This thread is to get all of the worthless banter between my side and ctishman's out of the "Nation Specific Weapons" thread. I will present my case and argue it here, he will respond, and hopefully some good suggestions will be distilled from both of us.

What he said: "Were I to pit four Prometheuses against three Valkyries, the Valks would most likely win with three surviving the battle."

What I say: That is as it should be. Right now, everything is looked at as a fighter ship. I understand this- it's the current setting in the game. But look at the big picture. A Prometheus is a bomber. It should die to fighters, that is as it should be. Its business lies with capital ships. If armour is ever introduced like me and Celebrim have said (basically, armour would negate the first 4000dmg/second, making most small-slot weapons useless against armoured vessels), a Valkyrie would be UNABLE to harm a capital ship. Fighters like the valk would be swatted away. However, a bomber could do serious damage to a capital ship, and the Prom, with its heavy armour and large slot, could do quite a bit of damage. Right now, with only the unarmoured, poorly armed Frigate to fight against and no heavy weapons to fight with, it's not really something we'll notice. But once capital ships spread around and we get back heavy weapons like the Avalon, things will change. The Prom should not be able to defeat a valkyrie. But the prom should kill the cap ships, which can kill the valkyrie, and so on and so forth.

I have more, but I'll let him rebut this first.

Okay. Starting from the assumption that the Prometheus is a bomber. While it is noted in the ship description that the official designation is a bomber, I prefer to think of it as a tactical bomber, akin to one of our F15E fighter-bombers of today, rather than as a dedicated bomber akin to the B52.

Whereas the latter ship is a dedicated, long-range high-altitude bomber that's not designed for combat, the F15E is built to deliver its payload to a ground target, but also survive in a dogfight if need be. If the Prometheus were not designed for ship-to-ship, it wouldn't have small (e.g. air-to-air missile) slots at all. Guild has stated that all ships in the test are specialized fighters to one degree or another, and that we haven't seen bombers yet. So by that logic, and the evidence presented in the preceding paragraphs, the Prometheus is not a bomber, but a fighter-bomber.

Next up: Targets. Working on the assumption that the Prometheus is a fighter-bomber, as proved in the previous point, one could say as you did that the Prometheus is simply waiting for something to bomb. Okay, I accepted that explanation last February or so, when the release date was unsure. However, more than a year later, and still nothing significantly rewarding for the Prometheus to bomb*, and with a stated release date target of summer, it is quickly becoming apparent that nothing will emerge as a target for the Prometheus in the time remaining to test. I argue that as it is, {hypothesis}Guild has, perhaps fatally, overpowered light fighters ( the Valkyrie) in comparison to heavy fighters, as represented here by the Serco Prometheus.{/hypothesis} Furthermore, their (Guild's) apparent unwillingness to fix this and release said fixes to testing seems to indicate that they do not consider the balancing of ship classes against each other from an early point in development a prominent issue-to-be-fixed. This I see as a potentially fatal flaw in an MMORPG, a genre whose history seems to prove the adage that the first impression is the most important.



*Digression: By significantly rewarding, I mean that there's nothing the Prometheus can do, or in its current form has ever been able to do, that the Valkyrie couldn't do better. That armor in the format specified by your post (a good idea, if you ask me) to this point has not been implemented in the test in release after release (and indeed in many releases made LESS competent) looks to many Serco players as an endless stream of disappointments, causing our best pilots to leave the nation in search of a more fruitful totem for their loyalties.

I don't like the idea of having this food web where one big ship eats little ship and so on and so forth. That's way too simple for what is aiming to be a dynamic MMORPG. For balance reasons, bombers should be heavily armored and heavily armed. If anything it would require at least two or three fighters to take a single bomber down. Not the other way around. As ctishman said, the agility and acceleration allows for the Valk to quickly get in and out of a fight. A bomber doesn't have that option and needs to fight to the death. Therefore it should naturally be tougher to kill.

Vendetta isn't meant to be a space combat simulator for fighters exclusively. If there's ever going to be any diversity in the roles which are presented in the game, those heavy ships are going to need a serious overhaul that would help them defensively. Hopefully we'll see a change toward that direction when the "Test" is over.

Vendetta is SUPPOSED to be a teamplay game. But let's put that aside and look at what happens if, magically, Proms are made so good that not only can they kill all cap ships, but are better than 2-3 fighter ships.

1. Everybody dumps Valks and gets Proms
2? 3? Who knows!. ???
4. Profit!

Really. Maybe it's not "complex enoguh" for you Arolte, but I somehwat prefer a food web to having the bombers as uber-ships and the fighters as bombers' little cousins. If the bombers couldn't dogfight, they'd need escorts. And that'd need... GASP!... teamwork to do. So I guess that is out of the question for a company whose very name is "Guild". If bombers can dogfight, fighters should be able to bomb. If fighters and bombers can both do both, then they are the same thing...

True, Vendetta is supposed to be a teamplay game, but the truth is that there's simply no mechanism in place to facilitate that kind of play. Group messaging is a start, and the plans for private channels that remain upon logoff are a step in the right direction, but the fact remains that teams are difficult to organize and keep online through a single coherent operation.* Whether ally AI is the solution to this problem, or just better incentives to remain involved, a ship meant to be escorted suffers a massive penalty when the escorts decide that they'd be better served going off on their own.

I don't propose making the Prometheus three times better than a fighter. I don't propose making it as good as two fighters. What I propose is to alter the gameworld in such a way that piloting a heavy ship won't carry an inherent penalty. This needs to be done in-engine because it's not in the gamer's nature to want to protect a weaker target.

Groups of fighters have no problem sticking together, because each does their part and their styles complement each other to create a stronger whole. A group of fighters and bombers do not stay together because there is no reason for the fighters to stick around. If they stay with their heavy, they're a sitting duck. If they leave it, it's a sitting duck. So why stay with it? It has nothing to offer them. No protection, no armor, etc.

However, rather than just sit and complain about it, I propose that ships be fitted with shields. Every ship has shields of one kind or another, but heavies' shields will merge with proximal fighters' shields to create a stronger whole. So long as the fighters stick with the bombers, the whole is defensively stronger, creating an impetus to work in groups.


*Digression: Often times I would go to start a cap, and have a good 75% of my allies log off or lose interest by the time I got to the flag. I'd be there, alone, with a Prometheus, getting slaughtered, begging over team-chat for someone to wake up and come help.

I wish to reply to some of ctishman's comments.

A) The F-15 Eagle (f-15 E / Strike Eagle) fighters are designated "Multi-role Fighters" by the USAF. Their standard payload is 6 Sidewinder Air To Air Missiles and 2 500kg Bomb(lets)

B) The Prometheus is more akin to the B-17 of WW2, old and slow yet able to deliver payload and is smaller than some modern-bombers.

Thus, the Valkyrie being "Advanced Fighter" versus the "Bomber"-class Prometheus, well, the Prom is definetly at an advatage against larger craft such as Centaurs and Ragnoroks but ultimately, a Bomber was never intended to bring down fighters, one reason many travel in aerial convoys with fighter protection.

However, the Valk is severely overpowered for a fighter. Her hull is too strong and weapons/speed capabilities unbalanced. The Valkyrie has the maneuverablity of a Fighter with the weapons and hull capabilities of a Light Picket Cruiser. Thus, she is capable of striking deadly blows with extreme force very quickly.

I recommend to the Developer's at Guild Software, that the Valkyrie needs to be given a good hard look at and perhaps readjusting her stats so that she may become as vulnerable as the Marauder and Prometheus, but in a different way.

Why not just make team objectives. I mean, capital ships are just one example. There should be lots of things that require a mixed group. With capital ships as our example, well, fighters can't destroy them, but bombers need cover. Stuff like that...

That's an awesome idea. Frigate Armor+ shared shields= apparent possibility for fun.

--I know this is dragging something up from the beginning of the thread, but the quote "A Prometheus is a bomber. It should die to fighters, that is as it should be" has the bad connotation that "Serco should die to Itani, as it should be, because Serco are bombers"

hmm :/

--I think each nation should have its own flavor, but be diverse as well.
Serco, Itani, and NT should each be composed of bombers, fighters, botters, newbs, traders... it's impractical to form a "bomber nation" a "trader nation" or a "fighter nation"

--I feel that Serco fighters, Itani fighters and even NT fighters should be evenly matched in war, but fighting is too much dominated by agility.

--I have to admit that Serco is losing in the "special ship" field. To avoid comparing prom and valk again, I'll just use the maud as an example: maud has 14000 hull, just 4000 shy of the Prom, has better agility than the hog and the hornet (from personal handling experience only, I don't have the numbers at hand), has great acceleration, 3 small ports, and 16 cargo slots.

--when it comes to fighting capital ships, I still fear that the prom falls short. are you sure a prom, which is supposed to be a "bomber", can fight capital ships better than a valk can?
When it comes to fighting frigates, aim really isn't a problem (the capital ship being so large), and the frigate's energy shots are easy to dodge in any ship with medium agility. Proms have difficulty dodging turret shots, however, and have not the "extra firepower" that makes a bomber dangerous. Unless there are better weapons made for bombers, a centurion+tachyon is a better choice for assaulting capital ships! (which sounds ridiculous, I know)

/me sighs loudly

Heaven forbid heavies become less of a flying target, right!? We've been through this argument before a gazillion times. No, a Prometheus won't be an uber ship if it could actually have the capability to defend itself. You've obviously missed the point entirely. Anyway, at this point it's not worth repeating because this topic has been pounded to the ground like none other. It's clear where everybody stands and it's just gotten to the point where people are rephrasing the same idea.

Hey I got an idea, let's just wait until the game is finished before we criticize it. There will be considerable changes that will affect the balance of gameplay, including weapons and ships. Don't get too used to what we have now and don't think the game will be space quake or whatever. It's inevitable that some people will, and those tri-flare/gauss Valk jocks of today will be disappointed when their EZ Kill Ship of Doom™ will be balanced out.

Thanks Arolte, but the point here is to debate. Let me throw in my two cents.

Rather than attack the ships' roles, I think our two problems are the small differences in hull strengths and the weapons. I think we can all agree on this. Celebrim once said that agility is worth twice as much armor. A Centurion can bring down a Hornet, because it can dodge whatever the hornet can throw at it, and shoot back.

First, we need to widen the gaps between ships. Something as heavy as a Ragnarok could be thought of as a Corvette, and should around 35,000 armor. The Prometheus is a little lighter and faster, so the original 28,000 could work. The Centuar and Wraith could be upped appropriately, as well.

Second, our current choice of weapons suck. The only good large port weapons are the screamers and the adv. gatling. Small ports on anything larger than a Wart Hog are useless. A ragnarok shooting gauss isn't going to hit anything. I've seen a tri-rail + dual swarm rag (or swarm/screamer) rag, and that is the only *real* rag config that you could expect to take into a battle and come out alive.

We need medium ports, that fighters do not have (excepting the hornet, which could possibly have 1 medium and 3 small), that would replace the small ports in the Wart Hog, Wraith, Atlas, Centuar, Ragnarok, and Prometheus. The current sunflare and gauss cannon could be a medium port, with the resurrection of the Level 1 rocket to be a small port weapon.

In terms of specifics, this is what I believe should be done to remedy Vendetta ***AS IT IS NOW.***

In terms of generalities, you must ask yourself, what are the roles of different ships?

Well, fighters escort bombers to protect them from...fighters. So, obviously fighters should be a problem to bombers. However, as ctishman said, there is nothing to bomb, and no incentive for fighters to protect bombers. It's a sitting, weak duck because of its lack of armor and appropriate weapons. An idea would be to allow a Ragnarok or Prometheus to carry ammo (a full refill of one slot for each cargo piece), which would allow a Prometheus to refit four triflare Valkyries. This could be done instantaneously and without the need for docking, which will, in the future, be timely and perhaps costly.

I'm not sure if I like the idea of shields being shared between a craft--perhaps for a special alien race or type of technology, but I would rather see a non-physical incentive for protecting heavy ships. Maybe, when sectors are huge, only ships above a certain size will have sub-warp-speed high boost speeds (800 - 900 m/s). The fighters could dock and be transported quickly.

Picture this. Itani send a raiding party into sector 12--two corvettes plus eight valkyries (four valks per 'vette). The two corvettes are destroyed. Now, these eight Valkyries are 200 km from the nearest wormhole. Even if they started boosting, they'd be stranded. Serco warships could easily sound out ships carrying fighters that travel three to four times the speed of the valkyries, intercept them, and destroy them at will.

If fighters were limited to "light" weapons (hey, maneuverability requires the sacrifice of something) and engines, heavies would begin to move into their rightful role, I believe.

Rogue, by your argument, the a squad of proms should be able to take a cap ship and a cap ship should be able tot ake out a valk.

But why is it that the thing that takes out the valkyrie costs millions of credits while the thing that takes out the bombers costs about 50k? Something doesn't add up here. Claiming the prom is unbalanced because it has nothing to bomb is weak. Even if it had something to bomb it would be weak because fighters would shred it before it did any damage. You doubt me? Try having a war in S16, one nation of proms attacks the frig and one nation of valks defends it. We'll see how it turns out. It would be an interesting experiment in any case.
Valk proponents seem to consistently ignore the fact that the valkyrie's health, firepower, and agility, is disproportinately advantageous. It bequeaths every advantage (accuracy, reduced vulnerability (dodging,) the ability to flee, and more firepower than any other ship in its class) without any disadvantage (no lack of health, no agility tradeoff for the health, no lack of firepower, no need to fight if you don't want to.) One ship gets every single tactical and strategic advantage in the game. That is not called balance, no matter how many features you add.

Either make it the fastest fighter, the fighter with the most health, or the fighter with the most firepower. But not all three at once.

The valks would win in sc16, because the frig has more armour. Therefore, all weapons work equally. Therefore, bombers are not of any use. If you read what I'll wrote, you'll note that I stipulated that there be a use for the proms (ie: Armored ships to kill).

But take a look at it this way, when we have thousands of sectors many if not most will probably not have stations. But there will be tons of profit to be made out in deep space. Now does it make sense to have a small ship to say mine roids or kill bots and take their cargo and then fly back a dozen sectors to the nearest station? No you would want a large ship to carry all that cargo. Anwser, frigate or larger ship. Problem, it can only cary 3 (or some other number) valks. But it can cary much more cents and keep some in it self in case the ships blow up. (Extra ships cant get to the frigate due to the fact that it dident use a wormhole but used its super hyper speed tm engines to get to where it was going) Now a group of pirates find out that this frig is out in sector 442 with a few escort fighters. They get a few fighters of their own, grab a few more rags and proms and head off. They wait by the only exit wh and wait for the frigate (or a cooler way, have a scanner ship scan deep space for the frig) The fighters get in first and destroy or keep the enemy fighters busy. Meanwhile the proms and rags start to target and destroy the frigate, something the fighters on their own wouldent be able to do. The enemy fighters are destroyed and the bombers are free to attack the frigate with guided nukes or more powerfull dumb fire nukes or hey why not some crazy new weapon to be added "soon" just beyond its firing range. They kill it and get the cargo. Mission accomplished.

Basicly what im trying to say is that it dosent matter what one ship can do to one other ship. Its what a goup can accomplish together. A C-130 Gunship would never be able to go one on one with a F-15. And like wise a single F-15 would be helpless against a Destroyer armed to the teeth with anti air weapons.

Bus: Light Freighter
Centurion: Light Fighter/Scout
Warthog: Light bomber
Wraith: Tactical Bomber/Frieghter
Vulture: Medium Fighter
Atlas: Medium Transport/Freighter
Hornet: Light Picket Ship
Ragnorok: Medium Warship
Centuar: Heavy Freighter

Prometheus: Heavy Warship
Valkyrie: Heavy Fighter
Marauder: Medium Freighter

Well here is some classifying I did. I eliminated the BOMBER-class craft since, well, bombing isnt really a tactic used ingame. We typically use weapons in ship-ship.

Magus: Look at any MAJOR military action, ever. Smaller craft are more agile. Think about during the American Civil war. The south used not much moer than a barrel with propellers to sink a Northern warship.

The idea that small fighters in numbers can shoot down a large target has been around for decades. Enough missiles, bullets, and packets means victory. As long as the atatcker is doing damage, the war will eventually go to one side. The one that can take the most fire (dodge) and keep fighting back.

"Look at any MAJOR military action, ever. Smaller craft are more agile."

-Smaller craft are smaller because they sacrafice reinforced armor and extra weapons. The valk sacrafices nothing.

Appeals to military reality are not especially applicable for balance considerations either. In a real military, the goal of research is to make the situation unbalanced in your favor. In a game, the goal is to keep things balanced.

And I still say I could fix the problem if they'd let me, and without resorting to the sort of massive changes that so many people favor but which to my mind don't at all address the problem just make new ones. Actually, I think they could fix the problem if they made it a priority, but it doesn't seem to be a priority.

In the whole thread, I think SirCamps is most on target here:

"First, we need to widen the gaps between ships. Something as heavy as a Ragnarok could be thought of as a Corvette, and should around 35,000 armor. The Prometheus is a little lighter and faster, so the original 28,000 could work. The Centuar and Wraith could be upped appropriately, as well.

Second, our current choice of weapons suck. The only good large port weapons are the screamers and the adv. gatling. Small ports on anything larger than a Wart Hog are useless. A ragnarok shooting gauss isn't going to hit anything. I've seen a tri-rail + dual swarm rag (or swarm/screamer) rag, and that is the only *real* rag config that you could expect to take into a battle and come out alive."

I could quibble with the terms and the numbers, but he seems to be on the right track.

The rest of this thread is so filled with logical falacies, erroneous analogies, and false 'facts', that I don't even want to try to deconstruct it.

...so that's the most egotistic and long-winded possible way of saying "I agree with SirCamps". If you have nothing constructive to add, please butt out.

Actually, I don't agree with SirCamps. I just happen to agree with SirCamps more than the rest of you. SirCamps at least keeps the problem and the scale of the problem firmly in front of him, as opposed to losing himself in false attempts to establish his authority.

I think it sorta ironic that I'm accused of egotism and long-windedness given the number of bombastic pronouncements made in this thread by would be experts in 20th century air combat.

I didn't pepper my responce with statements like, "Guild has, perhaps fatally, overpowered light fighters ( the Valkyrie) in comparison to heavy fighters" and "This I see as a potentially fatal flaw in an MMORPG". I don't ask you to pardon me for thinking that these are pronouncements with a little bit more cheek than even mine.

The whole fixation on whether or not the Prometheus is a 'fighter', 'fighter-bomber', or 'bomber' isn't constructive and has been repeated ad infinitum. All it leads to is ridiculous and irrelevant comparisons like, "A C-130 Gunship would never be able to go one on one with a F-15. And like wise a single F-15 would be helpless against a Destroyer armed to the teeth with anti air weapons." so if you have nothing constructive to say, why don't you 'butt out'?

Thanks for the kind words, Celebrim.

Basically, as I see it, fighters counter bombers. Bombers counter capital ships. Fighters AND bombers both go no where without the capital ship to rearm and transport them. Therefore the capital ship is the lifeline of both the fighters and bombers, and ought to be protected at all costs.

Forgive me, Celebrim, for using a WW2 example. Fighters and bombers both fought over the Pacific. There were various makes and models, as well as roles these aircraft played. B24s(the Prometheus?) were more effective at taking out Japanese warships than a P38 (Vulture). However, a weird combination of the two, a torpedo bomber (the Wart Hog), was successful if 200 of them were sent against a carrier.

And we could quibble over whether the P38 was fast enough to counter the Zero, or what, but we all forget one very important thing. If the carrier sinks, these planes are forfeit. They'll run out of fuel/ammo/rest and crash. Fighters and bombers must have a base of operations, and obviously, the capital ship serves that purpose away from home.

Again, my opinion: The role of the fighter is to protect the bomber and frigate, as well as attack enemy transports. The role of the bomber is to attack enemy frigates and transports. The role of the frigate is to supply fighters and bombers with ammo and health, as well as provide massive firepower against blockades, stations, mining complexes, and other large space objects. The role of transports is to keep the frigate healthy. (This is ecosystem is limited to combat roles.) Therefore, if the frigate dies, every other piece of the puzzle becomes loose.

Now, obviously Vendetta is *JUST A TEST* (damnit!) and we are lacking both the transports and the frigates. So bombers currently have no role, and fighters carry the day.

I think we all need to Be Nice™ and wait for the game to be finished Soon.™