Okay, the last petition on sunflares didn't go too well. Heck, I don't know if petitions have any effect whatsoever on this forum, but for what it's worth I hope this one ends up being more productive and will give the devs something to consider for future updates.

With version 3.2.6 and 3.2.7 of Vendetta we saw a lot of the ships get balanced. This was good. However, back then we used the heavy engine and fast charge battery combo. The problem? Right now the medium engine and fast charge battery combo is superior. Not only do we go at a slower speed, but the torque loss from a heavy to a medium is in fact significant, even though it's only 5 points lower. What has this done to ship balance? It just took one step forward... and one step back.

A lot of the ships behave much like they did before 3.1.6 and 3.1.7. The Hornet has become sluggish again with the medium engine. The Warthog, Prometheus, and Ragnarok can be added to that list as well. They were fine with the update before with heavy engines, but with a medium engine they've pretty much been reset to their previous settings.

What can be done as a temporary fix? Here are my two ideas:

1. Put boost tapping back in. From the sounds of it, however, boost tapping didn't get much support from the devs' side. To some extent I agree. But without boost tapping the heavy engine has become useless. I'd like to see some alternative solution than to put boost tapping back in, but it's still one possible temporary fix until something better comes around.

2. Give the medium engine the current heavy engine's torque, and the heavy engine something higher. In order for the ship balance changes to take effect, you NEED to keep the torque of the original heavy engine in those ships. I can't put enough emphasis on this. The medium and heavy engine speeds can remain exactly the same. The issue here is agility, not speed.

Ultimately I think the point distribution system for engines would work best. But implementing one would take quite a long time. And for now we're only looking for a temporary and quick solution to the problem. So now you're probably wondering why the word "petition" is in the subject line. I'm asking you guys to vote on one of the two temporary solutions above, or to give ideas of your own on how to solve the problem.

I'd personally go for number 2. It's a VERY quick fix that can be applied almost instantly, and it can put all the ships back up to speed with the original balance update. The medium engine will still remain slower than the heavy in this proposed change, so all other advantages and disadvantages of owning those engines will remain the same.

Arolte... before we had 1 engine. The heavy. If you knew what you were doing you'd use it and only it, nothing else. Now we have 2 engines. The med for traveling and chasing people down, and the heavy for better maneuverability.

If you want the agility why not just use a heavy engine? You probably won't be able to chase people down with it, but for non-greifers this isn't such a big problem. If your trading stick with the med, you'll be able to escape from most pirates using some tapping.

I almost always use a heavy engine and a heavy battery.

-homestar runner

Eldrad: I agree - I'm using the medium engine when travelling across sectors and the heavy engine when fighting in sectors - this is nicely balanced now:

- the medium engine gives you a chance to run away from attackers using a heavy engine

- the heavy engine on the other side gives you better fighting/dodging abilities.

Regards,
Mark (Commander Jameson)

fats charge bat / medium engine is the better combo i know....

Problem is, a person in a medium engine/fast charge combo can EASILY chase a heavy engine/heavy battery person down. That person is screwed once they run out of energy. They'll have to wait FOREVER to jump a wormhole, fire, or boost again. Is this what we call balance? The heavy engine is nerfed no matter how you look at it.

Also, a reminder that the ship balance model of 3.1.6 and 3.1.7 was based on the HEAVY engine. Now that the heavy engine has become useless, a lot of the ships are once again sluggish. The update might as well never have happened. Why is adding 5 points to the medium's torque so much to ask?

Why is boost-tapping so bad?
Give it back.

heh, I used a heavy engine/heavy battery combo for combat before I even knew how to boost tap and found it very useful. Nothing has been changed since except removing the boost tapping "exploit" which had polarized the engine/battery selection anyway. Heavy engine is just superior in terms of maneuvering. If you boosted the torque of both the medium and the heavy engine ppl would still complain that the medium is too sluggish.

If you boosted just the torque of the medium engine then you would really not have much of a reason to choose the heavy engine at all. See Eldrad's post; I couldn't agree more.

As for "chasing people down" I actually think that this is easier to do with a heavy engine since it gives you a top speed of 200 m/s. Haven't you seen those nature shows where the cheetah lies in wait in the tall grasses and then sprints after his prey for a short period of time? Same thing with the heavy engine, it just takes a little planning. Lie in wait by a well used trade route and when your prey passes by sprint that sucker down. The medium engine is more of an "antelope" engine that gives its user a decent running speed for a long period of time but not as much maneuverability as the "cheetah."

Hey, what about the light engine? No one cares about it, eh? I personally think the lower the max speed of the engine, the more maneuverability it should impart on the ship, and the higher the speed of the engine (the "heavier" the enging), the lower the maneuverability it should impart on the ship.

Oh, and bump up the speeds. Make it look like this:

Engine: Speed--------Boost Speed---Maneuverability/Whatever
_________________________________________________________
Light: 45 m/s ------- 160m/s ------ High Maneuverability/Torque/Whatever
Efficient: 55m/s ---- 180m/s ----- Medium Maneuverability/Whatever
Medium: 60m/s ------- 200m/s ----- Low Maneuverability/Whatever
Heavy: 75m/s -------- 220m/s ----- Very Low Maneuverability/Whatever


And DO NOT BRING BACK Boost Tapping. With boost tapping, the ONLY engine of value was the heavy engine. I used the efficient, but anyone could beat it. Boost tapping allowed max speed WITHOUT energy draw, and that is CONTRARY to the devs' whole idea of "boost uses energy except with efficient engine". I've been on the pirated and pirating side of things, and it is FAR better as it is.

As for what you say of the heavy being nerffed, it's not true. I use the heavy WHENEVER I am not planning on jumping, and whenever I am capping, and whenever I think I'll need to be at peak fighting performance. I use the medium when bot distracting and making logn trips. The efficient I use going to 17/18, because it can boost all the way to the gate. The only "nerffed" engine is the light as things are, which means things are getting better.

And as my answer to Arolte's original post, in which he states that "the Hornet has become sluggish again", well, the heavy hasn't changed! It's still there and still QUITE viable. I use it and I have no problems with it! So no one is -forcing- you to use a medium. If you want the performance of a heavy, install a heavy! You got the credits I think...

That is all.

I totally agree with Rogue, also, the higher the top speed, the slower the acceleration should be as well

Makes sense if you're talking about gears in a car, but wouldn't a rocket engine with more power neccessarily have more torque and a greater accelleration?

Nonetheless I agree with rogue in that I think it would be an interesting experiment.

However, the heavy engine might be useless because you wouldn't be able to maneuver with it or run for long periods of time with it. You would just make short dashes in straight lines.

What if each engine did have different "gears" which you could switch between? The lower gears would have high accelleration/maneuverability but low top speed and the higher gears would hive high top speed but low accelleration/maneuverability. The overall power of the engines would not be changed. i.e. in low gear a heavy engine would still out-accellerate/maneuver a light engine and in high gear a heavy engine would have a greater top speed than a light engine. The balancing factor would be energy consumption.

I mean, think about it guys. Why would you choose a V4 engine over a V8? Fuel effeciency (a.k.a. energy consumption). But do you really expect a V4 honda civic to out-maneuver a V8 ford cobra mustang?

nope, inertia is inertia whethere on a car or a space ship. if you are travelling in one direction, it takes force to change directions, the faster you are going, the more force it takes to alter direction. So the heavy engine moves at 65 m/s, that would take much more to overcome than a ship moving at 35 or 40 m/s.
if you really wanna make it "life-like"
make the agility relative to your current speed, regardless of which engine you are using.

...aaaand inertia has nothing to do with speed unless you are talking about relativistic velocities. At 35-65 m/s the force required to accellerate has absolutely nothing to do with how fast you are going.

Edit: I think you may be confusing "inertia" with kinetic energy. A ship of a given mass traveling at 65 m/s would take more energy to bring to a complete stop than if it were traveling at 35 m/s, but this really has nothing to do with how fast it accellerates, trust me on this. F = ma; highschool physics guys.

I'm not talking about acceleration per se, I'm talking about turning. I was told in my physics for engineers class that the faster you are moving, the harder it is to alter your course.
think about flying in "physics mode" in the game. if you boost right, then want to boost left, it takes awhile to change directions because you must first negate the direction you are moving in.
while if you are sitting still, it takes little effort to just boost left


I'll simplify:
In a car/jet, when can you make sharper turns (smaller turning radius)?
When you are going 20 mph, or 200mph?
or in terms of a plane, cruise velocity or mach speed.
You have a smaller turning raduis, ie can make sharper turns, ie more agile at the slower speed.
I'm not saying each ship shouldn't have it's own relative agility. I'm saying that a ship should lose the ability to turn fast when going at higher speeds.

Turning is measured in angular velocity which is the integral of angular accelleration which is the integral of torque which is also a force. It has nothing to do with velocity.

Changing "course" deals with the amount of work done on the ship, which indeed is related to velocity, (since work is merely the ability to add energy to a system) see my above post.

However, you can't make the jump from there to saying that a ship with a higher velocity has a lower accelleration.

If an engine is measured in power (like horsepower) then we are talking about the ability to do work, since power is measured in joules per second and work is in joules. So an engine with a higher thrust necessarily has more power than an engine with a lower thrust, since it is adding energy to the ship system at a higher rate. Therefore a "heavy" engine *should* be more maneuverable than a "light" engine because it can do more work and consequently change "course" more easily.

Edit: turning radius is also a function of work. The only reason a plane/car have tighter turning radii at lower speeds is because they are in fact moving more slowly. In each of those cases the torque applied to the plane/car would be the same at both velocities. A F-18 Hornet has the ability to pull 8 G's whether it's going 200 knots or 800 knots.

WatercooledCT is completely correct. If one is driving 100mph down the freeway, it will take a lot longer to make a 90 degree change in direction than if you are going 10mph. The same exact thing occurs in the air or in free space. If you are going fast, it will take longer to turn (same reason we can't manuever while turboing).

thanks Nyte, but even regardless of the time it takes to turn, the actual distance you need to go to change directions is much greater, which is the issue in this game. if I'm being chased and can make an instantaneous 90 degree turn I'd be in heaven, however while I am moving at full speed it takes some time to turn, so the person behind me has plenty of distance to callibrate his direction to intercept me

Well the distance being greater is a given. If it takes more time to turn, you will cover more ground before the change of direction is completed.

-double post
oops

i may have misunderstood the earlier posts....but when the hell did torque get involved? we are refering to the fact that the heavy engine is *fast* (not powerful) and thus would give you a larger turning radius, thus reducing manueverability.

edit:

phaserlight....don't reload after posting =P