I think alot of the weird aspects of combat and balance in vendetta comes from backpedalling being so easy. Your big rockets engines are at the rear of the ship, it would make sense that you move much faster moving foward then backwards. I think the devs should try experimenting with making reverse thrusting have 1/2 the force, and 1/3rd the top speed of moving foward. With backpedalling being less useful, good dogfighting ships will have tight turn radiuses, hence favoring smaller ships that we traditionally think of as fighter ships.

true, but combat already heavily favors smaller ships.

You can move much faster forward than backward, it's called turbo. :P

I said no to this last month, no the month before, and no every other time it came up. I still say no.

[rejected]

Crippled Pigeon, how often do you fight proms? How often do you beat proms? 'nuff said.

This would effectively turn vendetta into the slowest dogfighting sim ever, with lots of jousting. Since you couldn't dodge anymore, you'd have to either fly around in flight assist trying to get behind the other guy, or go on jousting runs. Or everyone would just keep holding down E+D or whatever your favorite roll + lateral strafe combo is, and combat would be people circling each other while rolling.

Like it is now, really. Except you could never escape.

Person: I don't tend to fight proms because everyone I fight flies IBGs and Rev-Cs. Now I have fought prom pilots, and I've beaten several of them. Granted, they sucked, but I did beat them. Now considering that most ships seen in combat tend to be the Cent II, the Cent III, the IBG, the Rev-C, the Rune Valk, the Corvus Vulturious, the Serco Vulture Guardian, the Valk Vengeance, and the IDF Valk, that's 9 light ship types versus the Prom II and the SCP, which is to say, two heavy types. And I've acknowledged many times in the past that the prom still needs some balancing.

But if the light fighters become even more maneuverable, or their maneuverability becomes more emphasized, then the medium fighters (the Warthog and the Atlas) will be left even further in the dust, and I won't say anything about the other heavy types besides the Prometheus.

Person, maybe you should look at things from my perspective. I fly the Warthog and the Atlas. Take one of those and fly against the really good IBG or Rev-C pilots. You'll see why I'm very wary about a change that too heavily favors the lights. The mediums don't perform as well as the proms, and their armor is somewhat lacking given the types of weapons that can be deployed against them. I fear that if the speed of the lights is emphasized, then they go from being difficult targets to pretty much impossible. In that event, then we'd might as well get rid of the Wraith, the Atlas, the Warthog, the Hornet, the Marauder, the Ragnarok, and the Centaur.

No. I don't think that in order to balance the prom, you must not change all the other ships, or change how the entire physics system works. To balance the prom, you must balance the prom.

I agree with Crip here. THOUGH I WILL say that I think the reason why most people don't fly proms is NOT because they're teh suck, its because they're not interesting to fly. I don't fly them, cuz when I do I feel like a cheap bastard.

I don't need to win all the time, I just like to feel that I'm getting better.

This is the same reason I started flyin a corvus vult/SVG when the Valk was "uber", it was just more fun. (Though, to be honest, taking down Valks in an SVG wasn't that hard, fat and fast, but you're tiny and just a lil bit slower, you'd land strings of shots, they'd be lucky if they tagged you)

But something needs to be done to make it so that heavies can keep up with these light fighters. Maybe its the fact that ACTUAL heavy ships are not a ship to be doled out to new players, they are honestly HARD to pilot. Ask tramshed and his centaur of doom (dual plasdev+gauss, he was usin it BEFORE centaurs got the thrust boost, and still doing well), or Amarus and his "Nerfed" prom. Go out and fly an MGC (rocketrag).

These ships do NOT turn well, or get out of the way of the many other creatures out there, but the pilots made them work through deliberate action, By keeping from using superfluous movement.

And that IS hard, its not something that should be given to just one nation, cuz to be honest, it took me a long time to feel comfortable with it.

Try jumping into a heavy action sector with an MGC without backup, see how long you last (thanks to Kate Azimuth, Apex Azimuth, and Ghost for that experience :P)

But take that same ship 1v1 against every other ship, and its a bloody monster.

Perhaps the Serco should have more of a midrange ship as their special, and we concentrate on upping the payload of the heavies rather than upping their ability to aim.

I'd actually like to see this as a way to increase variety in ships. I could see some ships having equal maneuverability in all directions, and other more focused on moving forwards. Maybe (but maybe not) even some that accelerate sideways faster than they accelerate forwards.

We already have a start for this in the Behemoth, which using turbo accelerates forwards very fast, but strafes very slow.

I agree that if it's made a blanket scenario for ALL ships, I wouldn't like it, but as a way to add more variety I think this has promise.

As it is now, vendetta is more like playing Descent in space, rather then a space dogfighter game.

'aven't read the thread, replying to the topic only.

Why, then, you might as well throw away three years of development and balance! Great idea! Even if it is a bit unoriginal...

Just to muddy the waters a little more: the ships utilize gravitic pulse engines. A local gravity well is created and the ship "falls" toward it. More wells are opened in a series (pulses) and the ship continues to "fall" in whatever direction the well is in. The effect is entirely directional.

The actual nature of turbo is not described in the backstory.

FM: the turbo is an overboost of the pulse engines. It creates a very deep gravity well in front of your ship, giving you greatly increased acceleration. Normally, most ships are limited to travelling below 65m/s so their particle shielding can still adequately protect the pilot against interstellar debris and radiation, but when "turboing," the additional gravity traps enough of those interstellar particles that standard shielding can still protect the pilot while allowing a much higher top speed.

Yea... sounds plausible.

Look, as it is, vendetta online could be described as the PC game Descent, but in space. You can dodge your opponents weapon in vendetta, but then again I can dodge my opponents rockets in quake. True dogfighting, I.E. trying to out-manuver your opponent, does not exist in this game. There is no battle between two opponents, each trying to get in the others blind spot. Theres dodging, trying to out-guess your opponents dodging, and missle boats, and no amount of weapon tweaking will change that. The implimentation of the capitol ship DOES bring new things to the game. It also behaves like what a real large ship would behave, moves foward, can't rotate on a dime. If the rest of the ships in this game had high foward movement in relationship to other directions, we would see far more diversity and strategy in pvp combat.

errrr.

if ships moved more forward, we'd see jousting and little else. you'd see quick passes and chasing. imagine this added to the 3K jumps?

and if you haven't been out-manuvered in this game, you're good. most of us have been.

if you want WW2 flight sims, Vendetta isn't it. thankfully.

i don't really see why ships shouldn't be able to dodge...IMO space fighters will be more like gunship helicopters rather than planes, with no up, down or (much) gravity there isn't any reason to dogfight in the traditional sense. Games like privateer, wing commander, x-wing even simply turned into turning contests, you *can* do passing maneuvers in vendetta with judicious use of the turbo but you can't expect it to be successful just becuase it happens in real life.

Besides, if vendetta was truly realistic missiles would have 100% accuracy, hit from miles away and be a one shot KO. But that wouldn't make a very good game.

I've made some comments you may be interested in in the "The return of the ever growing toys thread." I think that being able to fly backwards and sideways, etc. is a great innovation made by this game, and I wouldn't change it. I would however, change the turbo, or allow a variation on the current turbo. See below link:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/1494?page=5#116467
Note: the last half of the post is what really pertains to this, but I think the whole thing is worthwhile. ;)

~Seldon

I dunno, jonathanallan, if you've ever engaged in PvP against truly skilled opponents, then you'll realize that it's all about out-maneuvering and out-thinking your opponent. With the current physics system, differences in fighting styles become extremely apparent. As a medium fighter pilot, I have a very different style from someone who flies a light. The light fighter attempts to out maneuver the medium and get un-replied hits to the sides, top, and belly of the enemy. The medium does its best to prevent the light from getting around it, and works to turn its (usually) formidable armament at the opponent's weaker armor.

I'm not even going to bother reading what everyone else says, this would be bad for the game. Being able to fly in ANY directions is how a space combat game should work. Currently you DO move slower when backpedalling, and any good pilot can out manuver a back pedaler anyway. It's only in combination with certain weapons that backpedalling is really even effective and if you see it coming you can simply disengage and fight someone else. Personally, I try and use both flight-assist on and off and fly both forward and backwards as the combat requires. Perhaps practice with some friendlies for a while till your more comfortable with the current combat system. The devs have done a great job getting it to where it is now, no need to start reinventing the wheel on something that really isn't broken, or even starting to break!!!!

jonathanallan wrote: "...It also behaves like what a real large ship would behave, moves foward, can't rotate on a dime. If the rest of the ships in this game had high foward movement in relationship to other directions, we would see far more diversity and strategy in pvp combat."

I'm gonna repeat some of the post content above, but this topic got under my skin...

Like the cap ship, ever other ship in Vendetta(VO) flies, via turbo, far faster forward than in any other direction. Furthermore, VO's larger ships -- especially the moth -- fly forward under normal power at a seemingly greater rate of speed than they are able to maneuver.

VO may resemble some other no-gravity game environments, but so what? Ship v. ship combat in this game can be very challenging and a pilot can be caught unawares *very* easily whether she is fighting one v. one or is in a fur ball.

I have just gotten into some more PvP w/the cap ship introduction after many months of trading and botting. Wow, botting was like taking "Ship Maneuvering 101." PvP against veteran players is like going to grad school and realizing that what you learned is a great base, but there's _so_ much more out there to glean.