Well as it is now 99.9% of the players use the medium engine/fast charge battery combo. The light engine is useless and the heavy engine drains too fast. You can argue that some people use the efficient engine, but we all know that the medium engine goes 20m/s faster with very little penalty in energy consumption. Has there ever been a point in Vendetta history when the engines and batteries were properly balanced with the tier system? Not that I know of. I'm not saying it's impossible, but at this rate it's looking bleak.

Either something drastic needs to change or we'll always be stuck with one superior engine that the majority uses. I don't know about you, but I feel screwed over now that the Hornet's agility is back to pre-3.2.7 levels without the torque of a heavy engine. I want to have the luxury of boosting for a long time with the medium engine, but the torque on that thing sucks. Meanwhile Valk jockeys have no problem with using the medium engine, since there's really nothing to notice when the ship was already agile to begin with!

Torque is the thing that bothers me most, since people with higher agile ships get absolutely no noticeable penalty, people who use ships that borderline medium agility and low agility get screwed over with the current system. The 3.1.6 and 3.1.7 ship balance might as well never have even occurred.

So here's my new proposal:

Get rid of the light engine. Get rid of the light battery. Get rid of the torque specs of each engine (in other words give every engine the same torque as the heavy engine). The changes to each engine class could be as follows:

- Keep the efficient engine and fast charge battery as is.

- Make the medium consume very little energy with the fast charge battery.

- Make the heavy consume a lot of energy with the fast charge battery.

I know this seems very simplified and dumbed down, but it balances the game out temporarily. The engines would be almost identical to 3.1.x, but without boost tapping or any penalty on torque. To determine what the speed of each engine should be would be a matter of trial and error. You can't just automatically assume that the engines should have a jump of 20m/s with each level of the tier system. You'll need to do some actual testing.

Have three ships line up with a light, medium, and heavy engine respectively. Have them race in a straight line. Ideally not one ship should be way ahead of the other. They should just barely be nose to nose as they recharge and catch up again.

PS: One thing that I still don't understand is why a heavy engine would fit in a small fighter. Have you ever strapped a 747 engine on to an F-16? It just seems kind of unrealistic. Why should Vendetta be any different?

Ya see arolte, it's because its a heavy fighter engine. These are all fighters. Now if they offered a frigate engine to put in a fighter I would see the comparison.

PS: Refresh my memory, what happened in 3.1.6? That was a long time ago, could we even have multiple ships per char then?

"Well as it is now 99.9% of the players use the medium engine/fast charge battery combo."

This I seriously doubt. I use a heavy engine/heavy battery combo all the time. Very useful for in-sector fighting.

I almost always use a heavy engine...


-homestar

I agree that it is significantly harder to fight with a heavier ship. It's almost impossible to dodge swarms in anything less agile than a hornet. But I don't think sacrificing the modularity is the proper way to go about it. Once the mass is factored in, I think we will definitelty be able to make reasonable, incremental changes to the engines without drastically altering anything.

Also, I think engines across the board need to be faster. Have any of you ever used the light engine? It is painfully slow, and with a light battery too it is almost intolerable. The game practically demands you use an efficient or better, and your battery choices are pretty much limited to fast-charge or heavy. Fast-charge only if you plan on crossing sectors since the long recharge time for the heavy pretty much makes you a sitting duck. Across the board speed increases would make the game significantly more fun once it becomes uneconomical to always buy the best engine possible.

The penalty for high agility should be lower firepower and/or hull strength. This is true with the Centurion and Vulture, but as I'm fond of pointing out the Valkyrie has the agility of the tiniest fighter but the armor and firepower of an attack ship.

Asp

Ooops, I meant 3.2.6 and 3.2.7 when I referred to the balance changes above. NOT 3.1.6 and 6.1.7. My mistake.

You guys have listed quite a number of good ideas. All I'm saying though is that the agility level of the less agile ships need to be back up to 3.2.6 and 3.2.7 levels, WITHOUT forcing the player to use a heavy engine/heavy battery combo. I could care less if I had to travel slower with the efficient or medium engine, but the lack of torque in all the other engines have thrown the ships off balance. That's my only concern here.

And Roguelazer, they're NOT all fighters. There are bombers and heavy assault ships in the game right now. They don't utilize the same size engines either, if the scaling of the models are correct that is. Why would the devs make unique S-ports and L-ports that restrict fighters from owning the "heavy" weapons, but yet offer fighters to use the engines that were designed for bombers? It seems very inconsistent, wouldn't you say?

Of course heaven forbid we start seeing the current torque level of the light engine on every single fighter, if in fact this idea is implemented. Maybe the mass of the engine would determine the torque value rather than the thrust. While it may not be realistic, it would be one step towards giving the light engine a real purpose in the game.

**Kuvagh: The centurion is gonna be more maneuverable once the devs find out how to do so.

**Arolte: They are. The only thing that changed is the heavy engine. Had you used a medium engine like some of us back then, it would be the same with the medium engine now. But now that you can't exploit the heavy engine, you don't use it. Your choice.

Also, they are all fighters in the scale of things. They're fighter-bombers and interceptors and junk, but they are all fighters. You'll see what I mean once we get larger ships. Take a look at Homeworld for a good example of many classes of fighters. Or even Star Wars. A Y-Wing is a fighter AND a bomber, and larger than an A-Wing too. But they use very similar engines.

**Pavan: You also have to consider, SHOULD it be possible to dodge with anything heavier than a hornet? They're heavy bombers. Yeah, they need more hp. But maybe they're not supposed to dodge, just either run away or take the damage unflinchingly.

**Phaserlight: Good post. :)

Asp the valk does need to be brought down more if it's going to be equal to non specials, but look at the marauder. It's got great agility and 16 cargo! This isn't a problem at the moment because the flag capping is so profitable, but if the valk is balanced with normal ships and capping is made more reasonable or removed the game will be completely unbalanced. Golds will become extremely aggressive because of the amount of money they have and the lack of cash for other nations (as happened before s15 was added).

I'm not against balancing specials with non specials, but it must be done across the board to all three specials.

Arolte no ships should not get the ability to turbo for long distances and fight extremely well. That would mean everyone must use that engine. Diversity and balance is a good thing it will be bad for game play if there is only 1 engine.

Making engines that can either move quickly, or turn means that ships can either dodge or aim. This would make everyone fly a prom and just soak damage as they lay into their opponent. Also dodging with bad torque would probably actually be quite hard, so it would be more unbalanced than I've been saying.

roguelazer: Good post.