No! It's too powerful already. 650 damage a shot would make it the best energy weapon in the game by an even larger margin than now! Instead, give the std gatling gun 500 and we're talking.

If the adv. gatling needed 2 ports, it'd have to be something really special. 650 dmg/shot anyone?

We have a problem, as many of you have [some less than tactfully] pointed out.

Many people complain about Valkyries with 3 sunflares linked together, and others about the ineffectiveness of the larger ships. I propose a solution that involves tweaking weapons, ships, stations, and batteries/engines.

Weapons: The biggest complained-about problem.

As it stands, the sunflare rocket is thus:

Capacity: 16 Rockets
Repeat: .5 seconds
Damage: 1500
Splash radius: 60m
Detonation: 30m (prox fuse)
Speed: 55 m/s

The problem here is 1) the high capacity of the ammo, 2) the high damage, and 3) the issue of linking 3 together. I propose a change to the 'flare:

Capacity: 24 Rockets
Repeat: .35 seconds
Damage: 500
Splash radius: 40m
Detonation: 25m (prox fuse)
Speed 85 m/s (possibly a bit lower)

This converts such a weapon to a "fighter versus fighter" weapon, and would be impractical against large ships.

I would also be FOR boosting the small port homers', the Gemini and the others, speeds to an excess of 100 m/s.

Fighter fix:

Centurion:

No change

Vulture: No change.

Valkyrie:

Make only two of the s-ports capable of carrying ammo-based weapons (for instance: two flares and a tach, one flare, one rail gun, one tach, etc.)


Bomber fix:

Ragnarok:
3 small ports (2 ammo capable)
2 large ports
40,000 HP

Prometheus:
2 small ports (both ammo-cap)
2 large ports
32,000 HP

I would also take out the variable in the aiming solution for the Adv. Gatling... it makes it quite ineffective beyond a range of about 150meters. I would boost the speed of the plasma cannon to something beyond 200 m/s... come on people, the large port weapons have to be able to keep fighters at bay, not beyond touching range.

I would increase the speed of Swarms slightly, as well as Stingray missiles (just a bit though). The damage of Stingrays should be ~3500.

On a related note, I would like to see batteries and engines given small/medium/large slots like weapons. I've referenced to this in the thread "a completely different take on ships."

I dunno, Rene, I agree with Asp. Stand back and fire the rockets. I think a good fix to it would be to have localized damage. And heck, if you have rockets blowing up in the tubes, well, go n00k your rocket tubes and still fight. :P

RE: Sunflare fix:

That totally changes the weapon to the point that it is a new weapon, doesn't stop the problem most people have with the weapon (ei straight ahead charge + firing as fast as you can), and creates more network traffic do to the faster cycling ammunition consuming weapon.

Valkyrie fix: 'Fixes' that require creating specific code for a particular object are not recommended, I would think.

Bomber fix: 40,000 hull points? You don't take any half-way measures do you? How about we up the hull by one or two thousand first, rather than by a couple tens of thousands? Seriously, except against Valks and such, is the Ragnarok that bad of a ship, and even against a Valk I remember when 26,000 hull points provided an insane ammount of protection for a Prom.

DS4, can you go read my post in the suggestions forum about this? in the sunflares thread? please? pretty please?

rocket fix:

Euhm, kinda over the top DS4
In my mind a better idea:

Capacity: 12 Rockets
Repeat: .65 seconds- 0.7
Damage: 1500
Splash radius: 10m OR 30
Detonation: 5m (prox fuse) OR:15
Speed: 55 m/s

I didnt up the speed because you would nerve the jackhammer and the screamer at that time

Fighter fix:

Centurion: switch aglity with the valk

Vulture: No change.

Valkyrie: switch agility with the cent

Warthog : No change
Hornet: 11000 - 12000 hull

trader fixes:

Atlas: +2 cargo capacity
marauder: no change

Centaur:
1 small port
3 large ports
+2 cargo
17000 - 18000 HP


Bomber fix:

Ragnarok:
3 small ports
3 large ports
18000 - 20000 HP

Prometheus:
2 small ports
2 large ports
20000 - 22000 HP

wraith

2 small
2 large
14000 - 16000 HP

And please dont change the homers or gemini, unless maybe upping prox with 5m. But at max 6 - 9 shots possible

swarms : make it 10 shots of 4 in stead of 5 shots of 8. RoF = 2/s ?

PS: in my opinion changing the advanced gatling, is a bad idea. Because if it is as well effective at semi long range as at short range and you almost dont have to aim anymore. theb ab advanced gatling would be to uber. You could change it though if you made it needing 2 available large ports to put it in, in contradiction to the gatling only using 1 large port.

For the plasma cannon, I would suggest upping the damage with about 200- 400 a shot. Because now, a double gauss is a lot more effective because the chance of 1 hitting is larger then if you only shot 1 plasma.

And for the rest im a little bit out of ideas

cheers

As we all know, or should at least, the codebase WILL NOT ALLOW the centurion to have higher agility, although it is supposed to, that is all

humpy,

it cant have a bigger agility, but it hasnt got the max agility available. the valk has that one, so therefore change these 2 and the problem is kinda solved. But nobody replies on my propositions. Me feels unappreciated :(

cheers

Renny, that is what Scuba said. You can't switch the agility of the Valk and the Centurion. The Centurion will cease to fly correctly if you do.

ow

me whimpers, it would fix everything you know :(

But what do you think about my other strands of thought :D

cheers

honestly dumbfire rockets should be eliminated all together (boo, hiss, I know) cause by the year 4065 one *would* think that we had grown up and started to use more technologically sophisticated weapons... I mean, look at us now! Humans of today rarely use an unguided missle for any purpose. Dumbfire rockets are pretty much obsolete NOW for goodness sake. Why on earth would someone have revived them three thousand years later? For a few laughs?

SO what if I'm pessimistic, but logic tells that as time goes by we move on to more advanced things.

me thought that the shots of tanks were unguided. and most air to air missiles.

cheers

Celkan: Well, I don't know about in 4065, but in Vendetta they seem to work so why wouldn't the Vendetta nations build and use them?

Logic tells me that everything in the game of Vendetta is unrealistic, so why bother yourself over whether dumbfire rockets are anachronistic in the setting. Dogfighting _is_ itself anachronistic for a space combat, but you don't want to do away with that do you?

Celebrim, I don't know if you read the "so far as we have it" storyline for the final product, but the story starts in 4065 AD.

For full realism the character and all it's assets should die when his/her ship is destroyed. I don't think anyone wants that. Let's not over-value realism here.

Say it with me: "IT'S A GAME"
C'mon! "IT'S A GAME"

Let's focus more on what would be fun than on what would seem real. Flying a space-fighter will never be real for any of us.

"Flying a space-fighter will never be real for any of us."

All the more reason to try to make a realistic simulation. If we can't experience it in real life, at least a realistic simulation would give us a chance of kind of experiencing it nonetheless.

Besides, why would dogfights be anachronistic in space? Are handguns for our soldiers anachronistic in our current times when we can just nuke or bomb the enemy, run them over with tanks, poison them with radiation or chemical/biological warfare, napalm them to death etc...? They even carry knives, you know? How anachronistic is that?

" Dumbfire rockets are pretty much obsolete NOW for goodness sake"


Uhm, no. Many bombs are still dumb bombs (free fall), and many planes still carry air-to-surface unguided strafing rockets. Tank rounds are unguided, because only the fact that they fly at 1 mile per second.

That and I don't know of a way to shoot anything guided out of a freaking howitzer, do you?

Nighty> I agree 100%, fighting is space would make even more sense then it does to fight on Earth right now because everything is unmarked in space and so what's the best way to mark everything as yours? Have military power to back it up.

"That and I don't know of a way to shoot anything guided out of a freaking howitzer, do you?"

Actually, I do, but that is besides the point.

"Besides, why would dogfights be anachronistic in space? ... They even carry knives, you know? How anachronistic is that?"

Yeah, but do you fight an F-22 with a knife? How many combat deaths as a percentage in the last few wars involving first world powers have occured due to knife wounds?

There are alot of reasons why dogfights would be anachronistic in space. For one thing, dogfights are practically anachronistic now. In the last 30 years or so, how many fighter aircraft have been downed as a percentage by cannon fire and how many by fire from a guided missile? 'Dogfighting' as a concept largely depends on following things being true: a) the two participants are close enough that they can see each other, b) the events of the combat occur slowly enough that human reflexes and perceptions are fast enough to make a significant difference in the outcome of the combat, c) the kill radius of the weapons is small enough that the motion of the craft can carry the craft out of the kill radius in the time frame between the firing of the munition and it reaching the kill radius. The fact of the matter is that all of the following things are increasingly false even today, and would be even more false in the vastness of space with its near infinite horizons.

Consider the evolution of naval surface combat. Initially, in the age of the ram, kill distances were a single meter or so, and battles resembled 'dogfights' with individual elements of the fleet manuevering to ambush elements of the enemy fleet while they were distracted by another element of the fleet. During the age of sail, ranges increased out to about one mile, and 'dogfighting' between individual ships became possible as one ship could out manuever another to gain a superior firing position. By the age of the ironclad however, ranges of weapons approached that of the horizon and tactical manuevering for position became essentially unimportant. Instead, battles where decided by stealth, strategic manuever, and the range and accuracy of your weapons. By the modern area, engagement distances are measured in the hundreds of kilometers and surface combatants are essentially obselete. Surface ships themselves have in fact been more or less obseleted by weapons that operate in a new medium - either over or under the sea.

In space, engagement distances are likely to be measured in thousands of kilometers. Why? Because spaceships are likely to be able to detect each other over thousands or even hundreds of thousands of kilometers using various sensors - the most primitive of which might be a visual sensor with resolving power something along the lines of the Hubble telescope. Plus, there is every reason to suspect that they will have weapons capable of initiating an engagement at that distance.

Likewise, the velocities of weapons in space are such that they perclude human reflexes being important in the outcome of a fight. An incoming rocket moving at 100,000 km/h carrying a nuclear warhead with a kill radius of 15km or so and guided by an artificial intelligence with (at least in its particular area of expertise) well above human intelligence, perceptions, and reflexes is not going to be dodgable by a human pilot. In fact, the oppurtunity to respond will probably come and go faster than the signal can travel down his nerves and alert his brain.

More to the point, I think space is closer to being like the medium of water in which the larger vessel is likely to be the one with the most prowess. The analogy of space fighters attacking capital ships being like modern attack craft attacking surface vessels is one that carries alot of mythological power because of our history, but isn't one that makes alot of sense when you think about it. Space fighters aren't using a different medium than thier targets the way that flight is different than floating. Rather space fighters are just small armed space ships. The small size of aircraft is in large part do to the necessities of the medium of flight - you aren't floating, you have to deal with aerodynamics, you have to deal with gravity. I think space is much more like the medium of the ocean (and particularly submarines) than it is like flight, and successful warships will probably be alot more like submarines than fighters. Larger ships are just likely to have more capability in space than small ones - longer range, better sensors, more spare weapons, more armor, more defensive systems, more excess power, more excess fuel, larger and more intelligent AI, more crew (human and otherwise) for decision making, and maybe even better acceleration.