Currently the Teradon serves in war voys and Deneb. In it's war voy role it is very easily led away from the wormhole it is guarding. Chaining it to stay within a certain distance would only make it easier to destroy by keeping it at a fixed point.

Increasing the top speed ( I'm thinking around 160 but maybe as high as 180 ) would prevent it being lured away from it's position with no chance of attacking the opposing capship (dent or goli).

This is obviously not a huge game breaking issue but the fact that an opposing capship can drag the Teradon to the outer reaches of the sector with hardly any danger seems a bit lame.

180 seems like a good top speed for the terradon. At the moment it doesn't have power drain capabilities like the stronghold queens. If that holds, then giving the don a high intercept speed is a good idea.

+1. That big guy has 4 Engines, there's no reason for it to be slower than capships with less.

Just for the voys or are Deneb teradons included too? Those are already a bit broken and this might have deep impacts on Deneb outcomes if teradons were made fast.

Also, do teradons follow player capships in Deneb?

Chaining it to stay within a certain distance would only make it easier to destroy by keeping it at a fixed point.

how so?

So, I'm not against this. But we have also spent some time in the last couple of months to try and improve the default "Defend" AI behaviour, which has gone from "extremely stupid" to now "moderately stupid", and may eventually become "not entirely terrible".

I'm not sure that this Defend code is applied to the capships yet, it may only be on some of the smaller ships.

I would rather tweak the Defend behaviour, before just bumping the capship speed to solve what's ultimately an AI behavior issue.

Also, it should be noted, that right now, any changes I make to the Teradon will be reflected in all Teradons everywhere. Breaking them out into different "kinds" of Teradons, with different specifications, would have more time involved with it. Probably about the same as just improving the AI, at that point.

Ray has been struggling with a really complex and delicate code re-write, which is a month overdue at this point (past our own estimates); and I'm doing my best to not interrupt him, so this doesn't devolve into taking six months for us to finish. Because it's so complicated, it takes him days just to try and re-load it into his brain and remember how it all works, so unrelated-task interruptions are really bad.

But, once that project hits completion, I can try to schedule some time for this, along with a lot of other stuff that's appeared on the backlog in the meantime.

I figured AI improvements were in the pipe so to speak.

I thought of this from a couple of angles:

1. It's a quick stop gap that can be eased back down once you do get the AI closer to where you want it

2. As the only combat dedicated capship it should be faster than say a player built knock off trident or a goli. I know comparing to real world situations is not really a valid point but but naval frigates can usually run down hostile ships pretty quickly i.e. freighters and such.

I don't know how effective this would be as an alternative but what about swapping some of the gat turrets with cap rails?

In the end I think the Teradon should still be higher top speed than other cpaships especially player created versions. In the end maybe only by 10 or 20 meters per second.

I like the idea of making the blockade tougher, however nobody would have to lure the Teradon away from the wormhole if YOU werent constantly using deep spaced alts to keep the Teradon parked directly ontop of the wormhole "directly disrupting the natural gameplay of a sector."

Isn't the Teradon supposed to park directly on top of the wormhole when not actively engaging a target? Where else do you want it to sit? I thought the idea of a blockade WAS to disrupt traffic.

Don't know about the OP but I guess the spawn points of capital ships should be made near the wormhole. Leaving the sector should not cause it to spawn 6-7 km away. This would make it more like a blockade.

I'm not really understanding the issue, if the terradon chases you 300km away from the worm hole and then turns around to go back and "patrol" it isn't it doing its intended job regardless of it killing you? I would think a tether would make sense in this scenario.

Basically, the tradeoff is whether it's worth disabling the blockade to pursue a single ship. It makes the blockade relatively easy to manipulate.

Just overall the Teradon should be more effective than it is now regardless of this specific issue. If you can out run it in another capship it's kind of useless.

If the terradon can never catch up, what's the point chasing. It should go fast enough that if a hated cap ship pilot went afk with /+turbo on, the Don would eventually catch up. Doesn't have to be a crazy buff. Just enough to make it a good persuer.

I understand what a blockade is, but shouldnt you at least stand a chance of getting out of nationspace? As it stands now once that don stops on the wh and the sector is kept active trying to jump from Jallik to Edras will result in death before you even load the sector fully. Is the point of the blockade to totally shut down the nation space and trap all players inside? Or solely to stop trade ships? I understand how blockades work irl, but in real life i dont have a 10 second period of time where im frozen and cant move in a loading/jump animation. The serco can just go around the blockade as they have 2 wormholes to grey. However the Itani have but 1 wormhole and I dont really see why blockades should be made any more difficult. Especially since the same players have been exploiting deneb since I downloaded VO. Even after the "fix" ive submitted a few tickets over teamkilling/exploiting/intentionally losing that have gone without response. I dont see how buffing the blockade is a reasonable thought while the generating mechanism of the blockades is still being exploited.

The point of the blockade is to be a blockade. There are basically no vessels that should not be threatened by the blockade.

Of course I'm open to discussion about the issue of dying while loading, that's super bad. But that's also orthogonal. We shouldn't not-fix the Teradon's AI because we also have another problem with people dying while loading. Those are two independent issues that are not directly related.

I have no idea why your tickets went un-responded. It really depends on the era in time. We tried basically making that a person's job, but said person tended to just.. not do it, which was an issue. Since I've gone back to doing them all personally, I think the response percentage is higher, but I may still miss some? I've written elsewhere about the Ticket system needing an overhaul in general.

Although, as I search my email for tickets submitted by the Ebonstar account, I see only tickets 5103 and 5130, both of which I personally responded to, and one of which I gave you some really lengthy and candid responses.

Without wanting to go off-topic, are you sure you're actually submitting tickets correctly? Like, do you see these open tickets, when you go to the Support page for your Ebonstar account?

Note that, if you're submitting tickets under some other account, I have no idea. It gets really confusing when people submit tickets from many different accounts, and we've also had some people trying to purposefully "spam" us with tickets, which is also unpleasant.

Anyway, the point of the blockade is to be dangerous and highly inconvenient for traffic. The Serco were supposed to have two blockades against both their exit points, and obviously we have to re-visit the state of all of this. But, again, a blockade should be a blockade, and it should probably not be trivial to get a giant and dangerous capship to in-effectively chase you off into la-la land.

I have to agree with wash that increasing their top speed at least a little, even if it's only to 150m/s would probably be a sufficient short-term fix. Not as good as fixing the AI, but HOPEFULLY at least easy to implement with a minimum of dev time.

Okay, fine.

I just changed the Teradon turbo max speed from 140 -> 160

We'll see what ramifications that has. I can always set it back, just as easily, if need be.

It should be in production instantly (now), across the whole game.

Hmm always wondered why when they are no player in sector, the capships get off wh range, should they not stay at the wh to be more effective and only move to chase players?