centeur would be best, and knock down its stats.

Did you guys ever watch star trek? Or was it just me? Seen the newest series? The one with the old enterprise etc?

Are the cargo ships small and fighter-like? Are they bollocks. They are freigter-size. Why the HELL do we have transport ships that ersemble fighters?!

"up the amount you get for trading.
make trade ships a hell of a lot worse."
trading is way too profitable as it is.

randomize: That's the funniest thing I've seen.
Also side note... randomize when you said "half" did you mean 2/3rds? 10k isn't half of 14k and 2 isn't half of 3... that sorta confused me.
Another thing, it's possible to avoid the current bots (defence bots and I assume furies) using a tach, without using turbo, or using a med engine (and not flying in a straight line). Niether of these are great for traders... but it's possibility.

when i said half i meant 4000 points is roughly half of 10000 points, therefore Marauder is 150% hitpoints of Centaur which means Marauder has half more points than Centaur :) It's bit complicated logic, but hey, they don't call me random for no reason :)

I am not sure how I can use your advice versus bots that follow me from warmhole 11 in sector 17. I've found only 2 effective ways to dispose of them. One - proximity mines, 4-5 of them will take out the leader. Two - triple sunflare (no ramming, just turning around when when energy runs out and shooting it when bots are 300 meters away). BOOM! no more leader.

Mines are more effective min(d)e you ;)

those furies die quickly with my vulture or pizza cutter with energy weaps ;)

ahh you meant half more not half less.
randomize, ya the current bots don't deal well with mines and such.
I'm going to go post a thread in suggestions on this topic.

Leqiator: I agree with you that we need large freight traders that carry tons of cargo, but I don't think they should replace the current trader/smugler ships.

SF: The valk was toned way down, the prom was cripled, but the marauder wasn't really brought to the same lvl as other trade ships. Yes currently there isn't much reason to trade, and the economy is wierd. I assume this will be addressed in 3.3.x. Since 3.3.0 is nearish it's worth looking at trader ships. (I personally don't feel I'm complaining just trying to be helpful).

You know it's funny, I've complained about rocket ramming Valkyries since day one and now Valk pilots are complaining when they get rammed by Marauders. HELLO THERE!!! Glad to see you've finally woken up. The problem ISN'T the Marauder. Don't nerf the Marauder because you're getting rocket rammed. If there are any unbalanced ships in this game it's the frickin' Valkyrie, so shush up for a second.

Anyway, the Marauder's agility was lowered in 3.1.6 anyway. I don't know what some of you have been smoking, but it's NOT as agile as the Vulture or the Warthog. Try strafing a little and you'll see that it takes a lot longer to stop or change directions for the Marauder than any of the other ships above (yes, with a heavy engine). It's a six engine ship, it should NOT be slow.

Either the model needs to be redesigned or they need to make it agile again to reflect its physical design. You guys need to realize that it's a special ship. It's not supposed behave like an Atlas or Centaur, duh! It's not supposed to be easily chased down by pirates. The expense of the Marauder is supposed to be insurance for trading safely. If possible, I'd be up for giving it higher agility, but at the cost of low hull points. The ship doesn't look that strong, and since it has six engines it would make sense that it should be fast to have the ability to avoid pirates.

PS: The sunflares are the problem, NOT the ship.

As I see it, much the problem with the "specials" is not so much that they're "uber" and need to be nerfed, but that the ships are much too *CHEAP* for what you get. The economy (such as it is) is so screwed that "Credits" are easy to come by, thus making these "specials" affordable to anyone. These ships should be prohibitively expensive to all but a few. 21000c (IIRC) is chump change as the economy stands. I was on for less than 3 days before I had enough for 12 of these ships fully outfitted with the most expensive weapons available. I was able to buy one of the blue hockey pucks before I even had a handle on how to fly decently in this game (came in from Descent 3, different physics). Money is just too easy to come by.

Actually Arolte, the maurauder is FAR betteer than any special. Let's compare, shall we?

-------valk----maurauder
HP:...10000----14000
Agil:..VH-----Med
Cargo:.4-----16
Weapons:3s---3s

The only thing the valk has is higher agility.

Roguelazer: The *only* thing? I say the higher agility of the valk is a crucial advantage - especially at dog fights.

If you take the agility out of the equation and compare again, the Prometheus would be the best ship in the game.

Ah, and don't forget that the marauder has quite a large profile, making it easier to hit than a valk

Regards,
Mark (Commander Jameson)

Arolte, what the heck?
There was no Marauder in 3.1.6.
You meant 3.2.6, right? (If you didn't, can I become a reseller for whatever you're smoking?)

Ummm I don't think they took a agility hit in 3.2.6...
"Marauder - HP reduced from 18000 to 14000"
Is what the news says... I could be wrong in which case I think it should be put back to where it was before and lose 1 small weapon.

Also I completely agree with you arolte that flares are a seprate problem that has nothing to do with wether or not marauders need to be balanced.

Proximity ANTI-fuse will fix all this...warheads won't detonate unless you're one blast radius away (1/2 a blast diameter)...see my comment in another thread.