I've yet to be killed by a 'swarm hound'. Ecka's tried twice and he died twice even while running away after using all his swarms. And note he has played this game 10 years longer than I. Yesterday after Greenwall had been saying the greyhound is so 'OP' I made it a point to fly a lesser rated ship all day (centaur Mkii). Who did I run into? Greenwall in a Greyhound. What happened? Well, I'll tell you. I let Greenwall's hound hit me first and then I fought back. His "OP" greyound got me to 96% while my measly centaur mk II got him to 50% and then he called quits. Yet somehow the Greyhound is Overpowered in face to face combat? What a fucking joke.

Thanks for that nice anecdonte, Boda. Allow me to fill in a few facts you left out because it made for a better story:

1) I didn't kill you because I didn't want my standing dropped.

2) Nobody said I was a great pilot, so using my piloting as an example of why a hound isn't OP is futile.

This thread has nothing to to with swarm hounds. You're just ignoring the points that we've made...

hehe this is getting funnier the harder folks like dr lecter, boda shandis and espionage try.

dr. lecter:

i didnt really bother to read all of which you said and thats mainly cause youve been repeasting yourself. we aint going to "compare ships and show it with accurate statistics". i know you do it in your job but this is vo :P
you cannot generalize it and list up here nicely like a kid in school what you have heard. everyone will have a vaguely different opinion on the hound and thats why we've heard the full spectrum.

topic:

what most of the sane people have complained about is not that it is a good chaser or a good runner. thats completely cool. its also not great for 1v1 and it is not supposed too.
the problem with it is that it can be abused to fight in a furball and shoot stuff like swarms and get off there without any danger of exploding unless there is another hound pilot. and this it is not supposed to do. the greyhound is desgined to be a chaser ship mainly for pirates or maybe a runner ship for those that like to get from A to B quickly.
i'm cool if the least is kept as it is however it Needs to be fixed so that it can't get away from a furball situation as quickly. many appropriate suggestions as to how to prvent this have been made. pick one as i said before.

MrAbsurd, I don't think you're getting the point either. Any reasonable pilot can avoid swarms.

It shouldn't be a sub-par fighter, it should be an *awful fighter*. Strictly because it's an amazing chaser.
Jump in, and turbo and run away should be all it can do. If you're getting hit by a swarm hound then you're doing something wrong.

It is a woefully horrid fighter by any reasonable standard. In fact, it's so bad at fighting we could rename it to the "Corvus Panther".

If it was such a horrible fighter you wouldn't see pirates fly them all the time. Moreoever, if it was such a horrible fighter we wouldn't see TRS flying one all the time.

Flying one as a pirate is a serious choice to, you know, pirate. If I run into a valk while piloting one of my own, I'll generally fight: I'm in a great ship for chasing and fighting.

If I run into a valk while piloting a Hound, I don't stick around to PvP for shits and giggles, I turn tail and go back to hunting traders in actual trade ships…because the Hound sucks at combat.

I only fly one when I'm killing Ragnarok III's in station conq and that's because it's the only interceptor with positive energy gain while turboing which you need to kill Rag's because they have infiniturbo. If they didn't have infiniturbo or if they shot weapons that drained energy you could kill them in an SVG or a Valk or perhaps even a Hog II but you can't.

Perhaps the real solution to the greyhound is actually to rebalance the entire interceptor environment that it exists in. Savet has suggested nerfing infiniturbo across a range of ships before.

This whole thread.

Now for something constructive, your choices are:

A - Reduce Armor
B - Reduce Thrust
C - Mock them while they run away because they spent the only weapon they were counting on to do something.
or
D - Post in this thread. (My personal favorite.)

1. Swarms make you heavy and useless once you blow your load. If you swarm and run YOU are making combat not fun for people. Not the hound.
2. The greyhound SHOULD be better than every hound except the WTD. It costs 100k! Wtd needs a boost...we'll discuss that elsewhere.
3. The SVG can actually catch and kill a rag now, but it is still a slim margin of error.
4. In the hands of equally skilled pilots, the greyhound should lose to a corvult or valk. In the hands of a superior pilot, it has a chance to win. This has always been true, and is still true. If you are getting beaten by antibody in a dogfight, he fought better than you. I say this having been beaten by his corvult and greyhound on numerous occasions. It is annoying how some choose to fight with it, but it is far from over-powered.
5. We do need to review infiniturbo across the board.
6. If you start a dogfight in a hound, then flee when you realize you probably won't win, YOU are making combat not fun, not the hound.
7. The camo version should be restricted to Odia like its brother.
8. Lists are still awesome.

Related rant:
We have a very small community, and it is up to each and every person playing to decide to put away their rectal-fedora once in a while and play like you were raised outside of a wolf pack. The amount of vitriol being spewed into the game lately is ridiculous...from all sides. This is a game with no real penalty to death, no real long term objective, and no reason not to relax a little bit. Don't make me look sane in comparison.

The hound can remain effective and have it's most annoying attribute (Swarming and running) fixed by just removing it's large port.

Could make it more complicated than that by giving it a fixed weapon (can't swap out) of a power drain. Which would make sense on this type of ship since it would have to be light and fast to catch a ship, but under-armed to attack anything significant. Powerdrains would be functional to slow it down for the slower attack ships to catch up.

Savet, all your "You, not the hound" arguments are straw men.

It reminds me of the whole "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument. Bottom line is if you make something available for people to abuse and misuse, they will. No amount of social shaming or hoping-people-will-self-reflect will stop people from using the ship in a way that messes up the game balance.

There's a reason we don't have super weapons that can kill everyone in a sector, laser beam weapons that can insta-kill without aim, or ships than can teleport, etc etc. Pretty much every ship in this damn game has been tweaked over the years for balance reasons - aka because enough people cried and screamed and the devs happened to be receptive to the ideas at the time.

Speaking of devs, it might be nice to hear from them on this issue... we've gone on for 5 pages already!

No, about two or three of you have gone on for 5 pages already, while saying very little of substance.

You're in no position to talk about little substance, Lecter.

I'm going to paint all my valks red now since it's your favorite red herring.

ahaha I watched that for like 5 minutes and couldn't stop laughing

Well. That's a lot of words.

I'll take a look.

:D <3 Inc :)

Greenwall has a point...let's make a greyhound license, which is automatically revoked when you leave sector after firing all swarms but not killing anything and not dying.

The gun control argument is faulty while we let people drive cars, and we hold them responsible when they use them wrong. We also do that with guns too. I feel pretty justified pointing fingers from up here on my soap box.