I have to agree with DE (shocking, I know), at least in regard to farming lawguns. It's one thing for a vet to make an alt and farm lawguns. Its another matter for a newbie to farm them, especially given the number of newbies who's first experience in VO in on a phone or tablet.

That said, I doubt many newbies would realise the value of the VAN at their level anyway.

Faille.

Station guards are actually very easy to kill with flares. Point in their general direction and dont stop clicking - boom, lawneut.
With a little practice, it's much easier to get LENBs than Valents.

@Snake7561

You are a moron.

a. You use flares to hunt station guards.
b. You think it is easier to get flares than it is to get Valents.

by the time a new player can get flares, he isn't all that new anymore, idiot!

by the time a player hits combat level 3 and light weapons 3, he can buy basic neutron blasters. lenb are better than basic neutron blasters, but it isn't the same as comparing a valent to an ion blaster.

you really have no idea what it is like to be a noob. you have completely forgotten. it is so foreign to you that you can not help but think in terms of flares, lmine, proms, and valks. your brain is just not built for thinking.

The Valent is the ONLY neutron class weapon WORTH TAKING THE TIME to get, unassisted, before reaching combat level 3.

Plus it takes newbie a while to work out common combat tactics. We often forget what combat is like as a newbie. Remember when Aputechs ganked you? Me either, but it did happen...

I'm not suggesting any changes (I have insufficient knowledge of the weapon itself, or the missions to get it), just pointing out that combat as a newbie is a different kettle of fish to a vet levelling up an alt.

Faille.

DE is a retarded monkey.

Newbies don't get nice things. Look at all the non-hx plasma weapons with no use that are worse than free blasters. A weapon to can only get once when a newbie, then never again is not very useful to anyone but tinman. Newbies do not knew how to use a neut properly, and likely lose it very quickly.

+1 to OP

Valent and Axia need more high-standing trade-offs to make their mutual exclusivity meaningful.

There are a number of solutions available.

The mission that currently rewards the valent neutron could reward a lenb in it's place, allowing you to do anything you want with the valent, without significantly impacting new players.

You could respect the valent to match a n3, or lenb, to compete with aap.

You could make the valent neutron purchasable at license 5/5 or similar, again to compete with the axia aap.

or, you can make a manufacturing mission to produce valent neutrons.

redesigning the valent, and/or making it purchasable, would require direct effort from the devs.

making a manufacturing mission requires a pcc member to create the mission(s), which could be much quicker to accomplish.

The valent is currently inferior to a n3 in performance (velocity), but otherwise the valent is a high end neutron class weapon. it could be made to compete against the aap in availability. if a manufacturing mission allowed you to manufacture substantial quantities for minimal effort, it could be seen as a viable alternative to buying aap in bulk.

It is completely unreasonable to expect a brand new player to kill even one station guard. The very idea is a level of stupidity beyond my ability to communicate.

Station guards are not particularly difficult to kill. Often, one can dump enough fire into their tail before they turn and fight that they only require one or two more shots to finish off. Indeed, sometimes you damage them enough that instead of fighting they try to run back to the station to repair and then you can polish them off even more easily.

But can a noob in a Corvus cent or vult with a FC and blaster really take one on head-to-head? Yes, just like any other bot. They're not heavily armored, and they're not very aggressive: they sit there, spamming neuts at you, and only dodge a bit while you blast them to death. Their real strength is in the fact that often they are inside the NFZ and will be assisted by other guards and the SF when attacked. But picking the right station (Corvus) and right time (outside the NFZ) to hunt guards makes it easy for even a plucky noob to take them down.

The missions to obtain a valent are in the capital system, and only require you to hunt collectors. The missions are readily available, and a noob can do them in natural progression.

a noob traveling to odia and hunting stations guards is neither natural, nor beneficial to level advancement, nor anywhere near the same level of difficulty as compared to killing collectors.

seriously, kill collectors in the capital system, or kill station guards in odia. one of these is a good idea for noobs, the other isn't.

only a sadist would argue that a new player should travel to odia and hunt station guards. oh..... i get it....heh.

make it a drop from collectors

if you're a newb how could you be aware of Valent, LENB and other stuff in the first place?

You're aware of it when you take some noob mission that says to kill collectors and they hand you a shiny new prototype gun at the end of it.

There's a problem there tinbot: You can only get 2 in the 'verse. And newbs lose things veeeery easily.

Not even that, you only get ONE.

Actually 2. One from the collector mission we're all talking about and a second one from some tree, think it was the party one where if you fail, you get a mission where a valent assualt attacks you and if you destroy it, you get a Valent neut as a reward and access back into said mission tree.

There's an idea. Some beefed-up Valent bot could have a chance to drop these things.