/me pokes the devs.

WHERE IS MY HULL BOOST >:'(

How can you boost the vulture and the ragnarok without boosting the prom?!

Easy, by deleting a 0 and adding a 5.

Ha. That was good. I hate whining threads though. Of course, for Dave and his prom, I'll make an exception.

Yeah, guys, the Prom needs at least a 2k boost.

Yeah, so Dave can rocket-ram his way to victory easier
The prom doesn't need a boost, it needs a purpose in the game.

Hey! Okay then, the Hornet needs a hull boost too.

=b

And the cent also needs a boost... to 50k hull.
Stop whining for fakks sake.

Blitz, are we not allowed to debate what's needed? This is akin to SF's idea of "you're not allowed to hold your own opinions or disagree with me."

I posted in my Rails + rockets flare about the Hornet. it's perfect now.

Dave doesn't ram.

heheheheh....he does if you're about to kill him.....

lmao about the SF comment....

A debate isn't posting strange/weird/unfair/illogical/put-a-word-here suggestions which Arolte tends to suggest when it comes to *his* Hornet.
Look at Dave. He made a thread about it. Unlike Arolte, he doesn't pop up in every connected thread and repeat the same thing over and over again.

oh hush, they're both allowed to offer whatever suggestions they want about whatever they want when they want to how they like to, and you're no one to stop them.

Remember, this is why we have an FM. If someone posts "I want pink daisied proms!" odds are FM would move that to OT. If someone posted this many times, the FM would probably talk to the person about spam. If the person didn't heed the FM's warning, they would find posts deleted. If they still persisted, the FM might bring out some larger guns. But he hasn't and they haven't, so all is good. If the FM is ok with it, you should be too.

[flamey post deleted]..."no offense?"

Lol.

Blitz: He's wrong! Stop him! He's broken! Fix him!

/me grins ear to ear

You sure set yourself up for that one, pal.

He's saying what's wrong. The maneuverability or armor (remember maneuverability = 2(armor)). And he's asking that it be fixed, there's nothing wrong with that.

With that logic, I might say the roids need a hull boost.
Am I right? Hope not. Am I wrong? Guess.
If I recall, Arolte as been yelling to add hull to the Hornet since 3.2.
(AT one point he also suggested to add a L port to it. I died laughing. Guess why).

Fix it! There's something wrong!

PS
If he says what's wrong, it doesn't mean it's really wrong.
You can't demand a change because only you think it should be changed. I've yet to hear someone yell as much as Arolte about the Hornet.
Why? I'll leave it for you SMRTs to wonder about.

The hornet needs a hullboost.

that good enough blitzy :D

PS: Ill post the reason: The hornet is a big target, it is bigger then a heavy ship and as you know second in line, first one is the prom.

Im not asking for a big increase, but just so it can hang out a little longer against another ship, not much longer but just a little while. I hijk another 2 k wouldnt be such a bad idea

Or just, you know, make it smaller.

Hmm, increasing the hornets hull a little bit (1 or 2k) seems reasonable but the prom already seems to be a lot better than most ships. I'd hate to see a repeat of what happened when the prom was first introduced.

I think a mild (emphasis on the mild) increase in agility coupled with a shrinkage of the ship model will do wonders. Just make it behave with a medium engine slightly worse than it behaves with a heavy engine right now. I know its vague, but we have no objective values for agility to draw on, so it's the best I can do. We may not even need to add agility if the devs can ever institute my idea of independently moving weapons ports (reprinted at the bottom of this post to be read or ignored at your convenience).
Making it a tad bit smaller wouldn't hurt either.
I'm generally against affecting its hull since it seems like longevity isn't really the hornet's problem. The problem with the hornet is that it has trouble dodging AND it has trouble hitting its target. Making it last a bit longer won't fix either of those problems, it'll just mean it can ram more effectively (which is currently one of the few viable tactics with the hornet), and I think we all wanted to stray away from that style of play.


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Most people (me included) can't aim energy weapons worth piss in any ship less agile than a hornet. Hell, it's hard enough in a hornet. The reticule is slow to turn and irresponsive and the ship wobbles instead of slowing down to a stop; trying to aim a low aimbot gun on a moving object is a nightmare. Even WWII bombers were armed with guns that could take out hapless fighters. Our Vendetta craft, however, do not. The Adv. Gat. is a step in the right direction, but we need more. Perhaps having certain weapon ports respond to the mouse in a more tactile fashion would solve the problem. Currently, weapon ports are fixed on a point in the ship, so the weapons fire where the ship points. The high aimbot weapons like Gauss and the Adv. Gat. may automatically aim over a certain radius of the gunport, but they are still generally shooting where the ships point. So what you get is bombers spinning around wildly spraying fire hoping to get some hits on the fast ships zipping around them, pointing, and laughing.
But there is another way. What if certain weapons could move independently of the ship? So when you swing your mouse to the left, the weapon reticule moves slightly faster than the ship position reticule does. Allowing the ship to bring its guns to bear before the ship actually finishes turing. (This would require the addition of a third reticule whenever a ship equips such a weapon.) That way, the bombers could actually aim their energy weapons without depending on a relatively crappy aimbot. Not only this, but heavy pilots will be able to rely on skill rather than rocket-ramming/seekers/mines to defend themselves since, currently, those are their only viable tactics when faced with a light fighter.
I know some people will say that a bomber shouldn't be able to kill a fighter, which I consider a crap argument. A bomber shouldn't have superiority over a fighter, but that doesn't mean fighters should be able to kill bombers by the dozens with nary a scratch. They should at least work for their kills. On the other side of the coin we also have to keep in mind it would have to be done in moderation. We can't have a Ragnarok aim with the accuraccy of a Centurion, but a slight boost will greatly help.

As far as network load is concerned, I have no idea how independantly moving weapons will affect the server's strain. If there are no visual cues (visibly rotating turrets) I don't think it will have to consistently send packets. The same reason the frigate turrets are orbs rather than rotating guns. Considering my knoweldge of networking and servers amounts to little more than a festering pile of doodoo, however, I could be wrong.
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Well said. A great idea, Magus.

"I think a mild (emphasis on the mild) increase in agility..."

Maybe, but over time we've been moving the agility of all the ships closer and closer together. How far do we want to take that trend?

"but we have no objective values for agility to draw on..."

Actually, we do. Someone measured the agility values in absolute terms. I've seen a table somewhere we're someone listed acceleration to a constant value and the time required to get there. If someone could repost that, we could talk about exactly what was meant by 'mild' in absolute terms.

"I'm generally against affecting its hull since it seems like longevity isn't really the hornet's problem. The problem with the hornet is that it has trouble dodging AND it has trouble hitting its target. Making it last a bit longer won't fix either of those problems..."

Well, actually it would. The longer the ship lasts the less accurate it needs to be, however, you're next point on the other hand is highly sapient:

"it'll just mean it can ram more effectively (which is currently one of the few viable tactics with the hornet), and I think we all wanted to stray away from that style of play."

Indeed we do. But, I'm not entirely sure that we can do anything about it. The design of a 4 small weapon ship pretty much ensures that its only going to be good at one of two things. Either its going to be a long range sniper that works by not needing to move much, or its going to do what most big, strong, powerful things do to smaller, less strong, more agile things - get in close and maul them. I admit I've seen alot of quad flare ramming with the hornet, but if you make the ship more agile won't it still be able to quad ram (only more effectively)? You may give its pilots other options, but you won't remove the strategy because its inherent in a weapons platform armed with lots of shortrange weapons.

"Even WWII bombers were armed with guns that could take out hapless fighters."

The 'even' here is highly suspect. What other era of bombers were armed with guns that could frequently take out fighters? Guns aboard bombers were so ineffective that by the end of the war the US was building bombers with just 1 or no guns, and never built a bomber with more than 1 gun ever again. Gun kills of enemy fighters by bombers were so rare in the Korea and Veitnam eras, that when a B-52 managed to shoot down a Mig, they erected a statue to commemorate it. I think it happened only twice in the entire period. Even in WWII, bombers only rarely managed to shoot down attacking fighters. Generally speaking, an unescorted bomber - even a 'flying fortress' was a sitting duck against a fighter. The usual strategy was to come at the bomber from above and head on and shoot up the pilots.

"What if certain weapons could move independently of the ship?"

To a certain extent, weapons like the gauss and the advanced gatling already do. But if you mean fully independent (turrets), I'd rather leave that for bigger ships than we have now. Remember, between the biggest PC controlled ship (the Centurian) and the biggest planed ship in the game (the 'Frigate') there is a pretty big size gap that ought logically to be filled with ships of all sizes.

"Not only this, but heavy pilots will be able to rely on skill rather than rocket-ramming/seekers/mines to defend themselves since, currently, those are their only viable tactics when faced with a light fighter."

I hate to say this, but skill with a big hulking, powerful relatively unagile weapon is being able to close up and bring your greater firepower to bear against the more agile foe. Think of yourself as a slugger moving up to knockout a boxer who dances around landing alot of punches but not hitting particularly hard, or as an assualt mech striding in close to finish off a speedy mech like a wolverine, or a big Gorn CA putting a tractor beam on a Klingon D-7 and finishing it off with 'one hundredddd pointzzzz of plazmmaaa'.

"I know some people will say that a bomber shouldn't be able to kill a fighter..."

And some people will say that calling the ships 'bombers' only confuses the issues. They are ships that occupy a certain position on a graph of agility and size. For ships with that agility and size, what do we need to do to make them viable weapons?