OK, the new hive stuff? scary, the cap ship stuff? scary. I think we can all agree its time to bring avalons back.

(abuse of avalons in alpha/beta) station nuking wasnt nice, at all, no matter how it was played.

We now have no fire zones, why not make it so they *will not fire* inside a NFZ (You try hitting a docking bay with ye olde avalon from 1500m away just as they undock? impossible, it travels too slow, try hit a levy with one?), but i think with the recent hive changes, planned cap ship stuff, they need to make a comeback. (im talking about avalons and bigger guns, not lesser)

agreed.

I just want to see them =)

How's about, the station guards detect if you have an avalon launcher aboard your ship. Then they follow you in delta formation and shoot down the avalon if its fired. If of course you fire it 100m from the station to avoid the bots shooting it down, then the Avalon doesn't have enough speed to explode....... Or maybe just have this be the only way to shoot an avalon off. That way its always a suicide attempt and that might be enough to discourage some.

/givemoney Devs 2c

Upon detection of an avalon being launched in a station sector the station emits a large EMP pulse that disables all ships in the sector except guards who power down before pulse, then the sf and guards kill whoever launched it. There are a million ways to say and make it so there are no station killing avalons.

Bigger ships = bigger guns. Therefore, I agree.

However, I don't think that we should limit their use in NFZs. Just include a larger penalty, or something.

I just have to agree with this.
Yes, bring back avalons. I've not seen them, but they sound cool.
Anything bigger has to be better when it comes to weapons.

Bigger guns would be nice... but it would be cool if they made a new weapon class so that they could only be used by specific ships.

They did talk of some Proms using capship weapons in the Prom description... so... why not? This will probably require new ship variants as well.

if you fired an avalon 100m from the station you'd be blowing yourself up pretty quick.

I think avalons should be a cap ship weapon or a special slowship bomber that has very minimal or no turbo ability but gobs of armor.
Anyone remember the confed broadsword from Wing commander 2? no? oh.....well it was a bomber in that particalur game with only torpedoes, thick armor, 3 turrets and no turbo/afterburn

vendetta needs a similar class of bomber. one that would **require** escorts to the capital target or else be picked off by some fast moving fighter

also if avalons were to come back they should be able to be targeted and destroyed as a defensive measure

I think we don't really need bigger guns, but ships with bigger batteries. A rag could hold two batteries (and have double the turbo drain) so it could actually fire two gatling turrets or two queenguns at the same time without instantly running out of juice.

I was going to make a similer post this week. It doesn't have to be avolons, but we do need bigger and more damaging weapons. With the changes to the Hive and the Queen regenerating and the cap ships we definatly need something with a lot more power.

I for one don't want to spend hours trying to kill a queen or a Leviathon. I can see it now me and 4 buddies try and kill the levi but th bots around it still recharge it, so every hit we makes no difference. And killing the bot 1st won't matter because they will just re spawn after a couple of minites.

The only way i see us beating the hive right now is if at least 40 players are attacking the hive. but even thats not gareenteed. And it still might take 3 to 4 hours.

If people are worried about station killing players ten make the avalons (or what ever weapon you choose) not harmful to any player. Make it only work on bots.

JB

I for one *WANT* stuff that'll take 3-4 hours for many players to complete. this his the major lack I have in VO, teamwork isn't required and it's hard to actually make use of.

again, for WoW-enabled people, think Molten Core runs. 40 level 60 people spend 4+ hours on it, everyone pulling their weight. we don't have enought people for that right now, but 3-5 people spending an hour or two, yes please.

@JB

Your description of how long it should take to kill a Levi is a bit off but sounds about right, 2-3 hours with a minimum of at least 8 players should be a good starting point for epic battles, which was what I thought the leviathan was going to be, not just another quick rag kill by yourself.

The reason that team work is better in WOW is that each player is FORCE to choose a CLASS and so need to be in a group to be effective. Sure you can take down smaller creaturs and what not by yourself but anything worth bragging about takes a team, not a group, a team, many small groups working together.

This is exactly what VO needs, but it also requires more players.

Back to the original message of the thread. Yes, bigger weapons are needed and they could be both beneficial in a new weapons class for bigger ships and for some of the smaller, currently playable ships like the rag, prom, hornet, etc. So perhaps (L) port weapons and (XL) weapons. Make a mini-avalon that is twice as strong as the best rocket now, remember the sholder launched nuke from "Starship Troopers" perhaps somethign a little bigger then that, and have that a (L) port. Then give caps the real Avalon of old.

The topic of bringing back avalons was covered not too long ago on IRC. Word is they'll be back and made available to the public once the warheads can be targeted and destroyed. They're going to be made so they can be blown out of the sky prematurely.

This will of course require some careful planning when used against the hive bots. I'd imagine that the best tactic would be to attack in waves, so at least a few of the torpedoes will slip through its defenses. This should make for some very exciting battles.

I for one don't mind spending a couple of hours to try and achive a goal. If its a goal you can achive. But as it stands now, and I know Its not final yet. It seems as tho It would tak a 8 person group maybe avor 12 hours of hiting the Levithon or longer to kill it. With the bots recharging it and the bots spawning every min or 2 there doesn't seem to be a point at this stage with our low numbers.
I know its not final yet and i know they are still working on it. But if we are going to get stronger bots to kill i just think we need stronger weapons too.

JB

Where are you getting those numbers JB? The Leviathan has, if anything, gotten easier to kill since we first put it up on the test server (no more beam weapons, partly offset by repairing), and that first weekend it was killed 10 times. Also, the server its running on is *much* slower than the production servers, which affects how much time the bots get for AI calculations. No one really knows how hard it will be, yet. Also, we're working on better low-level bot-AI which will thwart the standard tactic of drawing groups of bots away. That alone will make a huge difference. Martin has killed two bastion queens while they were being repaired by himself without dying because of this exploit! Trust us, we will listen to what you all say, and make it difficult enough that it takes effort and teamwork, but not so difficult that people get bored before they succeed. Once we start advertising and get more players on, we'll have to rebalance things so that it takes a larger team. Ditto for player-controlled capships.

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH A DEV SAID SOMETHING!
A dev saying something this close to an update can only mean one thing.
COFFEE BREAK!
GET BACK TO WORK WHAT DO I PAY YOU FOR!!!!!!!!!!

[/sarcasm]

haha:) I was waiting for a compile, as I am again now.

Aww, come on, the avalons dont need to be nerfed now :( since we have station defence, you can't bomb the station, you can only use the avalons as they are ment to be used.

Not entirely. You can nuke stations from afar and escape the sector unscathed. With targetable warheads the strike forces can detect the incoming threat, blast it before it reaches the station, and then proceed to hunt your ass down. Now that's where the fun really begins!