Forums » General
First Impressions
I like 3.2. I like the direction the game appears to be going in.
Pros
1) It's nice actually struggling in a fight with bots. It's nice to actually be dogfighting bots rather than just circle straffing them.
2) The general ideas behind the weapons are more balanced and varied than before. That isn't to say that some twinking isn't going to be needed, but the ideas are good.
3) Diversity is a good thing.
Cons
1) I like having more diverse ships, but I'm worried about having each class as a stand-alone design. I haven't tried enough ships to have a firm opinion, but I think that in general the ships were better balanced against each other in 3.1 than now. I realize that to a certain extent you might want a few 'newbie' ships, but I think you should also realize that by and large any design which you throw into the pile of 'newbie ships' is one you are discarding ultimately from the game universe. This results in lower long term diversity and less ability to adapt a ship to your style. I think it would be better to work with a smaller set of 'classes' (light, medium, heavy, whatever) as before, and modify them slightly from some standard in normal ways - slightly less manueverability = much more firepower and armor (or vica versa), or more specialization (ability to group several similar weapons together) = even larger reduction in flexibility (since specialization tends to be more unbalancing than flexibility), and so forth.
2) I like the S and L groupings of weapons, but I'm worried that this provides too much flexibility. As I expected they would, it seems most pilots are going with groupings of the same weapon - usually a low energy consumption high velocity one. I think it would be better to group weapons into more categories S1 & S2, and L1 & L2 (& L3?). This would let you put more slots on ships without unbalancing them, and would return us to having even basic ships (sans 'the bus') with multiple types of weapons to choose from. It's simply more tactically satisfying to choose between two fire modes.
Also, it means that some weapons that aren't perfectly balanced will get used just because you have a slot. If you allow perfect flexibility, you are essentially throwing away certain less widely useful weapon types (prox mines for instance).
3) There are some hints that the advanced fighters are not just out of balance, but badly out of balance. In part, I think this is due to point #2 above. In part I think it is because it has been forgotten or overlooked that manueverability is almost always the single most powerful attribute of a weapon in a game like this. High manueverability is a force multiplier that results in taking fewer hits AND hitting the opponent more often. Increasing the ships manueverability is always the same as increasing BOTH its hull points and firepower. As such, any ship with high manueverability should sacrifice both compared to similar ships.
And as always PRICE is never a good balancing factor. Price is a method of controlling access, NOT of achieving balance.
Pros
1) It's nice actually struggling in a fight with bots. It's nice to actually be dogfighting bots rather than just circle straffing them.
2) The general ideas behind the weapons are more balanced and varied than before. That isn't to say that some twinking isn't going to be needed, but the ideas are good.
3) Diversity is a good thing.
Cons
1) I like having more diverse ships, but I'm worried about having each class as a stand-alone design. I haven't tried enough ships to have a firm opinion, but I think that in general the ships were better balanced against each other in 3.1 than now. I realize that to a certain extent you might want a few 'newbie' ships, but I think you should also realize that by and large any design which you throw into the pile of 'newbie ships' is one you are discarding ultimately from the game universe. This results in lower long term diversity and less ability to adapt a ship to your style. I think it would be better to work with a smaller set of 'classes' (light, medium, heavy, whatever) as before, and modify them slightly from some standard in normal ways - slightly less manueverability = much more firepower and armor (or vica versa), or more specialization (ability to group several similar weapons together) = even larger reduction in flexibility (since specialization tends to be more unbalancing than flexibility), and so forth.
2) I like the S and L groupings of weapons, but I'm worried that this provides too much flexibility. As I expected they would, it seems most pilots are going with groupings of the same weapon - usually a low energy consumption high velocity one. I think it would be better to group weapons into more categories S1 & S2, and L1 & L2 (& L3?). This would let you put more slots on ships without unbalancing them, and would return us to having even basic ships (sans 'the bus') with multiple types of weapons to choose from. It's simply more tactically satisfying to choose between two fire modes.
Also, it means that some weapons that aren't perfectly balanced will get used just because you have a slot. If you allow perfect flexibility, you are essentially throwing away certain less widely useful weapon types (prox mines for instance).
3) There are some hints that the advanced fighters are not just out of balance, but badly out of balance. In part, I think this is due to point #2 above. In part I think it is because it has been forgotten or overlooked that manueverability is almost always the single most powerful attribute of a weapon in a game like this. High manueverability is a force multiplier that results in taking fewer hits AND hitting the opponent more often. Increasing the ships manueverability is always the same as increasing BOTH its hull points and firepower. As such, any ship with high manueverability should sacrifice both compared to similar ships.
And as always PRICE is never a good balancing factor. Price is a method of controlling access, NOT of achieving balance.
Celebrim... well said.