hmmm an interesting point celebrim.

However one thing that was made fairly clear to me the other night when i was talking to incarnate when he was on.. is that this is not even close to the final version of the game, I kinda got the impression that they are testing server load/program code more than balancing the ships/weapons/etc.

(i believe incarnates quote was something to the effect that we are playing pong and he's designing quake3.. us telling him to change the paddle color doesnt mean much. )
(ps incarnate please correct me if i'm wrong)

just a thought.

As a red nation member, I noticed the overwelming number of members of the other nations, in particualer the blue nation. It might be a good idea to make a balancing system, not ingame ofcourse, but when newcomers want to choose a nation they only can choose the nation that will balance thins out.
At least a system that will take care of the unbalanced system now.

SHiemsosne

please, do not mind my spelling. I try :)

Don't worry, we wont

Don't forget that a lot of people just use that char on blue or gold to trade so they are safe. And after that they will transfer there money to yours, don't worry :D

cheers

Sorry double post

Well, the Serco are actually doing pretty well in terms of self defense. I'm sure a lot of Serco's pilots enjoy the challenge. The only real problem with lower nation populations is having to defend the flag. But also consider that CTF won't make it to the final release anyway. So why worry if it's not a long term issue?

I also noticed something interesting since I started playing Vendetta 3.2. Having gone through sectors 4, 6, and 12 for quite a number of times, I noticed that the Itanis had most of their n00b pilots just botting away near their home sectors. For the most part, only the vets of Itani went farther out and explored. The Neutral Territories had a good mix of n00bs botting in 6 and vet pilots exploring/trading throughout all the sectors. The Serco, however, had very few, if any, of their pilots in 12. So even though the population for the Serco may not be big, I'm willing to bet that they have a pretty high active pilot ratio that's more willing to explore and trade than, say, the Itani. That's pretty ironic, considering the history Guild Software chose for this nation. It might also be interesting to see a new column in the Nation Ranking page that would show active pilots versus total population.

Alot of fuss has been made over the Itani having the best dogfighter. I don't mean to offend anyone but I think the principal reason is personal ego. Most of us are pretty highly competitive and we want 'our skills' respected in some fashion, and it annoys the heck out of us when someone exploits something to gain an advantage on us which doesn't involve our 'skill'.

But, I'm beginning to think that the Valk isn't the only uber-ship out there that is causing problems. In its own way, the Marauder is every bit as powerful and maybe every bit as broken as the Valkyrie only the problem is more subtle and may not fully hit us in 3.2

Then again it might be already, it is very hard to tell. In alot of ways, I wish we could switch out the red team with the gold team and see what happens. The small size and consequently relatively low agression of Red makes them better suited for the job of 'traders', so its hard to distinguish Gold's 'personality' from the effects of having the 'Pizza-Cutter' at thier disposal.

Gold is having an increasing advantage in available capital as time passes. I don't think it is very hard to explain. Not only is the Marauder the trading ship with the most capacity, but it also has the shortest transit time of any trading ship (by virtue of its higher accelleration), and it is the only trading ship that you can trade in with reasonable security from pirates. In fact, considering that it now has a significant armor advantage on the Valk it is a fairly close contest between the two ships IMO.

In the short term this is probably going to lead to greater Gold aggression (though that's hard to tell because they are used to by virtue of 'winning' 3.1 being aggressive), because they have less on average to lose. In the long term, a huge resource advantage like that will lead to increased access to capital ships and other expensive weaponry which will more than overwhelm the advantage of having the best fighter in the game or the most heavily armored fighter in the game.

I realize that this is probably going to fall on deaf ears, but I really think that medium agility + cargo capacity and hull strength equivalent to very low agility is too much without some other mitigating disadvantage.

Which is why I don't complain about the position of the systems or anything that has to do with the flags or the current interface or the graphics (unless it is a problem with the engine) or the price of trade goods or the gameplay or anything of that nature. And its why I've stopped asking for things that I already know to be in the spec sheet. But I can only assume that the Marauder represents the beginning of the first ships of the final universe. Granted, in perspective it is no more 'a ship' than a frame is a complete car, but it is I think the outline of one. Now I know that there are alot more elements that are going to make up the final ships, and advantages and disadvantages in those elements might make them all worth while but at present I see a problem with the frame.

I'd have to completely disagree here. Swapping Serco and The Neutral Territories will only piss a lot of players off. They'd probably delete their accounts and switch back anyway. So that's not exactly a viable solution.

I'd also like to remind you guys that the Prometheus is a tank. It literally takes two or even three fighters to take one down! An experienced player can probably even hold off four fighters. And I'm not even exaggerating here. This is from experience.

The Neutral Territories were meant to have better trade routes. That's their advantage. That's what identifies them. The Marauder is perfectly balanced as is. It only has three small weapon ports. It's nothing special when compared to Itani's advanced fighter. I've also never seen anyone use 'em as a fighter ship exclusively. A few people may try it out, but I don't think anybody would be insane enough to waste 21k credits like that.

To sum it up:

Itani - Owners of the best fighters in the game. Extremely maneuvering capabilities, but weaker than other special ships.

Neutral Territories - Excellent trade routes and money production capabilites, but only moderately protected special ships.

Serco - Extremely powerful and strong special ship, able to hold off/destroy multiple fighters at once. Probably the best defended of the three nations.

Again, this is from what I've observed in game. I remember one time where we (The Neutral Territories) tried to organize a flag capture against the Serco with six fighters. Well, there were actually only three Serco Prometheuses defending the flag. Guess who won. The Prometheuses completely annhiliated our fighters and caused the other pilots to retreat. No special ships were used in the incursion, because it doesn't make the best fighter (duh). So what I'm trying to point out here is that the Serco already have a tough ship. Flag defense appears to be one of their strongest advantages.

Hehehe. I remember that, Arolte. For about five minutes after that, all you could hear over teamchat was "Holy crap! We won! How the... WE WON!!!"

Arolte: Swapping teams wasn't meant to be a viable suggestion. I was merely pointing out that you couldn't completely separate money production from war fighting capability, and as the universe expands that is going to be increasingly true. I'm trying not to judge the situation based solely on what I see, but on what I don't see.

Then again, maybe I'm just frustrated after months of campaigning against uber-ships because they had ruined my experience with previous games to see them become a reality in this one.