Ok, I know i'm bringing up an old, somewhat sore subject... but can we please... PLEASE just for a week cut the speed of the CtC transports down to 75m/s and boost thier armor X4 and see what happens. I think it would make the battles around convoys much more interesting.

Right now to be really effective you almost have to be in a light fast ship to attack, which is ok I guess, but you also have to be in a light fast ship to have any chance to defend in most cases, which is not so cool.

In the later part of the week the convoys move so fast that no seeker weapons are even worth using on defense, and larger ships like the rag cant even keep up. hell its own defense bots cant really keep up, they get spread out and cant do anything to catch an attacker, because they are just barely able to keep up with him.

If the transport speed was reduced, its bot escorts would reform faster.. PC escorts would have time to get into place.. attackers would either have to slow down to its speed to remain in weapons range, making them more veunerable.. or fly past in hit and run attacks.

As it is now, at the speed the transports move an attacker turboing up behind it usually has only a 30 or 40 m/s closure rate, giving them plenty of time to empty thier entire battery of weapon fire into it, and since the transport doesnt dodge, they have a good chance of hitting with most of those shots.
Attackers however DO dodge, so someone behind them has a much harder time hitting them. added to the fact that attackers tend to be a smaller target than the transport, and the benefit is clearly to the attacker, not the defenders.

I'm with Spellcast! Slower transports also means that people flying repair hogs/centaurs/proms can actually catch up with the transport and start repairing it before the thing dies. I used to fly a repair hog, but now light fighters are so fast, and the transport is so quick, I couldn't ever get within range to repair before it died.

And while I'm here, can I bring up this as a possible way to slow attackers?
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/9080

That way slower ships could still do something to contribute to defense, even if it means that hey can't necessarily boost very much to keep the target in the reticle, their weapons would have the reach to at least make attackers think twice about travelling alone.

Spellcast, this is half true at best. Many of us defend or attack in heavy ships when the size of the cargo is worth it. Many of us have a fair number of transport kills in a centaur or in a prom. Many of us have had successful defense in the same ships. A defense team is usually most effective with lights and heavies.

CtC is a matter of timing rather than speed. And you don't attack or defend the same way in a heavy and in a light.

I'm not saying that your suggestion is not fine. It could be more fun or at least a bit of a change. It would bring more opportunities to fight around the transport, instead of the somewhat repetitive interception ballet.

Also, seekers can be used for defense. True, the useful window is not so large, but when you use it well it does hurt :/ (/me shakes head remembering mr_spuck's swarms)

I think it would DEFINATELY improve the game to have slower transports. At the moment to attack a transport you often (i admit its kind of random) have to boost and fire at the same time to hit it, and the upshot of all this is that you can ONLY use a fast (210+) infiniboost ship if you want to reliably take down every transport. To be fair sometimes the thing does go slow, but thats the exception rather than the rule.
If it was slow enough that you could keep up with a non-infiniboost or heavy ship, i think CtC tactics would change dramatically for both sides as a vastly wider number of ships would be usable. This would include things like the corvus vultarious, the rag and the warthog mk4, all of which would bring different fighting styles to the scenario.

Great idea, please at least try it out for a couple of days devs, Pleeeease ;)

Sorry but it's wrong. You can comfortably shoot down every transport even with a 200m/s max ship that does not even has infiniboost. Among the ships you mention, only the Vulturius does not do it because of its insane drain (it was the same before with the IBG cent). The Hog IV is not so good, but mKII and TD are as fine as any other ship. Also may I recommend this reading: http://lafontaine.mmlc.nwu.edu/fables/lievre_tortue_vv.html

Again, I find Spellcast's idea interesting if not new. Now if CtC is to turn into a slow convoy guarded by Proms [don't get me wrong: there is a fair number of itani in Proms those days] and Agresso quietly painting the sky with AGT, flares and swarms while cruising at 60m/s behind the transport, you better rename it into Capture the Flag (ah, unfortunately, I did not participate in those, being no vet - so I use CTF as I've seen it in other games).

Why not try this before: just double the cargo carried by the transport.

Spellcast, this is half true at best. Many of us defend or attack in heavy ships when the size of the cargo is worth it. Many of us have a fair number of transport kills in a centaur or in a prom.-"

this is true, however in a heavy ship you are significantly more at the mercy of the random warpjump spread than you are in a light ship, making them far more impractical to use, ESPECIALLY on defense.

The window for using seekers is so small because you have to be able to get AHEAD of the transport for them to be of any use. Even if I get right next to the transport in my convoy gaurdian rag(repair/swarm/gems) the seekers are useless because i'm travelling faster than they can go, unless the attacker is racing up from directly behind me.

And you ARE correct that "-You can comfortably shoot down every transport even with a 200m/s max ship that does not even has infiniboost-"
but you CANNOT comfortably DEFEND with a ship that has a 200m/s max speed, because it takes so long to get close to the transport in such a setup if you get a bad WH jump.

Doubling the cargo on each transport wouldnt solve anything, because the transports dont appear to be significantly impacted by the mass of the cargo. the ones with 20 cargo perform almost exactly the same as the ones with 10. Additionally much of the drag that a player expereiences from the cargo is eliminated on an NPC because the NPC ALWAYS knows the best thrust combination to balance out his/her mass and get it moving in the right direction in the fastest possible manner, one of the advantages of being nothing more than an algorythm.

Additionally at no point does any of this bring into play the fact that the transports OWN NPC escorts are USELESS in defending it if the transport is doing 180m/s. I rarely ever see them kill an attacker before he has blown up the transport, because they are spread out and not WITH the transport. sometimes they can keep an attacker at bay so he cant get the cargo AFTER he kills the trans, because then they aren't forced to turbo around just to keep up.

I defend and attack most of the time in a 200 m/s max ship, and I do not feel uncomfortable. The bad WH jump is a problem for both attackers and defenders. The only solution I know is team work.

Double the cargo and you will laugh at centurions and other light ships.

You're missing the point there, we don't want light ships to be excluded.

Merely we think that if slowed down it would better suit a wider range of tactics and allow both attackers to *catch* the transport (it occasionally goes through sectors in 20 seconds) and defenders (including its escorts) to stay with it during its flight.

So slowing it down and making it tougher to kill (heck, stick it in an NPC behemoth) would be just the ticket for improving CtC.

I take your point regarding light ships.

What I'm saying is that there is currently a wider range of available tactics than those many players follow now, allowing to use many different ships.

and most players dont use those tactics because you really have to be "perfect" when using them. the light ships offer a lot more forgiveness than the heavies do in tactical options with the convoys.

"I defend and attack most of the time in a 200 m/s max ship, and I do not feel uncomfortable. The bad WH jump is a problem for both attackers and defenders. The only solution I know is team work."

I know what you mean... the WH jumps are what gets me these days. The convoy is moving so fast that unless I have awesome ping, I can't CtC. I could wait at a choke point, and attack the convoy like crazy, but that is the only opportunity I get... I can't catch up to a convoy that's missed/escaped, it moves and warps pretty fast!
cheers
~evoli

If you make is too slow though your just going to end up seeing them blown up just outside the stations, or right as the pop into there first jump. What's the fun in that?

johnhawl218, it is already very common for the (Serco) transports to be destroyed just outside the no-fire zone or at the first wormhole. Watch the reports.

OK, I would just like to add the experience of defending Solra's 'Tejat' transport during a test run, as a perfect example of how well this would actually work if implemented. He was flying a behemoth, which is not dissimilar to the concept of a transport with a lower speed and a lot more armour, and replicating CtC very well with sector announcements etc (oh and a lot more roleplaying which was great.).

This made attacking and defending very different to how it is now (a rushed and almost inevitable intercept), and incredibly more exciting. Attackers in fast ships could get shots on very easily, but to do sustained damage, would have to make repeated passes all the while outwitting the defenders. Defending also meant that with two people, you could fend a single attacker off and away more easily. as it was easier to maintain a position between yourself and the transport. Therefore it required: More group work. More strategy. More skill. I see no reason why this idea should not happen. Sure it also would take a bit of tweaking to get right, but its well worth the effort!

The main problem I saw was the inability to defend against a swarm spam. Maybe some of the anti-missile defense addon thingy ideas that have been floating around need to get fine tuned first, or some NPC dodging skills.

And another thing -- Yes while it would be very hard to defend this type of transport against AGT proms etc etc, I dont believe a good gameplay idea should be limited by or even evaluated against the current backdrop of (what I believe are) unbalanced ships.

(oh yeah and I also fall into the category of those with ping too high to ever catch a transport, so thats another positive!)

Ok I got an idea.

"So slowing it down and making it tougher to kill (heck, stick it in an NPC behemoth) would be just the ticket for improving CtC"

How about on the last day within the last few rounds we get behemoths filled to the BRIM with xithricite. I guarantee you that you will see a ton of large ships in those battles :) I mean noone's gonna take a cent that can only carry 11 cargo if they can get away with 60!!!

Some will say though. What happens if someone takes a behemoth and get's it all?

Well i'd think with a ton of large ships there that even a behemoth would get ripped up. Though I would love to see what the behemoth's mass would be with 120 xithricite :)

That'd be priceless.

/givemoney Devs 2c

It would be very nice if the transports were slower. Anything that replaces "hit and run with no chance to fight" with "tactics" is a good idea in my book.

*bump* because I think this is an all-around good idea, and the best solution to Spider's complaint here: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/9652#110699

I like this too, I frequently obliterate the Itani transport outside the station in Bractus C5, hell, sometimes I dont even wait for it to fully exit the dock before I start firing, and if I get the timing/aim right, the transport is dead before the first Aerna Seeker is launched (and if i have a team mate with me, who cares if I go pop?). The suggestion was not just make the transport slower, but a lot harder to kill, thus making it harder for me to kill it in one battery. I see all kinds of possibile tacticts involved with this, instead of the now *shoot hell out of the trans, grab what you can, rull like hell - rinse, repeat*

And I'd like to see the transport got a tad slower because I fly a Miner Hog (okay, so I'm a distinct minority here) and at 190m/s, I go exactly as fast as the Transport. Unless I get lucky and come out really close to the transport, I can never catch up to it, meaning I'm absolutely worthless as a defender if all I can do is just keep up 1500m away.

Make the speed random.

if transports are slower we will se a prom welcome comittee.
If you make speed random per voy you will see a mix group of attackers and defenders.