Currently the state of capital ships is essentially that they've been made almost useless for anything other than hauling.

There is no logic for this. The only logic i can figure out is that it's easier to nerf the trident than to consider making the game be actually balanced.

The trident takes a massively long time to build, and, i built mine - both goli and trident in fact - before the silly nerfs started.

I was seriously considering coming back to play again and to sub to use my capital ship... then i find out that as if the removal of experience for turret kills wasnt bad enough, they then nerfed grid power... ok, i could kinda handle that its fine...

But the unforgivable change is making it so that my drops from my kills are being messed with purely because i fly a capital ship.

WHY?

The only thing being achieved is a massively annoying change to people who've had the damn thing for years ... i have my way of playing, it doesnt hurt anyone and it even helps new players, but now app\rently attempting to farm sss requires me to use small ships?

THEN WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT OF ME HAVING A CAPITAL SHIP????????

This is *NOT* how you handle game design. It makes no sense at all that the things dropped from an enemy depend on the ship you used to kill it.

The reason it has been done is because there is nowhere for the sss to go, so, dent players give it away. Maybe if you tried actually bringing out some of the capital ships that were promised over 3 years ago, instead of making stupid nerfs to the ones exist, then you might find your population of players might grow, instead of this persistent dwindling.

You killed the best thing about the game, and, in the process, ensured a massive number of old players wont return.

My suggestion is simple - stop picking on trident players and making the trident into a useless waste of time, cos, we already spent the time building it, so you just ended up taking away the biggest good part of that massive amount of effort.

There is no logical reason why the trident should drop less sss - you have sectors being unable to farm for too long before it stops dropping, so, the dent player must move regularly, so whats the problem?

Frankly, if the sss situation stays as it is, i will never be back, not even for the christmas week, let alone consider a sub.

I built that trident and used it to farm sss years ago. Now you've chosen to take that away from me, and, from everyone else as well. What about l-mining? far more efficient, and you can still do that, you gonna nerf that next? Or did you just nerf trident farming cos that was actually fun?

Seriously. This is just a kick in the balls to any oldschool dent owner. Sorry for trying to help people. Let them fail and be unable to farm and then eventually give up building and just not bother. Seems like thats what you want to do.

You set up a game where it encourages dent owners to help new guys and then you take away the tridents primary strength...

It makes all the good bonus orders and abilities you've added to it seem ... well... pointless. Useless. It could be so good but you just broke it.

I used to think the trident recipe was long, yes, but worth it because of the combat capabilities. The changes you've made to limit it make the damn thing pointless. Its a glorified xc, added some guns yes, but those guns cant achieve anything. No farming of experience or of worthwhile goodies. So, the trident is entirely just a waste of time now.

Used to be my favourite part of the game... Thanks incarnate, for breaking the fun, again.

Oh and this thought of using a capital ship as a support ship for small ships is completely wrong and backwards. No military in fiction or fact would ever consider that sensible. The small ships are support ships for the big one... that is how it *always* is.

-1

-1 I fail to see your point especially since I built my dent and Goli and has used both to a heavy extent in combat already and I suggest you understand that some people have exploited the some of the recent turret updates manly the auto turret command farming a lot of sss in a matter of hours. And this is why we can't have nice things. and no the dent isn't as useless as you think. As a dent pilot currently I shall -1 this.

+1

Capship is "end game content"...

"end game content" should equal "end game power/ability"

Continuously nerfing cap ships and cap ship weapons with the intent of making it easily defeated by small ships is a slap in the face to everyone that spent sooo much time building one.

It is a "Capital Class Ship"...

it should be able to caprail your puny one seater at 2000m ...
It should have a battery big enough to run all it's turrets at the same time, regardless of type.
It shouldn't be made helpless by a PCB from your puny one seater.
Unrats in puny one seaters should fear it..
you should fear it..

There is no other purpose for spending so much time and resources building one, other than to be dominate in the sector and the game in general.

+1 I've always kind of had the thought that in this game, capships are rather too fragile than they should be.

100% agree with haxmeister.

& as for farming with capital ship goes, I think would be fine to do something so plugins can't control capships or something similar. From what I've known is that capships were able to endlessly farm stuff through plugins controlling everything which started the whole afk farming. So removing plugin control from capships would solve the problem no? Instead of making turrets just not drop anything at all.

There is no logical reason why the trident should drop less sss - you have sectors being unable to farm for too long before it stops dropping, so, the dent player must move regularly, so whats the problem?

Because it wasn't enough: people were still farming other things too quickly, and it was escalating faster than we could make gameplay changes.

Maybe you're unaware, but we're actually trying to roll out a dynamic economy. If the supply-side of a dynamic economy is completely insane, due to escalating farming problems, it makes development and tuning of the economy rather challenging.

I've already written elsewhere that the long-term goal is to change the NPC AI to be more "reactive" to farming scenarios (which is both more realistic, and likely more interesting to players), but, like a lot of other plans from the last couple of years, it was delayed when we became aware of other major problems that took priority (it's also complicated to implement and test, in its own right).

But, fundamentally, capships were not added to give mass-farming, nor for combat purposes. I've written about that before, which was linked above.

Notably, when people asked me to add player-owned capships into the game, I pointed out that there was no reason for them yet, and that for a long time they would be little more than a glorified show-off item. I'm actively trying to add those reasons, which relates to the economic changes and expanding galaxy. But those reasons do not include "overpowered and imbalanced combat and farming".

There are always aspects of gameplay that "emerge" organically, and when we can, we try to embrace them. But, sometimes we cannot, like say, "crackbotting", which a lot of people loved, but absolutely destroyed the sector's CPU usage, taking entire sectors offline.

I try to do the best I can for the aggregate of the game: the game/gameplay as it was/is, the problems we're currently dealing with, and the game we're trying to build for the future.

Obviously, I have pretty limited resources as well, and a big project with a lot of unexpected and difficult left-field problems that crop up.

Continuously nerfing cap ships and cap ship weapons with the intent of making it easily defeated by small ships is a slap in the face to everyone that spent sooo much time building one.

Having practically indestructible player battleships flying solo through grayspace with impunity was definitely never the goal. It isn't my fault if you have expectations that are misaligned with everything I've ever publicly written about capships (or game design balance in general).

Frankly, if the sss situation stays as it is, i will never be back, not even for the christmas week, let alone consider a sub.

Okay..? I mean, if you wanted to research that issue, you would have seen what I've already written about that subject (intended changes to NPC AI), instead of knee-jerking at me.

It's always a bummer if people decide the game is not for them. But, while I do actively listen to player input, we follow my path and my vision, and I do not expect to please all of the people, all of the time. My aim is to do the best I can for the "big picture" of a complex game, as a whole, which is continuously in development with limited resources.

According to incarnate, capitol ships are not to be end game content, but all new content. He doesnt wanna make capitol vs single seaters, he wants capitol vs capitol to be whats its about. The reason updates to capitols are so slow is because of demands like this one, they added the first capitol long before they felt ready. Inc also said the servers arent optimized enough to have capitols ships up to par, hence more reason for slow progress. You make ask why if autoturret is such a exploitable addition, why would they add it? Because it was already exploited by vets useing bot accounts. So they added it as a feature so its fairer for everyone. And when they have it as a game feature they can also control it much more precisely. Also ill add, yes they are freighters and they fly like them. They are designed as oversized xcs with shields. We dont have combat capitols yet because the freighters have so many bugs.

After saying all that, i agree capitols are kinda in the dumps atm, but this was the devs explanation. Also why we dont have more capitols, why make more problems when the old ones aren't fixed? Inc already asked several times for capitol ship weapon ideas for cap vs cap, and how to increase ranges of cap vs cap fights without makeing it completely incapable of dieing to smaller ships. Now would i absolutely love more capitol content and some new weapons? Absolutely! And now that i typed this i see inc has already said it. Oh well i am posting it anyways.

One last thing, make sure to help give them funding to make large updates, not smart to ask for big changes and remove the key element for big changes.... just saying

I disagree flying squirrle, capital ships were never meant to fight each other, as seen with the goliath as an example. Before the ship could deshield a trident, and because it could it got nerfed multiple times.

***Having practically indestructible player battleships flying solo through grayspace with impunity was definitely never the goal. It isn't my fault if you have expectations that are misaligned with everything I've ever publicly written about capships (or game design balance in general).***

Tridents can still equip 3? 4 capswarms? Goliaths use to counter this issue until recently where they were nerfed as to stop them from making tridents counterable.

I appreciate the intent, but..

According to incarnate, capitol ships are not to be end game content, but all new content.

That's news to me? I don't really know what that means.. we're definitely planning to have more new content than just capships.

He doesnt wanna make capitol vs single seaters, he wants capitol vs capitol to be whats its about.

What..? I'm not really into all-or-nothing designs, so no, I don't think that's true.

Inc also said the servers arent optimized enough to have capitols ships up to par, hence more reason for slow progress.

I have no recollection of saying that, exactly. I've talked about server scalability issues, and I've talked about capships. But player capships were never the "reason" for server scalability issues. "Cap battles" involving large numbers of NPC-capships were a problem, but that's kind of independent.

Server scalability work takes a long time, and definitely delays other new content from being added. But, the server issues themselves were not specific to player-owned capships.

We dont have combat capitols yet because the freighters have so many bugs.

That's sort-of partially true? Capships have definitely had a lot of bugs, of which we've fixed dozens in the past couple of years. But combat capships are more of a game-balance issue, which needs to be addressed with a different matrix of options.

I believe strongly in a concept of tradeoffs, and not "absolute advantage", and generally the people who are yelling at me about the lack-of combat capships want an absolute advantage, like what Haxmeister wrote above:

There is no other purpose for spending so much time and resources building one, other than to be dominate in the sector and the game in general.

If one is holding out for that, you're never going to be happy, because I will never add that to the game. That isn't how I design games, nor do I think that's interesting. A real-world aircraft carrier is far from an impregnable fortress, it's also a giant sitting duck, hence surrounding them with defensive fleets.

For the moment, we just have "freighters". There's an ebb/flow of balance and capabilities at any given time, based on what's feasible for us to ship, but "freighters" are what I've been telling people, and that's the expectation they should firmly have in-mind.

I'm trying to expand the game, and make it more interesting; but, I'm also trying to keep it stable / available, and not an exploitable mess. I think people don't realize how big of a challenge that is.

Goliaths use to counter this issue until recently where they were nerfed as to stop them from making tridents counterable.

I did not nerf goliaths "to stop them from making tridents counterable".

Ok, i definitely worded some things wrong, and i cant find the particular forum i was thinking of.
"Inc also said the servers arent optimized enough to have capitols ships up to par, hence more reason for slow progress."
I ment it the other way around, server updates and fixes before larger capitol ships caused delays. Not the reason, a additional reason...
Ill work on finding the forum thread i was thinking of, maybe i misunderstood it

Capital ships are supposed to be a cool long-term goal and improvement that un-locks other advanced forms of gameplay. It is not supposed to be a thing where you can sit in a wormhole and insta-kill everyone who jumps in, for instance. That creates a major "haves" vs "have-nots" problem, which some people want, because they happen to "have", but it's really bad for the game as a whole.

(In the same thread linked above by pardue)
Guess i read this as you were looking for more capitols vs capitols than caps vs fighters, half the thread your trying to fing weapon ideas to keep caps vs fighters as much the same, i didnt mean you didnt want the caps vs fighters, but you did want them to be a balanced fight. And the same thread you mentioned the sever issues with moveing capitols. I wasnt meaning player only capitols cause any issues, but the idea of the ships themselves

the way wormholes are set up you cannot sit on it and insta kill people, maybe you get lucky and get one or two with caprails? but overall capital ships are nigh on unkillable unless you have a capship with you while your attacking one, and the one running tends to always be able to get away.

They were discussing makeing pcb turret ranges boosted.
So camping a wh with a pcb turret that can fire much further makeing all ships who jump in trapped until death seem much more feasible

So where do you comment on the matter on whether a small ship being the primary ship when you have a capital ship is sensible, or completely backwards?

You keep on talking about balance and stuff... but frankly i see no balance in this game. I also see little reason why its a serious problem to let people farm via capital ships.

You made a great addition to the game, one which allows people to enjoy the game more, but currently being unable to farm the most sought after resources in the game with it makes it pointless.

It makes no logical sense that the drops are affected by the ship you use, thats just a lazy solution.

You released an automatic gun controlling command, then *didnt* predict that, funnily enough, people would use it to shoot at stuff? Frankly how did you *not* predict that they'd use it to farm sss???? If you had bothered to think about these things properly many of the nerf situations could have been avoided by simply predicting what the players would do with the new things you add.

As it is, you add stuff, then get unhappy with people using the damn thing in the most obvious ways... then yiu nerf it because it doesnt fit in with your vision.

i personally think the much better solution to all of this is to reduce the drop rates if you have to, rather than making it outright impossible. Try to make it so that capital ships can still make some effort at farming, but that they instead require some small ships as support to do it to maximum efficiency.

Currently there is a progression within the game, and, like it or not you have established the fact that at the end of that progression sits the trident. You made it this way, you are the one who is responsible for making any dent owner see their capital ship as their pride and joy, the primary ship. As a consequence people want to use it.

What is the point of a trident having guns at all if you magically make them useless for farming?

Whether it sits "right" with your vision or not, we created those damn things following your silly stupid long crafting requirements, and we did it expecting a certain thing. Now you've turned those months of our time spent way bac when into a waste of time, as you have substantially changed the capabilities of it after the fact.

Thats like me buying a tv then the manufacturer turns up and says, "hey we decided not to include a remote control after all - yoink!".

I have listened to the responsive points however, and if the references to the hive ai responses would lead to a complete reversal of the capital ship farming situation in favour of making the swarm respond with a harsh enough presence to endanger an afk-botter, so they can farm but not afk, then they'd need to be actively flying, then i can get behind that. But only if it includes a complete reversal of the limitations atm.

(The same thing - hive response - considering outside of this current topic does however sound like a great improvement to the game just generally.)

And finally...

Thankyou to Incarnate for taking the time to explain his position in detail. Also thankyou to the others throwing their opinions in too. I still disagree that outright blocking farming in capital ships is an appropriate solution, as i was reduced to face tanking wild queens to find some combat which isnt pointless.

All i wanted to do when i logged in at christmas, was do some farming in my capital ship, and share the profits with some of the newer players. I was rather annoyed to find this problem, especially after the universe has so much improved, with regards to general atmosphere, that i was intending to resub.

My last words are on a different topic. Direct into Incarnate's ear... As you came to respond, i'd like to offer a congratulatory comment - you have achieved a massive improvement to the universe in removing the most toxic players and in improving the feeling of... well safety for the players, safety in the sense of verbal aggression. You have also had one or two players other than myself return due to this improvement. Its been needed a long time, but, you got there, and thats at least something i'd like to say a seperate serious big thankyou for working towards, and achieving.

Yeah goodluck pcbing a normal ship with a capship lol your whole argument has debased into. "Well pcb turrets range MIGHT get buffed"

You released an automatic gun controlling command, then *didnt* predict that, funnily enough, people would use it to shoot at stuff? Frankly how did you *not* predict that they'd use it to farm sss???? If you had bothered to think about these things properly many of the nerf situations could have been avoided by simply predicting what the players would do with the new things you add. -Nyscersul

You have your chain of events wrong there. It was seen that players were using turret bots in Tridents to farm SSS afk. There were 2 things that were broken in this. Turret bots, because it was available only to those who could play on PC or with multiple devices. And the ability to farm SSS afk.

/+ActivateTurrets was introduced to replace turret bots, and turret bots were disabled shortly after. And the ability to farm anything afk has to go really, especially when said ability is there only for a few players while the rest have to do it the hard way.

What about l-mining? far more efficient, and you can still do that, you gonna nerf that next? Or did you just nerf trident farming cos that was actually fun?

L-mining has been disabled for a while now. Bots agro on mines on a priority basis, but, on failing to kill them for a short period, leave them alone and revert to normal agro.

I get that you're disappointed with the dent nerfs. But because of reasons mentioned above, they were overall for the better. You might not have used it exploitatively, you may have used it to help new players. But the fact is that a significant majority did use it exploitatively, for their own benefit. Sorry to say it, but you're collateral damage in a fight against broken exploits by certain veteran capship owners.

As for the "end-game power/ability" and "puny one seater" argument by haxmeister, I'll 100% agree with what Incarnate said on this. Making capships a whole class above small ships, incapable of being killed without a massive group assault and capable of casually decimating small ships, flying with impunity in grey...what is this, Vendetta Online Spreadsheet?
Capships don't require any particular skill to be built or owned. You can build a capship by pure skill-less grind, and once you build it you need 0 skill to continue owning it. If you want a capship, solely by virtue of the grind involved, to have super-buffed stats that supercede skill, you can make Vendetta Online power cards and play with those. "I play Trident!!!" - "Boom whatever else you played is gone. Suck it noob"

Another thing I'd still like to add here is that capships still give a huge buff in farming. For SSS, a capship + swarm rag allows you to farm way faster than tungmaud/tungtaur. Like 2-3x faster atleast.

Levis can be soloed with capships. WIthout capships, soloing a levi is a by-chance event if you happen to time your queens just right and be able to deal consistent dps along with the NPCs at the right moment. With a capship, you have a huge margin for error on energy deshields, and if that fails you can still cascade avs.

In station bombing, capships allow you to R/R and return in mere seconds, while without one you have to go to a station, R/R, and fly back. In furballs, capships provide a mobile base for free reps and reloads, apart from being able to lay out their own damage. Capcannons have pretty good targeting at close range, caprails can one-shot most fighters, and dodging either is pretty hard while being ganked by fighters.

To conclude, I'll say capships are powerful, and I think are supposed to be powerful, when used with small ships. They make combat easier for you, but they shouldn't become a substitute to skill in a small ship.

I get that you're disappointed with the dent nerfs. But because of reasons mentioned above, they were overall for the better. You might not have used it exploitatively, you may have used it to help new players. But the fact is that a significant majority did use it exploitatively, for their own benefit. Sorry to say it, but you're collateral damage in a fight against broken exploits by certain veteran capship owners.

Sid's statement is accurate, and it's pretty easy to dig up the forum threads and newsposts from the time to back that up.

It makes no logical sense that the drops are affected by the ship you use, thats just a lazy solution.

No, it was an effective solution, simple and easy-to-test with zero chances of failure; after the first two solutions I tried were flawed, buggy, and didn't resolve the issue. Do you have any concept of what the requirements are of testing such an N-dimensional situation in a complex online environment, when you have players also looking to actively exploit? Simpler can be better, if it gives some space to breathe, and it was only intended as a limited-time stopgap measure; but stopgaps can last a lengthy while in VO, because of the challenging nature of the project, and limited development resources.

You keep on talking about balance and stuff... but frankly i see no balance in this game. I also see little reason why its a serious problem to let people farm via capital ships.

If you can't understand this basic idea, I honestly don't know what to say. People were generating tens of thousands of SSS in relatively short periods of time, and problems were still on-going when the sector-to-sector migration requirement was added.

Ask yourself: How difficult do you think it should be to make a capship? Should it be an epic, endgame construct? Or something that takes a few days, because someone gives you everything you need, after they AFK-farmed it all in a brief period? Should nothing ever be difficult, or a significant personal achievement?

Here's another way to look at it: Should you be able to devalue the time-investment of every other player who has built a capship, simply because you're more effective at exploiting SSS drops than they were? Should you be able to drastically drop the trade value of Enduring Titles for such content, down the road?

Whether it sits "right" with your vision or not, we created those damn things following your silly stupid long crafting requirements, and we did it expecting a certain thing. Now you've turned those months of our time spent way bac when into a waste of time, as you have substantially changed the capabilities of it after the fact.

Thats like me buying a tv then the manufacturer turns up and says, "hey we decided not to include a remote control after all - yoink!".

This is self-righteous nonsense. Please show me where I wrote "BUILD A CAPSHIP! IT'S INTENDED FOR TRIVIALLY AUTOMATED MASS-FARMING OF SSS!"

Hint: I did no such thing. You developed expectations, and your expectations were unrealistic, and now you blame that on me. But that's illusory and incorrect, and I don't accept responsibility for ideas you've independently developed, particularly those that actively conflict with what I've written publicly about capships (and their chaotic on-going evolution).

I also didn't tell Wash that capships were absolutely all-about massive combat capabilities, and I definitely never told Haxmeister that capships should give him a massively overwhelming advantage over all non-cap players in all game situations. I am not responsible for whatever ideas people independently build up in their heads, but they're all happy to blame me when said-expectations are un-met.

Additionally, this is a dynamic, evolving MMORPG: things change, purposes change, functions get added and altered. Awareness and acceptance of that is fundamental to the fabric of the game. The only certainty in life is change, and change has always been a fundamental part of Vendetta Online.

That all said, I DO go wildly out of my way to NOT nerf content and features that people care about, and I only do so when I'm under significant pressures of dealing with other factors, some of which also have years of time and work put into them (like, say, a dynamic economy, based around the real-world trading, value and movement of item drops, including SSS).

What I don't get, however, is why you think the best way of addressing this is to self-righteously rant and badger me about this on Suggestions. You clearly weren't here for the exploit, and you didn't bother researching the facts (or even asking anyone about it, who was here?). You just decided to knee-jerk and go on a lengthy rant, and then even after I try to make a reasonably explanatory response, you're still ranting about "LAZY SOLUTIONS" and "NO BALANCE" and "NO LOGICAL SENSE" and so on.

I make no claims that my solutions are ideal, or perfect, or that the game is ever perfect. I view the game as constantly a "mess" in some way, and I'm always trying to fix some aspect or problem or situation, like a solo janitor charged with manually cleaning up the world's largest sports arena, using a single mop and bucket, all while people like you are (effectively) yelling that I'm a lazy moron.

But I'm actually not entirely incompetent at my job. I understand the totality of the issues a lot better than you do, and I was actually here to deal with them, where you're just choosing to go on a self-righteous tear.. long after the fact. These tweaks and changes played out over weeks, not instantly, and we tried a number of solutions at the time, before we ended up at the current situation (which, honestly, I didn't think we would need for very long).

However, I'm not asking for your forgiveness. I did the right and reasonable thing. Your current expectations, reactions, and the overall tenor of your messages are unreasonable.

I've kept this game rolling and live and stable for over 20 years, with extremely limited resources. I deserve some benefit of the doubt. You should question your own expectations and limited knowledge before you ignorantly blast my decisions on "Suggestions".

There is a difference between "asking" me for information or clarity, versus "ranting", and the latter is unhelpful (and draining). People are already self-righteously ranting at me about some personal pet-peeve, via different social and feedback mechanisms, roughly every day, and it is increasingly corrosive to my ability to operate this game.

My last words are on a different topic. Direct into Incarnate's ear... As you came to respond, i'd like to offer a congratulatory comment - you have achieved a massive improvement to the universe in removing the most toxic players and in improving the feeling of... well safety for the players, safety in the sense of verbal aggression.

I do appreciate that. This process of development, management and maintenance around the "report" system is on-going, complex, and has been.. excruciating? Perhaps the most unpleasant in my history of game development.

But I'm glad there's some value seen in it. Most of the other recent commentary I've had from vets (during the Holiday Promo) has been simply complaining how they aren't allowed to be as toxic anymore, because their "fun" is in being toxic, which is ironic. So, it's nice to hear anything positive about it.