Some of the Black Lance guild and Dubh, Ayn and some others spent some time last night playing with a variety of ships and weaponry to see how the new patch stacked up.

We had many duels including Prom vs Centaur, Centaur vs Centaur, Centaur vs Centurion Rev C, Centaurs vs 2 Centurion Rev C's and Centaur vs TPG Maud X.

We commonly equipped the centaurs with dual gatling turrets at first but rapidly switched to dual Jackhammers after they proved more effective in Centaur vs Centaur.

1) Centaur VS Prom SC - Seemed to be a good match up with the 2 gatling turrets on the Centaur eventually killing the Prom before the Prom's rockets could kill the Centaur. A lot of that had to do with the fact that Shape was piloting the Centaur and I was piloting the Prom.

For the rest of these, I was flying the Centaur, Dubh was flying the Maud, and Shape, Holden and Ayn were flying the Centurions

2) Centaur vs Centurion - one vs one and the Centaur will usually win if equipped with jackhammers. 2 vs 1 and it's tougher but if you actively pursue one centurion the Centaur can often kill one and damage or kill the other. The aim with the Centurion is to divebomb the Centaur and then turbo out of the kill zone. The Centaur is pretty hard to kill using this method however as it requires firing rockets in from 100m+.

Ayn had good success with his tactic, beating the Centaur by firing neut3's in from range. I'm not sure what the result would be if I practised more often against him. There was only one fight with Ayn.

3) Centaur vs Maud - The Centaur can now dodge the energy fire and close enough to rocket ram the Marauder. It can also dodge gems very easily. I think Dubh and I fought 4 or 5 times all of which the Centaur won.

4) Centaur vs Centaur - really depends on weaponry, Double deaths are pretty common.

Is it fun. Oh yeah. It's now called the Bird of Prey. I'm not going to make any suggestions about balancing, etc as for me, it's still too soon since the patch and there are many new facets of combat that I'm just discovering.

I can't wait till they do the Ragnarok. If the centaur handles that well... ooooo man, rocket rag of death comind >:D

Proving, yet again, that newbies fighting newbies prove nothing.

let me show you how gat's are used. =)

A talented gatling pilot can swing those results all over the place. If I were dual gatting an SCP, it'd be close, but I think that I could probably take the Prom, depending on the opponent. Although if I were flying the prom, again, depending on the opponent, I'd almost certainly take the Centaur.

Christ will you guys quit it with your bloody elitism? You guys are really insufferable. Genka in particular.

Edit: The dual gat is nice. But I prefer the gat+jack+flare. It is, imho an even match for the prom. Less armor and maneuverability, but a fair amount more firepower.

Crip: Way to be modest.

Shape: You misunderstood. What I meant was that combat today, with the heavies being all nicer and stuff, is an entirely new area, and as such requires a completly different approach. In todays day and age, analysing the merits of heavies is akin to a pair of newbs, one in a cent and one in a hornet, deriving from a few fights that a hornet is a better ship than the centurion. Such an analysis takes time and patience, not three people killing each other a few times in ships they know nothing about.

Or, it takes careful calculations. See the numbers thread. :D

Well, it is true I don't have much heavy ship experience, I'm a stuntfighter pilot, I like to dodge and weave through fire.

But, the centaur DOES fly like a lighter/midrange ship, specifically like my mk III vult + gausses (6000 kg). While it is certainly conceivable to say that an exceptional pilot would show me something I hadn't dreamed of. I wouldn't discount these tests. As the pilots involved, while maybe not in the upper eschelon, were
certainly competent.

That wasn't my original post anyway. The original one was rather... bad... badly worded, it just sounded clunky to me and rather a lot more like bragging, so I just cut out the body and left the conclusion.

I guess I didn't cut it down enough.

If only we could bring back the nuke, this would all be solved...

I dearly hope that once I level to a valk and sunflares I'll be able to use the one flare two tach setup that made alpha so much fun. I dearly, dearly hope :/

I want to use the 1 flare - 1 blue ion setup that made pre alpha so much fun :D

single flare still doesn't make enough damage.. Do dual flare single tach and have more bang for the buck.. besides, flares don't suck energy ;)

they do enough damage for what we used them at that time, namely as a destractionmethod to put the hurt of our ions on them.

And sometimes to get in aheavy hit once somebody was not paying attention..., in stead of all these dumbfire rockets you younglings use these days we still used out rockets sparingly and with caution since the person with the last rocket remaining had the biggest chance at winning the match :D. PS: I was always one with the most rockets remaining :D, except when I met icarus or phoenix :(

Yeah Spider, two wouldn't do enough against a prom either unless I did full damage with all of them.. unlikely. I'd rather use the flare to bounce the prom out of position and load it full of a battery of tachs, then back out and try again.

Battles are going to be fun again if I can :D

mmmhh,

I don't think that aprom should be afected by the concussion of a sunflare at all, in my opinion the concussioneffect of the sunflare should only be for the light ships. Meaning only a jackhammer (or screamer) should be able to shake the prom a bit around.

cheers

actually, I believe that the masses involved are taken into account. A centurion appears to be buffeted far more than a prom.

these "veteran" guys can brag all they want, but for the last couple months I've been totally undefeated in all pvp encounters, including them.

uh huh.... what's your character's name?