the flare launch rate was decreased.

This improved the sunflare ONLY out of all the fighter vs fighter weapons. A tri-sunflare now does 90% damage to my Centurion if head on. No less than 65% damage, even if the explosion occurs 40m behind me. The rail still does the same. The gauss still does the same. Today, I had two gold valks on my centurion, one with dual-flare and a gauss, one with tri-flare. I dodged a full loadout from the tri-flare. But when he came back and hit me for the first time, I was taken to 10% health. This is not an improvement. Yes, I took him to <30% with my rails. But the flare always beats the energy weapons now more than ever. I run for station, he shoots ahead of me and bounces me away. Not very nice.


Essentially, this thread is to express my opinion that if the repulsion effect does not extend to ALL energy weapons, it should be removed, or the flare should be limited. I had not realized before that 3 flares does far more "push" and "damage" than 1 flare. A tri-flare does a lot more damage than 3 single-flare shots. Why? Beats me! But it's annoying.

I'm better now. Sorry. But i'm still annoyed at it, that even though more than half of my rail shots hit I could not defeat these people.

Your rant wasn't so bad, though the title is a little insulting. I would have chosen something a bit better like "flare damage in 3.3.19" so that it can be referenced more easily. Still, it's good info. Thanks

Roguelazer, remember that a Valkyrie will always beat a Centurion. That you got him as far as 30% speaks to your piloting abilities.

I kinda think that the Sunflare isn't that bad. Having almost exclusively used rail guns as my energy weapon, it is very easy to take down a tri-flare Valkyrie. I have minor suggestions:

Gauss: Reduce something. Either velocity, damage, aimbot, or repeat rate (one, not all four).

Sunflare: Reduce ammo to 8. This makes it a *real* secondary weapon. People that load up on "secondary weapons" solely will find themselves low on ammo very quickly.

Rail gun: Slight increase in damage, please? Just an oh-so-slight one. That or an increase in velocity. (Although, I did score the longest kill I've heard of.... The Solution's Valkyrie at 1,100 meters.)

Those sonova Valks all died to us in the end rogue, but anyway:P
SunFlare is still pretty grim, if they hit you once it will be pain for a while, sicne it'll twirl yah.

Gauss-(Agreed)
SunFlare-(Won't work, people will just dock and reload... if that could be solved then sure)
Rail gun(Velocity increase, it's suppose to be fast)

i agree with rogue.
the flares need to be tweaked somehow, or the energy weapons need to be improved (and not only the gauss, please). right now, a valkyrie against a vulture needs to get lucky only 2 to 3 times, whereas the vulture needs to get in range when using gauss or needs an improper amount of time to kill a valkyrie by means of gravitons or tachyons.
as for the lowering the amount of flares per launcher: all for it, since them docking buys me time to repair as well, so i know i beat them (many would disagree, i guess, but if i get a valk to reload, it's a small victory).

The railgun is fine as it is. Against dodging fighters its not SUPPOSED to hit. Its hell taking down a decent railgun sniper because getting near them is so damn hard.

Gauss needs a velocity brushback to 160m/s. Sunflares need to be 12-in-a-rack.

Yes, I also noticed the flares to be MUCH powerfull now.

I was turboing in a straight line, and 2 flare hits made my VALK blow up... that is just insane...

Neverthless, the 'stuff moves on explosions' is really neat :)

My thoughts:

Gauss: repetition rate way down "half it". I never used it as a fast shot anyway, only when I was 95% sure that it would hit.

tachs/gravs : faster repetition rate for tachs, gravs + 20-30m/s

suns: ammo down to 6 - 8. Especially with this extra concussiondamage "you could look at it as a rpg damagetype :D"

jackhammer: bigger prox, make it 35 - 45m.

screamers: higher damage, +5%

swarms: more shots, I need more shots :(. 6-7 shots would be nice.

gemini is good as it is. They should keep their advantage in numbers. Due to their lesser prox

small homingmissile, useless. give bit bigger prox?

big homers, bump up the tracing.

flechette: lesser spread, and bit higher damage, maybe +25 - 50 ?

adv gatling, more then good enough

both cannons, never used them much, so cant really give an advice, I just know that I blow in them :(.

UD, I can hit a dodging fighter. I can hit a barrel roll. The hittin is not the problem. The problem is that it takes more ammo than I have to kill them!

Oh, and on the matter of rails, how come they don't damage the frigate?

No weapon rate-of-fire or damage amount has been changed in this latesdt update. My only explaination is that the forces push you faster away from the other rockets and the subsequent rockets explode farther away.

Also, the only damage that causes force are explosions because they are considered physical weapons. Purely energy weapons will probably never apply a force. Particle weapons may.

We know that raybondo, however the thing is that the push is only visible on the Flares really... There it counts too, since if it hits you you spin, making it easier for consecutive flares to hit.

with as a consequence that suns have:

2000 damage + concussion damage "special kind", what makes them with a loadout of 16, especially in the cases of multiflare setups uber.

Maybe later on we can put in some gizmos that could absorp 50% concussion damage or that negates the effect of concussion but by sacrifycing a weaponpod or a special slot or ...

You could compare it with acidresistance, poisonresistance, magicresistance from standard non space RPGs.

cheers

my major problem with the new cuncussion damage on the flares is that it is now all but impossible to win a fight vs flares if you are struck by a set at anything closer than maximum proximity range. the tumble makes it impossible to continue a controlled dodge, and on more than one occasion i've actually been blasted back into flares i had allready avoided when several groups were fired at me all at once.

I do not neccesarily believe that the solution is to alter the flares, I would like to see the tumble effect removed from the concussion damage though. have them blast you off course, sideways etc, but they shouldnt alter your ship facing, or they shouldnt alter it so drastically. (i've been spun a full 180 degrees on at least one occasion.)

Alternatively to cope with the increased effectiveness of the rockets, increase all high end energy weapons speed by 30-50m/s to the following:
tachyons: 210 m/s
gravitons: 230 m/s
Gauss: 195 m/s
Rail: 425 m/s
Gat Gun/Adv Gat Turret 190 m/s

Leaving the damage/energy consumption the same.

I feel that this would allow the energy weapons to be more effective at a slightly higher range, making it easier to distract and repel rocket users, keeping them at a greater distance to increase reaction time to dodge the rockets.

This would also give each of the energy weapons listed above a specific use. tachyons with their high refire rate remain balanced about the same compared to the flares, just having a slightly greater effective distance, the graviton gets bumped to being the fastest pure energy weapon, even though it is still hard to use due to energy considerations and refire rate.
the gauss cannon with it's powerful autoaim doesnt need as significant a boost, and I've long felt that the railgun needs either a small energy decrease to use or a small shot speed increase.

I also bumped the effectiveness of the gat/adv gat just a bit to keep them on par with the rest, but once again the very high refire rate and the excellent aimbot on the adv gat mean that it doesn't need a significant speed increase.

The reason the rail needs a boost is because it takes ammo AND energy. Tachs, Guass,gats, and gravs all take energy but no ammo. Heck, how many other weapons do take energy and ammo?

Rog I'm not sure how you can site a fight were you took a valk to 70% with a cent which has one third the weapons, barely one half the acceleration, and only 65% of the hull as an imbalance in weapons.

I agree with everyone that the explosive weapons have all been improved by this update, but most of them really needed that. No one has mentioned that homers are now useful. Due to their normally smaller damage radices they can effectively be used in close ranges without sending yourself spinning. Also in testing them I found that the yellow jacket knocked a prom over 120 degrees from its original position while a flare knocked it less than 60 degrees. I believe that homers, prox mines, and even non-flare rockets were given a need boost by this new code.

So instead of making all energy weapons better, or all explosive weapons worse, how about looking at slightly decreasing flare damage (100-300 more later if needed)?

As for energy weapon's balance I think people are way under estimating the effect of speed. 160m/s for gauss is a nerf. Remember that when tachs were 190 and gravs 180 the tachs were unquestionably more effective. Therefore I would also strongly advise against any changes in weapons speeds greater than 10% of their current speed. I would suggest a 10m/s decrease to the gauss, and a 10m/s increase to the grav and then only after heavy play testing change them further.

Rails: I agree that they are not on par with the top weapons, but they are a very difficult weapon to balance and they are closer to the other weapons than they have been before (having been the best weapon, and completely nerfed in the past). It may be worth looking at an increase in damage again (probably something less than 10%). Also the other weapons that use energy and ammo include the screamer and avalon.

Rails: I agree that they are not on par with the top weapons, but they are a very difficult weapon to balance and they are closer to the other weapons than they have been before (having been the best weapon, and completely nerfed in the past). It may be worth looking at an increase in damage again (probably something less than 10%). Also the other weapons that use energy and ammo include the screamer and avalon.

rails do not need damage increased, if the damage went up by as much as 100 then a quad rail hornet would be able to 1 shot kill a bus. I would prefer to see them balanced by increasing the speed or lowering the energy useage. i love the rails, and I agree that they are very close to being balanced, i think lowering the energy to fire by 20-30 or increasing the speed by 25-50m/s would do it perfectly.

i am against increasing the speed on railguns. decrease the energy usage, ok. increase the speed? hell no.

Honestly I don't think increasing the speed will be very effective, the smallest increment the engine allows one to change their aim by is to large to allow longer range fighting. A tach fired at a turret (when they were gaurding flags) from 400m with both target and shooter stationary had a very high chance of not being able to hit no matter how the shooter turned, they actually needed to move their ship to a different position (this may have actually been a problem with the autoaim I'm not 100% sure). Maybe giving it a small radius, say 1m within which it did 100% damage?

Hmm, perhaps prevent the twirl which rails have as they travel futher and a speed increase. Rail sniping is made harder by that twirl.

Eldrad, the homing missles haven't really been improved a lot... the fundamental flaw with a player twirling is still there.