I like it, Incarnate.

At this point, I couldn't care less about the speed, thrust or armor. The speed or the armor could be tweaked to make it more vulnerable. However I would really like to see a massive upswing in the cargo capacity of the slowest, most tank-like variant. 120cu, especially for serious mining, is a joke. Let's see an extra decimal place on that, and a big reduction in thrust and speed.

My opinion is a little different than everyone elses, sure we can down the armour a little bit, but I'm kinda aginst the speed decrease. Instead of the speed decrease how about we up the drain? That way Moths won't be able to infiniturbo and you have a few seconds to shoot them at WH's.

I like Both these ideas. A huge slow cargo varient would be great to see. I mentioned over in the other cargo mass thread, I'd like to see a slight moth nerf, and the addition of a larger, way slower and weeker giant cargo hauler that can carry massive amounts of cargo. The cap ships are likely to be able to do this, but I'm talking heavy ship sized with no docking ability. Making varients of the moth will be cool, but they will still be moths. I'd like to see a use gradation between cargo ship classes. Lighter and faster but less cargo room to heavier and slower with massive cargo room.

-tm

A moth with 1200cu of ion cores wont move.

Although a moth with 300cu sounds kinda nice. (n heavy)

I agree with tumble & lecter. (Wow that hurts me)

A huge slower and even MORE vulnerable ship would be neat, requiring a substantial effort to protect and scout out safe routes for.

And I'd like the behemoth to be less beefy, sure. Then the pirates would have a little more fun, if they can defeat the escorts.

(Different idea)
Would it be possible for the originating station to launch replacement "empty" cargo ships in order to pick up the cargo from 'sploded ships? The escorts could sit and guard the cargo. Might be interesting.

This sounds great, Incarnate, and I think this can actually all be fixed with the simple addition of a couple behemoth variants. A small increase in the weight of cargo would not hurt though. I totally agree with Cunjo that jettisoning cargo ought to be a viable escape option.

:: Current ::
Behemoth Basic -/-/-/8/4 45000 HP; 120 cu; 2L
30000kg; 500 N; 65 m/s; 19.0 Nm; 180 m/s; 50/s

:: Suggested ::
Behemoth Basic -/-/-/8/4 40000 HP; 120 cu; 2L
30000kg; 490 N; 65 m/s; 19.0 Nm; 175 m/s; 50/s

Behemoth Light -/-/-/9/4 20000 HP; 100 cu; 1L 1S
28000kg; 500 N; 65 m/s; 19.0 Nm; 185 m/s; 50/s

Behemoth Mining -/-/-/10/8 30000 HP; 160 cu; 2L
32000kg; 450 N; 65 m/s; 18.0 Nm; 170 m/s; 55/s

Behemoth Heavy -/-/-/11/6 50000 HP; 200 cu; 2L
35000kg; 520 N; 70 m/s; 20.0 Nm; 160 m/s; 60/s

This would slightly nerf the thrust, speed, and armor of the standard Behemoth a bit. The "Light" variant would be intended for nation-space trading; it is faster (and gives Cunjo a small port), but it will get shot dead in grey space. The mining variant has the kind of space for ore a miner would want, and a reasonable ability to get back to the station on its own. The heavy variant allows two trade trips at once of cargo, but it WILL want protection (and its HP ought to allow its companion escort & pirate to have a decent tussle).

I was thinking about possibly upping the "Light" turbo to 190m/s and the Heavy top speed to 75m/s. Comments?

[Edit: Corvus would NOT have the Mining or Heavy variants! (at least not at reduced license level requirements)]

Or the behemoth could remain as is, but a trade-ship with 480 cargo, and no turbo could be implimented. While it would have 60,000 armor, there's no way it could get away, and the escorts would be necessary. And these ships could also be über expensive, like 100k, practically REQUIRING players to higher escorts. I'm sure you can find a model for a larger trade-ship just by looking through the ship design contest thread.

Double the armor, and knock the top speed down to 100m/s.

This would:

1) Mean that escorts would have to be taken out before you can think about destroying the moth
2) Make it absolutely 100% require escorts, since its pretty damn slow
3) Give marauders and centaurs a role as faster trading vessels, instead of them just being flat-out inferior.

I hate the "lets just nudge it gently and see what happens" mentality. Variety is what makes things fun, so lets introduce more of it.

Person, that is clearly capital ship territory. That will come with time, but for now the topic is the behemoth. Uncle Dave, I agree with your intentions #1 and #3. However, I do think that the behemoth should not REQUIRE escorts - they should just be rather useful in grey space. Also, knocking the top speed down to 100m/s would make it useless for trading without at least doubling its cargo capacity, regardless of how much armor it gets... Variety without careful consideration is what leads to large imbalances. Nudging things gently until you find what you want is simply one way of getting there with (hopefully) as few problems along the way as reasonably possible.

uncle dave's gots it right!

i say UncleDave has it exactly backwards

the moth needs an armor cut it should have somwhere between 75%-50% it's current armor.

as it is the only thing a moth is faster than is a bus, the reason it seems too fast is because it's too hevily armored for the role it claims to play. civilian bulc transports are generaly the easiest ships to destroy. yes, armored vessils exist, but the moth doesn't claim to be an armored transport.

That goes back to the point originally made by Beolach - "in order for its escort(s) to be worthwhile, they need to have enough time to destroy the attacker(s) before the Behemoth is destroyed". Cutting armor instead of speed would lead to hit-and-run pierat tactics (effective in real life, but not especially interesting or fun). Cutting speed and leaving armor means that the pirates have to spend time on the escorts (who would otherwise destory the pierat while it was shooting the trader), while a winning pirate would still be able to chase down and kill the behemoth afterwards. Also, given the variants I suggested, we could have BOTH!

a moth could loose 35% of it's armor and still have about a 50% chance of escaping a solo pirat. (this is based on calculations i did for a previous moth nerfing thread). now all the escort has to do to increase those odds is distract the pirat, NOT DESTROY the pirat. if you move to intercept a pirat they should have to fight you before they can get in range.

Lord Q said "the escorts will just have to learn how to defend a moth. for one thing the maximum engagment range is around 800m - 1km. radar works for at least 2km (i don't know the actual maximum off the top of my head). learn to intercept posable threrats before they get too close." and "if you move to intercept a pirat they should have to fight you before they can get in range."

The problem with that is that it's nigh impossible to intercept threats that don't want to be intercepted; they'll just keep turboing towards the Moth, and unless the defenders manage to peg them perfectly with rockets (NOT an easy feat), there's no way the defenders can stop them before they get within engagement range of the Moth - and if the defenders moved away in an attempt to intercept the attackers, then they have to turn around and come back, which equals free attack time for the attackers.

A couple other notes: the maximum radar range in 3km, and the Moth is faster than the EC-88, EC-98, and has the same speed as the EC-101, Atlas MkI, Warthog MkI, Wraith MkI, and (this is the one that actually matters) the Tunguska Mineral Marauder. And it's only 10 or 20 m/s slower (not much) than any of the other trade ships, and has over twice the capacity (much more).

Beolach,

1. i'm fairly certain the Atlas, wraith and warthog have a 200m/s turbo speed (and that's the one i'm counting because player operated moths don't travel at non-turbo speeds for any lenght of time.

2. if the pirat turbo's towards the moth without manuvering, you should be able to kill them easily as they wouln't be manuvering and will be moving towards your weaponsfire. and if that diesn't wor, just get in teir way, that'll knock 'em right out of turbo, and chances are they wouln't be able to stabalise in time to catch the moth.
Admitedly i'm assuming the escort will move to intercept the pirat while the pirat is still at extreem radar range (2-3km) from the moth.

1. Wanna bet? The higher mark variants are faster, but the basic variants are 180m/s, same as the Behemoth. [edit] Of course, those are all low-level ships, so I'm OK w/ the Behemoth being better; that's why I said the MMaud was the one that actually mattered, it's a high level faction special ship, and has the 2nd largest capacity, but even its capacity is only 1/2 the Moth's, and it has the same turbo speed. [/edit]

2. Do you CtC much? Try to stop an attacker as they're turboing towards the transport. If you can do it more than 1 in 10 times (or even that much), then I will be very impressed with you.

in CTC the transport isn't a turboing moth. that is a signifigant diference, the rate at which the pirat can close distance is grately increased when the transport is moving slower.

about the top speeds i haven't checked, but that doesn't seem right to me. i know they used to be 200m/s infiniboost (back when every ship was) but i'm not too woried about it anyway, the mk1s aren't all that inportant because they represent a lower bound. themoth as argualbly the best trade ship should be compared wuth the other canidated for that title primarily. and the mineral maud is the frankenstein monster of the maud family. they dodn't matter much as no one takes them sseriously as it is, so fixing them is another issue all together.

Eh? The CtC transports turbo faster than a Moth.

realy? i don't do much CTC, but when i see them in B-8 they never seem to turbo at all.

[edit] but regardless i will concede the point that they do in fact turbo on faith. i still think stopping a turboing oponent in 1000m should be easy enough for a pilot who hase practiced doing so (ie an actual escort pilot, as opposed to just some guy who wanted something to do for a little while)