Well, they're supposed to turbo whenever an enemy is within 1km, but sometimes they never turbo, and sometimes they always turbo, and sometimes they turbo randomly. But, they're not being controlled by players, if they were, they would always turbo, and when they turbo they are faster than Moths.

well, since 1km is the edge of the effective engagment range it's too late to realy help much. and if they don't turbo at all than that falls into the scenario i previously described.

also it doesn't realy matter if they turbo faster than a moth if the don't turbo effectively (as your description seems to inpmy)

anyway i'll dig up the old calculations to see what i can do about finding a compromise between the "nerf the speed" and "nerf the armor"

OK, i've done the math:

Given:
1. The distance the moth must trave in any given engagment is a constant for that engagment regardless of the stats of the moth.
2. The first 10% of the time spent in the engagement is devoted to the pirat getting a shooting solution on the moth.
3. The moth is unable to do anything except run. ie. the moth is unarmed, and has no escorts.
4. Once the pirat has a shooting solution he will do damage at a constant rate untill the moth is able to escape or is destroied.
5. A compotent pirat is able to reduce the moth's armor to 40% under the current (un nerfed) conditions.
6. The moth average speed is 3/4 it's top speed.
7. Let the moth’s armor be reduced to 75% it’s current value.

Thus:
based on assumtions 5, 7 and 4, The moth must remain in the sector for and additional amount of time equal to 75% of 40% of the time the pirat has a shooting solution (30%) .

Because the pirat will only have a shooting solution for the last 90% of the battle (assumtion 2). The moth will need to remain in the sector for an additional amount of time equal to 27% of the time taken for the current escape (30% of 90%).

Now based on D=RT and Assumption 1, If T increases by 36% then R must decrease perportanatly in order for D to remain constant. Therefor D= (R-.27R)(1.27T)

Now since all we are interested in is the change in R needed to balance the change in T, we can extract R-.27R as the formula to calculate the resulting change in the moth's average speed.

Based on assumption 6, R will change from 135 (2/3 of 180 [the mot’s current speed]). To 98.55.

Again based on Assumption 6 that will make the new top speed of the moth 131 m/s

Now let the moth’s armor be reduced to 60% it’s current (unnerfed) total.
This changes the mot’s new speed to 141.12m/s

Anyway, I think this model has proven that even with a signifigant speed decrease the moth’s armor needs a heavy cutting in order to make it catchable.

LC, a Mining behemoth needs an additional SMALL PORT...

other than that... *shrug*

I still want to see one with 100u and 3 large ports...

The objection isn't that reducing armor wouldn't make it catchable, I agree that it would. The objection is that it would reduce how effective escorts would be.

It seems our disagreement hinges on your thinking here:

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.

It is extremely difficult to stop a turboing ship, even when you start when they're 2-3km away. It's not impossible, but I'd say you're either very lucky or several orders of magnitude more skilled than I am if you can pull it off more than 1 time in 10. [edit] Well, maybe 1 time in 10 is an exaggeration, but I feel very safe saying more times than not, the turboing pirate will get past the escorts easily if the escorts move away from the escortee in an attempt to intercept. [/edit]

so you would like a moth with the current armor and a to speed of 120ish?

that was the ballpark of the number i calculated as the aproxamate to speed of a moth with current armor.

personaly i don't want the mot's speed to go below 170 m/s, and definately not below 160 m/s and at either of thise speeds it would need mess than 60% of it's curent armor in order to be catchable by the mathematical model i developed above

I'd say cut its turbo speed to 150m/s, maybe less. I'm not dead set against decreasing the armor as well, as it is pretty high right now, I'm just saying if we keep its speed where it is now and just cut the armor, then it won't encourage hiring escorts as much as decreasing the speed & keeping its armor close to where it is now would.

well if you decrease the speed to 150 (which i'm against) you're looking at a moth with 55%+- it's current armor by my model.

[edit] so i'd recomend cutting the armor in half and then tweeking the speed

I'd say, from reading all this (and breaking several synpatic pathways trying to make sense of it) that maybe, just maybe, 160 speed, 30k armor would fit the bill. This way it is very vulnerable by itself, but when you add escorts it becomes far harder to kill.

What could be done, is modify the moth in the test server and then let us players take it for trial runs, or attack convoys there; that way we gauge it off-game, and see how effective both player and NPC escorts are with said moth stats.

Thanks for the input everyone. A lot of really good points and discussion. I'm continuing to check back and read the thread.

Also, jexkerome, I agree with putting changes in place on the test server, but it isn't really possible right now. The ship properties are currently defined in the client (although we're looking at changing that back again), so you'd need a special client version to test with. Perhaps we could do it at some point after we make the ship properties dynamically update again.

Thank you very much, Incarnate. If it is not too much trouble, I think that ship properties should return to the server since I agree with jexkerome. I assume that the properties went to the client for speed though. Hmm... Right, Cunjo, - oops. Lord Q, I think that this should make the used behemoths much more catchable. The basic can continue to be used by traders who want to try to go it alone with a reaonable chance of surviving. The Light and Heavy variants can then be used by convoys who want to try speed (at the expense of being an 18-wheeler) or cargo space (at the expense of not moving too fast - note the 65/s turbo cost on the Heavy).

:: 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 :: [Edited - 11:55 AM]
Behemoth Basic -/-/-/8/4 40000 HP; 120 cu; 2L
30000kg; 480 N; 65 m/s; 19.0 Nm; 170 m/s; 50/s

Behemoth Light -/-/-/9/4 15000 HP; 120 cu; 2L
28000kg; 500 N; 65 m/s; 19.0 Nm; 185 m/s; 50/s

Behemoth Mining -/-/-/10/10 30000 HP; 180 cu; 2L 1S
32000kg; 450 N; 65 m/s; 18.0 Nm; 160 m/s; 60/s

Behemoth Heavy -/-/-/11/6 50000 HP; 240 cu; 1L
35000kg; 520 N; 70 m/s; 21.0 Nm; 150 m/s; 65/s

:: Other ::
New Assault Ship 11/-/12/8/8 60000 HP; 60 cu; 3L
40000kg; 640 N; 70 m/s; 26.0 Nm; 160 m/s; 55/s

The Mining variant needs the small port slot for a scanner. The Heavy variant should only have 1 large port to emphasize that it needs escorts. The "New Assault Ship" will not exist for a long, long time.

Given that its supposed to be a fragile bulk trader, I'd rather not see an assault variant of the moth, particularly one with 3L ports. In fact, one of the most basic defining characteristics of each ship class is their weapon port configuration, I think a behemoth with anything other than 2L ports would need a lot of justification.

A 3L port ship would be cool, but make it a new heavy bomber, not a heavy transport variant.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v178/Dimpfinator/Trebuchet.jpg

LC,

those new varients look perfect =)

tho I really don't know if having lvl 10 mining is plausable, since the rate of gain in that is so slow... how many players do you think would have that high of a mining level, and how many could get it?

I'd have to look into it more...

Mkay, Phaserlight. Cunjo, I have mining LL 11, and I do not even especially feel like I tried all that hard through LL 8 at least.

"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."

Don't mean to be rude or anything, but it seems everyone just completly ignored me. Like I said in the above quote, I am against speed decrease, though if the Moth must be slowed down don't make it any slower than 170 m/s.

I'm also going to reinstate my point on increasing drain of the Moth. If we increase the drain, the Moth looses its infiniturbo ability, and along with loosing infiniturbo it also makes them vulnerable for a few seconds at WH's while they wait for their batteries to recharge.

give people a choice. let the marketplace decide.

Moth 1: big armor, slow speed
Moth 2: low armor, high speed
Moth 3: etc etc etc

DragonEmpire, I am sorry if it seems like everyone ignored you, but I think we believe differently. Exactly, ananzi -- Moth 1 = Heavy, Moth 2 = Light, etc.

I'm weighing in a little late.. but heres what I have to say.

In this instance Beolach (IMO) has it correct. We've allready seen with the CtC convoys that a lightly armored ship with a decent top speed is mostly undefendable, its a race instead of a combat most of the time.

For the behemoth I'd say cut the top speed down to 140-150 and leave the armor alone at first, a small cut in armor (10%ish tops) would be a second step if it's still too difficult to take out.

What's this "In this instance" crap? Dontcha know I'm ALWAYS correct? My opinions may change, but not the fact that I'm right. ;-)

LostCommander, I cant see how a moth can be an assault ship...