Is there any chance that in 3.3 or 3.2.11 they remodify the prom?
Think about the others:
Blue gets a valk. Small cargo, excellent fighter. Indeed a special ship
Gold gets Marauder. huge cargo, decent manuverability. NOt mobile enough to be a fighter, so it won't get abused. So people use it as it should be used trade ship. Also good concept as a special ship.
Red has the prom. horrible agility, not fantastic cargo hold, HUGE target, and the armor has been cut nearly in half.
This ship pretty much as no use. It can't fight, it's not a good cargo shipper. And with the hull cut, it's no longer good at defending other ships and soaking up damage.

I have no gripes about the other teams having these very useful ships, I simply request that red be given the same opportunity to have a team ship which has SOME use.

to be honest, when is the last time you've seen someone use a prom?

to be honest, when is the last time you've seen someone use a prom?
yesterday

I haven't used the Prom since it was rebalanced, so I can't speak to your complaints. I only play for about 15 minutes a week now, just long enough to take a ship out for a spin whenever there is a new update. However, I'll make a point of looking at the Prom next time and seeing what I think. It is entirely possible that a little bit of overcompensation has occured. However, it's also possible that you don't see alot of Proms because you don't see alot of red players and because heavies have always been tougher (and less popular) to fly than lights. That doesn't mean necessarily that the ship is unplayable, or even weak.

I would prefer that if the community comes to an agreement on the low utility of the Prom that it would be fixed by slowly creeping the hull points up until it becomes popular again. If it is too weak, probably it is nothing that 1000 or 2000 hull points wouldn't fix.

As a follow up:

How about simply reducing the physical size of the ship?
I have no problem with a slow ship (with good weapons) and little hull space as long as it isn't as big as a whale.
Bring it down to the size of a maud (or a valk if you really wanna) and I'd be very happy.

I agree that adding ~2,000 armor would definitely go a long way boosting the prom's popularity and make it a little more balanced. Plus it would bring the prom's armor to a nice round 20,000.

again, that's great, but it still can put up almost no fight against a small/agile ship. Take the tri-flare valk. I know people hate it, so do I, but there are ways around it. With a target as big as the prom, having 100,000 armor would not help against a ship faster and much smaller.
I think it would be fun to switch sizes of valk/prom. valk would be agile and fast and a HUGE target, Prom would be slow, with poor agility and a small target.

Take *THAT* Itani!

The thing is, I see mostly sercos using the valk. So nerfing it wouldn't nerf the Itani at all. I think this is possibly a problem with the game storyline. The fact that Pirates enjoy the Itani ship more than their own.

I see far more blues with valks. especially lately. this also has to do with the fact that there is frequently 3x as many blues on as red, mainlny because since they moved the black market, many people switched teams.

Again, let me sumerise the special ships and their uses
valk-fighter
marauder-trader
prom- Big, slow moving target.
you can throw 100,000 armor on it for all I can. what it comes down to is the fact that you can fight a reasonably skilled bus and it can take this whale of a ship in a 1 on 1 given enough time.

I have another idea, if you don't wanna shrink the actual size of the ship, give it some other benifit such as weapons on the ship only require 1/2 normal energy, or better yet energy weapons require no energy (while not turbing).

you think this is a stupid idea? think of it this way, when your aiming is so out of whack due to bad agility having unlimited energy weapons won't give any major disadvantage to the ship it's attacking.

I think that the problem does not lie in the choice of ships at all. The problem lies in the lack of good weapons for heavy ships. The Adv. Gatling is really the only good gun for l-ports. The Plasma cannon is ok, but should be traveling ~210 m/s.

Water, your basic conception of ships is flawed. You say the valk is a fighter, the maurader a trader, and the prom..... a "big, slow moving (sic) target." The Prom is a "heavy transport/assault craft."

We sure could use some good L-port cannons, devs. Either take out the aiming variable of the regular gatling cannon, or up the plasma like I've suggested.

but the idea of the ship should not rely on the weapons. regardless of what you put on a valk, it's small, fast and agile.
regadless of weaponry the basic build of the maud makes it a natural trader.
the prom has no such "natural" benifits.
saying that the prom "COULD" bea great ship as long as they had something good to arm it with is like saying that one brand of tennis rackets or golf clubs is better because if a PRO uses them, they might make some difference.
the whole idea of the special ships is that the ship itself is supposed to have a built in advantage somehow

as a side note. here is a pictoral of my feeling about the prom
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-07-02&res=l

except take the term "Tron 2.0 Multiplayer Demo" and insert the term "Serco Prom"

I love the irony of this thread. First the Prom was too powerful, so it gotr nerfed, now it sucks. This ship doesn't strike me as a combat ship, that's the Valk. And it sucks for trading, and the pizza cutter is great for that. What the Prom needs is HULL. REAL armor. It's a bomber. A run-into-a-group-of-enemies-and-nuke-ram-them bomber. It should be able to LAST. The only problem is there's no use for bombers in general since most people are fast enough to dodge a nuke. The only use the nuke gets is either to a) station nuke exploit, and any ship with an L port is fine for that, and cheaper, or b) nuke the frigate. THAT'S what it's for. Nuking large stationary targets. But almost nobody even acknowleges the frigate from what I can tell. The Prom is a big, akward elephant without a home. For now. But in the future, when some more people are on and we have traveling Frigates and escort squads, the Prom can shine. Think about it; A wing of 3 nuke Prommies with Valk and Hog escorts nuking a huge ship in tandem. It needs armor, true, but more importantly:

It needs a use.

-The Major

So how do we give the prom a special role of its own? I for one would like to see it as the big-brother to the ragnorak. A super-bomber around which other bombers would fly in a formation of capital-ship death. I would like to see it slower than a rag, less agile than a rag, and have a hull that was only mediocre. Then, give it a huge compliment of weapons: say, 1 small and 4 large. Yes, I'm serious. But make it so slow and wobbly that it is virtually impossible to fly it except for in a straight line, and very dangerous to fly out of formation. But give it more _punch_ than any other ship in a head-on conflict. Would anyone fly it day-to-day? no. Would it be special to a team attack? Yes. Would anyone gried in it? no, because on your own you'd be a sitting duck.

Valk = special "light"
Maurader = special "trade"/medium
Prom = special "heavy"


My half-cent.

The Rag and Promy need armor...big time.
The Rag is a heavy bomber...and the Promy *should be* a divebomber...able to blast stuff to /dev/null and keep on shooting.

Bombers shouldn't have less hull than fighters...EVER.

Slappy, the very essence of this game focuses on the person. It has to be a feasible one-person ship to be a viable option.

I would give the Prom a second large port, increase armor to ~35k, and call it a day.

Compensate? Give the Rag 1 small, 2 large, 16 cargo, and give it a hull of ~30k.

wow wow,

the rag 16 cargo ????, so you are making a centaur crossed with the cargo of a maud of it :(

no fun, no fun at all.

But I did like the idea of slappy, 4 large ports and 1 small, that would be nice, powerfull but nice :D

me thinks about 4 linked advanced gatlingturrets or 4 nukes centered on 1 player.

Me is scared now :(

cheers

Slappy: I think there is room between the Rag and a capital ship for a whole variaty of ships with weaponry that makes the Rag pale in comparison, but I don't think you need to totally rework the Prom to fill the slot. Hopefully, one day or another we will get more ships - gunships, strike fighters, military cutters, assualt ships, torpedo boats, etc. Lots of things are possible. Time might limit us from getting all of them, but I at least want to keep hoping.

Besides, what I really think the Prom needs is a couple bonus armor ports (see my armor thread).

"I would give the Prom a second large port, increase armor to ~35k, and call it a day."

Errr... I don't think it is necessary to give the Prom 3.5x the hull of a Valk (not to mention nearly twice the firepower) in order to make it usable. All we are going for here is usable, not abusable, right?

I think another improvement might be to change the Avalon's from detonating on contact to detonating on a timer. That way it, and all L-port ships would have a viable torpedo that will explode once fired without worrying about having to get someone really close to a stationary target to use it.

we're getting off course here. no more talk of changing the weapons please. The problem at hand is the PROM and it's use-ability, or lack thereof. please remember, making better L-weapons does not change the PROM