Like I said in the newspost, I'll make a ship balance update later in the week. Also, some major updates to In Progress will be forthcoming, but not yet.

Let us know what you think of the changes. Thanks!

wOOT! An update,and early (by my watch) at that. You rule.
More specific views later.

The new Trade Guild mission has been temporarily pulled until we reevaluate its reward structure (which seemed tremendously, exploitably high for certain things). It will probably reappear later this week.

/me cries, i'll never get my damn maud now =/

man, just change the numbers or something and let us have it back, we need something to break the monotony of gaining faction bad, hell make it so it doesnt give exp or money and only faction or something.

It's sad that the most fun I've had leveling was during "exploits".
Lemme remove the "most", from that last statement, for the sake of honesty.

I have never had so much fun gunnin my ship from place to place tryin to get it under the wire (and not succeeding either, which made it even more fun).

When leveling faction, there should be rewards along the way, so that people always have a goal that's somewhat nearby... having to level to 800 to get anything is just frustrating.

EDIT: This could easily be said of levels too. Instead of having the max levels be 16. Multiply that by 3. Have 48 levels, and just put 2 more levels inbetween each of the existing levels. There should be a new item for most levels.

Nice to see, how everything gets nerfed down that might have a slight chance to be useful for the Serco Dominion.

And still no fix in sight for the Prometheus variants. A really great update.

Linda

Nya: I can't undertand a single line of that post. Individual words come together, but as a whole, your post makes just too damn little sense.

Lin: My sarcasmometer just asploded.

Deep breaths, deep breaths everyone.

*breathing*

no sarcasm, just a quote from incarnate:
"Anyway, I know about the maud issues at the very least. I need to play with making the heavies more massive and then (...)"

I still do not know how you ever will make heavy ships usefull, if every patch nerf them more than before...
Remember: the UIT and Serco "special ships" are heavy...

But you said that you will make the prom usefull again?
You must have something in the queue that I am not thinking about... Hopefully we will see that someday...
It must be awsome.

Let's hope so, by goodness!

ships are almost balanced.
unless the corvus vulture (90 turbo drain instead of a 75)
and skycommander prometheus (65 turbo drain instead of 60)

there is a problem with XP
the Queen doesn't give any Pilot/combat XP.

Why? any one could explain why bots do not give any combat/pilot XP?

or maybe i could hope you are planning to add the Queen as a the hardest bot to kill in the "advanced combat mission"? if you do it we could able to gain Xp pilot/combat and able to share it in group too.

all vets in game are bored to do the "advanced combat mission"
the Queen could be the only Xp thing that could give us fun.

the reward : (medal + new positron at 10 kill) is great

Let's try to keep medal rewards a little more secretive.
Anyway, when you kill bots without a mission, you get only weapon experience. Queens are not on the list, and thus are done out of mission. I agree they should be on the bot list. Maybe that could be an additional reward, so that only worthy players who won't die and muck up their number of bots to reward. Another option is making Queens a permanent bonus, as in, Prossus can pop up as bonus, but Queens will always give bonus. Maybe not too large, but it will add bunches to the final bonus after finishing a list. Of course, failure results will be having to kill more bots, further delaying that final bonus.

NoAddedSugar, there is indeed something rather big that you're not thinking about. Increasing mass of heavies is a great thing, as long as you keep the acceleration the same or at least close to what it is.

Suppose an unladen prommie today has a mass of a ton, and accelerates at 10m/s. Onto that prom someone loads a 500kg somethingorother, which means that, with the application of an old brittish dude that invented a type of telescope, the prom now accelerates at 6 and two thirds of a meter per second.

Now suppose tomorrow's prom weighs in at two tons but still accelerates at ten meters per second. That means that putting a 500kg somethingorther on it makes it accelerate at eight meters per second.
Surprisingly enough, 6+2/3 < 8.

Nya: Bots probably don't give combat XP because they're so easy to kill.

A bit more concret: We are waiting now from update to update since November last year to get a useful special ship, so called Prometheus.

Since this time we saw upgraded light fighters, downgraded light fighters, mining to who ever cried out loud enough for it, badges for every s... (if i will ever see players running around like christmas trees, i don't know atm) ... okay, we all can fill up the rest.
And ... surprise, surprise ... we got a ship called Tunguska Mining Maud. Wow, large port, not so heavy like a Warthog ... Oups, +920 with Tunguska ... Okay, mission over mission done, got it. And what is this ship now after the last update? A piece of crap with 180 max. speed.

Sorry, i want to see one player who ever used this maud for mining. Imho there are other ship, easier to get, not so expensive, with two large port for mining beams, not 50 cargos, but still enough. And for none of these ships you need +920!!! with a faction.

The point that makes me so miffed atm is the fact, that it was done very fast, to tune down the Tunguska Maud and for a Nation special ship a balance is still not in sight.
This has something to do with psychologic. I can only speak for me, but you have taken *me* away a ship that was a kind of alternate until i can test a modified prom ... but you forget to give me that prom ... really *great* work.

And, i am tired to hear, that i should calm down, that time will bring us a useful prom, that i should be more patient ...

NoAddedSugar wrote: Let's hope so, by goodness!

Hope dies last ... my hope died.

Linda

genka: I'm curious about it. :)

(Mining Marauder has been nerfed somewhat, a few other things).

Nerfed SOMEWHAT ?
You nearly killed the poor thing. Nerfed it down to uselessness, Castrated it.
With 12k armor it was able to take some hits. 10k is 16% off, not just somewhat, but i can live with it.
Mass from 5k up to 5.5k. 10% that count. Fully loaded (cargo space 50) the Mineral Maud is hard to manouver, every additional mass counts.
Thrust and Turbospeed: Thrust down to 190 from the 210 the most ships have.
Turbo down to 180 from 200.
Before that the ship was barely able to run out the faster bots, so you could go into bot-filled sector, turbo and outmanouver them for a while to get the bots of your tail, turn arround to the roids and mine till bots come too close, then run away. Or just fly close around roids, turnin faster than the bots, mining by flying (sure you will get a few hits. but the maud had 12k armor...)
Not possible with this cutted maud you (the dev's) left.
Also the old config gave one a chance to run away from pirates. Sure, most of them are faster than 200, but you got a chance.
All of them are a lot faster than 180. No chance left. In addition with screwing down the armor you made a victim vessel out of good ship that was worth the effort to get it (and get a 920 standing by trading is a lot of work).
I think, with reducing the weapons ports on this modell to one small and one large when creating this ship, you did enough to cut down its fighter abilities.
What you did now was way to much.
And why? One or two whiners, lacking to fight this maud? Or pirates that failed to stop it? Or the Grudges, not willing to do the work they have to to get it too?
Me and some others did the work. It took us days to get the mineral maud. We did it because we know what we will get.
I feel betrayed now. And not for the first time.
Sorry my english is not good enough to tell you all my thoughts the way i would do it in german, but i hope you got the point.

Regards, Chris

Cip, it sounds to me like they tried to make it less useful for combat, as it is a mining ship, looking at the numbers posted however, i would have moved the thrust the other way, and the top speed farther down.

I'd have made it top speed of 50/150 with a thrust of 240 to compensate for the mass of the cargo, and bumped its own mass up to 6000. I would have also increased its cargo by 10.

Oh, and for the record cip, if you scroll down through the suggestions post, I think you will find that I am the first one to suggest changes to the mining maud. I got it, took one look at it, and went, WOW, this thing is not a mining ship, its a combat ship.

They nerfed it down?! That was the only ship really worth the effort of trading for days, and it was still far from "ueber"! What was the problem? That Serco won the cargo wars although they just get crappy ships, and some itani (with their border cent and various valk variants) started whining about the only real special ship a Serco can get without being loved by the itani nation? Hmm, I see no sense in trading for faction standing anymore, my condolences to those who worked for days on their standings and now have just another useless thing. :P

yea the tungsk maud was too great.

12 k armor
1 small + 1 large
50 cu (should not have 50cu if its a combat ship)
13 lenght
200 speed
...

i am agree with spellcast.

New balance is correct.
most of ships have their turbo drain decreased.

Only corvus vulture and skycommander prometheus didnt.
according to me its a mistake. hope devs will fix it soon and i have faith :o)

Outrage! The mining maud was not overly powerful. Don't forget Heavy Weapons weight A LOT more than Light Weapons. Fully loaded (a GT and a Rail), a Maud was weighting about 7 tons. Which is not little, compared to a Cent III at 4.5 or 5 tons. They have about the same thrust too. Just make the calculations.

I agree it was not supposed to be a mining ship, but then, ships don't have roles in the game. They merely have hints of what they could be used for. If they did have roles, they differences would be WAY more accentuated.

Heavy weapons are, again, nearly useless. Yeah, sure, an experienced pilot can use them, blah blah blah. But to get to be an experienced pilot, you need to be able to fight them. I wonder why most vets use light weapons... would it be that they are MORE powerful?

Logging out, and cancelling the account. (I'll check back in June)

Spell, deep in your dark soul you're a pirate. That's the reason you see this thing the piratish way ;)
A mining ship with a 150 topspeed will let the miner end up...
well, nowhere. AND poor.
Remember the two ports. One for the scanner and one for the beam. No weapons. So you will need the ability to run.
No ship is nailed to its main purpose, and even with the config you posted one (not me, but other pilots) could use the maud to ramkill lighter ships because of the 240 thrust. On the other hand, i used Rune Valk for mining, easily manouver out the bots and mine in sectors where no "mining ship" could do it without a distracting partner.
The flexibility of ships is part of the game. Make them more flexy, not less.