Celebrim: yeah, I know. But I long for the day so badly... /me tries to nudge it forward :-)

SirCamps: I disagree w/ "the very essence of this game focuses on the person."... it does _now_, but it's going to be a real MMORPG, which means in the future it will have to support team play better than it does now. Not at all saying that the individual should be abandoned, but we will eventually need to think bigger.

Watercooled, the purpose of the Prom is to be a heavily armed powerhouse of a ship. It would be excellent in that purpose if theyre were decent weapons for it to use. The only problem is, aside from the Gatling Turret, Sunflare, and Gauss, all the weapons suck. So nobody wants to use it. If Sunflares were nerfed the Valk wouldn't be nearly as good. At least 25% of the Valk's effectiveness is due to the bi-flare/tri-flare config. ppl have on it. The Prom just lacks enough badass weapons to make it frightening.

Guys... I'm willing to bet that the problem here is the engine itself, not the ship balance changes. Remember, we went from using a heavy engine to a medium engine. Buy a Promy or a Rag with a medium/fast combo. Then switch to a heavy/heavy combo. You'll notice a significant boost in agility. I'm trying to get a petition going in the general forum to increase the torque of the medium engine, so ships like these can get a fair chance at survival. So be sure to check that out.

Its an armored bomber. Problem is that its not armored enough any more... plus its low agility means its a sitting duck for warthogs or valkyries. All it needs is a second L port for countermeasures- a swarm, or mines, or SOMETHING to stop it being annihilated by fighters all the time. Has anyone noticed how difficult it is to take on a rag these days with the improved homing missiles? The prom should have the capacity to be even bitchier to kill. So chop off an S port and add an L port, and youre done.

But then this would require small remodelling of the ship... so its not likely that it will be implemented any time soon...

I agree with Dave.

Arolte, stop obsessing with engines. It's not the engine...it IS the armor. There's no point in being able to go warp 10 if you can't live long enough to accelerate up to speed.

I saw this happening...you people should listen to me some...
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1268&page=10


"Fine...go ahead...nerf the Promy...see how populated Red nation stays then. We're already severely undermanned as it is...

The Promy already has less cargo than the Atlas, less weapon capability than the Ragnarok, and less maneuverability than either...take away its armor and it's worthless...Red no longer has a 'special' ship - just a special 3D model. "



That was on 2003-04-27 at 18:27:08.
I saw this problem coming...I was ignored...
Quite frankly, I'm getting tired of it here, because to be blunt, it seems like that (censored) Arolte and a few fans of his are running the show here.
Anyone who doesn't like the way he does things needs to speak up.

It IS kinda strange that the trading vessel has as much hull as the bomber... Here's my version of the fixed prom:

Serco Prometheus
Cost: 21000c
Armor: 23000
2x small
2x large
8 cargo
Low Maneuverability


This makes it less than the 24000 armor limit that I see as the max because at that rate or above you cannot be killed by 2 nukes. This also gives it the capacity to be a REAL bomber and a fighter. Yet the low maneuverability and 8 cargo keep it from being an ubership.

if its going to be 23k y not 24? 2 avalons do 24k damage.

Doesnt the maurader now have 16k hull?

Would someone explain why fighters and bombers need to have more than 4 cargo or so? They're NOT SUPPOSED TO BE trading ships.

The prom should have more than 4 cargo because it can't be a good pirating ship with <8 cargo. As for 23000, well, I want to keep on the safe side and 24000 is too round a number for my tastes.

hm, as a side note:
I played as the prom for old time sake tonight.
It's not a horrible ship, it's nice to load it out with swarms and piss off the rocket rammers, however, good ship or not, it is not enough of a benefit to be considered a special.
I say give the prom to everyone. then give red some uber defence ship with only 2 s ports or something
it could be a flagging ship
say 30k armor, but not enough weapons to ever be an attach ship
then give it mid to low agility and a medium size frame

Lemme see what this looks like in my "special" format...

Serco Defender:
Cost: 21000c
Armor: 24000hp
Weapons: 1 small
Agility: Medium
Length: 10m (?)

Hmmm... 2 small is too much. That would be the best rocket-rammer there is, able to fire and take damage with impunity. Drop it to one small. And 30k is too much. Drop it to 24k.

Looks fair, but it'd be better if they improved the prom and ditched the black market.

or maybe make it in stead of a small weapon, 1 large weapon.

But lessen the autoaiming on the advanced gatling turret then ;)

and 22000 hull

Serco Defender:
Cost: 21000c
Armor: 22000hp
Weapons: 1 Large
Agility: Medium (less then the maud?)
Length: 10m (?)
cargo: 8

cheers

In my eayes, it could be a nice defensive weapon, and very good against rocketrammers

cheers

OOh, give it one large. Then they cahn have SCREAMERS! Faster than flares and with 2x the damage. This is the [slightly lower maneuverability] version of the original (3.2.0) valk!

"Would someone explain why fighters and bombers need to have more than 4 cargo or so? They're NOT SUPPOSED TO BE trading ships."

The prometheus is listed as a Armored Bomber/Transport, so technically, it was supposed to be used either as an armored trading ship or as an armored bomber.

Majority of the time, I use Prometheus's, but I rarely fight. The only reason I do use it is so that I have a few extra seconds to avoid attacks from pirates. Also, because I don't fight, I no longer can get anywhere in sectors 16-18. Within ten seconds of warping in I am bombarded by furies and killed.

Shoot swarms at furies. They stop shooting you and boost away to dodge the swarms.

After reading this, I think a useful prom would be as this:

Serco Prometheus
Cost: 21000c
Armor: 18000hp
Weapons: 0xSmall, 5x Large
Agility: Low
Length: Same as current
Cargo: 6

The prmetheus has 12 cargo. How is that not good? That is the second highest cargo next to the Marauder. The Prom is not that bad a ship. I used it a couple of times and was able to take out a wing of furies without the aid of mines or swarms. I realize bots and people are two different things, but I think most of the problems people have with the Prometheus is that it cannot hold its own against the Valk or Vult. But the fact is, no ship can hold its own against a Valk right now unless there is a large skill gap. The Vult may need work, but the Prom is far from unusable. I saw UncleDave take out quite a few wannabe Valk pirates in one.

5 large??? crazy...

This has been suggested elsewhere, but not with the Promethius in mind:

What if missile and rocket ammo required cargo space? Maybe the weapon itself could have a small internal capacity of projectiles (let's say 4 for Sunflares, just for the hell of it) but to get a larger capacity you would have to give up cargo space (again, let us say 4 Sunflares per space, just for the sake of discussion). This way, a Valk might be able to make a quick strike on a Promethius before running out of ammo, but the Promethius would be more likely to survive and would have the ability to deliver a massive defensive or offensive volley. Obviously the exact number of projectiles per weapon, how many of each would fit in a cargo space, and a limit on how many could be carried overall would need some fine-tuning.

This would restore the muscle to the big ships while reducing the popularity and leathality of projectile weapons on the smaller ships. I don't think this would be too severe of a nerf given that the smaller ships are able to deliver a volley and then run off to re-arm and that energy weapons would be unaffected. Using the numbers above, a tr-flare Valk could deliver 9 volleys instead of 16. That's sufficient for most skilled pilots I should think.

5 large? Howabout 2?