Corvettes and 55 piloting: A discussion.

I 100% agree with Avanga and I’ve been saying this for a long time. Not to mention a re-design of battlegroups to only allow so many of each "class." I absolutely agree with one or two of the command ships per battlegroup with so many support ships. THAT is a fleet. You didn’t just have fleets flying around of 6 ISDs. There was an ISD or two (Or even an ISD and a VSD), Lancers Frigates, Carrack Light Cruisers, Dreadnaught Heavy Cruisers, maybe a Tartan Patrol Cruiser, Guardian Light cruisers, fighters, bleh!

My point? Avanga hit the nail on the head: revamp the ships system all together along with the battlegroup. Make more "ship groups" other than small, medium, large, and heavy. Make fighter, freighter, corvette, frigate, destroyers, and spacestations (Or maybe make piloting spacestations a feat?). Transports fall under freighter, gunships under corvette, assault ships under frigate, and cruisers under destroyers. Then make battlegroups hold 1 destroyer, 2 frigate, and 2 corvette. Corvette’s can hold 1 fighter. Frigates can hold 6. Destroyers can hold 12. That way a battlegroup can have 26 fighters as well for "support." I’d like to say more, but then I’m just going to get crazy specific and ask for things that aren’t possible. However, at this time, I don’t believe (I could be crazy far off though) it would be too hard to just change the code for the piloting skills and change the "size" on the ships.

How it would work (Maybe?):
*Turbolasers do a lot of damage, but have a harder chance to hit faster moving objects (Do a speed check or size check maybe to handle this?)
*Laser cannons do less damage, but have a greater chance to hit
*Ion cannons do only shield,engine, and turrent damage
*Autoblasters will almost always hit but do little damage
*Destroyers have an almost impossible chance to hit fighters and a low chance of hitting freighters (Only turbolasers and ion cannons) with heavy shields/armor
*Frigates can hit fighters (Use more laser cannons and small number of turbolasers like 1 or 2) but have lower shield/armor
*Corvettes have medium shield/armor, but low weapons (No turbolasers; Autoblasters, laser cannons, and ion cannons only) and are fast
*Freighters are heavily armored, but almost no weapons (Only autoblasters and ion cannons) and are fast
*Fighters are very very fast and hard to hit with low shield/armor and few weapons (Laser cannons and ion cannons)

I’m sure the flaming will begin now…

Most of the people posting in their thread are accomplishing nothing but to reveal their own ignorance about piloting.

[code:wlx1z7ox]help shipsize
SHIPSIZE
This is a list of the ship sizes. When landed, they use up space equal to
their size. For example, a Corvette uses 30 units of hangar space. Make
sure hangars are built accordiningly.

Ship Size Chart:
1) Vehicles [Size: 1]
2) Fighter Ships [Size: 2]
3) Transports [Size: 5]
4) Freighters [Size: 10]
5) Gunboats [Size: 25]
6) Corvette [Size: 30]
7) Frigate [Size: 35]
Cruiser [Size: 50]
9) Battleship [Size: 65]
10) Battlestation [Size: 100]
11) Platform [Size: 200]

See also: SETSHIP MAKESHIP
—
Help file last modified by Immortal on Never
[/code:wlx1z7ox]

On this chart, I believe fighters and transports are ‘small’, gunboats, freighters and corvettes are medium, frigates and cruisers are large, and battleships on up are heavy.

There’s already a huge variation in sizes of ship, the problem is that due to the way the weapons work, and due to the complete randomness as far as what size ship gets what sort and number of fittings, there’s no point in using anything but the biggest battleship you have. If you have ISDs, VSDs, and Acclamators, there’s no benefit to building and using anything but ISDs other than price/rapidity of production (well, and acclamators for cargo but that’s another topic). And even then the benefit is tiny. Short of literally forcing people to use smaller ships (and forced gimping of various ships has happened every TL since battlegroup first went in), smaller ships won’t be attractive options.

And the reason is not that ‘herp derp turbolasers op’. The reason is that there’s no real gradient in ship ability, and no real ‘options’ as far as fitting. Sure you can prefer speed versus defenses or whatever, but in the end, every battle is won or lost based on how you move your battlegroup, how much fuel you have, how efficiently you chaff, and how you balance weapon spam with fuel consumption. Certain ships may be better or worse, have more or less fuel capacity, have better or worse armor, have better or worse hyper ratings, have more or fewer weapons, but there’s no rock-paper-scissors balance between big ships.

You were talking about how there need to be more than 4 categories of ship size. There are more than 4 categories of ship size. They just don’t mean anything substantial. They could, though. The framework is there already.

I don’t recall saying that, and looking back I can’t even find anything that looks like it might hint at that. I did suggest moving transports up to midships, by which I meant they should be larger and require medium spacecraft to fly. Beyond that I explained changes that need to happen to each type of ship, independent of the shipsize system. We’ve been saying the same thing.

I said make five, Fishy (Actually six). And posting the ship size chart for hangar space has NOTHING to do with assigning roles to different ships. My suggestion for making different categories was a code-wise way to make it work not to mention defining things a little better other than the gray areas of small, medium, large, and heavy. "Ships with this quality go into this category." And I believe I made suggestions behind the reasoning for each one category. Going on your "fuel wins a battle" then obviously this may change that up a bit. Especially if your destroyers can no longer hit anything smaller than essentially other destroyers. All I’m saying is that a rehaul of the entire system could fix a lot of issues other than saying piecemeal things like "Should we move corvettes from medium to large?"

someone mentioned having a chance to do special modifications to a ship a la millenium falcon. this would be good in theory if the problems inherent to that came along with it. if you remember, the upkeep and maintenance on the falcon was a bitch. maybe something similar to that.

[/offtopic]

right now, the only things holding back ship mods are min/max capacity and quota which isn’t really much. modding a ship is serious work and intensive. it should reflect that and make the spacecraft science actually do something instead of just saying it does something

I’m going to take this to a different thread.

I’ve been arguing that Corvettes need to be moved above 55, but not quite 100. I’ve argued making it its own class for the sake of it. I despise how good Corvettes are to the point that the moment one hits the market, 99% of the pbase suddenly owns one and is all that’s flown about. Combined with them being unable to be pirated makes it all more unbearable. My initial idea was make them 85-90 or so. I’m not terribly against leaving them 55 now that Sintaka has fixed shipdodge(It was broken in that the lower the percentage, the better you dodged. Therefore, people without shipdodge actually dodged the best. But no more!) With that fix, it reduced the amazing survivability available to the level 55 piloters.

As for the balance in ship fighting, I’m seriously of the mind that if turrets would just get nerfed, things will balance out quite a bit in regards to starfighters vs cappies. Will it changed the Large vs Heavy aspect? Not really. You’re right, going Heavy is the practical application in space battles, they are bigger, better and whatnot. The only reason we introduced heavy was to stop people from rolling those non-pilot race/class combos to somehow be just as good as full blown 150 pilot mains. Did it work? Certainly. Did it reduce large ships or the barely 100 pilot avatars? Not really. They are still useful in naval warfare, albeit perhaps a largely unexplored one with the pbase at large.

Amazingly Frigates/Corvettes are really good in naval combat, especially when utilized as part of the battlegroup/Squadron. Their size and ability to shipdodge makes them an invaluable member. Their only downside is the fact they can be tractored, but then, that’s where the people tractoring them are taking a risk. So while the difference between large/heavy is definitely favorable toward the Heavy, I wouldn’t go so far out of the way to say Heavy is exclusively the only choice for a fleet if corvettes and especially frigates are available.

Firstly, anyone thinking of arguing with Gathorn should know he’s one of few people that LOTJ could consider qualified to give advice on piloting.

Also; the fact PLAYER owned "medium" ship Corvettes CAN’T be pirated is by far the most retarded thing in LOTJ currently. It makes no sense, and serves to prove a previously made point that makes Corvettes deus-ex-piloting. Not to move off point, but if a smuggler can reach a ship..he or she should be entitled to steal it, or at least try. Why are Corvette’s not allowed? Because they’re expensive and over powered? Players risk, imms fault. Anyway.

I think Corvettes should either be nerfed, or moved above 55. NOT Medium Spacecraft shifted up, but simply the class of ship "Corvette".

Remove the pirate immunity too. What a crock.

I think any decision we make about corvettes needs to be made for the benefit of the mud. The fact space combat is almost nonexistent for almost anyone but major clan pilots is a huge problem for me. Nerfing Corvettes, or placing them even more out of reach of players will only increase this problem.

I don’t spend a lot of time as pilot mains (almost none) but the question we need to ask is ‘why aren’t there very many space battles between the non-major playerbase?’
Here is my quick list of why I do not get involved in the space arena:
1) There survival rate against cappies in anything but corvettes is laughable (surprised?)
2) Ships are too easily destroyed by explosives when trying to capture an enemy ship (This one problem destroys pirating or ship inspecting, maybe we can make it so only explosives in the engine room will destroy it, everything else will just randomly damage a ship component?)
3) The only ship that can survive a blockade run cannot be pirated
4) Leveling piloting is the most time intensive of any of the classes (I include raising the credits to purchase your own ship in this – it is a lot easier to get a combat/bher main to combat ready then it is a pilot class)
5) Space battle usually always leads to a Heavy getting involved and destroying everything (or worse a battlegroup jumping on top of you)

As others have said, corvettes are just a part of a larger issue. The overall system is broke right now, and we should be thinking about solutions that will improve the fun of space combat for the entire playerbase, not slapping band aids nerfing smaller issues. I think we should be focusing on the macro-gameplay of space combat right now, not the micro – but hey that’s just me.

What do you guys think?

Just on the subject of pirateship immunity… gunships and corvettes are the only safe way to have a navchart to a system. Once pirateship immunity is removed from those ship sizes, those systems will be as vulnerable as they were before drifting was ‘fixed’. So a decision needs to be made there.