People need to learn to adapt to the other ships. We can't expect to jump into a new ship and fly it the same way with the same results. I would never drive my luxury car in the same manner that I drive my truck, and vice-versa. I've been flying a rag and doing just fine against the Rev Cs, and have even managed to emerge (barely)alive after doing battle in a hornet. The more agile ships are easier for new players to use, but they're not necessarily the best.

so that must have been you who ripped me a new one in a rag FM :)

it occurs to me that the homogeneity of ship prefs (sky command vs RevC) is partially a function of how limited the opportunities, or forums, for combat are. right now one can fight either a 1v1 duel (which i imagine will become much more common since the last update) or CTC. even the group fights in B8 tend to just be several 1v1 duels pressed together. the RevC and skycommand are the best ships for this sort of engagement so naturally most people fly them. sometimes you see other ships in CTC, particularly when there's lots of cargo later in the week. i imagine that we'll see greater diversity when the engagements change, like when the serco Cap ship arrives. something with a little armor and large ports will probably be a lot more effective against that than a revC.

so maybe rather than worrying about ship diversity (who wants a bunch of ships that are all great for 1v1?) we should worry about engagment diversity.

I'm not going to touch the prom until we do a little more tweaking of the rockets (over the next week or two). As some have noted, one of the biggest prom issues is the trivial ability to ram at high speed and survive, while the more fragile "light" craft get plastered. We're working on a couple of changes to rockets that may alleviate this.

I'm not against tweaking the prom (even slightly in the nerf direction, if it comes to it), I just would rather change one thing at a time (the rockets) and see how it alters gameplay, as opposed to making a bunch of sweeping changes.

The AGT also needs to be looked at. Maybe a couple of lower-damage variants, with the current-model AGT increasing in mass. We'll see.

incarnate but please please pleaaaaassssseeee don't make it so that a light ship can survive a ram with ease like in the old days...

It just doesn't seem right that you launch a mean ass rocket in your face and practically don't take any damage... It should be a last effort ditch, meaning if you have a certain percentage left and you do it you'll die, but you'll have the chance of taking the other one along. Or even making the actual damage of the ram dependable on the amount of rockets you have left in your hold. Meaning you ram while you have 11 rockets in your hold, imagine a nice and hefty explosion of your own ship.

If this is however your last rocket... then the cases are severely different.

I however don't know if this will make packettraffic even more hectic then now.

cheers

From the updater:
- Ships get double damaged by own missiles. Used to deter
rocket ramming.

don't think you'll see lots of fighter pilots using rockets in the near future. I probably can mothball my centaur too... *sigh*

mr spuck, drop the weight a bit so they are usefull as secondary weapons but real precissionstrikes.

And trust me, people will use them. Only the excessive usage of spam will be over...

Since in old, before the rocketera, using rockets was an art in stead of the fly in a valk spam at 50m and get out unharmed...

No Rene, using rockets on a fighter now is plain stupidity. Most ships now strafe so fast that you have to be close to get a hit with rockets, then you take double damage... go figure... i suggest you take out a vulture with dual sunflares and try to hit a Centurion without ramming it... good luck (you're gonna need it)...

I end up spamming rockets all over the place in a desparate attempt to get a single hit... any skill associated with rocket dueling died months ago...

Ironically, I think the most skillful rocket fights I ever experienced where when the rocket damage was broken and they were dishing out 2-3 times the damage... Lots of triflare rammers back then, but lots of highly tactical duels took place too, because you daren't take a hit yourself...

My god, incarnate, don't nerf the only useful L port weapon we have. Seriously, you want us ALL to fly around with N2/3s?

ugh forgot about the difference in strafe speed...

/me shuts up.

PS: I don't like all out rockettypes, I was actually meaning the 1 ion-1 rocket type of fights from old.

I think he does, UD.

Sad to read incarnate's statement about the AGT.

Strange, that i never heard players complaining about the AGT in alpha (the time when we had a real uber-prom) or in beta without the mass thingy. Lower it's damage or increase the weight - and we have another useless weapon. Has anybody ever count the hits needed to bring down an Orion or IBG Centurion with a single AGT? You need a lot.

Linda

Yea, I'm with Lin. No one was complaining about the AGT when the prom was still a brick. In fact, until recently no one flew ships that could carry the AGT except for the few of us who were Hog pilots. People have only started complaining about the AGT since the Prom rebalance and it became slightly overwhelming.

Maybe the Prom should be tweaked some (UncleDave's semi-rant thread has some good ideas http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/9438) but leave the AGT as it is.

I've got to agree, if you've got one ship that can equip a large port weapon and still accelerate as well as the fastest small ships, there are two ways you can balance it. Either make all the L port weapons the same or worse than the small port weapons, or change the one ship. It won't stop with just the AGT.
Just for the record here is the Thrust/Mass for the SC Prom with an AGT, vs the IBG, Rev C, and SVG with two N3s (top 4 ships for acceleration).

IBG 0.059210526
Rev C 0.05625
Prom 0.056140351
SVG 0.051086957