Forums » Suggestions

Give the trident M 5 large ports beams.

«12
Jun 08, 2011 vIsitor link
>I think the turret placement is fine, thank you. Their is still a reason in this game that you can solo shit,
> so there.


Except that is part of the problem.

A Capship, even a 'mere' Trident, represents an enormous investment of time and resources, most likely from a large group of players; to destroy a Capship is to render that investment void. If a Capship can be destroyed by a lone one-man fighter, then its utility in combat is greatly lessened; certainly it is vastly less than the investment required to procure one. It doesn't take a genius to realize that is undesirable, both for the sake of the players and for game balance. For that matter, Capship shields, as currently implanted, are clearly designed to discourage such 'soloing' tactics.

The effort to destroy a Capship should and ought to be proportionate to the effort required to create one. As it takes a group effort to create a Trident M, so to should it require a group effort to unmake one.
Jun 08, 2011 Pizzasgood link
"If a Capship can be destroyed by a lone one-man fighter, then its utility in combat is greatly lessened"

Combat is not the purpose of all ships. Consider the effort it requires to build up the licences and standing to buy an XC, especially if you are not UIT, and compare to the ease of killing one. Also note that once you have the standings, assuming you maintain the faction stat you can obtain new XCs easily. Tridents will eventually be easy to regain once the insurance mission is implemented. So I see no issue.

Also remember that a player-flown Trident has the option of rotating to bring its turrets to bear on an enemy who stays still for too long, unlike the dumb AI ones. (Granted it probably rotates pretty slowly.) Furthermore, if somebody is that worried about their capital ship, they should hire an escort.

Anybody who flies a capship through greyspace solo has no right to complain about anything at all that happens to it.

Should a HAC be soloable? No. Should a shieldless Trident? Certainly.
Jun 08, 2011 vIsitor link
> Should a HAC be soloable? No. Should a shieldless Trident? Certainly.

The fact that the Trident M has no shields is a temporary condition, and you know it.
Jun 08, 2011 Pizzasgood link
Actually, I was assuming that they were going to leave the M shieldless and make a separate model with shields later. On further reflection, I probably read too many Alloh posts.

That said, a shielded Trident is still in the realm of things that should be soloable, when undefended.

How do you kill a shielded Trident? Take a swarm rag with one small port energy weapon, drop the shields, and then whittle the health down slowly until it dies. That works because NPCs are stupid. What happens when you try that on a player Trident? The Trident either tries to maneuver to hit you with the turrets (if there is a gunner), or failing that, flees to a friendly station where it can likely reach the NFZ before the armor is depleted, resulting in the station guards coming to the Trident's assistance. If the threat can be eliminated, the pilot can then escape to an empty sector and call for EMS or a friend to repair it, or try to sneak away to the nearest capital dock.

Lone shielded player-operated Tridents are possible to solo, but difficult enough to be justified.
Jun 08, 2011 vIsitor link
Your problem is doctrinal; you continue to treat the Trident like you would a dogfighter. A massively oversized dogfighter, but a dogfighter all the same. Except that Capships were never meant to be used that way. The very presence of a Capship on the field should greatly change the tactical situation; to be able to 'solo' one makes that fundamentally impossible.

They're in a class all their own, and rightly ought to be allowed play by their own rulebook.
Jun 08, 2011 vskye link
Point taken. Unmake one.. heh.
Jun 09, 2011 Pizzasgood link
Just because it is soloable doesn't mean it is weak. My point was that it would take a long time for a lone ship to kill it, and it would probably only work if the pilot were an idiot or had really bad luck. Give the Trident an escort and gunners and the situation changes drastically. In a fight with multiple people, it becomes much stronger. Why? Because if the enemies want to stay in the blind spots, their ability to dodge the fighter escort is severely limited. If they ignore the Trident, it can hit them with its turrets, and capgauss hurts. Meanwhile, the defenders can dock in the Trident to get RR on the battlefield.

Yes, it is relatively easy for a group of bombers to take out a Trident (especially if they have their own to RR in), and a solo person can potentially take out an undefended one. So what? The Trident is the smallest of the capital ships, and hardly even qualifies as one.

You said it yourself: they aren't meant to be used on their own. So if you don't want to be soloed, don't use one on its own.
Jun 09, 2011 Alloh link
Pizza is right. If used properly, a Trident-M is not soloable.

When used by a single, lonely pilot, just like if were an oversized XC, the capship should die just like an oversized XC with tons of armour.

Proper usage expect at least two players in Trident, preferably more. Get the Trident-M with a pilot, two gunners and two fighter escorts, and THAT is not soloable.

And reading all this again, instead of L or S ports, what we really need in simply a capital gun for Trident-M. Exactly the same one used by NPC Tridents, fixed equipament. As it should not require a Power Cell, it comes with a full reactor.

So, only turrets should be configurable in Trident-M, and it comes with a capital gun for pilot usage... or a retrofitted Queen Gatling Turret - the one that cracks NPC trident shields...
Jun 09, 2011 Spedy link
That's mostly the work of it's two hive queen positrons which never run out of energy, I think.

I believe the type M-trident should have at least some small sheilding; enough to ward off some one in a centurion pelting away with a plasma HX. Otherwise a trident really should be protected by a fighter escort, and vulnerable otherwise. Perhaps an internal armor repair system of sorts, capable of being activated only when the vessel is not under thrust or fire and requiring the whole reactor charge for the duration that the controller is using it.
Jun 09, 2011 JJDane link
Give the trident shields and recharge rate on par with a dynamic queen. It'll be soloable, but a skilled captain would have a chance of moving to mess up a stack...
Jun 09, 2011 vIsitor link
If a Trident were to require the combined efforts of even just two players to take down, then it could actually throw their weight around. However, if every bomber is a potentially mortal threat which must be intercepted for the Trident's safety, then the players fielding it are forced to be constantly on the defensive.

The crux of the matter is that under Pizzasgood's preferred model, the presence of a Trident would be a liability to the players fielding it, not the asset it ought to be. Ultimately, there is no point in fielding one when they would invariably fare better without one.

And, anyway, the Trident's turret blindspots are friggin' enormous; fixing that is honestly not too much to ask.
Jun 10, 2011 tarenty link
Give it one small turret, like the ones we have on atlases and behemoths, on each side right and left and the small space on the nose. You can still stack from behind but with some maneuvering the trident can face a turret at them, and a good pilot could stack around small turret fire, only not as effectively.

Before any change to the turrets, though, this needs to be tested and CD or any other that builds a trident need to tell us if the four turrets currently on the trident work.

Do turrets work yet at all?

The shields on a trident are currently soloable but barely. A trident moving away from a stack at 50+ m/s should retain it's shields.
Jun 10, 2011 Alloh link
And what if instead of all this we simply increase Max Turbo Speed to 120m/seg and improve its turbo trust/acceleration?

So the pilot can simply turbo away from any swarms.

Then create a might mining turret and give the pilot a fixed capital gun.
Jun 10, 2011 endercp12 link
From what I gather nanhin, the turrets on the trident are all the "small" variant found on the atlas and moth model already. They do not come standard with cap gauss or cap swarms
Jun 10, 2011 Pizzasgood link
If you mean it should be given enough acceleration that it can employ the "oh noes, let's turbo away from the missiles!" tactic after missiles have been fired, I have to give a -10 to it. However, a 120 m/s turbo speed with low enough acceleration that it would have to have engaged turbo before the bomber began firing to surpass 80 m/s before being hit wouldn't be a big deal to me.

Capships should not be sprinters. Even runts like the Trident.
Jun 10, 2011 pirren link
Capships should not be sprinters.

+100
Jun 10, 2011 vIsitor link
> Capships should not be sprinters. Even runts like the Trident.

That, at least, we can agree on. It's nice to have some common ground for a change.
Jun 10, 2011 Alloh link
eerrr... 120m/seg max isn't really a sprinter at all. Moths goes 160... And when I said increase, I meant a small increase, not making it an Atlas-X on steroids...