"what i'd rather see would be packs of ships."
-Fenix, wintermute, and I were doing that today. It was fun. Although there were one or 2 things that should be added to make it a tad more convenient. I've put them in your post in suggestions.

My bus with a single rail gun and std eng/bat managed to kill 2 vults in sector 9 before. In addition to UncleDave's prom and a couple of other big ships. Rail r0x0rs.

Roguelazer, I was talking about fenix's comment.

/me camps in a bus
Does that count?

Why not make the Cent the vult. Literally? Like switch them totally. Meh.

why not leave it the way it is? d0h!

on-topic part:
talking about vulture's profile... just don't look at it head on, straight back, or straight from the side. look at it from top or bottom, diagnally or not..
off-topic part:
if you want a ship that you need skill to fly in, try this.
3 gov issued cannons and 2 gatling gun in a light engine light battery ragnarok.

lmao, I just might try that

my 2¢:
even though i really suck at fighting (proven fact, just about everyone who started out the same time as I beats me, so either they trained more or just are better), I don't feel any of the non-special ships should be altered from their current state.
what i'd rather see would be packs of ships. will whip up a post in the suggestions.

The reason the vults profile is a problem is that it is used mainly 1 on 1 and thus the large top and bottom are never exposed; However, this makes it no less a problem seeing as the game community isn't going to expand much anytime soon.

The switch vutl & cent idea might just work. Give the 1 weapon weak ship the good for dueling profile and give the 2 weapon medium weak ship the slightly larger profile. No huge rebalance just swap the models. I'm no expert but that won't take much more than a couple lines of code to implement and if it doesn't work its easy to change back.

Yep, you probably knew it was coming. With the Valkyrie's rockets balanced out and the Prometheus nearly balanced, people are turning to the next "no skillz" ship, and it appears to be the Vulture.

Disclaimer: I am not saying that the Vulture has too many weapons ports, is too fast, or has too much HP.

End disclaimer.

The Vulture right now is too small. I personally think it should trade places with the Centurion and be the small, fast ship. It looks like an SR-71, being so small.

Right now the Vulture is unbalanced compared to the Centurion. We may have established that agility = 2armor, but profile or silhouette = 2agility. The Vulture is so slim that, although it is less agile than the Centurion (allegedly), it appears faster than it because of its profile. I am all for taking the Vulture as is and making it the Centurion, or slimming the wings and fattening it up in the y direction.

Slimming down the wings would also reduce the occurence of the wing bug. But how about this?
Why not just wait until the new ship models come out? Is there an ETA on that? If so, the point might be moot. If not, well, maybe a slight reworking is in order.

I'd rather see the Centurian get an agility boost and see the Vulture stay the same as it is, or maybe go back to its previous armour as I didn't feel it needed the most recent boost although its a big help against a hog with a gatling (way long sentence). But what about the poor hog? Part of what I like about the Vulture is I feel the small profile is balanced by it being fragile and the so called 'wing bug'. That's not a bug is it? Your Vulture should blow up if you clip a wing. It's silly when UncleDave does it to a Prom though.

Also I don't see a lot of "no skillz" people in Vultures as you say. Not to say its not happening, I'm just not seeing it. Most certanly the Valk rammer is dead. Dodging is important in a Vulture and that kind of gets in the way of the "no skillz" part or at least should after the money reset. If you're flying a Vulture and living your not "no skillz" and if your doing it with rockets then you must know there prox pretty well, also a skill.

I guess for me the issue is more the Centurion than the Vulture. Though I agree with your assesment of thier balance. If the Vult was easier to hit (maybe fatter as you say) I think maybe it would become a flying coffin. Then the Atlas will becom the new "no skillz" weapon and we'll all be cursing n00b Atlas rammers.

I think the non-specials are pretty well balanced actually. The vult maybe thin at one angle but its a flying target if its at any other angle. The Cent can rip a vult to pieces and vice-versa. The two ships should be left alone.

Durgia, the Cent can't rip the Vult to pieces. The Vulture has twice as much firepower (as its supposed to) but cannot be hit because of its nearly microscopic profile when viewed from the front. And that "one angle" you talk about is the only angle another pilot will see if the two are fighting.

Hoax: I agree. The Centurion _should_ be more agile and faster, but we are running into the physical limits of the engine. The Hog is fine, imo. I just don't like the Vulture (8500 HP) being so close to a hog (9000 HP). 8000 or even 7750 would be good for the Vulture. It doesn't seem fragile enough anymore.

What I meant about the "no skills" people is that the vast majority of fighter pilots use Vultures now. I am one of the few that uses the Hornet, and no one uses the Centurion. It's just useless, considering its large profile and lack of difference against the Vulture (the Vult is just barely slower). There needs to be more of a difference.
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Maybe there's another way to approach this. The Valkyrie was "broken" because of the sunflares. It's possible that the Vulture is "broken" because of gauss. The Vulture is really the only ship that can use gauss effectively, with its slim profile allowing it to get extremely close to just about any ship (the only effective counters are rockets and adv gatling). Neither the Centurion nor the Valkyrie fair very well against the Vulture. Possibly the gauss need to be 170 m/s, the tachyons 180 m/s, and the gravitrons 200 m/s.

Gauss ramming is still an issue with the Valkyrie and Vulture. Rocket ramming is still an issue, but less so than the previous version. I guess it all depends on what ship you use. I'm not going to get into talking about non-special ship balance though, since you already know what I'm going to say. But I have to agree that the Vulture's wings need to be clipped a little and it needs to be a little taller to give it a bigger profile.

I was going to stay out of this debate except that I've been dragged into it by someone bringing 'Celebrim theory' into the discussion and misapplying it. Profile is not equal to twice agility, the way that agility is 'twice' as good as hull points. It's not even equal to agility.

Profile is equal to hull points, though the relationship is fairly complex.

The reason that agility is 'twice' as good as hull points, is that a ship with 'double' the agility of another ship will be hit roughly half as often (effectively doubling its hull points), AND will also hit its target more often (effectively increasing its firepower). But, a ship with half the profile of another ship is only half as hard to hit and doesn't get better at hitting its target. So, in theory, making a ship have half its normal profile is only the same as making it have double the number of hull points.

But in practice, it won't work exactly like that. One of the reasons is the effect of rockets or similar weapons (and this is an example of a good reason why rockets should never go away). If a weapon must hit a point in order to score a hit (say a Tachyon), then if the target size doubles the chances of being accurate doubles. But a rocket doesn't have to hit a point. A rocket only has to hit a circle that roughly has a diameter of 60m. I say roughly, because its a 30m shape drawn around the edge of the profile of the target. So if you imagine a 5m diameter target, the diameter of the target the rocket must hit is 65m. If you double the target size to 10m, the rocket now must hit a target 70m in diameter, which is only ~16% easier rather than 100% easier. Notice that in the case of a very non-circular target like the Vulture there is a noticable difference in how hard the ship is to hit with a rocket depending on how it dodges.

Also note, that _assuming that the auto-aim is true_ (a bad assumption admittedly) the auto-aim will conpensate for a small circle (of varying size depending on the weapon) about the target point meaning that there is a minimum profile for most direct fire weapons beyond which lowering the profile size does not make the target harder to hit. This is the reason that Advanced Gatlings (with there large auto-aim radius) are reasonable answers to the problem of the Vulture.

So, in effect, as long as there are proximity weapons the effect of decreasing profile is LESS than the effect of increasing hull points. It is certainly NOT equivalent to qaudrupling hull points.

Ok, here is my take on the Vulture. It is an excellent dueling ship and a decent fighter. I _did not_ think it needed a hull boost in the last update. I have before argued that it would need a weapons boost (to 3S) but that was before the hulls and agilities of the Vulture and Valk got to be so close together. I still think in general more weapon = more fun, but as long as the Vulture is this durable and agile its probably 'good enough'.

I also _do not_ think it needs its model changed to make it easier to hit. What we do need is more weapons capable of countering its small forward profile - for examples, see the 'Light Autocannon' and 'Flechette Cannon' described on my toys thread. I have long thought that need those weapons to counter this exact tactic (close circling 'dumb' barrel rolling with a high accuracy direct fire weapon) that Vulture pilots are engaging in now that rockets are fairly balanced, and its nice to see that finally (after more than 6 months) the community is starting to consider this a problem. The Vulture is the best example of this, but in general, the tactic of holding down strafe+roll continually and revolving around each other at short range makes for really dull fights IMNSHO. Therefore, the real problem is not that the Vulture is too good at it, but that there are too few 'stones' to counter this 'scissors' tactic (as it were).

The other thing to note is the Vulture's profile is ideal in a duel, but not nearly so ideal in a furball. In a multiplayer fight, the Vulture is very easy to hit from above or below. If we had more people online and more (real) cap fights and more 'wars' like the old days, this would be more apparant.

In some cases "dumb rolling" might be right, but I'd just like to say that there can be a lot more going on when a pilot is rolling than may be readily apparent. Usually you'll want to involve a number of different strafes, but even if you're just switching back and forth from roll-right-strafe-left and roll-left-strafe-right the timing can provide a really enjoyable mind game. Also, where you point the nose of the ship while you do this is huge. Don't underestimate the subtleties some pilots employ while in a 'corkscrew'. :)

Asp

Asp: I don't, certainly not in the case of a competant pilot such as yourself. But I do want to point out that alot of those so called 'subtleties' are just simply mistakes. Most of the time that my target changes from roll-right to roll-left or other tactic change it's simply creating a stall point during which I can hit them. For myself, most of the time I change strafes, its not to do anything to defend myself, its an attempt to provoke an ill-timed strategy change on the part of my target and I'm inclined to think that alot of the players who think that they are doing something great by shifting around between roll-right and roll-left (or roll-up or whatever) or actually only meta-gaming the fight and not realizing it. The vast majority of pilots would be better of never altering thier strafe pattern against the vast majority of attackers. If the player only barrel rolls continually while adjusting his angle of attack to stay pointed at his target he's got most of the game covered already.

centurion is a very cheap fighter.

it would become the first upgrade in offensive ships in a dynamic economy.

Loosing one should almost be as cheap as losing a bus.

For instance 1000 c while the vult costs 15000 and the valk costs 50000.

And I like the vult, its an ideal ship but still very fragile.

cheers