Why is the valkyrie banned every other week?
I don't see why, because this is ridiculous, and even if this were to pass, you'd need to ban every other special ship available to nations. Like the Serco Prometheus.

It's not called a nation war if the Itani's can not represent their nation in the Nation War with their special ship. Otherwise ban proms too because that's not fair.

This is done because there's some people who whine about valks being overpowered. There's lots of discussion on this subject piled up on other pages of this forum. :)

It's the same reason why UiT cant hire me to fight for em, damn care bears think they run everything! One care bear stare and yer all sloth's.

Back in my day nation war had 3 rules.

1: No swarms or Lmines. (This was due to lag caused by these toys in them days)
2: No running out of radar range of any opponent. (Used to be held in empty space, or at a levi ring - host was to decide voilators)
3: Profit.

So yeah, stfu bitches. Rules are rules because you all got together and gave one host a care bear stare, he got bored, someone else took up the post and he ran it well for years, but after many many care bear stares, and rule changes. he finally gave up hosting it too. Then along comes Rin, nuff said. :P

Sorry guys, I used to enjoy the barter of whoring myself out at nation war, since that ended, well, it's just no fun for me. And to think, some of you paid me to fight for you! Suckers!

The long story short about the Valks is that they're too good at running away. So what happens when valks are involved is that they run around doing hit-and-run and mostly being untouchable (other than when in the hands of noobs or the impatient) while everybody else kills eachother, then they swoop in and hand everybody their rear ends. Now, you might argue that the greyhound can do that too, except the greyhound has no maneuverability and is made of glass, so for it the cleanup at the end is not so easy. That is very unlike the valk, which is extremely agile in addition to fast, and possesses a good amount of armor for such a quick ship.

Yes, no valks does mean a bunch of people go with corvults/svg/superlight/greyhound to try the same strategy, but those are more balanced. The CV has a very limited time it can spend turboing, and when doing so its firing capacity is severely limited. The SVG can run better, but maneuvers worse. They're both in the same league as eachother, as well as most other ships - they are fast but not stupid-fast. The greyhound, as I said, is very good at running, but it is also very fragile and not at all agile, so it's balanced. As for the superlight, they may be a bit OP, but on the other hand they're hard to get, and they are very fragile when you manage to hit 'em. And of course, only one blaster port. So that's balanced enough. Also, this means they go for a range of different ships, rather than everybody using the Valk.

It is unfortunate that the Valk belongs to a nation rather than being some oddball minor faction, but that is the way it is. Trivia: when Valks were allowed at all times, just as many if not more UIT used them as Itani, as did much of Grey. I don't remember much about the ship preferences of the Serco team at that time (many would say, "What Serco team?"). Basically, the vast bulk of NW survivors for any team were Valk pilots. I have seen a good number of people who were around before say that they have found the Valk-less nation wars much more fun.

For the record, banning Valks was not my idea, nor did I start the practice. Before I began hosting, Valks had been typically banned at all nation wars for a number of months. I happen to agree with that, but I also happen to like Valks and do understand that it feels unfair to the Itani, so I opted to alternate so that they could at least be used some of the time. Hopefully that also injects a bit more variety into NW, rather than being the same fight week after week.

Yeah, Rin Ganborro has taken the compromise standpoint of allowing them every other week. Swarms, Lmines, Teller-Ulams, etc are allowed now too.

I like the way Rin hosts NW, but imho he can ban proms with valks too. So, one week all ships are allowed and another week proms + valks are banned.

pffft, I've been saying for a long long time valks are overpowered, outrun anything, out manevor almost anything (think the superlight might have it beat), and has a shit ton of armor.

Despite RL keeps me away from NM - except when it is raining so I stand home on sundays - I really like the idea of alternating With/Out valks. One quick example I lived, UIT team had 3 ships left, none valk, gray had only a Valk. And yellows could not catch the Valk. Became boring, the Valk could evade forever...

But I also like to try other things, alternating, like:
-Use nation-exclusive ships as nation-exclusive ships. I.E., only Itani team with Valks, only Serco can use Proms, only UIT for Mauds/WTD and Gray limited to grayspace-based ships, as Grayhound, MercMaud, TaurAggressor...
-No nation-exclusive ships (ban valks, proms and mauds)
-NW located in race track sector, foggy sector, Levi sector (teams group up in neighbouring sectors), shipyard sector!
-Single-class ships NW. Everybody must use light, medium or heavy ships.

-Another date for NW, or some similar event during weekday, as wednesday. Name it NW2 or Nations Battle.
indeed, why not another date for NW2 and try all new stuff there?

{OT}And all this just show we allways had 4 nations in VO for all practical purposes, so we really need another playable "gray" nation/faction...{/ot]

You can evade forever in any light ship. The valk just happens to do it the best. Put any halfway decent pilot in a vult or a cent and they will evade you until one of two things happen:

1. They actually engage (which needs to happen at some point if he has any hope of winning)

2. They leave the sector.

I had a big long post in suggestions a while back gathering community input about how to fix PvP balance. There were some good suggestions made there by a few people.

That being said, the thing people need to remember is that by nature, the NW is what the valk is supposed to be the best at. That kind of combat is its greatest strength. The problem is that there aren't many other types of combat in Vendetta at the moment so you can't see its weaknesses. You know what valks suck at? Point defense. You can't hit and run while defending something. That kind of defensive combat is where ships like the Prom shine. Ships that can pick one spot and keep everything away from it will be 10 times better than a valk in that situation. Make an event centered around point defense, and I think you'd hear a lot less complaints about valks.

If you were sprinting in a race against Usain Bolt, you might naturally feel that the contest was a little unfair. But if you put Usain Bolt on a snowboard and send him down a halfpipe, suddenly he's not so good anymore.

A second NW would be fun, but I don't have the time and commitment-ness to run more than one event per week. If anybody else wants to host a second one on Wednesdays or whatever, more power to them.

If it's going to play around with various different rule-sets and stuff, it could be called the "Experimental War" or something, to help avoid confusing people (especially newbies).

Vendetta On-Air may take that up... I'm looking for other events to hold then just the Deneb Run. But I'll have to work on times and stuff later. Want to see more people involved, and not interfere with NW... and it be possible for my time schedule... oh this is already getting complicated.

Point defense shows up a bit in station combat. There's a bit of a problem: guided missiles make any kind of meaningful point defense difficult. The only real strategy is to repair the thing being attacked and take potshots at anybody who comes close enough. If you're in a heavy ship, you may also have to turbo away to avoid enemy missiles. I don't think I've seen anybody attempting station defense using Proms sitting still. I WISH it worked that way; it would be a lot more fun.

You should never be sitting still. The SCP has insane strafing power and can strafe around swarms without turboing away. Just about any mid/light ship can do this actually, but the SCP might be the only heavy that can pull it off.

I'd support a limited-rules nation war with only the following requirements:

Do not leave the asteroid field.
Do not return except in an 89.
If more than 1/4th of the ships that show up are valks, they are banned for the week. (? discuss)

Looking over this thread, I was thinking, and realized that the CTF sectors in sedina (H-9, check it out) and the other one which I can't remember where is, would be perfect for NW because the entire box with the edges of the roids the edges of the "Playing field".

"can strafe around swarms without turboing away. Just about any mid/light ship can do this actually"

A great many people do not seem to realize this. As soon as they hear that beeping, they start mindlessly turboing around. Doesn't matter what ship they're in, and doesn't matter what type of missile it is. Shoot a single stingray at somebody who is in a corvult or x1 and they'll start turboing all over the place while you have plenty of time to recharge your powercell and/or leave (if you're into that sort of thing - me, I'd rather run to a fight than away...).

Personally I was sick of seeing non Itani show up in Valks