"behave like Magus says above OR lower the valks acceleration."

-I'm against lowering it's accelleration since it's speed is what makes it special.
Itani= Blinding Speed.
Serco= Monstrous power.
Neutral= Balance, flexibility, and a really big cargo bay.

The speed makes the Valk special, but the problem is the balance. It is not only the fastest fighter, it also has more firepower than any of the other fighters, (I don't really consider the Hornet a fighter, more of a light support craft) and more hull points than any of the other fighters. Once the mass distribution problem is fixed and the centurion is given the speed boost it so desperately needs we can at least rely on it to rail-gun or tach valk jocks down as they run. But even then the tri-flare config will be horrendously powerful until they run out of ammo.

The thing is, sunflares in ones or even two's are perfectly legitimate weapons. The imbalance here is due to a convergence of several factors in the game mechanics that make the tri-flare valk so powerful.
A.) The additive speed of a rocket plus the turbo means people trying to defend themselves against a faster ship with rockets are rendered all but impotent.
B.) There is no way to stop a faster ship from running away from you, eliminating the need for ammo conservation.
C.) No consequenses for being a pain in the ass, damaging yourself, or death.

We know C is going to be fixed soon enough, so no use beating that horse anymore. But A and B need to be dealt with.

Today, for the god-knows-how-many-millionth-time, I was triflared into oblivion.

Some of us feel the black market must be destroyed. (I am one of them.) This would force players to learn to use their special ships.

Some of us feel penalties must be installed for killing players, and that the special ships must be harder to get.

It is true that the special ships are not balanced. But this is only true when players are loading them up only with rocket weapons. Using mostly energy weapons, they are almost balanced with the standard ships. If only energy were used, "a Vult(ure) would beat [the Valkyrie] 2 out of 3", to quote someone from ingame today.

There is the sentiment that sunflares, due to their massive destructive power in groups, should not be groupable. To which I shall respond: All fighter-, adv. transport- and attack-class ships should be limited to one, one, or two rocket tubes respectively. In other words, the Centurion, Vulture, and Valkyrie would be allowed a maximum of one rocket tube, while the Warthog and Hornet would be allowed two (which would be nongroupable).

This would prevent triflare and quardflare setups on the valk and hornet, stop heavy ramming almost altogether, and the only ships still able to do it would be the ones that would take the most damage from splash.

Excellent suggestions. I second all that was said.

There's other problems too, though, like what I did yesterday. Quad-gauss = two shots kills a hog. The weapons are just ALL too powerful with relation to the armour of the ships.

ya! ya!
/me agrees with RL
anyway verd quotes me incorrectly-- i said (+/-): "a vult can beat a valk 2 out of 3".
not any special ship (although that may be possible). i specify that for the valk because i had the chance to test it. with mauds and proms, i dunno. they aren't a regular view anymore nowadays.
and i do not support disabling the black market.
i am all for increasing the get-killed-penalty and the flare nerphing tho.

actually tosh you said something more along the lines of:

"If they used energy, a vult would beat them 2 out of 3."

that was the actual quote, I wasn't sure what you meant by "them", so I just said special ships. (I'll edit it.)

Rogue, the massive damage of the gauss when grouped is offset by its massive usage of energy, leaving the user open to attack very quickly while the battery recharges.

Unless you use a heavy battery and are a good shot, in which case the enemy won't have a chance to retaliate.

sunflares are overpowered and need a major nerfing. maybe they should just get rid of valks and whip up a more resonable ship for itani since everyone wants valks and almost everyone has 50 valks stashed somewhere which is rather unfair for most ppl since they either cant get past furies or dont know where blackmarket is. guass needs a 2 per ship max since it can do so much damage or be nerfed.

sunflares are overpowered and need a major nerfing. maybe they should just get rid of valks and whip up a more resonable ship for itani since everyone wants valks and almost everyone has 50 valks stashed somewhere which is rather unfair for most ppl since they either cant get past furies or dont know where blackmarket is. guass needs a 2 per ship max since it can do so much damage or be nerfed.

EDIT:no idea how the heck i did this just ignore 2nd post

I happen to like my duel flares thank you very much. i can use them well and dont need to ram. You, however, seem to think that everyone with more than 1 flare tube rams, and thus you want to nurf everyone back to 3.1 where we could only have 1 of each weapon. I dont think so. Give some penelties, but i see no reason to nurf it.

"Unless you use a heavy battery and are a good shot, in which case the enemy won't have a chance to retaliate."
-My problem with Gauss is that for some reason on my school's connection the shots sometimes come at me really fast. Almost as fast as gravitons. I don't know whether it is due to lag from me, lag from my opponent, or packet loss. But it is really hard to dodge.

That's to be expected, considering that they and gravs have the same speed +-10m/s. Check teh stats.

aren't all gauss, tach, and grav speeds equal?

Maybe I wasn't being clear. I wasn't referring to the projectile speed, I was referring to rate of fire. They come really fast. Definitely faster than they did while I was at home. And the projectile travels faster. So it's hard to dodge those things.

That and the flare problem. The thing with grouped flares is that a 3 flare config, especially on a valk, has a radius of at least 100m, probably more. Essentially it's a 100+m ball flying at you at anywhere between 55-200m/s. How the hell can you be expected to dodge that in anything less that a vult? A hog if you're good? But even that is really hard. The sunflares, especially in the tri-flare config, have every advantage and the only disadvantage to speak of is the splash damage issue. Which isn't even an issue since the Valk has greater hull than any ship that is maneuverable enough to warrant a ram.

/me recalls dodging all 16 salvos from AsteroidX while in his trusty prom...

magus, actually the ball is 65 m


----|-|
-----|
-----|
vv-x-x-vv
-----x
-----|
-----|
-----|

x = sunflare
v or | = 10m
- = spacing

Now the reach from 2 sidewinder shots isnt 30m it isnt even 10m, 5 m should be correct. But for ease of use, lets use the 10 m ;)

so in total from left to right , it zil have a range of 65m. From top to bottom "when you fire your front shot is something above/below the side shots, for ease of representation take 10" In reality only 5ish. So in total from top to down youll get something along the lines of a 70m.

So you dont ge ta ball of 100m but an ellips of 70.

I dont contest that it is hard to avoid. But I have been using it against the defense bots. Very succesfull I must say. At leat zhen they come 1 at a time"else, more dangerous ;)".

Im not against tripple setup if the devs considered altering the sunflares slightly. I havent got a clue how, but it could be done. On the other hand getting rammed is rather annoying. and then having a prox of 70m is already way to much.

But what is even more annoying is getting rammed by a marauder that uses tripple flares, it has the hull to withstand multiple rams :(

So the solution is not nerving the sunflares, it is not nerving the ships. It is just adjusting the sunies in tiny amounts, otherwise everybody will start to use the energyweapons. And trust me, it will get boring after a while.

So just alter the sunnies in this way that if they are shot from < 150- 175m that they wont have any effect. if they are shot from a bigger distancem then they zill have their original effect.

Or if a rocket is shot from point blank, unless of letting it do 100% damage, let it do 5% damage and the 95 other % to the shooter. and gradually scaling it expomnential downwards to 200m.

this will mean that a rocket shot from 200m zill do full damage to the oposer and no damage to the shooter and at about 150m it starts to hurt more for the shooter then for the target"60% shooter, 40% target" anyone ?.

cheers

PS: the reason why Im suggesting not to nerve the sunflares is because if they are shot from 175m - 250m they are only useable as tactical shots, to let someone dodge to the left so you can spray him zith your gauss or tach when he comes beside you. and if he doesnt dodge, hell have bad luck. The actual reason behind this all is that rockets are harder to shoot"without doing qa ram" then you can possibly imagine. And if some people have mastered that, then we arent allowed to take that advantage from them.

PPS: Im not at all a master with them, the bots are just stupid anf boost into them :( . Illalways preer energy weapons because of their infinite ammo.

cheers

hm hm hm
no, making the sunflares ineffective by dealing the most damage as splash is not the way.
i still second verd's thought, with the single tube on fighter crafts. if you're that good with flares, you don't need more, since every shot should hit. if it doesn't... use energy!
in my opinion the greatest problem with triflaring valks is also rocketspamming, because at some point, i am just unable to dodge, and with the combined damage 3 flares can deal, a vult gets smeared quite easily (takes 2-3 full hits)
another problem is the inheritant roles of the ships.
a bomber is simply not meant to go toe to toe with a fighter. it needs fighter escorts (multiple).
if people use more than their own force to overcome attackers, it's called "teaming up" and "lame". why? it is normal to use the variety of multiple ships to get air superiority.
the standard fighters are pretty much space superiority fighters, where you need to fly in packs of 2 to 3 crafts (or a sheer advantage in numbers, like 2:1 or better, to generalize for battles of any size), to make pincer moves and such.
the transports... need escorts. many. no single trader can hold his own against a wolfpack of valks, be they armed with flares or not.
so it is not only solved by nerfing first this, then the other detail, i think.
we need to go deeper and change our style of fighting. we also need to be able to coordinate better than via typing (binds are sufficient, i think, but it requires training).

I agree with Rene, I use rockets exclusively, and although it happens, I *try* not to ram, and its hard, unless you want to blow all your ammo in one last ditch attempt to execute your opponent. Rockets aren't all the accurate, espacially if your opponent is backpedaling and barrel rolling(why I commonly use the "Rocket Dash", running up to your opponent(outside of ramming range) and firing rockets, although it rarely hits) The problem is, (most)everybody flies like a bot(perhaps a bit smarter), because that is what they learned to fly off of(duh) and as I have seen, bots do not deal with rockets well(boost right into 'em, or stand like a deer in headlights.

sorry if this doesn't make much sense, school keyboard isn't very compliant.

My point for this little fix toshi was to not loose customisation and the ability to defend myself against defense ships :D. "So I did do it because I wanted it and saw a use for rockets." In human vs human fights you will see me rarely taking a full rocketlayout because my aim is just terrible if i have to take the inititiative. "egoistical purpose"

The ramfix should make it very hurtfull shooting the rockets at point blank and even at 150m. still receiving 60% damage from your own rocket is still a big chunk.

Also the reason why this all is possible is because valks and marauders are to easy to come by. So lets do this minor fix to solve the ramming and additional make the valk or any special ship less frequent. Besides once missions are integrated, my opinion is that the special ships will be a lot more balanced agaisnt the standard ships.

A good idea could be by just making it accessible in sec 18. There arent a lot of people that get there on their own with those bots that even come to you if you havent got them on your radar "so insane radarrange".

But you are right toshi, the rof is still a tad to high. But maybe after the fix we will think differently of it, I dont know, it is for the future to tell us that.

So lets just talk a little bit about it, and whenever the dev find the time to make a decent fix/ find a decent solution, lets pick up this discussion again and see if these altrations have made it better or worse.

cheers

2 rocket tubes would not be unbalanced in a valk. You should be allowed to equip a maximum of 2 of the same weapon.