yea, I noticed today that the moth has drastically less armor, lower thrust AND lower top speed... Seeing is how it's virtually a deathtrap if you get caught in a storm, I would hate to know what even a greenhorn pirate can do to the thing.

The other issue doesn't revolve around it being highly popable, but slow in general... my one-way XiRite run to Deneb now takes over half an hour, when it doesn't even take that long to circumnavigate the universe in a faster ship... didn't take much longer in the old behemoth either. This makes trading even MORE boring and tedious than it was before.

Even the added vulnerability to pirates doesn't help liven things up, since if you encounter one, you're pretty much just screwed, so all care is taken to avoid meeting them in the first place (previously, you could take your chances and have fun trying to run the gauntlet where you knew pirates would be)

Now, the moth needed a nerfing - that is indisputable, but nixing more than HALF of it's armor, cutting its thrust AND dropping its speed to WELL below that of your average assault bot is a bit excessive... am I the only one that thinks so?

So, yea... please un-nerf the moth... keep the thrust nerf, but fix the armor and speed back to what it originally was so it's flyable again. Please.

How bout doing trade runs in a different ship?

The phenomena of making enormous sums of money VERY rapidly using the Behemoth is a relatively recent one. I don't think the devs ever intended people to use it to become as wealthy as they are right now.

I mean, honestly 50-60 million credits, is there any good reason to have that much money right now?

I do actually agree with some of the more recent critique of the moth.

Ok, given that the Behemoth is supposed to be (and now is) a slow moving freighter, the shipwrights would have engineered this ship to be heavily armoured, enabling it to be defendable.

I took out an NPC moth in a Cent Mk III (iirc) with something silly like a Neut 1 and a Heavy Battery. This was not across a system and did not include any jumps. This was me, going up to the moth, and expending a battery and a bit on the moth, while practically sitting still. I boomed the moth and booked it before the escorts got anywhere close to landing a shot on me.

I think it should still take a solo pirate a system at least to reduce the armour on a moth. I'm not saying I think it should be difficult, but I think that there should be a relativley large amount of time and space needed for one person to wipe out a moth. Right now you can take out a moth in almost any layout.

While I completely agree that the moth should be only able to make it through Grey alive with escorts, I think right now its possibly undefendable (I have not tried this against a Behemoth Heavy). Watch a squad of Corvus Pirates go after a convoy. They eat them alive (or did last time I checked which was before the Behomth Heavy).

Anyway, yeah.

I have no problem with the moth taking forever to get where it's going, since to move the same amount of cu in the largest cargo-marauder would require 1&1/2 trips (there, back, and there again), so the moth is still faster than the alternative.

I do agree that the hack job to the armor was a bit excessive. actually i think the armor should have been increased, giving the ship the chance to live until its escorts get into play.

shape we once had widgets that costed 3k and were a contineous 18k upon delivery. So stating that these runs are relatively new is kinda incorrect. It happened during the first insurrection of the hidden sectors (so the statioin inside the roid), the sector 14 , 17 and 18. I loved it intensely since it cut down on boring trading by a looooot.

renegade that was before the current universe tho, and that particular game was never meant to be balanced money-wise, the whole alpha/pre-alpha tests were about network stability and the game engine. using anything from that time-period as an argument is completely out of context.

the moth is a civilian bulk transport. it shouldn't be expected to see combat. as such the designers would have sacraficed armor for inpruved cargo capacity and engin efficency.

basicly the moth should rely on speed and good piloting to escape pirats. now, it shouldn't be as fast as a fighter, and probably shouldn't be able to out run assault bots either (they are after all the hive's fighters).

if you don't want to be killed in an ion storm, plot a coarse around them, if you don't want to be attacked by pirats, avoid known pirat hang-outs and use some creativity in your escape methods.

and if you want something big and slow that you can escort/pirat in groups hunt down some Tridents.

spellcast that doesn't matter the slightest... we had it. Therefore it wasn't a new phenomenon besides that was during beta.

although i wonder how the secret sectors fit in that theory of yours seeing as that had nothing to do with game engine or network stability either and i'm dieing to see those items reemerge... I would prefer to look upon it as smuggling contraband goods or rare items to a specific place which can be boobytrapped or camped by a bunch of scallywags... It was at least a proper implimentation of cargo being more worth then a ship in stead of the junk we have now.

I actually have an interesting idea for making ion storms a bit harder for pirates.

What if Hive bots (and most bots in general) had a way of tracking which characters were pirates (some formula involving kills and standing with various factions), and became more aggressive to people with a higher pirate rating? Maybe they'd do it to protect their weapons or something.

if player data tracked hive kills, the hive could simply calculate hive kills/deaths to deterimin how serious a threat a pilot is.

Yes, I imagine that would be a natural offshoot of that, but we're talking about ways to even up the playing field a bit for traders right now.

well theoreticaly traders would have killed fewer hive bots than players who focused on leveling combat and weapons. so it would tend to make the hive more violent towards pirats and military pilots rather than peacfull traders.

alternativly the hive could be it's own faction 9or combination of factions) but that's been previously discussed.

Yes, yes. I think we all agree that the moth needs armor at least twice the thickness of *tissue paper* if it has a top speed of 120 m/s (as is, you can take a moth out with a stock GovBus). The moth is now virtually useless, even as an in-system bulk transport.

Also, Piracy needs to be more dynamic. As in, more rewarding and more challenging. Pirates make the game interesting, so we want the career to have some attractive appeal, but we don't want *everyone* to be a pirate.

(PS Dark Knight, where have you been? We have work to do!)

i think that it probably should have been slowed but i think its armor should have been increased instead of decreased. Maybe they can make a moth mk2 that requires a higher license and give more reason to continue to get more licenses.

I suggest:

Moth MKI: The ship as currently nerfed -/-/-/7/2 (or is it 8/2?)
Moth MKII (Armored): Just as slow, but sacrifice 20cu of cargo space for more armor: ~-/-/-/10/4...maybe require a higher combat level for it too
Moth MKIII (Cargo Runner): same armor as MKI, sacrifice 20cu of cargo space and one of the weapon ports for an extra engine or two = decent turbo speed and still has 1L Port for mines -/-/-/10/?

I like the idea of needing escorts to make trading with a moth work...I haven't tried it yet, but I plan to do so as soon as I run out of cash.

AGAIN: http://tinyurl.com/g5phd

We've been over the moth varients thing a million times... and my suggestion remains the same.

{BEGIN QUOTE}:
">>>>>
Ideally, we would have different varients - a heavy, slow, well-armored one with a larger hold (say, 130u?) which would need escorts in grey, and perhaps a lighter, faster, less-armored, less efficient one with only 1 L-port and 100u of cargo, which would be able to hold its own and escape in grey, but wouldn't be rewarding in bulk missions.

Consider:

Behemoth MKI
Basic
Level: -/-/-/8/4
Armor: 35000
Cargo: 120cu
Weapons: 2 large ports
Mass: 30000kg
Length: 34 m
Thrust: 500 N
Max Speed: 65 m/s
Spin Torque: 18.0 Nm
Turbo Speed: 180 m/s
Turbo Energy: 50/sec

Behemoth MK II
Light Varient
Level: -/-/-/9/4
Armor: 25000
Cargo: 100cu
Weapons: 1 large port
Mass: 27000kg
Length: 34 m
Thrust: 500 N
Max Speed: 70 m/s
Spin Torque: 18.5 Nm
Turbo Speed: 190 m/s
Turbo Energy: 50/sec

Behemoth MK III
Heavy Hauler
Level: -/-/-/11/4
Armor: 60000
Cargo: 140cu
Weapons: 2 large ports
Mass: 32000kg
Length: 34 m
Thrust: 550 N
Max Speed: 60 m/s
Spin Torque: 17.5 Nm
Turbo Speed: 150 m/s
Turbo Energy: 50/sec

Tunguska Mining Behemoth
Mining Varient
Faction: +700 Tunguska
Level: 4/-/4/9/6
Armor: 40000
Cargo: 120cu
Weapons: 2 large ports, 1 small port
Mass: 32000kg
Length: 34 m
Thrust: 550 N
Max Speed: 65 m/s
Spin Torque: 19.0 Nm
Turbo Speed: 170 m/s
Turbo Energy: 55/sec

I realize that there is a *lot* of variation there, but that should be a good thing, not bad. Each would have a distinct role, and each would be less overall-uber than the current moth; while the variations in cost/benefit areas are great, the overall balance should be about the same.

For reference against the current moth, see:
http://www.vo-wiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Behemoth
<<<<<

This way you would have versions that need an escort, yet can deliver lots of cargo (the MK III Heavy) or a lighter version you can fly and escape in yourself, but won't be useful for bulk runs because of the more limited cargo. (for reference, the thrust, rather than the top speed, was nerfed on the basic and most subsequent varients here, in addition to nerfs of Armor - all of them are less uber than the pre-nerf moth, but more practical than the current one)

{END QUOTE}

krazyivan, the problem with the varints you suggested is that the first two still suck too much to be useful in any fashion.

A slow moth (as slow as we currently have or slower) must be far more heavily armored than it now is, and slower still varients should offer more cargo space so that people will actually use them (take an escort and risk a scrap)

The fast moth varient is a good idea though, and I mentioned it above. The current moth should be weak and catchable by a good pirate, but not indefensible altogether... besides, getting slaughtered by stupid hive bots is just embarassing - it should take a player, or at least an NPC pirate to bring down a player-flown moth.

Small observations:

People used to trade in nothing but behemoths. That is all I saw. Even with a valk, they were next to impossible to catch, unless the pilot was incredibly unskilled, or had a tremendous lack of luck.

Now, I see a much greater diversity in ships used for trading. I still see moths. A few moth pilots have still managed to elude me.

The chances of a moth's survival are greatly increased (depending on which setup the pirate uses) when accompanied by one or more competent escorts.

Just as the devs intended, the Behemoth isn't such an uber solo trading setup as it used to be. I do, however, think that variants (if created) of the behemoth could use greater cargo capacity as well as a boost in armor. Going back to the same armor the moth had before would make it quite a bit tougher to kill, which I beleive would make it a viable solo trading ship. Its up to the devs whether they want the moth to be a solo ship or not. My vote is for more team play.

Team play is fine, in fact great, but traders should not be DEPENDANT on it, EVER, especially with such a small playerbase. It should be encouraged to some extent with the moth, but we need to face the fact that the moth, with it's 'limited' 120u of cargo room, is not the ship to be hiring PC escorts to guard. There really won't be a point in it until we have capital class transport vessels.

Even if there were pilots around to perform escort duties, there's not enough profit to be had by running the moth to justify paying them what they would demand.

Obviously, we've had the nerfed moths for a while now, and there hasn't been an increase in team play - just a decrease in moth use.

You can make a ship Slow, lightly-armored or maneuverable as a rock, but if you mak it all three, it's worthless.

Traders are not dependent on team play. They are only dependent on it if they want to move ENORMOUS quantities of cargo.

If the Moth is difficult to catch when it is solo, then it will be the #1 choice.

I might also add that pirates should ALSO not be dependent on team play, we DO have a small player base, and this makes teaming up for piracy often very difficult.

So sure, lets up the armor a bit, give the escorts a bit more time to scramble, but otherwise, I think the "nerfed" moth, is a step in the right direction. It allows trading across nation space in bulk, but greyspace factions take a bit more work. As it should be.

Traders haven't become dependent on team play. They don't have to use the moth, nor do they have to trade in pirated areas.

I also disagree that there hasn't been an increase in team play. As a pirate, I think I ran into a 'team' convoy perhaps once in all the months before the moth nerf. In the past couple of weeks, I have run into quite a few.

But I do agree that 120 cu is a bit small for a ship of that size. Either that or increasing the armor somewhat... but still not back up to what it used to be.

Edit - heh, missed Shape's post before I posted.