I think it's time we discuss the roles of heavy ships again.

Opinion 1: Heavy ships should be greater than light ships (that is, fighters). One light ship may harass a heavy, but should not be able to do considerable damage to it, and will meet a sudden and quick death if it gets too close to such a ship.*

* = Combat ships only. Freighters will be discussed later.

Opinion 2: To make Opinion 1 a reality, heavy ships' weapons must do more damage, be just as or more accurate as light ships' weapons, and have a farther range. Heavy ships must also have batteries with capacities that far exceed those of light ships.

Example of a heavy ship: Ragnarok.
Example of a light ship: Vulture or Valkyrie.

Heavy Ships.

Batteries.
Capacities must be several times those of light ships. If a light ship can get by with one or two energy weapons being powered by a 250 fast charge, a heavy ship should have a line of batteries like this:

Class 1 (heavy) Batteries:

Light
Capacity: 750 energy
Generation: 75/sec

Medium
Capacity: 1250 energy
Generation: 100/sec

Heavy: 2500 energy
Generation: 125/sec

Fast Charge: 600 energy
Generation: 150/sec

The goal here is to give an incredibly large overhead to heavy ships for sustained firefights. Screening weapons (like the adv. gat) should be able to be sustained nearly indefinitely (considering you only have one). Energy management should not be as important as it is for light fighters, considering the large reactors (renamed batteries) heavies probably have onboard.

Engines
I haven't as much on this, but they should be retooled torque-wise to give heavies manageable turning radiuses. However, since most primary weapons should/will be turreted, turning should not be the most important aspect of heavy ships.

Weapons
Weapons need to have longer range than light craft weapons and be more deadly. A good example of such a weapon is the frigate weapon. I just started a thread on that. If a Ragnarok had such a weapon (or two) with a good range (maybe 800m), it would make it hard for one or even two light craft to take down such a ship. They'd have to call for heavy artillery (similar reinforcements) to take out the big guns.

Rockets
Heavy Rockets need to be either homing or have incredibly fast velocities to catch fighters.

Stingrays
We can have incredibly fast, light missiles that do 1000 damage each (32 per tube) with a velocity of around 150 m/s. Repeat rate would be 1/ 2 seconds.

Dumb-fire rockets for heavy ships should have incredible blast areas and be relatively quick, considering the slowness of a heavy ship.

Heavy vs Light rockets could be around 1500 damage, repeat every .2 seconds with a velocity of 85-100 m/s.

Heavy vs Heavy rockets should have a low repeat rate but high damage. The avalon would work here, if it had a homing device (keep present speed).

The regular gatling needs to be made a medium port (hog's L port, 2 s ports on the Rag, and possibly one on the Hornet), as well as the prox mines.

Health
Heavy ships should see their hull strengths increase tremendously, and some agility be cut likewise. The Prom should see a decrease in agility, but the addition of a second large port, and about a 10k (to 28k) boost in armor. The Ragnarok should receive a 20k (36k) boost in armor. The Centuar is an armored freighter, in my view, since it will have the same number of L-ports as the prom (2), so its armor should go up 8k (to 24k). Hull bays need to be "fixed" so the Centuar's model can be expanded to what the devs wanted it to be originally.


Light weapons.
These changes wouldn't be quite complete unless we toned down light weapons and made a difference between light vs light and light vs heavy.

Sunflares should be reduced to 8 per tube, keeping present stats. Gauss should be changed to become a light vs heavy weapon, having high damage but low velocity and repeat rate.

Comments? Suggestions? Realize, that all these comments are made in light of the fact that one heavy ship should pose enough trouble for even a Valkyrie to back off. If you're of the opinion that one fighter should take down one heavy ship, please take your comments elsewhere. If you can't accept my starting premise, don't take issue with what I'm building on.

Even if you do think that a light should finish off a heavy every time, remember, this is not a racing game, it's a combat game. If I have a heavy ship with lots of armor, shields, and weapons, I should be able to blow one little fighter out of the sky easily, should he be foolish enough to fly one.

Right now, the best ship is the fighter. No serious pilot flies anything else. It takes a great deal of skill for anyone not in a Valk to defeat one (exception possibly being the Vulture because of its profile). The sight of a couple of Ragnaroks should be enough to make any Valk pilot turn tail and run. Right now, they're easy pickings. Their weapons suck, and their armor does as well. Wealth has no meaning. It's only overhead to replace your Valk. We need big, expensive ships that can fight off light ones.

Ah, how bout lets not. The heavy ships are really just made to fight in groups. Which we are now starting to get into. Lately, I've taken to flying either a Centaur, Heavy Bombers, Proms... ships with a good amount of size, weight, cargo, and not the best at accerleration with a medium/fast combo.

But, despite sometimes flying through in a centaur with nothing more than a medium heavy and a full load of cargo. I've yet to be destroyed by a pirate. On a cargo run that is. If I specifically make an effort to try to use my heavy ship as a fighter, well duh I'm gonna get killed. But using it to haul cargo and fly a straight line. Nothing catches ya. So this shouldnt really be a problem, especially when groups start forming so heavy ships can really let lose on the little pirates.

And excuse me. But there are plenty of us "serious pilots" who fly heavy ships, or cargo haulers. And "NOT" fighters, because were not in the game just to fight. Were in it to chat around with people, make some money, maybe help out a noob or two.

Here's my two cents (ya, like you guys care)

Ceadda is right. What We really need are frigates. Not like the s16 one, but like a bigger badder meaner (but unbearably slow - like max speed 20m/s) ragnarok. Maybe one with 8-10 missle launchers, auto targeted point defense weapons, etc.

Yeah, this is a way off, but I think it's the correct answer to the problem. Leave the freighters the way they are - that's all the Centaur is.

Plus - there's no use for the heavy fighters now. When it becomes time to take down stations, or capital ships, then there will be a reason for them.

EDIT: thought of something: Look at the TIE fighter v. TIE bomber - The bomber couldn't reasonably take out a fighter, but it was hell to capital ships...

Strangely enough, I'm with SirCamps. crazydeb8r, your analogy is flawed. Think of it more like TIE fighter vs Millenium Falcon. Then see who comes out on top. I agree, freighers shouldn't be able to best fighters. But combat heavies should.

I agree with you SirCamps. Most of the time I prefer slow lumbering ships with un-bearable firepower.

the Star Wars school of thought is inherently flawed. If little fighters could take down huge ships every day, why make heavy ships? Everyone should just fly fighters. The only use for heavy ships would be as carriers.

A heavy ship could house a reactor that projects a shield so strong even sunflares don't make a dent in it.

Me likes the idea of having the heavy ships just be that.. heavy. But until there are enough people to make those tactics work (like, 2 rags, 10 valks groups). It shouldn't be done yet...

as weird as this sounds too, I also agree with SirCamps (cept that the prom should have the highest # of hull points cause it IS a special).

I agree as well.
you gave an annology from Star Wars...I give you one from babylon5:
There is no way in hell a single fighter will take down any ship exept a fighter, that's why they fly in WINGS, when we are beggining to form with /group.

if you look at season 3-4 you can say that the white-star ships are like our Valks, they are small, fast and supirior for their size. yet, they have to fly in wings.

the only time you can say a white-star took down a one ship was with the shadow vecil, and yet it was not the same there...remember there are telepaths in that tv show, like a weapon aimed for ONLY heavy ships!

(sorry for the bad spelling)
Cheers

its still coming off here as the idea that the big ships we have now are our permanent big ships. And that's where this argument to change them gets flawed. They're arent the biggest ship we're ever going to have, they are just the biggest we have right now. When the dev's plop in something a bit more monstrous with a bit more power, then these ships will be a fair attack against the next size up. In coop with the fighters. But if you up the stats on our big ships now, when you get bigger ships, they're gonna be montrous just to survive an attack by a plain old bomber! And that's rediculous. So just hang on, wait for the bigger ships to come and for the bombers and haulers to have their greater purpose fullfilled.

I agree with you sircamps. The heavier ships should be powerfull enough to withstand any one fighter. Yet groups of 2 fighters shouldn't have any trouble bringing them down. I think the L port weapons need to be boosted up a considerable amount.

we don't have any heavy ships.. we have strike fighters and assult boats. a heavy ship would be something in the size range of 30 - 50 m long, with a hull in the 50-200k range, or approx as long as about 3 of our current ships lined up nose to tail. A strike fighter (valk, cent, hog<sorta>) should be able to take an assult boat. (prom, wraith, rag) the assult boats have the advantage of having heavier firepower, which will become useful once we have some larger ships that can absorb more damage. I do agree that our assult boats need to have a larger power reserve. this would IMHO be best implemented by adding a third type of port, (ala celebrims equipment ports) and giving ships like the prom/rag/centaur the ability to add energy storage units or other itmes from his toys thread.

I dont partucularly like your energy generation amounts, the engines still need to be able to draw energy faster than the battery can generate it for turbo.
I do think that you are on the right track with your top end power totals, but once again i dont believe that they should be built into the battery, but require a seperate storage unit mounted on an equipment port.

What about Medium ships then that have (L) ports?

If all the Large port weapons are amped up, we are going to have people flying around in hogs with Super killer weapons on a fairly manueverable ship... that doesn't sound like fun.

How about a Slightly Bigger Than Large port? (SBTL)

"I dont partucularly like your energy generation amounts, the engines still need to be able to draw energy faster than the battery can generate it for turbo. " ~ Spellcast


Why don't the heavy ships hes proposing require 3 of the same engine to achive "acceptable" acceleration amounts...

Something like:

Regular Rag with 1 Large Engine would be the same speed as a super heavy with 3 Large engines.


So 3 Efficeint engines on a "Big" fast charge would give you infinite boost...

I've thought about what everyone's said, and think that I now agree most with Ceadda. The current "heavy" ships are totally lacking in purpose (more so now since DEF turrets have been replaced with DEF bots) and are useless beyond trading (even then, use a Marauder).

I'm actually skeptical of getting heavily involved in this thread on the grounds that there seems to be little point in suggesting such far reaching additions to Vendetta given the current state of the game.

There are certain aspects of the original suggestions that I can agree with. Heavy ships do need some help. Heavy weapons don't offer the sort of advantages that they should, or at least, too few of them do to provide the sort of diversity they should have.

But I don't necessarily agree with the particular sort of changes suggested, as they seem too far reaching - changes in kind rather than mere changes in quality - and there ultimate effects too unpredictable. You could make those sort of changes and find yourself in a completely different situation with completely new problems and still need just as much 'fixing' as you needed beforehand.

All of this has been discussed in detail elsewhere. Just dragging up my old threads and discussions yields:

Semi-Capital Ships:
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1369

Capital Ships:
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=2314

Armor:
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1416

Turrets:
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=2975

Yes, Heavy ships should be more powerful, more hull etc. However, if they try to run, they should move very slowly making them easy prey for the agile light fighters.....

I do agree totally with Celebrim, that is exactly what we need. But for now, a small change could be this..

They way I see it, we need the turret weapons to be what they say they are. Large auto targetting weapons, if you fly on a straight line, they can easily target a small incoming fighter, and hit it.

Today I don't see the turrets being anything different then the small weapons, they shout in the direction you are flying.. If you see a turret weapon anywhere else, they are capable of swirling around and taking out a small fighter coming up from behind.

If this is the case, a centaur with 2 gattling turrets, can suddenly defend itself. And you indeed will need a wing of say 4 fighters to take it out. As it should be.

dual: The 'turret' weapons do not shoot only in the direction you are flying, but I have always thought that the 'advanced gatling' should never have been called a 'turret' because it totally confuses people about what they do.

I do not think that giving a ship 2 gatling turrets will suddenly enable it to defend itself, nor do I think it would take 4 fighters to take it out. But, this is as it should be. A ship that really requires 4 fighters with average pilots to take it out should not be only about the same price as a fighter, but 10-20 times as expensive as 4 fighters in order to keep money from being the deciding factor in who wins. Otherwise you'll end up with a small elite cadre of people who can afford the best tech, and a bunch of frustrated players who feel like they can't compete.